Speaking before his cabinet on Friday, Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said, “The world has not yet forgotten World War Two, but Russia already wants to start World War Three.”
The deputy PM in charge of the weapons industry says Russia would remove all ‘sensitive’ production facilities from Ukraine if the association agreement with the EU is signed, and he doesn’t believe Ukraine can count on eventual EU entry anyway.
“We will not be able to place certain sensitive technology [in Ukraine], we will have to completely localize them on Russian Federation territory. This means problems connected with the future cooperation in the aircraft and space industry and many more spheres,” Dmitry Rogozin told reporters.
“One can experiment as long as one wishes by deploying non-nuclear warheads on strategic missile carriers. But one should keep in mind that if there is an attack against us, we will certainly resort to using nuclear weapons in certain situations to defend our territory and state interests,” Rogozin, the defense industry chief said on Wednesday speaking at the State Duma, the lower house.
He pointed out that this principle is enshrined in Russia’s military doctrine. Any aggressor or group of aggressors should be aware of that, he said.
German newspaper Bild wrote this weekend that Russia stationed several Iskander tactical ballistic missile systems – which are capable of carrying nuclear warheads – in its westernmost exclave of Kaliningrad, along the border with Baltic states. The paper said it obtained “secret satellite” images showing at least 10 Russian missiles close to the EU border, which were deployed over the past year.
STUTTGART, Germany — NATO’s largest war game in years, which kicked off in Poland on Saturday, will involve some 6,000 troops at locations spread out across the region over the course of nine days.
ANKARA — While the last of six Patriot anti-missile batteries are deployed in Turkey, ostensibly to protect Turkish airspace from a potential missile strike from neighboring Syria, some officials claim the primary purpose is to protect a radar that would track Iranian missile launches.
The U.S. deployment of Patriot missiles in Turkey began Saturday to help the country defend against any possible threats from neighboring Syria in the throes of a civil war, AFP reported.
[Russia – Syria – Iran] | Ukraine and Eastern Europe | NATO
Syria’s pit fire would seem to have spilled over into Russia’s post-Soviet pseudo-democratic mafia-oligarch relationship with Europe: The Bear wants its buffers back (whether they like it or not).
Call it jockeying for position, political posturing, or whatnot, the world at the edge of history, i.e., the apparently still collapsing Soviet Union and the more just and friendly and expanding European melange of democratic open societies just got a lot more dangerous.
Perhaps from the start with Boris Berezovsky playing kingmaker, Putin had no intention of being the one to turn the lights out on imperialism Soviet-style. The talk has changed, perhaps: the walk? You tell me.
In this dangerous and hideous play, which may be entering a new phase, Syria’s civil war would seem to have signaled the fragility of Soviet-built post-Soviet relationships: what card had the Assad regime to play but its longstanding “thing” between Iran’s theocracy gone mad and Russia’s military-industrial trade complex?
That card has been played, indeed, and the old Syria ruined for hanging on to its yesterday.
Now Ukraine’s a kind of chip and both NATO and Russia would seem to have turned up new cards at the table, not too suddenly though but, still, one’s pushing a radar system behind missile batteries associated with the adverse Syria-Iran relationship and the other has sent out to its borderlands some trucks with missiles on their backs.
Who wants popcorn?
Stove top? Hot air? Or microwave?
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The latest professionally-agitated spectacle in Kyiv’s was spearheaded by the same Soros/Sharp/National Endowment for Democracy/CIA hydra that saw the overthrow of Ukraine’s government in 2004 in the so-called Orange Revolution. This time, not only is Ukrainian President Yanukovych, but ultimately Russian President Vladimir Putin, are the targets…