rickusn

Anyone who still thinks all is fine sees the world through rose colored glasses IMHO.

Putin touts new nuclear weapons against US - Telegraph

Putin touts new nuclear weapons against US
By Adrian Blomfield in Moscow
Last Updated: 2:37am BST 19/10/2007



President Vladimir Putin has announced plans to build a new generation of nuclear weapons after accusing the United States of harbouring an "erotic" desire to invade Russia and steal its natural resources.

Delivering one of his most belligerent anti-Western tirades, Mr Putin also suggested that America and its allies had concocted a fake assassination plot to prevent him from visiting Iran this week.


President Putin has plans to bolster the country's nuclear arsenal
Casting himself as a pugnacious but benign defender of national sovereignty, the president told his people during a live television phone-in that only Russia's military prowess had prevented the country from suffering Iraq's fate.

But he delivered a relatively conciliatory message on America's plans to station a missile defence shield in Europe - proposals which Russia hotly opposes.

The subject of Western plots was first raised by Alexander, a mechanic in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk. Was it right, Alexander wanted to know, that certain American politicians considered Russia's refusal to share its natural resources "unfair" — claims he bizarrely attributed to Madeleine Albright, the former US secretary of state.

"I know that such ideas are brewing in the heads of some politicians," Mr Putin replied. "I think it is a sort of political eroticism which maybe gives some pleasure but will hardly lead anywhere.

"The best examples of that are the events in Iraq, a small country that could hardly defend itself but which possesses massive oil reserves. Thank God Russia is not Iraq.

"It is strong enough to protect its interests within the national territory and, by the way, in other regions of the world. What we are doing to increase our defence capability is the correct choice and we will continue to do that."

On the subject of missile defence, however, Mr Putin was more measured. "The latest contacts with our American colleagues show that they have indeed given some thought to the proposals we made and they are looking for a solution to the problems and for ways to ease our concerns," he said.

Nearly eight years into his presidency, Mr Putin has grown steadily more assured and nationalistic in his public performances and the annual phone-in is clearly an event in which he revels.

As questioners fretted about Western machinations and Russia's uncertain future when Mr Putin steps down next Spring, the president was always on hand, like a cross between an emperor and a deity, to grant petitions, answer prayers and dispense advice and encouragement.

Not once was an unsettling or controversial question asked — a fact that drew scorn from the Kremlin's dwindling band of critics. "It was unbearably boring and openly narcissistic," said Yevgeny Kiselyov, a political commentator.

"It was all staged from beginning to end. If he is a president and not the Tsar, why don't we hear the opinion of those who don't vote for him?"

Russia's already rapid rearmament would be stepped up even further, Mr Putin promised. Ambitious plans to bolster the country's nuclear arsenal — as well as its conventional military hardware — were well underway.

They include new missile systems, modernised nuclear bombers and submarines. "We have plans that are not only great, but grandiose," he boasted.

To drive home this message, the broadcast was interrupted to show a test launch of Russia's newest intercontinental ballistic missile.

"The anti-western rhetoric is aimed at voters, philistines who like to believe that Russia is surrounded by enemies intent on keeping the country on its knees," Mr Kiselyov said.

"For them, Putin is the only man who can defend us from these vicious enemies."

glyn

[quote=rickusn;417994]
"The anti-western rhetoric is aimed at voters, philistines who like to believe that Russia is surrounded by enemies intent on keeping the country on its knees," Mr Kiselyov said.

"For them, Putin is the only man who can defend us from these vicious enemies."

Obviously a staged performance aimed at a home audience. I wouldn't put too much stock by that. He likes theatrical gestures but is also prepared to be pragmatic where it counts. I do not see him as genuinely hostile, but can understand the frustration his Russian political opponents feel. Democracy has yet to properly take root there.

__________________
Semper in excretum. Solum profunda variat.

Feanor

Democracy was never there.

Ophir

[quote=glyn;418162]Look at the bright side of life -- no one is going to scrap British nuclear deterrent anymore... Well, maybe the CND is.

All in all, I agree with Kiselyov here -- Putin's words are first and foremost for domestic consumption, and his statements aren't meant to scare the West.

glyn

[quote=Ophir;418182].

Ophir

Erm... don't you think that Russia, for example, needs nuclear deterrent? If so, why?

rickusn

Ophir:

The only thing I see as wrong is that the west including Japan,Norway,UK, Canada IIRC and the US fund nuclear clear-up in Russia and nuclear sub dismantlement WHILE Russia spends a huge amount of its defense budget on new nuclear submarines and new nuclear weapons of all types air, land and seabased.

