Russian strategic bombers land in Venezuela

10/ 09/ 2008
MOSCOW, September 10 (RIA Novosti) - Two Russian Tu-160 Blackjack strategic bombers have landed at a military airfield in Venezuela, Russia's Defense Ministry said on Wednesday.

The Tu-160 Blackjack is a supersonic, variable-geometry heavy bomber, designed to strike strategic targets with nuclear and conventional weapons deep in continental theaters of operation.
The bombers will conduct a number of training flights over neutral waters in the next few days and later return to their home base in Russia, the ministry said in a statement.
The planes landed at Venezuela's Libertador airfield and during the flight to the South American country were accompanied by NATO fighters.
"The flight itinerary extended over neutral waters in the Arctic and Atlantic oceans. The Russian bombers were accompanied by NATO fighters," the statement said.
Russia earlier announced it would send a naval task force from the Northern Fleet on a tour of duty in the Atlantic Ocean and participate in joint naval drills with the Venezuelan navy in November.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said on September 1 that Venezuela welcomed the Russian Navy and Air Force on its territory.
"If the Russian Navy arrives in the Caribbean or the Atlantic it may certainly visit Venezuela, we have no problems with that and would warmly welcome it," Chavez said.
"And if Russian long-range bombers should need to land in Venezuela we would not object to that either. We will also welcome them," he said.
http://en.rian.ru/russia/20080910/116695660.html

Who Started Cold War II?

by Patrick J. Buchanan

The American people should be eternally grateful to Old Europe for having spiked the Bush-McCain plan to bring Georgia into NATO.
Had Georgia been in NATO when Mikheil Saakashvili invaded South Ossetia, we would be eyeball to eyeball with Russia, facing war in the Caucasus, where Moscow’s superiority is as great as U.S. superiority in the Caribbean during the Cuban missile crisis.
If the Russia-Georgia war proves nothing else, it is the insanity of giving erratic hotheads in volatile nations the power to drag the United States into war.
From Harry Truman to Ronald Reagan, as Defense Secretary Robert Gates said, U.S. presidents have sought to avoid shooting wars with Russia, even when the Bear was at its most beastly.
Truman refused to use force to break Stalin’s Berlin blockade. Ike refused to intervene when the Butcher of Budapest drowned the Hungarian Revolution in blood. LBJ sat impotent as Leonid Brezhnev’s tanks crushed the Prague Spring. Jimmy Carter’s response to Brezhnev’s invasion of Afghanistan was to boycott the Moscow Olympics. When Brezhnev ordered his Warsaw satraps to crush Solidarity and shot down a South Korean airliner killing scores of U.S. citizens, including a congressman, Reagan did — nothing.
These presidents were not cowards. They simply would not go to war when no vital U.S. interest was at risk to justify a war. Yet, had George W. Bush prevailed and were Georgia in NATO, U.S. Marines could be fighting Russian troops over whose flag should fly over a province of 70,000 South Ossetians who prefer Russians to Georgians.
The arrogant folly of the architects of U.S. post-Cold War policy is today on display. By bringing three ex-Soviet republics into NATO, we have moved the U.S. red line for war from the Elbe almost to within artillery range of the old Leningrad.
Should America admit Ukraine into NATO, Yalta, vacation resort of the czars, will be a NATO port and Sevastopol, traditional home of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, will become a naval base for the U.S. Sixth Fleet. This is altogether a bridge too far.
And can we not understand how a Russian patriot like Vladimir Putin would be incensed by this U.S. encirclement after Russia shed its empire and sought our friendship? How would Andy Jackson have reacted to such crowding by the British Empire?
As of 1991, the oil of Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan belonged to Moscow. Can we not understand why Putin would smolder as avaricious Yankees built pipelines to siphon the oil and gas of the Caspian Basin through breakaway Georgia to the West?
For a dozen years, Putin & Co. watched as U.S. agents helped to dump over regimes in Ukraine and Georgia that were friendly to Moscow.
If Cold War II is coming, who started it, if not us?
The swift and decisive action of Putin’s army in running the Georgian forces out of South Ossetia in 24 hours after Saakashvili began his barrage and invasion suggests Putin knew exactly what Saakashvili was up to and dropped the hammer on him.
What did we know? Did we know Georgia was about to walk into Putin’s trap? Did we not see the Russians lying in wait north of the border? Did we give Saakashvili a green light?
Joe Biden ought to be conducting public hearings on who caused this U.S. humiliation.
The war in Georgia has exposed the dangerous overextension of U.S. power. There is no way America can fight a war with Russia in the Caucasus with our army tied down in Afghanistan and Iraq. Nor should we. Hence, it is demented to be offering, as John McCain and Barack Obama are, NATO membership to Tbilisi.
The United States must decide whether it wants a partner in a flawed Russia or a second Cold War. For if we want another Cold War, we are, by cutting Russia out of the oil of the Caspian and pushing NATO into her face, going about it exactly the right way.
Vladimir Putin is no Stalin. He is a nationalist determined, as ruler of a proud and powerful country, to assert his nation’s primacy in its own sphere, just as U.S. presidents from James Monroe to Bush have done on our side of the Atlantic.
A resurgent Russia is no threat to any vital interests of the United States. It is a threat to an American Empire that presumes some God-given right to plant U.S. military power in the backyard or on the front porch of Mother Russia.
Who rules Abkhazia and South Ossetia is none of our business. And after this madcap adventure of Saakashvili, why not let the people of these provinces decide their own future in plebiscites conducted by the United Nations or the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe?
As for Saakashvili, he’s probably toast in Tbilisi after this stunt. Let the neocons find him an endowed chair at the American Enterprise Institute.

