Ukraine Protests

Foreign Policy

The Russians Are Coming

[rquoter]Late on Friday afternoon, news broke that Russian President Vladimir Putin had called President Barack Obama at the White House to discuss the possibility of a diplomatic resolution to the crisis in Crimea. The two agreed to dispatch their chief emissaries to talk details about how to diffuse the situation. But while a settlement might now be a possibility, United States and NATO intelligence assessments agree that the likelihood of Russian troops crossing the border into eastern (and possibly northern and southern) Ukraine grows by the hour. So, is this another Putin psych-out? It may well be.

Here are 10 facts on the ground that add up to a very real chance that Russia might still invade Ukraine:

1. The size of troop movements, and the field hospitals.

As of this writing, Russia has amassed as many as 50,000 troops at various points along the Ukrainian border, including in Russian-occupied Crimea. Videos uploaded to the Internet show armored vehicles being taken off flatbed freight trains in Voronezh, a city northeast of Ukraine's Kharkiv, and in Novozybkov, which is 50 miles north of Kiev. (Tanks there are already rolling on the ground, in fact.) The Russians have also moved food, medicine, and spare parts into position, which would not be needed for any short-term military "springtime exercises," as the Defense Ministry now claims is all they're up to. A field hospital has been erected in the Bryansk region, as Voice of America reported: that's just 12 miles away from Ukraine's eastern border, which is now heavily monitored by Russian drones. Furthermore, Moscow has resorted to subterfuge to hide its activities -- not a terribly good sign of its sincerity. U.S. signals intelligence has been hindered by old-school tactics, including the use of couriers who deliver messaging from the army's High Command to commanders in the field. A senior U.S. military official told the Wall Street Journal: "They have moved into concealed positions," almost certainly to evade American spy satellites. If Russia wanted to reassure Washington that it was only staging drills, it would broadcast its movements and activities, not conceal them. "We've seen no specific indications that exercises are taking place," said the Pentagon press secretary, Rear Adm. John Kirby, on Thursday. Russia has enough men and firepower to reach the separatist region of Transnistria in Moldova, according to NATO's supreme allied commander Europe, Gen. Philip Breedlove. Meanwhile, Moldova Prime Minister Iurie Leanca sees "provocations" by the illegal statelet-within-a-state as likely. Let's not forget that the last time Russia held an impromptu military "exercise," it invaded and lopped off Crimea.

2. Putin enjoys embarrassing the United States, and especially its current commander-in-chief.

On Feb. 28, Obama warned that "there will be costs for any military intervention in Ukraine" -- before high-tailing it to a Democratic National Committee cocktail party at the Washington Hilton. The next day, the world awoke to a Russian invasion of Crimea. "Rarely has a threat from a U.S. president been dismissed as quickly -- and comprehensively -- as Obama's warning on Friday night," the Washington Post's Scott Wilson reported. And let's look at the laundry list of American desires and warnings the Kremlin has brushed aside: Russia has dramatically increased its arms transfers to Syria since the chemical disarmament deal was struck last fall. It continues to host fugitive NSA spy Edward Snowden. And during the midst of the Maidan protests, Russia's own spies intercepted a phone call between a top U.S. State Department official and the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, then leaked the contents of it to Kremlin-controlled media. Moreover, neither Putin nor his inner circle seem terribly aggravated by the current suite of U.S. or EU sanctions or the blockbuster admission by the Treasury Department that Putin -- now a staunch patriotic proponent of the "de-offshoreization" of the Russian economy -- personally controls assets in Swiss oil commodities giant Gunvor.

3. The IMF bailout.

The International Monetary Fund's assistance package to Ukraine was announced yesterday. It amounts to $18 billion to be dispensed over two years, and to which can be added the $14 billion already promised to Ukraine by other international contributors, such as the United States and European Union. That's a serious amount of money to help fish a floundering country out of a deep financial soup, and it well exceeds the bribe Putin offered Viktor Yanukovych to scrap the association agreement with the EU, which led to the revolution in Kiev. Yes, the IMF loan comes with conditions, particularly in Ukraine's energy sector. State gas company Naftohaz will have to be restructured and consumers will have to pay higher energy prices, which might not go down so well in the Maidan. But even so,
Putin has been written out of his decade-long role as the dark lord of Ukraine's volatile and expensive gas industry.
Putin has been written out of his decade-long role as the dark lord of Ukraine's volatile and expensive gas industry. I wonder how that makes him feel. Clearly, he would now prefer the total collapse of Ukrainian state institutions and its market economy to an IMF-facilitated stability. And who better to guarantee a reconstruction effort than conveniently located Russian troops?

