Russia’s Plan For The BRICS To Dismantle The Dollar System
Submitted by Calgary4Paul on Tue, 05/14/2013 – 12:40
in Daily Paul Liberty Forum

“A week before the recent BRICS summit in Durban, the Kremlin administration has silently produced a document which describes the Russian strategy in the context of BRICS cooperation. The document makes for a fascinating read for anyone brave enough to plow through the dense Russian legalese. The strategy has been designed in the “inner circle” of Vladimir Putin’s team, so it is safe to assume that it represents the official view on the BRICS future.

In Russia, politics are Byzantine; the fact that the Kremlin decided not to hide the document or leak it to a chosen few journalists, but publish it outright is a very strong signal, a very vocal angry signal directed at the US. A signal that the Western media chose to ignore.

In the recitals section of the document, the authors point out that “there is a common desire of the BRICS partners to reform the outdated global financial and economic framework that doesn’t take into account the growing economic weight of the emerging markets.” Moreover, the Russian strategists view the BRICS as a tool to reform the way the world is being governed. Then the document hammers home its message:

Russia assumes that, given enough political will of the leadership of the BRICS countries to advance their cooperation, this alliance can become one of the key elements of a new system for global governance, primarily in the economic and financial domains.

Move aside New World Order! The BRICS are coming to change the world.”

http://12160.info/page/russia-s-plan-for-the-brics-to-dismantle-the-dollar-system

Syrians: We are Eternally Thankful for Russia’s Stances in Support of Syria
http://sana.sy/eng/21/2013/04/29/479864.htm
Apr 29, 2013

DAMASCUS, (SANA)_The People’s Assembly Speaker, Mohammad Jihad al-Laham expressed Syria’s appreciation for the Russian stances in support of the international legitimacy and peoples’ right, especially its support to Syria against the war targeting it.
In a letter addressed to Chairperson of the Federation Council of Russia’s Federal Assembly, Valentina Matviyenko, marking the Day of Parliamentarianism in Russia, al-Laham expressed deep appreciation for Russia’s genuine support for the interests of ME peoples, especially the Palestinian cause.
Al-Laham considered that the Day of Parliamentarianism which celebrates the democratic principles and their traditions in the Russian parliamentary life comes at a time when Russia is working to redress the balance in the international policy that the US has monopolized over the past ten years, and build a balanced, multi-polar world free of the Western hegemony on the peoples’ interests.
Al-Laham said that Syria is confident that that the Russian leadership is working hard to realize the aspirations of the Russian people for more prosperity and progress.
M. Ismael

The Cypriot financial meltdown has rocked Moscow. Russia provided Cyprus in 2011 with a 2.5 billion-euro ($ 3.2 billion) low interest loan and believed the European Union and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) should join in the bailout of a euro-zone member nation. Until now, the Russian authorities apparently did not see any immediate danger, recently announcing an intention to press the Cypriots to disclose information about Russian bank accounts as part of President Vladimir Putin’s announced policy of “deoffshoreization” of the Russian economy to curtail corruption and illegal capital outflow (Kommersant FM, March 11).

Over the weekend (March 15–17) the entire Cypriot banking system was closed down and will continue to be closed at least until next week, as the local parliament rejected a bailout package negotiated by the EU Commission and the IMF that involved an up-to-ten-percent levy on bank accounts and deposits, including those from Russia. Putin and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev accused the EU of acting irresponsibly and unilaterally, without consulting with Moscow, and of attempting to confiscate Russian property (RIA Novosti, March 18). The Russian business community was equally irritated. Multi-billionaire turned politician Mikhail Prokhorov demanded that Russia must be an equal partner with the EU in deciding the future of Cyprus’s financial system and that the Russian Commercial Bank (RCB) of Cyprus (a fully Russian-owned subsidiary of the state-controlled banking giant VTB) must become the backbone of a revived Cypriot banking system. (Vedomosti, March 20).

