Category: Eastern Europe

NATO fears spy missiles

Alexei Chernichenko

Jul 29, 2011 15:45 Moscow Time

S-300. Photo: RIA Novosti

The United States is urging Turkey not to buy Russian S-300 long-range surface-to-air missile (SAM) systems, threatening to cease cooperation. Washington claims this deal jeopardizes NATO secrets.

Turkey declared a tender to buy S-300 missiles for its national air defense system back in 2005. Director of the Center for strategy and technology analysis Ruslan Pukhov explains their importance for Ankara:

“Until recently, Turkey had almost no air defense facilities of its own. Rearmament issues, including air defense means, are becoming increasingly important in view of this country’s role in the region and its president’s ambitions to make it a regional leader,” Ruslan Pukhov said.

By the way, S-300’s only rival in terms of the tender is the American Patriot PAC-3 surface-to-air missile system. Russian expert Viktor Litovkin has this to say on S-300 characteristics and features:

“S-300 complexes are considered to be the best long range SAMs in the world, destroying not the target missile’s body but its warhead, unlike US Patriots. As for defending targets, one S-300 is comparable to four Patriot PAC-3 missiles. The latter are launched at a particular angle to each of the four sides of the world, whereas the S-300 is fired vertically upward without being preliminary turned towards the target,” Viktor Litovkin explains.

American experts say that interaction between Russian and NATO systems will lead to information leakages. Military analysts polled by the Voice of Russia argue this is far from the truth, given that all systems work autonomously. Military observer Viktor Baranets is sure it’s all about lobbying arms dealers.

“Turkey, being a NATO member state, is living under constant pressure from the United States which decides what it should buy and what it should not. America acted the same way during military exhibitions in Malaysia, as well as in England, France and Germany. The key role has always been played by rivalry between Russia and the US. Now that Russia is not only exporting but also importing weapons, NATO is getting indignant over Washington’s dictating to Italy, France and other countries which arms and hardware models they may sell,” Viktor Baranets says.

Experts point out that Turkey may also dislike US attempts to influence its choice, especially when it comes to national security.

via NATO fears spy missiles: Voice of Russia.

July 30, 2011
China, Russia invited to Libya talks in Istanbul

ANKARA — Turkey has invited China and Russia to join for the first time discussions on Libya as part of a contact group of major powers, to convene this week in Istanbul, a Turkish official said.

“Russia and China have been invited as permanent members of the UN Security Council. We think they will participate but no information has reached us so far on what level,” foreign ministry spokesman Selcuk Unal told reporters.

The so-called International Contact Group on Libya, scheduled to meet on Friday in Istanbul, includes the countries participating in the Nato-led campaign targeting Muammar Gadhafi’s regime and regional players.

Russia abstained from a vote on a Security Council resolution in March that opened the way for international involvement in Libya and has since criticised the scale and intent of the Nato-led strikes.

China, for his part, had maintained a policy of non-interference in the conflict, but has appeared more involved recently and its officials have met several times with Libyan opposition representatives.

Along with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the foreign ministers of Australia, Bahrain, Britain, Bulgaria, Canada, Denmark, France, Italy, Malta, Morocco, the Netherlands, Poland and the UAE have confirmed their participation in the Istanbul meeting, Unal said. — AFP

July 13, 2011
Russian airliners targeted by ‘laser hooligans’

By Maxim Tkachenko, CNN

July 6, 2011 — Updated 0305 GMT (1105 HKT)

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

* Two commercial jets report laser beams in cabins Tuesday

* Incidents occurred as jets were landing at Moscow’s Vnukovo airport

* There have been 56 such incidents reported in 2011, official says

* There were only five reports last year

This file photo shows a Tupolev Tu-204 plane at the Moscow International Air Show on August 14, 2001, in Zhukovsky, Russia.

Moscow (CNN) — In a series of potentially serious incidents, aviation officials in Russia say, two commercial airliners have been targeted with laser pointers while landing at a Moscow airport.

The crews of a Tupolev Tu-204 flying from Istanbul and a Boeing 737 flying from the east Siberian city of Yakutsk reported seeing a green laser beam in their cabins. The beams came from the ground as the planes were preparing to land, four minutes apart, at Moscow’s Vnukovo airport shortly after 2 a.m. Tuesday, said Sergei Izvolsky, a spokesman for the Russian federal air transport regulator Rosaviatsia.

“When such a laser beam reflects off the multilayer glass of the pilot’s window, it creates a bright spark that can momentarily blind the crew for several seconds or even several minutes,” he said. “At that point, the pilot might be disoriented. He might not be able to see the plane’s dashboard or the airstrip on which he is landing. This is a navigation obstacle and, ultimately, a direct threat to both the crew and the passengers.”

Izvolsky said there has been a sharp increase in “laser hooliganism” against passenger jetliners in Russia.

“Since the beginning of 2011, there have already been 56 such cases registered, compared to just five for the entire last year. Most of them took place in Moscow and in some southern parts of Russia,” he said.

In all of the incidents, officials say, the planes have managed to land safely.

On Monday, a 17-year-old boy was arrested in connection with a laser incident reported Sunday in the southern region of Chechnya, the first and only case thus far in which a “laser hooligan” suspect has been identified. On Tuesday, Russian state TV continuously played a dressing-down that the regional police chief gave the teenager, who admitted his guilt, in front of his relatives and reporters.

“That was very bad conduct. More than a hundred were on board the plane, including women and children. You could have killed all of them,” Chechen Interior Minister Ruslan Alkhanov said.

The boy’s mother said, “I didn’t expect my son could do anything like that. In the future, I promise I will keep a close eye on him.”

