Vladimir Putin: The Great Nationalist

India places two-billion-dollar order for Russian missiles

20.08.2008


Designers of the Indo-Russian supersonic cruise missile BrahMos hope to receive an order for the production of missiles for submarines of the Indian Navy, the chairman of board of directors of the joint-venture, Alexander Dergachev said.


“The missiles will be made for submarines of the Indian Navy. The nearest order is seven submarines. We do not know yet when exactly it is going to happen. I hope soon,” the official said at a press conference devoted to ten years since the establishment of the joint venture BrahMos.

Dergachev said that India would announce the tender for seven submarines in the nearest future. Submarine-makers from Russia and other countries of the world will participate in the tender. The tender stipulates BrahMos cruise missiles for the submarines.

Sivathanu Pilai, the chief executive of the Indo-Russian aerospace joint venture BrahMos, stated that India already had a contract for the production of six submarines on the base of Scorpio project (France).

India’s order to the joint enterprise is evaluate at $2 billion, Pilai said. BrahMos makes land and sea-based supersonic cruise missiles for the Indian Armed Forces.

BrahMos Aerospace is a joint Indo-Russian venture established in 1998 to design, develop, produce and market a unique supersonic cruise missile.

BrahMos is a supersonic cruise missile that can be launched from submarines, ships, aircraft or land. The acronym BrahMos is perceived as the confluence of the two nations represented by two great rivers, the Brahmaputra of India and the Moskva of Russia. It is a joint venture between India's Defense Research and Development Organization and Russia's NPO Mashinostroeyenia who have together formed the BrahMos Corp. Propulsion is based on the Russian Yakhont missile, and guidance has been developed by BrahMos Corp. At speeds of Mach 2.5 to 2.8, is the world's fastest cruise missile. It is about three and a half times faster than the American subsonic Harpoon cruise missile.

Between late 2004 and early 2008, the missile has undergone several tests from variety of platforms including a land based test from Pokhran desert, in which the S maneuver at Mach 2.8 was demonstrated for the Indian Army and a launch in which the land attack capability from sea was demonstrated.

Pravda.ru forum. The place where truth hurts

//english.pravda.ru/russia/economics/20-08-2008/106153-russia​n_missiles-0


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What a disgusting propaganda. And what a stupid sheeple ("Oh, USA and Bush are evil, then russia and Putin are good"). Sick of this

.................................


so go already !


keep your appointment (?)


why stay where u get sick..

others can very well keep speaking their views

no one has collared you and forced you to stay!









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Actually do you realize how controlled russian medias are, and how articles like this are all you can find when it comes to politics? Oh, but Russia is against the USA (Is it?), so it`s not a bad thing when such things happen there, it`s bad only when they happen in the USA, wright?

We need more posts of the truth like this one. Russia, under Putin, and now with Medvedev, are moving their country forward. The Zionists can't stand this as they have lost their power to loot Russia of her precious resources as they have for the past 70+ years. Putin, in only 8 years of hs presidency, changed the political, economical, and military climate until now, Russia is much better off than it was before.
.

GOD BLESS Vladimir Putin, Dmitry Medvedev, Vladimir Illyich Lenin, Roman Abramovich, Josef Stalin, Nikita Khruschev, Boris Yeltsin, Mikhail Gorbachev and MOTHER RUSSIA!!!!!

Russia is the GREATEST COUNTRY on Earth, and home to the Soveskiy Soyuz!!!! I love my Mother Russia. As a Russian Jew, I am very, very proud of my roots.

Vladimir Putin is the Greatest Stateman, the Greatest Romanov Illuminist, the Greatest Patriot and he loves and respects the Russian Slavic People!!!!

Love that guy. Love the way he tried to poison us all in London.

Are they separate from the Codex Alimentarus? Is their water fluoridated heavily?What about food irradiation? I've long heard Russia banned microwaving due to destruction of nutrients. What about GM foods and herbs?Are they shipping in depleted uranium by tons like the U.S. is having done to resisiter states? What about environmental protection and free energy projects?

I understand Putin swims with dolphins and is big into marshal arts.He gave them a national week paid holiday to have sex for cementing some big peace project.

Vladimir Putin is not a democrat. Nor is he a czar like Alexander III, a paranoid like Stalin, or a religious nationalist like Dostoyevsky. But he is a little of all these—which is just what Russians seem to want

by Paul Starobin


The Accidental Autocrat


Like many Russians, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin is a late riser. Sometimes he doesn't roll out of bed until 11:00 a.m. Russia's president lives with his wife, Lyudmila, and two teenage daughters, Maria and Katerina, about twenty-five miles west of the center of Moscow, at Novo Ogarevo, a country estate dotted with white birch and pine trees that was built in the late nineteenth century for a son of Czar Alexander II. The neighborhood is now a haven for wealthy Russians, who have constructed opulent and often tasteless dachas. Trim and fit for his fifty-two years, Putin usually starts his mornings with a vigorous workout in the compound's small indoor pool. (The butterfly stroke is a favorite.) The grounds contain stables, a recently restored Orthodox church, a vegetable plot, and a helipad, and Putin sometimes spends the day working at Novo Ogarevo, receiving visitors there rather than at the Kremlin. In any case, he seldom leaves for the office much before noon.

