Russia in the 21st Century [Superthread]

[CougarKing]

While Russia will always loom large in Poland's foreign policy because of proximity and historical reasons, it will also place centre stage in that country's next election because of the current Eastern Ukraine conflict.

Foreign Policy

Don’t Bring a Dove to a Polish Hawk Fight
As Poland readies for its presidential election, one thing is certain: Russia is a threat

WARSAW — On Feb. 14, Magdalena Ogórek, a left-wing candidate in Poland’s presidential race, said if she were elected, she “would pick up the phone to call the Russian president” to normalize relations between Moscow and Warsaw. As it happens, it’s an unlikely scenario: The 36-year-old historian and TV personality is polling just 3 percent. But her comment sparked the question every candidate has now had to think about in the run up to the May 10 presidential election: Would you call Vladimir Putin?

The incumbent, President Bronislaw Komorowski, dismissed it outright. “If someone thinks that peace in Europe depends on a phone call, then they’re a bit out of touch with reality,” he said in a television interview.“If someone thinks that peace in Europe depends on a phone call, then they’re a bit out of touch with reality,” he said in a television interview. But that didn’t stop his main rival, Andrzej Duda, from releasing a campaign video showing a snoring Komorowski being woken in the night to take a phone call from Moscow. The clip ends with the words: “Do you want to continue worrying who will answer the phone?”

Foreign policy concerns — far beyond phone calls to the Kremlin — have been more prominent in this Polish election than previous ones, says Marcin Zaborowski, director of the Polish Institute of International Affairs (PISM). According to a recent poll, Poles consider security the most important topic in the presidential campaign. The spotlight has been on the conflict in Ukraine and its implications for Poland and the region.

(...SNIPPED)

 

[Edward Campbell]

See here for a useful overview of the Sino-Russian balance.

 

[CougarKing]

I am guessing some of you aren't surprised that Obama sent his Secstate to handle Putin instead of going there in person and staring the Russian leader in the eye...

Agence-France Presse

Putin to host John Kerry for high-stakes Sochi talks
AFP By Anna Smolchenko
1 hour ago
Moscow (AFP) - President Vladimir Putin is expected to host US Secretary of State John Kerry for talks in Sochi on Tuesday, in the first visit to Russia by the US top diplomat since the start of the crisis in Ukraine.

Ties between Moscow and Washington collapsed after Russia seized Crimea and buttressed separatists in eastern Ukraine, but after a year of raging tensions signs are emerging that both Russia and the West may be ready for a detente.
(...SNIPPED)

 

[OldSolduer]

Almost twenty years ago I had the privlege of dining with some members of the German Army in Shilo. The German company 2 IC said one thing that stood out:

`Russia is still too close`

 

[Kirkhill]

Moscow Times

Sanctions Force Russia to Abandon Next-Gen Warship Construction Plans

The Moscow Times

May. 20 2015 21:24 Last edited 21:24

Yekaterina Kuzmina / Vedomosti

Severnaya Verf shipyard has had trouble finding replacements to Western components used in the design.
Construction of a new class of highly advanced warships for the Russian navy has been abandoned after shipbuilders were unable to find parts to replace foreign hardware cut off by Western sanctions over the Ukraine crisis, news agency RIA Novosti reported Wednesday.

"Currently two of the ships are being built at our shipyards, [but] apparently they will be the only two ships from this project," the marketing director of the Severnaya Verf shipyard, Leonid Kuzmin, told RIA Wednesday. The yard has had trouble finding replacements to Western components used in the design.

The Gremyashchy-class corvettes — a class of small warship — are derived from the older Steregushchy-class corvettes but built to allow longer missions and launch cruise missiles. 

But these plans have been torpedoed by the realities of Russia's import substitution drive, which was intended to mitigate the effects of a Western arms embargo by spurring the development of comparable domestic equivalents.

Russian-made alternative components have been made for the two Gremyashchy-class ships already under construction, but Kuzmin said they are not as good as the Western hardware they replace, and the final eight vessels on order will be built as the normal Steregushchy-class corvettes the ships were based on.

