Moscow says S-300 supplies to Iran will force those willing to attack it to ‘think twice’

MOSCOW, April 22. /TASS/. The supplies of Russian S-300 missile systems to Iran are not breaking the balance of powers in the region, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Wednesday.

“As a result of the supplies of S-300 to Iran, those who still want to launch a strike against Iran will probably think at least twice before doing that,” Lavrov said in an interview with three radio stations, Ekho Moskvy, Sputnik and Govorit Moskva.

Putin’s disappearance implies a Russian dictatorship

Russian President Vladimir Putin has gone missing from public view without any explanation and Russians are wondering why.

Berlin:  Russian President Vladimir Putin has disappeared. Well, not literally, but he hasn’t been seen in public for a full week and reports about his schedule on the presidential website seem suspect. The Kremlin denies that he is ill, and the Russian blogosphere is abuzz with speculation.

It’s still impossible for an outsider to tell where Putin is, or what he’s up to. But it isn’t too early to draw conclusions from this episode. It offers evidence enough that Russia has become an outright dictatorship. No other kind of state would be so opaque, nor its citizens so preoccupied with their ruler.

Russia’s air force to receive 55 fifth generation stealth fighters by 2020

MOSCOW, December 15. /TASS/. Russia’s Air Forces will receive 55 T-50 PAK FA stealth fighters by 2020, Vladislav Goncharenko, a deputy head of the military aviation programmes department at Russia’s United Aircraft-building Corporation /UAC/, said on Monday.

“By 2020, a total of 55 fighters of the fifth generation are expected to be supplied to the Russian Air Force,” he told the Ekho Moskvy radio station. In his words, the army would receive first such aircraft in 2016.