Question to the Ministry of Defence:
To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what support his Department (a) is providing and (b) has plans to provide to the Russian Military Studies Centre.
The Russian Military Studies Centre remains a valuable and unique resource to Defence. The archive of books and journals is housed at the Defence Academy in Shrivenham, with support including direction and funding of cataloguing activity, ongoing provision of subscriptions to digital journals, and librarian services to support journal access and management. Defence has committed £63,000 in 2021 to the archive.
Looking forward, the Defence Academy have recently commissioned a detailed study of this capability, alongside their other library facilities, to find new ways of best utilising the archive to assist in understanding the Russian military within a broader, integrated reference capability. The first phase of this study is set to deliver in the early part of 2022.