Last year the Russian Army began selecting 8,000 troops for the new Arctic Brigade, which will be stationed in the Kola Peninsula, near the borders with Finland and Norway. The Kola Peninsula has long contained key air, naval and army bases. The new brigade will be ready for duty by the end of the year.
Russia has gone to other arctic military powers for ideas, and the best equipment available. This is part of a trend in Russia, to seek new military equipment wherever it can be found, and not depend on the, often second-rate, stuff produced by Russian defense firms. The brigade will be air mobile, and will possess vehicles that can move over snow and ice. Many of the communications will be satellite based, and everything will be able to handle the extreme cold found along Russia's northern coast.
We shall see. In the Cold War, Russian cold-war units were a joke. Buying actual equipment from the West is a good start, but the units need a lot of special training to operate effectively in the deep cold of the Arctic. Just surviving in the field in that environment is a full-time job before you get to the point of keeping equipment and weapons working and then using them to fight. Global warming or not, it's a very cold place. Russians may think they know cold, because of their World War II experience, but the far north is a different cold altogether.
I'm skeptical that Russia will actually field a brigade capable of operating in the Arctic. Very cold soldiers aren't the same as having Arctic combat capabilities.
