Rusland's Expansie

[Huzaar1]

Uiteraard, dit kon er nog bij. De Russen die boos worden om onaangekondigde zogenaamde spionage vluchten.
De gene die dit persbericht de deur uit heeft gestuurd moet vast een grijns op z'n gezicht hebben gehad.

[jurrien visser (JuVi op Twitter)]

Russia Accuses NATO on Spy Flights as Warplane Row Grows

By Ilya Arkhipov  Dec 16, 2014

Russia, accused by NATO of airspace violations and increased military activity, hit back at its Cold War foes, alleging a sevenfold jump in reconnaissance flights near its Baltic border by the U.S. and the alliance.

The lack of information flow between the two sides has sapped trust between them, Lieutenant-General Mikhail Mizintsev, head of the Russian Defense Ministry's joint military command center, said in answer to e-mailed questions. Russian fighters flew more than 300 missions in response to NATO and other foreign military aircraft approaching the country's borders this year, he said.

The sharp increase in air activity by NATO states and other foreign countries is taking place without "any mutual exchange of information," Mizintsev said yesterday. "All achievements in the field of trust-building and voluntary transparency that NATO and Russia have formed over the years have ceased."

Russia's military is shining the spotlight on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's activities around its borders as it's embroiled in the worst standoff since the Cold War with the U.S. and its allies over the conflict in Ukraine. The disclosure mirrors NATO reports of a jump in Russian military flights close to the borders of member states.

Last month, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said the government in Moscow wasn't making a fuss about increased activity around its borders by NATO and advised the military alliance to do the same.

No 'Welcome'

"We certainly do not welcome that NATO intensifies" its presence "near our borders," Ryabkov said. "We closely monitor everything that happens. We hope that NATO colleagues have the same attitude to what we do."

The number of flights by NATO's tactical aircraft close to the borders of Russia and Belarus doubled to about 3,000 this year, according to Mizintsev.

He challenged the alliance's claims that it had intercepted Russian aircraft 400 times this year, or 50 percent more than in 2013. NATO jets escorted Russian planes 140 times in 2014, a 70 percent increase on the previous year, while they flew missions that were "in strict compliance with international rules," Mizintsev said.

Dozens of Russian aircraft and naval ships as well as 9,000 troops and 250 tanks took part in six days of military exercises in the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad region from Dec. 5-10, state TV Vesti reported today. Lithuania put military units, including rapid-reaction forces, on high alert on Dec. 8 in response to the increased Russian activity.

'Dangerous Proximity'

NATO will remain vigilant in tracking Russian flights, Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters yesterday after a meeting at the military alliance's Brussels headquarters with Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk.

Mizintsev said Russia registered 55 cases of foreign jets flying in "dangerous proximity" to its long-range military aircraft, at a distance of less than 100 meters, in 2013-14. Russia's missions were "as risky as NATO aircraft flights near the Russian border can be considered risky," he said.

Russia is also concerned about increased tensions caused by the presence of NATO ships in the Black Sea, Mizintsev said. Sevastopol in Crimea, the peninsula that Russia annexed from Ukraine in March, is home to the Russian Black Sea Fleet.

Air Policing

"The Russian Defense Ministry leadership has repeatedly expressed its concerns over the significant increase of NATO military activity near the Russian borders," Mizintsev said.

NATO's Baltic Air Policing mission intercepted 80 Russian aircraft on 21 occasions near the borders of Baltic states last week, a record, the Lithuanian Defense Ministry said in a statement yesterday. Most of the Russian planes flew with their transponders turned off, it said.

Sweden and Denmark summoned Russia's ambassadors yesterday to express their displeasure after an incident in which a passenger plane leaving Copenhagen on Dec. 12 was forced to change direction to avoid colliding with a Russian military jet. The civilian plane was leased by Scandinavia's joint state-controlled airline SAS AB. (SAS)

Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov denied the surveillance plane had broken international airspace rules or had endangered civilian aircraft. The Russian aircraft was 70 kilometers (45 miles) from the passenger plane, RIA Novosti cited him as saying.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-12-15/russia-says-u-s-nato-increased-spy-flights-seven-fold.html?hootPostID=2b3d2440f08dfea4f677132eb8fe688c

[jurrien visser (JuVi op Twitter)]

Beware: Putin the wounded animal

Jake Novak, december 15, 2014 CNBC.com

Vladimir Putin is not a good man and not a good leader.

