Russia 03 (Oct 15 - Dec 24)

Re: Russia 03 (Oct 15 - Dec 18)

Postby behappyalways » Sun Oct 27, 2019 7:49 pm

2019.10.26【文茜世界周報】普丁秘密打造「俄羅斯東廠」 替他執行不能說任務
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nw7tnBs ... AU&index=2
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Re: Russia 03 (Oct 15 - Dec 20)

Postby behappyalways » Tue Dec 10, 2019 5:28 pm

2019.12.07【文茜世界周報】中俄外交經濟緊密結盟 抗美作戰目標明確
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nFvTsu ... U&index=10
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Re: Russia 03 (Oct 15 - Dec 20)

Postby behappyalways » Tue Jan 21, 2020 5:37 pm

Glued to the throne
How Vladimir Putin is preparing to rule for ever
The details are murky, but Putin’s plan for constitutional change looks like a long-term power grab

Jan 16th 2020

WHAT IS VLADIMIR PUTIN playing at? On January 15th Russia’s president took Kremlin-watchers by surprise. In his state-of-the-union speech, he announced a radical overhaul of the Russian constitution and a referendum on its proposed (still very unclear) terms.

This bombshell was immediately followed by another. The prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, resigned along with the entire cabinet. As The Economist went to press, the reasons for Mr Medvedev’s ejection and replacement by an obscure technocrat remained a riddle wrapped in a mystery.

To understand what might be going on, start with a simple fact. In the past 20 years Mr Putin’s regime has killed too many people, and misappropriated too many billions, to make it plausible that he would ever voluntarily give up effective power.

Under the current constitution he cannot run again for president when his term expires in 2024, since no one is allowed more than two consecutive terms. So everyone has always assumed that one way or another he would game the rules to remain top dog. He already has form on this.

His first two terms as president ran from 2000 to 2008. Term-limited out for the first time, he became prime minister for four years, during which time Mr Medvedev served as a distinctly neutered president.

In 2012 Mr Putin was back in the suddenly re-empowered presidency, and was re-elected to a second term in 2018. The only enigma has ever been what job he would jump to in 2024.

We still do not know. One option, clearly, is for Mr Putin to return to being prime minister; an argument for this happening is his statement that the new arrangements he is seeking will make the post more important, with full powers to appoint the cabinet (subject to confirmation by parliament, which Mr Putin’s loyal United Russia party controls), rather than letting the president pick them.

Another, and more likely, option is that Mr Putin will seek to maintain his hold on power by continuing to head a vaguely defined but powerful body called the State Council, which (funnily enough) Mr Putin said in his speech should be given more powers under the rejig.

In reality the details do not much matter. Russia is a dictatorship masquerading as a democracy. Mr Putin’s electoral successes owe much to years of economic growth (now brought to an end by corruption, uncompetitiveness, the end of the oil boom and Western sanctions following the annexation of Crimea in 2014) and the popularity of his reassertion of Soviet-era imperium.

But they owe perhaps even more to state control of television, the barring of popular opposition candidates, the co-opting of tame opposition parties and the arrests and intimidation dished out to the less tame ones. The murder of political opponents is no way to foster genuine competition for power.

Whether Mr Putin is president, prime minister, head of the State Council or honorary chairman of the National Bridge Association (the post through which Deng Xiaoping ruled China for years after stepping down from his more prestigious offices), makes a lot less difference than it would in a real democracy. Nor does anyone know what the final shape of the new constitution will be.

Mr Putin may decide, as many a despot has done before him, that a new constitution means resetting the existing term limits. Or, as Xi Jinping did in China in 2018, he could simply scrap term limits altogether (he says he does not want to do this).

Mr Xi did not even bother with a referendum, pushing the change that will allow him to rule indefinitely through the supine National People’s Congress with 2,959 votes out of 2,964.

Another model is offered by Kazakhstan, where Nursultan Nazarbayev, who became his independent country’s first president in 1990, stepped down last year—only to stay on as leader of the ruling party and holder of the title “Leader of the Nation”.

America would once have spoken out against such rule-twisting. Under Donald Trump, it does not; the American president makes little secret of his admiration for strongmen. Nor is the EU likely to do more than mutter as Mr Putin glues himself to the throne. It is spooked by a rising China and dependent on Russia for its gas supplies.

