Russia Restores Soviet-era Strategic Bomber Patrol

[december]

CHEBARKUL (Urals), August 17 (RIA Novosti) - President Vladimir Putin said Russia permanently resumed Friday long-distance patrol flights of strategic bombers, which were suspended in 1992 after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

"I made a decision to restore flights of Russian strategic bombers on a permanent basis, and at 00:00 today, August 17, 14 strategic bombers, support aircraft and aerial tankers were deployed. Combat duty has begun, involving 20 aircraft."

http://img.rian.ru/images/7212/89/72128934.jpg


The president, speaking on the final day of large-scale military exercises involving Russia, China, and four Central Asian countries in the south Urals, said that on the first day of patrol flights, bomber planes would spend about 20 hours in the air, with midair refueling, and would interact with naval forces.

"Air patrol areas will include zones of commercial shipping and economic activity. As of today, combat patrolling will be on a permanent basis. It has a strategic character," Putin said.

The president said that although the country stopped strategic flights to remote regions in 1992, "Unfortunately, not everyone followed our example." Other states' long-distance strategic patrol flights have created certain problems for national security, he said.

"We act on the assumption that our partners will treat with understanding the resumption of strategic air flights. Our pilots have been grounded for too long. There is strategic aviation, but there are no flights," Putin said.

Leaders of Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) were in Russia's Chelyabinsk Region for the final day of Peace Mission 2007 counter-terrorism exercises, which began August 9. The drills involved about 6,000 servicemen from Russia and China, along with around 1,500 from the other four member states, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan.

A former Russian Air Force chief said the resumption of patrols would strengthen Russia's defense capability. "It's a good thing that the old geopolitical setup has been revised. It used to be based on the principle, 'No one is going to attack us.' Practice testifies to the contrary," Army Gen. Pyotr Deinekin said.

He highlighted the new potential security threats Russia faces, saying NATO fighters were based in the Baltic States - formerly part of the Soviet Union and now EU members - while radar stations are being built around Russia's borders.

The general said that the early 1980s, in response to the U.S.'s deployment of cruise missiles in Europe, Soviet strategic aviation started patrolling areas as far afield as the U.S. coast. Patrols were discontinued following the collapse of the USSR and the Warsaw Pact, and due to severe economic difficulties, including an acute fuel shortage.

"Flights will be conducted on the same basis as they were in the past," Deinekin said.

Following Putin's announcement at Peace Mission 2007, exercises that were viewed by Western media as a display of Beijing and Moscow's renewed military might, Washington played down the significance of Russian strategic bomber flights.

"That's a decision for them to take," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said. "It's interesting. We certainly are not in the kind of posture we were with what used to be the Soviet Union. It's a different era. If Russia feels as though they want to take some of these old aircraft out of mothballs and get them flying again, that's their decision."

http://en.rian.ru/russia/20070817/72189719.html

Tu-160 Blackjack strategic bombers at the military aerodrome in the city of Engels, Saratov Region

http://img.rian.ru/images/5426/75/54267518.jpg

Su-34 Fullback bomber in a final test at the Chkalov aircraft testing center of the Russian Air Force's Akhtuba garrison.

http://img.rian.ru/images/5427/00/54270023.jpg

[them]

Contested Borders? (http://poli.vub.ac.be/publi/ContBorders/eng/contents.htm)

www.crisisgroup.org (http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=1439&l=1)

Russia - China (http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/prem/200104/tayler)

Japan's Northern Territories (http://www.mofa.go.jp/region/europe/russia/territory/index.html)

Secret of Sakhalin Island (Karafuto) (http://www.karafuto.com/)

Norway - Russia (http://www.specialoperations.com/Foreign/Norway/Borderguards/Grensekompaniet.htm)

http://static.flickr.com/25/53020572_9bd52c59ef_o.jpg


http://www.gmat.unsw.edu.au/ablos/ (http://www.gmat.unsw.edu.au/ablos/)

http://www.borderpol.com/ (http://www.borderpol.com/)

http://www.qub.ac.uk/cibr/ (http://www.qub.ac.uk/cibr/)

http://www.itlos.org/ (http://www.itlos.org/)

[december]

http://static.flickr.com/25/53020572_9bd52c59ef_o.jpg

And what did you want to say by posting this picture, Them?

