The Rise of the Russian Empire: Russo-Armenian Relations

[Anonymouse]

Re: The Rise of the Russian Empire: Russo-Armenian Relations

This is no surprise. Turkey has always had animosity towards Russia ever since Catherine started expanding the Empire, which eventually led the Russian empire onto the doorsteps of the Ottomans. It was no different then and it is no different now.

[Armenian]

Re: The Rise of the Russian Empire: Russo-Armenian Relations

Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has invited his Russian counterpart, President Vladimir Putin to a summit of Caspian nations.



The invitation was made during a session of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan August 16, where Iran has observer status, the Tehran Times newspaper reported Saturday. A date for the summit was not mentioned. However, Iranian media reported that no meeting between the two leaders had been planned for Bishkek, but that they met informally and had a friendly exchange of views. The first summit of Caspian nations, which includes Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Turkmenistan, took place in 2002. It was decided at the time to hold the second the following year, however it was repeatedly put off until now. The 2002 summit in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan discussed the legal rights of the Caspian littoral nations to explore the huge oil reserves beneath the sea.

Source: http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id...onid=351020101

[axel]

Re: The Rise of the Russian Empire: Russo-Armenian Relations

Speaking of Ivan the Terrible, a short clip out of Sergey Eisenstein's great movie...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnBIs5cxMG8

(Sorry for the digression)

[Armenian]

Re: The Rise of the Russian Empire: Russo-Armenian Relations

Russia in $250bn plan to restore its military might



In a hangar at an airfield 30 kilometres south-east of Moscow, technicians are checking the latest additions to the burgeoning military arsenal that a resurgent Russia hopes can restore its status as a major world power.

The MiG-35 and MiG-29 fighters, which Russia plans to showcase at this week's Moscow international air show, are just a small part of a £100 billion ($A249 billion) plan to return the Russian military to the heights of its Cold War might. At the weekend, President Vladimir Putin caused consternation by announcing the resumption of regular, long-range nuclear bomber patrols, but there is more to come. Russia is planning to double combat aircraft production by 2025, with more nuclear missiles, aircraft carriers and tanks at the top of Moscow's shopping list.

The message to the West is clear: the days of being able to dismiss Russia as a spent force are over. Bolstered by the cash from sales of oil and gas and Mr Putin's steely determination to re-establish the country on the world stage, the Russian military machine is back in business. Intelligence sources say Washington and London have been taken aback by just how seriously Russia has viewed the perceived slight of being overlooked as a world power. They admit that in concentrating so heavily on Iraq and al-Qaeda, they took their eye off the ball.

"They were slow to see that these people are still players," said a former White House staffer, who served both Ronald Reagan and George Bush.

"My great fear is that I wake up one day soon to discover that we lost the Cold War — or rather that, like everything else, we won the war and then lost the peace."

A source close to US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who cut her teeth in government as a kremlinologist in the 1980s, said that Middle East issues had diverted her attention from a more rigorous engagement with Moscow.

"She wants to spend more time on Russia but that hasn't always been possible. She said to me that she regrets the fact that she has not done enough on what is, after all, her major area of expertise," the source said.

Mr Putin has not been slow to take advantage of the US and British problems in Iraq and Afghanistan. The carefully staged pictures of the President stripped to the waist and striking various manly poses on holiday in Siberia last week are not the only Russian muscle-flexing that has been going on in recent months. While Russia's submariners have managed to upset even the mild-mannered Norwegians and Canadians by planting a flag under the Arctic ice, its long range TU-95 Bear bombers have rattled America's cage by buzzing its US naval base on the island of Guam in the western Pacific.

Source: http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/...62082096.html#

[Armenian]

Re: The Rise of the Russian Empire: Russo-Armenian Relations

Worried about Putin's Russia?: Read on



Monday, August 20, 2007

For the past several years, the Russia of Vladimir Putin has been sending very clear signals that it is no longer the weakened, troubled and Western-dependent state that it was following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Russia is once again a proud and assertive nation, increasingly recognizable by its actions to historians of its czarist and Communist predecessors. Many will say that its recovery is based on shallow foundations, in fact that it rests almost totally upon the high price of oil and gas - and Russia's fortunate possession of vast supplies of those vital commodities.

