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Russian Bomber Roulette: Russian Strategic Bomber Conducts Practice Strikes on U.S. Missile Defenses in Asia

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Photo Credit: Wiki

A Russian bomber recently carried out simulated cruise missile attacks on U.S. missile defenses in Asia, raising new questions about Moscow’s goal in future U.S.-Russian defense talks.

According to U.S. officials, a Russian Tu-22M Backfire bomber on Feb. 26 simulated firing air-launched cruise missiles at an Aegis ship deployed near Japan as part of U.S. missile defenses.

A second mock attack was conducted Feb. 27 against a ground-based missile defense site in Japan that officials did not identify further. The Pentagon operates an X-band missile defense radar on the northern tip of Japan that is designed to monitor North Korean missile launches and transmit the data to missile-firing ships.

The bomber targeting comes as Russia is building up forces in the Pacific by modernizing submarines and building a spy ship specifically for intelligence-gathering against U.S. missile defenses.

Officials said it was not clear why the Russians conducted the practice strikes. However, the simulations may indicate Moscow has targeted its offensive ballistic missiles on Japan or U.S. military bases in the region.

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Putin Orders Ban On Adoptions By Foreign Same-Sex Couples

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Photo Credit: RIA Novosti/Aleksey Nikolsky

President Putin is against the adoption of Russian orphans by foreign same-sex couples, Russian media reveal. The government and the Supreme Court have reportedly been requested to come up with amendments to the law by July 1.

Most likely the order will be fulfilled by the Ministry of Education and Science, which deals with issues concerning orphans and adoptions, according to Izvestia daily. But the ministry says it has not yet received instructions on the matter.

Tensions over the issue arose in mid-February, after the French National Assembly approved a sweeping bill to legalize gay marriage and allow same-sex couples to adopt children.

Soon after that children’s rights ombudsman Pavel Astakhov vowed he would do everything possible to ensure that Russian orphans are only adopted by traditional, heterosexual families.

In February, the Russian Foreign Ministry reported that it planned to verify the possible “psychological damage” inflicted on Russian orphan Yegor Shabatalov.The boy was adopted by an American woman, who lived in a same-sex marriage with another US citizen. However, she concealed her relationship from Russian authorities when she filed the adoption request.

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After A Decade Long Wait, China And Russia Ink ‘Super Jet’ Military Deal (+video)

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Photo Credit: Forbes

A recent official visit to Moscow brought back some new souvenirs for the Chinese military. How about a reported 24 Sukhoi SU-35 fighter jets, and four submarines from Russia.

China‘s new president Xi Jinping was in Russia this week to meet with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin. Both sides agreed to two arms-sale contracts in which China will buy Russian Sukhoi made fighter jets, Xinhua and Agence France Press reported on Monday.

China has been itching to buy the planes since the 1990s and has been in hot pursuit since last March.

Russia’s Interfax confirmed the existence and date of that agreement back in February, but didn’t speculate on sales numbers. This month, official talks trimmed the order down to 24 planes from an initial discussion of 48 Sukhoi Super Flankers. The Russians are said to have more confidence that China can’t copy their engines, and are also said to need the SU-35 orders because Russia’s Defense Department is ordering follow-on buys of new upgraded Sukhoi SU-35s instead.

The deals raised concern among some regional defense players — namely India. China Central Television reported on Sunday that the purchase deals were signed before President Xi Jinping’s ever stepped foot into Russia. The military deal marks the first time in a decade that China had bought large military technological equipment from Russia, according to official television.

Watch video here:

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UK Police Probe Death of Exiled Russian Oligarch Berezovsky

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Photo Credit: Fox News

British police said Saturday they have launched an investigation into the “unexplained death” of Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky, who was found dead at his home in southeast England on Saturday.

“His death is currently being treated as unexplained and a full inquiry is under way. The area around the property has been cordoned off in order to allow the investigation to take place,” police said in a statement obtained by Reuters.

The statement did not directly identify the 67-year-old businessman, but Thames Valley police said they were investigating the death of a man of the same age at a property in Ascot, a town 25 miles west of London.