Blowback from Bear Baiting
Mikheil Saakashvili’s decision to use the opening of the Olympic Games to cover Georgia’s invasion of its breakaway province of South Ossetia must rank in stupidity with Gamal Abdel-Nasser’s decision to close the Straits of Tiran to Israeli ships.
Nasser’s blunder cost him the Sinai in the Six-Day War. Saakashvili’s blunder probably means permanent loss of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
After shelling and attacking what he claims is his own country, killing scores of his own Ossetian citizens and sending tens of thousands fleeing into Russia, Saakashvili’s army was whipped back into Georgia in 48 hours.
Vladimir Putin took the opportunity to kick the Georgian army out of Abkhazia, as well, to bomb Tbilisi and to seize Gori, birthplace of Stalin.
Reveling in his status as an intimate of George Bush, Dick Cheney and John McCain, and America’s lone democratic ally in the Caucasus, Saakashvili thought he could get away with a lightning coup and present the world with a fait accompli.
Mikheil did not reckon on the rage or resolve of the Bear.
American charges of Russian aggression ring hollow. Georgia started this fight — Russia finished it. People who start wars don’t get to decide how and when they end.
Russia’s response was “disproportionate” and “brutal,” wailed Bush.
True. But did we not authorize Israel to bomb Lebanon for 35 days in response to a border skirmish where several Israel soldiers were killed and two captured? Was that not many times more “disproportionate”?
Russia has invaded a sovereign country, railed Bush. But did not the United States bomb Serbia for 78 days and invade to force it to surrender a province, Kosovo, to which Serbia had a far greater historic claim than Georgia had to Abkhazia or South Ossetia, both of which prefer Moscow to Tbilisi?
Is not Western hypocrisy astonishing?
When the Soviet Union broke into 15 nations, we celebrated. When Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia, Bosnia, Montenegro and Kosovo broke from Serbia, we rejoiced. Why, then, the indignation when two provinces, whose peoples are ethnically separate from Georgians and who fought for their independence, should succeed in breaking away?
Are secessions and the dissolution of nations laudable only when they advance the agenda of the neocons, many of who viscerally detest Russia?
That Putin took the occasion of Saakashvili’s provocative and stupid stunt to administer an extra dose of punishment is undeniable. But is not Russian anger understandable? For years the West has rubbed Russia’s nose in her Cold War defeat and treated her like Weimar Germany.
When Moscow pulled the Red Army out of Europe, closed its bases in Cuba, dissolved the evil empire, let the Soviet Union break up into 15 states, and sought friendship and alliance with the United States, what did we do?
American carpetbaggers colluded with Muscovite Scalawags to loot the Russian nation. Breaking a pledge to Mikhail Gorbachev, we moved our military alliance into Eastern Europe, then onto Russia’s doorstep. Six Warsaw Pact nations and three former republics of the Soviet Union are now NATO members.
Bush, Cheney and McCain have pushed to bring Ukraine and Georgia into NATO. This would require the United States to go to war with Russia over Stalin’s birthplace and who has sovereignty over the Crimean Peninsula and Sebastopol, traditional home of Russia’s Black Sea fleet.
When did these become U.S. vital interests, justifying war with Russia?
The United States unilaterally abrogated the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty because our technology was superior, then planned to site anti-missile defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic to defend against Iranian missiles, though Iran has no ICBMs and no atomic bombs. A Russian counter-offer to have us together put an anti-missile system in Azerbaijan was rejected out of hand.
We built a Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline from Azerbaijan through Georgia to Turkey to cut Russia out. Then we helped dump over regimes friendly to Moscow with democratic “revolutions” in Ukraine and Georgia, and tried to repeat it in Belarus.
Americans have many fine qualities. A capacity to see ourselves as others see us is not high among them.
Imagine a world that never knew Ronald Reagan, where Europe had opted out of the Cold War after Moscow installed those SS-20 missiles east of the Elbe. And Europe had abandoned NATO, told us to go home and become subservient to Moscow.
How would we have reacted if Moscow had brought Western Europe into the Warsaw Pact, established bases in Mexico and Panama, put missile defense radars and rockets in Cuba, and joined with China to build pipelines to transfer Mexican and Venezuelan oil to Pacific ports for shipment to Asia? And cut us out? If there were Russian and Chinese advisers training Latin American armies, the way we are in the former Soviet republics, how would we react? Would we look with bemusement on such Russian behavior?
For a decade, some of us have warned about the folly of getting into Russia’s space and getting into Russia’s face. The chickens of democratic imperialism have now come home to roost — in Tbilisi.