4. Putin has seen how reliably the U.S. policy establishment has done his work for him already.

How he must love it when the former director of Policy Planning at the State Department Anne-Marie Slaughter publishes an op-ed in the Washington Post arguing, inter alia, that the annexation of Crimea was legally and morally equivalent to NATO's intervention in Kosovo (conveniently forgetting that the latter stopped a genocide waged by a former Communist apparatchik turned pan-Slavic nationalist). This equivalence is exactly what Kremlin propaganda has maintained. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace's vice president for studies, Andrew Weiss, told the New York Times two days ago that Brussels is to blame for precipitating Russia's aggression by pursuing an association agreement with Ukraine in the first place. Putin couldn't agree more. All of the Beltway's best and brightest, who now profess to be in a state of total shock at the erosion of the post-Cold War order, nevertheless agree that the priority for the United States is to mollify rather than antagonize an angry bear. This is not a message lost on its subject. Putin must reckon that if his tanks roll into Kiev next Wednesday, those advising Obama will say, "Well, we mustn't upset him more because then he might invade Warsaw." (And judging from American rhetoric, Putin might be right about that.)


5. Well, seriously, what are we going to do about it?

As Russian armored personnel carriers and paratroopers move into position, John Kerry's spokesperson, Jennifer Psaki, tweeted this: "Watching huge Russian military buildup on #Ukraine's borders: dangerous intimidation #RussiaIsolated." That'll teach ‘em. Does the administration not see the futility in accusing Putin of playing by 19th-century rules using 21st-century media he's looking to censor, disrupt, or eventually shut down? How many divisions has the hashtag? Indeed, no one at any senior level in the U.S. government or NATO is contemplating a military response to an invasion of the Ukrainian mainland and the dismemberment of a European country. And Putin knows it. There's not even a bluff he has to call.

6. Listen to what the Kremlin functionaries are saying.

Yesterday, as the United Nations General Assembly voted to reaffirm Ukraine's territorial integrity and sovereignty, Russia's ambassador to that body, Vitaly Churkin, accused the U.S. embassy in Kiev of hosting the real shooters of Maidan demonstrators. Last week, Russia's insane propagandist-in-chief Dmitry Kiselyov took to the airwaves of his brand-new disinformation clearinghouse, Rossiya Segodnya, to remind viewers: "Russia is the only country in the world which is really capable of turning the USA into radioactive ash." Does this sound like a government looking for an "off-ramp" to an imminent confrontation with the West?

7. Russia's military and arms trade relies on Ukraine.

A little-noticed item in Sovershenno Sekretno, a Moscow-based magazine, authored by Vladimir Voronov, appeared in late February making the case for why Russia would indeed mount incursions into Ukraine. The most salient reason given was that, contrary to conventional wisdom that Ukraine's military depends on Russia, the situation is actually the other way around: Russia's military-industrial complex needs Ukraine's manufacturing resources. "It is difficult to overestimate the significance of Motor Sich for our aviation at least because its engines are used in all our helicopters, including the combat ones," Voronov wrote, referring to Ukraine's aircraft engine company. "It also remains the supplier of engines for aircraft used by the Russian Air Force and civilian airlines." The Ukrainian city of Mykolayiv alone hosts three different shipbuilding facilities, without which, Voronov says, "Russian shipbuilders cannot handle the ambitious program of rearming their own fleet." And the Ukrainian state-owned design bureaus Pivdenne and Pivdenmash are also necessary for Moscow's nuclear missile upgrades.

