Death throes of Russia's iconic countryside
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/featur ... 12286.html
As you will see below, under President Trump U.S. troops are being deployed to a very sensitive area of Poland, and they are also being sent to key areas of Bulgaria and Romania.
That is not sitting well with the Russian government, but they were much more upset when Trump insisted that Russia must give the Crimea back to Ukraine.
On the flip side, the Pentagon was quite annoyed when Russian fighter jets buzzed a U.S. warship in the Black Sea just a few days ago, and when a Russian spy ship set up shop just off the coast of Connecticut recently
Russia has carried out airstrikes in tandem with its ally Syria since Sept. 2015, while Iranian militias are also fighting alongside the troops of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
The ICRC, guardian of the Geneva Conventions setting down the rules of war, declared Syria an internal armed conflict – or civil war, in layman’s terms – in July 2012.
Under international humanitarian law, whether a conflict is internal or international, civilians must be spared and medical facilities protected.
The measure, which now goes to the Senate, requires Trump to seek congressional approval before easing sanctions imposed under the Obama administration for Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential elections and its support for separatists in Ukraine.
Russia will speed up work on reducing the country’s dependence on Western payment systems and the U.S. dollar in general
On September 26, 1983, Stanislav Petrov was on duty in charge of an early warning radar system in a bunker near Moscow, when just past midnight he saw the radar screen showing a single missile inbound from the United States and headed toward the Soviet Union.
“The siren went off for a second time. Giant blood-red letters appeared on our main screen, saying START. It said that four more missiles had been launched,” he said.
From the moment the warheads had taken off, there was only half an hour for the Kremlin to decide on whether to push the red button in retaliation and just 15 minutes for Petrov to determine whether the threat was real and report to his commanders.
Taught that in case of a real attack the US would have gone on an all-out offensive, Petrov told his bosses the alarm must have been caused by a system malfunction.
It was later revealed that what the Soviet satellites took for missiles launch was sunlight reflected from clouds.
Based on his story, the movie “The man who saved the world” premiered in 2014, featuring actor Kevin Costner. The actor sent Petrov $500 as a “thank you” for making the right decision.
Russia is the 12th largest economy in the world with about $1.3 trillion in GDP. That is slightly larger than Australia or Spain, and significantly larger than well-liked emerging markets economies such as Mexico, Indonesia, and Taiwan.
Russia’s sovereign debt-to-GDP ratio is a microscopic 17%. Compare that to the U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio of 106%, more than six times larger. Other debt-to-GDP zombies are Japan (240%), France (96%) and the UK (89%).
Russia is the world’s second largest oil exporter (after Saudi Arabia) and the world’s largest exporter of natural gas.
Russia is also the world’s third largest gold producer after China and Australia, and ahead of the United States.
Today, Russia’s reserves are back up to a healthy $425 billion, recovering over 40% of the reserves lost in the oil price collapse
Russia now has a gold-to-GDP ratio of almost 6% — more than three times the comparable ratio for the U.S. R
Russia has revved up its export economy. These exports include arms sales to cash customers such as Iran and Turkey.
Russia is also a major exporter of nuclear power plants. Russia recently signed several major deals with Turkey on the expansion of Turkey’s nuclear power generating capacity, for example.
Russia is also harvesting a bumper crop of wheat both from Russia itself and parts of eastern Ukraine effectively dominated by Russia.
Return to AMERICAS & EUROPE: Data, News & Commentaries
Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 10 guests