Russian Ship Tries Again to Return Syrian Helicopters

by Jason Ditz, July 12, 2012

The Russian cargo ship the Alaed has left Russian waters again on an attemptto deliver refurbished Syrian helicopters back to the Syrian military. The last shipping attempt failed after British officials, under US pressure, forced the revocation of their insurance.

The Alaed had been a Curucao-flagged ship, and British officials made a big deal of having given serious considerationto launching a naval attack on the ship and capturing it to prevent the return of the helicopters. It was at this point the insurance was pulled and the ship slunk back to Murmansk.

This time, things are different. The ship has been reflagged as a Russian ship and while still traveling as a private vessel it is trailing not far behind a flotillaof Russian naval ships headed to the same area on a “training” operation.

Being a Russian-flagged ship removes the insurance obstacle, and the close proximity of the flotilla presumably will prevent Britain from giving serious consideration to attacking it when it gets close to British waters.

Hidden in Afghanistan: Soviet Veterans of a Previous War Compare and Tremble

There are only a few of them left — deserters and MIAs of the huge Soviet Red Army divisions sent in to control Afghanistan. But they still remember how it all ended — and worry that the American war will end the same way

Even after three decades, Gennady Tseuma remembers the wavering call to prayer that went up clear over the hillside village. It floated out over the fields and river and pierced the early morning hush on the Bangi Bridge. Tseuma, then a Soviet soldier assigned to a small force guarding the river crossing in northern Afghanistan’s Kunduz province, recalls a feeling of dread when he heard the sound. Like many of the conscripts serving in the Red Army in Afghanistan, Tseuma was bored and undisciplined, and after 10 months of service, curiosity finally got the best of him.

The decision to investigate the call to prayer cost him the life he had known up to that point. “Our checkpoint was close to the village. Every morning the mullah did the call to prayer. It was totally new to me. I didn’t understand what was going on. I thought maybe they were killing people or something,” Tseuma tells TIME. “So, one day, early in the morning, I got off my base to take a look. When I got close to the mosque there was an old man sitting there. Then suddenly men with guns surrounded me and captured me. After that, the mujahedin told me to convert to Islam or they would kill me. I decided it was better to live than to die, so I became a Muslim.”

For the past 29 years, Tseuma and maybe around a hundred other Soviet POW/MIAs have lived through some of the most violent history of one of the most violent countries on earth. After serving in the European-style Soviet army, they lived and sometimes fought as Afghans. Those of them still alive have an extraordinary window into Afghan society combined with unique insight into the historical parallels between the Soviet defeat and the withdrawal of U.S. and NATO forces at the end of 2014.

Russia Sends Warships Toward Syria

The naval flotilla is a show of force and a reminder that Moscow will block any Western attempt to intervene against the Assad regime

by John Glaser, July 11, 2012

Russia has dispatched eleven warships to the eastern Mediterranean, some of which will dock in Syria, in Moscow’s latest attempt to display Russian power in the region and ward off a Western intervention in Syria.

About half of the ships are capable of carrying hundreds of Russian Marines, although its unknown if any forces are set to go ashore after docking at Russia’s naval base in Tartus.

The announcement came just one day after Russia officially said it would halt all new weapons sales to Syria. Russia has provide arms and backing to the regime of Bashar al-Assad throughout the 16-month long conflict.

Sending naval vessels, as Russia has done periodically throughout the past, seems an attempt to reassure the US and its allies that Moscow still plans to block any attempt to intervene militarily against the Assad regime.

Russia’s main concerns regarding Syria is that Washington will try to usher in regime change, and possibly military intervention, and exploit any political transition for their benefit, thus stamping out Russia’s valuable Middle Eastern ally.

UN envoy Kofi Annan said this month that while Russia has received a lot of criticism for continuing to back the violent President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, “very few things are said about other countries that send arms and money and weigh on the situation on the ground,” without naming any specific countries.

Foreign meddling on behalf of all sides has been instrumental in prolonging the conflict by emboldening both sides and making a political settlement more remote. But now Russia seems to be altering its posture to one of preventing any military intervention against Assad, instead of arming the regime as a proxy client. This position is more amenable to a resolution to the conflict, unlike the position of the US and its allies in arming and aiding the Syrian rebel fighters.