In September 2013, the Washington-based arms watchdog c4ads published a brilliant report called "The Odessa Network," which showed how a serious portion of the global arms trade was being conducted out of Odessa and Oktyabirsk, two Ukrainian port cities that now sandwich Crimea. Oktyabirsk is where the Soviets sent nuclear missiles to Cuba from in 1963, and, as of last year, was "functionally owned by Russia -- the port manager is a former Russian a navy captain, and the port owner is a Kremlin-linked oligarch," as authors report Tom Wallace and Farley Mesko wrote. Odessa is home to the shipping companies that handle the logistics for weapons transfers, particularly by Russia's state-owned arms dealer Rosoboronexport which controls 80 percent of the country's arms exports. In the last several years, Rosoboronexport has dispatched Kh-55 cruise missiles to Iran, Pechora-2 SAMs to Eritrea, T-72 tanks to Venezuela and -- very likely -- other forms of hardware to Bashar al-Assad's Syria from this southeastern city on the Black Sea. Rosoboronexport had $34 billion in weapons contracts as of June 1, 2013, with sales inked with 66 countries.

The company has two other maritime ports through which it likes to ship its materiel to paying customers: St. Petersburg and Kaliningrad. But look at a map and weigh for yourself the differential cost in time, money, and insurance in transporting cargos from those ports to, say, countries stationed along the Mediterranean or the Horn of Africa versus from the Black Sea. With a new pro-American, pro-European government now convened in Kiev, do you really think Putin will allow his Odessa network to be disrupted or cancelled?

8. The Kremlin lies shamefully and farcically.

Putin insists to this day that Assad didn't unleash poison gas in Syria's capital city last August -- despite the Kremlin's brokering of a diplomatic accord to dismantle and destroy Assad's poison gas stocks. Putin also insists that there is no Russian military presence in Crimea. Rather, pro-Russian "self-defense" militias -- "little green men," as Ukrainians call them* -- have somehow assumed total strategic control over a European peninsula the size of Wales, equipped with toys such as the VSS Vintorez sniper rifle, which is only given to elite units in the Russian military. So measure this track record of bare-faced mendacity against assurances given by Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu to U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel that Russia has no plans for an invasion of east Ukraine. Some 80,000 Russian soldiers could march into Donetsk and Kharkiv tomorrow, and we'd no doubt hear for the first 24 hours that news of such belligerence was a sinister U.S. conspiracy designed to distract attention from Detroit's bankruptcy.

9. Kombinatsiya is very much in evidence now.

This under-employed but still extremely relevant concept was defined by Vasili Mitrokhin, the former senior archivist in the Foreign Intelligence Directorate of the KGB, in his KGB Lexicon: The Soviet Intelligence Officers Handbook thus: "Operational combinations to create the right conditions for carrying out overt measures to disrupt enemy subversive activity (by catching the enemy red-handed, by the ‘chance' discovery by people who can be questioned as witnesses of material evidence of subversive activity..." Kombinatsiya also means disseminating "disinformation of the enemy, recruiting agents, planting them on the enemy, creating conditions required for the effective use of technical operations equipment, etc."
Saying that homosexual neo-Nazis financed by the State Department are in charge of Ukraine is one interlocking maneuver.
Saying that homosexual neo-Nazis financed by the State Department are in charge of Ukraine is one interlocking maneuver. So is releasing compromising or embarrassing phone conversations between European foreign ministers, American diplomats, and Ukrainian opposition figures; embedding FSB and GRU agents in the now-disbanded Ukrainian riot police Berkut or in the still-active Ukrainian security service SBU; egging on pro-Russian mobs to provoke pro-European Ukrainians into acts of violence in Kharkiv and Donetsk is yet another. And turning the lights off on Russia's independent media in the very same week you invade its neighbor is part of the domestic operation.

Putin doesn't want the truth to penetrate his national Potemkin village because the lie needs to be sold complete: the narod (similar to the German volk) must understand that its ethnic kin is under systematic assault from Tallinn to Sevastopol and that, if anything, it's the Americans who are the ones invading another country -- Russia. One also sees a bit of kombinatsiya in the incredibly successful boost to Putin's popularity (itself a function of a carefully scripted and acted-out propaganda narrative), which jumped 20 points since the Crimean adventure got underway and now hovers at around 80 percent. If Russia invades eastern or southern Ukraine, that figure will go up even higher because the excuse for protecting the Fatherland and its far-flung and imperiled diaspora has been cultivated in advance.