Cyprus has been used as an offshore financial haven by Russian companies and wealthy Russians to avoid high corporate taxes at home as well as to legalize billions obtained in kickbacks and other illegal or shady activities. Some of this wealth has been reinvested: Cyprus officially owns some 40 percent of the total foreign capital invested in Russia. The Russian economy to a large extent is controlled by shell holding companies registered in Cyprus, which—as a “foreign” EU investment—gives them additional protection from arbitrary actions by the notoriously corrupt Russian bureaucracy. Shell companies in Cyprus thus avoid the taxation of dividends and allow for the free movement of capital to a seemingly safe destination (Vedomosti, March 19).

Publicly, Putin has been largely silent up to now about the Cypriot banking crisis, but Medvedev has been openly unnerved, threatening to sue the Cypriot authorities and the EU for the losses encountered by Russians “because of their actions.” Medvedev also threatened to denounce the 1998 Double Tax Agreement between Russia and Cyprus, effectively terminating the island’s offshore status for Russian companies (RIA Novosti, March 20). Surely, the Kremlin could indeed achieve its announced goal of “deoffshoreization,” if it really wanted to. In fact, Putin’s friends and associates (including Medvedev) are exempt from “deoffshoreization.” Speaking to reporters, Medvedev explained that lots of fully legitimate financial operations were going through Cyprus and that “Russian government structures” were using Cyprus for its offshore banking services. According to Medvedev, “the volume of Russian illegitimate business going through Cyprus is grossly exaggerated” (RIA Novosti, March 20).

According to Moscow sources, the state-controlled natural gas monopoly Gazprom, where Medvedev was for some time board chairman, has a large euro deposit in RCB—at present frozen. Medvedev has promised that he will discuss the Cyprus problem and demand explanations from the EU Commission’s top brass, who will be in Moscow this week for a Russia-EU summit. Medvedev has threatened “to possibly rethink” Russia’s long-term policy of support of the euro if the terms of the “inadequate” Cyprus bailout are not rewritten. In Russian, the word “inadequate” (neadekvatnost) is the equivalent of “nutty.” At present some 40 percent of Russia’s overall $ 522 billion worth of foreign currency reserves are held in euro-denominated assets (Interfax, March 21).

Russia has been using the Cypriot banking system as a financial clearing house for brokerages and for export-import operations (legitimate as well as fake ones, intended for money-laundering and capital outflow). Russian oligarchs use Cyprus to do business, while parking their massive yachts and buying estates in the French Rivera and equally flashy places. But many other wealthy Russians of lesser caliber have been buying up seafront property, parking smaller yachts and settling on Cyprus, where the Russian community is estimated to reach 50,000. Now their bank accounts are frozen while real estate prices may tumble, putting their lifestyle in jeopardy. Russia’s overall losses in the Cyprus meltdown are unclear, but could amount to many billions of euros (www.newscom.ru, March 21).

Apparently Cypriots believe that Moscow has so much to lose in the meltdown, the Kremlin will be ready to outbid the EU and the IMF in a bailout by offering kinder terms. On March 19, the newly elected Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades phoned Putin and Finance Minister Michael Sarris was sent to Moscow to ask for support. Sarris met with Russian ministers but did not make any progress, while Putin—the only true decision-maker in town—avoided contact. Reportedly, Russia was offered to take over large, insolvent Cypriot banks for a nominal price of one euro and buy drilling rights to the recently discovered underwater natural gas deposits in the Mediterranean south of Cyprus. Sarris was apparently surprised that Russians, whom Cypriots have become used to seeing throw money around, did not pounce on the offer (Kommersant, March 21). Meanwhile, Putin’s economic adviser, Sergei Glazyev, told journalists Russia could bail out Cyprus if the island joined the Eurasian Union together with Belarus, Russia and Kazakhstan (RIA Novosti, March 20).

According to Russian sources, the Cypriot offer of property in exchange for cash was too vague to discuss seriously (Kommersant, March 21). Medvedev acknowledged that “a list of things for sale was offered,” but that Moscow wants to first see what bid the EU may offer. The true price of Cypriot offshore gas deposits is unclear, according to Medvedev, “and there are problems with Turkey.” Ankara has threatened to use naval power to stop any gas drilling in the Cypriot exclusive economic zone, if the interests of Turkish Cypriots are not taken into account (Interfax, March 21). Russia may be interested in purchasing Cyprus on the cheap—thus buying a strategic foothold in the Mediterranean. But at present, an open-ended commitment that may cost tens of billions of dollars seems too risky. Also, if the ruble effectively replaces the euro in Cyprus as it transforms itself into a Mediterranean Belarus, its attractiveness as an offshore banking hub may be undercut.