On days that he does go to the office, Putin speeds across the Moscow River in the back seat of his armored Mercedes Pullman and then cruises down the Novy Arbat, a garish boulevard bordered by neon-lit casinos, sushi bars, and ugly Soviet-era high-rise office buildings. Putin's motorcade deposits him inside the Kremlin walls, near his office in the Old Senate, a mustard-colored neoclassical building commissioned by Catherine the Great in the 1770s. Lenin made his headquarters here after the 1917 Revolution, when the Bolsheviks moved the capital to Moscow from imperial St. Petersburg.

Putin's office, in the northwest corner of the second floor, affords a view of Red Square. The office is spare and impersonal, with a somewhat antiquated feel. It has a clunky television and a bank of several dozen phones with heavy handsets—direct lines to the offices of Putin's Kremlin aides and other senior officials. Down the corridor, in a remodeled set of rooms that once contained Stalin's living quarters, is a small candlelit Orthodox chapel with icon paintings on the walls. Putin's immediate predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, had the chapel built but rarely entered it (according to what Putin told one visitor); Putin, in contrast, goes there very often. His private dining room, also on the second floor, contains a collection of bottles of Spanish red wine, one of his favorites. He likes to wash down his appetizers—what the Russians call zakuski, which are often the tastiest part of a meal—with a couple of shots of vodka, and to end his repast with a cognac from Dagestan, a province in Russia's troubled northern Caucasus. (Yeltsin's popularity, and Russia's image, suffered from his occasional displays of public drunkenness; Putin benefits from a reputation for sobriety and takes care to imbibe modestly in public.) He sometimes has dinner at the Kremlin, but more often heads back to Novo Ogarevo, where his work continues. Sipping cups of tea, Putin frequently works past midnight. An aide told me that "VVP," as his staff members sometimes refer to him, never hits the sack before 2:00 a.m.

The Russians have a saying: "Tyajela ti shapka manomakha"—"The crown of the czar is very heavy." On September 1 of last year a group of heavily armed men and women seized a middle school in Beslan, a railway-junction town in North Ossetia, a northern Caucasian province. They herded twelve hundred hostages, most of them children, into the gymnasium and wired it with explosives. The hostage-takers were Islamic militants; the operation was apparently organized by Shamil Basayev, a warlord whom Putin has likened to Osama bin Laden and who is leading a decade-old insurgency in the Caucasian republic of Chechnya and seeking to widen the rebellion to surrounding, largely Muslim provinces. (North Ossetia, an exception in the region, is predominantly Orthodox Christian.) The insurgents boasted of having made their way to the school by bribing the police at checkpoints along their route. "All your officials are mendacious and corrupt," one hostage recalls being told. Russian special forces surrounded the school. After a fifty-two-hour standoff a bomb exploded in the gym, perhaps accidentally, precipitating an hours-long firefight that killed some 330 of the hostages and wounded about 700.

On the day after the bloodbath Putin addressed the nation on television from the Kremlin. He seemed stripped raw; the brief clip I caught on the news was painful to watch. "It is a difficult and bitter task for me to speak," he began. "During these last few days each one of us suffered immensely." The thrust of his message was shame and embarrassment that Russians, "living in conditions formed after the disintegration of a huge, great country," had failed to pay enough attention to their defenses. "We demonstrated weakness, and the weak are beaten." His face was drained of color. I wondered if he was in shock.

But he soon rallied, unveiling in the days that followed a series of measures designed, he said, "to put right the system of power and management in the country." One measure was to end the popular election of regional governors and have the Kremlin appoint them instead, subject to confirmation by regional legislatures. In the West a chorus of critics decried a retreat to Russia's authoritarian past. Such criticism, though a bit sanctimonious, is reasonably well grounded: in the years since an ailing Yeltsin appointed him Russia's president, on December 31, 1999, Putin has in numerous ways tried to reassert Kremlin control over the country. (Voters ratified Yeltsin's choice in a March 2000 election, and elected Putin to a second four-year term in March of 2004.) But the West's concerns nevertheless struck me as out of touch with the anxieties and priorities of ordinary Russians. I lived and worked in Russia from 1999 to 2003, as the Moscow bureau chief of BusinessWeek, and most of the Russians I met (with the exception of those in the liberal intelligentsia) were supportive of the general direction of Putin's leadership. In fact, the majority of the criticism I heard came from people who felt that he was not authoritarian enough.

Putin is a difficult character study. An ex-KGB colonel, he is at times deliberately indistinct. And his secretive and tight-knit court tends to operate according to the old Russian village principle of "Iz izby soru ne vynesi"—literally, "Do not carry rubbish out of the hut." In the emerging school of Putinology, theories abound as to what makes him tick. Many analysts emphasize his intelligence training and his Soviet-era background. Alexander Rahr, the author of a biography of Putin calling him "the German in the Kremlin," sees him instead in the context of his KGB posting in Dresden and his affinity for German culture (he speaks German fluently). Others see a somewhat ambivalent Putin, split—as Russians often are—between an outward-facing Western orientation and an inward-looking Slavophilic one. The boisterous, red-faced Yeltsin—that bear of a man—more naturally fit the Western idea of a Russian leader. But Putin is as much a product of the Russian environment and heritage as Yeltsin was. In fact, Putin's Russianness, in the broadest sense, is the key to his character; in certain respects his rule is re-enacting distinctive Russian political traditions.