The question Vlad has to ask himself, if he resorts to the Brezhnev era 30 year old nucular (  ;D ) option - is how many of those rusty firing pistols would actually detonate - and how many of them would even lift off.

 

[The Bread Guy]

And Russia's Deputy PM keeps the rhetoric dial cranked to 11+ ....
"Russian Official: 'Tanks Don't Need Visas' "

Then again, maybe he's also Russia's Minister for Playing to the Base - this, from his Twitter feed:

It's not Russia that threatens the West. Its foundations will crash down under the pressure of ISIS and gays

 

[Old Sweat]

Almost twenty years ago I had the privlege of dining with some members of the German Army in Shilo. The German company 2 IC said one thing that stood out:

`Russia is still too close`

In the mid-sixties the Germans tested a number of wheeled and tracked vehicles (I got this second hand from some friends who were there at the time.) in Shilo. The Canadians who saw the vehicles were impressed with the high ground clearance. When asked the Germans replied that that they were not going to get immobilized by Russian snow and mud again.

It could have been a bit of a joke, and remember how the Germans are noted for having a sense of humour, not. There was a lingering doubt about German militarism then 20 years after the end of the war. I remember reading a bit in Time magazine that light heartedly proclaimed that on the 20th anniversary of VE Day, all the Volkswagen bugs in the world would turn into Tiger tanks and take over the world.

 

[Humphrey Bogart]

And Russia's Deputy PM keeps the rhetoric dial cranked to 11+ ....
"Russian Official: 'Tanks Don't Need Visas' "

Then again, maybe he's also Russia's Minister for Playing to the Base - this, from his Twitter feed:

..........

> > > > >

 

[a_majoor]

Applying pressure in unexpected places:

http://www.the-american-interest.com/2015/05/28/putin-fumes-over-fifa-arrests/

Putin Fumes over FIFA Arrests

Vladimir Putin is loudly railing against the dramatic U.S. arrest of FIFA’s top officials in Zurich for massive corruption, using his favorite rhetorical tricks of reversing the narrative and demonizing America. Reuters reports:

Putin said the arrests in Switzerland on Wednesday were an “obvious attempt” to prevent FIFA head Sepp Blatter’s re-election this week but that the 79-year-old had Russia’s backing.

“If anything happened, it did not happen on U.S. territory and the United states [sic] has nothing to do with it,” he said. “This is yet another blatant attempt (by the United States) to extend its jurisdiction to other states.” […]
Swiss authorities also announced a criminal investigation into the awarding of the next two World Cups, including the 2018 tournament which was granted to Russia in 2010 by a committee containing two of the indicted FIFA officials.

One of the reasons Putin may be so exercised is that the whole affair could call the location of the 2018 tournament into question. Putin is a man who loves sports, and and it was a huge point of pride for him when he secured the rights to host last year’s Winter Olympics in, of all places, Sochi, the seaside southern resort town where he likes to summer. The games cost a record-smashing $51 billion dollars (with some critics estimating that embezzlement accounts for more than half of that figure). That victory was multiplied when Russia’s bid to host the 2018 FIFA World Cup in 13 cities, including Sochi, won out. The Russian Sports Minister told state media that Russia’s right to host the Cup was not in danger, but given the investigation into how the decisions to award the tournament to South Africa, Russia, and Qatar were made, there are good reasons to doubt that. For one, consider this passage in the New York Times report on the issue:

Despite the broad nature of the charges, the case itself arrived at the Justice Department as something of a surprise. The four-year F.B.I. investigation grew out of an unrelated inquiry into aspects of Russian organized crime by the Eurasian Joint Organized Crime Task Force in the F.B.I.’s New York office, according to people with knowledge of the case’s origins.

There’s a second reason Putin might care about the FIFA arrests. His claim that the U.S. doesn’t have rightful jurisdiction because none of the alleged criminal activity is related to America is complete bunk and almost certainly an intentional misreading of how international criminal jurisdiction works (and that’s not to mention that the Russian president hasn’t exactly been leading by example on the issue of maintaining great respect for other countries’ inviolable territorial sovereignty). Recently, he trotted out the same invalid objection about the U.S. securing an extradition order for a Russian citizen accused of industrial espionage in Sweden. A world with more prosecution of corruption is a world that’s harder for Putin to operate in.

