In a discussion with the Ukrainian President Putin said:
"If I wanted, in two days I could have Russian troops not only in Kiev, but also in Riga, Vilnius, Tallinn, Warsaw and Bucharest," Mr Putin allegedly told President Petro Poroshenko of Ukraine, reported Süddeustche Zeitung, a German newspaper.
Showing posts with label Russia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Russia. Show all posts
Saturday, September 20, 2014
Saturday, August 30, 2014
PUTIN'S LATEST MOVES INTO UKRAINE
Andrew Stuttaford at the National Review writes about the "Guns of August" which is a term used regarding the start of battles in World War I. He quotes from an article by Anne Applebaum in Slate which discusses the new maps circulating in Russia showing the borders of Catherine the Great.
…In the past few days, Russian troops bearing the flag of a previously unknown country, Novorossiya, have marched across the border of southeastern Ukraine. The Russian Academy of Sciences recently announced it will publish a history of Novorossiya this autumn, presumably tracing its origins back to Catherine the Great. Various maps of Novorossiya are said to be circulating in Moscow. Some include Kharkov and Dnipropetrovsk, cities that are still hundreds of miles away from the fighting. Some place Novorossiya along the coast, so that it connects Russia to Crimea and eventually to Transnistria, the Russian-occupied province of Moldova. Even if it starts out as an unrecognized rump state—Abkhazia and South Ossetia, “states” that Russia carved out of Georgia, are the models here—Novorossiya can grow larger over time….
…In the past few days, Russian troops bearing the flag of a previously unknown country, Novorossiya, have marched across the border of southeastern Ukraine. The Russian Academy of Sciences recently announced it will publish a history of Novorossiya this autumn, presumably tracing its origins back to Catherine the Great. Various maps of Novorossiya are said to be circulating in Moscow. Some include Kharkov and Dnipropetrovsk, cities that are still hundreds of miles away from the fighting. Some place Novorossiya along the coast, so that it connects Russia to Crimea and eventually to Transnistria, the Russian-occupied province of Moldova. Even if it starts out as an unrecognized rump state—Abkhazia and South Ossetia, “states” that Russia carved out of Georgia, are the models here—Novorossiya can grow larger over time….
Applebaum is predicting that Putin will test NATO in the foreseeable future. Stuttaford discusses other the comments of several other writers critical of Obama and the West's response and indicating a growing fear in Eastern Europe about Russian aggression against them.
Thursday, August 28, 2014
RUSSIAN FORCES MOVING INTO UKRAINE
Headline in WAPO column written by Jennifer Rubin: "Russia Invades, Obama Expresses 'Concern'". "Concern" is a rather low-key response to a major step in Russian involvement in the Ukraine. It is a rather tepid word and I am sure Putin is not particularly alarmed. Putin is going to keep pushing since there is no resistance from Washington or Europe.
“These incursions indicate a Russian-directed counteroffensive is likely underway in Donetsk and Luhansk. Clearly, that is of deep concern to us,” a State Department spokeswoman said yesterday. She could not have been more inoffensive. Oh, the administration is also “concerned by the Russian Government’s unwillingness to tell the truth even as its soldiers are found 30 miles inside Ukraine. Russia is sending its young men into Ukraine but are telling – are not telling them where they’re going or telling their parents what they’re doing.” The spokeswoman further indicated that we wouldn’t change our policy of refusing to provide Ukraine with defensive weapons.
“These incursions indicate a Russian-directed counteroffensive is likely underway in Donetsk and Luhansk. Clearly, that is of deep concern to us,” a State Department spokeswoman said yesterday. She could not have been more inoffensive. Oh, the administration is also “concerned by the Russian Government’s unwillingness to tell the truth even as its soldiers are found 30 miles inside Ukraine. Russia is sending its young men into Ukraine but are telling – are not telling them where they’re going or telling their parents what they’re doing.” The spokeswoman further indicated that we wouldn’t change our policy of refusing to provide Ukraine with defensive weapons.
Wednesday, August 06, 2014
CHURCHES IN THE UKRAINE
A newsletter from the East-West Church and Ministry Report on how churches are responding to the situation in the Ukraine.
