Nikolas K. Gvosdev
Security, Europe
And how long can Moscow afford to modernize?
When the Russian Finance Ministry recently admitted that at the current rate of withdrawals to cover the state budget deficit, the Reserve Fund, may be fully depleted by 2017, outside observers immediately seized on the announcement. It quickly became the latest salvo in the debate over whether Russia’s military modernization program and Moscow’s ability to continue interventions in Ukraine and Syria are or are not sustainable. And so it forms the latest example of the problem Michael Kofman has diagnosed in America’s Russia analysis for the past two …read more
Source: The National Interest
