Russia in the 21st Century [Superthread]

[Kirkhill]

More, in a similar vein, from The Spectator.

Putin's dangerous games in the Baltic

Is the Russian president really crazy enough to launch a new wave of invasions, or is it all a clever bluff?
Paul Wood

22 October 2016
9:00 AM

The old KGB headquarters in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, is a sinister place, full of ghosts. It is a solid 19th-century neoclassical building with walls thick enough to have muffled the screams of those under interrogation. The cells in the basement are as cold and damp as they were in Soviet times and there are stone steps down to an airless, claustrophobic chamber where prisoners were executed, a thousand of them, the wall still pock-marked with bullet holes. You can imagine people hurrying by on the other side of the road in the old days, not daring to look up at the pale grey façade, knowing what took place behind it.

The building now houses Lithuania’s Museum of Genocide Victims, a monument to the one third of the country’s population killed or deported to Siberia during the-Soviet occupation. Lithuanian army recruits are taken there just as Israeli conscripts make a ritual visit to the Holocaust-museum near Jerusalem. ‘We feel the same,’ said my friend, a senior officer in the Lithuanian army, who was showing me round. ‘Never again… We will not repeat the mistakes we made when we allowed Lithuania to be occupied by the Soviet Union without one shot fired. It took an enormous effort for the freedom fighters after the second world war to resist and take that shame away.’

Russian tanks rolling into the Baltic states — Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania — once again? It seems a mad idea, but Lithuania thinks it real enough to have reinstated conscription. This is more than just Baltic alarm: Sweden signed a defence pact with the United States in June, and Finland is-trying to do the same. A recent Norwegian television drama imagined the country under Russian occupation. Meanwhile, in real life, Russia has formed three new motorised rifle divisions, with more than 30,000 troops, many of them to be sent close to the Baltics. And short-range missiles that can carry nuclear bombs have been delivered to Kaliningrad, the neighbouring Russian enclave.

Lithuania’s President, Dalia Grybaus-kaite, called the missiles’ deployment an ‘open demonstration of power and aggression against not [just] the Baltic states but against European capitals.’ The Russian military said it was only an exercise. My friend, the Lithuanian army officer, said: ‘We constantly see Russian forces on exercises close to the border. Most of these activities are offensive in nature: paratroopers conducting airborne assaults, marines in landing operations. When it’s combined with aggressive political rhetoric, we take this threat very seriously.’

A retired British general, Richard Shir-reff, believes that the Russians might well be coming. A former Nato deputy commander, he has written a future history novel called 2017: War with Russia. In it, Russia invades the Baltics then paralyses Nato by threatening to use nuclear weapons. The general’s view, shared by many serving-officers, is that complacent politicians have cut too much from defence and Nato countries need to rearm in order to deter Russia. ‘At all costs, we must avoid a miscalculation that could lead to the sort of scenario I outline in the book,’ he said. ‘Unless the risk of doing so is sufficiently high, the Russians might do it. They could bite off the Baltic states in pretty short order.’

A Russian invasion of Estonia and-Latvia would be complete in as little as 36 hours, according to a study by the Rand Corporation for the Pentagon. Russian tanks would be rumbling through Tallinn and Riga before Nato could so much as convene an emergency meeting to invoke Article 5 of its charter for mutual defence. The Rand study showed that it would take more than a week for Nato to get its tanks to the Baltics from Germany in response. By then it would all be over.So Nato has decided to send four battalions of troops to the Baltics, including one from Britain — exactly the kind of reinforcement that General Shirreff wants. The Baltic states have welcomed this.

One of the saddest exhibits in the KGB museum in Vilnius shows the long and ultimately doomed war ‘in the forest’ against the Soviet occupation. The partisans managed to smuggle a messenger through the Iron Curtain to the West, a difficult and dangerous journey, only for him to return two years later with the devastating news that no help would be coming. General Shirreff thinks that history might repeat itself.

‘If Putin did move into the Baltic states, that is probably the end of Nato,’ he said. ‘How certain are we that the alliance-really would invoke Article 5? The defence of Europe has depended on the certainty that America would come to the aid of a Nato member if attacked. But Germany? France? Italy? The UK? To recapture the Baltics would take massive military force, the like of which we haven’t seen since Overlord or Desert Storm. It’s difficult to see how Nato could summon the will or the capability.’

James Carden, a former adviser to a US presidential commission on Russia, agrees. ‘We have a habit of leading on these people who are along the periphery of Russia. Do the Baltics really think that we’ll get into a nuclear exchange if Russia runs over their borders? We won’t. We’re not going to go to war for them. De Gaulle knew this as far back as the 1960s, that the US would not trade New York for Paris in a-nuclear war.’ But he doubted that Russia really-wanted the Baltics back: it was just sending a-message to the West.

Certainly, the Russian military described the new motorised rifle divisions and the missiles in Kaliningrad as a response to Nato exercises on the border. To the West, Russia illegally annexed Crimea and tried to do the same to eastern Ukraine. But to-Russia, the West has recklessly ignored understandings about Ukraine’s neutrality by trying to bring it into Nato and the EU. Nato is already — symbolically — as close to the Russian-motherland as the Wehrmacht got in the second world war. Things look very different from Moscow. ‘We look the aggressors to Russia. Maybe their paranoia is understandable.’

If an invasion of the Baltics came, it would probably not start with tanks but with well-trained thugs stirring up trouble in Estonia’s Russian-speaking northeast.

This is all-shadow boxing, so far, a phoney war. So much depends on the personality of Vladimir Putin. ‘He’s a great tactician,’ said Professor Karen Dawisha, author of a book on Putin. ‘He’s a terrible strategist, as we can see from where Russia has fallen… He has been a huge failure in promoting Russia’s long-term interests but he has the capability to take us from one crisis to another.’

Putin knows perfectly well that going to war with the West — in Syria or the-Baltics — would be a disaster. ‘So he’ll want to-prevent that and one of the ways he prevents it is by convincing us all — and we are all convinced — that he’s slightly crazy.’