Monday, August 04, 2014
BILL CLINTON ON INTERNATIONAL EVENTS
Former President Clinton has spoken out forthrightly about a number of issues. I am not sure he is totally following the Obama administration line.
Former President Bill Clinton on Saturday sharply criticized Hamas for deliberately endangering civilians and using international aid to build a network of tunnels into Israel.
“I'm really worried about Ukraine,” Clinton said. His foundation's work has introduced him to activists and politicians throughout the country, he said. “I know a lot of those reformers. They don't want a hateful relationship with Russia. They just want to be free. They want to be a bridge between Europe and Russia.”
Former President Bill Clinton on Saturday sharply criticized Hamas for deliberately endangering civilians and using international aid to build a network of tunnels into Israel.
“I'm really worried about Ukraine,” Clinton said. His foundation's work has introduced him to activists and politicians throughout the country, he said. “I know a lot of those reformers. They don't want a hateful relationship with Russia. They just want to be free. They want to be a bridge between Europe and Russia.”
Thursday, July 31, 2014
DO SANCTIONS WORK?
Elena Servettaz discusses the impact of sanctions on Russia in World Affairs. While sanctions can have an impact she shows how they sometimes hurt the wrong people and also how some people who are on the sanctions list can work around being sanctioned.
A highly placed European diplomat confided that a number of Russian officials are worried about a new package of sanctions and are calling European embassies to find out if their name will be added to the list. The official claim until now, that it is a badge of honor to be on that list, is starting to crumble—and fast. Even Vladimir Putin, during a three-and-a-half-hour appearance on Russian television, said the sanctions were a “human rights violation.” The Russian president was talking about people added to the sanctions list after the annexation of Crimea—people like his friend Gennady Timchenko, whose wife, after the sanctions, he said plaintively, “could not pay for her operation because her credit card was frozen.”
Putin should also be concerned about himself. According to the Times of London, the US government is contemplating adding his name to the list of targeted individuals and freezing his own fortune, often estimated at $40 billion, in Swiss banks, if he decides to invade eastern Ukraine. But Putin’s spokesperson, Dmitri Peskov, said that his boss had complete peace of mind about this possibility.
A highly placed European diplomat confided that a number of Russian officials are worried about a new package of sanctions and are calling European embassies to find out if their name will be added to the list. The official claim until now, that it is a badge of honor to be on that list, is starting to crumble—and fast. Even Vladimir Putin, during a three-and-a-half-hour appearance on Russian television, said the sanctions were a “human rights violation.” The Russian president was talking about people added to the sanctions list after the annexation of Crimea—people like his friend Gennady Timchenko, whose wife, after the sanctions, he said plaintively, “could not pay for her operation because her credit card was frozen.”
Putin should also be concerned about himself. According to the Times of London, the US government is contemplating adding his name to the list of targeted individuals and freezing his own fortune, often estimated at $40 billion, in Swiss banks, if he decides to invade eastern Ukraine. But Putin’s spokesperson, Dmitri Peskov, said that his boss had complete peace of mind about this possibility.
Sunday, July 27, 2014
RUSSIAN INFLUENCE IN THE UKRAINE
Yahoo News. Russians are pushing Ukrainians out of leadership roles in Eastern Ukraine uprising. And the Russian taking over, Vladimir Anttufeyev, sounds like a person left over from Stalinist times.
He earned a fearsome reputation when he served in Transdniestria, which split from Moldova in 1990, as the head of security operations for 20 years.
Dismissed in 2012 when his ally was replaced as leader of the tiny sliver of land, he barricaded himself for three days in his study and refused to leave.
The EU first blacklisted Antyufeyev over his role in Transdniestria in 2004. Though it later suspended that decision, it has now blacklisted him again over Ukraine, imposing assets freezes and a travel ban on him.
One person who had been questioned by Antyufeyev in Transdniestria on suspicion of spying for Moldova said he was a tenacious interrogator. Speaking on condition of anonymity, for fear of reprisal, the person said Antyufeyev was "a professional", capable of being sociable and polite, always rigidly following the chosen line. With a smile on his face, Antyufeyev would exert moral pressure, the person said.
