For years, Russia has been helping Syrian despot Bashar al-Assad cling to a diminishing power structure in a shrinking territorial base without trying to impose an overall strategy.
Now, however, there are signs that Russia isn’t content to just support Assad. It wants to control Syria.
The Putin treatment is reserved for countries in Russia’s “near neighborhood” that try to break out of Moscow’s orbit and deprive it of strategic assets held for decades. Continue reading
“Well, if you take the regional reset, it was not our invention—it was the invention of Hillary Clinton and Obama administration,” Lavrov said.In 2009, while serving as Secretary of State, Clinton presented Lavrov with a mistranslated reset button.
The reset button was a gesture that the Obama administration wanted to pursue a new relationship with Russia. Continue reading
The reset between the Kremlin and the White House is dead.
Now, the question in Moscow is: what will replace it? Continue reading
A Russian bomber recently carried out simulated cruise missile attacks on U.S. missile defenses in Asia, raising new questions about Moscow’s goal in future U.S.-Russian defense talks.
According to U.S. officials, a Russian Tu-22M Backfire bomber on Feb. 26 simulated firing air-launched cruise missiles at an Aegis ship deployed near Japan as part of U.S. missile defenses.
A second mock attack was conducted Feb. 27 against a ground-based missile defense site in Japan that officials did not identify further.
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The bomber targeting comes as Russia is building up forces in the Pacific by modernizing submarines and building a spy ship specifically for intelligence-gathering against U.S. missile defenses. Continue reading
While the U.S. continues to “reset”, the neo-Soviet Union continues to restart.
“Treaties are like pie crusts, they are made to be broken” – Vladimir Lenin
Russian nuclear forces hold large exercise involving movement of strategic and tactical warheads
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The exercise raised concerns inside the Pentagon and with the U.S. European Command because it was the largest exercise of its kind in 20 years and involved heightened alert status of Russian nuclear forces.
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The exercises followed a recent surge in Russian strategic bomber flights that include a recent circling of the U.S. Pacific island of Guam by two Tu-95 Bear bomber and simulated bombing runs by Tu-95s against Alaska and California in June and July. Continue reading
Russia pulls out of nuclear aid program in setback for Obama reset policies
Russia’s government announced on Wednesday it is pulling out of the multi-billion dollar Cooperative Threat Reduction program that since the early 1990s helped Moscow dismantle nuclear weapons and missiles, United States officials said. Continue reading
After only a little bit of thought, most people wouldn’t buy the fact that the Soviets or Americans would have much to gain from each other in regards to simple parachute jumps and medical evacuations, marksmanship and communications. Even boot camp for entry-level military personnel undergo this. Both nations respectively have an advanced military. It can be plainly seen that this is nothing less than an intelligence gathering operation on the Soviet’s part.
Having said this, two points remained unanswered:
What information do the Russians really gain from this exercise and how will they use this against America in the future?
Joint U.S.-Russia military training raises concerns that the U.S. military will increase Moscow threat to friends and allies in Europe
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The U.S.-Russian Bilateral Presidential Commission stated in its June newsletter that “the training consisted of tasks common to both units: marksmanship, parachute jumps, communications, and medical evacuations.”
“The end result of this program is an improved understanding of how the other foreign military works, thus enhancing the operational effectiveness of allied forces,” the newsletter stated.
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The U.S. government, while seeking closer ties with Moscow, is “insulting” Georgia by holding the joint exercises, since the Obama administration remains unwilling to sell the Georgians needed defense equipment and arms and has held very little training joint training with its military, the aide said.
Additionally, the Georgians are “under constant threat from a large-scale Russian military mobilization set for Georgia’s Oct. 1 parliamentary elections,” the aide added.
“The idea that some of these same Russian paratroopers could drop into NATO territory someday is not a fantasy,” the aide said. “What is a fantasy is thinking that they would never have to do it.”
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The senior aide criticized the exercises as “more of the reset foolishness and weakness,” a reference to the Obama administration’s conciliatory policies toward Russia.
“Why don’t we do more in NATO? I guess Obama has reset that, too,” the aide said.
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Ariel Cohen, a Russia affairs analyst with the Heritage Foundation, said now is not the time for such military exercises with Russia.
Russia has sent military intelligence agents disguised as special forces soldiers to spy on American troops, tactics, techniques, and procedures, he said.
“Today, Russia, together with Iran and Venezuela is among the troika of the most virulent anti-American countries, not counting Cuba and North Korea,” Cohen said.
“Russia is playing the godfather of Syria and is threatening to aim nuclear tipped missiles on our European allies because their military is still thinking we will deliver the nuclear first strike. This is why they oppose our European missile defense.”
The Russian exercises came weeks before several episodes of Russian military activities that also prompted concerns among Republicans in Congress.
