Russia in the 21st Century [Superthread]

[McG]

The only thing I have seen were denials of health problems as reported by BBC

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-31849925

 

[Retired AF Guy]

Well there have been several announcements on various websites (e.g. debka news) saying that the Kremlin has told journalists not to leave Moscow in anticipation of a major announcement, but nothing from any mainstream agency.

 

[cupper]

Hmmm. Maybe during his investigation of the Nemtsov killing he discovered that it was he who ordered the hit, so he's had himself arrested, and is currently holding himself deep in the bowels of the Lubyanka Prison undergoing a vigorous interrogation being performed by the only man who is fully capable persuading the truth from himself, Himself.  ;D

 

[Retired AF Guy]

The New York Post is reporting that Putin is in Switzerland for the birth of his "love child."

Missing Putin found after ‘birth of love child’

By Geoff Earle

March 13, 2015 | 5:30pm

WASHINGTON — From Russia, with love child. Vladimir Putin hasn’t been seen in public for more than a week — and rampant speculation over the Russian president’s whereabouts took a wild turn on Friday with reports he was in Switzerland for the birth of his secret daughter.

“Es ist ein Madchen!” or “It’s a Girl!” screamed a headline from the Swiss newspaper Blick, which had him in Lugano to witness the arrival of his child with Alina Kabaeva, 31, a retired Olympic gymnast who served in the Russian parliament and now works for a media company.

The paper reported that Putin’s daughter was born at the posh Santa Anna di Sorgeno clinic on the Italian border.

Putin reserved two rooms at the clinic — one for Kabaeva, and one for body guards, Swiss radio channel RSI said, according to the Daily Beast.

Putin himself was staying with friends in the area, the Swiss website Ticino news reported.

Desperate to squash the rumors, the Kremlin released a photo and video Friday of the 62-year old Russian strongman meeting with the head of the Russian Supreme Court.

But there was no way to verify when they were taken, and plenty of reason for suspicion.

On Wednesday, the government issued a picture of a meeting between Putin and the regional governor of Karelia, but the Russian newspaper RBC said the meeting actually took place March 4.

There has been no verified Putin sightings since March 5, when he appeared at a press conference in Moscow with Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi.

Two canceled meetings since then have Kremlin watchers furiously trying to figure out where Putin is and what he’s doing.

Putin has two adult children with his ex-wife, Lyudmila Shkrebneva, and has insisted he has no relationship with the gymnast.

Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov denied the love child stories.

“The information on a baby born to Vladimir Putin is false,” Peskov said. “I am going to ask people who have money to organize a contest on the best media rumor.”

Other speculation about what’s behind Putin’s vanishing act range from health problems to a power struggle in the Kremlin. Peskov’s poetic denials – and the Kremlin’s reputation for obfuscation — did little to tamp down the persistent questions.

At one point, he claimed there was “no need to worry” about Putin’s health because. “His handshake is so strong he breaks hands with it.”

Article link.
More speculation to follow I'm sure.

 

[Good2Golf]

Hmmm....google-fu only show up this person when searching for "ALINA KABAEVA."  I though Vlad prefers riding horses, shirtless?

 

[larry Strong]

Hmmm....google-fu only show up this person when searching for "ALINA KABAEVA."  I though Vlad prefers riding horses, shirtless?

https://www.google.ca/?gws_rd=ssl#q=+Alina+Kabaeva%2C+31


Cheers
Larry

 

[Kirkhill]

Hmmm....google-fu only show up this person when searching for "ALINA KABAEVA."  I though Vlad prefers riding horses, shirtless?

I'm sure you meant to say "bareback".  Right?

 

[a_majoor]

Interesting comparison of Vladimir Putin to the Tyrants of ancient Greece. While like most analogies it fails if pushed too far, it is still an interesting read:

http://www.the-american-interest.com/2015/03/13/the-tyrants-hopelessness/

The Tyrant’s Hopelessness
JAKUB GRYGIEL
The ancients knew: to understand a tyranny, you have to understand the tyrant’s soul.

Tyrants, degenerate kings who ruled according to their own will and not the law, occurred relatively frequently in the history of ancient Greece (with the exception of Sparta) and Rome. They are also the protagonists of tragedies, dialogues, and histories written by classic authors, from Herodotus to Tacitus, from Plato to Cicero. The ancients found the term “tyrant” appropriate as a descriptor for a corrupted form of political regime based on personal rule, as well as a useful analytical tool. They were correct then. More importantly, they are still correct now.