 

[The Bread Guy]

And on the lighter side, from the satire site Duffle Blog ....

"Russia Threatens Export Ban On Cheap Vodka, Organized Crime"

;D

 

[opcougar]

[size=12pt]Russia Will Have 55 Stealth Sukhoi T-50 Fighters By 2020, But Are They As Good As The US Stealth Jets?[/size]

http://www.ibtimes.com/russia-will-have-55-stealth-sukhoi-t-50-fighters-2020-are-they-good-us-stealth-jets-1763583

 

[a_majoor]

Russian aviation technology really isn't up to snuff, and things like this only put them farther behind the eight ball. Whatever the faults of the F-35, at least the program is running and will produce hundreds, if not thousands of fighters, while the PAK-FA stalled out at 12:

http://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/2015/06/05/those-stealth-fighter-blues/?singlepage=true

Those Stealth Fighter Blues

Building fifth-generation fighters is hard, and the Russians so far just aren't up to the challenge.
by Stephen Green
June 5, 2015 - 6:39 am

The Russians just cut back — way back — on their PAK FA T-50* stealth fighter procurement. And it’s not because Moscow is short on cash, but because the fifth-gen fighter isn’t living up to expectations:

The first sign something was very wrong appeared in March. On March 24. Yuri Borisov, Russia’s deputy defense minister for armaments, told the Kommersant newspaper that the military is drastically cutting its number of T-50s. Instead of 52 stealth fighters, Russia will build merely 12 of them.

That’s hardly anything.

The Kremlin has produced five T-50 prototypes so far  —  and one was heavily damaged in a fire. Meanwhile, India is co-developing the plane with Russia, and New Delhi’s funding helps keep the project alive. But now Indian Air Force officials have also stopped talking to their counterparts in Moscow.

Which all puts a spotlight on Russia’s problems building so-called fifth-generation fighter jets  —  which the country needs to compete with the best the United States and China have to offer.

That bit about China is unfair. The Chinese can’t build a fourth-gen fighter without ripping off somebody else, and their engines aren’t even up to Russia’s Second World standards.

But back to the T-50′s teething problems, which we’re hearing about from Russia’s development partners in New Delhi:


For more than a year, the Indian Business Standard newspaper has reported on New Delhi’s misgivings. The Indian version of the T-50 is known as the FGFA.

“The FGFA’s current AL-41F1 engines were underpowered, the Russians were reluctant to share critical design information, and the fighter would eventually cost too much,” the paper reported, based on briefings from Indian Air Force officials in December 2013.

A month later, more bad news leaked to the press. India wanted a bigger share of the project. But the engine was still bad, it still cost too much, the plane’s radar was “inadequate” and its “stealth features badly engineered.”

Then in June, a T-50 landed at the Zhukovsky testing grounds near Moscow … and its engine caught fire. Russian officials said the damage was minor.

Moscow claims money problem are to blame for the scaled-back procurement, but that lie is revealed by this report:


Putin is allocating unprecedented amounts of secret funds to accelerate Russia’s largest military build-up since the Cold War, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The part of the federal budget that is so-called black—authorized but not itemized—has doubled since 2010 to 21% and now totals 3.2 trillion rubles ($60 billion), the Gaidar Institute, an independent think tank in Moscow, estimates.

Stung by sanctions over Ukraine and oil’s plunge, Putin is turning to defence spending to revive a shrinking economy.

If the PAK FA program were any damn good, Putin would find the money for it in his black budget. The Russian Air Force has been living off the scraps of the Sukhoi Su-27 — an airframe which first flew five days before Star Wars premiered in 1977. It has since been upgraded into fourth-generation “plus” planes like the Su-30 and Su-33, but the fact remains that Moscow hasn’t been able to develop a world-beating fighter in nearly 40 years.