In June, Russia’s military conducted a large-scale strategic bomber exercise in the arctic that included Russian Bear H bombers flying inside the U.S. air defense zone near Alaska. U.S. and Canadian jets were scrambled to intercept the jets.
The exercise, according to U.S. officials, appeared to violate the 2010 U.S.-Russia START arms treaty, which requires Russians to provide advance notice of such bomber exercises. None was given, either in advance or after the war games ended. A Russian military spokesman said the bomber exercises included practice targeting of “enemy” strategic defenses, presumably U.S. missile defense sites in Alaska.
Then, on July 4, another Russian Bear H bomber flew within 100 miles of the West Coast near California prompting a second scrambling of interceptor jets.
U.S. officials called that incursion the closest a Russian strategic bomber has flown to U.S. territory since the Soviet Union collapsed.
U.S. officials then disclosed that a Russian attack submarine sailed undetected in the Gulf of Mexico for several weeks before being spotted outside the Gulf.
Full article: Russian Troops Trained in U.S. (Washington Free Beacon)
Russia’s top military officer warned Thursday that Moscow would strike NATO missile-defense sites in Eastern Europe before they are ready for action, if the U.S. pushes ahead with deployment.
“A decision to use destructive force pre-emptively will be taken if the situation worsens,” Russian Chief of General Staff Nikolai Makarov said at an international missile-defense conference in Moscow attended by senior U.S. and NATOofficials.
Gen. Makarov made the threat amid an apparent stalemate in talks between U.S. and Russian negotiators over the missile-defense system, part of President Obama’s policy to “reset” relations with Moscow. The threat also elicited shock and derision from Western missile-defense analysts.
Full article: Russia threatens to strike NATO missile defense sites (Washington Times)
Get this: The General commanding Russia Strategic Rocket Forces, Lieutenant General Sergei Karakayev, said in December that the new Russian Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) are needed — because the existing ones are vulnerable to US missile defenses.
This is apparently the result of all that nice goodwill generated by the Obama administration’s “reset” of relations with Vladimir Putin’s Russia and the ratification of the New Start Arms Control Treaty. It should come as no surprise: nuclear weapons, along with oil and gas exports, are just about the only thing that still qualifies Russia as a “Great Power.”
If Russia’s leaders still resent their loss of superpower status and feel they have a strategic need to challenge the US wherever possible, then spending the money to build a new type of nuclear missile aimed at the US makes sense.
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Ever since Ronald Reagan gave his famous “Star Wars” speech in March1983, which lead to the rebirth of American missile defense efforts, opponents of the idea that it is not only possible but desirable to build defensive systems that can shoot down incoming nuclear missiles and their warheads have claimed that the technology cannot be developed. Yet now, a senior Russian officer has publicly admitted that America has built a system that can shoot down the solid propellent missiles that Reagan and his team thought were the most dangerous ones in the Soviet inventory. This is a major development: it proves that Ronald Reagan was right not to overestimate Soviet technological capacities.
Of course, as the US GMD system has fewer than 30 operational interceptors, the ability of Russia’s missile force with its hundreds of ICBMs and SLBMs to overwhelm the US defense system is obvious. However, if the US were to chose to build a much larger number of interceptors, and to build up a “multilayered” national missile defense system, as has been promised by Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney, Russia would no longer have an unquestioned ability to hit a wide array of US targets with nuclear warheads. The reliability of Russia’s missile strike force would be compromised.
If this is the motivation for Russia’s announced decision to build a new type of nuclear missile, then Russia’s commitment to “reset” its relationship with the US is based on a wildly false premise. After all, if the US does not threaten Russia’s territorial integrity, why should Russia worry about America’s ability to defend itself ? Or do Russia’s leaders still believe that a balance of terror, based on the old doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), is necessary?
Full article: Russia Wants to Build New Missiles to Hit the U.S. (Stonegate Institute)
As the US continues down the road of disarmament and a ‘reset’ the Kremlin won’t abide by, our Soviet counterparts are rearming and modernizing military technology. Soviet rearming is nothing new, regardless of the sideshow and overtures of ‘good will’ meant for public consumption. The Soviet long-term war preparations and plan have always been in tact.
Russia will produce six submarines and one aircraft carrier annually starting 2013, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said Thursday. “By 2013, production capacity [at Russian shipyards] will allow us to build six submarines and an aircraft carrier every year,” Rogozin told reporters, adding that the number includes both nuclear and diesel-powered submarines.
As a result, the production output will surpass that of the Soviet era when Russia built an average of five submarines annually, he said.
Rogozin earlier said the production had been bogged down in the past by a lack of financing, outdated equipment and a shortage of skilled labour.
Russia is planning to build eight Borey class strategic submarines and up to 10 Graney class attack subs by 2020.
Full article: Russia to build six submarines annually from 2013 (Space Daily)
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