Crisis in Ukraine

Unhappy438 said:

Concerned citizens firing at Ukrainian army

[video=youtube;WMeUmYaj7uw]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMeUmYaj7uw[/video]

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Russia is dangerously ill, infected with Kremlin-promoted “intolerance, aggression, militarism and chauvinism,” a Kyiv commentator suggests, and there is a great danger because of Vladimir Putin’s actions in Ukraine, that this “virus” will spread to that country and perhaps others as well.

And if that infection sets in and Ukraine thus becomes increasingly like its very ill northern neighbor, then Ukraine’s survival as a separate and independent state will matter less than it should and Putin will have gained a victory that he should not have achieved, according to Mikhail Dubinyansky.

In an essay in yesterday’s Ukrainskaya Pravda, the Kyiv commentator says that in Russia today, “hatred is again considered a civic responsibility, cruelty a virtue, despotism a good thing, and the seizure of the territories of others the occasion for an all-people’s holiday.” Millions have been infected with this “virus.”

It is spread everywhere, he continues, “on Russian television and in social networks, in drunken conversations and official declarations of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation. It infects old and young, poor and well-off, the openly lumpen and those who until recently had seemed intelligent and kind.”

This disease justifies any shameful act of the authorities, celebrates the use of force, and leads Russians to take up arms and “hate everyone: America, Europe, NATO, Georgia, Ukraine, the Balts, [the Central Asians], democrats, liberals, gays, the irreligious, and the semi-mythical Banderites.”

Only “an insignificant part of Russian society” seems immune, Dubinyansky says, and they are demonized as “’national traitors.’”

Not surprisingly, this very ill body “represents a serious threat to those around it,” infecting these countries with its own disease as they attempt to combat Russian aggression against them. Dangerously, that is what appears to be happening in at least some segments of the Ukrainian population.

“Until recently, we asserted that Ukraine is not Russia. Our society was much better: softer, more tolerant and more human. They had Chechnya, Daghestan, Nord-Ost and Beslan, [while] we had 20 years of peaceful life. They had a civil war in the center of Moscow,” something that until recently Ukrainians couldn’t imagine happening in their own capital.

“But as it turned out, it was not so difficult to descend to the Russian level,” he continues. “The first symptoms of the neighbor’s disease appeared in Ukraine several years ago and at first touched only the political elite.” Three years ago, Ukraine got “its own Khodorkovsky: the president of Ukraine dispensed with his competitor by throwing the former premier into prison.”

“Ukrainian politics had never known anything like that before,” and many Ukrainians hoped that Europe would intervene to reverse things. But then on November 30, 2013, “the Russian disease burst onto the streets: peaceful meetings in Ukraine had never been dispersed with such cruelty.” That helped spread the Russian disease to the broader Ukrainian population.

To be sure, Putin did everything he could to spread this infection into Ukraine, “and the main carriers of the Russian disease became the pro-Russian forces, Dobinyansky writes, “but patriotic society which opposed the Kremlin” also played a role in the spread of this infection in Ukraine.

As tensions rose, many defenders of Ukraine became more like the opponents of Ukraine. On May 2, he points out, all too many Ukrainians viewed those who died in Odessa not as fellow human beings “but only as enemies,” the clearest indication of how far the spread of the Russian disease has advanced.

Indeed, the Ukrainskaya Pravda commentator argues, “present-day Ukraine is divided” not just between “patriots and traitors” and “separatists and defenders of territorial integrity” but between those “who are gladdened by enemy bodies because they are enemies and those who cannot be gladdened because they are bodies.”

Tragically and unfortunately, “war has its own laws and its own pitiless logic.” If one is to fight as an equal, one often must adopt some of what the enemy is doing: “’Evil gives birth to evil,’ ‘an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,’ ‘if the enemy does not surrender, he must be destroyed.’” In Ukraine, these have become “our daily life.”

“If the separatists kidnap and torture people … of beat and kill pro-Ukrainian demonstrators, this means” in the minds of those infected with the Russian disease “that one must not stand on ceremony and display humanity,” Dobinyansky writes.

“If Moscow conducts a full-scale information war with the use of Dmitry Kiselyov, then this means [in the minds of those infected] that the Ukrainian media should forget about objectivity, impartiality, and other democratic standards.”

And if Russia forms a united front which tolerates no dissent, then for such people Ukraine should do the same. As a result, “liberalism and tolerance are at risk of defeat while cruelty is given a chance for victory” – a victory not only over Putin but one “over one’s own humanity.”