Very strange to me.

The Russians are also pouring tons of resources in building a new military globlal surviellance and command system.

Which is neccessary among other requirenments for targeting the below cited missile programs.:

Along with continued high amount of funding in the development of not on but three powerful, fast, long-range state-of-the-art anti-carrier weapons.

Always remember the quote from Adminstrator of the premier Russian Military werbsite warfare.ru which I have posted many times and I paraphrase abit here "Russias goal has been, is and will remain global domination".

WWW III started COLD some eight years ago its only a matter of months now before it becomes HOT.

Its well past time for those with their Heads in the sand to pull them out IMHO.

Here more on Russia, Putin etc etc etc:

Sino-Russian embrace leaves US out in the cold

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The Sino-Russian embrace leaves the US out in the cold

Moscow and Beijing are closer now than in the Communist period. An anxious America is left struggling to be heard

Jonathan Steele
Friday October 12, 2007
The Guardian


It was quite a shock for some Russians in a rural backwater of the Urals recently to see lorry-loads of Chinese troops go by. True, they were not pointing their guns at the babushkas but many people panicked, wondering how Chinese forces had reached parts of central Russia, a feat not achieved by either the Nazis or Napoleon's army.
Those who watched local television knew this was a joint exercise, the first of such magnitude, between Russian forces and over a thousand men of the People's Liberation Army - and the most startling evidence so far of the extraordinarily cordial relations between Moscow and Beijing.

It has become a commonplace of international diplomacy that Russia and China often work together on key issues. They have frustrated western hopes for sanctions or other tough action on disputes ranging from Burma and Darfur to Iran. They are blocking a solution on Kosovo. What few in the west have spotted is that Sino-Russian rapprochement has reached such a point that the two huge countries' relations with each other are far warmer than either US-Russian or US-Chinese relations. In other words, the famous US-Russia-China triangle Nixon and Kissinger created by their path-breaking overtures to Beijing in the early 1970s is completely reversed.

China, in those Maoist days, was mired in a mixture of international quarantine and self-imposed isolation, feared by the Soviet Union and hated by the US. The two Americans dramatically broke the mould. They cleverly manipulated Mao's ideological rivalry with Moscow to bring China back into the global arena and thereby infuriate and put pressure on the Soviets. This helped to ease the US retreat from Vietnam.

Now Russia and China are together and the US is out of the loop. It is a stark fact that Condoleezza Rice and defence secretary Robert Gates cannot ignore today as they start two days of talks in Moscow. No more easy concessions from Moscow and Beijing. Both powers are big boys and can bargain as hard as anyone from Washington, whether neocon or "realist".

Russia's friendship with China is not just a ploy by their elites. It has grassroots resonance. As Oxana Antonenko, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies points out, many Russians now see China as their country's closest partner. The number of Russians who feel China is a friend, according to a recent poll, is more than double the number who feel that about the US. Some 24% of Russians fear clashes with America in the near future. Only 4% see a chance of that with China.

These pro-Chinese views are particularly strong in the Russian far east, an area in which analysts used to detect Sinophobia, based on fears that China's booming population would covet eastern Siberia's rich resources and vast open spaces. Human contact, and economic benefit, have had the opposite effect. About 200,000 Chinese now live in Russia. This may not sound much compared with the numbers of Chinese in the US, Australia, or southeast Asia, but in Russia Chinese settlement started from a zero base a decade ago.

Many more Chinese come in seasonally to plant and pick crops, not just in the border areas but deep into European Russia. Mixed marriages are common, and reports say that one of the favourite pastimes of Chinese teenagers living across the river Amur from the Russian city of Blagoveshchensk is to train binoculars on the girls going by, pick out a likely local lass, cross over and woo her - and then live in Russia.

The countries' economies differ - one reliant on exports of energy, the other on low-wage industrial products, but they are complementary. Each is a good customer of the other. At the policy level, their partnership functions most strikingly in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, a body established six years ago. Working less formally until then as the Shanghai Five (other members were Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan), the group succeeded in resolving all the outstanding Sino-Russian disputes over the borderline.

Now the SCO helps to accelerate Russia's rising military links with China, not only the export of weapons but also in licensing and joint production. It has proved so successful that India, Pakistan and Iran want to join, presenting the SCO with the same widening-versus-deepening dilemmas that the EU knows so well. Members are not in full agreement on how to proceed. China prefers to focus on regional economic links, Russia on military partnership and strategic concerns. But they share the view that by working together they can reduce US and western pressure while also preventing unwelcome democratisation of the "colour revolution" type.