Boris Berezovsky, a self-exiled and outspoken oligarch, had a bitter falling out with Russian President Vladimir Putin. In recent years, the one-time Kremlin powerbroker-turned-thorn in Putin’s side fended off verbal and legal attacks in cases that often bore political undertones — and bit into his fortune.

Lawyer Alexander Dobrovinsky told Russian state TV that his client — who had survived assassination attempts in the past — lately had been in “a horrible, terrible” emotional state.

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Russia’s Gazprom Offers Cyprus Restructuring Deal to Avoid EU Bailout in Exchange for Gas Fields

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Photo Credit: Greek Reporter

Representatives of the Russian company submitted the proposal to the office of Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades on Sunday evening, Sigma TV reported.

The proposal states that Gazprom will fund the restructuring of the country’s crippled financial institutions in exchange for substantial control over the country’s gas resources while Cyprus won’t need to take the harsh bailout package offered by the EU.

EU offered a 10 billion euros rescue package to Cyprus with the condition of raising 5.8 billion euros ($7.5 billion) by taking a piece of every bank account in Cyprus. The originally proposed levies on deposits are 9.9 percent for acounts exceeding 100,000 euros and 6.7 percent on anything below that.

Cypriot President Nicos Anstasiades is not willing to discuss the Russian’s offer according to Newsit who cited an anonymous source close to the President.

“The president is not going to discuss this plan because he wants a solution that will come from the EU,” said the anonymous source.

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U.S. Cancels Part Of Missile Defense That Russia Opposed

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Photo Credit: DVIDSHUB

The United States has effectively canceled the final phase of a Europe-based missile defense system that was fiercely opposed by Russia and cited repeatedly by the Kremlin as a major obstacle to cooperation on nuclear arms reductions and other issues.

Russian officials here have so far declined to comment on the announcement, which was made in Washington on Friday by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel as part of a plan to deploy additional ballistic missile interceptors to counter North Korea. The cancellation of some European-based defenses will allow resources to be shifted to protect against North Korea.

Aides to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia said there would be no reaction until early next week, when they expect to be briefed by American officials. But Russian news accounts quickly raised the possibility that the decision could portend a breakthrough in what for years has been a largely intractable dispute between Russia and the United States. A headline by the Itar-Tass news agency declared, “U.S. abandons fourth phase of European missile defense system that causes the greatest objections from Russia.”

Pentagon officials said that those longstanding objections by Russia played no role in the decision to reconfigure the missile interceptor program, which they said was based on the increased threat from North Korea and on technological difficulties and budget considerations related to the Europe-based program.

“The missile defense decisions Secretary Hagel announced were in no way about Russia,” George Little, a Pentagon spokesman, said Saturday.

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Russians Conduct Huge Nuke Drill

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Photo Credit: APRussian nuclear forces conducted a major exercise last month that tested the transport of both strategic and tactical nuclear weapons near Europe, according to United States officials.

The exercise raised concerns inside the Pentagon and with the U.S. European Command because it was the largest exercise of its kind in 20 years and involved heightened alert status of Russian nuclear forces. The nuclear drills were part of other military maneuvers in Russia carried out between Feb. 17 and Feb. 21.

The exercises followed a recent surge in Russian strategic bomber flights that include a recent circling of the U.S. Pacific island of Guam by two Tu-95 Bear bomber and simulated bombing runs by Tu-95s against Alaska and California in June and July.

Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Wesley P. Miller sought to play down the nuclear exercise but declined to comment on the movement of nuclear weapons and whether nuclear forces went on a heightened state of alert. “We don’t comment on intelligence matters,” he said. Miller said the nuclear forces maneuvers were “nothing to be concerned about because the Russians, like us, have routine exercises and inspections.”

However, a U.S. official said the exercise was a concern within the U.S. national security community because of the scale of the exercise and the number of weapons being moved. “Certainly it’s a concern when you have this kind of exercise going on,” this official said.

