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Category: Russian Federation

New Russian-Armenian Defense Deal ‘Finalized’

Armenia — Armenian and Russian army units at a joint military exercise, undated

13.08.2010

Ruzanna Stepanian

The Russian and Armenian governments have finalized a far-reaching agreement that will prolong and upgrade Russian military presence in Armenia, a diplomatic source in Yerevan said on Friday.

The source told RFE/RL’s Armenian service that the two governments have worked out corresponding amendments to a 1995 treaty regulating the presence of a Russian military base in the country. They are likely to be signed during Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s visit to Armenia next week, he said.

The amendments will extend Russia’s basing rights by 24 years, to 2044, and upgrade the mission of its troops headquartered in Gyumri. The Interfax news agency reported on July 30 that a relevant “protocol” submitted to Medvedev by the Russian government makes clear that the troops will have not only “functions stemming from the interests of the Russian Federation,” but also “protect Armenia’s security together with Armenian Army units.” It also commits Russia to supplying its regional ally with “modern and compatible weaponry and special military hardware.”

Some Armenian opposition figures and commentators have expressed concern about the planned changes to the treaty, saying that they could make Armenia even more dependent on Russia. Giro Manoyan, a senior member of the opposition Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun), said on Friday that the changes will be “worrisome” as long as the Armenian government has not convincingly explained their rationale.

“My impression is that Russia has found an opportune moment to clinch from Armenia an extension of its basing rights in return for satisfying some of Armenia’s demands,” Manoyan told a news conference.

But Razmik Zohrabian, a deputy chairman of President Serzh Sarkisian’s Republican Party (HHK), defended the deal, saying that it will strengthen Armenia militarily and deter Azerbaijan from “unleashing a new war.” He claimed that the new mandate of the Russian base would oblige Moscow to support the Armenian side in case of renewed fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh.

“If war again breaks out between Karabakh and Azerbaijan, Armenia will naturally directly intervene, and if Armenia has the right to use the Russian base for its security, it means that Russia has to join the war on Armenia’s side,” Zohrabian told RFE/RL.

Commenting the agreement’s reasons and timing, Zohrabian suggested that Moscow is seeking to secure its long-term military presence in Armenia and keep the latter from joining NATO in the foreseeable future. “Perhaps the Russians have a sense that Armenia may seek to join NATO,” he said. “And that is normal, if they want to retain and strengthen their influence in this region.”

https://www.azatutyun.am/a/2127288.html

August 13, 2010
Tatar Nationalist Group Stages Protest In Kazan

August 10, 2010

KAZAN, Russia — A small group of Tatar nationalist activists have staged a protest in Kazan against what they say are government attempts to subdivide them, RFE/RL’s Tatar-Bashkir Service reports.

Members of the Tatar Public Center (TIU) organization met on Kazan’s Freedom Square and accused the federal government and Tatarstan’s leadership of “seeking to fragment the Tatar nation as the Russian census approaches.”

They held signs saying: “We Are Tatars, There Are 10 Million of Us, We Are One Nation!” “The Ethnocide of the Tatar Nation in Bashkortostan Is A Shameful Act,” and “Stop Dividing Tatars Into 100 Ethnic Groups!”

Rinat Yosyf, a TIU leader, told RFE/RL that the Moscow-based Russian historian and anthropologist Valery Tishkov subdivided Tatars into almost 100 separate ethnic groups in a recent article. Yosyf said at the same time Tishkov — a former Russian minister for nationalities — considers ethnic Russians a single nation.

Yosyf said similar views are being published with increasing frequency in the media in the run-up to the all-Russian census scheduled for mid-October.

Yosyf argued that there are Kuban Cossacks, Don Cossacks, Stavropol Cossacks, Pomors, Vyatich, and other subethnic groups that consider themselves to be Russian. He said Tishkov does not consider them separate ethnic groups, yet he is eager to apply that approach to Tatars. Yosyf said the TIU opposes such practices.

Tatar historian Damir Iskhakov told RFE/RL that in recent months more articles about Tatar culture and history use such terms as “Tatar-Bolgar,” “Bolgar-Turk,” “Kama Bolgars,” and “Simbir Bolgars” in order to replace the ethnonym Tatar with “Bolgars,” the ancient name of Tatars in the Volga region.

Iskhakov said the move to rename and subdivide Tatars is politically motivated. He said it appears to be an attempt to artificially reduce the number of people in Russia who consider themselves Tatars in the run-up to the census.

At the time of the last census in 2002, Tatars were the second-largest ethnic group in Russia after Russians. They numbered some 5.5 million and officially accounted for 3.8 percent of the total population of the Russian Federation.

The four major subgroups of the Tatar nation are the Crimean Tatars, Siberian Tatars, Volga Tatars, and Lipka Tatars. In the 19th and 20th centuries, Russian officials identified more ethnic subgroups as Tatars, including the Chulym Tatars, Baraba Tatars, and Kasim Tatars. Tatar nationalists consider all the subgroups as one nation.

https://www.rferl.org/a/Tatar_Nationalist_Group_Stages_Protest_In_Kazan/2124224.html

August 10, 2010
Armenia To Seek ‘Long-Range’ Weapons

Armenia — Surface-to-air missiles at a military base in Gyumri, undated

10.08.2010

Sargis Harutyunyan

Armenia plans to acquire long-range precision-guided weapons and will be ready to use them in possible armed conflicts with hostile neighbors, Defense Minister Seyran Ohanian said on Tuesday.

