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As the United Nations warns that Syria has descended into civil war, Russia continues to back President Bashar al-Assad in the face of growing international condemnation. Konstantin von Eggert, political commentator for Kommersant FM radio in Moscow, looks at why the Kremlin is steadfastly supporting the beleaguered Syrian government. Foreign policy analysts usually tend to explain Moscow's inflexible stance on Syria by evoking arms sales to Damascus (Bashar al-Assad's regime is said to have placed orders for Russian hardware to the tune of $3.5bn) and the Russian naval station in the Syrian port of Tartous. But this alone does not...

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday he will boost military cooperation with China, including holding more joint exercises, after the United States announced plans to shift most of its warships to the Asia-Pacific by 2020. Putin referred to recent Sino-Russian joint navy exercises in the Yellow Sea as an example of military cooperation which, he said, would go on. "We will continue cooperation also between our military," he told Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping in Beijing, where he is attending a security summit and meeting his Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao. "Recently joint navy exercises were held in the Yellow...

Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet his Iranian counterpart Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on the sidelines of a summit in Beijing next week as tensions rise over Tehran's nuclear drive, a Kremlin official said. "Meeting Ahmadinejad will let Putin personally feel the tension around the Iranian issue and how it is perceived in Tehran," Kremlin foreign policy aide Yury Ushakov told reporters last week in comments that were embargoed for release until Sunday. Putin and Ahmadinejad agreed to meet over the phone and the initiative came "from both sides," Ushakov said. The meeting will come as Russia prepares to host the latest...

NEW RUSSIAN ICBM IS NO SOLUTION Russian plans to upgrade their "Voyevoda R-36M2 Satan" intercontinental ballistic missile began in 2009, but are only now coming to fruition. Russian weapons maker NPO Mashinostroyeniya predicts the creation of a new liquid fueled ICBM will take a decade to design and deploy. And when it does do so, it won't be a panacea for current Kremlin concerns over European missile defenses; Russian experts fear that the missile, as currently designed, won't be capable of piercing the missile defense shield currently under construction by the United States and NATO. (RIA Novosti, May 8, 2012)...

A new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) so secret it has no name yet has been successfully tested in Russia, the defence ministry says. The new weapon is designed to penetrate Nato's European missile defence shield, Russian defence sources told the Interfax news agency. The test came days after Nato said its system had reached "interim operational capability". Nato says its shield is meant to protect members from a missile fired by a rogue state - understood to mean Iran. It plans to increase its capability by deploying further assets in the years ahead. However, Russia says the shield upsets the...

Hardly more than a handful of experts in Moscow paid attention to the G8 summit in Camp-David last week-end, and President Vladimir Putin’s absence accentuated the impression that Russia does not really belong to this exclusive club. The seven leaders had to work hard to find answers to the escalating economic challenges; it is clear that Moscow has nothing to contribute to this joint effort though Russia has been affected by the economic crisis no less profoundly than France or Italy (Kommersant, May 19). Ironically, the only good news around the G8 table, where Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev sat in...

Aviation authorities are scratching their heads over a mysterious flying object in the skies above Colorado that almost caused a mid-air crash. The object was sighted by a commercial jet pilot, who claimed to air traffic controllers that some kind of flying craft got too close for comfort on Monday. In a transmission that appeared on LiveATC.net, the operator of the Cessna Citation 525 CJ1 says: 'A remote controlled aircraft, or what? ... 9News reported the Citation was about 8,000 feet above sea level, or about 2,800 feet above the ground, at the time the pilot reported the seeing the...

Russia and the United States will begin their controversial first joint anti-terror military exercises on American soil shortly at Ft. Carson in Colorado. A special unit of Russian paratroopers departed for the United States over the weekend and will be working alongside American land forces as part of the war games. The Russian and U.S. special units will engage in joint gun practice as well as ... The drills are scheduled to end on May 31

Amid heavy fog and strong winds the Chinese and Russian navies conducted five days of joint live-fire military exercises codenamed “Maritime Cooperation-2012” in the Yellow Sea. The joint exercises, which began on April 21 when a Russian ship formation arrived at Qingdao, Shandong, focused on underwater and airborne threats. During a night drill an “enemy” submarine sent divers to attach a mine to a “friendly” ship’s hull. Depth charges were fired and a team of divers removed the hostile object. Then 11 Chinese warships and the Russian squadron detected a hostile submarine “hiding.” Hostages were also rescued from a ship...

- FrontPage Magazine - http://frontpagemag.com - Russia Wants Obama Re-ElectedPosted By David Meir-Levi On May 11, 2012 @ 12:46 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | No Comments Well, now we know what the “hot mic” incident was all about. The Wall Street Journal’s “Moscow Raises Alarm over Missile-Defense Plan for Europe” (Friday, May 4, 2012), makes the connection.At an international conference on Thursday, May 3, organized at Russia’s initiative, the Russian delegates showed computer-generated images of a hypothetical Russian pre-emptive missile attack on segments of a missile defense shield and early warning system that the US and NATO want to put...