10. Modernizatsiya isn't just for show.

Russia's Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu has only been in the job for little over a year and already he's polled as the "most efficient" minister in Dmitry Medvedev's cabinet. His portfolio was also the most scandalized, as Shoigu's immediate predecessor, Anatoly Serdyukov, was sacked in 2013 owing to corruption charges involving Oboronservis, a Defense Ministry-owned real estate firm that appears to have been largely managed by Serdyukov's 33-year-old mistress, who allegedly [source] embezzled hundreds of millions of dollars out of it. (It didn't help Serdyukov's case that his wronged wife is the daughter of Viktor Zubkov, a former prime minister and close confidante of Putin's.) But Shoigu wasted no time in establishing himself as a national hero. He has overseen the largest and most ambitious re-armament and modernization program of the Russian military since the fall of the Soviet Union. As my colleague Andrew Bowen has noted, Moscow plans to spend $773 billion by 2020 equipping the majority of its armed forces with the state-of-the-art weapons such as T-50 fighter jets, Borei-class ballistic missile submarines, and RS-26 inter-continental ballistic missiles. Shoigu is also responsible for expanding the ranks of contract soldiers (kontraktniki) who are seen to be more reliable than conscripts. By 2017, the goal is to have 425,000 kontraktniki trained and ready to deploy (Russia currently has less than half that number).

Plenty of military analysts are skeptical that these blue-sky reforms can ever be realized, but consider the exhibitionism that Shoigu's army and air force have resorted to in the last year. Zapad-2013, another military exercise -- this one waged jointly with Belarus -- last September, featured as many as 70,000 troops including paratroopers, Spetsnaz (Special Forces), and paramilitary servicemen from the Interior Ministry. It's had "counterterrorism" exercises with India, and a large-scale naval exercise with China. Russia also conducted its own much-vaunted war game in the Far East, with what it claimed was 160,000 troops, 70 ships, 130 aircraft, and 14 separate army brigades, although, as deputy editor of the newspaper Yezhednevny Zhurnal Alexander Golts pointed out at the time, these advertised numbers simply didn't add up. But they really didn't have to: it's the plumage of the fledging modernizatsiya that matters most of all. "The objectives have been achieved, and the exercises have been more than satisfactory so far," Putin declared upon the completion of the Far East exercise. More ominous have been the serial violations of Swedish, Norwegian, Estonian, Japanese, Colombian, American, and Ukrainian airspaces by aircraft that include long-range strategic bombers -- the kinds that would, say, reduce a country to radioactive ash.

The Russian armed forces aren't being revamped and expanded and better equipped for showroom purposes; they were being taken out for a test drive. Recall, too, that Putin, who was appalled at the bumbling and bungled 2008 war with Georgia for which he exclusively blames his former marionette, President Medvedev, has yet to have his own uniquely personalized war in well over a decade.
It's been a long time since the scorched-earth campaigns in Chechnya. And the timing couldn't be more right.
It's been a long time since the scorched-earth campaigns in Chechnya. And the timing couldn't be more right. The U.S. Department of Defense is mired in sequestration blues; the White House is catering to a war-weary and isolationist electorate (which may resent being given what it's asked for), and John Kerry is racking up air miles pursuing phantom "peace" deals around the globe. (He even met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov at a Nuclear Security Summit in The Hague on March 24.) Meanwhile, Russia's spending a mint on its own war-making capability, scoring diplomatic victories over Kerry whenever it can, cleverly exploiting the deterioration of traditional U.S. alliances in the Middle East (whether Egypt or Israel), and now looking to ensure that Ukraine -- which Putin considers "not even a state" -- of the former Soviet "near abroad" doesn't stand a chance of existing without a little help from old friends.

It doesn't bode well, either, that the Kremlin's read-out of Putin's phone call with Obama emphasized the "rampage of extremists" in Kiev and beyond, or the "blockade" of Transnistria. Both are clearly pretexts just waiting for Russia's invasion of Ukraine.[/rquoter]

 

^^

Obama's only good when he has his scripted teleprompter.

He sounds like a flat out idiot when he's unscripted. Putin is mopping the floor with him. I shudder to even think about how poorly Obama must have handled that call.

 

Don't worry. Glynch said nothing was happening and that we are all overreacting. Nothing to see here.