In a downright surreal passage, Cohen argues that Putin has shown “remarkable restraint” so far but faces mounting public pressure due to “vivid accounts” in the Russian state-run media of Kiev’s barbarities against ethnic Russians. Can he really be unaware that the hysteria is being whipped up by lurid fictions, such as therecent TV1 story about a 3-year-old boy crucified in Slovyansk’s main square in front of a large crowd and his own mother? Does Cohen not know that Russian disinformation and fakery, including old footage from Dagestan or Syria passed off as evidence of horrors in Ukraine, has been extensively documented? Is he unaware that top Russian officials, including Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Putin himself, have publicly repeated allegations of war crimes that were quickly exposed as false, such as white phosphorus use by Ukrainian troops or a slaughter of the wounded in a hospital? But Cohen manages to take the surrealism a notch higher, earnestly citing the unnamed “dean of Moscow State University’s School of Television” (that’s Vitaly Tretyakov, inter alia a 9/11 “truther”) who thinks the Kremlin may be colluding with the West to hush up the extent of carnage in Ukraine.
He earned a fearsome reputation when he served in Transdniestria, which split from Moldova in 1990, as the head of security operations for 20 years.
Dismissed in 2012 when his ally was replaced as leader of the tiny sliver of land, he barricaded himself for three days in his study and refused to leave.
The EU first blacklisted Antyufeyev over his role in Transdniestria in 2004. Though it later suspended that decision, it has now blacklisted him again over Ukraine, imposing assets freezes and a travel ban on him.
One person who had been questioned by Antyufeyev in Transdniestria on suspicion of spying for Moldova said he was a tenacious interrogator. Speaking on condition of anonymity, for fear of reprisal, the person said Antyufeyev was "a professional", capable of being sociable and polite, always rigidly following the chosen line. With a smile on his face, Antyufeyev would exert moral pressure, the person said.
And Slate has published an interesting article calling an ageing liberal Soviet specialist, Stephen Cohen, a pal of Putin for defending Russian actions in the Ukraine. Cohen has published an article in the leftist Nation supporting Putin. Cohen seems to ignore Russian atrocities.
Thursday, July 24, 2014
A DAY IN THE LIFE OF PUTIN
A description of the average day of Vladimir Putin.
The President wakes late and eats shortly after noon. He begins with the simplest of breakfasts. There is always cottage cheese. His cooked portion is always substantial; omelette or occasionally porridge. He likes quails’ eggs. He drinks fruit juice. The food is forever fresh: baskets of his favourites dispatched regularly from the farmland estates of the Patriarch Kirill, Russia’s religious leader.
The President wakes late and eats shortly after noon. He begins with the simplest of breakfasts. There is always cottage cheese. His cooked portion is always substantial; omelette or occasionally porridge. He likes quails’ eggs. He drinks fruit juice. The food is forever fresh: baskets of his favourites dispatched regularly from the farmland estates of the Patriarch Kirill, Russia’s religious leader.
It goes on from there. I wonder if someone has done the average day of President Obama?
Monday, July 21, 2014
FAILURE OF "RESET DIPLOMACY"
From Michael Rubin at World Affairs. Maybe Obama and Hillary spent too much time blaming Bush and Cheney than trying to understand Putin. The issue is how to negotiate with one's enemies or rivals. In addition the Russians (Soviets) have been excellent at diplomatic deceit (and I might add the Iranians, North Koreans, and others are just as good). Americans diplomat seem to believe whatever they are being told at the bargaining table.
The idea that diplomacy with rogue regimes is cost-free is a relatively new idea, one that may sound good in the abstract but is less durable in reality. Policymakers often advocate diplomacy with rogue rulers and even terrorist groups because other options seem unattractive. As our recent experience in Afghanistan and Iraq shows, war extracts a tremendous price not only in terms of blood and treasure but in terms of national morale as well. The American public is exhausted by these conflicts and wondering if their price was worth paying.
Obama sought Russian cooperation in Syria, for example, to resolve a horrendous human rights tragedy, but for Putin, the only question was how to achieve an outcome that diminished American influence.
Putin is a modern-day Machiavelli, unapologetic about saying and doing whatever is necessary to regain the glory and respect he believes the Soviet Union enjoyed. With his tireless efforts to engage and pour emollients on fundamental disagreements, Obama has acted as a modern-day Chamberlain. Simply declaring the Cold War over does not make it so unless both parties seek a new beginning. Obama sincerely wants peace, but so long as Putin seeks the restoration of an imperial Russian past, peace will never occur. Hitting the reset button should not mean allowing an opponent to use diplomacy to wage war by other means.
