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Russia is getting another five S-400 (also known as the Triumf/Triumph or SA-21) missile battalions in the next year. Russia already has two battalions, with the first one entering service two years ago. Belarus is buying the S-400, and part of a battalion was sent to the North Korean border recently (to make a political point, not that the Russians fear a missile attack from North Korea any time soon.) Within the next six years, Russia plans to buy 18 S-400 battalions, while exporting as many as possible. An S-400 battalion has eight launchers, each with four missiles, plus a...

John F. Burns, the chief foreign correspondent for The Times, responded to a common theme among the readers of At War — that the United States should learn from the Soviets’ experience in Afghanistan and withdraw its troops. Q. In Afghanistan, both the Russians and the British, at the height of their power, completely failed to bring the place to heel. So we’re going to succeed? Uh huh… Colin Wright Richmond, Calif.Q. The NY TIMES has the archives of the Soviet experience in Afghanistan. Go read them. If you do, then there is just nothing left to say except.. GET...

An Islamist militant group has reportedly said it carried out last week’s bomb attack on a Russian train – on the orders of Doku Umarov, leader of the Caucasian Mujahadeen and one of the country’s most wanted rebels. The claim published on a website can’t be verified. But previous statements it’s posted by North Caucasus groups have proved correct. The attack on Friday night’s express between Moscow and St Petersburg killed 26 people. The militants’ letter vowed more acts of sabotage against what it called strategic economic targets.

The United States is about to lose a key arms-control tool from the closing days of the Cold War -- the right to station American observers in Russia to count the long-range missiles leaving its assembly line. The end of full-time, on-site access will likely ignite complaints in Congress, with insiders from both parties arguing over whether the George W. Bush or the Obama administration is responsible.

Second Russian Stealth Frigate In Works Posted by Bill Sweetman at 12/1/2009 4:20 AM CST Maxim Pyadushkin writes: The Severnaya Verf shipyard in St Petersburg officially laid down the second Project 22350 frigate for the Russian Navy on November 26. The ship was named Admiral Flota Kasatonov. The first frigate of the class - Admiral Flota Sovetskogo Soyuza Gorshkov – has been under construction at Severnaya Verf since 2006. Kasatonov laid down on November 26 (UIC) The Gorshkov class will be the first fully stealthy Russian frigates, with their superstructures shaped to reduce radar cross-section. The 130 m-long frigates will...

CARACAS (Reuters) - Russia is building arms plants in Venezuela to produce AK-103 automatic rifles and cartridges and is finalizing contracts to send 53 military helicopters to the Andean nation, Moscow's envoy to Venezuela saidMonday. Ambassador Vladmir Zaemskiy told a news conference that Russian engineers and Venezuelan construction firms were building the rifle and cartridge plants which, when operational, would employ more than 1,500 workers. He gave no completion date for the plants under construction in the central state of Aragua. Details about Moscow's military shipments and projects have been scarce since socialist President Hugo Chavez's government began signing military...

VLADIVOSTOK. November 30. VOSTOK-MEDIA – Russian Minister of Interior Rashid Nurgaliyev has noted at the meeting with students that it is legitimate to hit back a police officer in self-defense. According to Pravda.ru daily, the statement came as a reply to the question asked by a student, which runs as follows: “Police officers’ assaults on citizens became more frequent lately. Don’t you think that it’s time to deprive the police of immunity?” The Minister clarified that if the individual to be detained is not a criminal or offender, then he has every right to go on the defensive. “We are...

BELGRADE -- The governments of Russia and Serbia are in negotiations to build a nuclear power plant in Serbia, the Russian ambassador to Belgrade says. "The construction of a nuclear power plant in Serbia is being given serious consideration," Aleksandr Konuzin was quoted as saying this Monday. He stated that Serbia wishes to export electricity, and added that the country has the resources to do so. "Russia is prepared to help Serbia with this intention through partnership and joint investments," the Radio-Television of Vojvodina (RTV) reported. Konuzin reminded that Serbia had recently reached agreements to build hydro plants with Germany...