There, I said it ... and the U.S. government basically began saying that eight months ago, when it joined with other Western nations in imposing a series of economic sanctions on Putin's Russia.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/102273192

[Elzenga]

Nog niet bekend??
www.google.com ...............

het aangehaalde contact tussen Rusland en India vind ik een belangrijke ontwikkeling...de BRICS show their flag(s).

[Zander]

Belangrijke ontwikkeling...

Nog niet bekend??
www.google.com ...............

[Elzenga]

Belangrijke ontwikkeling...

[dudge]

Why Russia's relationship with India matters for Europe


Yesterday, Narendra Modi and Vladimir Putin publicly reaffirmed the longstanding bond between India and Russia – even as the West continues to seek to isolate Russia in response to the annexation of Crimea and destabilisation of eastern Ukraine. At an annual bilateral summit in New Delhi, Modi and Putin signed a series of big deals: the state-owned Russian company Rosatom will build 12 nuclear reactors in India; Rosneft agreed to a 10-year, fixed-price contract to provide oil to India; and the two countries will co-operate on the production of 400 Ka-226 military helicopters. The meeting between Modi and Putin illustrated the strength of the relationship between India and Russia – and its potential to undermine the impact of Western sanctions against Russia.

Since the annexation of Crimea, there has been much discussion of the increasingly close relationship between Russia and China. In May, Russia agreed to a $400 billion deal to build pipelines supplying gas to China through the so-called eastern route. Then, in November, Moscow and Beijing signed another agreement to supply gas from western Siberia to China through the so-called western route. The fear is that China could undermine the impact of Western sanctions by "backfilling" – in particular, by providing Russia with an alternative market for its energy exports. Since the Ukraine crisis began, China and Russia have also discussed creating an alternative to SWIFT, the messaging service used by banks.

There has, however, been comparatively little discussion so far of the relationship between Russia and India, even though it is in some ways as important as the one between Russia and China. It certainly has a longer history, dating back to the Cold War when the two countries were de facto allies. This quasi-alliance, which was based on ideological, political and security considerations, was then formalised in the 1971 Treaty of Peace of Friendship. India was particularly dependent on Russia, which many Indians saw as the only other power on which they could depend (for example, in the United Nations Security Council). For decades, there was intense interaction between elites in the defence, scientific and industrial sectors of the two countries, and the Indian political class was decidedly Slavophile.

Indeed, the relationship was so strong that the collapse of the Soviet Union was a strategic shock for India. The Indian analyst C. Raja Mohan has gone so far as to write that "nothing was as traumatic for the Indian leadership and its foreign policy elite than the collapse of the Soviet Union".[1] The Indian foreign policy establishment subsequently went into what he calls "mourning". During the Yeltsin era, relations between India and Russia deteriorated as India sought to adjust to the post-Cold War world, but since Vladimir Putin took over as Russian president in 2000, the relationship has to some extent been reinvented and reinvigorated. There remains a depth and warmth in the relationship between the two countries. In the summer, Modi is supposed to have said that "every child" in India knew Russia was India's "greatest friend".

In particular, there is an especially close arms transfer relationship going back to the first sale of Soviet MiG 21s in 1963. Arms transfers were also a key element in the re-establishment of the close relationship between India and Russia after the end of Cold War. In the mid-1990s, Russia offered India a full range of advanced weapons, including the Su-30 fighter. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, India – now the biggest buyer of arms in the world – was the destination for 38 percent of Russia's major weapons exports between 2009 and 2013 (12 percent went to China).  During the same period, Russia supplied 75 percent of India's imports of major weapons.[2] What began as a buyer-seller relationship is now evolving to include joint ventures to develop technology, such as a fifth-generation fighter jet.

Apart from energy, weapons are one of Russia's few internationally competitive exports. It is therefore likely to seek to increase arms sales as a way to partially offset the loss of revenue from energy exports, which has been exacerbated by the fall in the oil price. India is likely to remain its most important customer. Thus, though some Europeans will balk at the idea, intensifying defence cooperation with India could help maximise the impact of sanctions against Russia. Although India is already increasingly buying weapons from the US and EU member states, there are limits to what the West is prepared to sell to it. For example, India buys Russian aircraft carriers and nuclear-powered submarines because Western countries are not prepared to share such advanced technology. "If the US offered them, we would happily take them!" says a former Indian diplomat.