Link

Russia’s cash flight to gather momentum
By Pavel K Baev

Last week marked the anniversary of the shocking performance staged by the Pussy Riot punk rock group in the Christ the Savior Cathedral in Moscow. And this year saw a spectacular increase in the density of “patriotic” political noise silencing common sense in debates over such matters as separation of church and state, homosexual “propaganda” or the adoption of Russian children by American families.

This noise has obscured one truly sensational news item produced by the chairman of the Central Bank, Sergei Ignatiev, who confirmed that Russia, which should have been – and needs to be – a net importer of capital, lost through capital flight US$ 57 billion in 2012, including $ 35 billion in “dubious operations” (Vedomosti, February 20). There is nothing new about these

figures, but Ignatiev asserted that more than a half of the dubious money outflow is controlled by “one well-organized group of people”, which should have been identified and terminated.

This informed estimate provides a rare insight into the maturity of organized crime in Russia and the scope of the country’s corruption.

This criminal group necessarily includes not only dirty bankers, who create disposable companies, but also tax authorities, who write down the non-payments, and even the Federal Security Service, which monitors financial flows (Novaya Gazeta, February 21). The organized crime group in question has built a reputation for reliably servicing the vast “shadow economy” and is well-protected against criminal investigations, so Ignatiev dares to spell out his frustration only because he is due in a few months to leave the position he has held for 12 years (Kommersant-FM, February 20).

This invincibility of a flourishing criminal organization sheds new light on the plight of Sergei Magnitsky, an accountant and auditor who discovered a fragment of its activity and paid with his life for the attempt to stop it (Ezhednevny Zhurnal, February 23). Magnitsky was arrested in 2008 and died in custody in Moscow the following year. The hysterical political reaction to every examination of the Magnitsky case in the United States or, more hesitantly, in the European Union can be largely explained by the inability to investigate this crime determined by the unbreakable chain of mutual commitments inside the group of money-exporters (Novaya Gazeta, February 20).

President Vladimir Putin is probably irked and alarmed by the absolute indifference within the corrupt bureaucracy to his supreme orders, and he also begins to suspect that the non-stop parade of raspil and otkat (these expressive terms for embezzlement and bribe have enriched the financial lexicon) threatens the sustainability of Putinism’s economic model.

He tries to strike some fear back into the predatory bureaucracy by expressing outrage over the most blatant “privatization” of budgets designated for top-priority projects in Vladivostok, which hosted the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit last September, and in Sochi, where construction for the 2014 Winter Olympics has entered its final desperate phase (New Times, February 18). His search for scapegoats remains, however, as unconvincing as is the legislation forbidding top-level bureaucrats the elementary convenience of owning bank accounts abroad (Kommersant, February 22). This “frown on corruption” only further encourages capital flight, which reached $ 10 billion in January and is no longer officially forecasted to cease, but rather to stay at the level of $ 50 billion in 2013 (RBC Daily, February 22).

This sustained outpouring of money affects economic growth, which Putin perceives as the crucial condition for stabilizing his suddenly shaky presidency. He has little interest in the services sector and is a firm believer in re-industrialization. But it is exactly the industrial production that registered contraction going into the fifth straight month, so that the output in January 2013 was 0.8% lower than in the same month of 2012 (Nezavisimaya Gazeta, February 22).

The defense-industrial complex is supposed to be the “locomotive” of growth in manufacturing, but an ambitious re-armament program is advancing well only on paper where target figures are routinely corrected to fit the actual results. The “patriotic” lobbyists have successfully derailed most proposals for importing high-tech weapons from Western producers, popular with former Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov.

His successor, Sergei Shoigu, prefers to defuse the conflict with the industry but cannot ignore the results of a recent audit, which established that only 20% of enterprises could qualify as “modern”. In more than half of them modernization makes no sense, so only political orders postpone their overdue shutdown (Ezhednevny Zhurnal, February 22). Putin has committed himself to feeding a “black hole” that aggravates the shortage of investment resources in other sectors (Nezavisimoe Voennoe Obozrenie, February 15).