(RFE/RL) -- Moscow has released a draft of a proposal for a new European security agreement the Kremlin says should replace outdated institutions such as NATO and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). The text, posted on the Kremlin's website on November 29, comes more than a year after President Dmitry Medvedev first formally raised the issue. Speaking in Berlin in June 2008, Medvedev said the new pact was necessary to finally update Cold War-era arrangements. "I'm convinced that Europe's problems won't be solved until its unity is established, an organic wholeness of all its integral parts,...

Poles protest US Stalin memorial plan23.11.2009 11:06 The Polish community in the United States is outraged by a plan to honour Josef Stalin by placing his bust on a pedestal at the National D-Day Memorial in Bedford, Virginia.  According to William McIntosh, the director of the Bradford museum, which is coordinating the project, the Soviet dictator deserves to be acknowledged alongside Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt has he was an ally of the US after Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union. The plans have met with protests from Polish war veterans in New York.  President of the Kosciuszko Foundation,...

Russia has ensured that it will honor a deal providing Iran with the S-300 sophisticated anti-aircraft system, Tehran's envoy to Moscow says.

YEREVAN -- Two leaders of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation party (Dashnaktsutyun) have criticized Russian policy toward Turkey and Azerbaijan, RFE/RL's Armenian Service reports. Vahan Hovannisian, a senior Dashnaktsutyun lawyer, said that Russian policy toward the South Caucasus is "dangerous" for Armenia. Hovannisian did not elaborate on his statement. Another Dashnaktsutyun leader, Hrayr Karapetian, who heads the parliament's defense and security committee, said Russia's deepening military cooperation with Turkey and Azerbaijan runs counter to its military alliance with Armenia. Karapetian said a 2010 plan for joint military exercises signed by Azerbaijani and Russian defense ministers is "at the least, strange and...

World powers united in condemnation of Iran's nuclear activities yesterday in a rare show of international consensus on the threat posed by Tehran's continued nuclear defiance. China and Russia joined the United States, Britain, France and Germany in backing an International Atomic Energy Agency resolution censuring Iran and ordering it to halt construction of a secret uranium enrichment plant. The resolution, the first since February 2006, passed with 25 votes and six abstentions. Only Malaysia, Venezuela and Cuba supported Iran. ...China, which has shared Moscow's reluctance to take a hard line with Tehran, was reportedly persuaded to support the resolution...

While the blogosphere remains a'fire on the global warming/faulty science debate, and the MSM appears reluctant to step into the debate other than to diss the CRU/NIWA scandals, it appears the media outlet unfraid of throwing a couple of science types together, living at extreme ends of the spectrum, comes from Moscow. Subject at hand? A segment titled “Heating Cheating”, and hosted by Bill Dod out of the RT Moscow studio. THE FIGHTERS ~~~ On one side of the ring is Aleksey Kokorin, Head of the Climate Change Programme at the World Wildlife Fund in Russia. Per their website: WWF's...

An express train carrying hundreds of passengers from Moscow to St. Petersburg derailed, killing dozens of people and injuring scores of others in what an official says "appears to be an act of terrorism." "We have the blast remains; a crater. There is little doubt this is terrorism," a source in Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's office told Fox News. Who was responsible for the derailment or why it occurred "remains unclear," the source said. Thirty people were killed in the accident and scores injured after the last three cars of the 14-car Nevsky Express left the tracks in the...

At least 29 passengers were killed and about 75 were injured when the Nevsky Express train from Moscow to St. Petersburg derailed, an emergencies ministry source said Saturday. It was not immediately clear what caused the accident. Just prior to the accident, the train driver had applied the brakes. The last four cars out of thirteen were involved from train #166 at 18:34 GMT Moscow time. A mobile field hospital was being flown to the accident site, near Bologoye, 200 miles from Moscow, to render assistance to injured passengers. Ambulances, Federal Security Service officers, law enforcement, emergency services and railroad...

Russia has completed delivery of 28 Su-30MKA fighters to Algeria. These were ordered three years ago. Algeria has also bought 22 Su-24 bombers and six Il-78 aerial tankers. There was also a purchase of 28 MiG-29 fighters, but this turned into a major scandal. Russian prosecutors recently tried and convicted several aviation company executives for passing off defective, or used, aircraft parts as new. Many of these parts made their way into MiG-29 jet fighters that were sold to Algeria. Two years ago, Algeria told Russia that it was cancelling the 2007 purchase of 28 MiG-29 fighters (for $1.3 billion),...

