ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

Admiral Nakhimov Written by  Alexandr Shishkin ; Originally appeared at  Vzglyad ; Translated by  AlexD  exclusively for  SouthFront A few years ago, the Navy actively pushed the concept of “new ship in the old body”, a radical reconstruction of Soviet-built ships with new armaments and electronics. A whole group of ships was sent for upgrades, but now we can say that all these plans failed completely. How did it happen and who should be held accountable? At the beginning of the 2010s advances in the Russian military steel construction caused a kind of euphoria.  Its typical manifestations were, for example, ideas of resuming the production of missile trains, ekranoplans, hovercrafts and an almost universal deep modernisation of the main ship composition, inherited from the USSR. A technical project was approved in 2012, providing for the tripling of ammunition of the nuclear submarines of Project 949A for the replacement of the complex “Granit” for “Onyx” and “Kalibr”. Acco

Four people have been arrested with 1.4 kg of a nuclear substance, californium, in their car in the Turkish city of Ankara, the country’s state-run media reproted on March 19. The security forces raid was conducted on a tip-off. Californium is a synthetic substeance used in nuclear reactors. It got its name from the University of California, where it had been originally synthesized. Accordign to Turkish broadcaster NTV, the suspects were reportedly aiming to sell the cache of 1.441 kg of the element for $72 million on the black market.

Sergey Shoigu Three attempts of usage of chemical weapons were prevented in Syria last week, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said during a video conference on March 20. “ There is a possibility that terrorists will use poisonous substances in order to accuse the Syrian troops of using chemical weapons in the future ,” the minister added. He also drew attention to an increased activity of the US-led coalition and attempts by militants to stage provocations. HINT:   An obvious place for possible militant provocations in the Damascus subrub of Eastern Ghouta where the Syrian Army’s military operation against militant groups is now ongoing. Shoigu said that over 65% of Eastern Ghouta has been liberated by government forces and 79,655 people have been evacuated from the combat area so far. “Currently, under the leadership of the Russian Reconciliation Center, an unprecedented humanitarian operation is being conducted in Eastern Ghouta. Over the last 5 days, 79,65