Russia will add 80 new warships to Black Sea Fleet - Vladimir Soldatkin - http://news.yahoo.com/russia-add-80-warships-black-sea-fleet-fleet-120309252.html
Russia will increase its Black Sea fleet with more than 80 new warships by 2020 and will complete a second naval base for the fleet near the city of Novorossiysk by 2016, its commander said on Tuesday.
In comments made to President Vladimir Putin as he visited the port city, Vice Admiral Alexander Vitko said a second Black Sea base was needed in addition to the main base on the Crimea peninsula annexed from Ukraine because of NATO expansion.
"Eighty ships and other vessels are expected to arrive (in Novorossiysk) before 2020. The Black Sea Fleet will have 206 ships and vessels by 2020," Vitko told Putin.
"NATO ships are constantly present in the Black Sea and it plans to establish a naval base in the Black Sea," he added.
NATO has regularly conducted naval exercises in the Black Sea, especially since Russia annexed Crimea, populated mainly by ethnic Russians, in March partly from fear that Ukraine's new pro-Western authorities might try to join the Atlantic alliance.
A NATO official told Reuters in Brussels there were no alliance plans to build a Black Sea base but said it already had access to the resources of member states in the region.
"Our Black Sea allies have ports that we use from time to time but (there are) no plans to build a "Nato" base as suggested," the official said.
Three NATO members have a Black Sea coastline - Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey.
The former Soviet republic of Georgia, on the eastern shore of the Black Sea, has sought membership in the past but like Ukraine is very unlikely to be admitted any time soon due to Moscow's fierce opposition to NATO's further eastern expansion.
DEFENSE SPENDING
During NATO exercises in western Ukraine earlier this month, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu promised to boost the number of troops in Crimea.
On Tuesday, Shoigu was overseeing Russian military exercises involving 155,000 servicemen in the Far East. He told Putin in a video conference that the army's firepower and assault capabilities had increased lately as part of spending plans for the armed forces set to cost hundreds of billions of dollars.
"The firing, assault and maneuver capabilities ... have increased due to the supplies of modern weapons and equipment," Shoigu said.
Russia plans to spend 21 trillion rubles ($545 billion) by the end of the decade on refurbishing Russia's armed forces. Some of those funds will be used to improve the defense infrastructure of Crimea.
Russia has staged several military exercises this year, including near Ukraine's border, which have contributed to the tensions with the West, which sees the increased training as saber rattling amid the persistent disagreements over Ukraine.
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Russian air incursions rattle Baltic states - Richard Milne, Sam Jones and Kathrin Hille - http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/9d016276-43c3-11e4-baa7-00144feabdc0.html?siteedition=intl#axzz3ELQFmbIk
The Baltic countries are registering a dramatic increase in Russian military provocations, rattling nerves in a region which fears it could be the next frontier after Ukraine in Moscow's quest at asserting its regional power.
Nato fighters policing Baltic airspace were scrambled 68 times along Lithuania's borders this year, by far the highest count in more than 10 years. Latvia registered 150 "close incidents", cases where Russian aircraft were found approaching and observed for risky behaviour. Estonia said its sovereign airspace had been violated by Russian aircraft five times this year, nearing the total count of seven over the previous eight years.
Finland has had five violations of its airspace this year against an annual average of one to two in the previous decade, while Sweden last week suffered what Carl Bildt called the "most serious airspace incursion" in his eight years as foreign minister.
"A lot of people here and across northern Europe are worried about what it means for the future. It's not benign, it's rather unpleasant," said James Rogers, lecturer at the Baltic Defense College. He added that the incursions were "Russia trying to remind everyone it is still a significant air power".
Although the Baltic states have borne the brunt of Russian adventurism in the skies, there has been a much broader surge in incidents, and other Nato members including Canada, the US, the Netherlands, Romania and the UK have experienced airspace infringements as well.
According to one western official, so far this year there have been well over a hundred quick reaction alerts - the scrambling of fighter jets - because of Russian activity in the vicinity of alliance airspace, a threefold increase over the number for the whole of 2013.
"[We] can attribute some of these flights to an increase in Russian military exercises and activity along Nato's eastern borders but in many cases the Russian military is being provocative by probing airspace they are not authorized to enter," said one senior Nato military officer, who confirmed there was significant concern over the increased number of incidents. "As in Ukraine, Russian aggressiveness in the air adds to the tension between the international community and the Kremlin."
Many of the reported incidents do not involve a violation of another state's sovereign airspace - which extends 12 nautical miles from the shore of Nato member states - but an entry into air defense identification zones, areas in which a country requires the identification and control of foreign aircraft beyond its sovereign airspace.