Understanding Putin requires exploring three core aspects of his political and personal character: the fighter, the Chekist, and the believer. These roughly correspond to Putin's instincts, his professional training and methods, and his religious and patriotic convictions. The parts may seem not to fit, but that is often the case with Russia's rulers. (After all, Stalin, the "Red Czar," was trained in a Georgian seminary.) Putin is best understood not as a divided character but as an integrated if complicated one: the Russian in the Kremlin.

The notion of joining the KGB began as a boyhood dream. Putin was under the influence, he told the compilers of First Person, of spy novels and movies: "What amazed me most of all was how one man's effort could achieve what whole armies could not. One spy could decide the fate of thousands of people." In ninth grade he went to the office of the KGB directorate in Leningrad and declared his interest in a job. He was told that the KGB didn't take people who came in on their own initiative, and that he needed some higher civilian education, such as law school. "From that moment on," Putin said, "I began to prepare for the law faculty of Leningrad University." In his fourth year at the school he was invited to join "the agencies." After graduation, in 1975, he embarked on a sixteen-year career with the KGB, mostly in the foreign-intelligence section. He left the security service after the botched 1991 coup, led by KGB hardliners, that tried to preserve the Soviet Union. The plotters had a "noble" intention, he would later say, but their method was wrong.

Putin the Chekist is a model of cool calculation, elusiveness, and calibratedtactics. He wears casual cynicism like an old cloak—insisting, for example, on his fealty to freedom of the press while re-establishing Kremlin control over the nation's television networks, which during the Yeltsin years were taken over by billionaire oligarchs with their own political agendas. His Chekist mentality seems to reveal less an active antipathy toward democracy than an impatience with its inherent untidiness.

One of the happier results of Putin's vocational schooling is an attention to organization and detail. Rabbi Beryl Lazar, a leader of the Russian Jewish community, told me a tale of his efficiency-mindedness. A few years ago, at a regular meeting with Putin in the Kremlin, Lazar brought up the difficulty faced by a young Moscow woman who had removed an anti-Semitic sign from a roadside, only to trigger a rigged explosive that severely burned and nearly blinded her. The woman was getting hassled by her neighbors, Lazar told Putin, and wished to relocate to an apartment in another neighborhood. Lazar wasn't sure that Putin was paying close attention. He left Putin's office but was stopped downstairs at a guard's station and told to go back. An aide said Putin had rung up Moscow's mayor, Yuri Luzhkov, to talk about the apartment, and that Luzhkov was waiting to meet with Lazar. It may be that Putin handles such tasks himself because he lacks confidence that they will otherwise get done. "He gets extremely frustrated with the incompetence of the state," the rabbi told me.

One would expect a fellow of Putin's trade to be suspicious, and indeed, even those kindly disposed toward him say that he can be excessively mistrustful. Perhaps only half a dozen people have his full confidence, and nearly all of them he has known for years. That group is something like a clan; the Moscow political analyst Olga Kryshtanovskaya told me that Putin has in effect re-created a Soviet-style politburo. But even in his lair, among team members, Putin tends to withhold. In meetings he "never commits himself," one Moscow insider who has observed Putin in private group settings told me. His two closest Kremlin aides are ex-KGB. One, Igor Sechin, a squeaky-voiced veteran of the Soviet Union's campaign to aid Communist proxies in Angola, guards Putin's paper flow, among other duties. The other, Viktor Ivanov, a veteran of the failed Afghanistan venture in the 1980s, has a portfolio that includes vetting government appointments and advising on Chechnya policy. Both are known for their animus toward Western-style Russian liberals, with whom Putin himself has been intermittently friendly. Many Kremlin watchers believe that Putin's smartest aide is Vladislav Surkov, the one person in the inner circle whom Putin didn't know before becoming president. Surkov, who handles political operations and relations with the Duma, is half Chechen but second to none in his hard line on Chechnya issues.

Perhaps the best illustration of Putin's repertoire of Chekist skills can be seen in his dealings with the oligarchs, who infiltrated Yeltsin's Kremlin, made fortunes in rigged privatization auctions, and seemed to regard the state as their private preserve. On joining the Kremlin staff in 1996 Putin worked among the oligarchs and their protectors in the Kremlin—a group, including one of Yeltsin's daughters, known as the Family. He could never have moved up the ladder, and surely not to the position of prime minister, without the Family's blessing, and indeed, he came to be accepted as one of them. So when he got the nod as president, they figured all would be business as usual. "He won't try to arrest or screw the oligarchs," Mikhail Fridman, a billionaire with oil and banking interests, told me at the time.

But as soon became clear, Putin viewed the oligarchs much the way ordinary Russians did: as gangsters with an insidious grip on the levers of political power. He proceeded to break their hold, using every pressure point possible. His first target was Vladimir Gusinsky, a media baron who had helped bankroll Yeltsin's 1996 election and whose financial empire had debts guaranteed by a state-controlled company. Gusinsky was arrested and jailed on charges of embezzling state property. He signed away his business interests in return for being allowed to go into exile in the West. Putin's next target, the flamboyant Boris Berezovsky, who had served in Yeltsin's administration and actively assisted in Putin's rise, fled the country rather than face a likely embezzlement charge.