The announcement followed a meeting of an Armenian government commission on national security that tentatively approved two programs envisaging a modernization of the country’s Armed Forces. One of the documents deals with army weaponry, while the other details measures to develop the domestic defense industry.

“These are extremely important programs,” Ohanian told journalists. “Their implementation will qualitatively improve the level of the Armed Forces in the short and medium terms.”

“The two programs envisage both the acquisition of state-of-the-art weapons and their partial manufacturing by the local defense industry,” he said. “The main directions are the expansion of our long-range strike capacity and the introduction of extremely precise systems, which will allow us to minimize the enemy’s civilian casualties during conflicts.”

Armenia — Defense Minister Seyran Ohanian (R) and National Security Council Secretary Artur Baghdasarian chair a meeting of a government commission on defense, 10August 2010.

“Their application will also allow us to thwart free enemy movements deep inside the entire theater of hostilities,” added the minister. He did not specify whether Yerevan will be seeking to have surface-to-surface missiles capable of hitting any target in Azerbaijan.

The Armenian military is believed to be already equipped with short-range tactical missiles. But little is known about their type and technical characteristics. The army command gave a rare glimpse of such weaponry in September 2006 when it demonstrated new rockets with a firing range of up to 110 kilometers during a military parade in Yerevan.

Ohanian did not deny that the modernization plan is connected with the persisting risk of another Armenian-Azerbaijani war for Nagorno-Karabakh. “You know what kind of a region we live in and how dependent we are during the escalation of conflicts,” he said. “We are therefore forced to do such work.”

It was not immediately clear whether Yerevan’s desire to get hold of more powerful weapons is connected with a new Russian-Armenian military agreement expected to be signed soon. The agreement will reportedly take the form of significant changes in a 1995 treaty regulating the presence of a Russian military base in Armenia.

Official Russian and Armenian sources have said that those changes would extend that presence and assign the base a greater role in ensuring Armenia’s security. A relevant Russian government document cited by the Interfax news agency late last month also makes clear that Moscow will commit itself to providing its South Caucasus ally with “modern and compatible weaponry and (special) military hardware.”

Artur Baghdasarian, the secretary of Armenia’s National Security Council who chaired Tuesday’s meeting together with Ohanian, confirmed this last week. “There exist joint projects on this matter and we will be consistently implementing them,” he told the Regnum news agency.

Earlier in July, Armenia and Russia announced plans to significantly step up cooperation between their defense industries after talks between their top security officials held in Yerevan. Baghdasarian reiterated on Tuesday the agreements reached during the “extremely important” talks envisage, among other things, the establishment of Russian-Armenian defense joint ventures.

That was followed by Russian media reports that Moscow has agreed to sell sophisticated S-300 air-defense systems to Azerbaijan in a $300 million deal that could affect the balance of forces in the Karabakh conflict. Russian defense officials have made conflicting statements about the veracity of the information, adding to concerns expressed by Armenian pundits and politicians.

Ohanian on Tuesday commented evasively on the possible S-300 sale. “I think that acquisition of any new weaponry will have a certain impact on the balance of forces [in the Karabakh conflict,] but want to remind that the S-300 systems are defensive systems,” he said. “At the same time, we can’t say we have information about their possible purchase [by Azerbaijan.]”

https://www.azatutyun.am/a/2124090.html

August 10, 2010
US State Dept downplays spy case fallout

By Robert Burns

New Zealand Herald

10:57 AM Wednesday Jun 30, 2010

WASHINGTON – The scandal over an alleged Russian spy ring erupted at an awkward time for a White House that has staked its foreign policy record on improved cooperation with Moscow, but it appeared unlikely to do lasting damage to US-Russian relations.

The administration sought to dampen tensions, while the Russian government offered the conciliatory hope on Tuesday that US authorities would “show proper understanding, taking into account the positive character of the current stage of development of Russian-American relations.”

The White House response was notably restrained following the dramatic announcement that 11 people assigned a decade or more to illegally infiltrate American society had been arrested. They are accused of using fake names and claims of US citizenship to burrow into US society and ferret out intelligence as Russian “illegals” – spies operating without diplomatic cover.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs laboured to show that the arrests were a law enforcement matter – one not driven by the president, even though President Barack Obama was informed – and played down any political consequences.

CCID: 31622

Obama was asked about the matter by reporters twice on Tuesday. He declined to comment both times.

Gibbs said Obama was aware of the investigation before he met with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev at the White House on Thursday, although Gibbs said he did not know whether Obama knew then that the arrests were imminent. The two leaders did not discuss the issue, Gibbs said.

Officials in both countries left the impression that spy rings remain a common way of doing business.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin offered a message of restraint during a meeting at his country residence with former President Bill Clinton, who was in Moscow to speak at an investment conference.

