And as for kabud, yes, God forbid our democratic free market allies in Ukraine pay the same amount as Germans for the same Russian gas that is piped across their territory. That would be, y’know, anti-market and “using energy as a political weapon”. And Armenians and Azerbaijanis, who are still supposedly in the Kremlin’s good graces, pay less or more for Russian gas? If you can wrap your mind around that one, I’m all ears.

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2 hrs 14 mins ago

MOSCOW (AFP) – Russia has begun to fulfil a 250-million-dollar contract to deliver surface-to-air missiles to seven countries including Libya, Syria and Venezuela, the Vedomosti business daily reported Friday.

Russia will also deliver the S-125 Pechora-2M missile batteries to Egypt, Myanmar, Vietnam and Turkmenistan under the contract, the newspaper said, citing a source in the state-owned Russian Technologies corporation.

Contacted by AFP, a spokeswoman for the company declined to comment. Russian Technologies includes arms exporter Rosoboronexport among its holdings. The paper did not say which parties had signed the contract.

The Pechora-2M — known as the SA-3A Goa in NATO parlance — is an upgraded version of a surface-to-air missile originally developed in the 1960s that was widely shared with the Soviet Union’s allies around the world.

Under the contract, 200 missiles are to be delivered including 70 for Egypt, an unnamed manager at a Russian defence-industry factory told Vedomosti. He added that most would be built at the Obukhov factory in Saint Petersburg.

“It is a simple but effective system, like the Kalashnikov assault rifle,” he said of the Pechora.

The space agency says three GLONASS-M satellites have been put into orbit by a Proton-M rocket that blasted off from the Baikonur launch pad in Kazakhstan.

The agency said the satellites launched Thursday will join Russia’s Global Navigation Satellite System, or GLONASS.

The system had 17 satellites before Thursday’s launch. It’s supposed to have 24 satellites available worldwide.

The government had promised to make GLONASS fully operationa

In an end-of-year interview that signaled an uncompromising stance toward U.S. President-elect Barack Obama’s incoming administration, Medvedev said Russia’s war with Georgia in August showed that tough action was sometimes unavoidable.

“Russia’s interests must be secured by all means available, this is my deep conviction. First of all, by international and legal tools … but, when necessary, by using an element of force,” Medvedev said in the interview, which was shown on Russia’s main television stations.

Touching on an economic slowdown that represents the biggest challenge to the Kremlin’s grip on power in a decade, Medvedev said Russia would weather the crisis but the rouble exchange rate would become more flexible.

That appeared to be an acknowledgement that Russia cannot sustain the billions of dollars it has been spending to support a currency that has come under immense downward pressure as prices for oil, Russia’s main export, plummet.

Medvedev ordered a massive counter-attack in August after forces under Georgia’s pro-Western President Mikheil Saakashvili tried to retake South Ossetia, a breakaway region of Georgia.

The Russian leader said he was compelled to act to prevent a genocide but Western states said the Russian action — which included sending troops to within a few kilometers (miles) of the Georgian capital — was disproportionate.

Medvedev alarmed some in the West by announcing the deployment of missiles to the western outpost of Kaliningrad in retaliation for U.S. plans, bitterly opposed in Moscow, to build a missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic.

In the interview, a transcript of which was posted on Medvedev’s official Internet site, http://www.kremlin.ru, he also attacked long-term plans by the NATO alliance to expand eastwards by allowing ex-Soviet Ukraine and Georgia to join.

“Today I do indeed feel an attempt to ‘put Russia in its place’. And if, sometime ago, when Russia was in a quite different situation, such attempts could still yield some results, in today’s situation …. this is simply inadmissible.”

SANCTIONS THREAT

He threatened Ukraine with sanctions if it failed to pay some $2 billion Moscow says it owes for gas. Russia has said it may cut off supplies to its neighbor from January 1, potentially disrupting gas deliveries via Ukraine to European states.

“They should pay the money to the last rouble if they do not want their economy ultimately to face sanctions by Russia,” Medvedev said.

Russia has been one of the biggest casualties of the global financial crisis, with its stock markets losing about 70 percent of their value since peaks in May and factories laying off thousands of workers.

Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev warned on Wednesday that Russia faced unprecedented danger and a senior police official predicted a surge in street protests.

Medvedev said Russia was likely to suffer a rise in unemployment, but he said the crisis — blamed in the Kremlin on lax regulation on Wall Street — was of manageable proportions.

“I believe the situation is not the most simple one, but there is no excuse for absolutely dramatic conclusions, to say nothing of hysteria. There is no ground to suppose we will have to resort to any radical measures,” he said.

Wed Dec 24, 2:09 pm ET

MOSCOW – Russian news reports say the military has commissioned another batch of new intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Russian news agencies quote a statement from the Strategic Missile Forces as saying the Topol-M missiles were put on duty Wednesday in Teikovo. The news agencies say the missiles are mounted on heavy off-road vehicles, but do not say how many were deployed.

Teikovo is a small town in the Ivanovo region some 250 kilometers (about 150 miles) northeast of Moscow.

The military commissioned its first Topol-Ms in 1998. The ITAR-Tass news agency said Wednesday the Strategic Missile Forces will have 65 such missiles by the year’s end.

Russian officials hail the Topol-M’s ability to penetrate any prospective missile defense.

That’s right folks, move along, nothing to see here…

Sounds like Steve (#17) may be practicing Saul Alinksy’s rule #5 in Rules for radicals:

Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.

Don’t let this tactic put you off like so many who are afraid to use the “c” word because they were mocked by teachers, the media and now also bloggers. There have been, and will continue to be, people who seek to force their ideology upon others. They may change the name from time to time, but the effect is still the same – and Putin has all the earmarks of a tyrant.

Enemies disappear into the political machine, opponents die untimely deaths, youth movements that brainwash… just read the news coming out of Russia. Is it all made up? Is Russia some thriving bastion of individual freedom?

Oh, I forget, the commies are gone and freedom is in the air.

Put down the bong.

And of course, over at her blog, Kim Zigfeld tries to call me a redneck moron for being sympathetic to Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX), as if that can describe the hundreds of thousands who gave him money or volunteered for his fledgling campaign. I put Kim on notice that she can censor me on her blog, but she can’t do it over here at Pajamas Media. You’ll notice too, that Kim has never taken the bait, not once, to try to hold up her arguments after I’ve shown how crazy and false they are.

No, she ignores me, because she never wants to discuss who funds her or for what purpose, or whether he/she/they has ever actually been to Russia or studied the country at all. That would spoil the cartoon character Google-bombing schtick. As it is though, Zigfeld’s traffic is just a tiny fraction of humor sites like English Russia or the other blogs she regularly attacks, such as Russia Blog or Sean’s Russia Blog.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjnMsiKuGXM&NR=1