After the departures of Berezovsky and Gusinsky, Putin and the oligarchs established an unwritten pact: the remaining magnates could keep their fortunes and their freedom as long as they stayed out of the political arena. But the oil baron Mikhail Khodorkovsky tested Putin by declaring his intention of bankrolling opposition political parties. Putin sent a warning shot: the arrest of one of Khodorkovsky's partners. But Khodorkovsky persisted, and in the pre-dawn hours one fall morning in 2003 he was apprehended in his private airplane, which was on a refueling stop in Siberia. He is jailed in Moscow, while his trial for fraud and tax evasion drags on. Khodorkovsky's company, Yukos, which tax authorities slapped with billions of dollars in claims, is being broken up, with the most valuable pieces turned over to a state-owned company. The Chekists play to win.

more:
//www.theatlantic.com/doc/200503/starobin




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Two fingered salute.

Putin has managed to loot $40 billion - yes billion! for his own personal fortune - and god alone knows how much his cronies have.

...........................


who do you mean by

>>>poison us all in London.<<<

who is US ALL.. ?

were you in london recently?

were you poisoned??

was there any attempt on you?

why would Putin even know of your existence?


AND IF he did
why would he want to poison you ??


are you using the "ROYAL WE/US " ?

by what right ?


Putin never tried to poison anyone

If you followd that poisoning case
it came out the victim was a jewish spy
involved in a myriad of conspiratorial
info selling and illegal deals who was
considered dangerous and his OWN killed
him and pointed it at Putin as those ones
always point their dirty deeds at those
who stand agaist them.

Where are your facts?
Proofs of any
"he tried to poison us all in London."??

playing for the semitic sympathy crowd
to approve your mud tossing ??
trained poodle syndrome gotcha' ??
it infects weak minds ya know!


grow up

use some intelligence when posting !













`

There is some truth to that first post, but Putin's no savior of the Russian people. It's more like one gangster consolidating power by eliminating the other gangsters. You still live in a ganster state, but it's better regulated, with less opportunity to get ahead. Too bad.

Numbskull.

.........................



LINK ?








`

Some countries, simply can't get over cliches. Russia became an eternal sequel of 'Dr. Shivago'. Bad ruskies, mean ruskies, communist ruskies.

Come on, guys!!!!. "Putin tried to poison us all". Sounds way too dramatic. Doesn't it sound to you as a very bad plot, used and abused by Hollywood?. Who would play the hero role?. Hugh Grant?.

The 'russian darkness' has been incongruently romanticized. If Putin wants to do something to your country, be absolutely sure that wouldn't include rat poison in your kidney pies. Chill out!.

Lets go to Reporters without Borders ...

[link to www.rsf.org]

After eight years in the Kremlin as president, Vladimir Putin was due to surrender the presidency to his hand-picked successor, former deputy prime minister Dmitri Medvedev, on 7 May 2008 and was thereafter expected to move to the White House (the seat of the government) to the post of prime minister. He has little to be proud of. His gradual takeover of the media with the help of his faithful ally, the Gazprom state energy conglomerate, seems to be complete. Broadcasting diversity is now just a distant dream and the regional news media work under pressure from Putin-appointed governors or local business potentates. Even the most distinguished journalists are targeted and Anna Politkovskaya, an investigative reporter specialising in Chechnya for the paper Novaya Gazeta and an outspoken critic of Putin’s policy there, was shot dead in her apartment building in Moscow on 7 October 2006. Prosecutors claim they have identified the man who shot her, but it is still not known who ordered her murder. Eighteen journalists have been killed in Russia since former KGB officer Putin came to power in March 2000. Very few of these murders have been solved. The French government nonetheless saw fit to award the Legion of Honour’s Grand Cross to Putin in September 2006. Statements by Medvedev have not resolved the doubts about his commitment to a free press and his desire to make it easier for journalists to work freely in Russia.

In pictures: War games
Russia's show of might

"Flights by other countries' strategic aircraft continue and this creates certain problems for ensuring the security of the Russian Federation," he said.

In Washington, state department spokesman Sean McCormack played down the significance of Russia's move, saying: "We certainly are not in the kind of posture we were with what used to be the Soviet Union."

"If Russia feels as though they want to take some of these old aircraft out of mothballs and get them flying again, that's their decision," he told reporters.

One of the reasons Russia halted its flights 15 years ago was that it could no longer afford the fuel.

Today Moscow's coffers are stuffed full of oil money, says the BBC's Rupert Wingfield-Hayes in Moscow, and the Kremlin is determined to show it is still a military power to reckon with.

'Shadowed by Nato'

Russian media reported earlier on Friday that long-range bombers were airborne, and that Nato jets were shadowing them.

Itar-Tass quoted Russian air force spokesman Alexander Drobyshevsky as saying: "At present, several pairs of Tu-160 and Tu-95MS aircraft are in the air over the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, which are accompanied by Nato planes."

