Sprawling training sites. Huge oil storage areas. Countless anti-aircraft missile launchers. Ponds for testing amphibious vehicles. And nuclear-tipped missiles that could reach Western European capitals in mere minutes.

A group of private intelligence analysts using commercial satellite images and other evidence has put together a graphic illustration of the Russian military buildup on NATO’s Eastern flank, a threat that has most of Europe scrambling to bolster its defences.

In

a video stitching together that evidence

and presented to the Toronto-based Mackenzie Institute think tank last month, the group provides a sobering overview of the heavily armed Russian presence near the borders of Poland, Lithuania and Finland.

They hope their research will turn some heads in North America, where attention has focused on Russia’s war against Ukraine but largely missed what President Vladimir Putin’s forces have done elsewhere in Eastern Europe.

“I think people need to know Russia is not this benign thing,” said Jeff Nyquist, a writer and blogger on geopolitics who presented the group’s findings in Toronto. “They want to dominate Europe, they want the United States to not be a great power any more … America can’t survive losing its allies in Europe. People need to understand what this means.”

The group’s analysis is “pretty good,” said Frédéric Labarre, a professor at the Royal Military College and an expert on NATO-Russia relations. The research serves the important function of letting Moscow know it is not operating in secrecy, he said.

“Their work is extremely, extremely useful if it gets published because it’s a way of telling the Russians ‘We see you. And whenever you move, we know where you’re going.’ ”

That said, Labarre is not convinced that the preponderance of Russian military equipment close to NATO countries — much of which he said is of poor quality — indicates an imminent plan to invade. It is more likely defensive, based on misconceptions about countries to its west.

NATO does not pose a military threat to Moscow but, said Labarre, “you cannot express this to a Russian, who has an ingrained paranoia about encirclement. This is not new. This is centuries-old, this fear of being encircled.”

Nyquist’s concern is linked to what he sees as a troubling turn by conservatives in the United States, who once were hawkish about confronting the Russian threat. Nyquist says he voted for Donald Trump in last year’s U.S. election, but now says the MAGA movement Trump leads is “obviously penetrated by the Russians.”

Trump himself has courted Putin as the White House tries to broker an end to the Ukraine war, halting direct U.S. military aid to Kyiv, hosting the Russian president in Alaska and at times harshly criticizing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump’s capture this month of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and assertions about U.S. dominion over the Western hemisphere have

triggered concerns

that he is willing to see Russia and China hold sway in their respective domains of Europe and East Asia.

But if the U.S. is sanguine about Moscow’s martial ambitions, Europe is waking up to the threat.

“We are Russia’s next target,” Mark Rutte, NATO’s secretary general,

said in a speech

last month, one of several cautions he has issued lately. “Conflict is at our door. Russia has brought war back to Europe. And we must be prepared.”

German

Defence Minister Boris Pistorius warned

that Russia’s readiness to invade other European countries is accelerating. “Some military historians even believe we have already had our last summer of peace,” he said.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk

has also raised the alarm

, as his country blamed a rail-line sabotage, drone incursions and the burning of a shopping mall on Russian agents. To prepare for more aggression, “we will accelerate the building of the strongest army in Europe,” Tusk vowed.

The group that put together the information on Russian forces is led by Lee Wheelbarger, who developed night-vision devices, communications equipment and a ground-breaking telemedicine system as a “senior technologist” with the U.S. Army.

He and his colleagues are not professional intelligence analysts. But he said he’s been studying Russian and other military movements for a decade – posting results on his KLW News online video channels – and has done work for the Ukrainian forces. Wheelbarger said he collects publicly available images from 28 commercial satellites operated by several companies. He and colleagues also access images from ground cameras – sometimes by hacking into them. He employs another video method he declined to discuss on the record, gleans information from human sources around the world and follows aircraft movements with flight-tracking sites.

To help identify what can look to the untrained eye like undefined blobs on the ground, he’s obtained three-dimensional renderings of various military hardware. Those renderings are then placed over the objects revealed by satellite images to see if they match in shape and size, helping identify the equipment. Other objects – like fighter jets and tanks – are clearly recognizable.