If Putin succeeds in making Ukraine like Russia by spreading the Russian disease, Dobinyansky suggests, the Kremlin leader will have won no matter how much or how little territory he will have seized. And although the Kyiv commentator does not say so, this may be Putin’s gravest crime of all in Ukraine.

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imranpanji said:

Lol, absolutely hilarious what passes as news nowadays.

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Unhappy438 said:

You're going to need to be more specific, if you're referring to the last article i posted then its an opinion piece.

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MOSCOW—Business sentiment among Russian companies deteriorated sharply in May, hit by Moscow’s standoff with the West over its annexation of Crimea, MNI Indicators poll showed Tuesday.

In response to Moscow’s move to take over Ukraine’s region of Crimea in March, Washington and Brussels imposed individual sanctions against Russia’s officials, businessmen and a few banks. The sanctions were positively taken by the stock market and the ruble as players had initially expected a harsher punishment. However, the penalties took their toll on businesses’ mood.

The MNI Russia Business Indicator fell to 49.2 In May, the lowest since late last year, from 55.6 seen in April. The decline below 50 suggests a considerable dent has been made in Russian business confidence from what have only been limited sanctions imposed by the U.S. and the EU.

As Moscow’s relations with the West were soured by the Ukrainian crisis, President Vladimir Putin set Russia’s face towards the East. Last week Russia and China Russia’s signed a $400 billion gas deal as Moscow looks for new markets.

“Russia’s agreement to supply natural gas to China helps to diversify its trading partners. But while President Putin enjoyed his moment in the spotlight with President Xi of China, the vast majority of Russia’s trade lies with Europe and he’d be wise not to rattle their cage too much more,” said Philip Uglow, Chief Economist at MNI Indicators, part of Deutsche Boerse Group.

The MNI monthly poll of Russian business executives at around 200 companies listed in Moscow comes after another poll – HSBC Purchasing Managers’ Index – that showed that the combined output of Russia’s service providers and manufacturers contracted in April at its strongest pace since May 2009 as business conditions worsened.

Despite the recent business polls, which reflect the sanctions, capital outflows and a sovereign rating downgrade, Russia believes it will rise higher in the World Bank’s Doing Business ranking.

‪Russia’s deputy economy minister Sergei Belyakov said last week that Russia may reach its goal and climb 10 notches to the 82nd position in the bank’s next annual global survey this year that ranks countries according to how complicated doing business is in each.

Mr. Belyakov said that the actual state of things in Russia is better than the country’s global image, which is formed due to a lack of information.

“Bad news sells better than good news,” he said in an interview.

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Dozens of Chechen militants have joined the fighting on the side of pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine in a development that threatens to further escalate the violence in the country.
On Tuesday, half-a-dozen armed men approached by the Financial Times outside a Donetsk regional hospital confirmed that they were part of a Chechen unit that had travelled to Donetsk one week ago to fight alongside the separatists.

