Why Is Russia Expanding Short-Range Air Defenses Around Moscow?

While Moscow is protected by one of the world's best air defense networks capable of shooting down ICBM's incoming MIRV warheads, satellites and other space-based weapons, this doesn't make it immune to sabotage attacks invoving drones and drone swarms.

Air defense is one of the key modern military capabilities that provide adequate protection for ground units, helping them retain their combat capabilities. In recent decades, these systems have become increasingly networked and multilayered, giving the defenders a plethora of other options to shoot down hostile jets, missiles, drones etc. More recently modern militaries have started relying on swarms of well-coordinated drones designed to saturate an area and overwhelm existing air defenses. Only a handful of countries have developed and battle-tested systems against such new offensive weapons...

In recent days footage taken in Russia shows that short-range air defenses, particularly the now legendary "Pantsir" hybrid SAM-AAA (anti-aircraft artillery) system are being deployed to protect crucial areas in the capital city of Moscow. Dozens of sources published both video and photo evidence that a number of "Pantsir-S1" SAM-AAA systems have been placed on top of certain key buildings in Moscow, triggering speculation that Russia is expecting renewed attacks by the Kiev regime forces. It's quite possible that this also includes defending from long-range Soviet made drones such as the now infamous Tu-141 "Strizh" that flew nearly 600 km through NATO's air defenses in Romania, Hungary and Croatia in early March...

The 1970s-era jet-powered drone was also used during December attacks against Russian airbases housing strategic bombers/missle carriers. Initial reports suggested that the Kiev regime forces launched the Tu-141, but more recent findings indicate that this isn't necessarily true for all attacks deep within Russia, with some security experts warning about sabotage attacks (apparently, coordinated by the CIA), including with small drones operated...

Marmema to the 1994 Budapest Memorandum No one cares about your stupid 1994 paper.

So you keep harping on about a non-existent promise that the USA didn't make and yet when >Russia EXPRESSLY violated the Budapest Agreement which it SIGNED promising to respect Ukrainian borders, you say no one cares?? Typical Russian double-speak

the Budapest memorandum

According to the three memoranda,[5] Russia, the US and the UK confirmed their recognition of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine becoming parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and effectively abandoning their nuclear arsenal to Russia and that they agreed to the following:

Respect the signatory's independence and sovereignty in the existing borders.[6]
Refrain from the threat or the use of force against the signatory.
Refrain from economic coercion designed to subordinate to their own interest the exercise by the signatory of the rights inherent in its sovereignty and thus to secure advantages of any kind.
Seek immediate Security Council action to provide assistance to the signatory if they "should become a victim of an act of aggression or an object of a threat of aggression in which nuclear weapons are used".
Refrain from the use of nuclear arms against the signatory.

Russia signed this and has violated protocols 1,2,3 and 5

Russia promised to not only respect Ukraine’s 1994 borders, including Crimea, but also
to Refrain from the threat or the use of force against the signatory.
to Refrain from economic coercion designed to subordinate to their own interest the exercise by the signatory of the rights inherent in its sovereignty and thus to secure advantages of any kind.
Russia has violated every one of those agreements which were made with Ukraine with the only condition from Ukraine being Ukraine giving up its nuclear weapons.
Russia reneges on international law and promises

===Why is the US involved? Because the USA is a co-signatory to the 1994 Budapest Memorandum which Russia violated

How The West Brought War To Ukraine.
‘For almost 200 years, starting with the framing of the Monroe Doctrine in 1823, the United States has asserted security claims over virtually the whole Western hemisphere. Any foreign power that places military forces near US territory knows it is crossing a red line. US policy thus embodies a conviction that where a potential opponent places its forces is crucially important.
In fact, this conviction is the cornerstone of American foreign and military policy, and its violation is considered reason for war.’ There are, in fact, Nato troops stationed now in Estonia.
They have been known to hold tank parades just yards from the border with Russia. That puts them 81 miles (about the distance from London to Coventry) from St Petersburg, Russia’s second city. Ben Abelow notes that ‘in 2020, Nato conducted a live-fire training exercise inside Estonia, 70 miles from Russia’s border, using tactical missiles with ranges up to 185 miles. These weapons can strike Russian territory with minimal warning. In 2021, again in Estonia, Nato fired 24 rockets to simulate an attack on air defence targets inside Russia’.
Again, can you begin to imagine the USA’s response to such action close to its borders, or Britain’s if (say) Ireland decided to join and host a foreign military alliance, hostile to us?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-11524385/PETER-HITCHENS-arrogance-folly-Ukraine-send-nuclear-catastrophe.html
Some people have the intellectual capacity to understand that we are asking Russia to live with things we never would.

Apparently you do not.

Your focus on one outdated issue makes you appear to be part of the spectrum.