That is true. But oil revenues, if invested wisely (as has been done by two countries as different as Norway and Dubai during the past decade), can enhance national infrastructure, industrial and technological developments, and military security. Not only is Putin's regime making smart strategic investments - in infrastructure, laboratories, a modernized military - its flow of energy wealth is giving the Kremlin the confidence to pursue assertive foreign policies, secure for the moment in a set of global circumstances that has hobbled the United States, turned the attention of China and India elsewhere (toward growth and internal modernization), and given all the world's oil-producing states immense leverage.

Right now, the list of Moscow's unilateralist actions is probably only exceeded by those of the White House over the past six years. Take an obvious example: Russia uses its veto power on the UN Security Council to support Serbia and crush Kosovo's hopes of independence, just as the United States uses its privilege to protect Israel and block pro-Palestinian resolutions in the world organization. In a similar negative way, Russia controls what the Security Council may, or may not, do regarding actions against Iran and North Korea.

The list goes on. Putin's ministers are adept at using what has come to be called "pipeline diplomacy" to force neighbors like Belarus and Ukraine to bend to Moscow's will and recognize their dependence upon Russian energy supplies, and it is clear that this is intended to have a secondary intimidation effect upon the states of Western Europe as well. Estonia and Latvia are browbeaten over what are regarded as anti-Russian acts, such as the removal of Soviet war memorials or treatment of Russian-speaking citizens. Western oil companies are discovering that a contract for control of energy resources is not necessarily viewed by the Moscow government as a sacred legal obligation. Thus, massive international corporations such as BP and Exxon, long regarded as powerful independent actors, are now, literally, being put over the barrel, forced to recognize their weaker bargaining position.

Many of their chief executives must have rubbed their eyes at the reports that Russia has just claimed extensive rights at the North Pole, with implications for rights to the exploitation of seabed energy resources. Moscow seems to be advancing its international claims with about the same speed that it denounces arms-control accords. If all of this is unsettling, it is by no means unusual. Actually, Russia's actions are rather predictable. They are the steps taken by a traditional power elite that, having suffered defeat and humiliation, is now bent upon the recovery of its assets, its authority and its capacity to intimidate.

There is nothing in the history of Russia since Ivan the Terrible to suggest that Putin is doing anything new. "Top-down" policies from the Kremlin have a thousand-year provenance. If they seem more noticeable at this moment in time, it may simply be because of two (possibly temporary) factors: the modern world's dependence upon petroleum, and the Bush administration's obsession with Iraq and terrorism. All Putin is doing is walking through an open gate - opened, by and large, by the West. So the reports from Russia that interest me most are not those concerning drone submarines under the Arctic icecap, or putting the screws upon Belarus to pay backdated oil charges. What intrigues me are the broader and more subtle measures being instituted by the Putin regime to enhance national - and, even more, nationalist - pride. They point to something much more purposeful, and potentially quite sinister.

Two examples will have to suffice here: the creation of a patriotic youth movement, and the not-too-subtle rewriting of Russia's school history books. The youth movement called "Nashi" (it translates as "ours") is growing fast, encouraged by government agencies determined to instill the right virtues into the next generation and to use this cadre of ultra-Russianists to buttress Putin's regime against domestic critics. The policies that Nashi advocates are eclectic. Among the main features are reverence for the Fatherland, respect for the family, Russian traditions and marriage, and a detestation of foreigners; it is hard to tell whether American imperialists, Chechen terrorists, or Estonian ingrates are at the bottom of their list of those who threaten the Russian way of life.

Right now, Nashi is training tens of thousands of young diligents; right now, they are in summer camps where they do mass aerobics, discuss "proper" and "corrupt" politics, and receive the necessary education for the struggles to come. Vast numbers have recently been mobilized to harass the British and Estonian ambassadors in Moscow, following Moscow's disputes with those two countries. According to The Financial Times, Nashi is training 60,000 "leaders" to monitor voting and conduct exit polls in elections this coming December and March. I find this all pretty creepy.