The leader of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, pardoned the teenager, saying he’ll be treated as a terrorist if he ever does it again. Kadyrov also imposed an immediate ban on all sales of laser pointers in Chechyna.

Last week, several Russian lawmakers proposed amendments to the country’s Criminal Code to specifically punish the use of laser pointers against airplanes. Under the bill, such actions could carry sentences of up to 10 years in prison.

via Russian airliners targeted by ‘laser hooligans’ – CNN.com.

July 6, 2011
Russian tourists in Turkey evacuated from plane on false alarm

Russian tourists were evacuated from the Tu-204 jet in the airport of Turkish resort city of Antalya because of the false activation of fire alarm system, a spokesman for Russia’s Federal Air Transport Agency (Rosaviatsia), Sergey Izvolsky said on Saturday.

A Red Wings Tu-204 jet en route from Antalya to the southern Russian city of Volgograd was preparing to take off when the fire alarm system in the luggage space switched on. The alarm turned to be false.

“The crew decided to urgently evacuate the passengers by means of an inflatable chute,” Izvolsky said, adding that none of the passengers had been injured.

A source in Antalya’s tourism industry said that there was panic during the evacuation and some of the passengers received minor bodily injuries.

It is the second incident with Red Wings air carrier’s flight in Antalya over a day. Some hours prior there was a 12-hour delay of the flight to the central Russian city of Samara.

Red Wings has yet to provide any comments.

via Russian tourists in Turkey evacuated from plane on false alarm | Russia | RIA Novosti.

June 27, 2011
Customs Union Issues

Mikhail Kozlov Deputy Director of Operative Department on Customs Services AsstrA Associated Traffic AG

Development of the customs union is approaching the next landmark — actual formation of the unified customs territory of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia.

Starting from July 1, 2011, customs control on the inner borders of the three countries will be abolished; veterinary, phytosanitary and transport control will be moved to the CU’s external borders. As of Jan. 1, 2011, there are unified forms and instructions on declaring goods.

At the same time there are still unsolved problems connected with the functioning of the unified customs territory:

1) The uniform application of international customs conventions. The agreement on TIR convention applications on the CU territory has not yet been signed because of the position of Kazakhstan that lies in the possibility of TIR procedures being applied for international goods transportation on the CU territory. At present by TIR procedure Kazakh carriers perform a great volume of cargo transportation from the Chinese-Kazakh border to Russia and Belarus. Unfortunately, in the CU customs code there is no analogue and quite simple guarantee system that can be used instead of the TIR procedure.

Kazakhstan still has not joined the Istanbul convention on temporary import/export of goods, which is why the agreement on the application of this convention on the CU territory was not even developed. Meanwhile Belarus and Russia have not yet solved the problem of guaranteeing transportation of goods through the territory of Belarus to Russia by the Belarussian Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

2) In the CU customs code the principle of residence is left for regular people participating in customs declaration in the CU: customs applicant of the customs procedure, customs representative and authorized economic operator, which makes the process of logistics optimization of commodity flows at the unified customs territory. For example, a freight forwarder of FLLC AsstrA Weisrussland — an approved economic operator in Belarus — cannot conduct the procedure of customs transit to Russia or Kazakhstan without payment of customs duties, taxes under his status of the AEO. Russian trade operator Perekryostok cannot put goods under the customs procedure of transfer for free turnover in Belarus in the immediate vicinity from the CU external border at TLC Brest-Beltamozhservice. With this purpose he has to register a residential company in Belarus.

3) In the field of tariff regulations there are no unified trade rules of procedure and impressments of country-members of the CU with third countries. In Kazakhstan there are still transitional rates of customs duties by 400 commodity items, different from the rates of the CU customs duties. In customs services of the CU, the indicatives for application of additional measures of documental control by determination of customs prices of goods differ.

4) In the field of non-tariff regulations there is the burning issue of developing unified technical rules of procedure for technical regulation. Belarus and Kazakhstan are against the transfer of veterinary control functions to the customs bodies at the border, which comes into force in Russia from July 1, 2011.

We would like to mark the problem of absence of actual simplifications in the work of customs representatives in the process of declaring goods, of a higher level of trust on the part of the customs officials to their work, despite quite a big size (1 million euros) of provision of customs duty payment.

The unified instruction for the CU on CMR note filling-in was developed as a simple sum of national instructions, it requires indication of the information not only for purposes of tariff and non-tariff regulation, statistics of foreign commerce and currency exchange regulations, but also the information necessary for different bodies of public administration, and that is why it is quite difficult and labor-intensive. All these factors led to the increase of prices for the services of customs representatives.

via Customs Union Issues | The Moscow Times.

June 24, 2011
Ukraine wants to strengthen strategic partnership with Turkey

KYIV, June 20 /UKRINFORM/. Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych has congratulated Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on his Justice and Development Party’s victory in the elections to the Turkish Grand National Assembly.

“This success is a sign of the support by the Turkish people of the efforts that your political party and you personally are taking to develop a democratic Turkish state and ensure the interests of the Turkish people,” Yanukovych said in a letter of congratulations posted on his official website.

The president noted that Ukraine wanted to strengthen friendly relations with Turkey and deepen their strategic partnership, which was launched during the Turkish prime minister’s recent visit to Kyiv.

“I am confident that the first meeting of the strategic high-level council between Ukraine and Turkey, which is scheduled for this year, will give a new impetus to the development of bilateral cooperation and contribute to enhancing the level of security and stability in the Black Sea region,” Yanukovych said.

via BSANNA News – BSANNA NEWS.

June 21, 2011