Six months after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, efforts to reinforce the Black Sea region have raised questions over why it wasn’t done before.

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Moscow has prioritized southeastern Europe, according to Matthew Orr, a Eurasia analyst at risk intelligence company RANE. Its buildup there “shows how much the Russians are concerned about this region, how much they want to have a strong military footprint there — to which NATO has to respond,” he said.

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Read the full article in Bloomberg here.