So, too, are the reports that Putin has personally complimented the authors of a new manual for high school history teachers that seeks to instill a renewed pride in teenagers of their country's past and encourage national solidarity. As a historian, I always shrink from the idea that education ministries should approve some sort of official view of the national past, although I know that bureaucrats from Japan to France do precisely that, that Beijing's leadership would get highly upset if it learned that schools in China could choose their own textbooks, and that American fundamentalists try to put their own clumsy footprint on what children should actually be exposed to.

But it is one thing for French kids to be told about Joan of Arc's heroism or American kids about Paul Revere's midnight ride; everyone is entitled to a Robin Hood or William Tell or two. It's a bit more disturbing to learn that the new Russian history manual teaches that "entry into the club of democratic nations involves surrendering part of your national sovereignty to the U.S." and other such choice contemporary lessons that suggest to Russian teenagers that they face dark forces abroad.

What does this all mean? Should oil prices collapse - should pigs fly - then Putin's efforts at a Russian nationalistic renaissance might also tumble. But there is no doubt about the coherence of this plan to rebuild Russian pride and strength from the top down and the bottom up. Over the longer run, the current street agitation against Britain's ambassador and the tearing down of the Estonian flag by Nashi extremists may be obscure footnotes to history. By contrast, the deliberate campaigns to indoctrinate Russian youth and to rewrite the history of the great though terribly disturbed nation that they are inheriting might be much more significant for the unfolding of our 21st century.

Source: http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/08/.../edkennedy.php

[Armenian]

Re: The Rise of the Russian Empire: Russo-Armenian Relations

This is no surprise. Turkey has always had animosity towards Russia ever since Catherine started expanding the Empire, which eventually led the Russian empire onto the doorsteps of the Ottomans. It was no different then and it is no different now.

As you have pointed out, Russian-Turkish (or Turanian) animosities go back hundreds of years, this rivalry is essentially a part of their genetic makeup and cultural legacy.

Besides their numerous devastating wars against various Asiatics hordes, Khazars, Chechens and Tatars, etc, Russians fought the Ottomans as well. As a matter of fact, even during the hight of Ottoman power, Russians posed the only real military threat for them. If I'm not mistaken, I think that Tsarist Russia never lost a major battle against the Ottomans. And let's also remember the many great Armenian generals that helped the Tsars in their successful military campaigns against the Ottomans - Suvorov, Melikov, Matadov, Behbutov, Shelkovnikian, Lazarian, Alhazian, Gusakian.

One can also look at Russian history this way:

Historically, Russians have suffered many catastrophic disasters, natural and man made. Russian history is saturated with devastating famines, political upheavals, and major wars against the Teutonic Knights, the Mongols, Napoleon, Hitler, Jooish Bolsheviks, NATO, etc. It is also a part of their history to rebound. After suffering severe devastation, losses and humiliation, Russians have rebounded time and again and have managed to give their enemies a devastating blow.

There were two such episodes in the early 20th century. First, Russia's tragic defeat at the hands of the Joo lead Bolsheviks which was within a few years brought under Russian control via Stalin's purges. Second, Russia's tragic defeat at the hands of the Third Reich which was reversed in a few short years culminating with the Red Army's destruction of Berlin.

And the latest episode was the west's (NATO's) victory in the Cold War. This latest Russian defeat may not have been of the same nature as the destruction caused by Napoleon, Hitler or the Bolsheviks, but it nevertheless ruined the nation and caused the deaths of millions of Russians as a result of chronic alcoholism, suicide, collapse of the health care system, social malaise, and bloody insurgencies. This latest defeat also undermined Russia's political status and plundered the nation for over a decade, a plundering that was of biblical proportions.

And today's resurgence of the Russian Federation is their historic comeback. This will come to a climax in the future, when they begin to throw punches.

History is not linear, it's circular. In essence, Russia was the successor of the Byzantine Empire as the Ottoman Turks were the successors of the Seljuk Empire. Thus, Byzantine-Seljuk rivalry evolved into Russian-Turkish/Ottoman rivalry. Today we are seeing the beginning stages of another major war, perhaps a global conflict, evolving between western and eastern powers.