And even back then, their engines sucked — less powerful and much less reliable than Western jets, and with maybe 2/3rds the service life.

The safest guess as to what happened to that burned-up T-50 is that something went very, very wrong with the engines. And if Moscow really wants to build a fighter as big as the T-50 — all weapons are stored internally and it has a massive wingspan nearly six feet wider than our F-22 — then they’re going to need big, powerful, and reliable engines to power that pig.

But they don’t, and throwing billions of dollars at it isn’t going to solve a problem which Russian aircraft have suffered from for 50 years or more. The Soviets could paper over that problem by building thousands of expendable jets, hoping to overwhelm NATO with sheer numbers. But the advent in the ’70s of airborne radar platforms and long-range air-to-air missiles obviated much of the Soviet’s numerical advantage. Stealth complicates things for the Russians even further. The Soviets responded to the challenge by trying to build fewer models of better aircraft — the Su-27 and the MiG-29. The MiG-29 never lived up to its promise, and the Russians must still depend on variants of the Su-27 well into the 21st century. It may be true that Western air forces are far too small, but the Russian Air Force is far too old.

Building fifth-generation fighters is hard, and the Russians so far just aren’t up to the challenge.

 

[a_majoor]

Various moves and countermoves in the Baltic States and Eastern Europe. The various nations have been agitating for soem sort of response to Russian agression, and now the US is offering to preposition some equipment. Russia, of course makse more threats in response:

http://ca.reuters.com/article/topNews/idCAKBN0OV17A20150615?sp=true&utm_content=buffere3dd1&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Russia says will retaliate if U.S. weapons stationed on its borders
Mon Jun 15, 2015 2:39pm EDT

By Gabriela Baczynska and Wiktor Szary

MOSCOW/WARSAW (Reuters) - A plan by Washington to station tanks and heavy weapons in NATO states on Russia's border would be the most aggressive U.S. act since the Cold War, and Moscow would retaliate by beefing up its own forces, a Russian defense official said on Monday.

The United States is offering to store military equipment on allies' territory in eastern Europe, a proposal aimed at reassuring governments worried that after the conflict in Ukraine, they could be the Kremlin's next target.

Poland and the Baltic states, where officials say privately they have been frustrated the NATO alliance has not taken more decisive steps to deter Russia, welcomed the decision by Washington to take the lead.

But others in the region were more cautious, fearing their countries could be caught in the middle of a new arms race between Russia and the United States.

"If heavy U.S. military equipment, including tanks, artillery batteries and other equipment really does turn up in countries in eastern Europe and the Baltics, that will be the most aggressive step by the Pentagon and NATO since the Cold War," Russian defense ministry official General Yuri Yakubov said.

"Russia will have no option but to build up its forces and resources on the Western strategic front," Interfax news agency quoted him as saying.

He said the Russian response was likely to include speeding up the deployment of Iskander missiles to Kaliningrad, a Russian exclave bordered by Poland and Lithuania, and beefing up Russian forces in ex-Soviet Belarus.

"Our hands are completely free to organize retaliatory steps to strengthen our Western frontiers," Yakubov said.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said: "We hope that reason will prevail and the situation in Europe will be prevented from sliding into a new military confrontation which may have dangerous consequences."

ALLIED ARMY

The Pentagon said on Monday the U.S. military was in the process of deciding where to store a battalion's worth of military equipment in Europe. The decision is part of a long-term effort to maintain equipment for a heavy brigade in the region to facilitate U.S. rotational training with NATO allies.

"This is purely positioning of equipment to better facilitate our ability to conduct training," said Army Colonel Steve Warren, a Pentagon spokesman, noting that two battalions of equipment already was stored there.

Lieutenant General Ben Hodges, commander of the U.S. Army in Europe, told Reuters in December the equipment set for the full brigade would be about 160 M-1 tanks plus M-2 Bradley fighting vehicles and self-propelled howitzers. A Pentagon official said on Monday the total number of vehicles would be about 220.

U.S. officials said a proposal under review envisages storing a company's worth of equipment, enough for 150 soldiers, in each of the three Baltic nations: Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.