MINSK (Reuters) – The United States and Russia will sign a deal this year to cut vast Cold War arsenals of nuclear weapons but may miss an early December deadline, a Kremlin source told Reuters on Friday. Diplomats from the two biggest nuclear powers are trying to prepare a new agreement on cutting atomic weapons before the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty expires on December 5. The new accord will be signed "in a European country" in December, the Kremlin source told Reuters in Minsk, where President Dmitry Medvedev was meeting regional leaders. "We may not be able to do...

A joint expedition of Russian and Korean archeologists studying a site of Balhae Era resulted in finding evidences that prove existence of a big administrative centre in the Primorye Territory in the 9th-11th centuries. "We have found a building in the shape of a palace, well-known to us from diggings of capital cities of Balhae in China. Nothing of the kind had been found in the Primorye before. The discovery confirms the supposition that Primorye was not just a periphery of the Balhae state, but an administrative centre once existed there. We are going to find out what it was...

Moscow, November 26, Interfax - Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia has supported Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's opposition to the idea of banning crucifixes from Italian public schools. "Italy and other European countries' Christian heritage must not be a subject of scrutiny at European rights agencies," Patriarch Kirill said in a letter to Berlusconi, posted on the Moscow Patriarchate's official website. Patriarch Kirill was commenting on a ruling, passed by the European Court of Human Rights on November 3, on a lawsuit, filed by an Italian mother, who claimed that crucifixes at public schools is a violation of...

China Promises New, Advanced Fighter David A. Fulghum/Washington Douglas Barrie/London China has the resources and technology--some of it obtained quasi-legally and illegally--to build a fifth-generation fighter, say U.S. Air Force and intelligence officials. But Beijing's aerospace industry may be missing key skills needed for it to match the performance of advanced, Western-built combat aircraft. What neither Beijing nor the Western defense community yet knows is whether Chinese technicians can generate the systems engineering and integration capabilities required to actually build in large production numbers and arm advanced aircraft with features similar to those of the aging B-2 and F-22 or...

Indian president becomes first woman leader to fly fighter jet Indian President Pratibha Patil on Wednesday became the first woman leader in history to fly in an Air Force fighter jet. Patil, 74, left the Lohegaon Air Force base near Pune in western India on a two-seat Su-30MKI for a 30-minute flight, where she was decked out in a G-force grey suit for her 0.9 Mac (700-800 km/hr) flight. Patil's fighter jet was escorted by two additional fighters so she could get a feel of how the planes fly and look in tactical operations. Her flight was broadcast live over...

Goldmine of black market in Russian data By Charles Clover in Moscow Published: November 24 2009 17:59 | Last updated: November 24 2009 17:59 Gorbushka Market, just outside central Moscow, does a thriving trade in any electronics good you could want: mobile phones, plasma television sets, the latest DVDs, and, if you ask to see them, software peddlers will show potential clients a list of “databases”. These consist of CDs with names such as “Ministry of Interior – Federal Road Safety Service”, “Tax Service” and “Federal Anti-Narcotics Service” and cost about $100 apiece. Each contains confidential information gathered by Russian...

Obama’s decision not to build the Missile Defense System in Poland and the Czech Republic and his Noble Prize have not yet been comprehended from a philosophical viewpoint. It’s time to do it. Power of Money against Power of Spirit The last turning point similar to the current one happened approximately 400 years ago. The Western European society discovered a new hierarchy of values. Feudalism that valued service and chivalry was replaced with capitalism. Wealth became the measure of success, and everyone was to care about his own pocket only. The cult of money replaced all other values, including religious....

Pro-Darwin consensus doesn't rule out intelligent design --snip-- (CNN) -- While we officially celebrate the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin's "On the Origin of Species" on November 24, celebrations of Darwin's legacy have actually been building in intensity for several years. Darwin is not just an important 19th century scientific thinker. Increasingly, he is a cultural icon. Darwin is the subject of adulation that teeters on the edge of hero worship, expressed in everything from scholarly seminars and lecture series to best-selling new atheist tracts like those by Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. The atheists claim that...