For years, Mearsheimer has argued that the U.S., in pushing to expand nato eastward and establishing friendly relations with Ukraine, has increased the likelihood of war between nuclear-armed powers and laid the groundwork for Vladimir Putin’s aggressive position toward Ukraine. Indeed, in 2014, after Russia annexed Crimea, Mearsheimer wrote that “the United States and its European allies share most of the responsibility for this crisis.”

https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/why-john-mearsheimer-blames-the-us-for-the-crisis-in-ukraine

It is particularly ignorant and time wasting of you and your cronies here to continue to post things suggesting I don't live in Michigan, that I hate America, blah blah. It merely displays your incredible inability to discover that there are many many Americans who blame the west for this crisis.

this is one - John Joseph Mearsheimer (/ˈmɪərʃaɪmər/; born December 14, 1947) is an American political scientist and international relations scholar, who belongs to the realist school of thought. He is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago. He has been described as the most influential realist of his generation.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Mearsheimer

Additionally there are numerous conservative commentators in this country stating much the same. There is Oliver Stone.

Noam Chomsky, in a lengthy interview in the online journal Truthout, explained: The crisis has been brewing for 25 years as the US contemptuously rejected Russian security concerns, in particular their clear red lines: Georgia and especially Ukraine. There is good reason to believe that this tragedy could have been avoided.
https://www.commentary.org/articles/joshua-muravchik/putins-american-apologists/

Instead of seizing the opportunity to create a new European order that included Russia, President Bill Clinton and his foreign-policy team squandered it by deciding to expand NATO threateningly toward that country’s borders. Such a misbegotten policy guaranteed that Europe would once again be divided, even as Washington created a new order that excluded and progressively alienated post-Soviet Russia.
https://www.ccny.cuny.edu/profiles/rajan-menon

Some members of the American commentariat will cheer” war, he said, owing to “the depth of their animus toward Putin.” This in part reflected “the unvarnished Russophobia pervading the ranks of the America political elite” and “disdain for Russia” that has “roots going at least as far back as the Bolshevik Revolution.” However, the “deeper” source of “our present-day antipathy toward Russia [lies in] a desperate need to refurbish the concept of American exceptionalism.” In “our collective identity [w]e Americans…are the Chosen People.” It would be more accurate, he went on, to characterize ourselves as “reckless,” “incompetent,” “alienated,” “extravagantly wasteful,” and “deeply confused.” Rather than “flinging macho-man insults,” Bacevich concluded, the U.S. should “acknowledge the possibility that Russia possesses legitimate security interests” in Ukraine.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Bacevich

I suggest every American who wants to know what’s *actually* going on in Russia and Ukraine, read this transcript of Putin’s address. As I’ve said for month [sic]—NATO (under direction from the United States) is violating previous agreements and expanding eastward. WE are at fault.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candace_Owens

As Christopher Roach suggested on the website American Greatness: A war of some kind has been going on for eight years in Ukraine. “While the West is now hyper-focused on the Russian invasion…the people of Donetsk have been shelled nearly every day by Ukrainian forces since 2014,” he wrote. “As Russia’s foreign ministry spokeswoman described the matter, the war began eight years ago and Russia is ending it

When Russia’s Vladimir Putin demanded that the U.S. rule out Ukraine as a future member of the NATO alliance, the U.S. archly replied: NATO has an open-door policy… . Russia—believing its back is against a wall and the United States, by moving NATO ever closer to Russia’s borders, put it there—reached the point where it chose war with Ukraine rather than the accept the fate the West had in store for it.
https://buchanan.org/blog/biography

Rod Dreher saw an interesting analogy: “As a great power, Russia claims a right to secure, peaceful, and friendly borders, free of military alliances designed to circumscribe, contain and control it. And the protests that Moscow is making are not without validity?” Dreher likened the possibility of Ukraine’s joining NATO to the 1917 Zimmerman Telegram, in which Germany invited Mexico to ally against the United States in World War I.

At David Horowitz’s website Frontpage, Robert Spencer quoted Putin’s declaration of war: “In December 2021 we once again made an attempt to agree with the United States and its allies on the principles of ensuring security in Europe and on the non-expansion of NATO. Everything was in vain. The US position did not change.” Then Spencer offered this gloss: If this is an accurate summation of what happened, and there is no reason to believe that it isn’t, then…the questions must be asked: was it really necessary to begin maneuvering to incorporate Ukraine into NATO, and to ignore all Russian entreaties. . ? Were State Department officials too preoccupied with implementing the woke agenda to bother to negotiate with Putin over NATO?

Since the day that Donald Trump became president, Democrats in Washington have told you it’s your patriotic duty to hate Vladimir Putin. It’s not a suggestion. It’s a mandate. Anything less than hatred for Putin is treason. Many Americans have obeyed this directive. They now dutifully hate Vladimir Putin. Maybe you’re one of them. Hating Putin has become the central purpose of America’s foreign policy. (Tucker Carlson}

The main thing to know about Ukraine for our purposes is that its leaders once sent millions of dollars to Joe Biden’s family. Not surprisingly, Ukraine is now one of Biden’s favorite countries. Biden has pledged to defend Ukraine’s borders…. How will this conflict affect you? It will affect you quite a bit, actually. Energy prices in the United States are about to go way up, and that means that everything you buy will become much more expensive.…You’re about to become measurably poorer…. It seems like a pretty terrible deal for you and for the United States. Hunter Biden gets a million dollars a year from Ukraine, but you can no longer afford to go out to dinner. (Tucker Carlson)

I still don't care about your paper and neither do these people apparently. 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.