Journey by Sea Takes Awkward Turn in Russia

MOSCOW — It is hard to imagine who was more stunned: the team of adventurers who succeeded in crossing more than 50 miles of the Bering Strait’s frigid, treacherous swells to Russia from Alaska last week, or the Russian border patrol agents in an armored tank who watched them appear on shore, seemingly out of nowhere.

On Wednesday, the team of six men — shadowed by a Russian military helicopter — did an about-face and returned to the Alaskan coast after spending four days in detention in Lavrentiya, a remote village in the Chukotka region.

The six, led by Steven Moll, 41, of Folsom, Calif., had hoped that after reaching Chukotka in the Russian Far East, they could continue south for 5,000 more miles to Taiwan.

Each of the six rode a 2008 GTX, 215-horsepower Sea-Doo made by the Canadian company Bombardier that carried enough gasoline for a 250-mile trip. They had planned to buy more fuel at stops along Russia’s vast eastern coast.

But what seemed like a well-scripted stunt hit a snag when the headlights from the watercraft sent Russian border agents into high alert. Much of the Russian coastal region is designated as a prohibited military zone.
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Chukotka has proved a formidable obstacle to would-be world travelers before. In 2006 Karl Bushby, a Briton trying to circumnavigate the globe on foot, walked across the frozen Bering Strait into the region and was arrested for failing to register with the Russian authorities after coming ashore. On Wednesday, after their release from custody but expulsion from Russia, the team made a six-hour cannonball run back across the Strait, whose waves can reach a height of 20 feet or more.

Russian Warships Sent on Maneuvers Near Syria

MOSCOW — Russia, which seems intent on positioning itself as an increasingly decisive broker in the Syrian crisis, announced on Tuesday that a flotilla of navy vessels had sailed to the Mediterranean Sea and some would dock in the Syrian port of Tartus. The naval group includes several landing craft with marines.

The voyage and naval maneuvers seemed designed to convey a message that Russian leaders would protect their interests in Syria, Russia’s most important relationship in the Middle East, even as they restrict new shipments of weapons to President Bashar al-Assad’s government until the conflict subsides, as military export officials had announced on Monday.
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Russian military officials have repeatedly hinted at a possible role in Syria for their naval power, diminished but still floating two decades after the Soviet collapse. The ships have been presented as a means either to evacuate Russian citizens or to secure the naval fueling station at Tartus, on the Syrian coast.

Though little more than a floating pier and small barracks, the site is Russia’s only remaining foreign military base outside the former Soviet Union. Any Russian presence on the coast would serve as a tripwire to prevent Western military intervention.

The statement by the Defense Ministry said ships had steamed from ports of the Northern and Black Sea fleets.

Russia Picks Politics Over Syria Arms Exports

Moscow’s announcement on Monday that it was refusing to make new arms sales to Syria came unexpectedly, after top Russian diplomats previously staunchly defended Russia’s right to supply arms to the embattled Assad regime.

“Until the situation stabilizes we will not deliver any new weapons” to Syria, Dzirkaln said at the Farnborough airshow in Britain. He said this included, in particular, the 36 Yak-130 combat training aircraft that Syria was intending to purchase for a total price of $550 million.

From the onset of the conflict in Syria last spring, Russian Foreign Ministry and political leadership has persistently maintained that Moscow’s arms shipments do not violate any international laws and will be continued.

Putin Says Russia to Prioritize India, China

Russia intends to maintain special cooperation with the emerging powers of China and India, President Vladimir Putin said on Monday at a gathering of Russia's top diplomats and foreign representatives.

"Our cooperation with China has the most important strategic and practical importance," Putin said. "We intend to pay special attention to deepening all forms of cooperation with our Chinese partners including coordination of our actions in the agenda of international affairs," he added.

"This also applies to other rapidly developing and increasingly politically important Asian states, including foremost our traditional partner and friend India," Putin said.
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"The June summit with the EU confirmed the priority character of Russian-European strategic dialog," he said. "At the same time, the level of cooperation with the EU in our view, has not reached its full potential,"he said.