Russia's global dreams

While Russia has long asserted its claim to being a global power politically, it is increasingly looking to give this some substance through out-of-area military deployments and even suggestions that it will establish a network of bases and facilities to provide the strategic infrastructure for global power projection. Regular long-range patrols of the Arctic and the Pacific were resumed in 2007 for the first time since the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991, using both reconnaissance aircraft and strategic bombers

[first posted to http://frp.janes.com - 15 October 2008]