“I understand that back home police are putting people in prison,” Putin said, drawing a laugh from Clinton. “That’s their job. I’m counting on the fact that the positive trend seen in the relationship will not be harmed by these events.”

The administration has made a high priority of improving relations with Russia.

At stake in the short term is a newly concluded nuclear arms control deal, dubbed New START, which requires a favourable vote in the US Senate and approval by the Russian legislature.

More broadly, Obama wants to build the foundation for a strategic partnership with Moscow – to increase security and economic and other cooperation with the former Cold War foe.

July 1, 2010
European countries provide most of PKK’s weapons

Intelligence sources indicate that the biggest arms suppliers of the terrorist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) are allies of Turkey that are also members of NATO. Recently drafted General Staff reports say that many mines planted by the PKK were obtained from Italy and Spain.

Turkey is ready to start a new round of diplomatic initiatives to stop countries that supply the PKK with arms. Turkey has undertaken similar initiatives in previous years.

Over the past few months, the PKK has relied on arms from Mediterranean countries, intelligence reports indicate. The roadside bomb that exploded in Halkalı on Tuesday was of Portuguese origin, intelligence sources said, adding this country to the list of countries that supply arms to the terrorist organization. That attack was carried out by the PKK’s urban offshoot, the Kurdistan Freedom Falcons (TAK).

The most crucial question is how the PKK is able to bring these arms supplies it obtains from Mediterranean countries to northern Iraq. US journalist Seymour Hersh claimed in 2007 that this was done via Israel.

The General Staff has seized PKK arms and ammunition originating from 31 different countries. However, NATO-member countries have been the biggest suppliers. Most of the arms and ammunition seized are of Russian, Italian, Spanish, German and Chinese origin.

In 2007 Turkey questioned the countries where the arms used by the PKK — particularly the heavy artillery the terrorist group uses — are mostly manufactured on how the PKK could have obtained these weapons. These diplomatic attempts must have produced some sort of a result, as all PKK weaponry seized in the past three years have had their serial numbers erased. The military has noticed that the PKK now generally erases serial numbers, especially on explosives. However, most of the time the origins of the ammunition can still be traced. Turkey is concentrating on finding the sources of not the lighter arms but of heavy artillery such as heavy machine guns, rocket launchers, mines and hand grenades.

According to data from the General Staff, the Kalashnikovs used by PKK terrorists are from Russia and China. The rocket launchers, mines, hand grenades and heavy machine guns so far seized from the organization appear to have been manufactured in Italy, Germany, England, Spain, Portugal, Czech Republic and Hungary.

The organization uses a third country to bring the weapons to northern Iraq and then into Turkey. What disturbs Turkey most is that the mines that have killed more than 100 Turks recently were all obtained from Italy.

Another issue is that the PKK, which had been rather sloppy in using remote-controlled mines until 2008, has become more of an expert at such attacks. Terrorism experts say the PKK has been given special training, with many suspecting Mossad agents. In 2009, Interior Minister Beşir Atalay claimed that some Mossad agents had gone to northern Iraq and given training on remote-controlled explosives.

According to documents from the General Staff, 72 percent of the Kalashnikovs used by the PKK are from Russia, 15 percent from China and the rest from Hungary and Bulgaria.

In 2007, it was reported that more than 170,000 weapons donated by the US to the Iraqi army had ended up in the PKK’s hands. The US Defense Department started an investigation after Turkey’s discovery of this fact.

Turkey is making a point to not publicly announce how it suspects these weapons are being brought into northern Iraq. Pulitzer-winning journalist Hersh, in an interview with the Takvim daily earlier this month, said Israel helped the PKK base in the Kandil Mountains bring in arms and supplies on helicopters.

He said that Israel gives extensive support to the PKK and the related Iranian organization Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan (PJAK), especially in terms of arms supplies. He also said that Mossad operatives are active in the area, noting that Jewish Kurds who left northern Iraq 50 years ago returned to the region after the 2003 US occupation. He argued that most of these people are cooperating with the PKK and the purpose of these developments will become clear to all in the near future.

Although this interview has attracted the attention of Turkish security units, there is a visible effort to avoid making any official statements at this point. Turkey recently made a decision to start diplomatically lobbying countries that supply arms to the PKK. If these countries fail to cut the support they provide for the PKK, then they will be warned openly in the international arena.

24 June 2010, Thursday

ERCAN YAVUZ ANKARA

www.todayszaman.com, Jun 26, 2010

June 26, 2010
Turkey: no Blue Stream gas to Israel for now

June 21st, 2010 by IFandP Newsroom

Turkish energy and natural resources minister Taner Yildiz said that the country would not be transporting any natural gas to Israel via the Blue Stream pipeline until Turkish-Israeli relations have normalised.

Russia’s Prime Minister Vladimir Putin had indicated during a recent visit to Turkey that shipping natural gas from Turkey to Israel via Blue Stream II was out of question at the moment due to some other reason. Subsequently, Mr Yildiz told reporters in Russia that he agreed with Mr Putin’s view. He added that the two countries also had the Samsun-Ceyhan pipeline through which Russian oil would flow to many different markets.

June 21, 2010