Lumbering Soviet-era bombers flying far outside Russian airspace. Harsh recriminations of U.S. expansionism. The most vigorous military modernization since the fall of communism more than 15 years ago.

With his country awash in oil-generated prosperity, President Vladimir Putin is flexing Russia’s muscles in a series of unsettling reminders of the Cold War that raise the question: Just what is the former KGB spy and - by extension, Russia - up to?

While U.S. officials and Russian experts generally don-t envision a new Cold War, many believe that Putin’s recent moves are designed to assert Russia’s new vitality, create further distance from the West and re-energize the Kremlin’s influence over the vast landscape that it controlled during the Soviet era.

Continue reading at McClatchy

By Peter Finn
The Washington Post

MOSCOW, Sept. 12 – President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday nominated a longtime associate who is a largely anonymous figure to be the country’s new prime minister, scrambling predictions about who will be the Kremlin-backed candidate in next March’s presidential election.

Viktor Zubkov, 65, was chosen by the president hours after Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov resigned. Zubkov, chairman of the Federal Financial Monitoring Service, a body that investigates money-laundering, must be approved by the lower house of parliament, or Duma, which invariably approves Kremlin initiatives.

Fradkov, a colorless technocrat who loyally followed Kremlin orders, said he was leaving his post so Putin would have a free hand to create a new government in the run-up to the presidential election, as well as parliamentary elections scheduled for December.

Putin, accepting Fradkov’s resignation, sounded a similar note to explain the government reshuffle, and also hinted that Zubkov may be around for a while.

“We all need to think about how to build up the structure of power and governance so they are better suited to the pre-election period,” said Putin in televised remarks from the Kremlin. He added that “we need to prepare the country for the time after the parliamentary election and after the presidential election.”

read more HERE

from The BBC Online

Russia is resuming a Soviet-era practice of sending its bomber aircraft on long-range flights, President Vladimir Putin has said.

Mr Putin said the move to resume the flights permanently after a 15-year suspension was in response to security threats posed by other military powers.

He said 14 bombers had taken off from Russian airfields early on Friday.

The move came a week after Russian bombers flew within a few hundred miles of the US Pacific island of Guam.

A few days ago Moscow said its strategic bombers had begun exercises over the North Pole.

Flexing muscles

“We have decided to restore flights by Russian strategic aviation on a permanent basis,” Mr Putin told reporters at joint military exercises with China and four Central Asian states in Russia’s Ural mountains.

“In 1992, Russia unilaterally ended flights by its strategic aircraft to distant military patrol areas. Unfortunately, our example was not followed by everyone,” Mr Putin said, in an apparent reference to the US.

read more HERE

Leaders of the six-nation Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) on Thursday agreed unified measures against terrorism, but also issued a warning against a monopolistic world order in what was seen by analysts as a message for Washington.

In a final declaration at their summit in the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek, the leaders of China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan warned that unilateral actions were not adequate to solving existing problems.

‘An effective global security architecture can only be achieved under the leadership of the United Nations and by closer adherence to the UN charter,’ read the final statement, which specifically mentioned the United States.

More at Monsters & Critics

Not a response to a Russian mission this month nor Canada’s plan for an Arctic port. Riggghhhttt!

A U.S. Coast Guard cutter is headed to the Arctic this week on a mapping mission to determine whether part of this area can be considered U.S. territory, after recent polar forays by Russia and Canada.

The four-week cruise of the Coast Guard Cutter Healy starts Friday and aims to map the sea floor on the northern Chukchi Cap, an underwater plateau that extends from Alaska’s North Slope some 500 miles northward.

This is the third such U.S. Arctic mapping cruise — others were in 2003 and 2004 — and is not a response to a Russian mission this month to place a flag at the North Pole seabed, or a newly announced Canadian plan for an Arctic port, U.S. scientists said.

“This cruise was planned for three years and we’ve had the earlier cruises; this is part of a long and ongoing program, not at all a direct response,” said Larry Mayer of the University of New Hampshire, who will be on the voyage.

So why are the countries with Arctic coastlines all heading northward now?

Under the U.N. Law of the Sea treaty, every coastal state that has the potential to claim some part of the Arctic’s undersea mineral wealth must make a claim to the U.N. Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf.

More at Reuters

But that’s ok. Our charitable and loving Christian faith dictates that we can go in later and take, by force, any and all natural resources we desire.

Russia plants flag on seabed under North Pole

Sub reaches bottom of Arctic Ocean in bid to claim resource-rich region

Russian miniature submarines are seen under water in the Arctic Ocean in this image taken from a television broadcast on Thursday.

MOSCOW - A Russian submersible reached the bottom of the Arctic Ocean on Thursday in a mission to symbolically claim the resource-rich region by planting a flag on the seabed under the North Pole, Russian media reported.
[...]

Under international law, the five states with territory inside the Arctic Circle — Canada, Norway, Russia, the United States and Denmark via its control of Greenland — have a 200 mile economic zone around the north of their coastline.

