Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
I watched a news report this morning, and the Russian Rebels have Cossacks on their side! I thought the Cossacks were long gone, but these guys have traded in their horses for armoured cars, and some of them still use the old maxim machine guns and anti tank rifles the Red Army had in WW2.

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:
Iron_Captain, can you give us a sense of how people in Russia actually feel about this?

Are people across Russia excited, or is it only really important to people living in the border regions?

 Iron_Captain wrote:
Because of adopting Western methods, in the past few decades, Russia has survived a complete societal collapse and absolute poverty. A few little sanctions are nothing compared to that. A little economical hardship will only increase nationalism.

 Iron_Captain wrote:
Russia has lots of (nuclear) weapons and that is why other nations can't do anything but try to isolate Russia (which is an impossible task with Russia) and draw up some more sanctions.

 loki old fart wrote:

Maybe Moscow has already thought of that.

 BaronIveagh wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:
Russia has lots of (nuclear) weapons and that is why other nations can't do anything but try to isolate Russia (which is an impossible task with Russia) and draw up some more sanctions.

Most of Russia's nukes were made in the Ukraine. As far as I know, those facilities are still under Kiev's control, and still functional. Retooling was estimated to require three months, about a year ago. Assuming they decide that NATO is NOT coming to help, how long do you think it is before an eastern Ukrainian city is a glowing crater?

Assuming that is that everything that's been said about Kiev is true. Nazis are not known for being 'good losers'.

 BaronIveagh wrote:

 loki old fart wrote:

Maybe Moscow has already thought of that.

If that's their plan, 2020 will probably be a bit late to get it up over Russia. I suspect that getting it up over the eastern Ukraine will be an even lower priority. Besides, being able to track an ICBM and shoot it down are two different things.

 Iron_Captain wrote:
Ukraine's military nuclear infrastucture was dismantled after they decided to give everything back to Russia. They lack the ability to produce nukes, missiles and launch platforms. It would take far more than 3 months, because industry for those last 2 will have to be built from scratch..

 loki old fart wrote:

If they're talking about it. It's as good as in place.

 loki old fart wrote:
Russia deploying next-gen Nebo-M radar complexes to counter NATO threat
http://rt.com/news/233959-russia-deploys-nebo-radars/

Russia has begun deploying the next generation of Nebo-M anti-missile radar facility systems as part of a responsive measure to a threat stemming from NATO anti-ballistic missile systems in Eastern Europe.

“The mobile multi-range programmable Nebo-M complex is capable of performing the tasks of providing information on small-sized aerodynamic and hypersonic targets in a difficult jamming background, as well as providing information for anti-missile weapon systems,” said colonel Aleksey Zolotuhin, a spokesman for the Russian Defense Ministry’s press service.

The development and deployment of next-gen anti-missile systems featuring Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) technology is a top priority for the Russian Defense Ministry, as US anti-ballistic missile system are springing up in Romania, Turkey, Poland, and even in Spain.

The new Nebo-M 3-D radar system features a programmable multi-band design. The complex includes central data fusion and command post module as well as three radars, all deployed on separate high-mobility 8 x 8 24-ton vehicles. According to Aviatioweek, radars feed data to the command post using high-speed narrow-beam digital data links in the microwave band.

The radar is designed to automatically detect and track airborne targets such as ballistic missiles, stealth aircraft, or drones, as well as hypersonic targets. In the circular scan mode the complex is able to track up to 200 aerodynamic targets at a distance and at altitudes of up to 600 kilometers. In sector scan mode, Nebo-M can track to 20 ballistic targets at ranges of up to 1,800 kilometers and at an altitude of up to 1,200 kilometers.

In October, the Russian Defense Ministry unveiled plans to build several new anti-missile radars in order to cover the entire territory of Russia by 2020. Moscow also announced that an early warning radar station in the western Kaliningrad Region would be put on full combat duty by the year’s end.

Maybe Moscow has already thought of that.

Ukrainian military officials have reported that Russian-backed militants continue shelling Ukrainian army positions and residential areas in the conflict zone in east Ukraine despite the 12 February Minsk ceasefire. They said that over the past day, insurgent forces launched 41 attacks, including 16 with artillery and mortars, five with multiple rocket systems and four with tanks.

The heaviest shelling was recorded in the Donetsk area. Russian-backed militants launched tank, Grad rocket, artillery and mortar attacks on towns in the vicinity including Opytne, Avdiivka, Vodyane and Pisky.

New York Times wrote:MOSCOW — The Kremlin was advised to annex Crimea and a large swath of southeastern Ukraine weeks before the Ukrainian government fell, a Russian newspaper reported on Wednesday, citing what it said was a memo that was presumably presented to the presidential administration.

Russia has long contended that it acted without premeditation in Crimea, and was only seeking to protect Russian speakers who it said were under threat of attack, and to stave off what it suspected was an attempt by NATO to move its forces into the region.

