Putin orders troops to pull back from border

 

 East-West tensions over Ukraine eased on Tuesday as President Vladimir Putin said he saw no need “for now” to send troops to the neighbouring state and ordered Russian armed forces to be pulled back from Ukraine’s border.“As for the use of armed forces, there is no such need for now,” Mr. Putin said in his first public comments on the Ukraine crisis.Describing use of force as a choice of “last, very last resort,” Mr. Putin warned that he could still go for it if the violence that swept Kiev in recent weeks spilled over to Ukraine’s Russian-speaking eastern regions.Looking relaxed and confident Mr. Putin fielded questions on Ukraine from Russian and foreign journalists for about 90 minutes at a news conference at his state residence outside Moscow.“If people ask us for help — and we have a formal request from [Ukraine’s] legitimate President – we reserve the right to use all means available to protect those citizens,” Mr. Putin said.Addressing a U.N. Security Council emergency meeting on Monday Russia’s Ambassador Vitaly Churkin read out a letter Ukraine’s ousted President Viktor Yanukovych sent to Mr. Putin asking him to use military force in Ukraine to help restore law and order.Mr. Putin denied Russian troops had been deployed in Ukraine’s Crimea. He said the masked armed men who had taken full control of the peninsula were “local forces of self-defence.”The Russian leader confirmed that 1,50,000 troops who had been holding snap military drills near the Ukrainian border over the past seven days were returning to their bases.Asked if he felt concerned that a war could break out in Ukraine, Mr. Putin said: “I’m not worried because we have no plans and will not fight a war against the people of Ukraine.”He said Russia had no intention to annex Crimea. “We are not considering this option. I think only people living on a territory can and should decide their future.”Recalling the case of Kosovo, which gained independence from Serbia, and the right to self-determination enshrined in U.N. documents, Mr. Putin said: “But we will never provoke anybody to take such a decision and will never encourage such sentiments.”While Mr. Putin’s comments helped defuse tensions, the rift between Russia and the West over Ukraine appeared to be widening.Even as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Kiev on Tuesday in a high-profile gesture of support for Ukraine’s new authorities, Mr. Putin denounced the makeover of power in Ukraine as an “unconstitutional coup and armed power grab.”As Mr. Kerry prepared to meet Ukraine’s Acting President Oleksandr Turchynov and Acting Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, Mr. Putin said both were “illegitimate” and insisted that Mr. Yanukovych was still the lawful President, even if he “has no political future.”Asked about U.S. threat to penalise Russia, Mr. Putin warned that sanctions would “hurt both sides.”Mr. Putin’s economic adviser Sergei Glazyev said on Tuesday that should the U.S. resort to sanctions, Moscow might drop the dollar as a reserve currency and refuse to repay loans to U.S. banks.

As the Ukrainian Parliament ratified an agreement with the European Union to receive a 610-million Euro loan and the U.S. offered another $1 billion in loan guarantees, Mr. Putin said Gazprom would scrap a heavy price discount it extended to Ukraine in December because of piling debts for earlier supplies.

INS Vikramaditya enters Indian Navy's area of operation

INS Vikramaditya

INS Vikramaditya and INS Viraat

 It was a sight to behold. As India’s newest aircraft carrier INS Vikramaditya entered the Indian Navy’s area of operation in north western Arabian Sea, accompanied by three other vessels, it was rendezvoused — in Naval parlance RVed — with the Western Fleet that had gone all the way from Mumbai to receive it.

INS Vikramaditya, which was accompanied by INS Trikand, which is a Talwar class frigate, INS Delhi which is a Delhi class destroyer and INS Deepak, the fleet tanker, fired ceremonial guns to salute the flag of the fleet commander Rear Admiral Anand Chawla, who was leading the flotilla of the Western Fleet, that also comprised aircraft carrier INS Viraat.

The other ships besides INS Viraat which had gone to receive INS Vikramaditya included two Delhi class destroyers, three Trishul class stealth frigates, a Godavari class frigate and a couple of offshore vessels.

All this happened about 1200 nautical miles from the country's shores on New Year’s eve and thereafter all the aircraft carriers, frigates and destroyers together set sail for India.

INS Vikramaditya, which was commissioned into the Indian Navy on November 16 last at the North Russian shipyard of Sevmash at Severodvinsk, is now headed for its home port at Karwar in Karnataka where it is scheduled to reach in a week’s time.

Commanded by Captain Suraj Berry, INS Vikramaditya -- which took eight years to refurbish at the Russian yard -- would reach Karwar on completing a near 8500 nautical mile journey.

On reaching Karwar, the aircraft carrier would re-equip and prepare and get ready for the next phase which would be its integration with the air wing, comprising about 30 Mig 29K aircraft and six Kamov Ka-31 “Helix” reconnaissance and anti-submarine helicopters.

It would take around four to six months for the full integration of the aircraft carrier after which it will become the spearhead of the carrier battle group. During this period, the aircraft carrier would also be equipped with surface-to-air missile (SAM) and close-in weapon system (CIWS) to safeguard it from aerial attack.

At the time of commissioning of INS Vikramaditya Indian Navy Chief Admiral D.K. Joshi had indicated that Indian naval fighter pilots would be certified to carry out flying operations from the carrier deck within weeks of the carrier’s arrival in India.

While a batch of combat fliers from ‘Black Panther’ squadron has undertaken simulator training in Moscow, before the flying operations from the carrier deck, they are also scheduled to perfect take-off and landing on the shore-based test facility (SBTF) at INS Hansa in Goa.