Putin, then, may have adopted Richard Nixon’s ‘madman theory’ — the attempt to scare a potential enemy into thinking you might just go to war, might even drop the big one, if pushed. Others in the Russian federation are playing their part — it sometimes seems as if the whole country has been gripped by world war three hysteria. The state-controlled TV channel NTV took its cameras into a nuclear bunker, telling-viewers: ‘Everyone should know where the nearest bomb shelter is.’ The chairman of the Duma’s defence committee even appeared on television in his old uniform as commander of the country’s airborne troops and promised to fly to the US on a military-transport plane if ordered to by President Putin. ‘We need to stop apologising to the Westerners,’ he said.

The very fact that people are talking seriously about an invasion of the Baltics may be evidence that Putin’s tactics are working. But it is a terrifying gamble. ‘Russia can win big but it can also lose big,’ said the Russian newspaper Moskovskij Komsomolets, speaking of the looming confrontation between the West and Russia in Syria.

Actual madman or just a convincing impression? We may not be able to tell the difference until it’s too late.

Paul Wood is a BBC foreign correspondent and fellow of the New America foundation in Washington.

http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/10/putins-dangerous-games-in-the-baltic/

 

[Kirkhill]

But, here is the reality of Russia's power.

The reason she went through the Channel.  It is easier for her tug to get her to shore.

 

[a_majoor]

The playing out of Russian "Hybrid Warfare" doctrine in Georgia. This is going on in several nations that border on Russia:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/24/world/europe/in-russias-frozen-zone-a-creeping-border-with-georgia.html?_r=0

In Russia’s ‘Frozen Zone,’ a Creeping Border With Georgia
By ANDREW HIGGINSOCT. 23, 2016

JARIASHENI, Georgia — Marked in places with barbed wire laid at night, in others by the sudden appearance of green signs declaring the start of a “state border” and elsewhere by the arrival of bulldozers, the reach of Russia keeps inching forward into Georgia with ever more ingenious markings of a frontier that only Russia and three other states recognize as real.

But while dismissed by most of the world as a make-believe border, the dirt track now running through this tiny Georgian village nonetheless means that Vephivia Tatiashvili can no longer go to his three-story house because it sits on land now patrolled by Russian border guards.

That track marks the world’s newest and perhaps oddest international frontier — the elastic boundary between Georgian-controlled land and the Republic of South Ossetia, a self-proclaimed breakaway state financed, defended and controlled by Moscow.

Mr. Tatiashvili’s troubles started early in the summer when earth-moving equipment turned up without warning and started digging a wide track through an apple orchard and a field of wildflowers on the edge of the village. He was out at the time, so he avoided being trapped.

There is no fence or barbed wire, but Mr. Tatiashvili does not dare to cross the track to visit his house for fear of being arrested, as his elderly neighbor was, by Russian border guards.

“It is too dangerous for me to go home,” he said, complaining that the boundary has become so mobile that nobody really knows its final destination. Mr. Tatiashvili now lives in his brother’s house, away from the border in the village center.

The destitute mountainous area of South Ossetia first declared itself independent from Georgia in 1990, but nobody outside the region paid much attention until Russia invaded in August 2008 and recognized South Ossetia’s claims to statehood. With that, the territory joined Abkhazia in western Georgia, the Moldovan enclave of Transnistria and eastern Ukraine as a “frozen zone,” an area of Russian control within neighboring states, useful for things like preventing a NATO foothold or destabilizing the host country at opportune moments.

The leader of South Ossetia, Leonid Tibilov, has said he plans to hold a referendum like the one in Crimea in 2014 on whether to request annexation by Russia.

But even without a referendum, the nominally independent country is already Russian territory in all but name. It has its own small security force, but its self-declared frontiers are mainly guarded by Russia’s border service, an arm of the Federal Security Service, the post-Soviet version of the K.G.B. It houses three Russian military bases with several thousand troops and, with no economy beyond a few farms, depends almost entirely on Russian aid for its survival.

The green border signs that first appeared last year and now keep popping up along the zigzagging boundary warn that “passage is forbidden” across what is declared to be a “state border.” Which state, however, is not specified, though locals are in no doubt about its identity.

“Russia starts right here,” Mr. Tatiashvili said, pointing to the freshly dug track that separates his house from Georgian-held land.

“But who knows where Russia will start tomorrow or the next day,” he said. “If they keep moving the line, we will one day all be living in a Russian-Georgian Federation.”

One of the new signs — written in English and Georgian — is just a few hundred yards from Georgia’s main east-west highway, and it puts a short part of an oil pipeline from Azerbaijan to a Georgian port on the Black Sea within territory controlled by Russia.

So tangled is the dispute over what land belongs to whom that each side has its own definition of the line. Russia and South Ossetia insist it is a border like any other — Venezuela, Nicaragua and Nauru also recognize it — while Georgia calls it “the occupation line.” The European Union, which has around 200 unarmed police officers in Georgia to monitor the agreement that ended the 2008 Russian-Georgian war, also says there is no actual border, only an “administrative boundary line.”

Kestutis Jankauskas, the head of the European Union Monitoring Mission in Georgia, said it was hard to know where this boundary line exactly runs. It was never recognized or agreed upon, and its location depends on which maps are used. Russia, he said, is using a map drawn by the Soviet military’s general staff in the 1980s.

It demarcates what in the Soviet era was an inconsequential administrative boundary within the Soviet Socialist Republic of Georgia but what is now hardening into a hazardous frontier.

The fitful movement of the boundary seems to be driven mostly by Russia’s desire to align what it sees as a state border with this old Soviet map. So far, the movement has always been forward, often by just a few yards but at other times by bigger leaps.

Because the line is so uncertain and, in many places, still completely unmarked, Georgian villagers sometimes find themselves on the wrong side and under arrest by Russian border guards or local security officers.