The idea that diplomacy with rogue regimes is cost-free is a relatively new idea, one that may sound good in the abstract but is less durable in reality. Policymakers often advocate diplomacy with rogue rulers and even terrorist groups because other options seem unattractive. As our recent experience in Afghanistan and Iraq shows, war extracts a tremendous price not only in terms of blood and treasure but in terms of national morale as well. The American public is exhausted by these conflicts and wondering if their price was worth paying.
Sanctions don't work because dictators don't care about their people.
Putin is a modern-day Machiavelli, unapologetic about saying and doing whatever is necessary to regain the glory and respect he believes the Soviet Union enjoyed. With his tireless efforts to engage and pour emollients on fundamental disagreements, Obama has acted as a modern-day Chamberlain. Simply declaring the Cold War over does not make it so unless both parties seek a new beginning. Obama sincerely wants peace, but so long as Putin seeks the restoration of an imperial Russian past, peace will never occur. Hitting the reset button should not mean allowing an opponent to use diplomacy to wage war by other means.
This is the first author to link Obama and Chamberlain that I have come across.
Monday, June 30, 2014
PUTIN'S GOALS
World Affairs has had two excellent articles analyzing Putin's policies and goals.
Melik Kaylan has written "Kremlin Values: Putin's Strategic Conservatism."
I first got wind of this new pan-Putinist ideology in Tbilisi, Georgia, while covering the national elections in the fall of 2012. Having reported from there during the Russian invasion of 2008 and after, I knew the population to be virulently anti-Moscow and largely pro-West. So I was astounded when the country elected an oligarch, Bidzina Ivanishvili, who had made his money in Moscow, who refused to criticize Putin, and who ran against a government headed by the volubly pro-American Mikheil Saakashvili. In the space of a few years, President Saakashvili had stamped out Georgia’s legendary corruption, driven out the mafias, notched up eight percent annual growth rates despite global banking failures and a Russian invasion, and had delivered efficiency, transparency, and foreign investment. Yet the other side won. I saw a most skillful, well-financed, pre-prepared opposition campaign with Moscow-based funds, one that deftly cooked up a prison abuse scandal with scary videos to smear the government. It convinced me that the KGB was rebooted, modernized, formidable, and once more able to redirect the destiny of its near abroad satellites as it had for years, even in democratic contests. Above all, I got a foretaste of the ideas Putin has expounded more openly and systematically since 2008.
Jeffrey Gedmin has written "Beyond Crimea: What Vladimir Putin Really Wants."
Kasparov’s comment is reminiscent of the remark made by Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson, who once said the “Russians are like a burglar going down a hotel corridor, trying all the doors. When they find one unlocked, they go in.” It’s not just Ukraine and Georgia where Putin has been at work. For more than a dozen years now, he has burglarized Eastern Europe and territories of the former Soviet Union. Putin’s weapons of choice have not been tanks and MiG fighters; he has mastered the dark side of soft power. [emphasis mine]
Melik Kaylan has written "Kremlin Values: Putin's Strategic Conservatism."
I first got wind of this new pan-Putinist ideology in Tbilisi, Georgia, while covering the national elections in the fall of 2012. Having reported from there during the Russian invasion of 2008 and after, I knew the population to be virulently anti-Moscow and largely pro-West. So I was astounded when the country elected an oligarch, Bidzina Ivanishvili, who had made his money in Moscow, who refused to criticize Putin, and who ran against a government headed by the volubly pro-American Mikheil Saakashvili. In the space of a few years, President Saakashvili had stamped out Georgia’s legendary corruption, driven out the mafias, notched up eight percent annual growth rates despite global banking failures and a Russian invasion, and had delivered efficiency, transparency, and foreign investment. Yet the other side won. I saw a most skillful, well-financed, pre-prepared opposition campaign with Moscow-based funds, one that deftly cooked up a prison abuse scandal with scary videos to smear the government. It convinced me that the KGB was rebooted, modernized, formidable, and once more able to redirect the destiny of its near abroad satellites as it had for years, even in democratic contests. Above all, I got a foretaste of the ideas Putin has expounded more openly and systematically since 2008.