Nato said it was aware of the flights but had no comment on whether Nato planes were in attendance.

In last week's incident near Guam, the Russian pilots "exchanged smiles" with US fighter pilots who scrambled to track them, a Russian general said.

The US military confirmed the presence of the Russian bombers near Guam, home to a large US base.

Last month two Tupolev 95 aircraft - dubbed "bears" according to their Nato code-name - strayed south from their normal patrol pattern off the Norwegian coast and headed towards Scotland. Two RAF Tornado fighters were sent up to meet them.

Russian bombers have also recently flown close to US airspace over the Arctic Ocean near Alaska.



[link to news.bbc.co.uk]

ussia's government
Putin's people
Aug 23rd 2007
From The Economist print edition

The former KGB men who run Russia have the wrong idea about how to make it great

Magnum/AP
“OUR pilots have been grounded for too long. They are happy to start a new life.” So said Vladimir Putin as he sent Russia's nuclear bombers back aloft on the world-spanning patrols they had suspended after the collapse of the Soviet Union. This comes hard on the heels of talk of reopening a Russian naval base in the Mediterranean, joint war games with China and the planting of the Russian flag in the polar seabed. The Soviet Union is dead and communism long buried. But Mr Putin wants you to know that the Russian bear is back—wearing a snarl with its designer sunglasses.

How has this situation come about? It is tempting to search for mistakes by Western governments, to look for the culprits who “lost Russia”. Yet as our briefing this week explains (see article), the role of outsiders has been secondary. The best way to understand both Mr Putin's ascent into the Kremlin and his rule since is to see them as the remarkable recovery of the culture, mentality and view of the world of the old KGB.



When Mr Putin was plucked from obscurity to become first Boris Yeltsin's prime minister and later his successor as Russia's president, few in the West had heard of this former KGB officer, who had briefly been head of the FSB, the KGB's post-Soviet successor. Just before he became president, Mr Putin told his colleagues that a group of FSB operatives, “dispatched under cover to work in the government of the Russian federation”, was successfully fulfilling its task. It was probably a joke. Yet during his two terms since then, men from the FSB and its sister outfits have indeed grabbed control of the government, economy and security forces. Three out of four senior Russian officials today were once affiliated to the KGB and other security and military organisations.

Why they do it
What motivates these so-called siloviki? In part, the wish for revenge on those who challenged them in the early 1990s, especially after the abortive KGB coup of August 1991. Greed may be the most powerful motive: some Kremlin insiders have hugely enriched themselves in the past decade, and corruption may be worse even than in the later Yeltsin years. But the new elite also has an ideology of sorts. They see the break-up of the Soviet Union as, in Mr Putin's words, the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe” of the 20th century. Capitalising on a widespread sense that Russia has been humiliated, they want to create as mighty a state as the Soviet Union once was. They see the West as a foe bent on stopping them.

In this, Russia's rulers have strong domestic support. It is hard to gauge Mr Putin's popularity in a country with such tightly controlled media, but his opinion-poll ratings are impressively high. That nobody doubts his ability to choose his own successor owes a lot to his suppression of all dissent, but it reflects also the fact that voters have little love for the tiny liberal opposition remaining. Thanks to GDP growth that has averaged almost 7% a year under Mr Putin, many Russians feel better off, even if a lot are still poor. And many share the desire to reassert Russia's greatness—and a deep-rooted belief that the West is Russia's natural enemy.

It is foolish for people in the West to deny that Russia is a great power and that, in some ways, its influence has increased. When Mr Putin became president, its GDP was the world's tenth-biggest and foreign reserves stood at $8.5 billion. Today Russia's economy is the world's eighth-largest, and the reserves are $407.5 billion. The Kremlin has played adeptly on Europe's dependence on Russian gas to enhance its influence. On issues such as Kosovo or Iran, Russia has used its seat on the UN Security Council to force the West to pay it attention.

To achieve true greatness, unclench that fist
Yet the siloviki's ambitions remain misguided. That is not because there is anything illegitimate about wanting a strong Russia. What is wrong is how they define that strength—in the Soviet terms of awe and anxiety—and how they pursue it. The economy, for a start, is heavily dependent on high prices for oil, gas and other commodities that may not last. Russia is weak in manufacturing, services and high-tech industries. Putting spies in charge of big firms is a recipe for failure: they know how to grab assets and jail foes, but not how to run real businesses. Foreign investors may still covet Russia's natural-resource sector, but a climate in which assets can be arbitrarily taken back by state officials and then redistributed to cronies is not welcoming. Both foreign and, more strikingly, domestic investment are very low compared with China.

Nor is it sensible to revive Russia's old anti-Western, zero-sum strategic thinking. The West tried to be a friend in the Yeltsin years, but has since been put off by Russian belligerence. A resurgent Russia can throw its weight around the neighbourhood and intimidate ex-Soviet republics such as Georgia, Ukraine and the Baltics; but by alienating its neighbours Moscow harms its own interests too. By dint of size and military strength, Russia is a power in the world. Yet today even the “soft power” that the Soviet Union once wielded through communism has mostly gone. In its place is only fear.