The world’s autocrats will watch events in Moscow with interest, to see if Mr Putin can offer them useful tips for extending their own rule. For democrats everywhere, the only comfort is that even rulers-for-life don’t live for ever.

Source: The Economist
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Re: Russia 03 (Oct 15 - Dec 20)

Postby behappyalways » Tue Jan 21, 2020 7:23 pm

2020.01.18【文茜世界周報】普丁無預警宣布修憲 為後2024鋪路
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jhUb_G ... U&index=10
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Re: Russia 03 (Oct 15 - Dec 20)

Postby behappyalways » Mon May 04, 2020 4:03 pm

2020.05.02【文茜世界周報】俄羅斯疫情爆發較晚 普丁高調操作醫護救援外交
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3XFUfgPn9s
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Re: Russia 03 (Oct 15 - Dec 20)

Postby behappyalways » Thu Jun 25, 2020 5:06 pm

二戰勝利75周年!俄羅斯20多種新型武器首度亮相!紅場閱兵秀軍事肌肉!│記者賴彥宏│【國際大現場】20200625│三立新聞台
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YuAgNHJgfg


Russia WW2 parade goes ahead despite virus fears
https://www.bbc.com/news/video_and_audi ... irus-fears
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Re: Russia 03 (Oct 15 - Dec 20)

Postby behappyalways » Tue Jul 07, 2020 11:54 am

2020.07.04【文茜世界周報】紅場閱兵紀念二戰 普丁宣傳修憲公投
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1bRVyv9wPA
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Re: Russia 03 (Oct 15 - Dec 20)

Postby behappyalways » Sun Aug 30, 2020 7:19 pm

2020.08.29【文茜世界周報】普丁最強對手突遭下毒 納瓦尼生命垂危引關注
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EueePRqasz8
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Re: Russia 03 (Oct 15 - Dec 20)

Postby behappyalways » Fri Sep 25, 2020 12:29 pm

Putin, the poisoning and Belarus: what's really going on? | The Economist
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IuE5iPyMnI
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Re: Russia 03 (Oct 15 - Dec 20)

Postby behappyalways » Wed Nov 11, 2020 1:59 pm

Putin’s new model army

Russian military forces dazzle after a decade of reform
NATO will need to step up

After the Soviet Union’s collapse, Russia’s once-mighty armed forces were laid low. Moscow bus drivers outearned fighter pilots. Hungry soldiers were sent to forage for berries and mushrooms. Corruption was rife—one general was charged with renting out a mig-29 for illicit drag racing between cars and jets on a German airfield.

“No army in the world is in as wretched a state as ours,” lamented a defence minister in 1994. Yet few armies have bounced back as dramatically. In 2008 Russian forces bungled a war with Georgia. In response, they were transformed from top to bottom.

That began with large sums of money. Russian military expenditure roughly doubled between 2005 and 2018, when measured in exchange rates adjusted for purchasing power. Though much of the budget is secret, Russia’s annual military spending probably stands somewhere between $150bn and $180bn, says Michael Kofman of the Centre for Naval Analyses, a think-tank in Virginia. That is around three times as much as Britain and close to 4% of gdp.

Much of that money has been spent on kit. In the past decade Russia has added around 600 new planes, 840 helicopters and 2,300 drones, estimates Julian Cooper of the University of Birmingham.

Whereas 99% of Russian armour in 2007 was classified as “legacy”—ie, introduced into service more than three decades ago—today fully 27% is modern, according to a study published by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (iiss), a think-tank in London, on September 29th. Russia’s warplanes have gone from being 97% legacy to being 71% modern in that time.

The key investments were in precision missiles like the land-based Iskander, sea-launched Kalibr and air-launched Kh-101, putting in range targets across Europe (see map). A decade ago the idea that the Russian navy could accurately hit targets in Syria from warships in the Caspian Sea would have been science fiction, notes Dmitry Stefanovich of imemo, a research institute in Moscow. “Now it’s a reality.”

In a European war, the idea would be to use such missiles to threaten civilian and military infrastructure deep behind the front lines on the ground, ensuring that a conflict over, say, Tallinn would stretch far to the west of the Rhine.