But Russia is claiming a larger slice extending as far as the North Pole because, Moscow says, the Arctic seabed and Siberia are linked by the same continental shelf.

Soviet and U.S. nuclear submarines have often traveled under the polar icecap, but no one has so far reached the seabed under the Pole, where depths exceed 13,100 feet.

MSNBC.com

from The BBC Online

Prime Minister Gordon Brown has said the UK will make “no apologies” for expelling four Russian diplomats.

The decision follows Moscow’s refusal to hand over the former KGB agent accused of murdering Alexander Litvinenko in London last year.

Mr Brown said that because “there is no forthcoming co-operation, then action has to be taken”.

The Kremlin said the decision was “immoral” and warned of “serious consequences” for the UK.

‘Absolutely clear’

Mr Litvinenko, a former KGB agent who became a UK citizen, was poisoned in London eight months after being exposed to radioactive polonium-210.

But Moscow has refused to extradite the main suspect, Andrei Lugovoi.

On a visit to Berlin on Monday, Mr Brown said: “I think people will understand that, when a murder takes place, when a number of innocent civilians were put at risk as a result of that murder, and when an independent prosecuting authority makes it absolutely clear what is in the interests of justice, and there is no forthcoming co-operation, then action has to be taken.”

The prime minister added that he wanted a “good relationship” with Russia.

read more at The BBC Online

By MARIA DANILOVA
Associated Press Writer

MOSCOW (AP) — Russia suspended participation in a key European arms control treaty Saturday, saying it will halt NATO inspections of its military sites and no longer limit the numbers of its tanks and other heavy conventional weapons.

The move, threatened for months, added new tension to relations with the West already strained over U.S. plans to build a missile shield in Eastern Europe, Russian conflicts with its neighbors and Western criticism of Moscow’s human rights record.

Experts said the move was a symbolic gesture rather than a sign of Russian intent to build up forces near its borders. The Kremlin, they said, appeared to be expressing its dissatisfaction with the perceived U.S. domination of global affairs, and positioning Russia as an unyielding global player.

The Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty was signed by Russian and NATO members in 1990, when Soviet and NATO troops faced off in Central Europe. It was amended in 1999 to reflect changes since the breakup of the Soviet Union, adding the requirement that Moscow withdraw its forces from the former Soviet republics of Moldova and Georgia.

More at the AP

By Spengler

Nothing like the imagined dialogue below will have occurred at the Bush family compound on the Maine sea coast during President Vladimir Putin’s July 1 retreat with US President George W Bush.

Putin, I expect, will have done his best to humor his American counterpart and keep him off his guard. Bush is prepared neither intellectually nor psychologically to understand what a Russian leader must do, and a practical man like Putin would not waste

words explaining the unexplainable to the uncomprehending. Putin’s unenviable task is to persuade Bush of his good intentions, while gaining maneuvering room to take measures that the US will regard as hostile. I have no idea how he tried to bring this off in Kennebunkport. But it is sobering to imagine how the conversation might have gone if Putin had told Bush the unvarnished truth.

Continue reading at the Asia Times

His Dad goes and meets Putin at the airport? What’s up with that? What….Georgie boy too busy? Well, he did have a tough morning….him and Daddy got the anchor of Daddy’s boat ( a cigarette boat….my theory on those things….small dick, big fast boat) stuck in some rocks and had to have secret service divers get them loose. Great use of our tax dollars! I’ll tell you what I think. They know he’s such an imbecile that they don’t want him to be alone with Putin. Daddy had to step in….and bring Mommy along, too.

By JENNIFER LOVEN
Associated Press Writer

KENNEBUNKPORT, Maine — Relations are rocky between President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin, but their meeting began Sunday with handshakes and smiles, flowers and kisses from Putin for the first lady and Bush’s mother.

Bush waited at his family’s seacoast estate as his father, former President George H.W. Bush, met Putin at a nearby airport and rode with the Russian leader in a helicopter to the compound. Emerging from a limousine, Putin handed large bouquets of flowers to first lady Laura Bush and former first lady Barbara Bush, then kissed them on both cheeks.

“It’s pretty casual up here — unstructured,” Bush said about the setting for his talks with Putin.

More at the Sun Sentinel

By TERENCE HUNT
AP White House Correspondent
I suppose he knows this because he looked into Putin’s soul and read that message. And I bet Merkel is dreading eating lunch with the no manners, touchy feely dope.

HEILIGENDAMM, Germany (AP) — President Bush on Wednesday discounted Vladimir Putin’s threat to retarget missiles on Europe, saying “Russia’s not going to attack Europe.”

Bush, in an interview with The Associated Press and other reporters, said no U.S. military response was required after Putin warned that Russia would take steps in response to a U.S. missile shield that would be deployed in Poland and the Czech Republic.

“Russia is not an enemy,” Bush said, seeking not to inflame a heated exchange of rhetoric between Washington and Moscow. “There needs to be no military response because we’re not at war with Russia. … Russia is not a threat. Nor is the missile defense we’re proposing a threat to Russia.”