Russia tests ICBM designed to overcome missile shield

MOSCOW - Russia on Thursday said it test-fired an intercontinental missile designed to avoid detection by missile-defence systems, raising the temperature in a tense stand-off with the West over Georgia.
The Topol RS-12M intercontinental ballistic missile was launched from the Plesetsk cosmodrome in northern Russia and flew 6,000 kilometres (3,700 miles) to hit a target on Kamchatka Peninsula in the far east, a military spokesman said.
The test was meant 'to develop equipment for potential combat use against ground-based ballistic missiles,' Alexander Vovk, a spokesman for Russia's strategic nuclear forces, said in televised remarks.
The test came barely a week after the United States completed an accord with Poland on basing anti-missile interceptors in the east European country and as Russia accuses NATO of building up its naval presence in the Black Sea.
The stand-off has deepened since President Dmitry Medvedev's announcement that Russia was recognising South Ossetia and another rebel region, Abkhazia, as independent states.
Russia has been upgrading its Topol missiles in response to US plans to develop a missile-defence shield using ground-based interceptors, analysts said.
'Russia is saying once again that has the opportunity to overcome US missile defence,' Anatoly Tsyganok, a retired colonel and head of the Centre for Military Forecasting, told AFP.
But he ruled out any possibility that the test was timed to coincide with tensions over Georgia.
The Topol was first tested in 1983 but Russia has in recent years been adapting it to include countermeasures against missile defence, with the last test-firing in December 2007.
'Experience shows the most economical and quickly achievable countermeasures against the development of a missile-defence system are so-called asymmetrical measures,' nuclear forces spokesman Vovk said, quoted by Interfax news agency.
Those measures include the missile being less detectable and its path less predictable, he said.
'Most likely this is an Topol SS-25 ICBM,' analyst Felgenauer said.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Tuesday promised a 'military response' to the US-Polish agreement on interceptors.
'These missiles are to be stationed alongside our border and they are a threat to us... We have to respond somehow to this situation, and naturally enough we have to take a military response,' he told Al-Jazeera television.