And the notion of "pan-Turkism" still plays a significant role in the attitudes of Turks today. It may not be a conscious thought or effort in the mind of the average Turk but it certainly does exists in their subconscious.

On the face of it, pan-Turkism is a natural concept, much like other nationalistic ideologies around the world. However, since we Armenians get in the way of their nationalistic ambitions, pan-Turkism is a severe longterm geostrategic danger for us. Fortunately, pan-Turkism also threatens Russians and Iranians, albeit to a lesser degree. Nevertheless, Russia and Iran, as viable independent nations, are keenly interested in keeping Turanian ideologies contained, it not utterly destroyed. As a result, Russia's and Iran's strategic borders begin in the Caucasus.

Thus, by protecting the Armenian Republic they are in essence protecting their national interests.

A SHORT INTRODUCTION TO PAN-TURANIANISM



Part-I: http://www.rozanehmagazine.com/NoveD...eganPart1.html

Part-II: http://www.rozanehmagazine.com/NoveD...ARTIIAzar.html

Part-III: http://www.rozanehmagazine.com/NoveDec05/AZPartIII.html

Part-IV: http://www.rozanehmagazine.com/NoveDec05/AZPARTIV.html

[Armenian]

Re: The Rise of the Russian Empire: Russo-Armenian Relations

TURKISH MILITARY ASSISTANCE TO AZERBAIJAN AND THE FOREIGN MERCENERIES DURING THE KARABAGH WAR


(Unidentified Armenian Fighters in Artsakh)

Intriguing facts in the book of Hayk DEMOYAN

The book by the Armenian historian Hayk Demoyan titled “Karabakh drama - hidden Acts” (Yerevan, Caucasian Center for Iranian Studies, 2003) presents and analyzes documents and evidence concerning Turkish military assistance to Azerbaijan, as well as revealing the recruitment of Chechen and Afghan mercenaries by Azerbaijan during the 1991-1994 Karabagh war. Based on Armenian, Russian, Turkish, French, Azeri and American sources, as well as the archives of the Nagorno Karabakh Republic’s State Department of National Security, Demoyan’s book reveals certain intriguing facts.

By 1991-92, Turkey had organized a number of secret air operations in order to transfer military equipment and ammunition to Azerbaijan. Meanwhile, Turkey embarked on a program of training for Azerbaijani officers and soldiers in military schools located in the territories of both Turkey and Azerbaijan. However, Ankara showed a certain degree of caution regarding the issue of directly supplying the Azerbaijani forces with military hardware and logistics, caution bred from the fear that Turkey’s clandestine action, namely, supplying the Azerbaijani armed forces with armaments, produced in Turkey or via NATO depots, could be exposed. Thus, Ankara provided the Azeri’s mainly with Soviet made weapons captured from the Iraqi Army after the Gulf War, as well as weapons imported from the former German Democratic Republic's army stores.

Concurrently, the Turkish National Intelligence Organization (MIT), in close cooperation with the Azerbaijani branch of the ultra-nationalistic Turkish organization “Grey Wolves” -which numbered over 15 thousand members-, began to implement meticulously planned activities. The Turkish branch of the organization started to recruit and post volunteers to special military bases of the Third Turkish field army, and then complete their further transfer to Azerbaijan.

In the summer of 1992, when the situation along the Nakhichevan section of the Armenian-Azeri border became strained again, the Commander-in-Chief of the Turkish ground forces Muhittin Fisunogli declared that, “all necessary preparations are made and the army is waiting for the order to proceed to action.” As a response to that declaration the Commander-in-Chief of the United Armed Forces of the CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States), Marshal Shaposhnikov, warned that the intervention of a third party in the conflict would lead to the outbreak of the Third World War.

