Posted on 07/28/2005 7:14:57 PM PDT by KOZ.
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Does your country face attack from militant frogmen? Do you need handguns that can kill terrorists in body armour at 100 metres?
If so, Russia could help.
Wednesday saw the opening of a Moscow exhibition of special forces' weaponry that arms exporters say will help the world win its "war on terrorism" while earning cash for Russia's flagging defence industry.
"This is for defending ports, boats or oil installations from underwater attack. It can shoot 17 metres at a depth of five metres," said Sergei Kalinin of the Tsniitochmash weapons company.
He put down the four-barrelled SPP-1M underwater pistol and its bundle of darts, and picked up a machine pistol.
"And this is one is very interesting, it only weighs 2 kg (4.5 lb). Even if a terrorist is wearing a bullet-proof vest, it will destroy him."
Other displays promoted devices for finding hidden explosives or drugs, while special crocodile-skin purses concealed a device to squirt indelible dye into the face of anyone who opened them.
Russia's defence industry was a global giant in Soviet years, but fell on hard times when the cash strapped post-1991 army had to slash its arms purchases.
ANTI-TERRORIST
It has looked to exports to survive, and officials think foreign anti-terrorist units could be important new consumers while Russia tries to battle off competition from Western producers in traditional markets.
"In 2002, we sold these products to 30 countries. Now we are selling to 50 countries," said Anatoly Isaikin, deputy director of Russian weapons exports monopoly Rosoboronexport.
He said most sales went to Southeast Asia, the Middle East and South America and that sales were only made to governments who made an official request.
"We need to remember that special units, especially anti-terrorist units, are not large. Therefore the quantity of products will not be the same as you would sell to equip an army ... The sum is not that big but the total is tens of millions of dollars. And it is increasing."
Russia sells about $6 billion of weapons a year.
Officials said that Russia's experience in urban and guerrilla tactics in Chechnya and the other regions of the volatile North Caucasus had helped it develop weapons perfectly suited to the global war against militants.
"We now have the weapons to adequately reply to the terrorists' threat to our country and the world," said Sergei Goncharov, president of the association of veterans from Russia's Alfa unit.
Alfa, along with its sister Vimpel unit, is Russia's equivalent of Britain's SAS or the U.S. Army's Delta Force and specialises in hunting militant groups.
"These weapons make Russia the world's leading country on the technical side of the war on terrorism ... If this continues and Russia can maintain its reputation, then it will keep its place as the top producer of elite weapons," Goncharov said.
Cloudiness, like in the eyes of any other dead fish.
nice :)
Enemies who we build industry for and who's coffers we feed every single day by the billions. They also arm our friends, such as South Korea and India and Indonesia, the Greeks, the Isrealies and Cyprus too.
Koz. is at it again. I guess he can't afford to party with Yushchenko Jr. so he needs to stir up some good old hatred.
Mother Russia looks back to the Soviet era for a new patriotism
The Kremlin is urging Russians to reaffirm their love for their country, writes Andrew Osborn in Moscow
Fear of China, velvet revolution and disintegration has prompted the Kremlin to inaugurate a Soviet-style, military, patriotic programme of un precedented breadth to keep Russia strong.
Before it broke up for the summer recess, the Russian parliament approved the reintroduction of Soviet-era style military training for school children under 18.
Compulsory lessons will include how to strip an AK47 Kalashnikov assault rifle, parade drills and how to respond to chemical, biological and nuclear attack.
Such training was first introduced under Stalin in 1939 but was abolished in 1993 after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The government also recently signed off a five-year, half-a-billion-ruble programme designed to inculcate patriotism and love of Motherland in the younger generation.
Its name recalls Russias Soviet past The State Programme for the Patriotic Education of Citizens and it effectively quadruples spending on patriotic education.
Its language would also be familiar to Soviet speech writers. It talks of resistance to attempts at discrediting or devaluing the concept of patriotism in the media and in works of literature or art.
Hundreds of thousands of leaflets promoting correct reproductive behaviour will be printed, Russian tricolour flags manufactured, patriotic computer games developed and children encouraged to mark the countrys key military victories as part of an over-arching strategy openly called developing the personality of the Russian patriot.
Cassettes and CDs with recordings of patriotic and marching songs will flood the country and there will be a specific budget for restoring moral values.
Opinion polls show that what was once taken for granted in the Soviet Union unquestioning love of country is on the wane, with some 65% of res-pondents saying they believe it is in decline.
