China Launches New Freight Train Link to Moscow

The railway authorities in Xinjiang said the additional cargo train service linking the region’s capital Urumqi with Moscow would contribute to the economic development of the autonomous region, which is seen as a “core area” of the Silk Road economic belt, Xinhua news agency reported.

Since March 2014, Xinjiang has opened cargo train service to Kazakhstan, Georgia, Iran, Turkey and also Chelyabinsk in Russia.

By the second half of the year, more than three cargo trains will run between Xinjiang and the destinations in Russia and also central and western Asia per week.

Makeyev working on heavy ICBM and possible new SLBM

The first two deployment sites for Russia’s Sarmat heavy liquid-propellant intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) programme will be in Orenburg oblast (presumably to re-equip 13th Missile Division headquartered at Dombarovskiy) and in Krasnoyarsk kray (presumably to re-equip the 62nd Missile Division headquartered at Uzhur), according to Strategic Rocket Forces (SRF) Commander in Chief Colonel General Sergey Karakayev.

Chinese military hardware hits Russia for joint anti-terror drills

Russian-Chinese anti-terror drills are in full swing with the latter’s tanks and gunships training at a military range in the Urals. It comes less than a month after joint naval drills, the largest of their kind China has participated in to date.

The joint counter-terror exercises, codenamed Peace Mission 2013, went live on Saturday and will last until August 15.