Chinese Defense Minister Liang Guanglie, in a visit to the Pentagon on Monday, met with United States Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and called for the two sides to continue to build upon their military ties. After meeting with Panetta, Liang told a news conference that the two sides are committed to continue building a sound, stable and reliable military-to-military relationship through more communication. "Facing the complicated and serious security situation in Asia-Pacific, both of us agree that it is in line with our own interests to strengthen the cooperation between the two militaries in order to protect the peace...

Russia’s most senior military officer said Thursday that Moscow would preemptively strike and destroy U.S.-led NATO missile defense sites in Eastern Europe if talks with Washington about the developing system continue to stall. “A decision to use destructive force preemptively will be taken if the situation worsens,” Russian Chief of General Staff Nikolai Makarov said at an international missile defense conference in Moscow attended by senior U.S. and NATO officials. The threat comes as talks about the missile defense system, which the U.S. and its allies insist is aimed at Iranian missiles, appear to have stalled. “We have not been...

When Congress returns after recess, the astronomical levels of spending included in President Obama’s budget will face a vicious show down in this election year, which will make the debt ceiling debate look tame. And while our Campaigner in Chief is busy making jokes about eating dogs and claiming credit for the death of Osama bin Laden, President Obama is facing intense scrutiny for his proposed changes to the military which will leave American vulnerable to future terrorist attacks. Last week in my leadership role at the Faith and Freedom Coalition of Ohio, I signed a letter along with...

Russian “Airborne Assault Forces” will be arriving in Colorado this May for joint terror-war exercises with U.S. soldiers, according to U.S. officials and Russian military personnel cited in media reports. The Kremlin’s Defense Ministry and the U.S. Department of Defense both said it would be the first time in history that American and Russian airborne special operations troops would be training together on U.S. soil. Analysts and commentators across the alternative media expressed alarm about the controversial announcement, likening it to a scene out of the movie Red Dawn or the predictions made by the late radio host Bill Cooper....

Kamov vs. Mil: prospects for Russian chopper fleet By the end of this year, Russia’s Far East air base of Chernigovka will be fully reequipped with new Mi-8AMTSh and Ka-52 attack choppers that will replace the obsolete Mi-8s and Mi-24s. Designed as a special forces' support helicopter, the Ka-52 is gradually growing to become the army’s main attack gunship. Plans to launch Ka-52 batch production were announced as early as in 2006. Under the modernization initiative, Ka-52s were to make up only a small portion of the 300 attack helicopters – just several squadrons of 70 to 80 choppers –...

BEIJING (AP) — China and Russia launched joint naval exercises Sunday that highlight warming ties between their militaries and growing cooperation in international affairs. [snip] "It's an excellent exchange for China to be able to drill jointly in such sensitive areas," Yin told CCTV. [snip] Much of that cooperation takes place within the confines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a grouping of Central Asian states that seeks to check U.S. influence in the region and began holding joint drills in 2005. Formerly Cold War rivals for leadership of the communist world, China and Russia have since found common ground in...

Turns out he’s not Kenyan after all. He’s KGB. All this time, people were worried that President Obama was born in Africa and that his radical agenda had been crafted by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Saul Alinsky on the streets of Chicago’s South Side. Now we know his real radical hidden agenda is in service of the Kremlin.

President Obama just gave the world a glimpse into his future foreign policy plans this week, should he win a second term. On tap for Obama II: more faith in our adversaries, more betrayal of our traditional allies and more unilateral indulgence in nuclear abolition fantasies. Monday, President Obama told Russian President Medvedev that “This is my last election. After my election, I have more flexibility.” Medvedev responded that he would dutifully report that tidbit to Vladimir Putin back in the Kremlin. The men apparently did not realize their discussion was being caught by a live microphone. Given that the...

The chairman of the House subcommittee on strategic nuclear forces slammed the Obama Administration today for what he called its lackadaisical approach to missile defense in the face of rising threats from North Korea, Iran, and – implicitly – China. "We all know that the world is getting less safe," Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio) told reporters at a breakfast talk in Washington, D.C. "Look at North Korea, look at Iran," he said. "These are real and emerging threats that we need to stay ahead of," he said, "[but] if you listen to the hearings in our committee, there is a...

For the past four years, Vladimir Putin, Russia’s prime minister, and his sidekick Dmitry Medvedev, who has the nominal post of president, have been engaged in a huge propaganda operation to fool Russians and the West. With much fanfare, they have pretended to reform their benighted land. Mr Medvedev denounced corruption, and they pretended to be friends with the West, particularly through a warming of their relations with the U.S. in 2009. But this has been a sham to conceal the truth: that Russia is shamefully misruled. The ruling former KGB regime has squandered tens of billions of pounds and...