Regrettably, modern language and thought have effectively expunged the word “tyrant” from our lexicon, diminishing our ability to assess many of our enemies. In modern times the simple definition, as mentioned above, is deemed to be unsophisticated. It puts a lot of emphasis on the individual leader, whereas we prefer to seek explanations in large impersonal forces, ranging from contests of ideas and economic systems or the élan of the masses. We are also wary of embracing a “great man” view of history because this assigns responsibility to an individual for political outcomes, and there seems to be a widespread allergy to accountability. (Hence, “mistakes have been made”, rather than “I made a mistake”, is a common talking point for today’s leaders.)

Furthermore, to call a political leader a “tyrant” is to impart a nefarious connotation and to render judgment that a leader is personally responsible for the brutality of his state in its domestic as well as foreign acts. The modern presumption, since perhaps Weber, is that political analysis ought to be pursued not so much sine ira et studio (as Tacitus put it in the first lines of his Annales) but without expressing moral judgments. Calling somebody a tyrant expresses a “value judgment,” and carries a tinge of anger and partiality too. For the well-heeled modern mind, “tyrant” is a slur, not an analytical concept. Hence, we prefer to study the institutional arrangements that may be less than optimal for freedom, to measure the material conditions that impede the exercise of freedom, or to ignore in toto the reality of a tyrant by adopting euphemisms such as “rogue state” or “strongman.”

Another source of the modern skepticism toward the term “tyrant” is the belief that the 20th-century version of dictatorship has been marked by the lethal and unique combination of ideology and science. The modern dictators—Hitler and Stalin come to mind—are essentially deadly managers of ideological dogmas and scientific tools (giving rise to a “dark age, made more sinister, and perhaps more prolonged, by the lights of a perverted science” as Winston Churchill famously said)—racial purity and paganism combined with armored divisions and gas chambers, atheistic materialism prodded by the atom and industrial power. The resulting totalitarian systems were thus more than anything an individual tyrant could erect. They were all-pervasive political systems, and could not sustain themselves by the sheer will of one tyrant.

But there is still an analytical place for tyrants. In fact, many of today’s strongmen—say, Vladimir Putin—resemble more ancient tyrants than modern ones. Ideology and science play less of a role in their hold on power. Today’s tyrants are ideological opportunists—postmodern leaders who shape their “narrative” according to public relations needs. They also face science, or technology, which can strengthen their rule but also has ways of undermining it. Instead, today’s tyrants exercise personal rule through brute force and murder, but also through skillful cooptation of society. They are good pupils of Niccolò Machiavelli, and expend energies to avoid being hated by the majority of their subjects. They are feared, to be sure, but they buy the servility or docility of their populations through economic welfare and propaganda.

Putin’s tyranny, for instance, is built on targeted violence (the recent assassination of Boris Nemtsov is one in a long list), propaganda (the television channel “Russia Today”, the most visible tool abroad, is just one part of a much larger apparatus of disinformation), nationalism (the invention of “Novorossiya” as a distinct Russian land encompassing, of course, the Donbas region is one example) and bribery of Russians (a project that may be more difficult to continue given the fiscal troubles of the regime). It is personal rule, maintained for the personal benefit of the leader. A tyrant is a violent narcissist. And his will trumps all law, positive and natural.

What do ancient writers say about tyranny, then?

A useful ancient text to understand tyrants—and for our purposes, how tyrants may behave in their foreign relations—is a minor work by Xenophon of Athens (430–354 BC). A student of Socrates, he wrote, among many other dialogues, treatises, and histories (notably, the Anabasis), Hiero or Tyrannicus, a brief dialogue between the eponymous tyrant of Syracuse and the poet Simonides. Somewhat forgotten, this short text was brought back to our attention by Leo Strauss, who in 1948 wrote On Tyranny, a commentary that spurred a vibrant debate on Xenophon as well as on the wider subject. While the dialogue revolves around the question of whether tyrants can be happy (the answer is no, not really—in large measure because they must remain dissatisfied hedonists), it also offers a window into the minds of these solitary rulers whose will is the law of the land.

In Xenophon’s description, tyrants have a few particular traits that, by implication, make them behave in unique, distinguishable ways.