One hundred miles north of Moscow, the Kremlins patriotic programme is already in full swing.
Some 3000 youth members of a pro-Putin movement called Nashi (Ours or One Of Us) are currently camped out in the countryside learning how to repel velvet revolutions (in reference to the overthrow of communist rule in Czechoslovakia in 1989, achieved by demonstrations and strikes).
Gleb Pavlovsky, a well-known Kremlin adviser, makes no secret of the camps purpose: Young people need to understand the technology of constitutional action. And sometimes constitutional action involves conflict or street action. They need for example, in the case of an anti-constitutional coup to be ready to stop it.
Earlier this year, a new TV channel, Zvezda (Star), was launched to promote the Russian army and in September Russia Today, a 24-hour rolling news channel (being hailed as Russias answer to CNN) will start to broadcast to America and Europe. Few believe it will focus on the less savoury aspects of Russian reality.
Under Putin, Russia Day has also become a grand national holiday. It marks June 12, 1990, the day when the Russian Parliament formally declared its sovereignty. However, under Boris Yeltsin the occasion a kind of Russian independence day was not even celebrated. Under Putin, since 2003 it has been turned into an occasion full of pomp and circumstance at which young people are urged to demonstrate and reaffirm their love of Mother Russia.
This year it was marked with a concert and fireworks on Red Square. Putin told the crowd: I am absolutely convinced that if we unite our forces, we can realise Russias colossal potential in the very best way in order to make our homeland strong and prosperous. The future of Russia is in your hands!
Film, a medium which Vladimir Lenin described as the most important of all the arts, is also doing its bit.
A fictional tsarist-era sleuth called Erast Fandorin, who takes on Russias enemies with Sherlock Holmes-like cunning, has proved particularly popular.
In the last six months the character has been the centrepiece of two home-grown blockbusters Turkish Gambit and The State Counsellor where he almost single-handedly foils dastardly anti-Russian plots by the Turks and a group of anarchists respectively.
It appears the Kremlin believes that patriotism begins at home with your choice of spouse. Nationalist MPs recently introduced a draft bill that would punish Russian women who marry foreigners. The bills author made no secret of who he had in mind: the Chinese.
With its rich oil resources, Russias far east is a source of serious anxiety to Moscow.
The region has lost 700,000 people, a tenth of its population, since 1990 and the border with China is littered with abandoned Russian military bases. Chinese workers have become common in many Siberian towns, as have mixed marriages, and Russia is worried that Beijing has territorial designs on vast swathes of its under-populated land.
While China is doing all it can to curb its birth rate, in Russia deaths outstrip births and the UN has warned that its population could tumble by a third by 2050.
In a recent speech, Vladislav Surkov, one of Putins most powerful advisers, openly raised the possibility of the collapse of Russia.
There is also real fear of the occurrence of a velvet revolution. Having seen what happened in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan, the Kremlin is twitchy ahead of crunch parliamentary elections in 2007.
And finally, there is the Chechnya problem which seems to be spreading to neighbouring republics.
Much of the south of the country is currently engulfed in a wave of violence associated with crushing poverty and radical Islam.
We have a serious task in combating terrorism which is threatening the integrity of our government and hence our sovereignty, said Surkov.
The Caucasus is problem number one. Unfortunately the situation there is not improving. In fact, it is getting worse. Its like an underground fire. And so far we have nothing to boast about there.
So bad is the situation that President Putins top adviser in the region has suggested that direct rule from Moscow be restored.
Faced with such a scenario, the Kremlin has done what it does best: it has drawn upon its Soviet past and is dabbling again, as they did with the USSRs five-year plans, in social engineering .
Look who's talking, comrade JB6 propagandist himself.
Shouldn't you be partying it up with your boy Yushchenko's son. Heard his $130K BMW is a real blast. Incredible that a 19 year old "consultant" can afford that and a $750,000 apartment all on his own, in a nation where the average income is $2,000.
America is also busily enriching our potential enemies...like the Chinese and Saudis.
what is so sinister about this article that you find objectionable? Anti-terror weapons are a good thing. These can'tbe used in combat only for defense - too light and have limited uses.
who do you think they are talking about? militant forgmen? body armor? islamofascists dont have these we do. these weapons are made to be sold to make money for killing US troops. russia has been selling in iraq/iran etc.
I know of no American militant frogmen killed by Russian weapons.
oh look. ignorant comments from destro. how surprising.
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