“Our president [Chechnya’s Ramzan Kadyrov] gave the order. They called us and we came,” one of the fighters, a 33-year-old named Zelimkhan, said. He added that the unit was called the “dikaya diviziya”, or savage division.
The men said one of their group had been killed and four seriously injured in the Ukrainian military’s air strike on the Donetsk airport on Monday as government forces sought to recapture the facility from separatists
“They’ve killed one of our guys and we will not forget this,” said Magomed, a 30 year-old Chechen fighter with a wolf tattooed across his chest. “We will take one hundred of their lives for the life our brother.”
Vladimir Putin, Russian president, has repeatedly denied that Russian forces are operating on-the-ground in eastern Ukraine and helping the separatists.
A Russian foreign ministry official said it was foreign media “hype” to report the presence of armed Chechens in eastern Ukraine.
“If they are Chechens, they are citizens of the Russian Federation. We can’t control where our citizens go,” he said. “But I can assure you that we have not sent our forces there.”
But authorities in Kiev said the Chechens’ presence was further evidence of the Kremlin’s aim to destabilise the region with whatever means possible.
In a statement on Tuesday, Ukraine’s foreign ministry claimed it was now facing “undisguised aggression” from Russia and “the export of Russian terrorism to our country”.
“There are grounds to affirm that Russian terrorists funnelled on to the territory of Ukraine are being organised and financed through the direct control of the Kremlin and Russian special forces,” the ministry said. “Our law enforcement today in eastern region of Ukraine are facing well prepared and armed Russian mercenaries ready to rob, intimidate, torture and kill Ukrainian citizens.”
The Chechen fighters emerged as Kiev continued to press an assault in the east that resulted in dozens of deaths on Monday.
At the same time, the Organisation for Security and Co-operation on Tuesday said it had lost contact with four of its Donetsk special monitors. Michael Bociurkiw, a representative for the OSCE chief monitoring mission in Kiev, said the OSCE had lost contact with the monitors while they were travelling east of Donetsk, near the border with Lugansk.
As of Tuesday evening, the OSCE still had not heard from the monitors, who had travelled to Ukraine from Switzerland, Denmark, Estonia and Turkey.
Chechen fighters have a reputation for brutal war tactics, having fought two long and bloody wars for independence from Russia. Chechen extremists have been responsible for many of the terrorist attacks in Russia in recent years as part of their continued fight for their republic’s independence.
But other Chechen fighters have chosen to side with Mr Kadyrov, the republic’s authoritarian leader, who receives substantial financial assistance from Moscow in return for keeping the region under the Kremlin’s control.
Zelimkhan, the Chechen fighter, said he had travelled to Donetsk with 33 other militants from Grozny via the Russian city of Rostov and that they were stationed at a Donetsk military base alongside three local pro-Russian paramilitary groups, each of which had its own commander.
He added that there were 16 fighters from Ossetia, another republic in Russia’s North Caucasus, who had been in eastern Ukraine for a month and were fighting alongside them.
Asked whether there were Russian fighters on the ground in eastern Ukraine, Zelimkhan replied: “Am I not Russian?”
“The Russians can’t openly attack Ukraine,” he added. They’re not officially here. Everything is underground.”
The Chechens described a devastating attack against their unit and other pro-Russia separatists on Monday, alleging that the Ukrainian military had employed two fighter planes and eight helicopters as well as snipers.
Magomed pointed to blood wounds seeping through his camouflage uniform on both the upper and lower parts of his leg – the result of two sniper bullets, he said. Two other militants, Said and Khyzyr, had bullet wounds on their arms, while others were being operated on inside the hospital.
Magomed said the unit’s casualties would not go unanswered. “In our nation,” he said, waving his pistol, “there is a belief in blood revenge.”

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UPDATE 3-Russia moves some troops away from Ukraine; NATO says big force remains

Thu May 22, 2014

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/22/ukraine-crisis-russia-military-idUSL6N0O83J920140522

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May. 27 2014

Russian troops may be slowly pulling back from near the Ukraine border, although the bulk of the force remains close to the frontier for now, a NATO military officer said Tuesday.

"NATO has observed some continued Russian troop activity in the vicinity of the border with Ukraine over the past days. There is some evidence of equipment and supplies being packed or prepared for movement in certain locations," the officer said.

"The activity we are observing at present could suggest a slow or staged withdrawal of forces. At present, the bulk of the previously deployed Russian force remains in the vicinity of the border," the officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, said.

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/...ing-back-from-ukraine-border-nato/500988.html

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Germany Helped Prep Russia for War, U.S. Sources Say
Over the past few years, NATO countries have helped Russia revolutionize its armed forces. Now questions are arising about a German defense contractor that trained the Russian military.

The world was shocked when Russian special operations forces invaded Crimea with advanced technology, drastically improved operations, and with so much operational security that even agencies in the U.S. intelligence community didn’t see it coming. In Washington, government and congressional leaders are wondering how the Russian special operations forces got so good, so fast, without anyone noticing. Some are wondering how much help Russia had from the West.

In 2011, for example, the German defense contractor Rheinmetall signed a $140 million contract to build a combat simulation training center in Mulino, in southwest Russia, that would train 30,000 Russian combat troops per year. While the facility wasn't officially scheduled to be completed until later this year, U.S. officials believe that Germany has been training Russian forces for years.

Rheinmetall defended the project even after the invasion of Crimea, up until the German government finally shut it down late last month. But many tracking the issue within the U.S. government were not happy with Germany's handling of the Russian contract, and worry that some of the training may have gone to the kind of special operations forces now operating in and around Ukraine.

“It’s unfortunate that German companies were directly supporting and training Russia’s military even during the attacks against Ukraine,” one senior Senate aide told The Daily Beast. “The U.S. government should call on our NATO allies to suspend all military connections with Russia at this point, until the Russians leave Ukraine, including Crimea.”