The first, and perhaps most striking, characteristic of a tyrant is that he has little hope. As Xenophon writes, “in this pleasure of hope [tyrants] are worse off than private men” (1:18). The subject of the discussion at this point of the dialogue between Hiero and Simonides is the pleasure of food and how the ability to be served with every conceivable delectable deprives the tyrant of the pleasant expectation of something he cannot obtain. But the point is larger: tyrants can get anything they want in great abundance—horses, gold, food, and women—and as a consequence they lack the anticipation of greater delights. Fantastic wealth and absolute power are not the sources of joy but of constant disappointment. What we see of tyrants is their wealth and castles—in Putin’s case, his expensive watches, gold-laden mansions, and bank accounts—but this does not tell us much about them. As Hiero says, this “keeps what is harsh hidden in the tyrants’ soul, where human happiness and unhappiness are stored up…. [T]his escapes the notice of the multitude.” (2: 4-5).

Why does this matter? Who cares if a tyrant is unhappy or, perhaps more crassly, if he is a hedonist unable to enjoy pleasure? The darkness of a tyrant’s soul is no private predicament because it alters his outlook, and hence his behavior. The inability to hope leads to a lack of appreciation of the future. The expectation of a better tomorrow—in terms of more scrumptious food or a more just and peaceful political environment—can create incentives to moderate one’s behavior in the present as a means of achieving goals. Or to be more precise, it makes personal sacrifices possible: one works hard to build something for tomorrow, or saves money to acquire a possession later on. A tyrant lacks this sense, according to Hiero’s argument; his is a barren soul, incapable of understanding the benefits of personal sacrifice.

The result is not inaction or peace. On the contrary, a hopeless tyrant is “insolent” and lives off constant and destructive plunder. The poet Simonides understands the tyrant when he explains that “it is inbred in some human beings, just as in horses, to be insolent in proportion as the needs they have are more fully satisfied” (10:1). Aristotle went even further, writing that “the greatest crimes are caused by excess and not by necessity. Men do not become tyrants in order that they may not suffer cold” (Aristotle, Politics, Book II, Part 7). Xenophon, through Hiero, admits that “tyrants are compelled most of the time to plunder unjustly both temples and human beings, because they always need additional money to meet their necessary expenses. For, as if there were a perpetual war on, [tyrants] are compelled to support an army or perish.” (4:11) Incapable of hope, living in fear of losing what he has, the tyrant is constantly preying on his own subjects but also on subjects of neighboring states.

Another source of a tyrant’s myopia is implied in the above description. Tyrants are perennially insecure. Their lives are ruled by the desire—and the need—to hold on to power, a preoccupation that is always immediate.

Xenophon describes the fear with which tyrants must travel. They all “proceed everywhere as through hostile territory” (2:8). All men tend to experience risks in foreign territory, but only tyrants “know that when they reach their own city they are then in the midst of the largest number of their enemies.”(2:9). A tyrant is therefore a “soul distracted by fears” (6:5), who believes he sees “enemies not only in front of [him], but on every side” (6:8). Euripides also observes in a fragment of a lost tragedy that the “tyrant must ruin his friends and put them to death; he lives in very great fear that they will do him harm.” The tyrant’s life is constantly at risk: there may be no tomorrow if today the tyrant stops increasing his domination of others, acquiring greater wealth, accumulating more power, and consequently plundering ever more. Xenophon again: “Their largest and most necessary expenses go to guard their lives” (4:9).

For the tyrant, the future is irrelevant because the present is perennially at risk. Or, another way of putting this is that the tyrant is a narcissist whose only preoccupation is his own wellbeing and survival. The future is circumscribed to his own personal survival, no matter what the costs may be.

A tyrant is a shark who perishes when he stops swimming, as George Weigel comments on Putin; the tyrant dies (or rather, is killed because few retire peacefully) when he stops dominating others.

Two immediate consequences, relevant for how we assess the strategic interactions with today’s tyrants such as Putin, stem from this ancient wisdom.

First, threatening a tyrant with future costs is ineffective. In War and Human Nature, Harvard professor Stephen Rosen observes, “Tyrannies have shorter time horizons within which strategic costs and benefits are calculated. Specifically, tyrannies [are] prone to be strongly affected by incentives and disincentives that appear near in time to the moment of choice.” What speaks to a tyrant is costs or pain that can be imposed here and now; tomorrow is less relevant. In practical terms, this may mean that imposing economic sanctions on a tyrant is less effective because the costs of such punishment will become a reality slowly, at some future point. As such, sanctions are less likely to alter a tyrant’s behavior today or in the immediate future.