The squeeze is acutely felt in the oil and gas industry, which was the main provider of prosperity for the country but now is facing technological challenges and saturation in the key export market in Europe, and so contributes to the trend of extra slow growth (Forbes.ru, February 21). Putin’s particular attention to every oil contract and gas deal used to be an attraction for Western investors, who valued his guarantees, but now it is seen as a factor worsening the “Siberian” investment climate.

With a wary sense of deja vu, European consumers follow the current Russian-Ukrainian quarrels as President Viktor Yanukovich refuses to pay a $ 7 billion fine to Gazprom, speculating that Putin will not risk another “gas war” (Kommersant, February 22).

The Russian president is indeed more preoccupied with fierce court intrigues, suspecting that the government’s forays against his loyal lieutenant Igor Sechin, who considers himself an “energy tsar”, are merely a means for Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev to position himself as a smarter economic “modernizer” (Novaya Gazeta, February 22).

Jealously guarding his privilege of economic commander-in-chief, Putin cannot fail to see that his instructions to secure stable growth and to keep the working class employed depart further and further from the reality of inescapable stagnation.

The slowdown is not externally induced or cyclical but determined by escalating bureaucratic predation, which escapes Russia through “dubious operations” that roughly equal what Gazprom earns in net profit. Putin is helpless to curtail the corruption, which is the organizing principle of his system of power and the only guarantee of loyalty of his subordinates.

The pivotal institution of the Russian presidency is quickly losing legitimacy – a stronger signal to the elites than any “stay home” order from Putin that it is time to pull their ill-gained fortunes out of the country. The regime’s failure is, therefore, gaining momentum.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/CEN-01-270213.html

Russia’s cash flight to gather momentum
By Pavel K Baev

Last week marked the anniversary of the shocking performance staged by the Pussy Riot punk rock group in the Christ the Savior Cathedral in Moscow. And this year saw a spectacular increase in the density of “patriotic” political noise silencing common sense in debates over such matters as separation of church and state, homosexual “propaganda” or the adoption of Russian children by American families.

This noise has obscured one truly sensational news item produced by the chairman of the Central Bank, Sergei Ignatiev, who confirmed that Russia, which should have been – and needs to be – a net importer of capital, lost through capital flight US$ 57 billion in 2012, including $ 35 billion in “dubious operations” (Vedomosti, February 20). There is nothing new about these

figures, but Ignatiev asserted that more than a half of the dubious money outflow is controlled by “one well-organized group of people”, which should have been identified and terminated.

This informed estimate provides a rare insight into the maturity of organized crime in Russia and the scope of the country’s corruption.

This criminal group necessarily includes not only dirty bankers, who create disposable companies, but also tax authorities, who write down the non-payments, and even the Federal Security Service, which monitors financial flows (Novaya Gazeta, February 21). The organized crime group in question has built a reputation for reliably servicing the vast “shadow economy” and is well-protected against criminal investigations, so Ignatiev dares to spell out his frustration only because he is due in a few months to leave the position he has held for 12 years (Kommersant-FM, February 20).

This invincibility of a flourishing criminal organization sheds new light on the plight of Sergei Magnitsky, an accountant and auditor who discovered a fragment of its activity and paid with his life for the attempt to stop it (Ezhednevny Zhurnal, February 23). Magnitsky was arrested in 2008 and died in custody in Moscow the following year. The hysterical political reaction to every examination of the Magnitsky case in the United States or, more hesitantly, in the European Union can be largely explained by the inability to investigate this crime determined by the unbreakable chain of mutual commitments inside the group of money-exporters (Novaya Gazeta, February 20).

President Vladimir Putin is probably irked and alarmed by the absolute indifference within the corrupt bureaucracy to his supreme orders, and he also begins to suspect that the non-stop parade of raspil and otkat (these expressive terms for embezzlement and bribe have enriched the financial lexicon) threatens the sustainability of Putinism’s economic model.

