Newsweek - Russia could soon be carrying out military drills alongside North Korea and Cuba according to Valery Gerasimov, the chief of staff of the Russian armed forces.

Speaking at a meeting on Saturday which was also attended by Russia’s defence minister Sergey Shoygu, along with the heads of all armed forces branches, Gerasimov announced: 
“We are planning an expansion of the communication lines of our military central command. We are entering preliminary negotiations with the armed forces of Brazil, Vietnam, Cuba and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.”
“We are going to conduct a series of joint naval and air force exercises, as well as joint drills of our ground troops and air assault troops,” the military official added.
According to the former U.S. ambassador to the Ukraine Steven Pifer, Russia is developing these potential military partnerships as a response to its current international isolation. Due to its involvement in the Ukrainian conflict, the U.S. and EU have both imposed sanctions on the country and certain Russian individuals, and the country was suspended from the G8 last March.
“The Russian military may be reaching out to other countries as part of Moscow’s effort to show that it is not isolated, despite the very negative international reaction to Russian aggression against Ukraine,” Pifer says.
However Pifer, who also served as special assistant to president Bill Clinton on Russia and Eurasia, does not believe Russia’s attempts to embark on new military partnerships will develop further:
“I’d be astonished to see Russian and North Korean troops training together,” Pifer says.
“As for Cuba, Moscow has a long history there. My guess is that part of the Russian interest is tit-for-tat: they are unhappy with U.S/ military cooperation with the Baltic states and other countries, such as Georgia, that are close to them, so they hope to tweak the United States by upping their engagement in Cuba.”
However, according to Pifer a Russian partnership with Cuba may also be unlikely due to the recent thawing of relations between Havana and the U.S.

Last week Russian president Vladimir Putin told military officials in Moscow that he would like to expand Russia’s role in the arms trade across the Far East and Latin America.

Watch Out America: North Korea's Military Practices Sinking US Aircraft Carriers

February 2, 2015

The National Interest - North Korea’s Navy and Air Force recently conducted a drill simulating “mercilessly striking” U.S. Aircraft Carriers using “guerrillas-style combat,” according to official media outlets.

On Saturday the Korean Central News Agency reported that Kim Jong-un had recent personally overseen a recent joint naval and air force drill that practiced sinking U.S. Aircraft carriers.

“The drill was conducted with main emphasis on rounding off the war method of mounting surprise air and naval attacks on the U.S. imperialists' carrier which sailed into the operation waters in the southern half to make military strikes at strategic targets of the DPRK,’ the report said, using North Korea’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK).

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According to KCNA, the drills began with North Korea’s fighter aircraft “bolding breaking” through the carrier strike group’s “dense network of anti-air defense” to launch close-range “zooming attacks” on the carrier itself. After these sorties, “combined submarine units made torpedo attacks in succession from ambushed waters on the enemy forces hit hard by air strikes.”

After the drills were complete, Kim Jong-un directed the armed forces to intensify their efforts against U.S. carrier strike groups, because if the military “steadily studies and rounds off the war methods of mercilessly striking the enemy's backbone by the guerrillas-style combat method… it is quite possible to send even a carrier to the bottom of the sea.”

Kim also told the military not to fear America and its allies’ superior technology because “the fight with the enemies is not only the confrontation between arms and equipment and physical strength but the confrontation of mental power and ideology of people.” Kim argued that North Korea holds advantages over its adversaries in these latter qualities.

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It is not the first time that North Korea has discussed sinking a U.S. aircraft carrier. In October 2013, the U.S., South Korea and Japan held trilateral naval drills off the Korean Peninsula that included the USS George Washington nuclear aircraft carrier, along with supported weaponry like guided-missile ships, anti-submarine helicopters and early warning aircraft. In response, North Korea released a statement via KCNA that threatened to mount a counterattack that would “bury” the “provocateurs in the sea together with the carrier.” During the drills North Korea’s general staff said deploying the aircraft carrier for the drills was “very dangerous, reckless behavior,” and claimed it was armed “with at least 100 nuclear bombs aboard, many guided-missile destroyers, cruisers, submarines and escort warships, etc.”

Similarly, when the USS George Washington participated in drills in South Korea in July of last year, North Korea claimed charged the U.S. with “reckless hostility and confrontation," although it didn’t specifically threaten to sink the carrier itself. KIm Jong-un did visit frontline troops during the drill and directed them to send their enemies “to the bottom of the sea, to the last man.”

It is unclear if the North Korean military has previously practiced sinking U.S. aircraft carriers.