Written by  Nikolas K. Gvosdev ; Originally appeared at  The National Interest ne of the major blind spots in how the U.S. national security apparatus responds to and formulates policy for issues that arise across the Eurasian heartland is how the American government has chosen to bureaucratically define the region. Namely: the continued inclusion of Russia within the diplomatic confines of a larger European bureau has intellectually limited assessments about Russia’s position in the world by framing Russian action primarily through a European lens. Not only does this undercount Russia’s ability to be a major player in the Middle East, South Asia and East Asia, it has also, in my view, tended to overweight the importance of the Baltic littoral to Russian policy. Poll U.S. experts and at the top of any risk prediction for 2019 will be the threat of a Russian incursion into the Baltic states—and the importance of continued efforts to reinforce NATO’s north-eastern frontier as a re

IMAGE: degandr.ru Written by  Maksim Klimov ; Originally appeared at  VPK , translated by  AlexD   exclusively for  SouthFront It is meaningless to build fifth generation submarines without taking into account modern methods of their detection The main tactical property of submarines is stealth. With this in mind, the dramatic increase over the past quarter century of the effectiveness of their search and defense sharply raised the question of revising the appearance of modern and promising submarines, their role and models of application in modern war. Until the issues of protection against detection are resolved, it is pointless to start designing the next generation boats. According to the theory on the matter, science is arguing still, but the fact remains that a number of successful detections and search operations performed by anti-submarine aircraft of the naval aviation with a special configuration of a conventional search radar “Initiative” (development of 60s), en

A fresh photo has appeared online showing a Russian soldier with a patch of the Manbij Military Council of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). The SDF is a Kurdish-dominated group which controls the area of Manbij as well as most of northeastern Syria. On December 28,  the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), which are the core of the SDF, announced  that they are inviting the Syrian Army to take control of Manbij to protect it from a possible Turkish invasion. A group of Russian and Syrian troops were already deployed in the village of Arima, west of Manbij, earlier this week. Click to see the full-size image