Russia today

MOSCOW - This spring, Russian tanks and missiles rolled across the cobblestones of Red Square as soldiers in olive green uniforms goose-stepped and a military band played the revived Soviet anthem. It was the first full-scale military display at the annual Victory Day parade in almost two decades.
On Aug. 8, the tanks rolled again, but this time it wasn't just a parade. As hundreds of Russian armored vehicles rumbled toward the cavernous Roki tunnel into Georgia, the show ended and the shooting started.
The move stunned many in the U.S. and Europe. But it was the result, at least in part, of factors the West has never really understood: Russia's wounded pride over its loss of the Soviet empire, its fear of NATO expansion along its borders and its anger over being treated as a backwater in Europe rather than a global power.
Russia says it was forced to respond to Georgia's ferocious assault on the capital of separatist South Ossetia, which likely killed scores of civilians and a number of Russian peacekeepers. But Russia's role in the Caucasus is much more than that of a neutral peacekeeping force, and its intervention goes much deeper than the latest clashes.
Georgia, meanwhile, blames Russia for provoking the crisis by supporting separatist territories on its soil. The sight of Russian tanks rolling down its highways was also a searing reminder that Moscow dominated Georgia for almost two centuries, and that Soviet tanks entered the capital of Tbilisi in 1989 and soldiers beat 20 protesters to death with shovels.
For much of the world, the motives behind the conflict seem murky; after all, the Cold War is over and the Soviet Union is dead. Russia, it seemed, was becoming a modern nation, part of the international community.
What is hard for the world to see, though, is that there are two Russias. The first is a rapidly developing modern country, a major energy exporter with expanding ties to the global economy, a nation with a sense of pride and purpose after years of struggle.
Symbols of this new Russia are everywhere, from the gleaming skyscrapers springing up along the Moscow River, to shopping centers being built in Siberia, to Russian tourists crowding beaches in Turkey and shops in Manhattan, to the reed-thin women in designer dresses who saunter down the capital's Tverskaya Street, a coiffed miniature dog tucked under one arm.
But behind this growing European facade is an older and less familiar Russia, one that is much harder for foreigners to grasp. This Russia is a 1,000-year-old civilization that is distrustful of political change, wary of the West and jealous of its historic role as master of its corner of the world.
This is a country that throughout its history has felt threatened by independent nations on its borders, and now feels under siege.
The feeling of being surrounded is an uncomfortably familiar one for Russia, which has no natural borders and has been invaded by everyone from the Mongols to the Swedes and the French. To protect itself physically, Russia continually sought to extend its borders and prop up neutral buffer states at the periphery of its sphere of influence. To protect its unique culture, which is neither European nor Asian but both, it adopted a kind of psychological isolation from the rest of the world.
Russia's intervention in Georgia draws on a long history of empire that goes back not just to the Communist era, but much further, to its Czarist past. The symbols of this past survive in the names of many Russian provincial cities — Vladivostok, which means "Conqueror of the East," and Vladikavkaz, "Conqueror of the Caucasus" — in the canals and mansions of St. Petersburg, dredged from a swamp on orders of Peter the Great; and of course in the red-brick walls of the Kremlin itself.
Unlike many Western powers, Russia seems unable or unwilling to turn its back on its cruel but glorious legacy of empire. As Vladimir Sorokin, the Russian writer, told a German magazine last year: "We still live in the country that was built by Ivan the Terrible."
"Russia is a big and capable country, which will not let the West dictate the conditions," Igor Saryov, 33, of Moscow, said matter-of-factly as he waited on a sidewalk outside a Moscow metro station. "In any situation, Russia is going to act as it sees fit."
Standing next to him was Alexei, 33, with slicked-back black hair, drinking a beer at around 10:45 a.m. He refused to give his last name.
Far from committing aggression in Georgia, he said, Russia was resisting it. "Russia has never been conquered, not in 1,000 years, though many tried," he said. "It's because it's in our genes not to allow anyone to dictate the conditions, how to act, where to act."
The roots of Russia's latest intervention in Georgia can be traced at least back to 1991, when Tbilisi declared its independence and an impoverished, divided Soviet Union finally crumbled.
After centuries of being feared by its neighbors and presiding over a patchwork of European and Asian cultures, Russians were suddenly expected to build a modest nation state and live within its shrunken borders. While many of Moscow's satellite states in Europe rebounded quickly, Russia, the epicenter of the failed Soviet experiment, never recovered from the memory of humiliation, poverty and dependence of the immediate post-Soviet period.
Like the U.S., Russia is a patchwork of ethnic groups and cultures. America's diverse population has traditionally rallied behind ideals of individual freedom. Russians, meanwhile, have been united in their pride in Moscow's imperial scope and power.
When the empire crumbled, Russia suddenly found itself without a reason to exist.
A few days after his re-election in 1996, President Boris N. Yeltsin asked an advisory panel to come up with "a new national idea to unite all Russians." The panel gave up in frustration.
As Europe advanced, so did NATO, the Western military alliance originally formed to thwart Soviet expansion — stoking Russia's fears of being surrounded and eventually overwhelmed.
Analysts also say Europe has tended to treat Russia as a second-class European nation. "They've realized that if Russia merely plays the role the West has made for it, we would quickly become a country that protects the pipeline sending gas and oil from Western Siberia," said Sergey Mikheyev, an analyst at Center for Political Technologies.
After Russia defaulted on its debt in 1998, its economy started to grow, aided by cheap rubles and fueled by rising gas and oil prices.
Russia's gross domestic product rose 58 percent from 2000 to 2006, and perhaps a fifth of Russians belong to an emerging middle class that didn't exist in Russia before 1991. Russia now earns $1.2 billion a day from gas and oil exports, according to UralSib Capital, a Moscow financial corporation. Its gold and currency reserves are worth more than $581 billion, compared to just $10 billion a decade ago.
Suddenly, there was the sense that the West needed Russia more than Russia needed the West.
The driving force behind Russia's political transformation was Putin, who rose under late President Boris Yeltsin to become prime minister in 1999. In an essay released just days before Yeltsin's resignation, Putin wrote: "It is too early to bury Russia as a great power."
Whether by accident or design, the political system Putin built came to bear an uncanny resemblance to that of the old Czarist state. Today, as in the Czarist epoch, Russia's institutions — its courts, media and businesses — enjoy a measure of independence they could only dream of in Soviet times. But they still are ultimately answerable to the government, especially if they challenge the state.