Second, tyrants do not understand the concept of peace. The tyrant of Syracuse, Hiero, explains to the poet Simonides that “for private men, relief from war is brought about both by treaties and by peace. Whereas for tyrants peace is never made with those subject to their tyranny; nor could the tyrant be confident trusting for a moment to a treaty.” (2:11) The constant, perennial war that the tyrant himself is causing means that even when he has killed the enemy he feared, he cannot rest and be glad (2:18). In brief, one would be foolish to trust a treaty or ceasefire or even a “peace” with a tyrant. He is inherently incapable of respecting it.

 

[a_majoor]

Unbelievably, we are still not ready for prime time against Russian "Hybrid Warfare", despite seeing it in action in Georgia in 2008, Crimea and Ukraine starting in 2014 and watching "shaping" operations even now:

http://www.the-american-interest.com/2015/03/16/hard-power-gestures-from-russia-and-the-west/

Hard Power Gestures from Russia and the West

After reappearing triumphantly following a mysterious absence, Vladimir Putin ordered a massive military drill during which personnel will be on high alert. Bloomberg News reports:


Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered troops placed on full combat readiness in snap drills in western Russia, as Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu warned the country was facing new threats to its security.

Some 38,000 troops, 41 warships, 15 submarines and 110 aircraft are involved in the exercises, Shoigu said on Monday, according to a Russian Defense Ministry statement. “New challenges and threats to military security demand a further increase in the military capabilities of the armed forces,” Shoigu said, the Interfax news service reported.

According to Russian state media, the drills are a response to Western and specifically NATO exercises encroaching on Russia’s breathing room. CNN reports on the strongest of these hard power gestures:


The U.S. Army says it will soon be sending armored Stryker vehicles on a 1,100-mile convoy through six European countries to show solidarity to allies in the wake of recent Russian actions in the Ukraine and Crimea that have Eastern Europe on edge.

The move was first reported Thursday in the military newspaper Stars and Stripes. U.S. Army Europe posted the Stripes story on its website on Friday.

The convoy is “a highly visible demonstration of U.S, commitment to its NATO allies and demonstrating NATO’s ability to move military forces freely across allied borders in close cooperation,” U.S. Army Europe spokesman Lt. Col. Craig Childs, said in a statement, according to the Stripes report.

The troops and vehicles involved will be moving from training exercises conducted as part of Operation Atlantic Resolve in Estonia, Lithuania and Poland, the report said. They’ll move through Latvia and the Czech Republic as they make their way to Vilseck, Germany, about a 40 miles drive from the Czech border.

NATO’s very visible renewed efforts in eastern Europe are a nice gesture to soothe the nerves of rattled allies, but physical presence alone is unlikely to prove terribly effective against Russia’s hybrid war doctrine. The odds that Russia would roll a tank battalion into sovereign territory are much lower than a seemingly ‘organic’ uprising of ethnically Russian citizens taking place somwhere like Estonia or Latvia (where Russians represent as much as a quarter of the population). Above all, Russia’s hybrid war gambit demands that it maintain plausible deniability about its involvement, all while creating a situation beyond the West’s will or ability to repair.

The ugly truth is that hard power alone may not deter Putin (nor, unfortunately, any of his likely successors) from trying to rattle the cage. NATO currently lacks its own doctrine for dealing with what on the surface may look like a popular uprising in a member country—short of invasion, what is the threshold for invoking Article V? Hybrid warfare is ultimately a shadow struggle led by intelligence agencies, a struggle in which a conventional military alliance can be easily wrong-footed by a nimbler foe. We may well not see it discussed with the press, but we hope that Western planners are well aware of the imbalance facing NATO and are doing their utmost to compensate however they best can.

 

[Good2Golf]

Is not the West engaging in a type of hybrid warfare with Russia on the economic front?  The country sliding towards a full-on recession may significantly impact Russia's ability to continue imposing its will on the region.  Did I misread my von Clausewitz?

Regards
G2G

 

[a_majoor]

Is not the West engaging in a type of hybrid warfare with Russia on the economic front?  The country sliding towards a full-on recession may significantly impact Russia's ability to continue imposing its will on the region.  Did I misread my von Clausewitz?

Regards
G2G

Given that the main driver of the economic warfare project seems to be Saudi Arabia (which has its own reasons to cripple Russia, particularly the support Russia gives Iran and its proxy, Syria), and *we* have been generally slow and irresolute (and not even consistent) in our use of the economic sanction weapon, as well as being pretty much outclassed on the information warfare front,  I'd say that generally we have been more lucky and opportunistic in our ability to react to the crisis in Ukraine, and certainly haven't demonstrated the ability to counter or supress the "shaping" activities in the Baltic Republics and elsewhere. If (for example) the ethnic Russian population of Latvia "spontaniously" demands Russian protection, we will be totally flat footed.