According to the Congressional Research Service, Rheinmetall’s partner in the deal was the Russian state-owned Oboronservis (“Defense Service”) firm. The training center, modeled after one used by the German Bundeswehr, was to be “the most advanced system of its kind worldwide.” Reinmetall saw the contract as a precursor to several more projects “in light of the plans to modernize the equipment of the Russian armed forces.”

U.S. officials, now looking back, are privately expressing anger and frustration about the German work with the Russian military. While definitive proof is hard to come by, these officials look at the radical upgrade of Moscow’s forces–especially its special operations forces–experienced since they last saw major action in 2008's invasion of Georgia. The U.S. officials believe that some of the German training over the last few years was given to the GRU Spetsnaz, the special operations forces that moved unmarked into Crimea and who can now be found stirring up trouble in eastern Ukraine.

“People are pissed,” one U.S. intelligence official told The Daily Beast. “The chatter inside the Pentagon is that the training they were providing was going to Spetznaz.”

Rheinmetall did not respond to a request for comment.

Russia maintains close economic ties with many NATO states–especially Germany. By some estimates, the country exported nearly $50 billion in goods to Russia in 2013. Tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of German jobs depend on Russian trade.

The armed forces of NATO members have also been working with their counterparts in the Russian military, on and off, for years. Russia has held joint military exercises with both Germany and the U.S., for example. America has bought Russian helicopters to use in Afghanistan. And Moscow allows NATO equipment to pass through Russian territory as the gear comes into and out of the war zone.

To the Congressional Research Service, “Rheinmetall’s construction of an army training center could be viewed in the context of the broader bilateral defense cooperation between Germany and Russia,” the service writes in its report. “The German… government’s approval of the contract to construct a training center also appears to be in line with long-standing German policy to promote military training and joint exercises with partner countries.”

But some on Capitol Hill see the Rheimetall contract as only one example of the folly of several NATO countries that rushed to sign lucrative defense contracts with Russia after President Obama declared a new “reset” policy with the Russian Federation. Lawmakers have tried to halt the French sale of the Mistral, an amphibious warship, to the Russian Navy. Some are also unhappy about the Italian sale of Lynx armored personnel carriers to Russia.

A Senate aide said that one of Rheinmetall’s contributions was to help the Russian army and GRU Spetznaz upgrade their gear. Reports show that the Russian military units both inside Ukraine and amassed on its eastern border are sporting brand new communications equipment, body armor, personal weapons, and ammunition. Taken together, it gives them a huge tactical advantage over the beleaguered Ukrainian armed forces.

Top defense officials are now acknowledging that Russia’s military has been revolutionized in recent years. This month, Vice Admiral Frank Pandolfe, the director for strategic plans and policy for the military’s joint chiefs of staff, told Congress in open testimony that in recent years Russia has created regional commands that “coordinate and synchronize planning, joint service integration, force movement, intelligence support, and the tactical employment of units” in what he deemed “snap exercises,” or military training missions that can be ordered at a moment’s notice.

In the testimony, Pandolfe also said Russia has placed greater emphasis on the use of Special Operations Forces as well as information and cyber warfare. Experts said that Russian military doctrine was dramatically updated in the past few years and clearly set out Russia’s plans for modernization and a focus on highly trained rapid reaction special forces. But in the West, the papers were not well read, much less understood.

The Russians also changed their doctrine to reflect that they viewed the threat as not coming from a conventional war, but from the need to protect Russian populations in unstable states facing what they deemed to be Western aggression.

“This wasn’t just about implementing lessons learned from [the 2008 invasion of] Georgia, it was about giving them a basis for a different kind of operations,” said Fiona Hill, a former top intelligence official on Russia, now with the Brookings Institution. “We should have been paying more attention to this. There have been these signals for a long time, but we have been misreading them.”

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articl...lped-prep-russia-for-war-u-s-sources-say.html

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Garyvdh said:

All Posters need to please include warnings on any posts which include graphic images or video.

Failure to do this might result in deletion.

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The second thing to know about Putin is that he shares the same traits as the famous Russian czars of the past. He’s expansionist, xenophobic, and paranoid, attributes that unfortunately make him the ideal leader for the Russian people at this time in their history. He reflects the promise of restoring Russia once again to the period of greatness his people feel is rightfully theirs. In other words, he wants to reinstitute the Russian Empire.

