In a rare direct contact between military leaders‚ Gen Valery Gerasimov reached-out to Gen CQ Brown about upcoming naval activities. The communication which happened last week broke the usual pattern of silence between both nations military commands.
The Russian side gave a heads-up about their planned missile-launch drills in the eastern Mediterranean (an area thats been getting more attention lately). Its worth noting that such direct military-to-military talks dont happen often these days; the last similar contact was quite a while back.
The Russian Defense Ministry confirmed this pre-planned discussion: their chief-of-staff wanted to inform the US about naval movements and testing activities. The timing of this communication seems interesting — coming during a period when Moscow-Washington relations arent at their best