He tries to strike some fear back into the predatory bureaucracy by expressing outrage over the most blatant “privatization” of budgets designated for top-priority projects in Vladivostok, which hosted the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit last September, and in Sochi, where construction for the 2014 Winter Olympics has entered its final desperate phase (New Times, February 18). His search for scapegoats remains, however, as unconvincing as is the legislation forbidding top-level bureaucrats the elementary convenience of owning bank accounts abroad (Kommersant, February 22). This “frown on corruption” only further encourages capital flight, which reached $ 10 billion in January and is no longer officially forecasted to cease, but rather to stay at the level of $ 50 billion in 2013 (RBC Daily, February 22).

This sustained outpouring of money affects economic growth, which Putin perceives as the crucial condition for stabilizing his suddenly shaky presidency. He has little interest in the services sector and is a firm believer in re-industrialization. But it is exactly the industrial production that registered contraction going into the fifth straight month, so that the output in January 2013 was 0.8% lower than in the same month of 2012 (Nezavisimaya Gazeta, February 22).

The defense-industrial complex is supposed to be the “locomotive” of growth in manufacturing, but an ambitious re-armament program is advancing well only on paper where target figures are routinely corrected to fit the actual results. The “patriotic” lobbyists have successfully derailed most proposals for importing high-tech weapons from Western producers, popular with former Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov.

His successor, Sergei Shoigu, prefers to defuse the conflict with the industry but cannot ignore the results of a recent audit, which established that only 20% of enterprises could qualify as “modern”. In more than half of them modernization makes no sense, so only political orders postpone their overdue shutdown (Ezhednevny Zhurnal, February 22). Putin has committed himself to feeding a “black hole” that aggravates the shortage of investment resources in other sectors (Nezavisimoe Voennoe Obozrenie, February 15).

The squeeze is acutely felt in the oil and gas industry, which was the main provider of prosperity for the country but now is facing technological challenges and saturation in the key export market in Europe, and so contributes to the trend of extra slow growth (Forbes.ru, February 21). Putin’s particular attention to every oil contract and gas deal used to be an attraction for Western investors, who valued his guarantees, but now it is seen as a factor worsening the “Siberian” investment climate.

With a wary sense of deja vu, European consumers follow the current Russian-Ukrainian quarrels as President Viktor Yanukovich refuses to pay a $ 7 billion fine to Gazprom, speculating that Putin will not risk another “gas war” (Kommersant, February 22).

The Russian president is indeed more preoccupied with fierce court intrigues, suspecting that the government’s forays against his loyal lieutenant Igor Sechin, who considers himself an “energy tsar”, are merely a means for Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev to position himself as a smarter economic “modernizer” (Novaya Gazeta, February 22).

Jealously guarding his privilege of economic commander-in-chief, Putin cannot fail to see that his instructions to secure stable growth and to keep the working class employed depart further and further from the reality of inescapable stagnation.

The slowdown is not externally induced or cyclical but determined by escalating bureaucratic predation, which escapes Russia through “dubious operations” that roughly equal what Gazprom earns in net profit. Putin is helpless to curtail the corruption, which is the organizing principle of his system of power and the only guarantee of loyalty of his subordinates.

The pivotal institution of the Russian presidency is quickly losing legitimacy – a stronger signal to the elites than any “stay home” order from Putin that it is time to pull their ill-gained fortunes out of the country. The regime’s failure is, therefore, gaining momentum.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/CEN-01-270213.html

January 24, 2013 6:44 pm

Ukraine gas deal loosens Russia’s grip

By Roman Olearchyk in Kiev and Neil Buckley in London

A landmark “unconventional” gas deal Ukraine signed with Royal Dutch Shell on Thursday in Davos demonstrates just how determined the former Soviet republic is to break its dependence on imported Russian fuel.

Ukrainian officials say the potentially $ 10bn-plus project is a big step in a broader effort to boost domestic production, diversify supply sources and make its gas-guzzling heavy industry more energy efficient.

The Shell deal in itself poses a limited short-term threat to Russia’s Gazprom, since, even if as successful as Ukraine hopes, it will take some years to begin producing. But, longer term, it may force the Russian gas monopoly to rethink relations with its biggest foreign customer.