But a report in Novaya Gazeta, one of the few independent voices still publishing in Russia, said that well before the Ukrainian government fell in February 2014, the memo the newspaper had obtained advised the Kremlin to adopt the policy it has since pursued in Ukraine. The memo appears to have been drafted under the auspices of a conservative oligarch later suspected of funding the separatists, the report said.
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The memo lays out what it says is the inevitable disintegration of Ukraine and suggests a series of logistical steps that Russia should take to make sure it remains in control of the situation, steps not far off from what actually occurred.
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Ukraine Crisis in Maps

The latest updates to the current visual survey of the continuing dispute, with maps and satellite imagery showing rebel and military movement.

As early as Feb. 4, 2014, well before President Viktor F. Yanukovych resigned, on Feb. 21, the memo predicted his overthrow and suggested that Russia use the European Union’s own rules on autonomous areas to try to bind both Crimea and eastern Ukraine to Russia.

Dimtry S. Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, suggested that the memo was a hoax. “It seems like a fake,” he said.

“I don’t know whether this document exists at all, I don’t know who might be the author, but for sure the document has nothing to do with the Kremlin,” Mr. Peskov said. The authenticity of the document could not be independently verified.

The memo proposes a detailed strategy, one that the Kremlin seems to have largely followed, though it does not seem eager to annex large areas of southeastern Ukraine, as the memo urges.

With Ukraine likely to break into two — a European-aligned west and a pro-Russian east combined with Crimea — Moscow had to act quickly, the report said, particularly given that the Yanukovych government could soon fall.

Russia should take advantage of the “centrifugal forces” tearing the country apart in order to merge the east with the rest of Russia, the memo said. “The dominant regions for the application of force should be Crimea and the Kharkiv region,” it said, particularly given that strong groups there endorsed the idea of joining Russia.

Novaya Gazeta said that a conservative Russian oligarch, Konstantin V. Malofeev, could have been the mastermind behind the document. The newspaper quoted Mr. Malofeev’s communications team as denying any involvement by him.

The report said that oligarchs in Ukraine, who are not tempered by bureaucracy as much as their Russian counterparts, had lost control of the demonstrations in the central square in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, known as the Maidan. It said the commanders in the square were “presumably controlled not by the groups of oligarchs, but to a great extent by Polish and British secret services.”
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Russia has since switched tactics, blaming the United States for the protests.

The memo was also dismissive of the Ukrainian leader’s chances of bringing the situation under control.

“President Yanukovych is not a very charismatic person,” it said. “He is afraid to give up the presidential post and at the same time is prepared to trade the security officers for guarantees of keeping the post and of immunity after resignation.”

Moscow should abandon the Ukrainian leader, the report suggested. “There is no sense in further Russian political, diplomatic, financial or media support for the regime,” it said.

The report emerged as the cease-fire in southeastern Ukraine seemed to be taking hold.

In Kiev, the military said that for a second night in a row cease-fire violations had “significantly decreased,” and that the previous 24 hours had been the quietest since the Feb. 12 signing of a cease-fire in Minsk, Belarus.
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Recent Comments
L.J. Martin
23 minutes ago

Whether the annexation of Crimea was premeditated, and, given the Kremlin's gift for intrigue and deniability, we'll probably never know for...
Johan Van Moerzeke
23 minutes ago

It’s important to recall why, and how, the U.S. has been supporting Ukraine militarily, and to place the narrow question of lethal...
Ilya Shlyakhter
50 minutes ago

Left unclear is the status of this memo: was this just one of many policy recommendations/analyses? U.S. conservative think tanks produce...

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Donetsk, Luhansk and the Mariupol area experienced no shooting, it said. In the past 24 hours, separatist forces have fired mortar rounds or other shells just 15 times and light weapons four times, the Ukrainian military said.

Yet concerns about the strength of the truce remained, with the Ukrainian military spokesman saying it could not move to the next stage — the withdrawal of heavy weapons — as long as the separatists continued fighting.

“For now, there is still no order on the withdrawal of weapons, as the fighters have not yet fulfilled the first point of the Minsk agreement, to cease-fire,” said Andriy Lysenko, the military spokesman.

The unease was also reflected elsewhere, with France, which helped negotiate the cease-fire, threatening new sanctions if fighting erupted around the strategic southern Ukrainian port of Mariupol.

“The problem today is particularly around Mariupol,” the French foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, told France Info radio. “We’ve told the Russians clearly that if there was a separatist attack in the direction of Mariupol, things would change completely, including in terms of sanctions.”

The comments came after the foreign ministers of France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine met in Paris on Tuesday but made little progress in solidifying the agreement known as Minsk II. Violations on the ground would mean that Europe would again raise the question of sanctions, Mr. Fabius said.

