Russia just looking for a friend in Venezuela.

According to the Russian analyst, the United States will just have to get used to the Hugo Chavez's of the world. That certainly would take some getting used to, especially while countries like India are being attacked by terrorists and Russia is selling arms and weapon systems to all comers. The World has taken a decided turn to her ugly side and it is difficult to find news encouraging for the future.

Russia acts as if she will suffer no consequences from a less stable World and means to profit from whomever, wherever, whenever.

Nice. Real nice.

Russia Returning to the Soviet Era.

Taifun class sumarines at Murmansk. This can handle 200 missiles.

Murmansk spent nuclear store area

Murmansk ship dump

Murmansk Soviet fleet wrecks

Murmansk ships

You have to go back to Neville Chamberlain's "peace in our time" declaration to find a more spectacular and ridiculous statement than George Bush's soul seeing assessment of Vladimir Putin. Hardly a month goes by without Putin coming up with another example to remind the world about the real story in Putin's soul.

Russia has some of the worst environmental disasters on the planet.

Many of these are from military nuclear wrecks and wrecked nuclear weaponry. Mr. Putin would be more impressive if he cleaned up some of the worst of these areas, especially those involving spent nuclear fuel, instead of using new found energy wealth to revive strategic weaponry and icons from the Soviet era.

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Russia revives military boast of Soviet days
By David R. Sands Washington Times
January 18, 2008

Reviving yet another iconic image from Soviet days, Russia's military announced plans to stage a parade of ballistic missiles, tanks and platoons of soldiers this May through the Kremlin's Red Square.

The display of military hardware, the first of its kind since 1990, will be held May 9, the day Russians mark the victory over Germany in World War II, and could coincide with the inauguration of Dmitry Medvedev, close aide to outgoing President Vladimir Putin, as Russia's new leader.

Similar displays, typically held May 1, were a high point of the old Soviet calendar, with leaders such as Josef Stalin and other top Communist Party figures perched on the reviewing stand above Lenin's Tomb to witness the country's military prowess and send a message to the Soviet Union's Cold War adversaries.

The announcement comes at a time of rising tension between Russia and the West, on issues ranging from a planned U.S. missile defense system in Eastern Europe, to human rights to the future of Serbia's Kosovo province. Mr. Putin also has struggled to rebuild Russia's military forces, which deteriorated badly in the wake of the Soviet Union's collapse.

"You can't teach an old imperial bear new tricks," said Ariel Cohen, a Russian specialist at the Heritage Foundation. "The current regime's craving for international prestige is as high as the insecurity of its rulers."

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband yesterday accused Moscow of following the old, hostile Soviet pattern in an escalating dispute over Russia's order that two British cultural outreach offices in Moscow and St. Petersburg be shut down. Russia claims the centers are operating illegally, but Mr. Miliband said Russian authorities were trying to intimidate the British employees.

"We saw similar actions during the Cold War, but frankly thought they had been put behind us," Mr. Miliband told the House of Commons.

According to Russia's Interfax news agency, the May 9 parade lineup will include the newest version of the Topol-M SS-27 intercontinental ballistic missile, armored personnel carriers, tanks, and 6,000 troops decked out in a newly designed uniform.

Mr. Putin has made restoring Russian national pride and reclaiming some of its lost international influence central to his presidency.

He revived a reworked version of the old Soviet anthem as Russia's new national anthem and once called the collapse of the old Soviet empire "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century."

With Mr. Putin's endorsement, Mr. Medvedev is expected to win the March 2 presidential vote handily. He already asked Mr. Putin to serve as his prime minister.

The official May Day parades were discontinued after 1990. In recent years, the day has been marked in Moscow and other cities primarily by protest marches by the declining Communist Party and by right-wing nationalist parties.

President Boris Yeltsin began staging military parades — without the weaponry — through Red Square in 1995, the first one marking the 60th anniversary of the Allied victory in Europe.

Pavel Felgenhauer, a Russian military analyst for the Washington-based Jamestown Foundation, said the revived display is one of a number of recent symbolic moves by the country's military. They include the resumption of strategic bomber patrol flights over the Atlantic and Pacific in August and plans for major naval exercises in the Mediterranean for the first time since 1991.

Mr. Felgenhauer noted that the traditional route for the May parade must now be altered in part because of the construction of a new shopping mall.

"One can only hope that ... no ancient building will collapse as tanks and ICBMs roll into central Moscow to serve the vanity of Russia's leaders," he said.

