Category Archives: United States

European Union, NATO, Russia, Ukraine, United States

Russian troops continue to amass on the Ukrainian border…

UKRAINE

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has said there are ‘record number’ of Russian troops on his country’s borders with Russia.

Speaking this week, Poroshenko said that the information came from NATO, US and EU sources as well as Ukrainian intelligence.

Reports of an increasing Russian presence on the border have been recurring since NATO commander Philip Breedlove warned last month of the risk of a return to heavy fighting in Eastern Ukraine. Kiev has repeatedly reported snap surges in violence by Russian backed rebels in the Luhansk and Donetsk regions during this time.

Most recently Ukraine’s defence forces complained of 540 violations of the ceasefire signed between Moscow, Kiev and the rebels in February, all in the space of just a week at the end of June.

As early as May, intelligence was portraying a mass build-up of troops and heavy weapons on the Russian side of the Ukraine-Russian border including tanks, rocket launchers and artillery.

Speaking about the current situation, Poroshenko said: ‘We have information that a record number of Russian armed forces have been stationed on the Ukrainian border.’

‘The evidence we have is not solely from our own intelligence sources, but we have confirmation from NATO and US lines as well as from EU states.’

Poroshenko recently visited some of the easternmost positions held by pro-Kiev forces in Donetsk region, including the port city Mariupol, the outskirts of which have sustained some of the most persistent attacks from pro-Russian separatists since February.

‘We have information about possible key targets of attacks and we regularly perform staff exercises,’ Poroshenko said. ‘We will defend our country. Today we have a completely different army compared with a year ago.’

The Ukrainian president did not give a precise number for how many Russian soldiers he believes are now on Ukraine’s border, but last month defence minister Stepan Poltorak estimated that there were 55,000.

Irrefutable evidence

The Prime Minister of Ukraine has claimed that Vladimir Putin is trying to ‘eliminate Ukraine’ as conflict continues between government-backed troops and rebels.

Russia has persistently denied supporting separatist fighters in eastern Ukraine with money and weaponry but Arseniy Yatsenyuk said there was irrefutable evidence of the presence of Russian fighters and equipment.

He has claimed ‘tens of thousands’ of soldiers and guerrillas were in Donetsk and Luhansk with Russian-supplied tanks and missiles.

‘Putin’s aim is to kill the Ukrainian project, just to eliminate Ukraine — I have no doubt,’ he said. ‘For Putin, Ukraine is the battlefield against the free world.’

Mr Yatsenyuk, who rose to his post after the ousting of President Viktor Yanukovych in February last year, said he was ‘absolutely sure’ that MH17 was shot down by ‘Russian-led terrorists’, possibly with the help of Russian soldiers.

Ukraine is among countries including the Netherlands, Australia, Belgium and Malaysia calling for an international tribunal on the disaster that killed 298 people exactly a year ago.

The Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond supported the calls while offering his condolences to everyone affected by the disaster and promising the Government’s support for families of the 10 Britons who also died.

‘Justice must be delivered for the 298 innocent people who lost their lives,’ Mr Hammond said.

‘That requires an international tribunal, backed by a resolution binding all UN member states, to prosecute those responsible.

‘Any attempt to undermine this process would deprive the victims of justice and cannot be tolerated.’

A UN resolution would bind all member states to bring charges against whoever shot down MH17 but Russia is expected to use its veto on the Security Council to prevent the tribunal.

Speaking with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, Mr Putin said it would be ‘premature and counterproductive’ before initial investigations were completed, according to a Kremlin statement.

Mr Rutte had said the move would give ‘the best guarantee of cooperation from all countries’ in seeking justice for the families of the victims.

On the day the Boeing 777 went down, a post attributed to a rebel leader claimed separatists had shot down a Ukrainian military transport plane in Donetsk.

The swiftly-deleted post, accompanied by a video of rising smoke, said: ‘We warned them – don’t fly in our sky.’

Separatist forces operating around the crash site in Hrabove have since denied any involvement but Russian rebel leader Igor Girkin has been named in a lawsuit seeking $900 million (£575 million) in damages for the families of 18 passengers – six of them British.

The Netherlands is leading the criminal investigation into the downing of MH17 as most of the passengers were Dutch and a final report on the cause of the crash is due to be released in October by the Dutch Safety Board.

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Military, NATO, Russia, United States

Russia performs combat drills in regions shared with NATO states…

RUSSIAN MILITARY 

Intro: Russian military practice live firing and anti-submarine combat in Baltic and Arctic

The Russian navy is continuing anti-submarine combat drills in both the Baltic and the Arctic Barents Sea.