 

[tomahawk6]

How Russia went from Democracy to one man rule - again !!

 

[MilEME09]

How Russia went from Democracy to one man rule - again !!

The key was he was so popular most didn't care, and his information control is top notch so Russians believe anything state media tell them, or atleast most do

 

[Good2Golf]

Given that the main driver of the economic warfare project seems to be Saudi Arabia (which has its own reasons to cripple Russia, particularly the support Russia gives Iran and its proxy, Syria), and *we* have been generally slow and irresolute (and not even consistent) in our use of the economic sanction weapon, as well as being pretty much outclassed on the information warfare front,  I'd say that generally we have been more lucky and opportunistic in our ability to react to the crisis in Ukraine, and certainly haven't demonstrated the ability to counter or supress the "shaping" activities in the Baltic Republics and elsewhere. If (for example) the ethnic Russian population of Latvia "spontaniously" demands Russian protection, we will be totally flat footed.

I was refering less on petro-related efforts, on which I agree with your assessment on the maint target being KSA, vice RUS, and more on the sanctions impost on Putin's 22 cronies comprising the senior level of the RUS kleptocracy. 

I do agree with you, however, on the poor performance rating I would give the West regarding more directly shaping a response to the RUS use of force in the region.

Regards,
G2G

 

[Robert0288]

The key was he was so popular most didn't care, and his information control is top notch so Russians believe anything state media tell them, or atleast most do

Unfortunately, western news has gotten so bad many people here see Russian news as news rather than an extension of the Russian government and a key piece of their propaganda machine.

 

[a_majoor]

The Baltic Republics are pretty open and vocal about preparing to resist the "Hybrid Warfare" strategy of the Russians. While being forewarned and forearmed, the Balts only have a tiny pool of manpower and are not economically strong enough to stay mobilized for prolonged periods, so the next few years are going to be difficult for them.

http://www.defensenews.com/story/defense/international/europe/2015/03/18/nato-allies-brace-for-russias-hybrid-warfare/24979545/

NATO Allies Brace for Russia's 'Hybrid Warfare'
Agence France-Presse 5:40 p.m. EDT March 18, 2015

RIGA, Latvia — NATO allies are scrambling to protect vulnerable Baltic partners from the threat of hybrid warfare, a Russian tactic that officials and experts say is based on deception rather than formal declaration of war.

Russian President Vladimir Putin's use of anonymous "little green men" to slice Crimea away from Ukraine last year sent alarm bells ringing throughout the three small Baltic NATO and EU members.

They endured decades of Soviet occupation after the Red Army rolled in during World War II. While a full-scale invasion is improbable now, hybrid meddling and destabilization tactics designed to test NATO's commitment to collective defense are not.

Putin's brand of hybrid warfare also relies on "misinformation, bribery, economic pressure," which are designed to "undermine the nation," according to Latvian Defence Minister Raimonds Vejonis.

Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite did not mince her words when she said: "The first stage of confrontation is taking place — I mean informational war, propaganda and cyber attacks. So we are already under attack."

Trojan Horse

According to James Sherr of Britain's Chatham House think-tank, hybrid warfare is "designed to cripple a state before that state even realizes the conflict has begun.

"It's a model of warfare designed to slip under NATO's threshold of perception and reaction."

NATO Deputy Secretary General Alexander Vershbow has called it a modern example of the ancient Trojan Horse tactic.

NATO is "looking at how we prepare for, deter, and — if required — defend against hybrid threats," the former US ambassador to Moscow said recently at a security conference in the Latvian capital Riga.

Not to be caught off guard amid an increased Russian military presence in the Baltic, alliance members have mounted a series of troop rotations into the region.

The United States also deployed a cargo ship full of heavy armor there this month, including helicopters and tanks for exercises dubbed Atlantic Resolve.

NATO will boost defenses on Europe's eastern flank with a spearhead force of 5,000 troops and command centers in six formerly communist members of the alliance: the Baltic states and Bulgaria, Poland and Romania.

Lithuania revived its pre-WWII Riflemen's Union to help deter the threat of both conventional and hybrid warfare.

The citizens' militia boasts over 8,000 members in the nation of three million people, a number almost on par with its 8,000 military personnel and 4,500 reservists.