Enough equipment for a company or possibly a battalion, or about 750 soldiers, would also be located in Poland, Romania, Bulgaria and possibly Hungary.

The idea was that, in the event of an attack on NATO's eastern border, the United States could quickly fly in troops who would use the equipment, cutting out the weeks or months it would take to transport convoys of gear overland across Europe.

However, the U.S. proposal could cause tensions within NATO, an alliance that often struggles to accommodate more hawkish members such as Poland or Lithuania alongside other states that want to avoid a military stand-off with Russia at any cost.

Speaking after talks in Warsaw with the U.S. Secretary of the Navy, Ray Mabus, Polish Defence Minister Tomasz Siemoniak said he expected a final U.S. decision on the equipment within a few weeks.

"They know how important this is to us, because we want to build a permanent U.S. presence, the allied army here on the Polish territory," Siemoniak told reporters.

"It seems to me that such enterprises, that is equipment warehouses, are a very crucial step when it comes to building such a presence."

A spokesman for Lithuania's foreign ministry, Kestutis Vaskelevicius, said any increased NATO presence was intended to improve the security of the Baltic states. "(It) is not directed against anyone, and it does not threaten anyone," he said.

TWO-SPEED NATO

Since Russia's annexation of Ukraine's Crimea Peninsula and a rebellion by Moscow-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine, Poland and the Baltic states - countries with a history of Russian occupation - have pushed NATO for a muscular response.

But proposals for a permanent NATO combat presence in eastern Europe were blocked by Germany and some other alliance members. Instead, NATO intensified exercises, rotating troops through the region and set up a command headquarters for a rapid reaction force in north-west Poland.

Sources close to the government in Poland, and other states in the region, said that response persuaded them they could not fully rely on NATO, and that their best bet in the event of an attack was that the U.S. military would come to their aid.

At a NATO summit in Wales last year, agreement was reached on "pre-positioning" military equipment in eastern Europe, but the Pentagon's plan appeared to go further and faster than measures envisaged by the alliance.

The initiative could force some former Warsaw Pact countries now in NATO to make uncomfortable choices.

Bulgaria and Hungary both say they are committed members of the alliance, but they have maintained close cultural and commercial ties to Moscow, and may not want to jeopardize those links by storing U.S. military equipment on their soil.

Rosen Plevneliev, the Bulgarian President, said it was too early to say if his country would join the Pentagon's initiative.

"At the current moment there is no proposal whatsoever to the Bulgarian government upon which we can start discussions," he said.

(Additional reporting by Andrius Sytas in Vilniu, Tsvetelia Tsolova in Sofia, Katya Golubkova in Moscow and Adrian Croft in Brussels; editing by Giles Elgood)

 

[a_majoor]

When the Chinese close their doors to Russian bankers, you know things are getting bad. Propping up Russia as a stick to beat the West (and keep people's minds off the South China Sea) would seem to be an ideal strategic use of their financial power:

http://www.the-american-interest.com/2015/06/18/chinese-banks-closed-for-russian-business/

Chinese Banks Closed For Russian Business

Here’s still more evidence that at least the financial part of the sanctions on Russia is having an effect: Yuri Soloviev, the deputy chairman of VTB, Russia’s second largest lender, wrote an op-ed to complain about how Chinese financial firms are declining to work with their Russian counterparts these days. In his piece in Finance Asia titled “Unlocking the Potential of Russia-Asia Cooperation”, after the usual platitudes about all the things going well, he gets to a section called “sticking points”:

China’s ambiguous position regarding Russian banks in the wake of US and EU sanctions is a key issue holding back progress toward greater bilateral cooperation. Most Chinese banks will currently not execute interbank transactions with their Russian peers. In addition, Chinese banks have significantly curtailed their involvement in interbank foreign trade deals, such as providing trade finance.
China’s domestic capital markets are another area of untapped potential. Currently, foreign companies are barred from raising equity or debt capital on China’s local yuan markets.