Russian military operations have been steadily increasing this year, but the ones being carried out in the Baltic and Arctic are the most controversial. This is largely due to Russia sharing both regions almost exclusively with NATO member states.

Its Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad borders Poland on one side and Lithuania on the other, while the other four countries who have a territorial claim on the Arctic besides Russia are all NATO members – Denmark, Norway, Canada and the United States.

Russian corvette Soobrazitelny: one of the ships of the latest class of corvettes of the Russian Navy, the Steregushchy class. It joined the Baltic Fleet in 2011. The ship is fitted with anti-aircraft capabilities.

Russian corvette Soobrazitelny: one of the ships of the latest class of corvettes of the Russian Navy, the Steregushchy class. It joined the Baltic Fleet in 2011. The ship is fitted with anti-aircraft capabilities.

Intelligence suggests that the Russian Baltic Fleet have sent out three corvette vessels (Boykiy, Stoykiy and Soobrazitelny), along with two anti-submarine Ka-27PL helicopters, against its designated enemy. This is believed to be the Russian submarine Vyborg.

The Vyborg is deemed by military analysts as one of the quietest submarines in the world, and in this instance was tasked to disrupt the ships’ landing attempts.

After tracking the submarine, the corvettes and helicopters managed to force the submarine to resurface. The ships have also practiced live artillery fire at naval and aerial targets.

Russia’s North Fleet also sent out vessels to simulate anti-submarine combat, dispatching the Brest and Yunga anti-submarine ships into the Barents Sea near the Arctic. These crews have performed torpedo attacks and have fired the reaction engine-bomb installation RBU-6000, which relates to the fleet’s anti-submarine rocket launcher.

Intelligence also suggests that the ships have conducted practice with its naval fleet air-arm, not just with the Ka-27 helicopters but also with its Il-38 maritime patrol plane. They have also performed refined communications and simulated emergency responses on board.

In May, too, Russia practiced live firing in the Baltic when it sent its largest amphibious hovercraft into the region. Defence officials from both Lithuania and Estonia have expressed concern at the number of Russia military exercises near their territories, saying that such snap drills by Russia could be exercises being used as cover for a larger redeployment of forces toward their borders.

 

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Britain, Defence, Europe, Government, Military, NATO, Politics, United States

UK commits to defence spending of 2 per cent of GDP for next five years…

DEFENCE SPENDING

Britain has committed in meeting the NATO target of spending 2 per cent of national income on defence, the Chancellor announced in the Budget.

Military chiefs applauded the decision although there are fears of ‘creative accounting’ – because intelligence spending could be included in the figures.

The Commons foreign affairs committee chairman, Crispin Blunt, said: ‘The pledge to meet the NATO target of 2 per cent of GDP on defence is not quite as profound as it appears.

‘The Government is apparently changing the way they measure defence spending to meet this important target by including expenditure outside the MoD budget, including £2.5 billion on the secret intelligence agencies.’

The pledge will likely be welcomed both by NATO and the US, who have both voiced concerns about the importance of meeting this target.

Whilst welcoming the announcement Admiral Lord West warned: ‘If this is creative accounting I would be very disappointed.’

George Osborne said the Government would spend 2 per cent of GDP on the military every year of this decade and raise the defence budget by 0.5 per cent a year in real terms. Until now, ministers had not committed to spending at that level beyond the current financial year – prompting pressure from backbench MPs and military chiefs.

Mr Osborne said: ‘The Prime Minister and I are not prepared to see the threats we face to both our country and our values go unchallenged.

‘Britain has always been resolute in defence of liberty and the promotion of stability around the world. And with this government it will always remain so.’

The Chancellor announced a new fund, worth up to £1.5billion a year, which will be spent on intelligence items such as cyber security.

Recent figures released by NATO revealed that Britain is line to spend 2.1 per cent of national income on defence this year. But this includes all of the £1billion cross-departmental fund known as the Conflict Pool, which is used to support fragile and war-torn states rather than military operations.

The UK is just one of four of NATO’s 28 member states who currently meet the 2% target and last month the U.S. called for billions more to be spent citing the situation in the Balkans. ‘I think it’s clearly the view at NATO that the Ukraine situation has been a game-changer,’ said Robert Bell, the U.S. secretary of defence representative in Europe.

NATO announced in June that it would be ‘naming and shaming’ the Western European countries which failed to spend more than 2% of their gross domestic product on defence, at the same time that US President Barack Obama expressed his concerns at the G7 summit that UK spending would fall.

The 2015 Strategic Defence and Security Review which is taking place this year will review the threats facing Britain and its ability to tackle them. Writing in a British newspaper last month, defence secretary Michael Fallon said that the review will ‘be positive and assertive about Britain’s place in the world: ready, willing and able to act to defend our values as we always have done.’

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