 

Something is happening here...... internal politics within Russia mostly. Puting is surfing the line between enough crisis to cover his ass for losing the Ukraine with inspired nationalism and too much crisis that will embroil him in a shooting war and ostracizing his economy on the world stage. With just the right amount of crisis he can suppress the dissent of the western looking, democratic youth for another generation. Losses on the Russian stock market mean little to him but reduces the power and prestige of the oligarchs who might oppose anything he wants; letting him blame his current recession and growing economic hardship on The West.

Putin wants to press this as far as it serves his internal purposes but not far enough to expose his real weaknesses, military readiness and dependence on energy markets. That's why it will not go beyond annexing Crimea.

And I don't think this was a premeditated, I think he was caught off guard by the expulsion of (coup de tat) of Yanukovych. I don't think he had a clue. I think the annexation of Crimea was a knee jerk response, though it certainly was an existing contingency plan within normal strategic military planning. And I do think this will settle out with Crimea being Russian and Ukraine tending western. Tensions will remain at something less than Cold War levels and Putin will use that for his purposes, as will our own military industrial complex. The same chickenhawks that pump up the paranoia to sell guns and elect their proxies.

 

Russia Navy Larger Than U.S. Navy Now, With Addition of Ukraine Navy Ships

[rquoter]Since taking 51 vessels from Ukraine without resistance, Russia now has more warships than America. The U.S. Navy has 283 active vessels, and Russia had 280 warships until last week, when it began taking over Ukrainian vessels stationed in Crimea.

The last of Ukrainian’s 17 military vessels stationed in Crimea not already taken by Russia, the minesweeper Cherkassy, was sabotaged by its crew Wednesday after several unsuccessful Russian capture attempts. Tuesday night, gunfire, explosions and smoke were seen and heard coming from the vessel during a Russian attempt. Ten Ukrainian vessels, not stationed in Crimea, still remain in the possession of Ukraine.

Russia has also gained navy officers. About 12,000 of Ukraine’s 15,450 navy personnel were stationed in Crimea when Russia invaded at the end of last month. Most of the officers have joined the Russian navy or resigned, according to representatives of the Russian government.

The 204th Tactical Aviation Brigade, based at the Balbek airbase, had 39 Mig-28 fighters, which were seized by Russia in the early days of their invasion. Three hundred surface-to-air missiles were seized at the Fiolent airbase, as well.

A representative of the Russian navy gave an interview Tuesday. According to Yuri Borisov, deputy defense minister for the Russian Navy, the Russian navy will have 40 more warships, including submarines and support vessels, set up for combat duty this year. Borisov stated the increase would make “resolution of the whole range of tasks that the Navy assumed [and] become more combat effective in any parts of oceans in the world,” as reported by Russian news agency ITAR-TASS.

The warships will be equipped with anti-submarine and high-precision assault weapons and self-defense and airborne devices, according to the plans for the fleet development.

The vessels will be brought into military service for Russia’s navy in the near future, Borisov told reporters. Borisov also spoke “Yasen nuclear submarines of a new generation” and “modern multipurpose surface warships,” such as Lider head destroyers, corvettes and frigates. Borisov outlined plans for coast guard ships, small missile-carrying warships, anti-sabotage cutters, rescue ships, and support vessels such as icebreakers and floating cranes.

Relatedly, the Russian navy has been reported today to be conducting a massive exercise in the Mediterranean Sea, close to Cyprus. Ships from the Russian Northern Fleet are beginning joint exercises with large Russian Baltic Fleet ships. The Russian Navy may use Cyprus as a port during their exercise, it is reported, because Russia is allowed to refuel at Limassol.

The U.S. Navy has 283 active vessels plus many thousands of non-combat vessels. The force includes 10 Nimitz-class carriers, to which will be soon added two new Ford-class ships, which America is building. No other country has more than two aircraft carriers.

For comparison, the Chinese Navy, who earlier this year announced plans to build a second aircraft carrier, was reported in 2012 to have over 500 combat vessels and almost 150 major combat vessels, although some of these ships rank equally with what the U.S. would classify Coast Guard vessels. Iran, considered to be another possible future military opponent of America, had 30 submarines, two destroyers and six frigates when assessed in 2012.

[/rquoter]

http://guardianlv.com/2014/03/russi...navy-now-with-addition-of-ukraine-navy-ships/

 

Report: Ukraine military dolphins to switch nationalities, join Russian navy

Weeks after Russia annexed Ukraine's Crimea region, it plans to take custody of dolphins in the nation as well.