'Media Weaponization'

With roughly a quarter of the populations of Estonia and Latvia being ethnic Russian, some argue that Moscow's huge TV, radio and Internet presence is part of a hybrid battle for Baltic hearts and minds.

Putin justified his Crimea takeover by insisting that Moscow was coming to the defense of ethnic Russians in the territory, sparking concern here that Russia could deploy a similar policy.

According to Riga journalist Olga Dragileva, a hybrid media war aimed at sowing "dissatisfaction and illusions" among ethnic-Russian Latvians is in full swing in the eurozone member, which is still recovering from a crippling 2008-9 recession sparked by the global financial crisis.

It amounts to "the weaponization of social media," according to Janis Karklins, director of NATO's Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence.

Based in Riga, the center works to analyze the official Russian political narrative and suggest responses.

Karklins warns the solution does not lie in creating counter-propaganda: "The old recipes are not effective any longer."

He proposes instead "to develop skills of media information literacy and critical thinking in our education system to make it harder for adversaries to disorient the population."

EU leaders are expected to agree at a summit this week to set up a special media unit to counter what the bloc sees as a skilful Russian propaganda campaign during the Ukraine crisis.

Hybrid Response

Many here believe neighboring Estonia had a foretaste of hybrid war in 2007 when the nation of 1.3 million suffered a blistering cyber attack against official state and bank websites.

The assault was widely blamed on Russian hackers, although the Kremlin denied involvement.

As in hybrid warfare, aggressors in cyberwarfare are often hard to identify and hence may not fear immediate and targeted retaliation — a key plank of conventional warfare.

Tallinn, home to NATO's cyber defence center, is also demanding Moscow release Eston Kohver, an Estonian police officer it claims was snatched at gunpoint by Russian operatives last September from inside Estonia.

Moscow insists Kohver was engaged in a clandestine operation in Russia and has charged him with espionage.

To counter similar murky scenarios, Vershbow says the alliance must develop hybrid responses able to "deploy the right forces to the right place at the right time."

 

[a_majoor]

And on a different topic, the US has inadvertently shot itself in the foot twice: becomong dependent on foreign technology coming from a non allied state, and not having any "plan B" if the supply was cut off. Of course ULA could buy rocket motors directly from SpaceX which is vertically integrated and has no subcontractors in the usual sense. SpaceX plans to ramp up rocket engine production for their own expanding slate of launches (each Falcon uses 9 rockets on the first stage and a slightly modified version of the same motor for the second stage, the Falcon 9 Heavy uses 3 first stages ganged together for 27 motors), so making extra motors for ULA will not tax them too much (besides the obvious irony of supplying their own competitor):

http://www.defensenews.com/story/defense/air-space/space/2015/03/18/hasc-looking-to-alter-rd180-restriction/24977293/

HASC Looking to Alter RD-180 Restriction
by Aaron Mehta 10:27 p.m. EDT March 18, 2015

WASHINGTON — There is a growing sense on the Hill that language designed to limit the procurement of Russian engines for military space launches needs to be altered to avoid unexpected fallout.

Both Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee Strategic Forces Subcommittee, and the panel's ranking member Rep. Jim Cooper, D-Tenn., indicated a belief that section 1608 of last year's National Defense Authorization Act needs to be re-opened and cleaned up to ensure the United Launch Alliance (ULA) can use its full lot of purchased RD-180 engines.

In a marathon double-hearing, Roger's committee questioned, first, SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell and ULA head Tory Bruno, and then Pentagon representatives, about whether the language, which restricted the use of RD-180 engines on the Atlas V launch vehicle to those that were purchased before the February invasion of Ukraine, was being properly interpreted.

The situation Congress is dealing with is complicated, to put it lightly. The Hill passed 1608 with the intention of allowing ULA to use 14 engines it was already on contract for before the Russian invasion. However, Pentagon lawyers have apparently concluded that the language, as written, allows ULA to use only five of those 14.

At the same time, ULA has decided it will close down its Delta IV medium launch vehicle line by 2018, leaving it just with the Atlas V and the Delta Heavy, used only every few years for specialized missions. Without the extra RD-180 engines, ULA says, it will run out of the ability to compete for competitive launches after 2019.

That would leave SpaceX's Falcon 9 – which members of Congress, SpaceX executives and US Air Force officials alike continue to say will be certified by June – as the only military space launch option for the Air Force. Meanwhile, costs for the Delta IV Heavy would increase, potentially to as high as $1 billion per launch, Bruno said.

