Russian Military: News & Updates

MOSCOW — Managers of the Zenit Arena, a giant half-built stadium in St. Petersburg, received an official letter from the Ministry of Emergency Situations last week demanding that they immediately create shelter facilities for wartime. The stadium, under construction for the upcoming World Cup 2018, is located outside the city boundaries, the letter said, but in case of nuclear attack it is in the potential “zone of war destruction and radiation fallout.”

The last time Russians heard authorities talk like this about a potential mobilization for a nuclear strike was 20 years ago, and it all seemed highly improbable. Now, it appears, the Kremlin is not joking. Up to 40 million people participated in recent civil-defense exercises all across the country, learning about how to hide and where exactly to run to in case of a nuclear war.

But whether the motive behind this is self-defense, an implied threat to the West, a means to mobilize and control public opinion, or all of the above, is not entirely clear.

“These are the most serious tensions between Moscow and Washington in decades, said Sergei Markov, a member of the Civic Chamber, a Moscow-based state institution. “The war might begin even before the November elections in the U.S.”

“I personally plan to stock 200 cans of pork to be ready for a potential war crisis,” Markov told The Daily Beast in an interview, “and I advise everybody to do the same.”

State Duma Deputy Vadim Dengin said he hoped that there would be no war with United States. “I cannot understand why the West cannot just leave us in peace, let us be,“ the official said. “Americans should realize that it will be their children looking for shelters, too, if they are serious about attacking Russia.“

On Thursday, Vladimir Gladkov, a 19-year-old student, said he heard from a neighbor that the closest bomb shelter to his apartment building was Kitai Gorod metro station.

A thermonuclear bomb on Moscow?

Gladkov, who was born years after the Soviet Cold War with the United States was over, sounded frustrated: “Americans are not crazy to bomb us, I am not sure why our authorities want people to experience hysterical panic attacks. Maybe somebody feels annoyed that we feel too free and happy,” he suggested.

In Russia, where generations have suffered from wars or economic crises, panic takes over quickly as a kind of contagious epidemic and some respond with millennial obsessions.

During the impoverished years of the early 1990s, thousands of Russians moved to settlements in the Taiga seeking mystical salvation. Over 3,000 believers in Christ Vissarion still live in the Siberian woods waiting for the End of Light.

In 2012 many in Russia waited in fear for the Mayan Doomsday. People bought bottles of vodka, matches, and candles to survive the dark times.

There is an expression that every Russian knows well: “To save for a black day.” And there are so many black days in Russian history—not just days, but years of devastation.

“My life is just one everlasting black day,” says Baba Zoya, an old woman living alone in the village of Bezvodnoye in the Nizhny Novgorod region. The 82-year-old pensioner finds winters especially hard to survive.

“On some cold winter days when every joint, every bone hurts, I have no energy to go out and buy a piece of bread,” she told The Daily Beast. Her only comforts are her old dog and a falling-apart armchair outside of her old dark wood isba, a Russian traditional log house. She remembers World War II only too well—dozens of Bezvodnoye men left one day and never came back. “I wish, my dear, that you live your life without such awful memories,” she said.

Last week Perm, a city of more than 1 million people in the Ural region, prepared shelters “for the employees who would continue to work during wartime,” the state Russia channel reported.

Experts from the Ministry of Emergency Situations inspected one of the shelters to make sure there is enough space, medicine, and minimal provision; the daily norm of water was three liters per person, the channel reported.

Television shows devoted to the civil-defense drills explained to Russians that there was no reason to panic, that during wartime authorities would make sure that there was no radiation on public transport, that every person would have at least 300 grams of bread per day.

From early morning on Thursday, activists received boxes with baby food, plastic bags full of diapers and used warm clothes at Russia Behind Bars NGO, which had been supporting Russian convicts for the last eight years. Were there bomb shelters for the population of Russia’s prisons?

“No chance to survive in prison,” the head of the NGO, Olga Romanova, told The Daily Beast. “Russian prisoners will be doomed, everybody in jail realizes that.”

For her part, Romanova said she knew exactly where she would go and how many minutes it would take for NATO missiles to reach Moscow.

“If they bomb Moscow, I might make it to Taganka metro station, it takes me about 5 minutes to run from my house,” Romanova told The Daily Beast. “My husband and I have already discussed and decided that we would only bring a couple of water bottles and our passports.”

 

Moscow: The European Union has decided against imposing any new sanctions against Russia as a result of its devastating air assault on rebel-held east Aleppo. It seems that sanctions fatigue is setting in among many EU members, and there may be some very good reasons for that.

For over two years the US, the EU and other allies have been ratcheting up financial, economic and political pressures on Russian individuals, banks and institutions deemed to be connected with Kremlin’s Ukraine policies. The hope was to generate enough pain to cause Vladimir Putin to change his mind, influence the Russian public to turn against Kremlin policies, or at least cause sufficient economic dislocation to force Putin to let go of Ukraine. This is probably a good moment to ask, how is that going?

What was the extent of sanctions?