Rebel forces said that they had already begun withdrawing heavy weapons, including 100 howitzers pulled back from the front during the first day of operations on Tuesday. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe issued a statement saying it could not confirm withdrawals from either side because it did not have a thorough accounting of the weapons there before the cease-fire.

But the rebel forces said the organization would soon be able to monitor the withdrawal.

There has been a kind of unspoken contest in Ukraine about whether the economic situation or the low-grade war was the worst news, and the economy seemed to edge out the conflict on Wednesday.

With the Ukrainian currency falling precipitously against the dollar, the central bank on Wednesday banned banks from buying foreign currency for the rest of this week, Reuters reported.

Despite the Ukraine crisis and increasing tensions with Russia, most Nato members are doing little to reverse the decline in their defence spending.

The promises and rhetoric that they will meet the threat is not matched by reality.

New research by Ian Kearns and Denitsa Raynova of the European Leadership Network (ELN) found that six countries, including two of the biggest defence spenders in Europe, the UK and Germany, will cut defence expenditure in 2015.

Defence spending in France, the other big spender in Europe, will remain static.

The report examined the defence expenditure of 14 members of the alliance to see whether they were living up to recent promises made at the Nato summit in south Wales when David Cameron urged members to boost their defence spending.

Allies currently meeting the Nato guideline to spend a minimum of 2% of their gross domestic product (GDP) on defence will aim to continue to do so.

Allies whose current proportion of GDP spent on defence is below this level will:

This means that in 2015-16 the UK is on course to spend its lowest percentage of GDP on defence in any of the last 25 years”

European Leadership Network
Few countries have met this target so at the Nato summit last September the commitment was watered down, with the less ambitious goal that those countries that were not meeting the target should "halt any decline in defence expenditure" .

ELN research predicts that in 2015 only one of the 14 nations examined, Estonia, will meet the 2% target. While expenditure will increase in Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway and Romania, none of these will meet the target.

The UK, Germany, Italy, Canada, Hungary and Bulgaria will cut their defence spending.

Britain currently just meets the 2% target, but the government is committed only to continuing that target until the end of this Parliament.

Examining current expenditure plans, the ELN concludes that defence spending in the UK will fall from its current level of 2.07% of GDP (£36.4bn) to 1.88% (£35.5bn) in 2015-16.

These figures are in line with earlier research carried out by the Royal United Services Institute which projected that UK defence spending could fall to about 1.7% of GDP by the end of the decade.

The ELN concludes that with other department spending such as health and international development ring-fenced, it will be hard to change this trajectory.

The report says: "This means that in 2015-16 the UK is on course to spend its lowest percentage of GDP on defence in any of the last 25 years."

The impact of recent defence cuts has already been felt in Britain and Germany.

Small crumb of comfort
Without any of its own maritime patrol aircraft, the UK recently had to request the help of Nato allies to search for suspected Russian submarines off the west coast of Scotland. In Germany there have been reports of serious malfunctions in military equipment.

The ELN report warns that if spending trends continue, this will "seriously undermine basic defence capability".

Europe's failure to pay its way in Nato is seriously worrying the US, which already provides 75% of all Nato defence expenditure (the US spends 3.8% of its GDP on defence).

The small crumb of comfort is that those countries that feel most threatened by Russia's recent actions in the Ukraine are upping their game.

Estonia will meet the 2% target this year, while Latvia, Lithuania and Poland are significantly increasing their defence spending. But the problem is that these countries are relatively minor military powers in Europe.

The big players like the UK, Germany and France are either cutting or freezing their spending.

A separate report by Ian Brzezinski for the Atlantic Council says there is also an "exercise gap" between Russia and Nato. Since 2013 Russia has conducted at least six military exercises involving 65,000-160,000 troops.

'Not all about size'
In contrast, Nato held fewer exercises involving fewer personnel. The largest of these, named Steadfast Jazz, involved 6,000 military personnel of which half were headquarter staff.

Nato officials insist size is not the only measure of commitment, but capability too. Russia is seeking to reverse years of underinvestment in its military.

So what should Nato countries be doing to bridge this divide in spending and flexing of military muscle?

The ELN research concludes that European Nato countries will have to work together more to arrest the decline, with burden-sharing becoming a necessity not a choice.

The report concludes: "It is clear that none of the Nato countries examined have the funding or the domestic support to fully modernise their militaries... more defence co-operation among allies is the only realistic way forward."

A Ministry of Defence spokesperson said: "With the second largest defence budget in Nato and the largest in Europe, the government is committed to spending 2% of GDP on defence. Decisions on spending after the financial year 2015-16 will be determined in the next spending review.

"Over the next decade we are committed to spending £163bn on equipment and equipment support to keep Britain safe. That includes new strike fighters, more surveillance aircraft, hunter-killer submarines, two aircraft carriers and the most advanced armoured vehicles."

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
TBH Putin immediately condemned the shooting.

"Mr Putin has assumed personal control of the investigation into the killing" said his spokesman Dmitry Peskov.