Lastly, what is now abundantly clear about Putin is that his words mean nothing; his demeanor means nothing; he will change on a whim and make no apologies. Critics say Obama was surprised by Russia’s actions in Ukraine and the subsequent annexation of Crimea. That’s not exactly true. The Obama administration was well aware of Russia’s attempts to quash anti-government protests in Kiev, and calculated that while the Olympic Games were underway in Sochi, Putin wouldn’t make any overt moves.

Where they were wrong is the belief that Putin, after spending billions to showcase modern Russia in Sochi, would forfeit all that good will to make an aggressive move on Crimea. Threats to exclude him from the group of world powers, the G-8, did nothing to dissuade him.

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http://www.dailyadvance.com/opinion...-him-czar-putin-will-not-be-contained-2429729

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Special Forces And Nuclear Weapons: The New Russian Military Threat

Author: Daniel Gouré, Ph.D.
April 22, 2014.
Posted in Early Warning Blog

Over the past several weeks as events in Crimea and eastern Ukraine have unfolded, the world has had a chance to see the new Russian defense strategy and force posture in action. Russian President Vladimir Putin has successfully finessed his country’s myriad of weaknesses – economic, political, demographic and military – in ways that permit him to use coercion and even naked military force against his neighbors with near impunity. Dealing with an aggressive, yet relatively weak Russia poses a far different problem for the West than deterring or containing a rising China.

The successful occupation of Crimea and the current operations to destabilize eastern Ukraine belie the general weakness of Russia’s conventional military forces. Successive modernization campaigns have run afoul of budget difficulties, weaknesses in the country’s military-industrial complex, the inability to shift from a conscript-based to a professional military, a limited pool of acceptable conscripts and political infighting. Efforts to mimic Western militaries’ transformation from quantity to quality in military forces have been only partly successful. Despite a significant increase in defense spending in recent years, the Russian military not only lacks sufficient modern equipment but many of the critical enablers to support the kind of high intensity, fast-paced, information-intensive operations that the United States and a number of its allies can conduct. Russia has had to go to foreign suppliers, including NATO countries, for such capabilities as amphibious warfare ships, unmanned aerial vehicles and even training facilities.

One of the few successes of the Russian military modernization program is its special operations forces (SOF). Following the near-debacle of the 2008 war with Georgia, the Russian government revamped its special operations command and control structure and focused on increasing the capabilities of SOF units. It paid particular attention to enhancing the ability of these forces to conduct counter-terrorism and subversion operations. In addition, the Russian military focused on combining deployments of special operations forces on the ground with new tactics and techniques for counter-C3 warfare, including expanded cyber attacks. Commentators have noted the advanced equipment sported by a number of Russian units in Crimea and even in eastern Ukraine.

The other area where Russian defense investments have paid off is in nuclear weapons. Russia is a major power because it, along with the United States, is the largest nuclear weapons state in the world. With respect to theater nuclear weapons, the Russian inventory is estimated to be ten times that of the United States. Russia is deploying a new inter-continental ballistic missile, submarine-launched ballistic missile, at least one theater ballistic missile and possibly a nuclear-capable cruise missile.

Nuclear weapons are at the heart of President Putin’s geo-political strategy for reasserting Russian influence not only in the near-abroad but also in Europe as a whole. The Kremlin believes that if Europe remains vulnerable to Russian nuclear threats it can be influenced, even coerced on subjects such as Ukraine. In effect, Moscow hopes that this threat will encourage NATO and the European Union to stand by as the Russian empire is recreated.

One of the primary reasons that Russia has been so steadfastly opposed to the deployment of missile defenses in Europe, even though proposed defenses will be incapable of defeating Russian strategic nuclear forces, is because it is concerned that such capabilities will devalue their nuclear weapons as instruments of coercion with respect to Europe. For this reason, the hint put forward recently by the Obama Administration that it is considering accelerating the deployment of theater missile defenses, the Phased Adaptive Architecture, to Eastern Europe, is a significant threat to the Kremlin.

