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The Polyus military testbed was put together on a crash basis as an answer to America's Star Wars program. It was built around a surplus TKS manned spacecraft and was meant to test prototype ASAT and Star Wars defense systems. It failed to reach orbit, but it had succeeded, it would have been the core module of a new Mir-2 space station. Its mere presence could have decisively changed the shape of the Cold War in its final months. In 1985, it became clear that the Energia launch vehicle would be ready for launch before the Buran space shuttle that...

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for the first time has revealed details about an ultra-secret Cold War-era project to raise a sunken Soviet submarine from the depths of the Pacific Ocean in 1974. The high-risk salvage operation, code-named ‘Project Azorian’, had been shrouded in secrecy for decades but the spy agency broke its silence in newly-declassified documents published yesterday by an independent watchdog, the National Security Archive. The documents, drawn from a 50-page article written for an in-house CIA journal, recount the daring bid approved by then-president Richard Nixon to raise the submarine using a specially-designed ship, the Glomar Explorer....

MOSCOW, March 18 (RIA Novosti) - Russian-Chinese military exercises dubbed Peace Mission 2009 will be held in the summer in northeastern China, the Russian Defense Ministry said Wednesday. The first bilateral counterterrorist exercises Peace Mission were held in Russia and the eastern Chinese province of Shandong in August 2005, involving warships, aviation, and over 10,000 servicemen including marines and paratroopers. "The final decision on the date, venue, name and forces involved will be made at bilateral consultations to be held in the last 10 days of March," a ministry source said. The Chinese Defense Ministry said Tuesday that joint maneuvers...

MINSK, March 10 (RIA Novosti) - Belarus and Russia will stage a large-scale strategic military exercise in the fall, the Belarusian defense minister said on Tuesday. The drill, called Zapad 2009 (West 2009), will involve around 13,000 service personnel on both sides. Leonid Maltsev said the Russian military would contribute "Ground Forces, Air Force, Air Defense Forces and reconnaissance units." He added that the drill would, among other things, rehearse interoperability within the framework of the Belarusian-Russian integrated air defense system, which the two countries agreed to establish recently. The exercise scenario has been approved by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko....

Russian troops are indiscriminately murdering civilians and interning them in concentration camps, the embattled Georgian president charged yesterday, as he begged the West not to "appease" Moscow as it did with Nazi Germany. The startling accusations came as Russian troops blatantly violated a cease-fire by sending an armored convoy through the strategic city of Gori. The invaders first poured into Georgia five days ago - ostensibly in defense of a pro-Moscow breakaway region, South Ossetia. "What they are doing is exactly what Stalin did to Finland, what they've done to Afghanistan, what in the Second World War Germany was doing...

Ideology matters again. The big development of recent years is the rise not only of great powers but also of the great-power autocracies of Russia and China. True realism about the international scene begins with understanding how this unanticipated shift will shape our world. Many believe that when Chinese and Russian leaders stopped believing in communism, they stopped believing in anything. They had become pragmatists, pursuing their own and their nation's interests. But Chinese and Russian rulers, like past rulers of autocracies, do have a set of beliefs that guide their domestic and foreign policies. They believe in the virtues...

Jan. 14, 2008 A-50 Airborne Early Warning, Control Aircraft to Be Upgraded Soon Russia’s Vega Consortium has completed research and development work to upgrade A-50 airborne early warning and control aircraft, Interfax reported. “The successful completion of research and development work enables to start serial upgrading for A-50 jets of Russia’s Air Force,” a source with the country’s defense and industrial complex told Interfax. First of all, the novelty provides for “serious updating of radar facilities” and analog processing will be replaced by the digital one. Upgraded A-50 has proved it’s apt to the estimated specification, representatives of defense community...

Beijing (AsiaNews/Agencies) – Joint military exercises involving troops from China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan will continue till August 17. More than 6,000 troops and 36 aircraft from the six nations are currently engaged in China’s far northwest Xinjiang region for two days; tomorrow they will move to Chelyabinsk, Russia. The exercises are intended to improve cooperation against terrorism, drug and weapons trafficking and criminal gangs as required by an agreement of mutual assistance against armed attacks. But the real objective is political. Chinese Foreign Minister Li Hui noted that “this is the first time that all the leaders...

Former commander in chief of the Soviet Ground Forces Gen. Valentin Varennikov, left, presents a saber to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, during the opening of Venezuela's cultural center in Moscow, Thursday, June 28, 2007. Chavez arrived in Moscow for talks with his Russian counterpart as Russian news media speculated about a major weapons deal. As deputy head of the Soviet General Staff from 1979-84, Varennikov was a key planner of the Soviet Union's strategy in Afghanistan Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, 2nd from left, and Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov share a joke while opening Venezuela's cultural center in Moscow, Thursday,...

There are many reasons to expect Moscow's deteriorating ties with the West will continue their downward trend this autumn. But the key one may be growing differences over the breakaway regions of Transdniester, Abkhazia, and South Ossetia and their stated desire to proclaim independence from Moldova and Georgia. The issue pushing the frozen conflicts to the fore are two independence referendums -- one in Transdniester on September 17, the second in South Ossetia on November 12. Russia, which has acted as a long-term booster for the separatist regions, is looking at the plebescites in two ways: a chance to bring...

General Yury Baluyevsky-Russia's #2 man in Defense-is unhappy over the American's missile defense system. What good is it to have 927 ICBMs if they can be destroyed in flight ? Details at: http://insidestraight.typepad.com/the_inside_straight/2006/08/us_and_russia_h.html

New Russian rockets are capable to overcome American ABOUT The Russian militarians approve, that have received the nuclear warhead, capable to overcome antimissile defense of the USA. Results of the test of an intercontinental ballistic missile lead yesterday "Poplar-th" testify to it with a new head part, informs a today's issue of the edition "Businessman". Yesterday's rocket firing ?N-12I1 "Poplar-th" from a mobile launcher was already the sixth within the limits of test of the system created for overcoming of the American antimissile defense. However for the first time start-up has been made not from Plesetsk, and from proving...