The biggest misreading of all is over Russia's own political future. The siloviki have shown they can squash opposition, suborn the courts and stay in charge. But, as in all autocracies, they are acutely nervous about the future. Mr Putin's popularity will not easily transfer even to a hand-picked successor. More generally, as ordinary Russians get richer, they may grow dissatisfied with their present masters, especially when they see them stealing and mismanaging the economy. Russia has huge problems: crime, poor infrastructure, secessionism and chaos in the north Caucasus, appalling human-rights abuses and a looming demographic catastrophe. To counterbalance these woes, the new elite may resort to even wilder forms of nationalism; and that nationalism could turn into a monster that even its creators cannot control.

In truth, the biggest threats to Russia's future stem not from its “enemies” but from internal weaknesses, some of them self-inflicted. For a Russian ruler, or ruling class, to accept that truth would take real courage—and real patriotism.



[link to www.economist.com]

Friday a Russian pro-democracy campaigner denounced attempts by Vladimir Putin's government to infringe on the Internet privacy of citizens and to control the content of independent Web sites.

Show related
articles
At a conference organised by Privacy International, Boris Pustinsev, president of St Petersburg-based Citizens Watch, explained it would be necessary soon to obtain a state licence in order to publish even the most simple Internet site. For Pustinsev, this is a new attempt by the FSB (the information agency that has succeeded the KGB) to seriously tighten up on the use of the Internet.

Pustinsev referred to "Sorm 2", a system of black boxes that must be installed by Internet service providers (ISPs) in Russia allowing interception of their subscribers' correspondence. ISPs must pay at least $15,000 (about £9,300) for these, including installation costs. According to Citizens Watch, the expenses include setting up a fibre-optic connection to the local office of the FSB. Pustinsev stated that in the event of refusal, a provider faces the threat of having its licence revoked.

"Our only defence against Sorm is the constitution," explains Pustinev. "It says that no police officer or agent can read your mail without an official mandate from a judge or a prosecutor. Since 1995 only a judge can provide this mandate."

The only Russian ISP that has refused to comply with Sorm, BSK of Volvograd, lost its licence at the beginning of the year for daring to ignore the interdict. "It was almost a miracle, but with the assistance of our lawyers and the Ministry [of Communications] its licence was restored, on the basis of rights guaranteed by our constitution," says Pustinsev.

"But since then the president [Putin] has proposed a law which would impose the granting of this same licence for any editor of an updated Internet site at least once a year." This law ("On state registration of Internet mass media", according to Radio Free Europe), could be voted in before the end of September 2000, warns Pustinsev.

Citizens Watch therefore expects that some new barrier to free expression will be introduced as a pretext for encouraging reluctant ISPs to accept Sorm without complaint. "With this new law it would be easier to refuse a licence. We think that the Russian security services never gave up the old traditions of the KGB, we cannot have confidence," insists Pustinev. "A system such as Sorm can be used to collect political information in order to blackmail someone or to conduct industrial espionage. We are convinced that Sorm contributes to this."

Take me to Surveillance

[link to news.zdnet.co.uk]

[link to en.wikipedia.org]

On 1 November 2006, Litvinenko suddenly fell ill and was hospitalized. He died three weeks later from lethal poisoning by radioactive polonium-210. According to medical professionals, "Litvinenko’s murder represents an ominous landmark: the beginning of an era of nuclear terrorism."[5][6][7][8]

Everybody around Putin is completely corrupt, but many think that the president himself is honest. In February 2004, presidential candidate Ivan Rybkin named three men as Putin's bagmen, including Gennady Timchenko, cofounder of oil-trading company Gunvor. After Rybkin made this statement, he vanished from the political stage. In September, the Polish magazine Wprost wrote that Timchenko, a former KGB officer and member of Putin's dacha cooperative in St. Petersburg, has a net worth of $20 billion. Officially, Timchenko sells the oil of four Russian oil companies, but how are the prices determined to generate such profits?

In a sensational interview in Germany's Die Welt on November 12, Stanislav Belkovsky, the well-connected insider who initiated the Kremlin campaign against Yukos in 2003, made specific claims about Putin's wealth. He alleged that Putin owned 37 percent of Surgutneftegaz (worth $18 billion), 4.5 percent of Gazprom ($13 billion) and half of Timchenko's company, Gunvor (possibly $10 billion). If this information is true, Putin's total personal fortune would amount to no less than $41 billion, placing him among the 10 richest in the world.

In April 2004, Paul Klebnikov, the American editor of Forbes Russia magazine who authored of a book about the “supreme” oligarch Berezovsky, set the aggregate net worth of Russia's 100 wealthiest oligarchs at $140 billion. Klebnikov was killed in Moscow the same year.

On April 18, 2008, the Russian RIA Novosti reported that the number of Russian billionaires has grown to over 100. In four years their combined wealth increased from $140 billion to a staggering $522 billion.