Russia and China have joined four Western powers in readying a resolution critical of Iran's nuclear program, diplomats said Tuesday, as Teheran pushed forward its own alternatives to a UN-backed plan aimed at preventing it from developing nuclear weapons. The development is significant because it groups Russia and China with the four other powers - the US, Britain, France and Germany - in unified criticism of Iran's nuclear program. Russia and China have acted as a drag on Western calls for tougher action against Iran. While the board passed an IAEA resolution critical of Iran in 2006 that had the...

Today, November 24, it is exactly 150 years since Charles Darwin published his On the Origin of Species. The world has been gearing up for this “second echelon” of celebrations for this international “Year of Darwin”, following on from the 200th anniversary of his birth this last February. Atheists and humanist groups in particular have seemed to be relishing the thought of giving further prominence to the ideas of their patron saint. Their adulation is heightened by their knowledge that...

Iran threatens Russia with legal action Tue, 24 Nov 2009 15:13:33 GMT The S-300 surface-to-air missile system. A top Iranian military official says Tehran may respond to Moscow's failure to fulfill the S-300 delivery contract through legal action. "The Russians have failed to meet their commitment due to pressure form the Zionist Lobby and the Americans," Brigadier General Mohammad Hassan Mansourian said on Tuesday. "And as this agreement is an official one, it can be pursued through international legal bodies " Mansourian told reporters at the site of the Iran's five day large-scale defense drills. Iran on Sunday launched a...

The government has decided to undertake a major replacement of aging military equipment. In many cases, this is essential, because buying new gear basically halted (with a few exceptions, like ballistic missiles) during the 1990s. So most of the armed forces are using Cold War era gear manufactured in the 1970s and 80s. Fortunately, even older equipment was junked as the armed forces shrank 80 percent in the 1990s. According to the new government plan, in the next decade, at least a third of current gear will be replaced, and in some categories (usually high tech), over 80 percent. President...

A Russian military delegation is inspecting airfields before Moscow sends 10 MiG-29 fighter jets to bolster Lebanon's almost non-existent air force, a challenge to U.S. efforts to build up the Mediterranean country's state institutions to counter Hezbollah. Under a deal announced in December by Lebanese Defense Minister Elias Murr during a visit to Moscow, Russia will provide the MiG-29s from its air force inventory free of charge, including upgrades, under a military assistance program. The Americans have supplied second- and third-hand military equipment including M-60A3 main battle tanks (ex-Jordanian) and M-198 155mm artillery guns, worth $400 million to Lebanon since...

The large-scale exercises Iran is currently conducting to test its air-defense network and assess its ability to protect its nuclear facilities appear to be little more than a show of defiance against the United States, Israel and Russia, its longtime key arms supplier. Without the advanced S-300PMU missiles that a fickle Moscow refuses to deliver, presumably because the Kremlin finds it more advantageous to extract concessions from the Americans, Iran's strategic targets are highly vulnerable to air and missile strikes. Indeed, as the United States and its Western allies consider imposing a package of harsh economic sanctions on Tehran for...

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia – A cutting-edge French warship sailed into St. Petersburg Monday to show off its capabilities to potential buyers in the Russian navy, whose pursuit of an amphibious assault capacity is frightening some neighboring countries. Russia's once-mighty navy was severely degraded after the fall of the Soviet Union and it currently has no big ship with the power to anchor in coastal waters and deploy troops onto land. Russian officials announced this year that they were planning to make their first arms deal with a NATO country by buying a French vessel like the Mistral, a 23,700-ton (21,500-metric...

United States Defense Secretary Robert Gates is the Mephistopheles of the Barack Obama administration - not because of his gift for intrigue, which is slender, but because of his capacity to personify non-being. "Everything that arises goes rightly to its ruin," said Goethe's devil to Faust, "so it would be better for nothing to arise." In his November 20 keynote speech to the German Marshall Fund's (GMF's) International Security Forum on Friday in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Gates portrayed the man who wasn't there. That is the secret of his longevity in public office. Several hundred attendees, including defense ministers and...