As Russia moves back from the freedoms of the Gorbachev and Yeltsin years, its internal politics increasingly resemble China's. Beijing tightens controls on activist websites and peasant protesters in advance of next year's Olympics. The Kremlin squeezes radical critics out of the December contest for seats in parliament. Unlike China, Russia is still nominally a multiparty system, but its ruling party is virtually unassailable.

Putin's surprise decision last week to put himself at the head of the electoral list of the ruling party, United Russia, has lifted it to 54% in the polls. The Communists, on 6%, might not even break the 7% barrier required to get into the Duma. No doubt Putin's people will rectify that, since they want at least one quasi-opponent around, in addition to the phoney pro-Kremlin parties they have created. The two other ways that Russians could express opposition have been abolished. The right to vote "against all" is dropped. Low turnout will no longer invalidate an election.

Hinting he may become prime minister, Putin has found the best way to get round the bar on a third consecutive term as president. The constitution describes the president as commander-in-chief, but it does not say he controls the foreign ministry and security structures. A presidential decree does that. In the remaining months of his term, Putin could sign a new decree giving control over them to the prime minister. It would be a masterstroke.

Whether their system is best described as "bureaucratic capitalism" or "authoritarian capitalism", Russia and China are firmer friends today than they were in their Communist period. They have given a new meaning to "triangulation". The west should take note.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/china/stor...189483,00.htm

beka

Actually Chinese men marrying Russian women makes sense. From what I have heard there are a lot more Russian girls than Russian men, and there are a lot more Chinese men than Chinese women.. So, hey that's literally a marriage made in heaven.

Quite frankly though the reason Russia is turning to China is partly becuase of the Nato Expansion and those bases.

Feanor how do you feel about Nato expanding East? Do you think it's threatening.

I have studied a semester of Russian history in college, and my "bit" of knowledge about Russian history tells me that the Russians have a very understandable fear of encirclement, partly because on the European side especially there are no natural borders/defensive terrain. As such throughout Russia's history they have faced a ton of terrible invasions.

In my book, I don't see how the Russians wouldn't view Nato troops so close to their border as anything BUT threatening, and my feeling is that any Russian president who cared about his country, democrat or not, would take serious issue with it..

Thus, my feeling is the US bares quite a lot of responsibility for Russia turning to China and Iran. As for them being a democracy, I think it will take time, but their democracy will always be a bit authoratarian because of the issues Russia has.

Still, I think the whole question and answer thing, even if it's nice questions, is really an awesome idea, and I wish we had it in the United States. Putin doing this reminds me of Roosevelt's fire side chats.

glyn

Ophir

I think Mr Putin is grateful to all of those countries for their assistance.

Well, yes, Russia is trying to modernize its military. I don't think it's bad per se.

Heh, the guy got carried away. Seriously, though, there are lots of people who believe that Russia must rule the world. In reality, however, a country with declining population, the country whose main export commodities are raw materials, the country whose GDP is somewhere between Brazil and South Korea has few chances to rule them all.

I don't get it; do you state that our countries are at war since 1999, and that in several months American and Russian soldiers are to become shooting at each other?

braindead

__________________
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beka

Uh...Did I say that the Eastern Europeans didn't have a reason to fear Russia? But guess what the same resentments that Eastern Europeans have towards Russia, guess what many Latin Americans have towards the United States. They have long memories of the United States getting involved in their internal affairs. Castro had strong national security reasons for wanting those Soviet missles. Heck, we even stole half of Mexico, after promising Spain, when they gave us Florida that we would respect Mexico's territory. Do you think the Mexicans have forgotten that one. Or the Haiwian natives have forgotten how we stole Hawai? Or the American Indians have forgotten how we stole the entire United States. We have absolutely no justification to be pointing fingers at Russia. In that regards. I guess according to your theory, Russia would be justified in setting up bases in Latin America. But well, we have the Monroe Doctrine which specifically rejects that idea.

Well similarly, Russia has security reasons for not wanting NATO in Eastern Europe. If we want Russia to respect our feelings about Latin America, we should respect Her feeling about the danger of Nato troops on the Russian border. The only thing this has done is make the Russians feel they were perhaps wrong to voluntarily give up their empire. And they did give up those nations voluntarily.