The snowballing enrichment of the rich may gladden the heart of a “capitalist revolutionary.” But it bodes no good for Russia. The oligarchic monopolies undermine the very foundation for free enterprise in Russia. Their growing wealth correlates with the growth of corruption, which Putin admitted he was unable to curb. Dmitry Medvedev, the new president, declared that fighting corruption would be his priority. He has a huge task before him. Even assuming that an average oligarch is no more corruptible than an average citizen, he has both the greatest means and the greatest reasons to engage in corruptive practices to reign over his ill-gotten wealth.

lexander Valterovich Litvinenko (Russian: ????????? ??????????? ??????????) (30 August 1962[1][2] – 23 November 2006) was a former officer of the Russian State security service, and later a Russian dissident and writer.
Litvinenko became a KGB officer in 1986, and two years later, was moved into the Military Counter Intelligence. He was promoted to the Central Staff, and specialised in counter-terrorism and infiltration of organised crime. Six years later, he was promoted to senior operational officer and deputy head of the Seventh Section of the FSB.
In November 1998, Litvinenko publicly accused his superiors of ordering the assassination of Russian tycoon and oligarch, Boris Berezovsky. Litvinenko was arrested the following March on charges of exceeding his authority at work. He was acquitted in November 1999 but re-arrested before the charges were again dismissed in 2000. A third criminal case began but he fled the country to the United Kingdom with his wife, where he was granted political asylum. During his time in London Litvinenko authored two books, "Blowing up Russia: Terror from within" and "Lubyanka Criminal Group," where he accused Russian secret services of staging Russian apartment bombings and other terrorism acts to bring Vladimir Putin to power.[3][4] He also made a wide range of other claims against Russian secret services and Putin through interviews and articles he wrote.
On 1 November 2006, Litvinenko suddenly fell ill and was hospitalized. He died three weeks later from lethal poisoning by radioactive polonium-210. According to medical professionals, "Litvinenko’s murder represents an ominous landmark: the beginning of an era of nuclear terrorism."[5][6][7][8]

[link to en.wikipedia.org]

And don`t forget Politkovskaya aswell:
[link to en.wikipedia.org]

The official says investigators have concluded, based on forensic evidence and intelligence reports, that the murder was a "state-sponsored" assassination orchestrated by Russian security services.

Sources say police intend to seek charges against a former Russian spy, Andrei Lugovoi, who met with Litvinenko on Nov. 1, the day officials believe the lethal dose was administered in the Millennium Hotel teapot.

Lugovoi steadfastly denied any involvement in the murder at a Moscow news conference and at a session with Scotland Yard detectives. Russian security police were present when the British questioned Lugovoi, and British officials do not think they received honest answers from him.

British health officials say some 128 people were discovered to have had "probable contact" with Polonium-210, including at least eight hotel staff members and one guest.

[link to blogs.abcnews.com]


Putin is a skunk.

Putin is a Patriot! Right or Wrong, he is a Patriot, and one helluva Chess Master.

He didn't fight America, in Georgia, nor is he against America, but he is fighting against those who have stolen America's sovereignity and those who have allowed it to happen.

Yet, let no one be fooled, The Soviets want the world as much as anybody.

To many observers, Vladimir Putin is a threat to democracy and global stability. But to the teenage members of his fan club, the Russian president is nothing short of a hero.

The club's founder, Igor Boiko, a 19-year-old social-work student at the Russian State Social University, says: "We want to draw people's attention to the positive aspects of VV's presidency ... He stopped the war in Chechnya and outlined the most important problems facing the country, many of which have been solved with visible results."

Many of the female members of the group, which has 450 activists in Moscow, venerate the clean-living, strong and strangely handsome president as a father figure, or even the ideal husband. "He is a perfect politician, sportsman and family man!" gushes Vika Matorina, 18.

Doka recently spent two weeks with the VV fan club and was surprised by the level of support for Putin, whose image appears on posters above the students' beds, on badges, and superimposed over the Russian tricolore hanging next to makeshift shrines. "They spend hours chatting on the internet and even go to university wearing Putin T-shirts," he says. "I was really shocked at how they could feel such intense love for him. It's like they have nothing in common with reality."

Since his rapid ascent to the Kremlin in 1999, Putin stands accused by observers in and outside Russia of stifling press freedom, eroding democracy, abusing his country's huge energy clout and fostering a disturbing rise in nationalism. But none of that concerns the devotees of the VV fan club, who have childhood memories of a poorer Russia under the beleaguered Boris Yeltsin.

Largely unknown to Russians before he came to power, Putin gained huge popular support thanks to his tough treatment of rebel Chechen guerrillas and his approval rating – currently standing at around 80 per cent – has continued to climb as the economy recovers from the chaos of the 1990s. Recent accusations surrounding the murder in London of the dissident former-KGB officer Alexander Litvinenko appear to be of little concern.

For the members of the fan club, Putin, a former KGB spy and Judo blackbelt himself, is irreplaceable – and many of their low-key demonstrations call for a change to the Russian constitution, which demands that he step down next year after a maximum two terms in office.

"They were quite a small group," says Doka, who accompanied the fan club on a protest, "and I really had the feeling most of them were not that serious about politics. But at the same time, I was thinking it was frightening, because these people represent the future of Russia."