Russia’s military is an extremely brittle instrument. It will be decades, if ever, before Russia will pose a conventional threat to NATO. In the meantime, the West will have to figure out how to help those living in Russia’s neighborhood withstand the kind of tactics and forces Moscow employed in Crimea and is currently employing in eastern Ukraine.

http://www.lexingtoninstitute.org/s...lear-weapons-the-new-russian-military-threat/

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The Soviet Spetsnaz Threat to Nato
Published Airpower Journal - Summer 1988
Capt Erin E. Campbell, USAF

The Spetsnaz are the only Soviet troops who can think for themselves and take quick decisions.
-Abdul Haq, Afghan rebel leader

IN recent years, Soviet military doctrine has increasingly emphasized the use of conventional forces in conducting military operations. As a result, Soviet tacticians have stressed the need to wage a blitzkrieg-style attack to defuse NATO's military might before a war could escalate to a nuclear level. Traditionally, however, westerners examine future wars primarily by focusing their attention on thermonuclear weapons and conventional forces while granting scant attention to a third dimension of Soviet military operations--saboteurs, secret agents, and special forces.1

This third dimension of warfare essentially entails the use of military active measures that are special operations involving surprise, shock, and preemption in the enemy's rear echelons with the ultimate goal of winning a quick victory by producing conditions conducive to the rapid advance of the main Soviet force.2 The Soviet troops entrusted with fulfilling these preemptive actions are "special purpose" or "special designation" (spetsnaznacheniya) troops, more commonly known as Spetsnaz forces.

Because of Soviet military doctrine's focus on the need for surprise and preemption of the use of nuclear weapons, Spetsnaz forces could play a prominent role in the successful implementation of overall Soviet war strategy. Moreover, current evidence indicates the Soviets are fortifying and preparing their Spetsnaz apparatus to decimate the capabilities of NATO's military and political organizations in the opening phases of a potential surprise attack against Western Europe.

Strategy for a War Against NATO

The Soviet Union is none too eager to engage in an overt armed conflict against Western Europe. Nonetheless, one cannot discount that in the future extraordinary events may error simultaneously which, collectively, could precipitate a crisis situation between NATO and the Soviet Union/ Warsaw Pact nations. C.N. Donnelly (head of the Soviet Studies Research Centre, Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, England) suggests that two phases would precede the outbreak of hostilities: the preparatory phase, and the crisis phase, both designed to employ all measures to exploit NATO's weaknesses and to reduce its combat potential.3

During the preparatory stage, the Soviets' primary aim is to weaken the West's capacity to wage nuclear war either by preventing the development or the deployment of new weapon systems or by depleting the political will to use them. This is accomplished via Soviet political active measures--for instance, propaganda campaigns, disinformation, and the sponsoring of Western peace movements. From the Soviet point of view, it is most desirable to operate exclusively at this level, whereby Soviet influence and power gradually grow in Europe and US power declines until the states of Europe are effectively "Finlandized" and the United States becomes isolated.

Should these political active measures fail, however, the prewar crisis phase would ensue. This phase is likely to commence only if some aspect of Soviet policy fails and it then becomes apparent to the Soviet Union that a war is either inevitable or that war is the only means by which the leadership can achieve a vital policy objective.

At this juncture, the Soviets would initiate unconventional warfare methods (i.e., military active measures) to degrade NATO's fighting capability, creating favorable political and military circumstances for a successful follow-on campaign, The Soviets define unconventional warfare as a variety of military and paramilitary operations which include partisan warfare, subversion and sabotage (conducted during both peace and war), assassination, and other covert or clandestine special operations.4 These missions are assigned to special units of the Committee of State Security (KGB--Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopusnosti), to the Soviet General Staff's Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU-Glavnoe Razvedyvatelnoe Upravienie), and to airborne, ground, and naval forces, all of which possess Spetsnaz forces.

At this crisis stage, the Soviets will put these forces into play. From the outset, the ultimate Soviet objective will be the total political collapse or neutralization of key NATO governments.5 Because frontal military assaults would be less effective in accomplishing this, Soviet strategy emphasizes the need for initial operations in the enemy's rear echelon, the domain of Spetsnaz forces whose operations are intended to sow the seeds of a political-military collapse. Indeed, the Soviets' aim is to prevent the formation of a static, frontline war with NATO on one side and Warsaw Pact forces on the other.6 Therefore, the Soviets intend to infiltrate NATO's rear area before the outbreak of hostilities to begin eroding NATO's political and military structure from within.

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In the late 1970s, the Soviet army redeveloped its doctrine for the "deep operation" in conventional conditions, and it determined that the sine qua non of success is surprise.7 While the Soviets do not expect total surprise, they do believe that, if a sufficient degree of tactical surprise is achieved, then NATO deployment should be patchy and incomplete, and some corps would still be moving toward their defensive positions when open hostilities begin. Thus, the primary concern of Soviet strategists and tacticians is to launch low-visibility operations that ensure surprise, induce operational paralysis, and obstruct enemy mobilization and deployment.