Jeffrey Gedmin has written "Beyond Crimea: What Vladimir Putin Really Wants."
Kasparov’s comment is reminiscent of the remark made by Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson, who once said the “Russians are like a burglar going down a hotel corridor, trying all the doors. When they find one unlocked, they go in.” It’s not just Ukraine and Georgia where Putin has been at work. For more than a dozen years now, he has burglarized Eastern Europe and territories of the former Soviet Union. Putin’s weapons of choice have not been tanks and MiG fighters; he has mastered the dark side of soft power. [emphasis mine]
Thursday, May 29, 2014
PUTIN'S WAR STRATEGY IN UKRAINE
From RealClearWorld on "Putin's new type of war in the Ukraine and whether it is failing." A good discussion on Putin's strategy in the Ukraine and the tactics he has used.
According to a report by the Atlantic Council, Russia has been preparing for this new kind of war for several years, building "very covert but well-structured networks with agents, with pro-Russian organizations, involving in such illegal activity many Ukrainians." Russian special ops officers "are very dangerous, well armed, [and well] prepared to do what they are doing now." Many are veterans of Chechnya or even Afghanistan. A number of them moved to Ukraine after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991; so they can claim to be regular Ukrainians just defending themselves.
According to a report by the Atlantic Council, Russia has been preparing for this new kind of war for several years, building "very covert but well-structured networks with agents, with pro-Russian organizations, involving in such illegal activity many Ukrainians." Russian special ops officers "are very dangerous, well armed, [and well] prepared to do what they are doing now." Many are veterans of Chechnya or even Afghanistan. A number of them moved to Ukraine after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991; so they can claim to be regular Ukrainians just defending themselves.
Tuesday, May 06, 2014
PUTIN & WASHINGTON: A BATTLE OF VALUES
Jeffrey Gedman discusses Putin's goals and the West's failure to respond in an excellent column. What caught my attention was his judgement that Washington doesn't know what to do. . .or maybe what even role America should play in these events. There seems to be a growing consensus that the US has "been outwitted."
But while Putin clearly knows what he wants, do we? History has taught us that in world affairs either a nation has an agenda or it becomes the victim of the agendas of others. The US has been preoccupied. Iraq, Afghanistan, the 2008 financial crisis, the Arab Spring, and the Asia pivot have all consumed our attention and resources. For nearly a decade and a half we’ve been missing in action from Central and Eastern Europe. Vladimir Putin has taken advantage of our absence. We’ve been outwitted.
Gedmin also gives some policy options to perhaps get Washington moving again, beginning with his call for a new "containment strategy."
Melik Kaylan also has a good column on Putin's "strategic conservatism." He has goals bigger than Russia.
Yet as Pat Buchanan and others have noted, Putin’s Russia is back in the ideological hunt—offering an alternative set of ideas capable of competing internationally with those of the US. Americans are still in denial about it, for many reasons, perhaps the chief among them being that, Buchananites apart, US opinionmakers on both left and right have largely written off the kinds of people that Putin appeals to both in Russia and abroad. If the paleoconservative voice has been relatively marginalized in the US media, it has a huge equivalent constituency in most countries that take traditions seriously. As Buchanan goes on to say in his article, “the decisive struggle in the second half of the twentieth century was vertical, East vs. West,” but “the twenty-first century struggle may be horizontal, with conservatives and traditionalists in every country arrayed against the militant secularism of a multicultural and transnational elite.”
I first got wind of this new pan-Putinist ideology in Tbilisi, Georgia, while covering the national elections in the fall of 2012. Having reported from there during the Russian invasion of 2008 and after, I knew the population to be virulently anti-Moscow and largely pro-West. So I was astounded when the country elected an oligarch, Bidzina Ivanishvili, who had made his money in Moscow, who refused to criticize Putin, and who ran against a government headed by the volubly pro-American Mikheil Saakashvili. In the space of a few years, President Saakashvili had stamped out Georgia’s legendary corruption, driven out the mafias, notched up eight percent annual growth rates despite global banking failures and a Russian invasion, and had delivered efficiency, transparency, and foreign investment. Yet the other side won. I saw a most skillful, well-financed, pre-prepared opposition campaign with Moscow-based funds, one that deftly cooked up a prison abuse scandal with scary videos to smear the government. It convinced me that the KGB was rebooted, modernized, formidable, and once more able to redirect the destiny of its near abroad satellites as it had for years, even in democratic contests. Above all, I got a foretaste of the ideas Putin has expounded more openly and systematically since 2008.
