Russia

If you look at the negotiating team that the Russians have put forward this time, and they've slightly rotated some of their personnel - which is I suppose a little bit revealing - they've chosen Vladimir Medinsky to lead the delegation. He's a presidential aide, he is a historian, he was very well known for being quite hard lined on Ukraine, he has got very specific views about Russian territorial claims to Ukraine, and he's been part of those negotiations before. But it sort of suggests that some of the topics on the table are different to what they were talking about back in Abu Dhabi a few weeks ago, but it doesn't suggest that it's more forward-looking. They've chosen someone that's rather regressive, and what Medinsky is going to be really pushing forward, and I'm sure he did over the last few days, is talking about these so-called root causes of the conflict, and that's a kind of point that Putin has been talking about excessively over the past four years. To delve into the history and Russian territorial claims, and really to try to get to what Russia sees as the root of the conflict, rather than moving forward, trying to come up with negotiations, trying to come up any kind of compromise on either side. So it doesn't really suggest that the Russians are putting forward a team that's interested in progress."

It doesn't need to be a very sophisticated attack to do great damage, so an old ship dragging an anchor can do damage to a cable. The actions of Russia, of ships like the Yantar in the waters around Europe, are part of the hybrid warfare concept...The network [of cables] is vulnerable. You can't monitor every metre, every centimetre of the network at all times. And so it is relatively easy for an adversary to damage."

For now, Europe’s best move would be to develop its advanced non-nuclear weapons arsenal, which can threaten valuable targets inside Russia and blunt an invasion, according to Darya Dolzikova, a senior researcher at the Royal United Services Institute. “I don’t see a pan-European nuclear deterrent,” said Dolzikova, author of a recent report on nuclear deterrence in Europe. “I don’t think that’s feasible. What I do think there is room to do is ask, ‘How do the French and the British think about their own domestic deterrents, and how does that affect European security?’” France and the UK have about 400 deployed warheads between them. That compares with America’s 1,670, a number that could grow following the expiration this month of the New START treaty between the US and Russia that controlled nuclear arms. Despite their smaller arsenal, the French and British warheads have enough explosive power to destroy hundreds of cities, according to Dolzikova. Russia, by contrast, is more nimble, its vast arsenal including smaller weapons giving it more options for targets and how it responds in any escalation.