1993 was a very decisive year for the Karabagh conflict. Turkey did its best to exert some influence on the resolution of the conflict in favor of Azerbaijan. Besides the fact that Turkey officially closed its border with Armenia on April 3, 1993, it also signed an agreement with Azerbaijan on the supply of light weaponry and the training of Azeri military specialists, blatantly violating the OSCE decision (February 1993) which prohibited any military supply to the zone of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Thanks to the revelations of former Ambassador of Greece to Armenia, Leonidas Chrisantopoulos, it became known that in October 1993 Turkey tried to use the parliamentary crisis in Russia in order to make incursions into Armenia. According to information from French intelligence sources, corroborated by the US Ambassador to Armenia, there was an agreement reached between the then speaker of the Russian parliament Ruslan Khasbulatov and Turkish PM Tansu Ciller that, in the case of an anti-Yeltsin fraction success, Khasbulatov would allow Turkey to execute a small-scale incursion into Armenia.

Curiously, the territory of the non-recognized Turkish republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) was also used for the recruitment of foreign mercenaries and military instructors. Through the initiative of English Lord Erskin and Turkish businessman Mustafa Mutlu, foreign and Turkish mercenaries were transferred to Azerbaijan. According to the Turkish and European press, in return for this service, the Azeris were obliged to deliver oil to Great Britain for 150 thousands US dollars per year. The territory of the TRNC was not chosen coincidentally, in so far as the jurisdictional scope of resolutions of international organizations does not extend to the territory of the non-recognized republic. Also, Demoyan re-established the hidden links between the Azerbaijani government, Chechen and Afghan authorities, as well as revealing the agreements concluded between them concerning the supply of mercenaries to the Azeri armed forces.

In early June 1992 the number of Chechen mercenaries in Karabakh totaled approximately 300. They had been recruited on the basis of a military agreement signed between Azeri and Chechen authorities regarding the supply of human resources from Chechnya in exchange for military supply from Azerbaijan. After heavy losses Chechen fighters left Karabakh battlefields, partially in connection with Inter-Chechen and Chechen-Russian problems. A Chechen representative from Grozny arrived in Stepanakert, the capital of NKR, and reached an agreement on the repatriation of Chechen prisoners of war. The Chechens amongst the bodyguards of the then Azeri President were also recalled. By a strange coincidence, this occurred precisely on the eve of Colonel Huseynov’s armed mutiny and attempted march on Baku in June 1993.

Following the defeats suffered by the Azerbaijani army at the Karabakh frontline in mid 1993, Baku turned to the Afghan authorities for the supply of Mujaheddins to fight against the Armenian self-defence force of Nagorno-Karabakh. Demoyan refers to a report by American journalist Thomas Golz, while describing how US citizens, who were involved in the Iran-Contra affair whilst serving in the US Special Forces, brought mujaheddins to Azerbaijan while also training Azeri pilots in Texas for this mission. Nevertheless, the enthusiasm of the Americans faded away when a possible Azerbaijani connection was discovered in the attacks on the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania far before September 11. After those attacks the FBI traced about 60 phone calls made from the satellite phone used by bin Laden to his Islamic Jihad associates in Baku, and from there to partners in Africa.

Source: http://www.panarmenian.net/library/eng/?nid=42&cid=10

[Armenian]

Re: The Rise of the Russian Empire: Russo-Armenian Relations

It's amazing how concerned these Joos are about world peace, human rights and social injustice... The plight of the Chechens... the plight of the Albanians... the plight of the Bosnians... the plight of Russia's oppressed... the plight of the much oppressed Jooish people of Israel... Just amazing. I'm glad Moscow appreciates their selfless work as well. And Gary Kasparov... Well, what else can one say? He would have done much better for himself had he stuck to chess. Now he is simply a clown in Moscow. I guess his Jooish side got the better of him.

Armenian

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Russia Releases Reporter From Confinement in Psychiatric Clinic



Bloomberg News, By Henry Meyer

A Russian journalist won release after 46 days of forcible confinement in a psychiatric hospital, a case human rights groups likened to the Soviet-era practice of locking up dissidents in clinics. Larisa Arap, 48, who had written an article on maltreatment of children at a mental clinic in the northern city of Apatity, was hospitalized against her will on July 5. Doctors at the clinic released her today after intervention by Human Rights Commissioner Vladimir Lukin, his spokeswoman Natalya Mirza said by telephone.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists had written to Putin asking him to secure Arap's release. ``The horrifying method of forcible psychiatric detention as punishment for dissent was a trademark of the Soviet past and has no place in a new, democratic Russia,'' it said in the letter. President Vladimir Putin, a former KGB colonel who was elected in 2000, has tightened control of political life in Russia, squeezing opposition parties out of parliament and eliminating most independent media. Arap, who belongs to an opposition movement led by former world chess champion Garry Kasparov, was taken away in an ambulance after visiting a doctor for a routine health check needed to extend her driving-license, said Marina Litvinovich, a spokeswoman for Kasparov.

