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Home , Kerch (fortress), Kerch Strait incident, Northern Fleet, Russian Navy

EURASIA Black Fleet takes over

OE Watch Commentary: Vice Aleksandr Alexsanderevich Moiseev has been a fast-burner in the Russian service and has spent much of that time beneath ice. He is no stranger to the Northern Fleet. Aside from the expected achievements of an up-and-coming submariner, in 1998, his submarine launched two German commercial satellites into orbit while submerged. It was the first commercial space launch for the Russian and the first commercial payload launched from a submarine. His involvement in the November 2018 Strait incident has done nothing to slow down his meteoric career. As the accompanying passage from the Independent Observer discusses, he is replacing Nikolay Yevmenov, who is promoted to command the . End OE Watch Commentary (Grau)

“Aleksandr Moiseev served 29 years onboard nuclear . Now, he is the new commander in charge of ’s most powerful fleet.” Map of Russian Northern Fleet bases. Source: Kallemax at English Wikipedia, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Map_of_Northern_Fleet_bases.png, Public domain

Source: Atle Staalesen, “Putin appoints new leader of Northern Fleet,” Barents Sea Independent Observer, 8 May 2019. https:// thebarentsobserver.com/en/security/2019/05/putin-appoints-new-leader-northern-fleet Putin appoints new leader of Northern Fleet The decree from President was signed on the 3rd of May. But the news was made public by the Armed Forces only six days later as thousands of Navy officers were marching in the streets on May 9th. The person who has headed the Northern Fleet for the past three years, Nikolay Yevmenov, is promoted to command the Russian Navy. He takes over the leadership of one of most powerful military forces in the world. Yevmenov replaces Vladimir Korolev, who has been in charge of the Russian Navy since 2016. Aleksandr Moiseev comes from the post as commander of the Fleet where he has served since May 2018. He has long experiences in the North. For more than two decades, he served on board submarines that have crisscrossed the Arctic. He started in 1988 as engineer on a sub and ended up as onboard one of the world’s most powerful nuclear submarines. In 1994, he served on board the K-18 , a Delta-IV submarine, and was decorated for his participation in the planting of a Russian flag at the . From 1998 he headed the nuclear powered K-407 Novomoskovsk, another Delta IV sub. He later became head of the Northern Fleet’s 31st , the powerful unit based in Zapadnaya Litsa on the Barents Sea coast. In 2008, he was in charge of the nuclear-powered submarine K-44 when it made a transfer from the Northern to the while submerged under the polar ice. He is a man well-liked by the President himself. In 2011, he was awarded the medal for Hero of the Russian Federation, and subsequently became the deputy commander of the Northern Fleet and then the leader of the submarine unit of that same fleet.

THE RUSSIAN WAY OF WAR by LESTER W. GRAU and CHARLES K. BARTLES

At any given time, assessments of the vary between the idea of an in- competent and corrupt conscript army manning decrepit Soviet equipment and relying solely on brute force, to the idea of an elite military filled with Special Operations Forces (SOF) who were the “polite people” or “little green men” seen on the streets in . This book will attempt to split the difference between these radically different ideas by shedding some light on what the consist of, how they are structured, how they fight, and how they are modernizing. DOWNLOAD AT: https://community.apan.org/wg/tradoc-g2/fmso/m/fmso-books/199251/download

OE Watch | June 2019 7