So what happens now?
While politicians sometimes talk of a new Cold War, none seems on the horizon. The Kremlin seems to have abandoned efforts to impose a Utopian system on the world by force and keep its citizens captive behind an Iron Curtain.
But in striking at Georgia, Russia has asserted its right to intervene in the affairs of countries along its borders — especially the former Soviet republics, which Russians call their "near abroad." The invasion also expanded the role of Russia's military, which until now mainly kept the peace domestically, fighting Islamic or ethnic separatists in the restive North Caucasus.

Traveling to Russia

Russia has remained a bulwark of strength and some mystery since it formed over a thousand years ago from the small feudal fiefdoms scattered down the Volkhov River. A step removed from Asia but surprisingly un-European, Russia is a complex society that's hard to define.

If you like to see photographs from Russia and Ukraine visit my other blog at
http://interesting-to-know.blogspot.com

Russia and Ukraine

If you like to see photographs from Russia and Ukraine visit my other blog at
http://interesting-to-know.blogspot.com
Russia
Russia (Russian: Россия, Rossiya), also the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country extending over much of northern Eurasia. It is a semi-presidential republic comprising 83 federal subjects.
At 17,075,400 square kilometers, Russia is by far the largest country in the world, covering more than an eighth of the Earth’s land area; with 142 million people, it is the ninth largest by population. It extends across the whole of northern Asia and 40% of Europe, spanning 11 time zones and incorporating a great range of environments and landforms. Russia has the world's greatest reserves of mineral and energy resources, and is considered an energy superpower. It has the world's largest forest reserves and its lakes contain approximately one-quarter of the world's unfrozen fresh water.