Hospitalized in the northern port city of Murmansk, she was injected with drugs that weakened her, caused her tongue to swell, blurred her vision and affected her balance, CPJ said, citing her family. On July 26, the authorities transferred Arap to the clinic in Apatity, 160 kilometers (100 miles) south of Murmansk, the place she had described in her article, the media freedom watchdog said. Lukin's spokeswoman Mirza said that an independent psychiatric commission appointed by the human rights official to investigate Arap's case had recommended her release.

Source: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...0&refer=europe

Don't sell uranium to Russia: Kasparov


(Riot police detain former world chess champion Garry Kasparov at a protest in Moscow)

Former chess champion and significant political opposition figure in Russia, Garry Kasparov, has warned Australia against selling uranium to his country, The Bulletin magazine says. Mr Kasparov has told the magazine that the Kremlin cannot be trusted to use Australian uranium purely for domestic peaceful purposes, as is Australia's requirement. Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer says negotiations on a new agreement to sell uranium to Russia could be signed next month during President Vladimir Putin's visit to Australia for APEC.

The Bulletin reports it understands agreement has been reached on the billion-dollar-a-year uranium deal, with only last-minute technical details to be sorted out in to meet the September deadline. But Mr Kasparov, who leads the United Civil Front opposition movement in Russia, said Australia should not assume Russia could be trusted with uranium. "Should Australian uranium end up in the wrong hands - and it's not too far-fetched to suggest that Russia under Putin is already in the wrong hands - Australia will not be able to act innocent or to claim ignorance," Mr Kasparov said.

"You can only be confident that the Kremlin will look out for itself, that they have zero obedience to the rule of law and that all sales are final." Mr Kasparov said Australia should not stop doing business with Russia but warned that, when it came to nuclear materials, "there are more than simple commercial considerations in play". He said that, at the very least, Australia should acknowledge that Russia's technology deals with countries like Iran and Syria were destabilising the world.

Source: http://www.theage.com.au/news/Nation...62256622.html#

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Perhaps Gary should be reminded of the following news report from a few months back:

Russia To Look For Uranium In Armenia

April 23, 2007, ArmeniaLiberty.org, By Shakeh Avoyan

The Russian and Armenian governments agreed on Monday to jointly develop Armenia's untapped uranium reserves which they said could make the country self-sufficient in production of nuclear energy. A relevant agreement was signed in Yerevan by Prime Minister Serzh Sarkisian and Sergey Kirienko, the visiting head of Russia's Federal Agency on Atomic Energy (Rosatom).

"The main purpose of the agreement is to look for radioactive materials in Armenia and jointly develop those resources," said Environment Minister Vartan Ayvazian. According to Kirienko, the two sides will set up a joint venture that will explore areas in the southeastern Syunik region which Armenian and Russian geologists believe are rich in uranium. He was confident that they will discover commercially viable reserves of the radioactive metal used in nuclear power generation. "Armenia will be able to meet its needs and sell [uranium] to others," the Rosatom chief told journalists "It is turning from an energy resource dependent country to an energy resource exporting one." A U.S. company, Global Gold, is already looking for uranium in another region of Armenia.

The mountainous country was a major center of non-ferrous metallurgy in the former Soviet Union and still exports copper and gold in large quantities. But its uranium reserves, estimated at 30,000 metric tons by Soviet geologists, have not been developed so far. Officials said the real reserves may be twice bigger. In Kirienko's words, Armenia could become one of the few countries of the world with a full uranium production cycle from extraction of the metal to its transformation into nuclear fuel. Some of that fuel would be supplied to the nuclear power station at Metsamor, he said.