Avid TAI readers might recall Anders Aslund earlier this year pretty much predicting that the financial sanctions would start to leave a mark:

The Dodd-Frank Act and similar EU regulations have reinforced the powers of U.S. and EU financial regulators, compelling international banks to exercise extreme caution. The banks’ internal due diligence departments are far more strict than the actual law, and they prevented loans to Russian companies from going through even when the transactions were formally legal, because they feared that the rules might suddenly change. Even Chinese state banks are now reluctant to lend to Russia. As a consequence, Russia has become exposed to a liquidity freeze.

A liquidity freeze or “sudden stop” of international financing is a frightful condition. It hit much of the world after the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy on September 15, 2008. The smaller and the more financially exposed an economy was, the greater the damage. Three of the worst-hit economies were the Baltic countries—Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania—which faced GDP slumps of 14-18 percent in 2009. Interestingly, these three countries had state finances that were as stellar as Russia’s, with more or less balanced state budgets and minimal public debt, before the crash, but it did not save them. Thus these Russian virtues are beneficial, but are no guarantee of financial stability. The key commonality of these four countries is that they all lacked access to international finance. For the Baltic countries, the liquidity freeze lasted only three quarters. It is likely to last much longer for Russia.

Why does this matter? While the Russian state under Vladimir Putin paid off all its debt and tucked away a sizable rainy day fund in the 2000s, Russian firms are deeply indebted. We once again direct you to the excellent piece by Vladislav Inozemtsev from a few months back for context:

Russia throughout the 2000s remained an economy with high inflation, and therefore with high interest rates. At the same time, the ruble/dollar exchange fluctuations were relatively small during the whole period (30.6 rubles per dollar in early 2002, 24.4 rubles per dollar in early 2008, and 33.1 rubles per dollar in early 2014). In such circumstances large Russian companies listed on foreign stock exchanges and showing healthy financial results easily obtained three- to ten-year loans from foreign banks at 3.5–5.5 percent per annum, instead of paying 12–14 percent for one- to two-year loans from Russian banks. As a result, by the beginning of 2014 Russian corporations owed foreign creditors more than $678 billion (22.4 trillion rubles), while borrowing from Russian banks totaled only 19.3 trillion rubles. Most of these foreign loans were constantly replaced by new ones; in other words, the corporations borrowed money not just to acquire additional capital but also to pay off older obligations—but their overall amount of debt grew steadily by $60–70 billion per year from 2009 to 2013.

Bills coming due, income drying up, and no way to borrow money: it’s a sticky situation for anyone to be in. The Kremlin might try to put on a brave face by talking about meeting EU sanctions with counter-sanctions of their own. But the truth is, they’ve got an incomparably weaker hand to play. They’re vulnerable, and they know it.

 

[Kirkhill]

If true then Capitalism wins again.

Money trumps both policy and politics.  The Chinese have met the enemy and they are us.....

 

[a_majoor]

And more unrest in the Near Abroad. Funny how ham handed crony capitalism and centralized control tends to annoy people even without Wstern intervention....

http://www.the-american-interest.com/2015/06/24/protests-in-yerevan-have-the-kremlin-spooked/

Protests in Yerevan Have the Kremlin Spooked

Street protests in Armenia have continued for a fifth straight day in response to an electricity price hike of 16.7 percent announced on June 17 by the government in this poor landlocked nation of 3 million. The protests show no sign of easing off. The Guardian:

The protests in Yerevan, which began on Friday, escalated significantly after police fired water cannons to disperse seated demonstrators on Tuesday morning. By Wednesday evening thousands of people had gathered on Marshal Baghramyan Avenue near the presidential palace, chanting slogans and blocking traffic.

In the early hours of Wednesday, ruling party politicians and others formed a human shield between police and protesters, although negotiations over a potential meeting with the president, Serzh Sargsyan, fell through for the second night.

Why is this significant? The parent company of Electric Networks of Armenia, the firm that has a monopolistic grip on electricity distribution on the country and that his been insisting on the price hike, is Inter RAO, a large Russian energy company whose chairman is none other Igor Sechin, one of Vladimir Putin’s closest pals.

