NDC Outlook 2025-10: Russia’s naval futures: new horizons 2050, by Andrew Monaghan1
Summary
Moscow is launching a large-scale and strategic process to enhance its maritime power. This is designed to overhaul the shipbuilding industry and to shape a new image of the Russian navy. This is changing the characteristics of Russian strategic power.
This overhaul characterises Moscow’s strategy making, more generally in terms of the leadership’s priorities and also systemic problems, and more specifically in the attempt to connect economic interests and military power.
It reveals how the Russian leadership views the future: the process shapes a planning horizon out to 2050. It also includes shorter term scenarios. This is particularly important for NATO, because much of Moscow’s thinking about potential conflict is in the maritime domain, especially in the Baltic Sea and Arctic.
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