Vantage Point North Podcast Ep2: From the Arctic to Black Sea via Baltics

The latest Vantage Point North Episode is out.

This week the podcast will cover the rebuilding attempts of the Russian Arctic brigade, Defense plans of the Baltic states that have been criticized by the Estonian PM Kaja Kallas and the current situation in Ukraine.

You can listen the podcast either from Anchor or your podcast platform of choice.

Apple podcast coming soon.

Feel free to send feedback to the author on Twitter @pmakela1.

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Quick guide to identifying the Russian tanks Part 1: Updated Dec. 2021

As most of the western nations have reduced their inventories to a few or mostly one type of main battle tank model in their active inventories, the myriad of tank platforms and distinct versions employed by the Russian armed forces may feel overwhelming. Here is a quick guide to identifying Russian MBTs. When you come across an image (or the actual thing), follow the steps to identify it properly. Updated 15.12.2021: T-90 modifications Family of the tank Russian Armed Forces currently operates, or at least storage, the following tank platforms/families: - T-55 (<2000 in storage) - T-62 (2000 in storage) - T-64 (2000 in storage) - T-72 (2000 active duty, 8000 in storage) - T-80 (2000 active duty, 5000 in storage) - T-90 (350 active duty, 600 in storage) - T-14 (20 in field testing) So how can you identify what type of a tank are you looking at? There are two features that can be used to distinguishing th

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Russian T-72B3 obr 2016 tanks near Ukraine For well over a decade, Russia has been actively building a capability to turn large training exercises into offensive military operations to minimize the suspicions of the buildup. This strategy was successfully employed in 2014 when Russian army occupied Crimea from Ukraine. The same type of maskirovka , or deception, was also used multiple times by the USSR. During the massive Zapad 2017 exercise many western experts and pundits, myself included, were very worried that Russia would use it as a cover to stage an attack against Ukraine or even the Baltic states. Before Zapad 2017 I wrote a short checklist titled "To worry or not": Tweet from 2017 The list isn't comprehensive, but the Russian buildup during the January 2022 ticks all other boxes from that list, with the exception of Air Force assets being deployed to road bases, but that isn't strictly necessary given the availability of runways in the regions surrounding Ukr

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