His group’s conclusions based on that evidence include:

• There has been major expansion in recent months of military installations in Kaliningrad, the tiny Russian “exclave” sandwiched between Poland and Lithuania, including an enlarged command centre, several huge new missile storage facilities and a reconstructed nuclear-weapons depot, an assertion backed up by other reports.
• A runway at an airfield in Kaliningrad was recently lengthened and is lined with fighter jets and supersonic bombers. Nearby is  a storage facility for SS-27s, nuclear-armed inter-continental ballistic missiles. A photograph taken and posted by a cell-phone user – and published by other sites, too – shows a queue of truck-borne “Iskander” missiles, which can carry both conventional and nuclear warheads, on a highway 19 kilometres from Poland. Nyquist said it’s odd to station ballistic missiles – which roar into space then hurtle down to targets up to thousands of kilometres away – so close to the borders where they are more vulnerable. But he said they could also be fired in “low-trajectory” mode and reach NATO headquarters in Belgium, for instance, in five minutes. Nyquist suggested the Russian nuclear weapons stationed near borders would serve as a kind of blackmail to deter NATO.
• Poland has recently added defences along its border with Kaliningrad, including concrete “dragon’s teeth” and tank ditches for thwarting armoured vehicles. Flight tracking this past summer revealed numerous trips by airliners into Kaliningrad from the Russian far-east at all hours of the night and day, while beaches were empty of tourists, suggesting an influx of troops.
• As in Kaliningrad, scores of S-400 anti-aircraft missiles and launchers are stationed in Belarus, a close Russian ally. A train that the group tracked from its start point in China delivered military hardware to a Russian base in Belarus, Wheelbarger says. He and his group also spotted more SS-27s, stored just 64 kilometres from the Latvian border.
• Belarus contains huge military training grounds near Poland, including “fording ponds” where amphibious vehicles are tested.

Nyquist argued that the most likely move by Russia, if it were to invade NATO territory, would be to capture the so-called

Suwalki Gap

along the Polish-Lithuania border, both cutting off the Baltic states from the rest of NATO and linking Kaliningrad with Belarus.

Labarre called Russia a ”very nasty neighbour” with imperialist ambitions, but he downplayed the significance of its positioning of military hardware close to NATO-country borders. In Kaliningrad, for instance, the area is so small, it would be difficult not to do so, he said.

• NATO to bolster eastern borders as Russia, Belarus hold joint military drills
• How the little-known Suwalki Corridor could largely block NATO assistance to Baltic states

Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our daily newsletter, Posted, here.

The United Arab Emirates has removed state funding for citizens who want to study in the United Kingdom over fears of campus Islamist radicalization there driven by the Muslim Brotherhood.

The move to formally exclude British universities from eligibility for state-funded UAE scholarship programs appears to date to last summer, and it had been informally implemented even before that, but it has come to light now after British officials inquired about the absence of any British institutions on the list of schools approved for UAE scholarship programs.

The Financial Times newspaper

quoted an anonymous source

who said UAE officials made clear to Britain that the decision was deliberate because people there “don’t want their kids to be radicalised on campus.”

The UAE’s list of approved schools has several top schools in Europe, the United States, and elsewhere, but none of Britain’s elite universities such as Oxford or Cambridge, and none of its larger modern campuses like the University of Manchester, or the various schools in London that attract many of the U.K.’s foreign student population.

The absence of those schools from the UAE’s approved list also means credentials from them are unrecognized and of lesser value in the UAE employment market.

Approximately 8,500 Emirati students were studying in Britain in 2024, the last year for which numbers are available.

Many Emirati students study in Europe and are funded by generous state backing to do so, with their tuition, board, travel and insurance covered for study in several prioritized academic areas.

The move to exclude Britain is part of a wider spoiling of relations between the U.K. and the Gulf state, though until now most of the conflict was over commercial interests such as the attempted purchase of The Daily Telegraph newspaper and the financial problems with the Manchester United football club.

It also reflects growing concern, both in Britain and abroad, about Islamist radicalism at British universities.

The UAE is a leading diplomatic voice in this debate. Since the Arab Spring uprising across the Muslim world in 2011, the UAE has moved vigorously to curb the influence of political Islamist groups, especially the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Muslim Brotherhood was a driving force of the Arab Spring in Egypt where it gained its strongest ever influence, which has since waned. It is a Sunni Islamist organization founded in Egypt almost a century ago.

U.S. Vice President JD Vance posted about this news on social media, saying, “Some of our best Muslim allies in the Gulf think the Islamist indoctrination in certain parts of the west is too dangerous.”

Britain has declined to list the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist group, although Prime Minister Keir Starmer has said it is under review.

This potential British listing has become a political hot issue, with surging Reform UK Leader Nigel Farage vowing to ban the Muslim Brotherhood if he becomes prime minister.

Canada also does not include the Muslim Brotherhood on its list of proscribed entities, although Canada’s listing that bans the terror group Hamas notes that it “emerged from the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1987.”

The UAE bans the Muslim Brotherhood as a proscribed organization, which puts it in the small minority of countries that do so. The UAE has also strongly advocated for other countries, including Britain and France, to ban the group, saying it is the source of rapidly spreading extremism across Europe and elsewhere.