The reverse-monopoly is an idea ULA, which SpaceX been hammering on for being a monopoly during the last decade, has taken great pains to point out. So did Rogers, who tried hard to get Shotwell to use the "monopoly" word when describing that situation before eventually giving up and using it himself.

"You would have a monopoly, is where I'm going with this, and I just want you to acknowledge it," Rogers said after a back and forth with Shotwell. "You would have a monopoly on that work."

Rogers and Cooper alike made it clear they were sympathetic to the need for ULA to have access to those extra engines.

"We're going to try and statutorily clarify that it was our congressional intent that those 14 engines be used," Rogers said. "That will require both the House and Senate to concur on that but that's what we're going to try and clear up."

Speaking to Defense News, Cooper said "the Congress made a mistake" with its language.

"It was a drafting error and we need a technical correction to fix that," Cooper said. "I thought that should be made more explicit."

While the subcommittee's leadership might be in agreement, not everyone on the Hill is. Rogers noted that Sen. John McCain, the Arizona Republican who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, seems to disagree with that interpretation.

"We're helping him understand the national security implications of that," Rogers added. "Hopefully it results in what is not a problematic remedy, but I've been in congress 13 years. Nothing is easy."

Asked about the RD-180 issue on March 16, Rep. Mac Thornberry, chair of the House Armed Services Committee, said he wants to "understand much more clearly why they don't think that we can have an American engine." (interpolation: besides SpaceX, no current American company seems to have a suitable rocket motor in production or advanced development)

I would say the anxieties about being dependent on a Russian engine have only grown as we've seen what the aggression of Russia in a variety of spheres," he added. "So is this a question of dollars? Is it technology? Is it bureaucracy? What's the issue here? That's what we would need to understand better in order to answer that question."

In the meantime, the Air Force is trying to sort through its options. Bill LaPlante, the service's acquisition head, said the Pentagon lawyers' reading of the law is "quite restrictive."

If that's the intent of the Congress, we can do that," LaPlante said after the hearing. "The top legal experts in the department are reading it that way. If that wasn't their intent, [Congress] can change the language and we certainly will adhere to it."

 

[a_majoor]

Putin signals Russia will stay the course. I suspect he is counting on the irresolution of Western leaders (where is the ghost of Winston Churchill?) and the internal friction of multi player alliances to reduce the pressure on Russia so long as Russia stays resolute. The Russian game plan is to wait out the sanctions and oil war (although Saudi Arabia probably has a few thoughts on that matter). The western inability to seemingly sustain attention or effort over the long term will cost us pretty badly, I suspect:

http://www.ctvnews.ca/world/russia-won-t-bend-down-in-standoff-with-west-putin-says-1.2298317

Russia won't 'bend down' in standoff with West, Putin says

Vladimir Isachenkov, The Associated Press
Published Thursday, March 26, 2015 10:05AM EDT
Last Updated Thursday, March 26, 2015 12:38PM EDT


MOSCOW -- President Vladimir Putin voiced confidence that Russia will come out as a winner in its standoff with the West if it firmly stays its ground.

Speaking Thursday before senior officials of the Federal Security Service, the main successor to the KGB agency, Putin said "the situation around our country will change for the better, but not because we will make concessions, bend down or trifle with someone."

"It will change for the better only if we become stronger," he said.

The Russian leader accused the West of using "attempts at political isolation, economic pressure, large-scale information war and instruments of special services" to weaken Russia.

He named the deployment of NATO's forces near Russian borders, the development of the alliance's U.S.-led missile defence program, and a U.S. program of developing high-precision long-range conventional weapons among the top threats.

"No one has succeeded in scaring our country or pressuring it and no one will," he added.

Russia's relations with the West have plunged to the lowest point since the Cold War over the Ukrainian crisis. The United States and the European Union have slapped painful economic sanctions against Russia over its annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula and support for insurgents in eastern Ukraine.

Putin, a KGB veteran, praised the agency, known under its Russian acronym FSB, for its efforts to catch foreign spies, saying it exposed 52 foreign intelligence officers and 290 of their agents last year alone.

He added that a top priority for the FSB now should be tracking Russian citizens who have left to fight alongside the Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria.

"Later they could be used against us, against Russia and its neighbours," Putin said. "So it's important to take additional measures to cut international links and resource base of the terrorists, block avenues for their entry and exit from Russia."