The Armenian government plans to decommission the Metsamor plant by 2016 in accordance with its commitments to the European Union and the United States. It announced plans last year to replace the Soviet-era facility with a new plant meeting modern safety standards. The government pushed through parliament a legal amendment allowing it to look for foreign investors that would be willing to provide an estimated $1 billion needed for its construction. Kirienko said Moscow is ready to participate in the ambitious project.

Source: http://www.armeniadiaspora.com/ADC/news.asp?id=2221

[Armenian]

Re: The Rise of the Russian Empire: Russo-Armenian Relations

"The Foreign Policy Association invites you to attend a lecture on “Living with Vladimir Putin's Russia” with Jack Matlock, Former American Ambassador to the Soviet Union."

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6984236696572924685&q=Living+with+Vladimir+Putin%27s+Russia&total=15&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0

[Armenian]

Re: The Rise of the Russian Empire: Russo-Armenian Relations

Russia Air Show: Flexing Military Might?



At the largest post-Soviet air show, Putin shows he's making headway in rebuilidng the Russian aerospace industry

by Anna Smolchenko

Russian President Vladimir Putin seems to be using any opportunity he can these days to remind the world—perhaps especially the U.S.—that he is rebuilding his country's military, political, and economic might. On Aug. 17, he ordered strategic bombers to resume patrols over the Atlantic and Pacific oceans for the first time in years. Thousands of Russian and Chinese troops are currently conducting joint military exercises. And on Aug. 21, Putin presided over the opening of the largest air show in post-Soviet history as combat planes roared over the Zhukovsky airfield outside Moscow. "[We must maintain] our leadership in the production of combat aircraft," Putin declared at the opening.



Are these signs of a new Cold War or something more nuanced? It's as hard as ever to read the inscrutable Putin, but he seems determined to ensure his legacy as the leader who won back world respect for Russia before his second term ends next year. Whatever the Russian President's political or military agenda, rebuilding the defense and aviation industries are key goals for the Kremlin. And Russia is making some progress—as the aviation show testifies.
Civilian Aviation Lags Military Industry



A key player is Rosoboronexport, the state arms trader and sponsor of the International Aviation & Space Show. The company is run by Sergei Chemezov, who is sometimes mentioned as a possible successor to Putin. On the air show's first day, Rosoboronexport signed an agreement to sell to Indonesia six Sukhoi fighter jets, which will be delivered between 2008 and 2010. The deal, estimated at $350 million, is Russia's largest arms contract with Indonesia to date. Overall, Rosoboronexport this year has inked agreements worth $2.5 billion to export Russian-made aircraft.



Most industry observers agree that Russia's civilian aviation industry is lagging behind the fighter aircraft makers. "Our military aviation is all right. The commercial aviation is slowly recovering," says Ruslan Pukhov, director of the Moscow-based Center of Analysis of Strategies & Technologies, a defense think tank. To boost the Russian industry's ability to compete in passenger and transport jets against Boeing (BA) and Airbus, the Kremlin created United Aircraft, a state holding company combining key producers such as MiG, Sukhoi, Ilyushin, Tupolev, and Irkut. United Aircraft's ambitious goal: to produce and sell about 4,500 aircraft worth some $250 billion by 2025. For starters, Russian airlines are expected to order some $600 million in Russian-built aircraft at the Moscow air show.



Other deals include a new joint venture between Boeing and Russia's titanium giant, VSPMO-Avisma. The new company, Ural Boeing Manufacturing, will produce titanium parts for the new Boeing 787 Dreamliner jet. VSMPO-Avisma, majority-owned by Rosoboronexport, supplies titanium products to Boeing, Airbus, Brazil's Embraer (ERJ) and other aerospace groups. Earlier this year, Russian airliner Aeroflot (AFLT.RTS) signed a major deal to buy 22 Boeing Dreamliners—another sign of Boeing's close ties to the Russian market. Altogether, more than 780 companies from Russia and abroad, including markets as far away as Zimbabwe, are taking part in the six-day International Aviation & Space Show.

Source: http://www.businessweek.com/globalbi...821_086445.htm