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8 Arrested In Murder Of Russian Councilman Found In Cement Barrel

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Photo Credit: josef.stuefer Zooming around in a Rolls Royce and boasting of ties to Chechnya’s strongman ruler, Mikhail Pakhomov didn’t live the life of the average provincial Russian lawmaker. He didn’t die the death of one either.

Pakhomov, 37, a councilman from the industrial city of Lipetsk, 215 miles south of Moscow, was found beaten to a pulp at the bottom of a barrel of cement Monday after what investigators say was a business deal gone wrong — and a kidnapping that went even worse.

Evgeny Kharitonov, a former senior official in the Moscow regional government, was arrested at a Moscow airport Monday and charged with organizing Pakhomov’s kidnapping over an $80 million debt. A warrant was issued Tuesday for his business partner, Sergei Krasovsky. Four other men are charged with the murder-kidnapping, and another three with a related theft.

The case has gathered wide public attention. Some Russians have referred to it as a “postcard from the 1990s,” when business, political and criminal interests mixed together and often exploded into violence.

The son of a well-known Lipetsk theatrical couple, Pakhomov ran Liter, a construction and transport company. A former Lipetsk police official was quoted by local media as saying he had been arrested for robbing a shop with a well-known mafia gang in 1995 and on suspicion of kidnapping in 2010, but never charged. After a failed attempt in 2011 to win election to Russia’s parliament as a candidate of the Kremlin-backed United Russia, he became a city councilman last October.

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Revealed: Russia’s Double Dealing On Arms To Assad Regime

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Photo Credit: The Independent Russia has been accused by Western diplomats of reneging on a pledge to stop supplying arms to the Syrian regime. The assurances made over a month ago were presented by British officials as a sign that the Kremlin was distancing itself from President Bashar al-Assad and his ruling coterie.

The flow of arms has, however, continued unhindered with the Russians stressing that there was no United Nations prohibition on supplies and it was simply fulfilling its contractual obligations. As well as air- and naval-defence systems, the Kremlin may now be preparing to send Yak-130 jets which can be fitted with missiles to carry out ground attacks, according to American and European officials.

The Syrian regime has extensively used warplanes to carry out raids on heavily populated areas, leading to dozens of civilian casualties. Russia’s state arms agency holds a $550m contract to supply 36 of the Yaks, which are trainers but can also be used on combat missions. Last year, a Russian-operated ship carrying helicopter gunships and air-defence missiles was forced to turn back to Russia, after its British insurers withdrew coverage. The aircraft were subsequently sent through a different shipping company.

While the Assad regime continues to receive weapons, from Iran as well as Russia, a British attempt to provide military aid to the Syrian rebels failed at a European Union meeting in Brussels today.

There was agreement, instead, on an amendment which would allow more “non-lethal” assistance to the opposition. But the outcome of the meeting in Brussels made it very clear that David Cameron’s Government had been isolated in its efforts to strengthen militarily the moderate revolutionary factions, who have been increasingly sidelined by jihadist groups receiving arms and money from backers in the Gulf states.

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Encroachment: Russian Nuclear Bombers Circle Guam

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photo credit: Andrey BelenkoTwo Russian nuclear-armed bombers circled the western Pacific island of Guam this week in the latest sign of Moscow’s growing strategic assertiveness toward the United States.

The Russian Tu-95 Bear-H strategic bombers were equipped with nuclear-tipped cruise missiles and were followed by U.S. jets as they circumnavigated Guam on Feb. 12 local time—hours before President Barack Obama’s state of the union address.

Air Force Capt. Kim Bender, a spokeswoman for the Pacific Air Force in Hawaii, confirmed the incident to the Washington Free Beacon and said Air Force F-15 jets based on Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, “scrambled and responded to the aircraft.”

“The Tu-95s were intercepted and left the area in a northbound direction. No further actions occurred,” she said. Bender said no other details would be released “for operational security reasons.”

The bomber incident was considered highly unusual. Russian strategic bombers are not known to have conducted such operations in the past into the south Pacific from bomber bases in the Russian Far East, which is thousands of miles away and over water.

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