[cheeb]

This was in the prescence ,
Of Hu Jintao{Maos protege and China's presedent}
At a Sino-Soviet war game excercize!!!

http://www.debka.com/section.php?cid=13

Looks like a cold war agenda is being pushed???

[synergy777]

http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=7018

Russia, China Host Ahmadinejad at Anti-U.S. Security Summit
Henry Meyer – Bloomberg.com August 16, 2007

Russia and China today host Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at a summit of a Central Asian security club designed to counter U.S. influence in the region.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization invited Iran to become an observer in 2005, sparking concern in the U.S., and Ahmadinejad called for closer ties to the group when he attended last year's summit in Shanghai. Kyrgyzstan is hosting the one-day annual meeting in its capital, Bishkek.

China and Russia, which are competing with the West for access to Central Asia's oil and gas reserves, are positioning the SCO as a counterweight to the U.S., said Andrew Kuchins of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.

``Russia and China never tire of reiterating their commitment to a multipolar world and opposition to a unipolar one,'' he said in a telephone interview. ``The SCO is a manifestation of that in Eurasia.''

The U.S., whose relations with Russia have deteriorated, accuses Iran of seeking to develop nuclear weapons and sponsoring terrorism. Ahmadinejad has said the Central Asian group can help fend off ``outside interference'' in the region.

Chinese and Russian officials say the SCO, set up in 2001 with the stated goal of strengthening regional cooperation and combating terrorism, is focused on maintaining stability in the region. Its six members include the four Central Asian states of Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan.


Resurgent Taliban

Afghan President Hamid Karzai, whose country is battling a resurgent Taliban, is a guest at the summit. Chinese Assistant Foreign Minister Li Hui said Aug. 11 the group wants to cooperate with Afghanistan in fighting drug smuggling and terrorism.

The SCO in 2005 called for a timetable to end the U.S. military presence in Central Asia. Within six months, Uzbekistan ordered out U.S. forces stationed at its Khanabad airbase. The U.S. has a remaining airbase in Kyrgyzstan, which is used to support operations in Afghanistan.

Leaders of the SCO will tomorrow fly to the Urals region of Chelyabinsk to attend large-scale war games involving 6,000 soldiers and 100 aircraft called ``Peace Mission 2007.''

It marks the first joint military exercises on Russian soil between Russia and China, once rivals during the Cold War. Two years ago, the two countries staged major war games in China, causing concern in the U.S.


Russian Influence

In another unwelcome development for the Americans, Turkmenistan's President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov also accepted an invitation to attend the summit. His long-ruling predecessor, Saparmurat Niyazov, who died last year, had kept the energy-rich country isolated and resisted Russian influence.

Russia in May secured a deal to build a new pipeline to import more gas from Turkmenistan, bolstering its dominant hold on supplies to Europe and heading off a competing U.S.-backed plan that would bypass Russian territory.

Ahmadinejad has been pushing for full membership in the Shanghai group. Analysts say this probably won't happen because Russia and China aren't willing to risk a rupture with the U.S. by inviting its arch-enemy into their club.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, who met Ahmadinejad last year in Shanghai, will not hold talks with the Iranian president in Bishkek.

Admitting Iran, which is under United Nations sanctions over its disputed nuclear program, ``would create more trouble than it's worth,'' said Michael Denison, a Central Asia analyst for the U.K.-based security research company Control Risks.

Still, they might promote closer ties, short of actual membership, he said in a telephone interview. At a meeting of SCO foreign ministers July 9, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said observer countries expressed``disappointment'' at being limited to a ``ceremonial presence.''

Along with Iran, Pakistan, India and Mongolia have observer status in the six-member group.

www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601085&sid=aRwBBl6fYDLw&refer=europe

[december]

Looks like a cold war agenda is being pushed???


No Cold War if U.S. keeps out of Europe, vows Russia's Ivanov

http://img.rian.ru/images/6397/83/63978307.jpg


04/ 07/ 2007


TASHKENT, July 4 (RIA Novosti) - Russia's deputy prime minister said Wednesday the media could "forget the term Cold War" if the U.S. agreed to Russia's latest missile defense proposal to use a base in Russia instead of Central Europe.