Gazprom may in part have brought this shift upon itself. It has twice cut off gas to Ukraine since 2006 amid disputes over prices and unpaid bills. In that time, it jacked up gas prices to more than $ 500 per thousand cubic metres – before a $ 100 discount Kiev negotiated in 2010 in return for extending Moscow’s lease on the Crimean naval port of Sevastopol.

That is a higher gross price than Gazprom charges many more distant west European clients. Ukraine’s latest 2009 contract with Gazprom is the official reason Yulia Tymoshenko, the former prime minister, is in jail – after prosecutors charged that she abused her powers by agreeing a deal at an excessive price.

So one of Europe’s most energy-intensive economies has had to change, to reduce its $ 13bn annual Russian gas bill. Last year Russian gas imports into Ukraine fell 25 per cent year-on-year to 33bn cubic metres. Total domestic demand was down 8 per cent.

Ukraine’s reduced needs are partly caused by recession and slow growth since the 2008 financial crisis. But Dennis Sakva, energy analyst at Kiev-based investment bank Dragon Capital, said Ukraine’s vast metallurgical industry and electricity generators had cut demand by switching from gas to coal. Ukraine also reduced losses and the gas it uses to run pumping stations in its large gas pipeline system by 37 per cent last year, he added.

Eduard Stavytsky, the energy minister, told the Financial Times: “By increasing domestic production and boosting efficiency, we can this year further reduce imports.”

That could, in theory, make Ukraine liable for heavy fines under a minimum “take or pay” clause in its 2009 contract. But Gazprom appears reluctant to enforce these penalties. Sergei Kupriyanov, Gazprom’s spokesman, confirmed on Thursday that Ukraine was already importing less than minimum contracted volumes but said enigmatically that Gazprom was not demanding fines “because we need to set realistically attainable goals”.

Ukraine has potentially enough untapped gas to reduce future imports to a minimum. Estimated to hold Europe’s third-largest shale gas reserves, it is bringing in international energy majors in hopes of replicating the North American shale gas boom of the past decade.

US-based Chevron won a tender last year to explore for shale gas in western Ukraine. ExxonMobil and Shell were chosen to explore off Ukraine’s Black Sea coast.

“I am confident that these projects will produce enough gas to allow Ukraine . . . to completely cover domestic gas demand within 10 years,” Mr Stavytsky said.

Any reduction in imports from Gazprom over time could have a significant impact on the Russian monopoly.

Ukraine’s consumption decline in 2012 “certainly has to cause Russia to assume that it will not sell the amount of gas it expected to sell to Ukraine in the coming few years”, said Simon Pirani, senior research fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies.

Gazprom’s nearly 40bcm exports to Ukraine in 2011 compared with 150bcm to the entire European market farther west.. More than half its 503bcm total sales were to Russia itself – at much lower prices.

Gazprom has already been forced to negotiate lower prices in its long-term contracts to several big west European customers as prices for “spot”, or market-traded, gas have fallen sharply thanks to a flood of cheap liquefied natural gas cargoes from other sources into Europe. The European Commission is also conducting an antitrust probe into whether Gazprom is abusing its dominant position in central and east European markets, which Moscow denies.

Ukraine, meanwhile, is making other efforts to diversify sources. Mr Stavytsky said it would this year begin building three coal gasification plants, financed by a $ 3.7bn Chinese credit line, and an liquefied natural gas terminal capable of importing at least 5bcm annually.

Greater energy independence could also potentially help Kiev break free of Moscow’s political orbit, as gas has been a central bargaining tool for Russia. President Vladimir Putin has offered lower gas prices as part of efforts to persuade Ukraine to join a customs union Russia is creating with Belarus and Kazakhstan.

Gazprom’s Mr Kupriyanov played down any threat, however. “We don’t understand these arguments that we could lose this big market,” he said.

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/f5decc00-6641-11e2-b967-00144feab49a.html?ftcamp=published_links%2Frss%2Fglobal-economy%2Ffeed%2F%2Fproduct#axzz2J0OzDl63

Putin flexes muscle in big test of Russia’s nuclear arsenal
By Steve Gutterman | Reuters – 10 hrs ago

MOSCOW (Reuters) – President Vladimir Putin took a leading role in the latest tests of Russia’s strategic nuclear arsenal, the most comprehensive since the 1991 Soviet collapse, the Kremlin said on Saturday.