Besides, given that there are a lot of unsolved issues in Eastern Europe with Russia. For example, the ethnic Russians in Georgia wanting to succeed from Georgia etc. Why in the heck do we want to have NATO anywhere near those countries. In some aspects, you could have a powder keg waiting to happen. To I really want to go to war with Russia over those two territories in Georgia, heck no.

rickusn

Putin continues to threaten war. Then so be it lets get it done now, right now, I hate waiting in line listening to BS. Call his bluff. Ive had enough of his childish arrogant,ignorant rantings I have bosses at work who are worse for crying out loud.

And heres more:

Russian Chief General Staff to be Sacked?
Posted by: Steeljawscribe in Russia
While we have been busy over here, seems there is a bit of a dust-up that has arisen overseas between President Putin and his CGS, Yuriy Baluyevskiy centered on the INF treaty and Russia’s continued adherence in view of the proposed US European site for a portion of its ballistic missile defense system. When Secretaries Rice and gates arrived in Moscow earlier last week they were "cordially" greeted by President Putin who proceeded to lecture them both for a good thirty minutes over the pending BMD deployment and threatened to withdraw from the Treaty if the deployment proceeded.

Of course, he later went to Iran this week to make nice with Ahmadinejad…

In the interim, Yuriy Baluyevskiy made the following statement as part of an interview:

"I would be in no hurry today to demolish this treaty. Its demolition could, in my view, have irreversible consequences." And, generally, according to Baluyevskiy, there is no "compelling need to quit this treaty immediately."

That couldn’t have gone over well in the halls of the Kremlin, and indeed, according to a daily paper in Moscow (the Moscow Gazeta, not associated with gazeta.ru), proceedings may be underway to fire Baluyevskiy… (more below the fold)


Here’s the meat of the Gazeta’s article:


Gazeta’s sources in Arbatskaya Ploshchad believe that Baluyevskiy has overstepped the invisible line of what is permissible and connect this with the in-house situation in the MoD. "Yuriy Baluyevskiy is a combatant general that is respected and popular in the army. Following the departure of Sergey Ivanov, the generals wanted him as minister. Serdyukov will in the MoD never become one of theirs," the source said. According to him, Baluyevskiy’s irritation with Serdyukov was manifested particularly in the past month. On 18 September the minister tendered his resignation in connection with his father in law, Viktor Zubkov, having been appointed premier. On 24 September the president denied Serdyukov his request, but the chief of the General Staff managed to get plenty done in this time. Specifically, on 20 September, during a visit to the 76th Pskov Airborne Division, he uttered sacramental words that will be remembered well in the defense department: the MoD could be led by a woman. In addition, Baluyevskiy identified the range of duties of the defense minister, who must know the problems of the armed forces, and his main function is to "ensure that the men are fed, that they have a new tank."

Gazeta’s sources do not rule out the chief of the General Staff knowing about his imminent dismisal (Colonel-General Igor Bykov, chief of the Main Military Medical Directorate, has as of September been tipped as a candidate for departure together with him), this is why he so boldly pointed out to Putin yesterday the shortcomings in his INF analysis—to the extent of his notions of Russia’s interests.


(source: Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty)

In the interrum, the Russian CGS noted in public, "I would be in no hurry today to demolish this treaty. Its demolition could, in my view, have irreversible consequences."

That couldn’t have gone over well in the halls of the Kremlin, and according to the Moscow Gazeta (not the gazeta.ru) will probably result in the firing of Yuriy Baluyevskiy…more below the fold

braindead

AFAIK in Georgia it is the Abkhazians and Osseets who want to break up with Georgia , Russians are the minority there . And you want to have a foothold there because it is the region where a lot of energy flows /will flow through . Pipe-lines etc. , but you sure knew that .

Feanor

The issue is that Abkhazians and S. Ossetians have a very high percentage of Russian citizens there. In Abkhazia it's 95% of the population. They use the ruble as currency in their republic. Given such a high degree of integration it's not surprising that they want to join Russia. If you want to look at ethnic Russians then Pridnestrovye (Transnestria) would be a better case of ethnic Russians rebelling.

Beka, NATO expanding east is not a good thing for NATO in my opinion. Many East. European countries view NATO as their permanent ticket to success, and independence at the expense of the West, which will supposedly protect them and ensure economic prosperity. The attitudes are that once you're in NATO everything will happen magically. Your country will become a Western nation. Realistically NATO expansion is weakening NATO, and given the recent chill in relations between the U.S. and many European nations this all together, in my opinion, diminishes NATOs strength as an alliance.