Spetsnaz activity thus would be initiated prior to the advancement of main army forces at the front to ensure surprise. The Soviets believe that creating such disruption would assure the advancing main forces of a rapid, uninterrupted, and hence successful advance. The actual damage that a small team could accomplish would be moderate at best; however, the shock to national morale resulting from such acts as the assassinations of senior politicians, industrialists, financiers, and the like on the eve of the war would be disproportionately great in comparison to the small cost of attempting such an operation.

It is essential to bear in mind that these Spetsnaz operations are not designed in themselves to result in a Soviet victory since their task is merely to reduce the enemy's resistance; rather, their function in the overall Soviet war plan is to enable the main army to conclude war operations in a more abbreviated and less risky fashion.

Wartime Missions

Prior to the employment of combat airborne and naval Spetsnaz units, the Soviets would preposition other Spetsnaz forces within enemy territory. In preparation for a war, the Soviets would post to their embassies and consulates a certain number of Spetsnaz officers and warrant officers in the guise of technical personnel, guards, gardeners, drivers, and so forth.8 Similarly, groups of professional Spetsnaz agents posing as tourists, delegations, sports teams, or as passengers on merchant ships, civil aircraft, or commercial trucks would attempt to infiltrate into enemy territory.9

Finally, on the eve of war, Spetsnaz units, employing various pretexts and covers, may concentrate in neutral states and enter enemy territory once fighting has commenced. Also at this time, various Spetsnaz elements would covertly deploy and link up with their indigenous agent assets to set in motion operations in the target area. It is expected that KGB agent assets would likewise emerge to conduct their special operations and that local Communist, Leftist, and possibly terrorist elements also might be activated to implement these operations.10 In short, Soviet Spetsnaz forces would then be poised and ready to strike when necessary.

As the Spetsnaz missions are but one element of an integral war plan, the Soviets believe Spetsnaz objectives can be successful only if they take place on a massive scale concurrent with operations conducted in the enemy's rear areas by airborne troops, naval infantry, air assault brigades, divisional deep reconnaissance units, KGB teams, and similar groups from the Warsaw Pact. Therefore, the main Spetsnaz forces will be dropped simultaneously on all fighting fronts while the professional "athletics" regiments will operate within range of capital cities, regardless of their distance from the front-line.11

Soviet Spetsnaz forces entering their operating area in Western Europe would first pursue the following primary objectives listed in descending order of importance:

The physical incapacitation and destruction of NATO nuclear and chemical warheads, means of delivery, and related command, control, and guidance elements--both strategic (e.g., Polaris submarines in bases) and tactical (e.g., air-delivery systems).
The disruption of NATO political, strategic, and tactical command, control, and communications elements. This also includes the elimination of personnel in key positions.
The physical incapacitation of certain electronic warning and reconnaissance equipment, radars and early warning equipment, air defense equipment of all types, and possibly ballistic missile early warning systems.
The capture of key airfields and ports to prevent reinforcement or redeployment, particularly by the United States; the destruction or neutralization of airfield and port facilities not required intact by the USSR, plus railways and key road junctions important in mobilization plans.
The disruption of key industrial targets and facilities (e.g., power stations, oil refineries, military-electronics industries, etc.).12

Finally, in the wake of the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) signed in December 1987, allied air assets and air bases would likely become a much higher priority target for Spetsnaz forces after ground-based assets have been dismantled.

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In sum, it appears the Soviets ,are most likely to continue their current ploys to undermine Western Europe from within-for example, by infiltrating and manipulating organizations opposed to Western government policies and by bullying susceptible nations into passive acquiescence of Soviet actions. However, there are indications that the Soviets currently are continuing to reinforce their Spetsnaz capability against Europe. Thus, while open warfare in Europe does not seem imminent, Western military planners must be prepared to contend with the presence of Spetsnaz forces if war should occur.

http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/apj/apj88/sum88/campbell.html

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Unhappy438 said:

Not sure how relevant this is but its good investigative journalism on some corruption in Russia.

Russian Railways paid billions of dollars to secretive private companies

http://www.reuters.com/investigates/russia/

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ghoti said:

So scary that Putin is less honest than Zuma! He really is a bottom feeder of our society.

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