To help get people out of detention, recover cattle that have strayed into Russian-controlled land and settle quotidian disputes like who owns which apple trees or vineyard, Europe’s monitoring mission organizes a monthly meeting of Georgian, Russian and South Ossetian officials.

As happened when the two pro-Russian regions of eastern Ukraine declared themselves independent states in 2014 and said they would like to be absorbed by Russia, President Vladimir V. Putin has mostly feigned ignorance of what his country’s surrogates are up to in Georgia.

Asked in April about South Ossetia’s plans to hold a referendum on joining Russia, Mr. Putin suggested that Moscow was mostly a bystander. But if South Ossetia wants to hold a referendum, Mr. Putin said, “we cannot resist it.”

While Russian military, border and diplomatic personnel have poured into South Ossetia, the local population of Ossetians — an ethnic group whose language is distantly related to Persian — has steadily drifted away, shrinking by around half from a prewar level of roughly 70,000. An ethnic Georgian population of around 25,000 that used to live there has long since fled.

Like Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territory, the border markings deep into what Georgia insists is its territory are slowly creating “facts on the ground” that, no matter what the international community might think, are a reality that everyone has to deal with, particularly residents.

Elizbar Mestumrishvili, 75, a farmer who lives next to Mr. Tatiashvili’s now-marooned house, can still get to his home, as it lies on the Georgian side of the new dirt track.

But he is wary of going to the bottom of his garden, which lies within a 60-yard frontier zone that Russian and South Ossetian security officers claim the right to patrol. Pointing to a row of vines drooping with plump grapes, he said it was unwise to walk any farther because “they might come and set up a border post.”

The so-called borderization of a previously vague administrative boundary created political headaches for Georgia’s government ahead of parliamentary elections on Oct. 8. It still won the election but had to fend off attacks from rivals who said it had responded too meekly to Russia’s “creeping annexation.”

When it defeated supporters of former President Mikheil Saakashvili in elections four years ago, a coalition led by Georgian Dream, a party set up by an enigmatic billionaire, pledged to reduce tensions with Russia, which loathed Mr. Saakashvili. Instead, Russian border guards have moved deeper into Georgian territory.

“There is no improvement. I would say the opposite,” Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili said in an interview. “Unfortunately, Russia never appreciates when you concede or make a step forward or compromise. They always take it for granted.”

All the same, he insisted that even though his government had no intention of repeating Mr. Saakashvili’s disastrous 2008 attempt to confront Russia militarily, the border will not last.

“It has no prospect,” he said. “They are trying to build this border, these fences inside our country. We think it is temporary.”

 

[fake penguin]

But, here is the reality of Russia's power.

The reason she went through the Channel.  It is easier for her tug to get her to shore.

Crazy thing is I google  Russia  military capabilities  and it's scary how powerful they are.  With their s400's they have by far the best air defence in the world. Sounds like they can defeat us air power. Some say they are developing better 5th generation fighter jets. Also a better electronic warfare capabilities.  Now I  know I just started to read up on Russia military  I just had no clue.

 

[Good2Golf]

Crazy thing is I google  Russia  military capabilities  and it's scary how powerful they are.  With their s400's they have by far the best air defence in the world. Sounds like they can defeat us air power. Some say they are developing better 5th generation fighter jets. Also a better electronic warfare capabilities.  Now I  know I just started to read up on Russia military  I just had no clue.

Some say though, that their captured UFO technology is not as advanced as the USA's captured UFO technology.  Some also say that the USA's TR-3B can outfly the S400 missile, so the air defence overmatch is not as great as some say. :nod:

 

[blacktriangle]

TR-3B

You know too much. What a shame, you could have made a great black helicopter pilot...

>

 

[Lightguns]

But, here is the reality of Russia's power.

The reason she went through the Channel.  It is easier for her tug to get her to shore.

The last American aircraft that smoked like that was the USS Langley, but they are catching up.  I bet cancer is high on the list of aliments of flight deck crew. 

 

[Retired AF Guy]

Article from Foreign Policy argues that Putin may not be the great strategist people take him for.

Putin’s Chaos Strategy Is Coming Back to Bite Him in the Ass

The Russian president has sown confusion and conflict around the world the past two years. But his short-sighted meddling isn’t the work of a mastermind.

Back in March, when the U.S. elections still seemed far away — back before anyone had heard the name Fancy Bear and before everyone knew John Podesta’s risotto secrets — I was in Moscow talking to a Russian who had previously worked in the Kremlin. Over the course of a wide-ranging conversation, it became clear that we agreed on one key characteristic of Vladimir Putin. He called it the “Putin Paradox” and defined it thus: The Russian president’s tactical instincts for how to seize an opportunity are so brilliant, and yet the strategic outcomes are almost invariably disastrous. Seven months later, the saga of Russian meddling in America’s presidential election has managed to illustrate the “Putin Paradox” perfectly.

There can be little serious debate at this point that Moscow is indeed meddling. Despite Donald Trump’s skepticism, the U.S. intelligence community has collectively blamed Russia for the hack of Hillary Clinton’s campaign emails, which were released by the website WikiLeaks, and the hack of the Democratic National Committee. In addition to this more hands-on interference, Russia’s foreign-language state media, notably the RT television network and Sputnik press agency, consistently push a partisan, anti-Clinton line and spread claims of election rigging and other shenanigans. (This is tame, by the way, in comparison with the over-the-top rhetoric of Russian TV host and propagandist Dmitry Kiselyov, who claimed the U.S. establishment might kill Trump rather than let him become president — but such bombast is intended for domestic consumption and not to influence the U.S. vote.) There are also concerns, still unproven, that Russians could hack electronic voting systems on Election Day.

And yet, for all this effort, what has been achieved? There have been some successes — but they seem likely to come at a very high cost.

The success of Russia’s intervention must be measured relative to its goals. Although a Trump victory seems increasingly unlikely, there’s little reason to think that’s what the Kremlin ever really wanted. The Republican nominee may seem like something of a fellow traveler now — it was noticeable that even during the third debate he batted away opportunities to distance himself from Putin — but he would be an unpredictable president. Putin has gotten used to operating as the wildest man on the geopolitical stage; a Trump presidency might severely cramp his style and his strategic calculations.