Obama's foreign policy attitude may be change, but it's not the one America hoped for!Saturday Night Live's opening skit was a mock press conference between China's Hu Jintao and President Obama. It perfectly highlighted the failure of Obama's Asia trip to strengthen U.S. overseas relations. But just as it was with Obama's bow to the Japanese Emperor, these scenes are not all jokes and giggles. The issues behind the humor are very serious with potentially dramatic negative consequences for the United States and the maintenance of world peace. Speaking on Fox News Sunday, Brit Hume summed the problem up well:...

Russian Victoria Radochinskaya has won the Mrs World 2009 beauty pageant, which took place in the Vietnamese city of Vung Tau. Seventy-eight participants, aged between 19 and 41, competed for the title of the world's most beautiful married woman. Vietnam, the host country, was represented by two contenders. The final round of the competition took place on Sunday. Victoria Radochinskaya, 31, became the 15th winner of the contest since it was first held in 1985. The PR specialist received the $150,000 jewel-studded crown from last year's winner, Ukrainian Natalya Shmarenkova. First runner-up was Mrs America Andrea Robertson, a professional model....

The recent revelations of a International Energy Administration whistleblower that the IEA may have distorted key oil projections under intense U.S. pressure is, if true (and whistleblowers rarely come forward to advance their careers), a slow-burning thermonuclear explosion on future global oil production. The Bush administration’s actions in pressuring the IEA to underplay the rate of decline from existing oil fields while overplaying the chances of finding new reserves have the potential to throw governments’ long-term planning into chaos. Whatever the reality, rising long term global demands seem certain to outstrip production in the next decade, especially given the high...

So, the lack of reproducibility doesn't mean there's a conspiracy or malfeasance, but it does mean that the science isn't settled as Al Gore claims . It cannot be settled until critics have had a chance to rebut the claims. The lack of reproducibility gives the skeptics too much credibility if they are wrong , or not enough credibility if they are right . At the center of the reproducibility debate is Stephen McIntyre and his website ClimateAudit. McIntyre documents his struggles to obtain the raw data and reproduce the results of famous temperature reconstructions. When he finally gets his...

Russia has now turned into a "criminal state", according to the man who was once its leading foreign investor. Bill Browder of Hermitage Capital was reacting to the news that his lawyer had died in prison in Russia after being held for a year without charge. He told the BBC that his lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, had in effect been "held hostage and they killed their hostage." Through Hermitage Capital, Bill Browder campaigned against corruption at some of Russia's largest companies. Russian officials say they are investigating Mr Magnitsky's death. In 2005, Mr Browder was banned from Russia as a threat...

Azerbaijan and Armenia held a presidential summit on Sunday amid warnings that a full blown war is brewing over a festering territorial dispute. Azerbaijan and Armenia held a presidential summit yesterday amid warnings that war was brewing between the countries over a festering territorial dispute. Ilham Aliyev, the president of Azerbaijan, said the negotiations in Munich were a final attempt to avert a military confrontation. They were convened by the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe as part of efforts to find a peaceful solution to a problem that has divided the two former Soviet republics since the 1991...

Fungi are single or multi-celled organisms that break down organic materials, such as rotting wood, in order to absorb their nutrients. Neither plant nor animal, they range from mushrooms to single-celled yeast. Scientists were investigating organic chemicals trapped in an Italian sedimentary rock formation when they found evidence that an extinct fungus feasted on dead wood during a time when the world’s forests had been catastrophically eradicated.[1] What could have caused such a universal effect on forests, and why does organic material remain in rocks that are supposedly 251.4 million years old?...

Note: The following text is a quote: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/readout-vice-president-biden-s-call-georgian-president-saakashvili Home • Briefing Room • Statements & Releases The White House Office of the Vice President For Immediate Release November 19, 2009 Readout of Vice President Biden’s Call to Georgian President Saakashvili Vice President Biden called Georgian President Saakashvili on November 18, 2009, to discuss democratic reform in Georgia and to reiterate the United States’ strong support for Georgia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. The Vice President underscored the importance of sustaining the commitment to democratic reform to fulfill the promise of the Rose Revolution. He also emphasized that all parties should live...

