Russia to introduce defense sanctions against Eastern Europe

 

 

Sergei Balmasov

http://english.pravda.ru

 

Russia is ready to introduce sanctions against the countries of Eastern Europe which delivered arms to Georgia during the recent war in the Caucasus. The countries still have Soviet arms in their arsenals which require regular modernization and spare parts shipments. Russia’s President Dmitry Medvedev entrusted the government with preparing a list of suggestions to cease the military cooperation with those countries that practice arms shipments with Georgia.

 

First and foremost, it goes about the Czech Republic, Bulgaria and Poland. Just like the United States, Ukraine and Israel, they were providing weapons to Georgia before, during and after the war in August 2008. Now Russia is ready to scrap its military cooperation with them.

The Czech Republic stands out from all other nations of Eastern Europe at this point. This country provided Georgia with 175 tanks and armored vehicles, over 100 artillery units, 200 man-portable air defense systems, several L-39 planes and tons of ammunition. All of the above-mentioned weapons were made in the USSR, except for DANA self-propelled howitzers and Czech-made analogues of Soviet RM-70 systems.

Bulgaria also shipped tens of mortars, fire guns, ammunition and other weapons to Georgia. The armed forces of this country have Soviet armored vehicles, missile defense systems, as well as helicopters and aircraft. This weaponry requires regular technical servicing and may come out of order without technical inspections in only several years.

Glamorous capitalism and feast of consumption to end in Russia because of crisis

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The irreversible transformation of the national psychology will become one of the results of the current economic crisis in Russia. People will finally revise and change their moral and material values and will thus trigger the collapse of the glamorous capitalism in Russia, Professor Nikita Pokrovsky believes.

The Russians will revise their views about social values and will become closer to European nations in terms of their attitude to life, the professor believes.

“One has to understand that consumption is a universal language which people use to communicate with each other inside the society. We are what we wear, what we drive and where we spend time. A modern-day Russian is a product of the raw-material economy, a slave of the oil pipe. People have withdrawal symptoms when the country steps away from that pipe. Glamorous capitalism is the biggest social value of the Russian society nowadays. This capitalism is characterized with an aspiration to consume as much as possible, to build gorgeous temples of consumption on city outskirts, to virtualize real life and introduce digital technologies everywhere,” the professor said.

The professor believes that the Russians will revise their consumption concepts under the conditions of the economic crisis. They will switch to the system of reasonable self-restriction that will manifest itself in different sides of life.

USSR’s huge K-7 ‘flying wing’ aircraft was only one step away from global triumph

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The aircraft construction industry of the USSR was working on an amazing project during the years preceding World War Two. Konstantin Kalinin, an outstanding aircraft designer of those times, was leading the project to build a gigantic flying machine, which was known as the K-7 heavy experimental aircraft.Kalinin’s design bureau was working on the plane at the end of the 1930s. K-7 became the embodiment of revolutionary ideas of that time. For example, for the first time in history the plane was outfitted with a control wheel booster. This option was widely used in the aircraft-building industry afterwards. Kalinin also decided to use chrome molybdenum steel pipes for the carcass of the liner, which was also a novelty in the Soviet Union .

The first tests of the aircraft began in 1933, but the government ordered to scrap them soon afterwards. Kalinin’s opponents convinced the Soviet leadership that there was no sense in spending too much money on the flying giant. Kalinin’s ideas, which were never materialized in K-7, were later used in the development of heavy aircraft.

K-7 was originally designed as a three-engine passenger plane to transport 22 passengers and luggage. The design bureau subsequently rejected the idea and the project began to develop as the construction of a transcontinental aircraft. Kalinin wanted to make the plane look like a huge wing, which would be the perfect aircraft, as he thought. Therefore, the constructor was working on the project on all-in-one-wing principle.

Russian surveillance of Abkhazia’s skies

 

The Russian General Staff has chosen the small town of Bombora outside Gudauta to be an air force base. In Soviet times a paratroopers’ regiment was based there. Now about 20 aeroplanes are proposed to be stationed there: Su-27 fighters, Su-25 low-flying attack aircraft and some An-26 transport aircraft.

“The question of stationing a Russian air force unit at the Bombora airfield,” a military-diplomatic source in Moscow told Interfax, “is being discussed at consultations with the Abkhazians alongside the possible creation of a naval base for Black Sea Fleet vessels in Ochamchira.”

And he gave the following details.

This military airfield is the largest in the Caucasus region. Stationing a Russian air force unit on it will not require any large additional expenditure because all the necessary ground infrastructure already exists there.

 

Thanks to its four-kilometre long landing strip, Bombora is capable of receiving all types of fighter and transport planes. Moreover, the landing strip almost runs up to the sea shore, which allows the aircraft to stay at low altitude after taking off, hence becoming practically undetectable by the enemy’s radar.

A source in Abkhazia’s presidential administration also confirmed to the newspaper Vedomosti that consultations were being held. “The republic’s leadership supports this idea,” he said. “In its time this was an effective military airfield. And naturally, it would also be expedient to use it now.”

Incidentally, this expediency was confirmed during the August war. The airfield received transport planes carrying paratroopers who were subsequently disarmed by the remnants of the Georgian army. Weapons seized as military spoils were also sent on to Russia from there.

Abkhazia’s Deputy Defence Minister Zakan Nanba declared back in early September that the republic was ready to hand over Bombora to be used by Russia. Tbilisi responded in outrage: neither they nor their allies would tolerate a Russian military presence on Georgian territory. And they would try to activate “international levers” to prevent this.

The West is displeased.