Rather, the aim of all of Russia’s election interference was to do two things. First, to weaken Clinton, such that on her inauguration she would be too busy coping with a disgruntled Democratic left, an embittered Republican right, and a divided country in between to devote energy to confronting and toppling Putin. It is too early to be sure, but if anything, the hacks actually seem to be doing the unthinkable and bringing Democrats and mainstream Republicans together in their shared anger at Moscow.

Second, by undermining the very legitimacy of U.S. democracy, Russia’s hacking sought to weaken U.S. legitimacy abroad, dismay its friends, and provide fuel for a global propaganda campaign that, at its heart, tries to convince people not that the Russian system is better than the rest, so much that it isn’t any worse. That propaganda has resonated somewhat, but it is hard to demonstrate that anything the Russians are doing is more damaging than the Trump campaign itself.

But just like the Crimean annexation (which led to sanctions and massive costs to the state treasury), the Donbass adventure (which led to more sanctions and has mired Russia in an expensive, undeclared war), and the Syrian intervention (where Putin backed away from an early withdrawal, leaving him stuck in yet another open-ended war), today’s Russian achievement is poised to become tomorrow’s debilitating disaster. Russians who chortled at the original WikiLeaks revelations and felt sly satisfaction at the havoc created by “their” hackers are now expressing concerns about possible U.S. retaliation and, more importantly, what this will mean for future Russo-American relations. As one bitterly grumbled, “Let’s get used to sanctions until we’re in the grave.”

Clinton is no friend of Putin’s. But she is a pragmatic operator less interested in starting new crusades than clearing up old conflicts; had Putin waited until her inauguration and offered some kind of deal on Syria, maybe even Ukraine, it seems likely that she would at least have considered it. With his smear-and-leak antics, though, Putin appears to have managed to convince Clinton and those around her that the Kremlin represents a clear and present danger to American democracy and Western unity. As a Washington insider put it to me, “Expect now to see Putin’s nightmares” — maybe even that long-rumored quiet support for regime change in Russia — “come true once Hillary’s in the Oval Office.”

In Moscow, the realization is growing that a few months of schadenfreude during the U.S. presidential campaign are not going to be worth the likely fallout. The foreign-policy elite fear that Washington is preparing to call Moscow’s bluffs in the Middle East and Europe and also push harder on a wavering European Union to maintain and even step up pressure on Russia. The political and business elite are concerned that even if the United States does not actively push for regime change, it will clamp down all the more tightly on their opportunities to travel abroad and invest. One senior parliamentary aide recently expressed to me the worry that “Russia is becoming the new South Africa,” referring to the 30-year era of boycotts and sanctions that isolated that country when it was still white-ruled and characterized by apartheid.

Even the spooks who orchestrated all this have their qualms. Putin’s patronage and his enthusiasm for their ability to stir up trouble abroad have served them very well until now. However, their methods and capabilities are now coming under a scrutiny unseen since the Cold War, and a new U.S. retaliatory strategy seems to be taking shape. An analyst close to the Russian intelligence community expressed a real worry, for example, that cyber-espionage capabilities, “which could have been real assets, were wasted on emails full of gossip.”

To understand why Putin’s American adventure has gone so badly wrong — and to understand why it illustrates so well this idea of a “Putin Paradox” — it helps to look at it in the context of how the Russian president likes to operate. Putin is a sort of improv player on the world stage, riffing off current events and others’ concerns. In particular, he has for some time engaged in what I’ve called “troll geopolitics,” which involves dramatic stunts that cross all sorts of lines and generate plenty of breathless press coverage along the away.

Examples of this sort of trolling include rhetorical and gestural displays like sending long-range bombers to skirt NATO airspace and, recently, deploying nuclear-capable missiles to the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad. These are relatively meaningless — but do attract alarmed attention from the West. At other times, his trolling can take a much more serious, and risky, form. The intervention in Syria was meant to prop up one of Russia’s last allies and serve as a brazen response to Washington’s efforts diplomatically to isolate Moscow. But it has also increased the odds of two nuclear powers coming into direct military conflict.

As for the meddling in America’s elections, it may have started as the more inconsequential sort of trolling, but when Putin succumbed to his usual tendency to double down in the heat of the moment, it became a more consequential intervention — an overt challenge to the very integrity of U.S. democracy.

For Putin, the temptation to meddle in America’s domestic politics must have been irresistible. Massive and diffuse political machines, especially those relying heavily on volunteers, are by their nature insecure, easy targets for Russia’s extensive, aggressive, and active intelligence services. And America’s increasingly bitter and divided political landscape produced an exceedingly hostile presidential campaign that maximized the impact of strategic leaks and other “active measures” — as the Russian spooks call political operations. The opportunist in Putin spotted the weaknesses within the U.S. political system this election and seized the moment with glee, and American democracy has indeed suffered. But Putin has also managed to make Russia’s role so evident that it demands some kind of U.S. response.

The Kremlin’s problem, among others, is that Putin the Opportunist is consumed by the moment. He is focused on what he can accomplish tomorrow, without necessarily thinking through to what the consequences may be the day after. He also too easily assumes that he will remain in control of what he started; this, too, is something we’ve seen before.

When the Kremlin decided to intervene in Ukraine’s Donbass region, arming local malcontents and sending men and guns to back them, it must have looked like a shrewd tactic. Kiev, the thinking went, would be forced to capitulate, and Moscow could claim not to be involved. More than two years later, Russia is still mired in a vicious and bitter conflict, bankrolling the thuggish pseudo-states of Donetsk and Luhansk out of a shrinking state budget.

In some ways, the story of Putin’s foray into American politics follows the same trajectory. A cute plan to use deniable assets to stir up trouble abroad and force an opponent into a weak position has once again proved too cute for its own good. Putin’s claims that his hands are clean look increasingly flimsy; the chaos takes on a life of its own and even begins to threaten its maker.