Russia’s ultimate aim is to create a “reconnaissance-strike complex”—originally a Soviet idea—in which data from vehicles on the ground, drones in the air, satellites in space and radio signals emitted by enemy units are collected, processed and fed into the weapons in real time.

Any “sensor” (for instance, a drone) can feed a target to any “shooter” (like a faraway ship), with targets prioritised centrally and struck, ideally, within minutes. Though Russia is behind America and probably China in this ambitious endeavour, it has made “huge leaps”, says Dima Adamsky of idc Herzliya, a university in Israel.

Russian forces are not just better armed, but also more fleet-footed. Thanks to improvements in readiness, Russia could probably get 100,000 troops, complete with heavy armour, to a European hotspot within 30 days. nato might struggle to muster half the number, of lighter forces, in that time.

Around 5,000 of Russia’s airborne troops are said to be on two hours’ notice. Soldiers are kept on their toes with huge exercises. The latest, Kavkaz (Caucasus) 2020, involved 80,000 personnel and concluded on September 26th. “Russia has traded mass for tempo,” concludes Lt-General Jim Hockenhull, Britain’s chief of defence intelligence.

Russia’s armed forces enjoy the additional advantage of being blooded in battle. Though Russia and China may have comparable weapons, the quality of the forces, in training and combat experience, is “night and day”, says Mr Kofman. In Ukraine, for instance, Russia has practised armoured warfare and artillery duels, experimenting with the use of cyber-attacks and drones to feed targeting information to its guns.

Syria, where over 63,000 Russian personnel have served, has been a testbed for precision strikes, air defence against rebel drone swarms, and the use of unmanned vehicles.

Russian officers in Syria have even shown signs of shedding the Soviet legacy of rigid, top-down command and acting with more autonomy and creativity, a practice known as “mission command”, observes Mr Adamsky. That, he says, would be “a major departure from the Russian military tradition”.

And in both countries, Russia has honed its skills in electronic warfare by jamming radios, radars and drones. Russia’s fake gps signals in Syria were even strong enough to bamboozle civilian airliners in Israel.

Not everything has been fixed, of course. Viktor Murakhovsky, a former officer who now edits a military journal, is positive about the reforms. But he says that shipbuilding is slow and that the country lags behind its rivals in long-range drones. The new t-14 Armata tank, the next-generation Su-57 warplane and new submarines have all been delayed.

Though Russia is adept at blowing things up in space, its ageing fleet of reconnaissance satellites has shrunk over the years, with modernisation complicated by Western sanctions. The biggest problem of all, says Mr Kofman, is the limited capacity of Russia’s defence industry, including shortages of skilled personnel, machine tools and components.

The trade-off between hardware and humans is also apparent. Though troops no longer go hungry, their pay is not great. Mr Murakhovsky points out that a skilled tank commander in his 20s can expect little more than 43,000 rubles ($532) a month in peacetime, lower than the national average. “In my opinion, it’s not enough.”

Morale among conscripts, who still make up 55% of ground forces, remains low, and the short duration of their service limits their usefulness in combat. Though the days of renting out warplanes may be over, last year Russian military prosecutors announced that 2,800 military officials had been charged with corruption. The amount stolen totalled around $90m.

Nor has military renaissance bought peace of mind. In a war with nato, Russia “would have conventional superiority for a limited period”, concludes the iiss, but would be outgunned if the conflict dragged on. In recent years, Mr Putin has therefore worked to ensure that a conflict would not drag on.

He has invested heavily in nuclear forces, unveiling a host of lurid weapons such as hypersonic gliders, radioactive torpedos designed to pollute coastal areas and nuclear-powered cruise missiles capable of circling the Earth indefinitely.

Missiles like the Iskander, Kalibr and Kh-101 can also carry both conventional and nuclear warheads (nato officials point out that they would have no way of knowing which until they landed). For Russian generals, the hope is that their revived strength means that the nukes are never needed.

For its part, nato has largely focused on Russian threats to the Baltic states, and the challenges of reinforcing Europe over weeks and months. It has underestimated how Russia’s new firepower may be used in a shorter, sharper and more expansive war that would stretch far beyond the Baltics.

Its planners, and the national politicians that set military budgets and priorities, need to adjust their strategies and spending in the light of these new threats.

Source: The Economist
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