Syria Buys a Russian Insurance Policy.

Kremlin sets sights on Middle East
Last week Moscow claimed territorial sovereignty over the Arctic -- now its navy is planning to operate out of Syria
MARK MACKINNON Globe and Mail
August 7, 2007

JERUSALEM -- Days after Russia sent the diplomatic world reeling with its audacious flag-planting beneath the ice of the North Pole, the Kremlin is moving to reassert itself in warmer climes as well, plotting the return of the Russian fleet to a Syrian port on the Mediterranean Sea.

With much of the world still agape, and the Canadian government fuming, over the bold voyage under the Arctic ice by two Mir submarines last week, the head of the Russian navy announced that he wanted next to plant the white-blue-and-red Russian banner in the Middle East. The new Russian strategy envisions returning warships to a Soviet-era naval base at the port of Tartus.

"The Mediterranean Sea is very important strategically for the Black Sea fleet," Admiral Vladimir Masorin said as he toured a Russian base in the Ukrainian port city of Sevastopol. "I propose that, with the involvement of the Northern and Baltic fleets, the Russian navy should restore its permanent presence there."

It would mark the first time Russia has established a military presence outside the borders of the former Soviet Union since the USSR fell apart in 1991.

"It's a symbol, the planting of a flag. Just like the one Russia put under the North Pole," said Alexei Malashenko, an expert on the Muslim world at the Carnegie Moscow Centre. The intent, he said, is to declare that Russia has returned to the Middle East, where Moscow held wide influence during the Cold War, backing the socialist regimes of Syria, Iraq and Egypt against U.S.-supported Israel.

It's a move that many in Israel and the United States will have trouble separating from a broader pattern of renewed Russian support for countries and groups Washington and Tel Aviv see as enemies.

"The Russians are coming" read a front-page headline in yesterday's edition of Israel's mass-circulation Yediot Aharonot newspaper. "A Russian flag on Syrian soil has significant strategic implications. Firstly, it challenges the United States and the dominance of the Sixth Fleet stationed in the Mediterranean. Secondly, with its actual presence in Syria, Russia is announcing that it is actively participating in any process and conflict in the Middle East, that it has a stance of its own and that it must be reckoned with," the article read.

It went on to speculate that a Russian presence in Syria could handcuff the Israeli military in the event of another war over the Golan Heights, which Israel has occupied since 1967.

The planned return to Tartus is just the latest thorn the Kremlin has thrust in the side of the United States and its plans to remake the Middle East. Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President George W. Bush have both gone to great lengths to insist the two countries are not on the verge of another Cold War. But the Kremlin and the White House, already butting heads in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, are increasingly at odds across this volatile region.

Mr. Putin, who has repeatedly lamented U.S. dominance in what he derisively calls a "unipolar world," has allowed Russian technology to be used in Iran's controversial nuclear program despite the overt suggestion by the Bush administration that Tehran's pursuit of nuclear power, which Iran says is for civilian purposes only, could trigger a war.

Russia's relations with Syria have warmed even as Washington has sought to isolate Damascus over its ties with Hezbollah and Hamas, as well as its alleged support for insurgents in Iraq. Two years ago, Moscow wrote off a nearly $10-billion Soviet-era debt owed to it by Syria. Now it's reportedly in the midst of selling medium-range missiles and MiG-31 fighter planes to Damascus over Israel's objections.

The Kremlin has also happily bucked the White House line when it comes to dealing with Hamas, the Islamist movement that recently seized control of the Gaza Strip from the Israeli and U.S.-backed Fatah movement.

While Moscow maintains good relations with Fatah via Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas (who speaks Russian and did his PhD in Moscow), it has been one of the few non-Muslim countries to maintain contacts with Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal.

Though Mr. Putin voiced support for Mr. Abbas while he was in Moscow last week, Hamas officials announced the next day that Mr. Meshaal had been invited to Moscow as well. "The level of relations with Russia is excellent," Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said.

While much of the motivation for backing Syria and Iran can be attributed to crass commercialism - there are few markets these days for Russian military hardware - the underlying policy increasingly appears to be that Russia supports whatever the United States is against, and will throw its lot in with anyone willing to stand up to U.S. hegemony.

But as dramatic as the Russian fleet's return to Syria might be, Mr. Malashenko said his country's navy remains in such a dilapidated state that it's unlikely to affect the balance of power in the region, given the overwhelming presence of the U.S. Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean.

The Russian fleet's return to Tartus would, for now, be just a statement of future intent, he said