Article Link

 

[a_majoor]

Lithuania prepares a manual for its citizens in the event of an invasion:

http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/28/europe/lithuania-war-manual/index.html

Lithuania issues manual on what to do if Russia invades
By Nic Robertson, Antonia Mortensen, Elizabeth Roberts and Woj Treszczynski CNN
Updated 12:44 PM ET, Fri October 28, 2016

(CNN)If you invade, don't expect our people to make it easy for you.

That was the message Lithuania sent to Russia Friday as it published a manual for its three million citizens on how to defend their homeland in the event of invasion.

Since Russia annexed Crimea two years ago, Lithuanians have been on edge.

Conscription has been restarted and defense spending ramped up, not to mention their now-answered calls for NATO to deploy more troops to the Baltics.

But even this is not enough to assuage anxiety -- the Lithuanian government has Friday issued a 75-page guide on what to do if the country is invaded, entitled "Prepare to survive emergencies and war."

"Attention needs to be paid to the actions of the neighboring country -- Russia," says the manual.

"This country does not hesitate to use a military force against its neighbors, and at this moment it basically continues the military aggression against Ukraine."

It notes the Russian method of using "denial and ambiguity" at the beginning of an invasion and warns: "It is most important that the civilians are aware and have a will to resist -- when these elements are strong, an aggressor has difficulties in creating an environment for military invasion."

Hard-hitting new instructions

It is the third time the Lithuanian government has distributed a handbook of this type to its citizens since the Russian annexation of Crimea.
The last one, published in December 2015, was entitled "Prepare to survive emergencies and war: a cheerful take on serious recommendations."

It included cartoons of a family with a cat and noted that "while no country is immune to adversities of any nature" it is important not to panic if there is an emergency.

There is nothing cheerful about the latest edition, which details how Lithuanians should spy and inform on the enemy if Russia succeeds in occupying part of the country.

There are also detailed images of Russian-made tanks, grenades, mines and guns and instructions on how to recognize different types. Further instructions cover first aid and surviving in the wild.

There will be 30,000 copies available in schools and libraries and it will also be published online.

Lithuania borders Russia's strategically important enclave of Kaliningrad where it has been enhancing its already muscular military options, including the arrival of a nuclear-capable short-range ballistic missile system earlier this month.

The document reminds Lithuania's people -- of whom around six percent are Russian, according to the last census in 2011 -- that the defense of the country is "the right and duty of every citizen".

Citizens are the best early warning system

Karolis Aleksa from the Lithuanian Ministry of Defense, the editor of the manual, said that in times of invasion, "people become your early warning system," and by reporting crucial details they can help intelligence officers and soldiers.

"This doesn't scare people when you give them this, so we will see actually society is waiting for this," he told CNN.
Additionally, he suggested, simply creating and distributing the manual publicly and with "fanfare" could deter potential aggression from Russia.

"It is precisely to send a message to Russia -- don't do it -- we are ready and will not be hoodwinked like Ukrainians," he said.

Lithuania's defense minister, Juozas Olekas, told CNN "We demonstrate that whoever crosses our border will have strong resistance from our society, from our military forces"

Lithuania lived under Soviet rule from 1940-1991. Thirty thousand Lithuanian resistance fighters were killed in the first 10 years as they tried to fight the Red Army from flimsy hideouts in Lithuania's sprawling forests.

With ramped up defense spending, the reinstatement of conscription and NATO's troops, Lithuania is at the front line of a new Cold War.
Its defense minister sees no thaw any time soon, telling CNN: "President Putin only understands power against power."
The new handbook aims to place some of that power in the hands of Lithuania's people.

 

[Kirkhill]

From the Daily Express.  http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/727105/Russia-defence-spending-drop-27-per-cent-draft-budget

Russia braced for huge cuts to defence as financial crisis looms

VLADIMIR Putin's ability to wage wars around the world could be severely curtailed after a draft budget submitted to parliament set out swingeing cuts of 27 per cent to Russia's defence programme.

By TOM BATCHELOR
PUBLISHED: 13:00, Mon, Oct 31, 2016 | UPDATED: 17:54, Mon, Oct 31, 2016

Cost-cutting measures amounting to tens of billions of pounds could scupper research and investment in new technologies including next-generation fighter jets and intercontinental cruise ballistic missiles as well as the country's ability to wage wars in Europe and the Middle East.

Projects such as the PAK-DA hypersonic stealth bomber - due to enter testing in 2020 - may also be put on hold as the massive savings start to impact Russia's ability to project its influence around the world.

According to a draft budget seen by the Financial Times, President Putin's spending programme on defence is likely to be cut from £50bn to £37bn in 2017.

That would bring Russia's defence allowance in line with the spending in the UK.

Britain plans to invest around £35bn this year on defence, rising to almost £40bn by 2021.

But as UK military spending rises, Russia's could drop by around 15 per cent between 2015 and 2019.

Russia's economy has been in a deep recession since 2015, shrinking by 3.7 per cent in real terms last year as a result of a sharp drop in oil prices.

Cuts to other areas including health and education are also mooted in the policy document, submitted on Friday to the Duma.

Despite turbulent economic conditions in Russia, spending on defence grew by 60 per cent by 2015 as compared to 2010.

However, Julian Cooper, a UK-based expert on Russia's defence programme, told the FT that was likely to change.

He said: "If the draft budget is adopted it may well result in a period during which military expenditure in real terms will decline."

NATO secretary general warned on Friday that Russia was using nuclear threats to try to intimidate Europe.

Jens Stoltenberg said he did not see an "imminent threat" but warned about a "stronger Russia... a Russia which is more assertive, and a Russia which has been willing to use force against non-Nato European countries".

Nuclear weapons are hugely costly to develop and maintain and deep cuts to Russia's budget could impact on Moscow's equivalent to the Trident weapons system in the UK, which MPs backed in a vote last month.