The exercises, held mostly on Friday, featured prominently in news reports on state television which seemed aimed to show Russians and the world that Putin is the hands-on chief of a resurgent power.

Tests involving command systems and all three components of the nuclear “triad” – land and sea-launched long-range nuclear missiles and strategic bombers – were conducted “under the personal leadership of Vladimir Putin”, the Kremlin said.

An RS-12M Topol Intercontinental Ballistic Missile was launched from the Plesetsk site in northern Russia, and a submarine test-launched another ICBM from the Sea of Okhotsk, the Defence Ministry said.

Long-range Tu-95 and Tu-160 bombers fired four guided missiles that hit their targets on a testing range in the northwestern Komi region, it said.

“Exercises of the strategic nuclear forces were conducted on such a scale for the first time in the modern history of Russia,” the Kremlin statement said.

“Vladimir Putin gave a high evaluation to the combat units and crews and the work of the Armed Forces General Staff, which fulfilled the tasks before them and affirmed the reliability and effectiveness of Russia’s nuclear forces.”

The exercises included tests of communications systems and “new algorithms” for command and control, it said.

Russia says it is modernizing a nuclear arsenal that was largely created during the Cold War and will continue to use nuclear weapons as a key deterrent.

In the 2010 New START treaty, Russia and the United States set lower numerical ceilings on the weapons tested in the exercise.

But Putin has made clear further cuts depend, among other things, on Washington assuaging his concerns about anti-missile defenses it is deploying, including a European shield Russia says will make it more vulnerable.

Russian and American leaders say nuclear war between the Cold War rivals is now unthinkable.

But critics say Putin – in power since 2000 and back as military commander-in-chief since his return to the Kremlin in May after four years as prime minister – is exaggerating potential threats from the West to bolster support at home.

http://news.yahoo.com/putin-flexes-muscle-big-test-russias-nuclear-arsenal-193419573.html

Putin flexes muscle in big test of Russia’s nuclear arsenal
By Steve Gutterman | Reuters – 10 hrs ago

MOSCOW (Reuters) – President Vladimir Putin took a leading role in the latest tests of Russia’s strategic nuclear arsenal, the most comprehensive since the 1991 Soviet collapse, the Kremlin said on Saturday.

The exercises, held mostly on Friday, featured prominently in news reports on state television which seemed aimed to show Russians and the world that Putin is the hands-on chief of a resurgent power.

Tests involving command systems and all three components of the nuclear “triad” – land and sea-launched long-range nuclear missiles and strategic bombers – were conducted “under the personal leadership of Vladimir Putin”, the Kremlin said.

An RS-12M Topol Intercontinental Ballistic Missile was launched from the Plesetsk site in northern Russia, and a submarine test-launched another ICBM from the Sea of Okhotsk, the Defence Ministry said.

Long-range Tu-95 and Tu-160 bombers fired four guided missiles that hit their targets on a testing range in the northwestern Komi region, it said.

“Exercises of the strategic nuclear forces were conducted on such a scale for the first time in the modern history of Russia,” the Kremlin statement said.

“Vladimir Putin gave a high evaluation to the combat units and crews and the work of the Armed Forces General Staff, which fulfilled the tasks before them and affirmed the reliability and effectiveness of Russia’s nuclear forces.”

The exercises included tests of communications systems and “new algorithms” for command and control, it said.

Russia says it is modernizing a nuclear arsenal that was largely created during the Cold War and will continue to use nuclear weapons as a key deterrent.

In the 2010 New START treaty, Russia and the United States set lower numerical ceilings on the weapons tested in the exercise.

But Putin has made clear further cuts depend, among other things, on Washington assuaging his concerns about anti-missile defenses it is deploying, including a European shield Russia says will make it more vulnerable.

Russian and American leaders say nuclear war between the Cold War rivals is now unthinkable.

But critics say Putin – in power since 2000 and back as military commander-in-chief since his return to the Kremlin in May after four years as prime minister – is exaggerating potential threats from the West to bolster support at home.

http://news.yahoo.com/putin-flexes-muscle-big-test-russias-nuclear-arsenal-193419573.html