The nation's history began with that of the East Slavs. The Slavs emerged as a recognizable group in Europe between the 3rd and 8th centuries AD. Founded and ruled by Vikings and their descendants, the first East Slavic state, Kievan Rus', arose in the 9th century and adopted Christianity from the Byzantine Empire in 988, beginning the synthesis of Byzantine and Slavic cultures that defined Russian culture for the next millennium. Kievan Rus' ultimately disintegrated and the lands were divided into many small feudal states. The most powerful successor state to Kievan Rus' was Moscow, which served as the main force in the Russian reunification process and independence struggle against the Golden Horde. Moscow gradually reunified the surrounding Russian principalities and came to dominate the cultural and political legacy of Kievan Rus'. By the 18th century, the nation had greatly expanded through conquest, annexation and exploration to become the huge Russian Empire, stretching from Poland eastward to the Pacific Ocean.

Russia established worldwide power and influence from the times of the Russian Empire to being the largest and leading constituent of the Soviet Union, the world's first and largest constitutionally socialist state and a recognized superpower. The nation can boast a long tradition of excellence in every aspect of the arts and sciences. The Russian Federation was founded following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, but is recognized as the continuing legal personality of the Soviet Union. Russia is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council and a leading member of the Commonwealth of Independent States and the G8. It is one of the five recognized nuclear weapons states and possesses the world's largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction.

Ukraine

"Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks to Sultan Mehmed IV of the Ottoman Empire." Painted by Ilya Repin from 1880 to 1891.

Ukraine (Ukrainian: Україна, Ukrayina,) is a country in Eastern Europe. It borders Russia to the east, Belarus to the north, Poland, Slovakia and Hungary to the west, Romania and Moldova to the southwest, and the Black Sea and Sea of Azov to the south. The city of Kiev (Kyiv) is both the capital and the largest city of Ukraine.
The nation's history began with that of the East Slavs. From at least the 9th century, the territory of Ukraine was a center of the medieval Varangian-dominated East Slavic civilisation, forming the state of Kievan Rus' which disintegrated in the 12th century. From the 14th century on, the territory of Ukraine was divided among a number of regional powers, and by the 19th century, the largest part of Ukraine was integrated into the Russian Empire, with the rest under Austro-Hungarian control. After a chaotic period of incessant warfare and several attempts at independence (1917–21) following World War I and the Russian civil war, Ukraine emerged in 1922 as one of the founding republics of the Soviet Union. The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic's territory was enlarged westward shortly before and after World War II, and again in 1954 with the Crimea transfer. In 1945, the Ukrainian SSR became one of the co-founding members of the United Nations. Ukraine became independent again after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. This began a period of transition to a market economy, in which Ukraine was stricken with eight straight years of economic decline. Since then the economy has been experiencing a stable increase, with real GDP growth averaging seven percent annually.

Ukraine is a unitary state composed of 24 oblasts (provinces), one autonomous republic (Crimea), and two cities with special status: Kiev, its capital, and Sevastopol, which houses the Russian Black Sea Fleet under a leasing agreement. Ukraine is a republic under a semi-presidential system with separate legislative, executive, and judicial branches. Since the collapse of the USSR, Ukraine continues to maintain the second largest military in Europe, after that of Russia. The country is home to 46.4 million people, 77.8 percent of whom are ethnic Ukrainians, with sizable minorities of Russians, Belarusians and Romanians. The Ukrainian language is the only official language in Ukraine, while Russian is also widely spoken and is known to most Ukrainians as a second language. The dominant religion in the country in Eastern Orthodox Christianity, which has heavily influenced Ukrainian architecture, literature and music.