Dr Natasha Kuhrt, of King's College London's War Studies department, said: "It's not definite yet but clearly with the economic situation being as it is, something has to give.

"To some extent Russia has achieved what it wanted in terms of military spending and has brought armed forces up to the required level from quite a low base.

"If this is approved by the Duma, it is a sign that their priorities need to be recalibrated."

She also warned that a reduced military budget did not mean an end to the fighting in Ukraine.

Dr Kuhrt said: "Ukraine doesn't take a lot out of the military budget. Russia now feels confident that it can defend itself.

"It is all about threat perceptions, if you are in the Baltic states even though you may feel insecure, it doesn't mean that Russia poses a direct military threat.

"I don't think Russia would actually launch an attack on the Baltic states, all it needs is for the West to overreact and that creates a certain momentum, then they can say to their people 'We told you so, they are the aggressive ones'."

A significant cut in the country's defence bill chimes with a leading Russian analyst's assessment that President Putin is weak and insecure despite his aggressive posturing.

Award-winning author Arkady Ostrovsky argued that the Russian leader knows he cannot afford a conventional war with NATO but is trying to intimidate the West with a threat of nuclear conflict.

Mr Putin may be forced to rely on increasingly bellicose rhetoric if the funding for Russia's military programme begins to dry up.

Moscow-based newspaper Vedomosti has warned the cuts "brings Russia close to third-world countries".

Details of the Russian government's future budget comes just two weeks after Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia announced plans to triple annual spending on arms and military equipment.

By 2020 the combined overall defence budgets of the three Baltic republics will reach an estimated $2.1bn (£1.7bn), more than double that when the countries entered NATO in 2004 and the fastest such growth in any region worldwide, Reuters reported.

Implications for Vladimir's ability to bluff, to hold on to his cadre in the Kremlin, near term stability.

The difference between the US and Russia is not that they have equal capabilities - they don't - but Vladimir's willingness to use the capabilities that he has.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvrupRQD44I

 

[MilEME09]

The Russian military isnt dumb either, it knows where it's weak points are, and uses its strengths like the VDV, Naval Infantry, special forces, etc to full use. In open conflict I feel the west has the better trained regular forces, however russia I feel has us beat in the SF category namely in the Tier 2/3 capabilities. The VDV for example is to be expanded to 72,000 by 2019, that is an airborne force with air mobile armour, and other combined arms support that is larger then the entire CF.

 

[a_majoor]

Russia may be expanding their efforts into other regions as well:

http://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/10/30/did-moscow-botch-a-coup-in-montenegro/

Did Moscow Botch a Coup in Montenegro?
DAMIR MARUSIC

A murky tale of spycraft, diplomacy and intrigue in the Balkans suggests that Russia’s secret services are ratcheting up their efforts to an unprecedented degree.

On the day of Montenegro’s Parliamentary elections on October 16, a remarkable story emerged: Montenegrin security services had arrested some 20 Serbian nationals who were alleged to be preparing an attack on various state institutions that very evening, as the results were rolling in. Among those arrested was a retired Serbian general who was also the leader of a right-wing nationalist movement based in Novi Sad, almost 500 kilometers away in Serbia’s Vojvodina region.

The immediate reaction from Serbia was disbelief leavened with thinly-veiled contempt. Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic demanded he be shown proof of the plot, and many in Montenegro’s opposition, who are in large part made up of Montenegro’s Serbian minority, claimed that Prime Minister Milorad Djukanovic’s security services had ginned up a false flag operation in order to help cement his victory.
Two days later, Montenegro’s special prosecutor Milivoje Katnic, insisted that he would be happy to share the evidence that his investigators had gathered, and that an “unprecedented massacre” had been prevented by the arrests. More details of the plot were revealed: The plan was for several individuals to enter the parliamentary building in the capital, Podgorica, wearing uniforms of Montenegro’s elite security services, and subdue the guards inside. They would then open fire on unarmed opposition supporters gathering outside the parliament awaiting election results. Finally, they would kidnap the Prime Minister, and either declare the election invalid, or somehow hope to throw it to the opposition.

By that point, Djukanovic’s ruling Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS) had won a convincing plurality of the votes and was settling in for the negotiations necessary to cobble together a governing coalition. Western journalists by and large stopped paying attention. Crazy conspiracies are a fact of political life in the Balkans. And though there were reports of voting irregularities, DPS’s margin of victory more or less corresponded to pre-election polls. Nothing more to see here.

But the story was far from over.

This past Monday, the Serbian PM held another presser. Looking shaken, Vucic confirmed that there had in fact been a plot to assassinate Djukanovic. Another set of special forces uniforms and €120,000 in cash had been found in Serbia, Vucic said, and several other Serbian nationals had been arrested. He added that no politicians, in either Serbia or Montenegro, were involved in the planning, but rather he vaguely gestured at “foreign services, both from the West and from the East”, and said that those that have been arrested would be dealt with.

On Thursday, another bombshell landed: the daily newspaper Danas, citing highly-placed sources in the government, reported that Serbia had secretly expelled several Russian citizens in connection with the Montenegro plot. Furthermore, the paper reported that the Serbs arrested earlier had in their possession several devices allowing for encrypted communication, as well as some unspecified sophisticated technology used to continuously track the location of Djukanovic. Some of the arrested Serbs had reportedly fought on the Russian side in Donbas, in Ukraine.

It just so happened that Nikolai Patrushev, the former head of the FSB and the current head of Russia’s Security Council, had just arrived in Belgrade. Could his visit be linked to the expulsions of what appeared to be Russian agents? An almost-forgotten story about electoral intrigue in a small Balkan country of 600,000 all of a sudden involved its larger neighbor, and even implicated Russia in a plot with potentially global ramifications.

