Russia and Eurasia

The warming of relations between Russia and China in the Arctic has driven some Western policymakers to declare that an ‘Arctic Alliance’ has formed between the two powers. However, a deeper examination of the evidence indicates that a destabilising partnership between the two powers is far from apparent.

There has been a tendency among researchers and policy-makers studying the evolution and deployment of unmanned aerial vehicles, referred to colloquially as drones, to discount their contemporary effectiveness in inter-state conflict. However, the recent conflict in and around the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh has in some ways challenged that assumption

Anti-corruption campaigner and leading Russian political oppositionist Alexei Navalny has been poisoned with the nerve agent ‘Novichok’. With the international community now demanding a full and transparent enquiry into the incident, it appears that this is yet another sign that the Kremlin’s grisly method of dealing with dissidents has indeed become an intrinsic facet of state policy in Russia.

The Government’s tepid response to the Russia Report is unlikely to have made any in the Kremlin lose much sleep. A stronger effort is therefore imperative to deter any future attempts to undermine UK democracy.

While the plot may have turned out to be a complete fabrication, the fear and panic inspired by the initial reports serve as a reminder that mokroye delo - wet affairs or “wetwork” in the West - has seen a resurgence under Vladimir Putin.

Any hopes of an alternate course for Russia have surely been dashed by the constitutional overhaul and it appears that the future will hold significantly more continuity than change for the country both internally and externally.

Despite Kaliningrad’s rich and complex history, the city’s current aesthetic, economic stagnation and social instability is in need of attention. However, for as long as Russian authorities prioritise its military importance, Kaliningrad’s residents will have to wait.

The Arctic has long been a space of stability and of healthy inter-governmental collaboration. It is vital that this stability endures and the status quo persists to preserve the region and ensure its stable development.

The House of Commons Defence Committee has published the HSC's evidence to the committee's inquiry into the potential end of the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty.

An HSC Senior Fellow, Dr Rowan Allport, has had a comment piece published by UK Defence Journal. In it, he gives his analysis of the UK Government's recently published Modernising Defence Programme report - a document intended to point the way ahead for UK defence policy.