Русские американцы

-АМЕРИКА подарила России джинсы, рок-н-ролл и жвачку. А Россия — Америке?
— Америка — страна молодая, она создана трудом выходцев из разных стран. В том числе из России. На всём протяжении американской истории, причём в самые ответственные её моменты, русские всегда были и, надеюсь, будут готовы прийти и помочь. Жаль, что Америка об этом часто забывает.
— Жаль, но Россия — тоже. Если про нобелевского лауреата экономиста Леонтьева, изобретателя телевидения Зворыкина, авиаконструктора Сикорского у нас ещё помнят, то дальше — тишина.
— А ведь были и такие знаковые фигуры, как Фёдор Каржавин (1745–1812) — первый «русский американец», друг президента Мэдисона, внёсший свою лепту в борьбу за независимость американских колоний. Жизнь и дела его — сюжеты для авантюрного романа.
Или Иван Турчанинов — полковник Генерального штаба Российской армии. После Крымской войны он вышел в отставку и эмигрировал в Америку. Когда в США началась гражданская война, добровольцем записался в армию северян, командовал бригадой, был произведён президентом Линкольном в генералы. Его называли «русским громобоем» и «неистовым казаком». Кстати, его жена стала первой в Америке женщиной — полевым хирургом.
Александр Северский (1894–1974) — друг Сикорского, конструктор военных самолётов. Среди его идей были автопилот и система дозаправки в воздухе. Строитель и предприниматель Пётр Дементьев (1850–1919) основал город Санкт-Петербург во Флориде. Степан Тимошенко (1878–1972) — учёный-металлург, крупнейший в мире специалист по сопротивлению материалов…
А русские купцы, основавшие первые поселения в Калифорнии и на Аляске! А русские женщины! Елена Федукович — выдающийся американский офтальмолог. Нина Фёдорова — генетик, академик Национальной академии наук. Александра Толстая, младшая дочь Льва Николаевича, — филантроп, основательница Толстовского фонда… Ещё — артисты балета, музыканты, певцы, художники. Тысячи фамилий в русском мире Америки являются гордостью наших стран.

Georgia War Shows Russia `Force to Be Reckoned With'

Russia's five-day drubbing of the U.S.-trained and equipped Georgian military this month followed a 5 trillion ruble ($200 billion) buildup undertaken in 2006 and lessons learned from misadventures in Afghanistan and Chechnya.
``Today they're a reinvented institution and a military force to be reckoned with'' after ``10 years of humiliation and pressure from NATO,'' Rose said.
The resurgent military deployed in Georgia gives Russia a credible threat of force as it seeks to check the pro-Western aspirations of its neighbors. Backed by the U.S., the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in April promised Georgia and Ukraine, both former Soviet republics, eventual membership in the military alliance.
``The Russians regard the Georgian episode as merely the start of a sustained campaign to restore their country's sphere of influence,'' wrote Jonathan Eyal, director of International Security Studies at London's Royal United Services Institute, on its Web site. ``It is now impossible to persuade the East Europeans that a Russian threat is remote.''

Booming Economy
Supported by a booming, oil-fueled economy, Russia has been increasing military spending since Vladimir Putin, now prime minister, became president in 2000, said Konstantin Makiyenko, a Russia defense analyst for the Center for Strategy and Technology Analysis.
The 2006 buildup increased spending further. Russia's annual military budget likely will rise to 1.029 trillion rubles this year and 1.267 trillion rubles in 2009, up from 841 billion rubles in 2007, according to Finance Ministry data published Aug. 22 by UralSib Financial Corp.
The budget is cloaked in secrecy, so it isn't known exactly how the money is spent. Makiyenko said the armed forces in recent years have procured more advanced weapons, including T-90 battle tanks, Iskander missile complexes, the S-400 air defense system and more than 30 fighter jets.
Russia also has raised pay for its troops, which numbered 1.13 million in June, according to Defense Ministry spokesman Yury Ivanov. Russia plans to cut the payroll, mainly by reducing non-combat positions, to 1 million by 2013 so it can increase wages more as its conscript army is honed into a more professional force.