Iran to work with Russia to stop strike on Syria

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said his country will press efforts to ward off military action by the U.S. and its allies against the Tehran-backed regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad, Iranian state TV reported on Thursday.

The report said the remarks came late Wednesday during a phone conversation between Mr. Rouhani and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.

Mr. Rouhani was quoted as saying “military action will bring great costs for the region” and “it is necessary to apply all efforts to prevent it.”

According to the report, he said both Iran and Russia would work in “extensive cooperation” to prevent any military action against Syria. Rouhani also called such military action an “open violation” of international laws.

While condemning chemical weapons, Mr. Rouhani was quoted as saying, “Early judgment can be dangerous, before clarification” can be made of allegations that Syria used the weapons.

“Western countries have found some excuse to prepare the ground to weaken the stance of Syria in further talks” after the Syrian government has won the upper hand in confronting rebels, Mr. Rouhani said.

The president also predicted regional consequences for any military strike.

“Syria has a strategic and sensitive situation, and any sort of military invasion would lead to instability in the entire Middle East,” he said.

Russia’s war games catch West off guard

Russia’s unscheduled war games in the Black Sea that began on Thursday without prior notice have taken the West by surprise, with NATO calling on Moscow to show greater openness.

President Vladimir Putin issued a snap order to launch large-scale naval and air manoeuvres in the Black Sea at 4 a.m. on Thursday when he was on the way back from the BRICS summit in Durban, South Africa.

On Friday Mr. Putin watched sea landing operations as part of the surprise three-day drill that involves 36 warships, 20 aircraft and 7,000 troops.

The Kremlin said the main goal of the exercise was to check “combat readiness and coordination among the various branches of the Armed Forces”.

Russia’s unannounced military muscle flexing has caused unease in Brussels. The war games are being held in a strategic region within striking distance of several NATO countries and Georgia, with whom Russia fought a war in 2008.

“In future it would be useful to make our relations more predictable and ensure maximum transparency,” the Interfax news agency quoted NATO Secretary-General Alexander Vershbow as commenting on the Black Sea drill.

A ranking NATO diplomat told the Russian business daily Kommersant that even though Russia was not obliged to notify NATO of the war games, “partners should not act like this”.

Mr. Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov said Russia was under no obligation to give advance warning of military exercises as long as they involved fewer than 7,000 ground troops.

Moreover, naval manoeuvres do not require any notification at all.

The current military drill is the second snap manoeuvre Russia has conducted this year after a break of 20 years.

Russia to re-establish permanent naval presence in the Mediterranean

 

Russia will re-establish its permanent naval presence in the Mediterranean, more than two decades after it withdrew from the region, Russian military sources said.

A naval task force, drawn from the Black Sea Fleet, will be deployed for round-the-year duty in the Mediterranean in 2015, a General Staff official told Russian news agencies on Monday.

“The force will accomplish scheduled and urgent missions on the Mediterranean theatre of operations, including deterrence of threats to Russian national and military security originating from that region,” the military official said.

The deployment of a new naval task force was practised during the largest war games of Russia’s three naval fleets in the Black Sea and the Mediterranean last month, he added.

The Mediterranean task force will be modelled on a Soviet Navy group that used to patrol the region during the Cold War, the official revealed.

The Fifth Operation Squadron of the Soviet Navy was set up in the Mediterranean in 1967, shortly after the six-day Arab-Israeli war. Russian historians believe the move deterred the United States from using its Sixth Fleet on the side of Israel.

The Fifth squadron, numbering up to 80 warships at its peak strength, was disbanded in 1992.

Meteor strike in Russia

The meteor which closely missed the Russian city of Chelyabinsk on Friday is likely to go down in history as the largest celestial body to have hit the Earth over the past hundred years.

NASA scientists said the object was a tiny asteroid that released 300 to 500 kilotons of energy when it exploded, which is roughly equivalent to 20 atomic bombs of the type dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This would make the Chelyabinsk meteor the largest since 1908 when a meteor hit Tunguska in Siberia, levelling an estimated 80 million trees. The energy of the Tunguska blast is estimated to have been up to 50 megatons.

Scientists believe the Chelyabinsk meteor was about 17 metres across and weighed 10,000 tons. Shock waves from its explosion over Chelyabinsk wounded 1,200 people and shattered doors and windows in 3,724 apartment houses, 671 schools and 235 hospitals and outpatient clinics. What saved the city was that the explosion occurred 30 to 50 km above the ground.

Chelyabinsk governor Mikhail Yurevich said it was a very close brush for the region with a population of 3.5 million people.

It was the biggest celestial body ever observed on its flight through the atmosphere and there was a good chance of finding its fragments before they get contaminated by exposure to the elements.

Divers on Saturday searched the bottom of frozen Lake Chebarkul about 80 km from Chelyubinsk where a chunk of the meteor is believed to have plunged, but found nothing.

Scientists said the Chelyabinsk meteor's close miss should serve a wake-up call for the international community to set up a system for monitoring meteors of similar size and providing advance warnings to the population.

“Today we can spot about 10 percent of such objects as the Chelyabinsk meteor in the solar system,” said Dr. Malkov. “Ninety percent go undetected and some of them may crush on Earth any time.”

Politicians backed calls for greater international effort to combat cosmic threats.

“Instead of building a European missile defence system, the United States should join us and China in creating the AADS – the Anti-Asteroid Defence System,” said Alexei Pushkov, head of the International Committee of the State Dume, the lower house of the Russian Parliament.

 NASA, 2012 DA14, asteroid