In a typical instance, Russian aircraft will turn off transmitters that emit a transponder identification code and will deviate from standard flight plans, or else not file them at all. Such measures render planes invisible to civilian air traffic control systems.
Russia's sorties involve a range of aircraft, from smaller Sukhoi Su-27 Flanker fighters and surveillance planes to Tupolev Tu-22 supersonic bombers and even giant Tupolev Tu-95 long-range nuclear bombers.
According to the Pentagon, in the past two months alone Russian nuclear bombers have made at least 16 incursions into US and Canadian air defense identification zones. The most recent incursions - last Wednesday and Thursday - coincided with a visit of Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko to Ottawa and Washington.
Apart from such political signals, a broad-based military expansion is behind the surge in incidents. Foreign military experts say Russian president Vladimir Putin's introduction of "snap" test exercises and the scaling up of the annual exercise cycle reflect the priority his administration has assigned to defense and to regaining Great Power status.
A multiyear military spending binge has endowed the Russian Air Force with new capabilities and resources, meaning it flies more and further.
Nowhere is Russia's growing swagger triggering more concerns than in the Baltic states, which have a history of Soviet occupation, heated political arguments with Russia and sizeable Russian populations. Mr Putin's new argument that ethnic Russians abroad are part of a "Russian World" and as such worthy of Moscow's protection has reignited such fears.
"What is happening now in Ukraine is part of a global project," warns Andrei Piontkovsky, a Russian political commentator highly critical of Mr Putin, adding that the president could target the Baltics next.
Defence officials in the Baltic sea region fret that the incidents, taken in conjunction with other recent Russian acts in the region such as the apparent abduction of an Estonian intelligence officer and the seizure of a Lithuanian fishing vessel in international waters, add up to a more assertive stance from Moscow towards the Baltics.
The most provocative acts - the Swedish incursion and the capture of the Estonian officer - came days after President Barack Obama affirmed in Tallinn that the US and Nato would protect the Baltics from any potential attack.
"It is making people nervous. So people are questioning whether the allies would come to their aid," said Mr Rogers. "It's important that the big western powers meet like with like and show that Russian saber-rattling will not intimidate anyone."
Russia to fully renew nuclear forces by 2020 - http://rt.com/politics/189604-russia-nuclear-2020-mistral/
Russia is set to renew the country's strategic nuclear forces by 100 percent, not 70 percent as previously announced, according to Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin.
"The formation of the technical basis for strategic nuclear forces is going at a faster rate, and in fact, we will renew not 70 percent of the SNF, but 100 percent," Rogozin told Rossiya TV channel.
The deputy premier, who's responsible for the Russian defense industry, also declared that in 2015 the army and the navy are to switch 30 percent of their weapons to "cutting edge" technology, and by 70 percent in 2020.
"Should we amaze our colleagues, and is it necessary to brandish all types of weaponry to surprise them? Something must be preserved as a quiet secret for yourself to reveal at the most critical moment," Rogozin said, as quoted by RIA Novosti.
He added that the Russian army needs to be compact to move to "any threatening war theater" if necessary.
Rogozin also stated that Russia can do without the French Mistral helicopter carriers, the delivery of which was suspended over the situation in Ukraine. Moreover, the official described the statements from France that the contract could be disrupted as "unlawful" because one third of the ship was manufactured in Russia.
"For the same reason, it is impossible to transfer this half-of-the-ship to anybody else," he added.
"Secondly, the money has been paid and it must be returned with penalties. Thirdly, it is not even money that France is risking, but its status of a reliable supplier in the World Trade Organization," Rogozin said.
Mistrals aren't entirely convenient for the Russian climate, as they were initially designed for the Mediterranean and wouldn't be able to sail in northern seas, the deputy premier underlined.
Last but not the least, Russia can now make state-of-the-art ships that can easily match up to the Mistrals, the official said.
"Last year, on November 16 we transferred the Vikramaditya light aircraft carrier, which was formerly our Admiral Gorshkov missile cruiser, to our Indian colleagues. Thus, having implemented that contract and earning big money, we proved inside Russia and showed to the country's leadership that Russia can now assemble ships of that kind," Rogozin stressed, as quoted by ITAR-TASS.
The deputy PM also said that Russia would invite the world's best specialists to work in the country's manufacturing.
"In principle, we would be glad to hire French shipbuilders. I'm not joking. We'll be employing the best specialists from all over the globe now," Rogozin stated, adding that Ukrainian workers are welcome too, and for them the procedure of getting Russian citizenship would be simplified.
Among other developments, the Russian military-industrial complex will replace all the Ukrainian supplies in two-and-a-half years.
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