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This paper covers issues of Russia's national security in the Arctic as viewed from the military perspective. It examines the trends in the development of a reliable defense system for this country. It postulates the importance of greater defense capacity in the Russian Arctic, as nATO relentlessly builds up its military forces next to Russian borders, and the US military infrastructure continues to develop. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Russia has experienced twenty years of economic and social change, which had a substantial impact on the regional and sectoral patterns of the development of its economy, infrastructure, the quality of the environment and the well-being of its people. The current economic revival offers new opportunities and presents new challenges for the sustainable development of Russia. The paper employs the UN Sustainable Development framework of indicators and assesses sustainability of Russia using multi-criteria evaluation methods, namely the uncertainty randomization multi-criteria evaluation method “Analysis and Synthesis of Parameters under Information Deficiency” (ASPID). The analysis covers economic, environmental and social trends in Russia's development in 1985–2008 and assesses sustainability of this development from the point of view of multiple criteria. The results show the potential of employment of multi-criteria methods for the sustainability assessment at the macro level and offer useful insights into multidimensional nature of sustainability and the role of priority setting in the evaluation process. Such an analysis reveals the degree of harmoniousness of sustainable development policy. It shows how different sets of priorities determine the outcome of multidimensional analysis of sustainability and could potentially help in assessing progress and designing new policy instruments. This paper is one of the first to apply multi-criteria methods to the macro sustainability analysis in the dynamic setting. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Regional climate change affects the state of inland water bodies and their water balance, which is determined by a number of hydrometeorological and hydrogeological factors. An integral characteristic of changes in the water balance is the behavior of the level of lakes and reservoirs, which not only largely determines the physical and ecological state of water bodies, but also significantly affects the coastal infrastructure and socio-economic development of the region. This paper investigates the interannual variability of the level of the Ladoga and Onega lakes, the largest lakes in Europe located in the northwest of Russia, according to satellite altimetry data for 1993–2020. For this purpose, we used three specialized altimetry databases: DAHITI, G-REALM, and HYDROWEB. Water level data from these altimetry databases were compared with in-situ records at water level gauge stations. Information on air temperature (1945–2019) and precipitation (1966–2019) acquired at three meteostations located at Ladoga and Onega lakes was used to investigate interannual trends in the regional climate change. Finally, we discuss the potential impact of the lake level rise and regional climate warming on the infrastructure and operability of railways in this region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]