The Montenegrin elections were framed by the long-serving Djukanovic as a referendum on his decision to pursue further euroatlantic integration for his country. And the vote was more than just an attempt at getting a symbolic mandate: Montenegro completed its accession negotiations with NATO in May of this year, and now needs its own parliament to ratify the treaty. If the opposition had won, Montenegro’s NATO bid would have been dead in the water. (NATO member states are, in turn, expected to ratify Montenegro’s accession by Spring of next year.)

NATO’s calculus for admitting Montenegro, a state that is anything but a paragon of transparency and press freedom, is obvious: Albania and Croatia are already members, and admitting Montenegro de facto closes off the Adriatic to Russia’s military. Djukanovic, himself a problematic character who has clung to the levers of power for the better part of two decades, is alleged to have direct links to various smuggling rings and mafias that operate out of his country. Of course, as a defensive alliance, NATO is primarily concerned with reforms tied to aspirant countries’ armed forces, and here Montenegro appears to have made the required progress. Presumably, the thinking goes, the larger-frame corruption will be dealt with as the country strives to work its way into the EU. NATO accession for Montenegro, apart from serving immediate strategic interests, will also put the country on the path to eventual virtue.

For its part, Russia has been particularly irked by the country’s westward lurch, and especially its NATO aspirations. Its irritation has two facets—one broadly strategic and one broadly economic.

As far as strategy goes, Russia sees its competition with NATO in more zero-sum terms. Though Moscow has made no measurable progress in getting Montenegro to cooperate on security matters, NATO accession forecloses even the possibility of Russia having a friendly outlet on the Adriatic at some point in the future. This feels like a slap in the face to the Kremlin. And it blames the West for delivering it.
Montenegro’s westward drift also sets a kind of uncomfortable precedent for Russia’s best ally in the region, Serbia. Prime Minister Vucic has been playing a careful double game on this count, quietly telling Western audiences that he intends to steer his country their way, while publicly maintaining good relations with Moscow. Serbian public opinion remains icy on NATO and warm on Russia. But with time, the Kremlin is surely calculating, that could change.

Financial interests, too, play a role in Russian frustrations. The above-mentioned lack of transparency makes Montenegro an attractive destination for Russian money, much of which is of murky provenance to say the least. Many Russian expats have made summer homes for themselves in Montenegro—25 percent of all tourists to Montenegro are Russians, and by some estimates, Russian citizens own 40 percent of the real estate in the tiny Balkan country.

Oleg Deripaska, one of the richest men in Russia before the 2008 financial crisis and still a well-connected Kremlin insider, is an outsize player in Montenegro. The saga of Deripaska’s involvement with Montenegro’s aluminum smelter KAP is lengthy and full of intrigue. Djukanovic had personally negotiated with Deripaska over the initial privatization of KAP in 2005, and Deripaska’s En+ holding company is currently suing the government for around €700 million, a hefty chunk of the country’s $4.25 billion GDP. Beyond commodities, Russian capital totaling more than a hundred million dollars continues to flow in to the country every year, much of it into real estate or the development of massive hotel and casino complexes. Deripaska himself is a key investor in the Porto Montenegro marina project, which is being designed specifically to cater to the superyachts of the world’s mega-rich. Russian money accounts for about a third of the foreign direct investment flowing into Montenegro.

Djukanovic’s government appears to have concluded that being so tightly dependent on a single source of foreign capital is not a smart long-term development strategy. And while wealthy Russians have no problems continuing to park their money in both NATO and EU countries, a pivot westward for Montenegro does (eventually) mean increased scrutiny. It’s not an insurmountable problem by any means for Russia’s quasi-gangster elites, but the status quo is certainly preferable. And Russian foreign policy is always attentive to the needs of its kleptocrats.
Whatever its roots, the Kremlin has made no secret of its displeasure at Montenegro’s NATO pretensions. Russia’s Foreign Ministry called Montenegro’s accession an “openly confrontational step, fraught with further destabilizing consequences for the Euro-Atlantic security system.” Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov was more direct and menacing: “Moscow has always said that the continued expansion of NATO, of NATO military infrastructure in the east, cannot but lead to a response from the east, that is from Russia,” he said.

According to polls trumpeted by Djukanovic’s government, support in Montenegro for NATO accession appears to have grown this year. Nevertheless, splits on ethnic lines persist: Ethnic Bosniaks and Albanians—small minorities—support entrance overwhelmingly, the majority ethnic Montenegrins grudgingly support accession, and ethnic Serbs are mostly opposed. Djukanovic has accused the Serbian opposition parties of taking Russian money, a charge which opposition leaders deny. At the same time, the opposition parties have unabashedly supported the Russian line on NATO, and have echoed the anti-Western and pro-Russian sentiments of the more nationalist politicians across the border in Serbia.

That Serbian irredentist forces in Montenegro would be cooperating with paramilitaries in Serbia proper barely raises an eyebrow for anyone even passingly acquainted with the Balkans. Similarly, that the Russians would be tempted to exploit ethnic divisions for their own ends should surprise no one at this point.

That Russia may have been plotting a coup against a country weighing its options on NATO accession, however, is a new and troubling development—if true.

But how likely is it that Russia was actually behind the failed coup? The available evidence, though circumstantial, is suggestive.

It’s well known that Russian intelligence services have operated with a fairly long leash in Serbia for some time now. Less well known is that the leash had started to fray recently. A colleague with intimate knowledge of the Balkans tells me Russian spies are aggressively tailing foreigners in and around Belgrade, using techniques until recently only visited upon diplomats in Moscow. While Prime Minister Vucic is not said to have authorized the new behavior, up until now he has done nothing to try to curb it either.

The true nature of Patrushev’s visit to Belgrade is at the heart of the matter. Serbian Interior Minister Nebojsa Stefanovic claimed that the trip was not a surprise—that it had been planned well in advance, and was a routine state visit for a high-ranking Russian official. The official reason for his trip, according to Stefanovic, was to discuss the signing of a proposed memorandum for security cooperation.