As the indispensable Leonid Bershidsky has pointed out, even if the protests hadn’t been warmly greeted by Ukraine’s Minister of Internal Affairs Arsen Avakov (who happens to be an ethnic Armenian), Moscow was more than ready to see the West’s fingerprints all over them:


“I’m sure there are plenty of militants from Ukraine and there is an outside coordination center run by the same political operators who ran the Maidan in Kiev,” Russian political scientist Sergei Markov wrote on Facebook. “There can be no doubt that this is no spontaneous outpouring of popular protest in Yerevan. It’s all a matter of technology and the organizers’ main goal is to incite bloodshed.”
According to Markov, the Yerevan disturbances are the response of a sinister Western cabal to Armenia’s 2013 decision to opt out of a trade and association agreement with the European Union and instead join Putin’s Eurasian Union.

In addition, the Guardian notes that Igor Morozov, a member of the foreign affairs committee in the Duma, accused the American embassy of actively participating in fomenting the unrest in Yerevan.
Bershidsky thinks that the Armenian protests don’t yet stand much of a chance of turning into a Ukraine-style revolution (read his whole piece here for more context) and he may well be right. But then again, the world has not been short of surprises this year, and with it never being clear just how much Kremlin bluster is propaganda and how much is serious, it’s safest not to write anything completely off.

In any case, we here at TAI will certainly be following events on Twitter using the #ElectricYerevan tag.

 

[threestorms]

Well now that oil prices are up that will affect Russian for sure.

ie they will benefit from it.

On the flip side I would love to see people go to the streets when water and electricity is allowed to be upped by 30%ish (Ontario)

 

[The Bread Guy]

I see Russia's Info-machine can sometimes be guilty of "premature ejaculation" ....

• June 11, 2015:  "Kremlin Blames Technical Glitch for 'Fake Firing' of Kaliningrad Governor -- The Kremlin has apologized for a "technical glitch" that caused an announcement to appear briefly on its website in the early hours of Thursday morning claiming that President Vladimir Putin has dismissed the governor of Russia's Baltic exclave, Kaliningrad.  The governor, Nikolai Tsukanov, remains in his job and "there is no question of an early resignation," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in comments carried by state-run news agencies.  Peskov sought to stress the Kremlin's support for the governor, saying Tsukanov will run for a second term this fall, and enjoys the president's endorsement for his re-election bid.  "A technical glitch happened during the night, and a decree about Tsukanov's early resignation was issued," Peskov was quoted as saying by state-run news agency RIA Novosti. "That decree was recalled, it was removed from the presidential website. You are all witnesses to that. Tsukanov remains governor." ....
• June 28, 2015:  "Executive Order on early termination of Kaliningrad Region Governor’s mandate -- Following a request from Kaliningrad Region Governor Nikolai Tsukanov to step down ahead of term, the President accepted his resignation and appointed Mr Tsukanov Acting Governor of the region until an elected Kaliningrad Region Governor takes office."

Oooopsie ....

 

[The Bread Guy]

Really?  Really?

Russia's Prosecutor General's Office has opened an investigation into the legitimacy of the independence of the Baltic states. The office is to look into whether a decision, made by the State Council of the USSR in 1991, to recognize the three breakaway states as independent nations was legal, newsru.com reports.

Russian news agency Interfax quotes a source saying that Russia's Prosecutor General's Office has accepted an enquiry previously made by several parliament members. "The decision to recognize the Baltic states' independence is juridically harmful, because it was adopted by an unconstitutional body," the source said.

He added that the enquiry would be analogous to the one that the office made regarding the status of Crimea, ruling recently that the 1954 decision to hand it over to the Ukrainian SSR was illegal. The source noted, however, that this conclusion of the Russian Prosecutor General's Office did not carry any legal consequences.

"The Office of the Prosecutor General of Russia merely stated that the transfer of Crimea to Ukraine under Nikita Khrushchev was unconstitutional, because the decision was made by state bodies that were not authorized to do so," the source explained ....

 

[McG]

If you are inclined to (maybe one day) launch an invasion, then you may as well get around to laying the groundwork with your legal pretext sooner as opposed to later.