But while Putin clearly knows what he wants, do we? History has taught us that in world affairs either a nation has an agenda or it becomes the victim of the agendas of others. The US has been preoccupied. Iraq, Afghanistan, the 2008 financial crisis, the Arab Spring, and the Asia pivot have all consumed our attention and resources. For nearly a decade and a half we’ve been missing in action from Central and Eastern Europe. Vladimir Putin has taken advantage of our absence. We’ve been outwitted.
Gedmin also gives some policy options to perhaps get Washington moving again, beginning with his call for a new "containment strategy."
Melik Kaylan also has a good column on Putin's "strategic conservatism." He has goals bigger than Russia.
Yet as Pat Buchanan and others have noted, Putin’s Russia is back in the ideological hunt—offering an alternative set of ideas capable of competing internationally with those of the US. Americans are still in denial about it, for many reasons, perhaps the chief among them being that, Buchananites apart, US opinionmakers on both left and right have largely written off the kinds of people that Putin appeals to both in Russia and abroad. If the paleoconservative voice has been relatively marginalized in the US media, it has a huge equivalent constituency in most countries that take traditions seriously. As Buchanan goes on to say in his article, “the decisive struggle in the second half of the twentieth century was vertical, East vs. West,” but “the twenty-first century struggle may be horizontal, with conservatives and traditionalists in every country arrayed against the militant secularism of a multicultural and transnational elite.”
I first got wind of this new pan-Putinist ideology in Tbilisi, Georgia, while covering the national elections in the fall of 2012. Having reported from there during the Russian invasion of 2008 and after, I knew the population to be virulently anti-Moscow and largely pro-West. So I was astounded when the country elected an oligarch, Bidzina Ivanishvili, who had made his money in Moscow, who refused to criticize Putin, and who ran against a government headed by the volubly pro-American Mikheil Saakashvili. In the space of a few years, President Saakashvili had stamped out Georgia’s legendary corruption, driven out the mafias, notched up eight percent annual growth rates despite global banking failures and a Russian invasion, and had delivered efficiency, transparency, and foreign investment. Yet the other side won. I saw a most skillful, well-financed, pre-prepared opposition campaign with Moscow-based funds, one that deftly cooked up a prison abuse scandal with scary videos to smear the government. It convinced me that the KGB was rebooted, modernized, formidable, and once more able to redirect the destiny of its near abroad satellites as it had for years, even in democratic contests. Above all, I got a foretaste of the ideas Putin has expounded more openly and systematically since 2008.
Monday, April 21, 2014
RUSSIAN MILITARY
Putin has been upgrading the Russian military.
Elite Russian troops are displaying a new arsenal of body armor, individual weapons, armor-piercing ammunition and collar radios — a menu of essential gear that gives them a big tactical advantage against a lesser-equipped Ukrainian army.
If President Vladimir Putin orders an invasion, the new-generation body armor, in particular, would provide exceptional protection against small arms if Russian troops go street by street to capture Kiev and other cities.
U.S. soldiers have complained that their main rifle and round, the M4 carbine and its 5.56, lacked lethality in Afghanistan against a Taliban enemy that does not often wear body armor. Without a shot to the head, the enemy could take several 5.56 hits and keep going, soldiers said in surveys.
“If the Russians are coming across mechanized, with airborne and infantry units wearing their body armor, it basically means the Ukrainian rifles have no ability to penetrate the body armor worn by the Russian troops, meaning you’re talking about having to shoot somebody six, seven, eight times, in the chest,” Mr. Traudt said. “They’re going to get bumped, but there’s no lethality involved.”
It would appear that the Russians are better prepared for the new non-nuclear warfare than the US is. This raises a lot of ramifications for any future US-Russian confrontation.