Following Moscow’s annexation of Crimea in March 2014, the US and EU started by targeting dozens of Russian and Ukrainian politicians, separatists and businessmen known to be close to the Kremlin, with asset freezes, travel bans and other measures, on the theory that they would appeal to Putin to alter course in Ukraine.

The measures were stiffened a few months later, as leading Russian state banks, arms companies and energy corporations such as Rosneft and Gazprom, were prohibited from raising long-term financing in the West, or from refinancing their existing loans. Russia was banned from importing any civilian items that might have military applications and technology vital to the development of Russia’s oil industry was blacklisted.

Critics at the time worried that the West was pulling its punches since Moscow’s main source of revenue, exports of oil and gas, remained sanctions-exempt.

Nonetheless, the measures took a deep toll on Russian companies that had become most integrated with the global economy and some Russian analysts point out, disproportionately hurt Russia’s most pro-Western business leaders.

“For big companies, sanctions sharply limited their room to manoeuvre,” says Alexei Makarkin, deputy director of the independent Center for Political Technologies in Moscow. “It meant less access to foreign markets and sources of capital. Formal sanctions may have seemed fairly limited, but actually, we saw much wider ‘informal sanctions’ take hold, as Western companies declined to invest in Russia or sell even permitted technologies because they feared future sanctions. It has caused quite a lot of damage, and led to an economic retrenchment in Russia.”

Experts say it may also have prompted a strategic realignment, as Russia turns away from what it regards as unreliable Western partners toward Asian ones.

Russia also retaliated, with its own sweeping “counter-sanctions” against Western agricultural imports in mid-2014, hoping to enlist political support from European farmers who had become big players in the Russian market over the past two decades.

Has Putin changed course as a result of sanctions?

The Kremlin has visibly not backed down on its annexation of Crimea or its policy of aiding Ukrainian separatists. Plus, a year ago, Putin added to the West’s list of grievances against him by intervening militarily in Syria.

It’s not clear whether sanctions were a factor in convincing Moscow to come to the bargaining table with European leaders in an attempt to find a path to peace in Ukraine. But the two agreements hammered out among the parties in Minsk seem to largely favor Russia’s interests by requiring Kiev to grant “special status” to two pro-Russian rebel republics and engage in decentralising constitutional reforms.

“It should be clear to everyone by now that the West cannot force Russia to do anything by applying this illegal pressure of sanctions. It’s not even worth discussing,” says Andrei Klimov, deputy chair of the international affairs committee of the Federation Council, Russia’s upper house of parliament.

What has been the impact of sanctions on Russia’s economy?

It’s hard to say since around the time sanctions started to bite in late 2014 Russia was also hit by a catastrophic collapse in the global price of oil, its main foreign source of revenue. The oil price drop seems to be the main culprit in the near-halving of the Russian rouble’s value and the spike in inflation to nearly 20% in 2015. Experts in the US estimated that sanctions shaved up to 1.5% of Russia’s GDP in 2015. That was a very bad year for Russia in which the economy shrank by almost 4%. But, aside from a brief run on the rouble in December 2014, there was no sign of panic in Russia.

But by late 2016, Russia’s recession appears to be ending. Experts project a return to modest growth next year, despite the fact that oil prices remain less than half their 2014 peak and sanctions are still firmly in place.

Sanctioned Russian banks and state corporations have managed to pay down their international loans, even though their access to foreign capital markets is still restricted. Indeed, Russia’s foreign indebtedness has shrunk by over a third, further reducing future Western leverage.

Claims by some Russian officials that sanctions actually helped Russia by stimulating economic diversification remain largely bravado. One key exception is Russia’s agricultural sector, which has seen a significant upswing thanks to the low rouble and the banning of competitive foreign food imports.

Nor have Western interests remained unscathed amid the sanctions war. Some European farmers have, indeed, been hard-hit by the loss of Russian markets, while the global oil major Exxon, reported this week that it has lost nearly $1 billion due to the sanctions-mandated closure of its Russia operations.

How has the Russian public reacted to sanctions?

If one goal of sanctions was to demoralise Russians and turn them against their leaders, it appears to have backfired. A tracking poll by the independent Levada Center in Moscow found that 56% of respondents were either “very” or “somewhat” worried about Russia’s international isolation due to the Kremlin’s Ukraine policies in March 2014; by August 2016, that number had fallen to 40%. The numbers of Russians who said they weren’t “particularly worried” or were “completely unconcerned” rose from 39% to 58% over the same period.

“People are becoming increasingly less worried about sanctions and seem to just accept them as part of life nowadays,” says Alexei Grazhdankin, deputy director of the Levada Center. “Asked whether Russia should continue with its political course, regardless of any sanctions, more than two-thirds of Russians now say ‘yes’ it should.”

Some Russian commentators argue that even if the sanctions are eased, irreversible shifts have already occurred in Russia’s geostrategic alignment and the public’s sense of national identity. More than ever, Russian patriotism is taking on an anti-Western character, which looks increasingly permanent.