As Alex Gabuev points out in a forthcoming ECFR publication, Russia is likely to seek to balance its growing dependence on China in the future by developing closer relationships with other Asian countries. Since the most natural partners – Japan and South Korea – are US treaty allies, Russia may have to concentrate on other Asian countries such as India. As such, India is likely to become even more important to Russia in future. If the West is going to prevent Russia's relationship with India from undermining the impact of sanctions in the same way as it fears Russia's relationship with China might, it needs to find ways to pry India and Russia apart. Defence cooperation with India – including arms exports – could be one way of doing that. Perhaps France could even sell India the two Mistral helicopter landing ships that Russia had ordered.

http://www.ecfr.eu/article/commentary_why_russias_relationship_with_india_matters_for_europe379

[Ros]

Oekraine zoals we het kennen is met de invasie van de Krim sowieso verleden tijd lijkt me?

Vanaf het moment dat de EU heeft staan juichen bij de protesten en afzetting van de pro-Russische regering.

[dudge]

Poetin wil denk ik nog steeds het conflict in Oost-Oekraïne snel kunnen beëindigen. Daarvoor is niet meer maar minder NAVO activiteit richting en in de rest van Oekraïne een voorwaarde. Gaat hem niet worden denk ik zo als ik vooral de houding en gedrag van de VS zie. Einde Oekraïne zoals we het kennen dus. Het moment nadert denk ik snel dat een groter deel van Oost-Oekraïne zal worden bezet door pro-Russische "eenheden" (deels Russische SOFs en huurlingen). Blijft er westelijke rompstaat Oekraïne over...die dan bij NAVO en EU wordt getrokken.

Tja...zullen mensen, organisaties en landen zijn die daar blij mee zijn...tja..

Oekraine zoals we het kennen is met de invasie van de Krim sowieso verleden tijd lijkt me?

[jurrien visser (JuVi op Twitter)]

Poetin wil denk ik nog steeds het conflict in Oost-Oekraïne snel kunnen beëindigen. Daarvoor is niet meer maar minder NAVO activiteit richting en in de rest van Oekraïne een voorwaarde. Gaat hem niet worden denk ik zo als ik vooral de houding en gedrag van de VS zie. Einde Oekraïne zoals we het kennen dus. Het moment nadert denk ik snel dat een groter deel van Oost-Oekraïne zal worden bezet door pro-Russische "eenheden" (deels Russische SOFs en huurlingen). Blijft er westelijke rompstaat Oekraïne over...die dan bij NAVO en EU wordt getrokken.

Tja...zullen mensen, organisaties en landen zijn die daar blij mee zijn...tja..

Conform voorspelling.

[Elzenga]

Poetin wil denk ik nog steeds het conflict in Oost-Oekraïne snel kunnen beëindigen. Daarvoor is niet meer maar minder NAVO activiteit richting en in de rest van Oekraïne een voorwaarde. Gaat hem niet worden denk ik zo als ik vooral de houding en gedrag van de VS zie. Einde Oekraïne zoals we het kennen dus. Het moment nadert denk ik snel dat een groter deel van Oost-Oekraïne zal worden bezet door pro-Russische "eenheden" (deels Russische SOFs en huurlingen). Blijft er westelijke rompstaat Oekraïne over...die dan bij NAVO en EU wordt getrokken.

Tja...zullen mensen, organisaties en landen zijn die daar blij mee zijn...tja..

[Mourning]

Rusland heeft niets te verbergen en de steun aan de rebellen staat al langer vast, dus waarom sneaky doen? Ow... wacht even.

M.a.w. om precies dezelfde redenen welke Rusland omgekeerd heeft.

[Ros]

Correctie:

Formeel nog nooit erkend door Rusland. Maar waarom doen wij als Westen eigenlijk niet precies hetzelfde m.b.t. wapenzendingen richting de Oekrainse regering?

Het Westen heeft niets te verbergen en de steun aan Kiev staat al langer vast, du waarom sneaky doen ?

[Mourning]

Correctie:

Formeel nog nooit erkend door Rusland. Maar waarom doen wij als Westen eigenlijk niet precies hetzelfde m.b.t. wapenzendingen richting de Oekrainse regering?

[Ros]

F*cking hilarious, als het niet een dermate ernstig onderwerp zou zijn, daar de Russen al LANG troepen op de grond hebben in de Oekraine.

Formeel nog nooit bevestigd....zo werkt het nu eenmaal  Hulp van de VS aan de regering in Kiev zou het weleens formeel kunnen maken. Misschien is dit zelfs wel onderdeel van een "deal" om de oplossing te versnellen ?