Yulia Minazhetdinova, 17, student at Russian State Social University

I really like Vladimir Vladimirovich [VV] Putin. He comes across as a nice man. I'm grateful to him for ending the war in Chechnya and for paying off a lot of our foreign debt. He has raised pensions and social allowances and improved the city of Moscow. My fascination with VV has given me a better understanding of politics. For example, after the fan club's protest at the Georgian embassy, I understood the nature of our relationship with Georgia and why we have a conflict. My parents are against my hobby. They say I don't understand politics but I disagree. Putin is my hero, he inspires me, adds meaning to my actions. I aspire to be like him.

Tanya Skoropistseva, 20, foreign languages student at the Russian Academy of Education, and Lyosha Sobolkov, 18, economics student at the Modern Humanitarian Academy

Tanya: My friends invited me to join the youth movement Walking Together and it got me interested in Putin's personality and policies. At first he left me unimpressed but then I realised what he had done. If he hadn't changed Russian politics, we'd still be a cheap labour force. He said that Russia is an important country and can't be a doormat. I have T-shirts with "I Want Putin" printed on them – and I'd like to knit a jumper in the colours of the Russian flag with his portrait. I also want my husband to be like Putin.

Lyosha: I have been in the fan club for one year and have been interested in politics since I was 16. Putin has done a lot of good for Russia; he has raised the quality of life and I personally feel it. For example, in the Nineties, nobody travelled much but now it's affordable. That's the president's achievement. I have Putin T-shirts, pins, pictures, stickers and many posters. I have a mug too. I want to have wallpaper with his image in my room.

Roman, 18, first-year student at Russian State Humanitarian University

I've been a member of the club since it was founded in February 2006. I think that Putin is the best president for Russia and I respect him as a person. He is the face of Russia, representing us on the world stage. All members of the club are interviewed to make sure they are really interested in VV Putin. They are all worthy representatives of young generations, and every day our lives are filled with activities. I think ours is the first fan club for politicians. We have a meeting every Friday where we discuss what is happening in our president's political and personal life. His actions are precise; he has planned them thoroughly and has lead Russia out of the crisis of the 1990s. We know that he goes to judo school; he's not obsessed with one single goal. He is respected in the world. It is for this reason that we decided to gather a fan club of people who love him, because there are so many of those who see him as a role model.

Nadya Toporivskaya, 21, nurse at medical college

I've been interested in Putin since I was six. I liked him as a man, as a leader of the country, and as a sportsman. He inspired me to take up judo. Putin restored order to the country and stopped the war in Chechnya. At his many conferences he is never afraid to point out who are our friends and who are our enemies. He admits that we have problems with low pensions and salaries, but says he will solve them. He doesn't ignore problems. I admire the fact that he says wise things and that he is so strong-willed. He looks like a very determined man. I get news about him from the Kremlin website and watch his speeches on TV. Putin is the symbol of a strong Russia.

Lena, 19, third-year philology student at Moscow State Pedagogical University

I really like the fact that Putin works on relations with other countries. And now our life is more streamlined and structured. I like it that Putin completes everything he starts. He is also a very multi-faceted person: he does judo and goes fishing and skiing. I think he is a good role model for young people. He has two daughters of my age and is a family man who is friendly with everyone. I want him to stay for a third term because no one else will be able to maintain stability in the country; only he will be able to go on with the political course that he has started. Four more years of such intensive development and we'll reach the level of life of European countries, while keeping our traditions too.

Igor Boiko, 19, founder of the fan club and first-year social-work student at Russian State Social University

We support the president with our actions and we want to gather people together. Putin has done so much and there is even more to be done. He has to be given a chance to strengthen his position and remain for a third term, and we want to speak about it publicly. Our actions are either linked to a certain event or designed to draw attention to our fan club. Our activities aim to increase the level of political activity among young people and to express our feelings towards the president.

I study at the Social University and I'm drawn to politics. My interest helps me develop my organisation and communication skills, which will be very useful in the future.

Yulya Pipilova, 18, entering Moscow State University of Culture to study culture and entertainment management

I have five different T-shirts with Putin's portrait on them, and several kinds of postcard which also have VV's face on them: we design them and print them for everyone. The aim of our last action was to show that we weren't happy that VV didn't want to change the Russian constitution and stay on for the third term. I want a husband who'd be like Vladimir Vladimirovich.

Tanya Arkhipova, 18, orthodontics student at Moscow Regional Medical College

I first noticed Putin in 2000. Although I was only 11, I clearly understood that something was wrong with Yeltsin. And when a new person came in, I became interested in his personality and politics.

I like the way Putin treats his wife and children; I think that he's a great husband. He has also made people respect Russia. Life is more stable, pensions and benefits are rising, and there's overall development. Putin's successor should continue the course that VV has chosen.


more:www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/we-love-putin-me​et-the-russian-presidents-teenage-fan-club-458034.html







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Yes, RIP Anna.

IN RUSSIA, gangsters have the macabre custom of making a birthday present of a murder. On Vladimir Putin’s 54th birthday, one of his fiercest domestic critics, the journalist Anna Politkovskaya, was shot to death in her apartment building in central Moscow. She worked for the weekly Novaya Gazeta, Russia’s last independent newspaper. Its deputy editor was murdered a couple of years ago, and the killer was never found. Although Politkovskaya had been tailed by the FSB for years and her murderer was captured on film, he got away. The Kremlin has made no comment.