Archivo de la etiqueta: Russia

Turkmenistan to buy eight warships in Turkey

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Dearsan New Type Patrol Boat, by DEARSAN

Turkmenistan to buy eight warships in Turkey


Published on Monday, 17 June 2013 Written by The Times of Central Asia

ASHGABAT (TCA) ―Turkmenistan will buy eight new well armed naval vessels from Turkey that significantly strengthen the naval fleet of the country, said the publication eurasianet.

The order will be implemented by the Turkish producer Dearsan, from which Ashgabat has already bought two high-speed patrol boats.

The eight new ships will be of the same size, but with better weapons. Each will be equipped with four anti-ship missiles, two anti-aircraft missile systems “surface-to-air” with remote control, six mortars, one 40mm gun, two 25-mm machine guns with a remote control and two 12.7-mm machine guns with remote control.

In addition to the above vessels, Turkmenistan has purchased five rocket launches from Russia.

These vessels seriously increase the Navy of Turkmenistan, which is becoming a serious competitor to Azerbaijan and Iran on the Caspian Sea.

An increasing crisis in Kyrgyzstan

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Kumtor At 4,000m above sea level, Kumtor is one of the highest gold mines in the world. It is situated in the permafrost of the Tien Shan mountains of China and Central Asia. BBC: “In pictures: Kyrgyzstan gold mine protests”

An increasing crisis in Kyrgyzstan – moving towards a fallen state

Józef Lang, Ośrodek Studiów Wschodnich (OSW), 2013-06-12

In recent months the situation in Kyrgyzstan has systematically deteriorated and over the last two weeks violent protests have been held both in the north and south of the country. They have demonstrated the weakness of the central government and the degree to which the country has disintegrated. In spite of this, Kyrgyzstan will most likely not be threatened with another revolution in the vein of those of 2005 and 2010 since the opposition is divided and marginalised at the central level and the interests of influential local actors in the south of the country are not currently under threat. Furthermore, in the long term any further destabilization in Kyrgyzstan or the erosion of the state and the disintegration of the country pose a serious threat to the country and a great challenge for the remaining states in the region.

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Iran invited to Syria peace conference

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Iranian_AAEEIranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi (Reuters)

Iran invited to Syria peace conference: official

The Daily Star, June 11, 2013 04:46 PM

MOSCOW: Iran has received a verbal invitation to attend the proposed peace conference on Syria, the Islamic Republic’s deputy foreign minister said on Tuesday without specifying who extended the invitation.

“Ten days ago, we received a verbal invitation to take part in this conference,” Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian told reporters in Moscow.

“The conference will be successful if all the influential countries take part.”

Russia has backed Iran’s representation at the so-called Geneva 2 talks, meant to push forward a political transition in Syria after negotiations in the Swiss city failed to achieve tangible results last June.

But Western countries, including the United States and France, have questioned Iran’s participation because of its strong alliance with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and links to the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon.

The fate of the Geneva 2 talks seems to be hanging in the balance because of the major nations’ failure to agree on a list of participants and the Syrian opposition’s refusal to attend the meeting at a time of significant reverses on the ground.
(The Daily Star :: Lebanon News :: http://www.dailystar.com.lb)

What Does China Really Want?

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Go

Chinese Go players

What Does China Really Want?

By Adam Minter, Bloomberg, Jun 5, 2013

For those Chinese paying attention to Xi Jinping’s four-country tour of the Americas this week, one question stands out: Why would their president want to spend two informal days, more or less one-on-one with U.S. President Barack Obama in the middle of the desert?

This isn’t just a matter of protocol — though there are plenty of questions about that — but rather a deeper inquiry into what precisely China wants from a bilateral relationship with the U.S.

Varying answers in Chinese media suggest the ruling Communist Party hasn’t become accustomed to, or embraced, China’s role as a “great power,” despite three-and-a-half decades of economic and military growth. The party — via its official media channels — has spent the last week softly but explicitly damping expectations that the June 7-8 “summit” at the Sunnylands desert estate in Rancho Mirage, California, will lead to a bilateral global future.

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Europe’ s Blinkered Russian Policy

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Yekaterinburg_2013

Europe’ s Blinkered Russian Policy

by: Judy Dempsey, Carnegie Europe,  June 3, 2013

How blind the EU can be.

Despite worrying changes in Russia and Eastern Europe over the last six months, the EU’s policy toward both regions remains the same.

If the EU took its foreign relations seriously, the two developments should jolt it into adopting a very different Eastern strategy.

The fact sheets that EU officials drew up ahead of today’s EU-Russia summit in the southern Russian city of Yekaterinburg read nearly the same as the ones drafted six months ago for the last summit in Brussels. The statements prepared for José Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, and Herman Van Rompuy, president of the European Council, are also astonishingly similar.

Obviously, from the perspective of Brussels, little has changed in EU-Russia relations. In Russia, however, change has been disturbing.Vladislav Surkov, the Kremlin’s main ideologist and the man behind the concept of “sovereign democracy,” quit last month. Apparently, the special ideological system he built for President Vladimir Putin was not sufficient to withstand or anticipate the 2011 antiregime demonstrations. More importantly, Surkov was critical of repression. His view was that it is better to co-opt opponents than to lock them up. Putin held a different view.

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