Elite Russian troops are displaying a new arsenal of body armor, individual weapons, armor-piercing ammunition and collar radios — a menu of essential gear that gives them a big tactical advantage against a lesser-equipped Ukrainian army.
If President Vladimir Putin orders an invasion, the new-generation body armor, in particular, would provide exceptional protection against small arms if Russian troops go street by street to capture Kiev and other cities.
U.S. soldiers have complained that their main rifle and round, the M4 carbine and its 5.56, lacked lethality in Afghanistan against a Taliban enemy that does not often wear body armor. Without a shot to the head, the enemy could take several 5.56 hits and keep going, soldiers said in surveys.
“If the Russians are coming across mechanized, with airborne and infantry units wearing their body armor, it basically means the Ukrainian rifles have no ability to penetrate the body armor worn by the Russian troops, meaning you’re talking about having to shoot somebody six, seven, eight times, in the chest,” Mr. Traudt said. “They’re going to get bumped, but there’s no lethality involved.”
It would appear that the Russians are better prepared for the new non-nuclear warfare than the US is. This raises a lot of ramifications for any future US-Russian confrontation.
Sunday, April 20, 2014
OBAMA'S FOREIGN POLICY
From the Financial Times. Obama is a president focused on America and not the rest of the world. His foreign policy has not just failed with regard to Russia and the Middle East, but it has led to a diminished US friendship with countries such as India and Brazil, not to mention China and Japan.
And then there is this comment by David Goldman: " Putin isn't a genius -- we are complete idiots."
And then there is this comment by David Goldman: " Putin isn't a genius -- we are complete idiots."
Wednesday, April 16, 2014
UKRAINE: WORLD WAR III?
From the Daily Mail.
EDWARD LUCAS: I hope I'm wrong but historians may look back and say this was the start of World War III
- 'Vladimir Putin is striking at the heart of the West'
- 'We can chose to surrender any responsibility we have to protect Ukraine and the Baltic states'
- 'Or we can mount a last-ditch attempt to deter Russia from furthering its imperial ambitions'
- 'If we choose to resist Putin, we will risk a terrifying miltary escalation'
- 'I do not think it an exaggeration to say this could bring us to the brink of nuclear war'
Friday, April 04, 2014
RUSSIA, THE NEW LEADER OF CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION?
Conservative Pat Buchanan has written a very interesting article on Putin. He reflects on Russian history and its Christian mission and how Putin is attempting to revive Russia's Christian mission. Many Russians see the West as decadent and believe it will be Russia which will carry out the revival of moral values. Putin rejects Marxism-Leninism as the way to revive Russia in favor of what he sees as Christian values. In doing this he is in the tradition of Alexander Solzhenitsyn who saw the West as decadent decades ago.
Many Russians see the west as engaged in the "sewage of hedonistic secular culture".
Many Russians see the west as engaged in the "sewage of hedonistic secular culture".
Putin
is entering a claim that Moscow is the Godly City of today and command
post of the counter-reformation against the new paganism.
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2014/04/is-god-now-on-russias-side/#315lQ2tzSQgJm569.99
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2014/04/is-god-now-on-russias-side/#315lQ2tzSQgJm569.99
Putin
is entering a claim that Moscow is the Godly City of today and command
post of the counter-reformation against the new paganism.Putin
is entering a claim that Moscow is the Godly City of today and command
post of the counter-reformation against the new paganism.
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2014/04/is-god-now-on-russias-side/#315lQ2tzSQgJm569.99
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2014/04/is-god-now-on-russias-side/#315lQ2tzSQgJm569.99
Putin
is entering a claim that Moscow is the Godly City of today and command
post of the counter-reformation against the new paganism.
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2014/04/is-god-now-on-russias-side/#315lQ2tzSQgJm569.99
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2014/04/is-god-now-on-russias-side/#315lQ2tzSQgJm569.99
Monday, March 31, 2014
UN VOTE ON CRIMEA
The Atlantic has an interesting map showing how countries voted with regard to condemning Putin's actions in the Crimea. It is also of note that Armenia voted with Putin and against the Ukraine (read Armenia's reasoning in the article). There is western unity, but there are also many abstentions in South America, Africa, and Asia.
Yes
Abstain
Absent
No
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