Canada is a popular destination for students from the UAE, although Canada has recently drastically cut the number of foreign students it accepts under annual caps.

The Financial Times also reported that British officials do not regard the ban as total, as there remain some UAE military personnel on scholarships.

It is also not a ban on Emirati students going to Britain for school, as many whose families wish to fund it themselves continue to study there.

The UAE did not comment on the FT’s report, and the British Prime Minister’s officer issued a statement saying: “All forms of extremism have absolutely no place in our society, and we will stamp them out wherever they are found. We offer one of the best education systems in the world and maintain stringent measures on student welfare and on campus safety.”

• Muslim Brotherhood and Qatar have established extensive network across Canada: report
• ‘Son of Hamas’ warns about Islamism’s creeping hold on West

Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our newsletters here.

OTTAWA — New backbench Liberal MP Michael Ma, who made headlines for crossing the floor from the Conservatives last month, will join Prime Minister Mark Carney on his first trip to China next week. 
 

Ma will be travelling to Beijing and Qatar alongside a coterie of Liberal cabinet members including Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand, Industry Minister Mélanie Joly and Natural Resources Minister Tim Hodgson. 

His inclusion is notable because he is the only elected member of the delegation who is neither a minister nor a parliamentary secretary. He is vice-chair of the Canada-China Legislative Committee alongside 11 other MPs and senators. 
 

Ma’s inclusion in the trip so shortly after crossing the floor to join Liberal ranks could suggest he is primed for a promotion from the party’s backbench, though some critics see it as a reward for joining government ranks.
 

Asked why Ma was joining the delegation, PMO spokesperson Audrey Champoux said the Toronto-area MP has “considerable experience building relationship between people, businesses and communities, across the Indo-Pacific region.”
 

“Additionally, as the Member of Parliament representing Markham—Unionville and one of Canada’s largest Chinese-Canadian communities, Mr. Ma will add important perspectives and insights throughout the delegation’s work,” she added. 

Ma did not immediately respond to an interview request about the trip.

Ma was born in Hong Kong and immigrated to Canada at the age of 12. He was first elected for the Conservatives in Markham—Unionville in April 2025. He won the seat after Liberal candidate Paul Chiang dropped out of the race due to controversy over what he described as a joke about a bounty by China on another Conservative candidate and Hong Kong democracy activist Joe Tay.
 

But Ma created a political maelstrom when he announced he was crossing the floor to the Liberals just hours after the House of Commons rose for the winter break in December. His addition to the government ranks brought the minority Liberals to 171 MPs, one seat from a slim majority.
 

News of Ma’s attendance on the trip raised eyebrows among his former Conservative colleagues on social media.
 

“I mean … come … ! on … ! At what point do we just say, the Liberal Party of Canada has no values, no principals,”
wrote MP Dean Allison on X
.
 

Carney’s trip to Beijing is the first visit by a Canadian prime minister to China since then Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in 2017.

Both Carney’s and Trudeau’s trips have remarkably similar objectives: rebuild Canada’s economic and diplomatic relationship with China to help diversify the country’s trading partners following the election of U.S. President Donald Trump and a cooling of bilateral relations with China under their predecessor.
 

Following trips to China in 2016 and 2017, Trudeau repeatedly said that rebuilding the relationship with the
Asian economic powerhouse was a “top priority.”
He also accused Prime Minister Stephen Harper for Canada’s frosty relationship with China.
 

But Canada’s relationship with China quickly soured after that.
 

First came the arrest by Canadian authorities of Huawei top executive Meng Wanzhou on behalf of the U.S. government. Then China detained two Canadian citizens, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, for nearly three years in what is widely considered as retaliation for Meng’s arrest.
 

The Trudeau government’s relationship with China became frigid, leading it to release a new Indo-Pacific strategy in 2024 that focused on developing relationships in the region to get around China’s “increasingly disruptive global power.”
 

But faced with rising U.S. protectionism in Trump’s second term, Carney sees China as a crucial new trading partner to help alleviate Canada’s dependence on the Americans.
 

His trip next week will be his first meeting in China with President Xi Jinping. On top of the aforementioned ministers, Agriculture Minister Heath Macdonald, International Trade Minister Maninder Sidhu and parliamentary secretary Kody Blois will also travel to Beijing.

Carney will then travel to Doha, the capital of Qatar, before attending the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland.

National Post

cnardi@postmedia.com

• Geoff Russ: Carney cozying up to China aligns us with those who would destroy us
• The Monroe Doctrine, explained — and why it’s being called Trump’s ‘Donroe Doctrine’

Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our politics newsletter, First Reading, here.