"If the proposal [on a new radar in Russia] is accepted, we will have no reason to deploy more missiles in our European regions," including the Kaliningrad Region, a Russian exclave bordering on Lithuania and Poland, Sergei Ivanov told reporters.

"After that I will request that journalists forget such terms like 'Cold War'," Ivanov said.

President Vladimir Putin, during his recent two-day meeting with President George W. Bush at his father's house at Kennebunkport, Maine, proposed incorporating a new radar, currently being built in Southern Russia, into part of a missile defense system managed by the NATO-Russia Joint Permanent Council, of which Moscow and Washington are members.

When asked whether Russia really could counteract the perceived threat from U.S. missile defense plans to deploy bases in Central Europe, Ivanov said: "We have found an asymmetric and appropriate response."

Ivanov also said Russia was ready to upgrade its early warning radar in Gabala, Azerbaijan, which was also proposed as an alternative to U.S. missile plans, but America has repeatedly called it obsolete.

Ivanov said the radar could be installed with state of the art equipment, "The technology is completely new, it is already in use with our Space Forces."

All information from the new radar will be compatible with a "joint information system" aggregating antimissile data in two centers in Moscow and Brussels.

The U.S. has said it wants to place a radar and a host of interceptor missiles in Poland and the Czech Republic to fend off what Washington sees as an impending missile threat from Iran and North Korea.

Russia's future radar base is located near the town of Armavir, Krasnodar Territory - about 700 km (450 miles) to the northwest of the Iranian border and just about 100 km to the north of Sochi, the Russian alpine resort on the Black Sea, whose bid to host the 2014 Winter Olympics will be decided tomorrow in Guatemala.

http://en.rian.ru/russia/20070704/68350442.html

[them]

And what did you want to say by posting this picture, Them?

That we all have our own space, individual or nation face. We mark our territory to let others know where the line is.

[december]

Russia conducts Tu-22 strategic bomber drills in the south

24/ 08/ 2007

MOSCOW, August 24 (RIA Novosti) - Russian Tu-22M3 strategic bombers successfully conducted a series of tactical exercises in the south of the country and in Kazakhstan this week, an Air Force spokesman said Friday.

The Tu-22M3 Backfire-C is a supersonic, swing-wing, long-range strategic bomber that Russia uses mainly to patrol the skies over its southern borders, Central Asia and the Black Sea region.

"We held a series of strategic bomber exercises [involving Tu-22M3 bombers] Tuesday and Friday to practice penetrating the air defenses of a potential adversary," Colonel Alexander Drobyshevsky said.

"The crews also conducted simulated bomber raids at the Guryanovo testing range in the Saratov Region [southern Russia], and practiced launches of cruise missiles at the Emba testing range in Kazakhstan," he said.

President Vladimir Putin announced August 17 that Russia had permanently resumed long-range patrol flights of strategic bombers, which were suspended in 1992 after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Speaking on the final day of large-scale military exercises involving Russia, China, and four Central Asian countries in the south Urals, Putin said: "Air patrol areas will include zones of commercial shipping and economic activity. As of today, combat patrolling will be on a permanent basis. It has a strategic character."

The announcement gained substantial coverage in British and other Western media, which called the Kremlin's move a return to the Cold War era.

It also apparently triggered serious concerns in NATO, which recently increased its monitoring of Russian bomber flights in neutral airspace.

Last Friday, the British Defense Ministry reported an alleged incident, the second this summer, in which the Royal Air Force had to scramble its Typhoon fighters to intercept a Russian Tu-95MS Bear-H strategic bomber that approached British air space during a flight over the North Atlantic.

Russia has denied any wrongdoing, saying its planes never violate foreign airspace, and their actions have no aggressive intent against other countries.

However, the Kremlin's assurances did not stop attempts by foreign media to further fuel fears that a new military buildup is underway in Russia.

Britain's Daily Telegraph newspaper said Friday on its Web site that NATO vessels are closely monitoring sea trials of the latest Russian diesel missile submarine with enhanced stealth capability in the Baltic Sea.

The Project 677 Amur submarine features a new anti-sonar coating for the hull, an extended cruising range, and advanced anti-ship and anti-submarine weaponry.

The newspaper speculated that Russia could be testing NATO's "ability to defend territorial waters in much the same way that bomber flights can test its ability to defend airspace."

http://en.rian.ru/russia/20070824/74204305.html