Not just any dolphins. These highly trained military mammals detect risks such as sea mines or enemy scuba divers trying to slip through. Sea mines are sophisticated weapons that can sink ships and other watercraft.

"The combat dolphin program in the Crimean city of Sevastopol will be preserved and redirected toward the interests of the Russian navy," state-run Russian news agency RIA Novosti reported Thursday.

Ukraine's right sector leader killed Obama: Russia stands alone
Dolphins are a crucial part of open-water security. They detect sounds and objects in murky waters that human beings can't, making them uniquely effective at highlighting dangers on the sea floor.

Harnessing the military power of animal intelligence

Ukraine was using outdated military equipment for the dolphin program and planned to disband it next month, RIA Novosti said.

The Ukraine Defense Ministry told CNN that the nation has an ocean dolphin facility, but declined to provide details, saying they're classified.

The dolphin program dates to the 1960s, when Russia and Ukraine were part of the Soviet Union, but was handed over to Kiev after independence.
The U.S. Navy in San Diego also trains dolphins and sea lions to help protect its assets and find dangerous objects underwater.

Tensions between Moscow and Kiev have escalated since Russia reclaimed the Crimea region after a referendum this month that overwhelmingly supported the annexation. The United States and its allies have pledged to isolate Russia for its actions.

Ukraine also has combat sea lions that operate under the same base. It's unclear whether they'll be barking allegiances to Moscow or Kiev.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/27/world/europe/crimea-dolphins-defect/index.html?iid=article_sidebar

 

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>Of the 650 people in my Mom’s village in Crimea. Only 3 have Russian passports. A family that moved there in 2006. Also they voted against.</p>&mdash; Free Ukraine (@Ukrainolution) <a href="https://twitter.com/Ukrainolution/statuses/450251845165142016">March 30, 2014</a></blockquote>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p><a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23Putin&amp;src=hash">#Putin</a> calling <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23Obama&amp;src=hash">#Obama</a> probably to buy time or to trick. Never trust Putin. Never. <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23Russia&amp;src=hash">#Russia</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23Ukraine&amp;src=hash">#Ukraine</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23Crimea&amp;src=hash">#Crimea</a> <a href="http://t.co/AcX7xuw57z">http://t.co/AcX7xuw57z</a></p>&mdash; Anders Östlund (@andersostlund) <a href="https://twitter.com/andersostlund/statuses/449776135275302912">March 29, 2014</a></blockquote>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p><a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23Putin&amp;src=hash">#Putin</a> has no idea who he picked a fight with. <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23Crimea&amp;src=hash">#Crimea</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23Ukraine&amp;src=hash">#Ukraine</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23Russia&amp;src=hash">#Russia</a> <a href="http://t.co/KQ7O0DwWdQ">http://t.co/KQ7O0DwWdQ</a></p>&mdash; Anders Östlund (@andersostlund) <a href="https://twitter.com/andersostlund/statuses/449651488533786624">March 28, 2014</a></blockquote>
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How many of them float?


Crimean Tatars plan to declare autonomous territory in Crimea
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-N...ritory-in-Crimea/5991396185648/?spt=sec&or=tn

"By adopting this document, we inform all parties of the beginning of political and legal procedures for setting up a national autonomous territory of the Crimean Tatar people on their historical territory in Crimea... It is doubtless, however, that not a single party should have the right to trample on the Crimean Tatar people's inalienable and natural right to determine their fate and their future on their historical territory in Crimea on their own... Despite the fact that Crimea is having hard times today, we should not leave Crimea."

 

Which side are you on?

Also... you damn well know that Russia's navy cannot touch the United States navy.... they simply do not have the resources.

 

I don't thikn you understand the ramifications of their control of the Black Sea. How will America get its Georgian Wine? From Atlanta? Hahahaha.

 

What a godsend to the fans of the military industrial complex.

OMG we need to start building asap. We need to cut food stamps, social security, and all the entitlements.

Time to buy the military stocks, guys.

 

This is pretty big news. I'll bold the impt parts for glynchy.

Nato suspends Russia co-operation

Nato foreign ministers have agreed to suspend all practical civilian and military co-operation with Russia.

Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said Russia's annexation of Ukraine's Crimea region was the gravest threat to European security for a generation.

There could be no "business as usual", he added.

He had earlier categorically denied reports that Russia was pulling its forces back from its border with Ukraine.

Moscow is believed to have massed tens of thousands of troops on Ukraine's eastern border in recent days, causing alarm in Kiev and the West.

Foreign ministers from the 28-member Nato bloc, gathering in Brussels for their first meeting since Russia's annexation of Crimea, issued a strongly worded statement in which they condemned Russia's "illegal" annexation of Ukraine's Crimea region.

They agreed to suspend Nato co-operation with Russia in a number of bodies but added that dialogue in the Nato-Russia Council could continue, as necessary, at ambassadorial level and above "to allow us to exchange views, first and foremost on this crisis. We will review Nato's relations with Russia at our next meeting in June".

They are also looking at options including situating permanent military bases in the Baltic states to reassure members in Eastern Europe. Russia's actions in Ukraine have caused concern in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which were part of the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

Nato jets will take part in air patrols in the region later in a routine exercise that analysts say has taken on added significance due to the crisis. Several Nato countries, including the UK, US and France, have offered additional military aircraft.

'Aggression'

Announcing the formal suspension of ties, Mr Rasmussen said Nato's message was clear: it stood by its allies, it stood by Ukraine and it stood by the international system of rules that had developed in recent decades. He urged Russia to be part of a solution "respecting international law and Ukraine's borders".

He also said Nato would offer Ukraine greater access to alliance exercises and support the development of its military.

Answering questions from reporters, he said he expected Nato-Russia co-operation over Afghanistan - including counter-narcotics operations - to continue.

Ukrainian ministers were also in Brussels to meet their Nato counterparts. A joint Nato-Ukraine statement issued after their meeting announced that they would intensify co-operation and promote defence reforms in Ukraine through training and other programmes.

Speaking earlier, Mr Rasmussen praised what he termed the "exemplary restraint" shown by the Ukrainian government and military, and welcomed the advent of "solid democracy" in Ukraine.

"Russia's aggression against Ukraine challenges our vision of a Europe whole free and at peace," Mr Rasmussen also said.

But despite the uncompromising language, Mr Rasmussen concluded by saying: "The only path to follow is the political and diplomatic path."

In Moscow, the Russian foreign ministry warned Kiev against any attempts to join Nato, saying such efforts in the past had "led to a freezing of Russian-Ukrainian political contacts, a 'headache' in Nato-Russia relations and... a deepening split within Ukrainian society".

On Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin told German Chancellor Angela Merkel he had ordered a partial withdrawal of Russian troops from the border with with eastern Ukraine.

But Mr Rasmussen told reporters: "Unfortunately, I cannot confirm that Russia is withdrawing its troops. This is not what we are seeing."

Gas price rise

Meanwhile, Russian energy firm Gazprom has announced an increase of the price it charges Ukraine for gas from Tuesday.

Gazprom's chief executive Alexei Miller said the price of Russian gas for Ukraine had gone up to $385.5 (£231) per 1,000 cubic metres in the second quarter of 2014 from the previous rate of $268.5.

Mr Miller added that Ukraine's unpaid gas bills to Russia stood at $1.7bn.

In other developments on Tuesday

• Ukraine's parliament ordered security services to disarm all "illegal armed groups", following Monday night's shooting in Kiev that involved a member of the radical Right Sector group

• MPs in Kiev voted to allow to hold joint military exercises with Nato and other nations on Ukrainian soil

• Russia's upper house of parliament voted to pull out of a treaty with Ukraine on the Black Sea Fleet's presence in Crimea.

Tensions between the Kremlin and the West rose after the overthrow of pro-Kremlin Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in February, following months of street protests.

Russia's subsequent decision to annex Crimea, after a Moscow-backed referendum that was later condemned as illegal by the UN General Assembly, triggered a crisis in relations.

The US and EU have imposed sanctions on members of President Putin's inner circle and other officials. Russia has retaliated with its own sanctions on US politicians.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26838894

 

Nato boosts Baltic force, but local leaders want more

There has been an American invasion of a former Soviet Airbase in the middle of Lithuania. They are, of course, invited guests - more than 100 US Air Force personnel, along with F-15 fighter jets and a Nato early-warning radar plane with its characteristic mushroom-shaped dish on top.