“The effects of this crisis, and the public’s sense that the West deliberately inflicted it upon us, has consolidated Russians in ways we have not seen in a long time,” says Viktoria Ledeneva, director of the Center of Migration Studies in Moscow, which focuses on demographics and changing social realities. “There is no question we will emerge from this with stronger national spirit and a more unified civic identity.”

http://www.defenceupdate.in/western-sanctions-russia-backfired/

 

A Russian special forces soldier appears to have pulled a move straight out of an action movie, calling down an airstrike on himself after he was discovered by ISIS troops in Syria, Reuters reports.

According to AFP, the soldier was on a week-long mission identifying ISIS targets and passing the coordinates along for airstrikes. He called for his final, dramatic airstrike at some point in the past week near Palmyra.

"The soldier died heroically, calling the strike onto himself after he was discovered and surrounded by terrorists," Reuters quotes the Interfax news agency.

The Russian soldier is at least the seventh killed in Syria since Russia launched a military campaign in the Middle Eastern country back in September.

But it was only this week that Russia finally admitted it had special forces soldiers participating in combat missions inside Syria. Syrian troops entered Palmyra on Thursday. It had been held by ISIS since last May.

 

Ain't this Old News?

 

nope this is a recent one

 

Can you please share link to it, it's not in OP?

 

http://www.defencenews.in/article/R...d-by-ISIS-Calls-In-Airstrike-on-Himself-18879

 

With deals over USD 12 billion in kitty this month, including leasing of a second nuclear submarine, Russia hopes to bag more projects as it termed itself as not just a business partner but an “ally” who stood by India in its “darkest hours”. Russia is eying the multi-billion dollar deal for P75-I project of India under which six conventional submarines are to be built with Air Independent Propulsion systems and the next aircraft carrier project besides the deal to jointly develop a fifth generation fighter aircraft.

Asserting that there is no limit to what India and Russia can do together, a top Russian defense official claimed the US and Europeans can never give what Moscow can and has offered. “We are ready not just to deliver most serious weapons, most important weapons but continue to give our state of art technology,” Sergei Chemezov, CEO of Rostec State Corporation, an umbrella organisation of 700 hi-tech civilian and military firms, told PTI.

“Russia is a friend, an ally and not a business partner. Russia stood by India during its darkest hours. Next year will mark 70 years of our relationship. It is a long time,” he said and noted that Russia had stood by India when it faced sanctions after the 1998 nuclear tests.

“Not so in the recent past, when India was under sanctions, we were pretty much the only partner for India. “Russia has been a partner not only in every day military supplies but also most sensitive and most important supplies including a nuclear submarine which was rented to India for you to use,” said Chemezov who is also a close aide of Russian President Vladmir Putin.

“Come to think about it, I would not imagine any other country to do that, he said. Not in the past or in the future. I cannot imagine US or Europe giving India such a strategic asset,” he said when asked about the tough competition that US and Europe are giving to Russia in the Indian defence market. Not only did Russia lease out a nuclear powered submarine, it actively helped in the building India’s first indigenous nuclear weapon carrying capable submarine INS Arihant which has been inducted into the Indian Navy.

Chemezov said “it is a very special year for us and will be marked by major projects and things are starting already.” He, however, admitted that from a third person’s point of view, there might have been some decline in some areas of defense between the two countries. US and some European countries have managed to strike mega deals with India which the Russians were also competing for.

“It is not a linear sort of relationship. We feel that ties are definitely developing and increasing,” he said. Giving example of the deadly BrahMos missile, Chemezov said that not only has Russia delivered high value equipment but has also collaborated with India on developing strategic assets.

He pointed out that in late 1990s, Russia had transferred technology for Su30 MKI, India’s frontline fighter aircraft. “At that point of time, it was our most modern equipment, our most modern plane. When we had actually signed that agreement, Russia did not even equip its army with this.

“This was basically our newest highest technology. That shows and speaks about our relationship with India,” he said. He also gave the example of T90 tanks, saying they are “not in anyway less but in many way, modern than any advanced US or European technologies”. He said there is scope for cooperation in the P75-I and the aircraft carrier project.

“There is definitely scope for both of those. There is pretty much no limit to what we could do together. Anything that is within our realm of things and possibilities, means it is the same with India,” he said.

Chemezov said that Russia has already submitted its proposals for both projects.

 

Th

Thanks! None in Russia Media Reporting it. This happened inext March 2016, apparently, defencenews is late by few months to report it
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/russian-rambo-wipes-out-isis-7626914

 

is that so,

Mods do your stuff
delete this thread

 

Well then, just do a little more tp keep it intact. Do not raise the cost after the agreement and deliver on schedule.

 

I find the statement has hidden communication from Russia. By emphasizing old contribution by Russia, they are desperate for seeing all the expected deals to be signed. If we drop some then they might favour the other nation. Thats how I interpret, 'but I might be wrong though.

Here is a link, if the thread starter has not shared already :
We are an ally who stood by India in darkest hours: Russia

 

Russi ne senti kardiya