Re: The Rise of the Russian Empire: Russo-Armenian Relations
Russia successfully fired its newest intercontinental ballistic missile from a submarine located in the White Sea to a target on the Pacific coast 6,700 kilometers (4,200 miles) away, the military said. The Bulava missile was fired from the Dmitry Donskoi submarine at 6:45 p.m. and struck the Kura range on the Kamchatka Peninsula at 7:05 p.m. Moscow time yesterday, state television said. "Initial data indicates the missile performed according to plan,'' it cited the Defense Ministry as saying. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has said Russia can produce missiles capable of piercing any defenses. Yesterday's test of the Bulava, which has an estimated maximum range of 8,000 kilometers, comes as the country upgrades its rocket forces to counter a planned U.S. anti-missile shield in eastern Europe. Russia rejects the Bush administration's assertion that the system is aimed at defending Europe from a nuclear-armed Iran and sees it as part of a plan to isolate the country that began with NATO's expansion. Ties with the U.S. were further strained when Russia sent warplanes and troops into Georgia last month in its biggest foreign military operation since the Cold War. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned in a speech yesterday that Russia had taken a "dark turn'' characterized by authoritarianism at home and aggression abroad and called for U.S. and European unity to meet the challenge.
`Paranoid, Aggressive'
The "paranoid, aggressive impulse, which has manifested itself before in Russian history, to view the emergence of free and independent democratic neighbors'' not as a source of security but as a source of threat, has re-emerged, she said. Rice rejected suggestions that the West provoked Russia by pledging in April that Georgia and Ukraine would ultimately be admitted to NATO. Russia's behavior "cannot be blamed on NATO enlargement,'' she said. NATO has transformed itself from a Cold War alliance in a divided Europe to "a means for nurturing the growth of a Europe whole, free and at peace, and for confronting dangers, like terrorism, that also threaten Russia,'' she said. Russia's invasion followed a Georgian attack on the Russia- backed breakaway region of South Ossetia. The government in Moscow said last week it will boost defense spending by 26 percent to a post-Soviet record 1.28 trillion rubles ($50 billion). Funding will be directed toward its Topol intercontinental ballistic missile program, upgrading nuclear-weapons-equipped Tu-160 bombers and completing the Borei-class submarine Yuriy Dolgoruky, said Andrei Frolov, a defense specialist at the Moscow-based Center for the Analysis of Strategies and Technologies. Russia says the U.S. anti-missile shield, comprising a radar installation in the Czech Republic and interceptors in Poland, is designed to undermine its nuclear deterrent. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization expanded to Russia's borders when the former Soviet republics of Estonia and Latvia joined the alliance in 2004. Past tests of the Bulava, designed for a new generation of nuclear submarines, have had mixed success, with three failing in 2006 and one in 2005.
Source: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...tUM&refer=home
Russia Test-Fires Ballistic Missile 6,700 Kilometers to Pacific
Russia successfully fired its newest intercontinental ballistic missile from a submarine located in the White Sea to a target on the Pacific coast 6,700 kilometers (4,200 miles) away, the military said. The Bulava missile was fired from the Dmitry Donskoi submarine at 6:45 p.m. and struck the Kura range on the Kamchatka Peninsula at 7:05 p.m. Moscow time yesterday, state television said. "Initial data indicates the missile performed according to plan,'' it cited the Defense Ministry as saying. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has said Russia can produce missiles capable of piercing any defenses. Yesterday's test of the Bulava, which has an estimated maximum range of 8,000 kilometers, comes as the country upgrades its rocket forces to counter a planned U.S. anti-missile shield in eastern Europe. Russia rejects the Bush administration's assertion that the system is aimed at defending Europe from a nuclear-armed Iran and sees it as part of a plan to isolate the country that began with NATO's expansion. Ties with the U.S. were further strained when Russia sent warplanes and troops into Georgia last month in its biggest foreign military operation since the Cold War. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned in a speech yesterday that Russia had taken a "dark turn'' characterized by authoritarianism at home and aggression abroad and called for U.S. and European unity to meet the challenge.
`Paranoid, Aggressive'
The "paranoid, aggressive impulse, which has manifested itself before in Russian history, to view the emergence of free and independent democratic neighbors'' not as a source of security but as a source of threat, has re-emerged, she said. Rice rejected suggestions that the West provoked Russia by pledging in April that Georgia and Ukraine would ultimately be admitted to NATO. Russia's behavior "cannot be blamed on NATO enlargement,'' she said. NATO has transformed itself from a Cold War alliance in a divided Europe to "a means for nurturing the growth of a Europe whole, free and at peace, and for confronting dangers, like terrorism, that also threaten Russia,'' she said. Russia's invasion followed a Georgian attack on the Russia- backed breakaway region of South Ossetia. The government in Moscow said last week it will boost defense spending by 26 percent to a post-Soviet record 1.28 trillion rubles ($50 billion). Funding will be directed toward its Topol intercontinental ballistic missile program, upgrading nuclear-weapons-equipped Tu-160 bombers and completing the Borei-class submarine Yuriy Dolgoruky, said Andrei Frolov, a defense specialist at the Moscow-based Center for the Analysis of Strategies and Technologies. Russia says the U.S. anti-missile shield, comprising a radar installation in the Czech Republic and interceptors in Poland, is designed to undermine its nuclear deterrent. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization expanded to Russia's borders when the former Soviet republics of Estonia and Latvia joined the alliance in 2004. Past tests of the Bulava, designed for a new generation of nuclear submarines, have had mixed success, with three failing in 2006 and one in 2005.
Source: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...tUM&refer=home
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