Bulgarian Prime Minister Rosen Zhelyazkov said that countries in Southeast Europe must do everything possible to prevent Russia from imposing on Ukraine a future reminiscent of the dark Soviet era.
Russia has decided to re-establish the Soviet counter-intelligence (CI) organization "Smersh" and in early January 2024, an open-source image showed operatives apparently wearing Smersh uniform patches.
The Russian army is de-mothballing old Soviet tanks T-54 and T-55, accepted for service in 1946. A batch of such tanks was spotted being shipped by rail from Russia’s Far East.