Weaponry Display
The military is ``gaining in strength and power like all of Russia,'' President Dmitry Medvedev said May 9, presiding over its biggest weaponry display since the Soviet era, in Moscow's Red Square on the 63rd anniversary of the World War II victory over Germany.
A day earlier, Putin urged Parliament to keep increasing spending because ``only a battle-ready, well-equipped military with strong morale can defend'' Russia's ``sovereignty and integrity.''
The renewed strength allowed an estimated 10,000 troops to storm into Georgia almost unimpeded. Columns of troops and armaments rolled through South Ossetia, the pro-Moscow breakaway region that sparked the war after Georgia tried to retake it. Fighter jets bombed military bases as tanks ruined parts of the regional capital, Tskhinvali.

Stalin's Birthplace
Within three days, Russia controlled a third of Georgia, including the port of Poti and the central city of Gori, birthplace of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.
Russian General Anatoly Nogovitsyn, deputy chief of the General Staff, said no new arms were tested during the war. Instead, the Russians used T-72 tanks fitted with explosive- reactive armor, BMP-1 and BMP-2 infantry vehicles, BTR-80 armored personnel carriers and MT-LB multipurpose tracked vehicles, said Jane's Information Group, a defense intelligence service. It also used self-propelled guns and rocket-launchers.
Georgia suffered more troop casualties -- 215 killed and 1,200 wounded -- than Russia, with 64 killed and 323 wounded, according to figures from both governments.
About 2,100 South Ossetian civilians also died, Nogovitsyn said. Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Boris Malakhov said the military minimized collateral damage, comparing its performance favorably with NATO's 1999 air attack of Serbia, when bombs fell on hospitals, a television tower and the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade.

`Confident Military'
``The Russian incursion into Georgian territory -- and the air campaign against Georgian military targets -- show a confident Russian military,'' Jane's analyst Nathan Hodge wrote in a report. ``This is not the degraded Russian military of the 1994-1996 Chechen War, when Russian fighting units were plagued by corruption, poor leadership and lack of funding.''
Putin, 55, came to power after a decade of economic chaos following the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991 hollowed the once- vaunted Red Army. Morale and pay were so low during the second war against Chechnya separatists, starting in 1999, that soldiers sold arms and ammunition to rebels, Russian novelist and journalist Vladimir Voinovich wrote in 2003. Some officers sold their men to Chechen warlords as slaves, he wrote.
Nogovitsyn said Russia learned strategic lessons from that war. ``Chechnya taught us many things, including how to use units as part of battalion tactical groups,'' he said Aug. 19.
Russia plans to garner additional lessons from Georgia. Medvedev, 42, on Aug. 18 said the war should be used to develop new approaches to arms procurement and assigned Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov to come up with them.

`Practical Action'
``There will be a decisive switch towards practical action,'' Nogovitsyn said. ``When there were no resources, we shuffled papers in academies, but now a new era has started. We will teach our troops whatever they need to know'' with exercises that replicate battle conditions and aircraft that ``no longer sit on the runway.''
Makiyenko, the defense analyst, said the military could have been even more effective in Georgia. The kind of weaponry ``it really needed was not there,'' he said. Modern aircraft, intelligence and communication should be the military's new focus, he added.


Finally, representatives of the four Duma factions were given the floor. They declared their unreserved support for the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

“This is test of our resolve,” warned Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov. He began his speech by addressing his audience as “Comrades!” and continued it in an alarmist tone. “Today, the will of all of Russia is needed, of all the parties, to understand, perceive the substance of the processes occurring and to act as a united team,” he said. Recognition alone is not enough. “We have to conclude the appropriate treaties immediately that will guarantee the security of those republics,” he said, and expressed regret that Russian forces did not bring the affair to a close. “We should have bombed the entire military infrastructure of the Saakashvilists so that it could not be restored,” he said. The Russian president, in Zyuganov’s view, should “call an urgent closed meeting of the Security Council and discuss everything connected with national security.”

LDPR leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky was also less than completely satisfied with Moscow’s conduct during the war. “We should have taken the whole territory of Georgia under control,” he said, “arrested all Georgian officers and taken them here, like to Guantanamo, arrested Saakashvili and handed him over for trial by a military tribunal and gone to the border with Turkey.”