Most foreign investors have been focused on Central Asia’s vast hydrocarbon resources and the extractive industries of energy and Minerals. But water is an issue of rising concern throughout the region as after years of soviet mismanagement geopolitical tensions are running high. These regional problems present outside companies willing to think outside the box with an incredible opportunity and a guaranteed red carpet welcome. Simply put, the region’s scarce water resources were misused to satisfy the autarchic needs of the entire USSR, whose breakup in 1991 completely disrupted inter-republic trade patterns, leaving the Stans with the remnants of a centrally...

A Russian Orthodox priest, Fr. Daniel Sysoyev, who carried out missionary work among immigrants from ex-Soviet republics, many of them Muslims, received over a dozen death threats before his murder on Thursday, a Russian paper said. Fr. Daniel of St. Thomas Church in Moscow foresaw his death, writing in his internet diary that he had received telephone threats from Muslims. Fr. Daniel’s evening ‘talks’ for inquirers included several especially designed for Muslims.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A masked gunman entered a church and murdered a Russian Orthodox priest who had received death threats for converting Muslims to Christianity and criticizing Islam, prosecutors and church officials said Friday. The killing could threaten delicate relations between the powerful majority Russian Orthodox Church, which has close ties to the Kremlin, and the country's growing Muslim minority of about 20 million. The gunman approached priest Daniil Sysoyev, 34, in St Thomas Church in southern Moscow Thursday night, checked his name and then opened fire with a pistol, a spokesman for the investigating committee of the Prosecutor-General's office...

The diaries of a British reporter who risked his reputation to expose the horrors of Stalin's murderous famine in Ukraine were put on public display for the first time Friday. Welsh journalist Gareth Jones sneaked into Ukraine in March of 1933, at the height of a famine engineered by Soviet dictator Josef Stalin. Millions of people starved to death between 1932 and 1933 as the Soviet secret police emptied the countryside of grain and livestock as part of a campaign to force peasants into collective farms.Jones' reporting was one of the first attempts to bring the disaster to the world's...

We Love Russia!!

Russia's KBM has been briefing Middle East and other militaries on the Igla man-portable air defense system. The Igla-S, an enhanced version of Igla-9K38, was touted as effective against fighter-jets, helicopters, unmanned aerial vehicles and cruise missiles. Iran and Syria have received a legacy variant of Igla-S. The Igla-S has been touted as capable of downing a range of U.S. UAVs deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq. "It also has night-firing capability," KBM said. "Igla-S MANPADS is a new-generation system featuring considerably extended firing range and enhanced kill probability against aerial targets and possessing a new quality for this class of...

Russia has provided an "unprecedented" 970 billion roubles (22.6 billion euros, 33.8 billion dollars) to its defence industry this year, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Wednesday. State support for the sector had helped it grow by 3.8 percent since the start of the year despite the economic downturn, Putin said in comments reported by Russian news agencies. "During the recession we have allocated enough money to the military-industrial sector, which is a priority for government support. In 2009 funding reached an unprecedented level for our country: almost 970 billion roubles," Putin said. State aid had taken the form of reduced-rate...

BRUSSELS, Nov 18 (Reuters) - NATO countries voiced concern on Wednesday at Russian and Belarusian exercises held near the Polish border in September, saying they were at odds with improved relations with Moscow. Ambassadors from the 28 NATO states meeting in Brussels expressed concerns about the large scale of the exercises and a scenario that envisioned an attack from the West, NATO spokesman James Appathurai said. "There was the general sense that the political message of the exercise was incongruous with the general improvement in political relations and practical cooperation which is under way between NATO and Russia," Appathurai said....

This is the third article to appear on these pages from an IBD subscriber who lived in the Soviet Union until 1980. Click here to read the previous two articlesWhenever I speak about my experiences living in the USSR, my American friends respond that such things can never happen in a democracy like the United States. They don't understand why I am repulsed when I hear the president talk about "sacrificing for the collective good," which sounds so compassionate, as opposed to greedy capitalism. "Sacrifice for the collective good" is one of the founding principles of socialism, where the collective,...