"A several thousand kilometer long fiber optic cable is to be laid along the Russian Arctic coast as part of the Armed Forces’ building of a new closed internet."

From The Barents Observer (still banned in Russia):

Russia’s new military internet to be supported by Arctic cable

The system could ultimately also be used as the basis for a bigger sovereign all-national web, military developers say.

The new system for exchange of digital information has been called the Multi-service Transport Network System (MTSS) and is under full development in the country. According to military officials, the first testing took place during the Zapad-2017, the great military exercise held in the western military district and Northern Fleet in September 2017.

Up 20 GB of information can be exchanged at a time between the military units. All of it is based on resources and communication systems developed in Russia and it includes mechanisms for monitoring, operational managed and function control, the press service of the Armed Forces informs.

It will significantly enhance the management efficiency of the military, officials say.

Arctic cable
According to newspaper Izvestia, several fiber optic cables will be built to support the new MTSS. That includes one major cable laid across the country’s Arctic coast from Vladivostok in the east to Murmansk and Severomorsk in the west.

The Armed Forces have already started preparing for the laying of the trans-Arctic cable, military officials told the newspaper.

The MTSS will be fully isolated from the World Wide Web and all information will be stored on servers controlled by the Ministry of Defense. Data centers are reportedly under development several places in the country...

...MUCH MORE

Deeper into the story the writer mentions the Russian Defense Minister which reminded me of a fun quiz we had on the blog.
Here's the 2018 update:

Russia's Defense Minister Talks Smack* to Germany
 In February 2016 we posted a series of five headshots of defense ministers that had made the rounds on the internet the previous year, see if you can guess which one is Russian:

(from left to right): Sweden (Karin Enstrom), Norway (Ine Eriksen Søreide), Russia ( Sergey Shoigu), 

Netherlands (Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert), Germany (Ursula von der Leyen)

Of the five, three have moved on with their political careers while the defense minister in the middle and the defense minister on the far right remain in the office....