Posted on 03/01/2011 12:16:52 PM PST by americanophile
Moscow – The graying bear is getting a make-over. Russia's military is launching its biggest rearmament effort since Soviet times, including a $650 billion program to procure 1,000 new helicopters, 600 combat planes, 100 warships, and 8 nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines.
Analysts say Russia, while already the world's fifth-largest military spender, needs strong conventional forces to reduce its overreliance on its aging Soviet-era nuclear missile deterrent. Valentin Rudenko, director of the independent Interfax-Military News Agency, says it could create "a whole new ballgame."
"For about two decades we've had no real modernization, at least not like what's being proposed now," he says. "Russia will finally have a modern, top-level armed forces that are capable of protecting the country."
Deputy Defense Minister Vladimir Popovkin last week announced the unprecedented new outlays, which will see a massive re-equipping of Russia's strategic nuclear deterrent as well as its conventional forces. The Defense Ministry today said the "modernization drive" will begin this year with the deployment of new generations of air defense and antimissile weapons by Russian ground forces.
The impressive shopping spree comes on the heels of a painful military reform that severely downsized Russia's conscript Army, eliminating 9 out of 10 Soviet-era units and cutting 200,000 officers. The goal now, experts say, is to equip Russia's new lean-and-mean, largely professional armed forces to face 21st-century threats. These are mainly considered to be regional conflicts such as the brief 2008 Russo-Georgian war, which highlighted military shortcomings.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Wonder if we are funding it through a global fund of some sort?
They’ve got China on their longest border. I can hardly blame them for doing this elsewise they will soon need to contemplate losing the Russian Far East.
IIRC, they defaulted.
MOSCOW, November 15 (RIA Novosti) - Russian President Dmitry Medvedev can look around the summit table on Saturday knowing his government has less debt than any other G20 country, according to the Guardian newspaper. The British paper put Russia's debt at $76 billion - less than 1% of the United States' $8.4 trillion. As a percentage of gross domestic product, Moscow's situation is not quite as rosy, but President George Bush would probably take a national debt running at 6% rather than 60% of GDP. http://en.rian.ru/business/20081115/118335408.html
Probably going to go after ANWR ... why not, we’re not using it.
I checked: they defaulted in 1998.
Interestingly, the late 1990s was a great time to default - in that time period the average lag to renewed access to foreign credit (which is one of the major costs of sovereign default) was 3.5 months (!). Credit was everywhere.
If Russia had (somehow) defaulted during the 1980s the lag would have been about 4.5 years, which would have been a body blow for a country.
Their currency ran like a cheap stocking at the time - which I guess worked out ok as they’re an energy extraction economy.
In today’s saturated debt environment formal sovereign default would be very serious indeed: access to foreign credit is very precious right about now. They couldn’t default now - not that that’s on the cards.
The Putin-era Russian military has ten-year record of talking big even as it continues to rot. Their defense industry is in a state of utter neglect. I seriously wonder if they have actually managed to professionalize their army, judging by their pathetic performance in the Georgian War (not to mention their motley appearance).
...seemed to work out for them. Now they’ll be a serious thorn in our side.
Yes it seems so. They defaulted with their eyes open.
Hmm, I wonder if such a cheap default opened up fault-lines of moral hazard in their economy or national psyche which may have slowed them down. Maybe their country is now owned by bailed-out bankers.
Oh, yeah, like that would ever happen.
I see trees of green,
red roses too.
I see them bloom,
for me and you.
And I think to myself,
what a wonderful world.
I see skies of blue,
And clouds of white.
The bright blessed day,
The dark sacred night.
And I think to myself,
What a wonderful world.
The colors of the rainbow,
So pretty in the sky.
Are also on the faces,
Of people going by,
I see friends shaking hands.
Saying, “How do you do?”
They’re really saying,
“I love you”.
I hear babies cry,
I watch them grow,
They’ll learn much more,
Than I’ll ever know.
And I think to myself,
What a wonderful world.
Yes, I think to myself,
What a wonderful world.
Oh yeah.
Russia/Soviet/Coldwar2 PING!!!
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It’s cool. Apparently the Russians love their children too.
Russia, Greece, Ecuador, Venezuela etc have defaulted and will default again without thinking twice.
http://zerohedge.blogspot.com/2009/02/russia-about-to-default-on-debt-again.html
BS. The Russians don’t have that kind of money, they can’t even feed their people. This is like putting a sticker on your front door that says “Protected By Security Service” when all you can afford is the sticker.
Hate to say it though, but after finding out we’re going to lose Texas to LaRaza, that makes our arithmetic at arriving at the White House almost impossible. And seeing how the Russians are building lots of Churches, a flat tax and actively shooting at somali pirates, some farmland there is starting to look tempting. I don’t know.
We will only loose to la raza if we surrender hispanics to them. Most who come here even illegal Mexicans want to make a better life for their progeny. They want the opportunity to make money like other capitalists. They aren’t stupid, democrats are not the vehicle to achieve that. We simply need to start the process of proselytizing them. The left is successful only because they actively recruit. We instead surrender them as lost and hope they can understand a tepid intellectual argument. It’s a wonder we haven’t been run by communists 50 years ago.
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