Tim Marshall

base was built in Chechnya to deter any would-be attackers, be they the Mongol Golden Hordes, the Ottoman Empire or the Persians.

Warsaw Pact state bar Russia was in NATO or the European Union.

‘Workers of the World Unite’,

Russian island in the Bering Strait is two and a half miles from an American island in the Strait, Little Diomede Island, and can be seen with the naked eye.

High up in the Urals there is a cross marking the place where Europe stops and Asia starts.

taciturn, stoic, grizzled

overstretch, spending more money than was available, the economics of the madhouse in a land not designed for people, and defeat in the mountains of Afghanistan all led to the fall of the USSR.

During that era Russia was effectively a colonial power ruling over nations and people who felt they had nothing in common with their masters;

The ports on the Arctic, such as Murmansk, freeze for several months each year: Vladivostok, the largest Russian port on the Pacific Ocean, is ice-locked for about four months and is enclosed by the Sea of Japan,

was always about ensuring that Moscow controlled the space to prevent anyone else from doing so.