These days, residents of the nearby town of Siauliai are more worried about uninvited guests from the east. And in fellow former Soviet state Ukraine, they have just seen their worst fears confirmed.

Lithuania's Defence Minister Juozas Olekas does not describe it as a new Cold War. To him, he says, "it feels hot and very near", adding that Nato must to do more to stop what he calls "this aggression".

Warplanes from the Russian Federation already fly close to nervous Baltic states. Their arrival is often unannounced and invisible to civil air traffic controllers.

The Russian air force rarely submits flight plans or "squawks" communication signals while in the air. Sometimes it can seem as if they were carrying out a combat mission, though they're not technically breaking any rules.

The warplanes avoid Nato airspace, following a narrow corridor over the Baltic Sea. Sometimes they turn towards Kaliningrad - the small Russian enclave between Lithuania and Poland, now joined by Crimea as a Russian-controlled quirk of the map.

At Nato's Combined Air Operations Centre, deep in the countryside of northern Germany, they pool the resources of all the alliance's military radar to track the Russian activity.

The base in Uedem is surrounded by wire and patrolled by guards with dogs. We are taken past bunkers covered by grass, before being given a rare glimpse inside one of the operations rooms.

More than a dozen staff in different Nato camouflage uniforms and speaking a variety of accents are closely monitoring computerised maps showing scores of white dots. Here they can track every single plane flying in area stretching from the Alps in the south right to the northern tip of Norway.

Gp Capt Stephen Richards of the UK's RAF is the air operations commander at Uedem. He tells me that over the years they have seen a gradual increase in war plane activity, consistent with what he calls "Russian ambition" - and President Vladimir Putin's increased defence spending. Now they are spotted virtually every week.

Asked if he is worried by it, he says he is not, but adds "we need to be aware".

From Uedem they can scramble fighter jets right across northern Europe.

Back in Lithuania, an alarm sounds at the F 15 fighters' temporary home - pilots aim to be in the air within fifteen minutes.

They're here because the small Baltic states, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, lack sufficient aircraft to police their own skies. So Nato's wealthier members take turns doing it for them.

Normally they send four jets, but this time the US has sent ten F-15s. And suddenly there have been offers of more planes from half a dozen countries, including the UK, Denmark and France.

Lt Col Lendy Reneger, US Air Force commander at the base in Lithuania, says the alliance's response to recent events has been "swift and strong".

He says there's no more powerful message than showing "air superiority", though he carefully avoids naming Russia.

He also declines to answer when I ask him if he or his pilots have spotted any Russian warplanes up close during their patrols. "I can't comment on the specifics of the operation," he says.

Nato is keen to stress that, in a nervous post-9/11 world, air policing is as much about investigating suspicious civilian aircraft as it is about facing off against old enemies. And, up in the air, the F-15s show us how they would deal with an unidentified plane.

From a Lithuanian transport plane we watch as two of the US fighters pull up alongside and signal for us to land.

For this exercise they have been joined by two Swedish Grippen fighters. The Swedish Air Force was embarrassed last year when they failed to scramble when a Russian bomber flew close to their coast.

It was Easter and they were on leave. They do not want to be caught napping again.

The Baltic states, on the other hand, have always been quick to identify threats from their eastern neighbour.

Maj Gen Edvardas Mazeikis, the head of the Lithuanian air force, says "of course we feel threatened," before adding that it is not yet "the enemy at our gate".

He thinks Nato's response to the crisis has been correct, but his defence minister wants more.

Juozas Olekas says Nato should have a permanent presence, including ground troops, in the Baltic states.

But therein lies a dilemma for the alliance's leaders. Would more reassurance for its smallest members be a catalyst for another Cold War?

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26849732

 

lol. The IMF is about to buy Ukraine for 18 billion dollars.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/28/world/europe/ukraine-bailout.html?_r=0

If Ukraine thought it had trouble before, wait till it finds out the cost of being "saved"

 

<iframe width="853" height="480" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/vwBZObfp24c" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

 

^ I laughed. Fallon does a great Putin Impression.

 

i'd hit it so hard she'd be singing he chorus to Immigrant Song.