The most authoritative publication to dispute that claim, perhaps surprisingly, was the Russian business daily Kommersant, which reported that the true purpose of Patrushev’s “unexpected” visit was to “discuss the ‘Montenegro case'” and to “prevent the scandal from roiling Serbo-Russian relations”. Kommersant noted it was suspicious that Patrushev held separate closed-door meetings with Stefanovic, the Foreign Minister, the Prime Minister, and even the President, Tomislav Nikolic, over a proposed agreement that had already been discussed, and was in itself completely non-binding. Citing unnamed sources in Belgrade, Kommersant concluded that Patrushev’s intervention appears to have been successful.

How successful the intervention was—if it was an intervention in the first place!—remains to be seen. For example, while Stefanovic has been denying that any Russians were expelled, Vucic was more circumspect when pressed by media about the reports of expulsion, and their linkage to Montenegro. “Not everything in your question is correct, one part is false,” the PM answered gnomically, before adding he could not legally say more. The Russian Foreign Ministry, for its part, called the reports of Russian spies being declared persona non grata an “absolute fiction”.

Taken together, all the evidence is still inconclusive, and given the sensitivities involved, may stay that way. And like all stories having to do with spies, speculation can lead down endless rabbit-holes. However, one very recent development, which occurred as this piece was being written, is worth mentioning: yesterday evening, a large cache of weapons, including an RPG, several hand grenades, and ammunition for automatic weapons and a sniper rifle, were found in the woods near Prime Minister Vucic’s residence. The stash was located near a bend in the road, where the Prime Minister’s armored car would have had to slow down as it made its way to Belgrade’s center. Vucic was reportedly spirited away to a safe-house by his bodyguards, and is awaiting the results of the investigation into the incident.

So while the facts remain murky, something definitely appears to have happened. Vucic looked rattled at his press conference last Monday when he first revealed that the plot against Djukanovic was real, so perhaps he didn’t know exactly how much freelancing was going on within his country’s borders up until that point. He had certainly been tolerating Russian activities until then, and if Russian agents were in fact expelled this past week, it would indicate that he had concluded that things have gone too far. He may have realized in a blinding flash that his delicate dance, of edging Serbia ever closer to the West while publicly flirting with Russia, could have ended in catastrophe had there been bloodshed in Montenegro. Perhaps whatever power struggles Vucic’s moves have triggered have yet to play out fully in Serbia—violently, as is tradition.

But more broadly, if the story, as I’ve tried to reconstitute it, is true and the Russians were in fact involved in a failed coup against a sovereign country trying to align itself with the West, it should give pause to those pundits who still think that a workable equilibrium with the Kremlin is somehow attainable. At the Valdai conference this past week, Russian President Vladimir Putin indicated that he increasingly saw talking to Washington as pointless. With old spies running the Russian state, the conversation appears to be going back into the shadows, where these men are most comfortable.

 

[Journeyman]

Cost-cutting measures amounting to tens of billions of pounds could scupper research and investment in new technologies including next-generation fighter jets and intercontinental cruise ballistic missiles as well as the country's ability to wage wars in Europe and the Middle East.

a)  What's a cruise ballistic missile?

b)  I doubt "waging war in Europe and the Middle East" is a line serial in anyone's annual budget.

                  :dunno:

 

[Old Sweat]

a)  What's a cruise ballistic missile?

A contradiction in terms, or a sign of a sub-standard education, or both.

 

[Kirkhill]

It was a Financial Times article redone for the Daily Express..........  Proceed with caution.

Having said that:  I don't see a problem with the overall report or conclusions.

 

[The Bread Guy]

Russia may be expanding their efforts into other regions as well:

http://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/10/30/did-moscow-botch-a-coup-in-montenegro/

Yup ...

Russia:  Don't think we can't see you, Montenegro & Bosnia ...

 

[Retired AF Guy]

a)  What's a cruise ballistic missile?

b)  I doubt "waging war in Europe and the Middle East" is a line serial in anyone's annual budget.

                  :dunno:

It was a Financial Times article redone for the Daily Express..........  Proceed with caution.

Having said that:  I don't see a problem with the overall report or conclusions.

Unfortunately, the original FT article is behind a paid firewall, but I was able to find a copy, and while it talks about possible cuts to the Russian defence budget, it makes no mention of specific weapon systems.

  What's a cruise ballistic missile?

Long range cruise missile (AS-15 A/B Kent, Kh-101/102)??  :dunno:

 

[The Bread Guy]

Well, THAT'S got to be reassuring to Russians ...

Russia outstrips USA in anti-meteorite defence

The US government has held exercises to simulate a collision of planet Earth with an asteroid up to 250 meters in diameter. The asteroid may supposedly ram into Earth on September 20, 2020.

Pravda.Ru asked coordinator of Kosmopoisk public association, cryptophysicist,  researcher and writer Vadim Chernobrov what means of protection against space bodies Russia had.

"The Americans often carry out large-scale and regional exercises, the legend of which is about meteorites. Russia should not be envious about such measures at all, because Russia holds similar exercises on a regular basis without advertising them.

"One of the most recent exercises was held in the Tyumen region. I have to say that the world's largest of such exercises was conducted in Russia in the first half of 2013, although the event had not received any coverage at all. The event was held soon after the fall of the Chelyabinsk meteorite. As we know, pieces of that space body started falling on Earth on February 10. The last pieces fell on 20 February - the process took ten days.

"The Russian Defence Minister ordered to hold large-scale exercises in the area of the crash site soon after the phenomenal event. The legend of the exercises did not contain a word about the meteorite danger, but everyone knew that the event was connected with the fall of the Chelyabinsk meteorite. In fact, their goal was to show both the defence minister and the president, that our troops, if necessary, would be ready to go to any location in Russia and take all necessary measures in this regard." ...

Source (Pravda)

 

[Good2Golf]

Yay!  "We'll investigate why your family was flattened by a meteorite..." 

 

[The Bread Guy]

Yay!  "We'll investigate why your family was flattened by a meteorite..."

"Even 99.9% reliable fails ONCE in a while ..."