 

[a_majoor]

Rusian oligarchs bailing as the economy tanks. The economic stats in this article are looking pretty grim as well:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/11482991/Russias-oligarchs-head-for-London-as-rouble-collapses.html

Russia’s oligarchs head for London as rouble collapses

Some of Russia's wealthiest individuals are looking to leave the country for London and Switzerland as the economy faces a sharp recession
By Peter Spence, Economics Correspondent

6:00AM BST 29 Mar 2015

Russia’s richest and most powerful are set to leave in droves, seeking to avoid a tax squeeze and the fallout from the country's economic crisis.

The majority of oligarchs interviewed for a new report on Russian have said that they are likely to leave the country in the next few years. Of the 30 Russian nationals included in a study by Campden Wealth, in partnership with UBS, more than half said that there were likely to move abroad, although not imminently.


Of those living in Russia, more than one in four said they had plans to leave within five years. Participants in the Campden study jointly control $2.5bn (£1.7bn) of personal wealth, and businesses with turnover of $6.5bn last year.


One Russian national interviewed by Campden said: “Russians, if they haven’t done so already, are considering relocation out of Russia. Clearly London is a key jurisdiction of choice.”


New rules introduced at the start of the year have meant that foreign business owned by Russians are now subject to Russian taxes, putting the squeeze on the wealthiest in a country where just 111 individuals control nearly a fifth of all household wealth.

Only businesses domiciled in countries with taxes 75pc lower than the Russian rate are affected. As a result, business interests in Cyprus are affected, while those in the UK are not.

Data showed a 69pc increase in Russian applications for UK investor visas in the first nine months of 2014, compared to 2013. Last November, the minimum investments for such visas was doubled to £2m.

Along with the tax changes, collapsing forecasts for economic growth and rocketing inflation rates have made Russia a less attractive place to do business. Andrew Porter, director of research at Campden Wealth, said: “Many of the wealth holders we spoke with expect that the economic conditions will, if not worsen, stay as bad.”

The Central Bank of Russia has estimated that GDP will fall by as much as 4pc this year, a product of falling oil prices and ongoing conflict in Ukraine. At the same time, inflation soared to 16.7pc in the year to March 10.

As fears of an even deeper slump have mounted, oligarchs have become more conservative in an attempt to preserve their wealth. The number who said they were pursuing preservation strategies has more than quadrupled from two years ago to 23pc, according to Campden.

A businessman from Nizhny Novgorod said: “Business owners are now more likely to adopt a more conservative approach to investing … because of the economic situation.”

Yet despite the gloomier landscape, some oligarchs surveyed by Campden Wealth believed that the downturn offered money making opportunities.

Peter O’Flynn, a co-author of the report, said: “Wealth holders seeking security invest in Europe, Russians deeply committed to gains invest in Russia.”



The rouble’s swift depreciation, losing more than 45pc of its value against the dollar since the start of 2014, may result in an M&A spree. On average, the oligarchs profiled in the report have segregated 48pc of their wealth from their business assets, and said they intended to segregate more of their personal wealth over the next 12 months.

Much of this personal wealth is held in foreign currencies, meaning that snapping up Russian firms is now easier. Russians are now looking to pick up bargains as the economic climate has reduced the valuations of potential targets. As such, most respondents said that they planned to invest more in Russia than abroad.

Russian entrepreneurs maintain a higher risk appetite than their western European peers. About half of participants’ private portfolios are made up of cash and real estate.

For some, sanctions over Ukraine have created business opportunities. As imports have been blocked, food prices have soared and presented investment opportunities in the agricultural sector.

 

[CougarKing]

How can long can they sustain this with the current economic sanctions and the effects of the sinking price of oil?

International Business Times

Russia Working To Make Military Invincible, Says Rearmament Of Nuclear Forces Top Priority
By  Kukil Bora @KukilBora on January 31 2015 1:42 AM EST

Russia’s Defense Ministry announced Friday that the government will work for the reinforcement of the country’s military, with more focus on the rearmament of nuclear deterrence forces, so that the Western powers cannot outclass Russia in military capabilities.

Citing Russian President Vladimir Putin’s comment in December about furthering the development of the country’s armed forces, Defense Ministry Sergey Shoigu said that Russia is not interested in an arms race, but it is ready to ensure defense capacity in the current military and political situation. Tensions between Russia and the West have significantly increased over the past few months due to the conflict in the eastern Ukraine. Some observers even foresee the possibility of a military confrontation between Moscow and the West.

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