Bush spoke before heading off to lunch with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is hosting the annual meeting of the world’s seven richest industrial democracies and Russia. Merkel has made global warming the centerpiece of her G-8 leadership and is pushing for specific targets for reducing carbon emissions.

More at the AP

from UPI.COM

MOSCOW, June 1 (UPI) — The ongoing saga of the Russian spy murder may be a topic for discussion at the Group of Eight meeting.

Certainly, it is expected to be a topic for bilateral discussion between British Premier Tony Blair and Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G8 summit in Germany.

On Thursday, the main suspect in the murder of a former Russian spy accused the British intelligence service of being behind the killing. Andrei Lugovoy, the man Scotland Yard’s anti-terror unit believes to be behind the poisoning of Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko, accused multiple parties of being responsible for the killing.

Lugovoy said at a news conference in Moscow he had unspecified “evidence” that MI6 has had a hand in the murder, or at least that the British spy service let it happen. MI6 had tried to recruit him to dig up embarrassing material about Russian President Vladimir Putin and his family, he said.

He also claimed exiled oligarch Boris Beresowski may have had a hand in the killing. He held the news conference only a few days after London asked the Kremlin to extradite him so he could be tried in a British court.

The Russian constitution forbids extraditing its own citizens and observers say it is unlikely Russian investigators would find Lugovoy guilty.

I guess this is what was meant by “crisis stage.” And who put us here?

MOSCOW (AFP) - President Vladimir Putin issued an acerbic warning Thursday to the United States, saying the recent test of a new Russian missile was a direct response to US actions and condemning “imperialism” in world affairs.

“Our American partners have quit the ABM Treaty,” Putin told reporters after meeting his Greek counterpart, referring to the landmark 1972 US-Soviet treaty limiting the missile defenses of the Cold War superpower foes.

“We warned them then that we would come out with a response to maintain the strategic balance in the world. Yesterday we conducted a test of a new strategic ballistic missile with multiple warheads, and of a new cruise missile, and will continue to improve our resources.”

The United States informed Russia in 2001 that it was exercising its option to withdraw unilaterally from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) pact. It has since stepped up controversial plans, fiercely opposed by Russia, to deploy a missile defence shield in eastern Europe.

Putin warned Wednesday that the US missile defense plan would turn Europe into a “powder keg” and he repeated on Thursday previous assertions that the planned deployments would ignite a new Cold War’style arms buildup.

“We are not the initiators of this new round of the arms race,” Putin said.

More at YahooNews

Administration officials said privately that the situation has reached a crisis stage and needs to be reversed before it gets worse.
And what exactly is a crisis stage? Don’t you wonder where we’d be in foreign relations today if Bush had never stolen the Presidency?

President Bush yesterday launched a high’stakes effort to repair the dramatically deteriorating U.S. relationship with Russia by inviting President Vladimir Putin to visit the family compound in Kennebunkport, Maine, after weeks of rhetoric reminiscent of the Cold War.

The White House has grown increasingly alarmed lately with the harsh tone coming out of Moscow and its hardening positions on issues that include Iran’s nuclear program, Kosovo statehood and missile defense. Administration officials said privately that the situation has reached a crisis stage and needs to be reversed before it gets worse.

Although the president’s aides do not expect to resolve the stickiest issues dividing the two sides during the visit to the Bush family retreat on the rocky Maine coast July 1-2, they hope the relaxed setting will restore U.S.-Russian relations to a more constructive footing. In more than six years as president, Bush has never asked any foreign leader to join him at his parents’ seaside home until now, and aides hope Putin will be impressed with the show of intimacy.

“The Russians still remain a very important partner, despite the tensions that may arise over various issues,” White House press secretary Tony Snow told reporters after announcing the meeting yesterday. “We’re going to make all our concerns known, but on the other hand, we’re going to continue working to work ahead.”

More at the Washington Post

A bizarre cross between a hovercraft and an airplane, developed during Cold War

They hover and skim above the water surface at speeds of up to 250 miles an hour, they carry heavier loads of cargo and troops than any airplane - the Ekranoplans, or “Wing-in-Ground” (WIG) vehicles are possibly the most exciting and strange looking technology ever designed by men.

Developed mostly by Soviets during Cold Wars years (by Rostislav Alexeev’s design firm) some of them were over 500 feet in length and had an estimated weight of over 500 tons! And yet they skimmed over the waves with grace, at high speeds, able to negotiate stormy conditions, unseen by radar - all thanks to an aerodynamic principle known as the “ground effect”.

All pilots are familiar with this effect: when an airplane is about to land, it almost wants to “float” on air, moments before touchdown. The compressed air between the wing and the ground becomes a “cushion” that gives the plane smooth gliding ability. Over the sea surface this effect is even more noticeable.

Check out this awesome and rare video!

read more and see some other great Russian Military aircraft at DARK ROASTED BLEND