EUROPE: 'Coldest winter in 1,000 years' on its way...

Coldest winter in 1,000 years on its way

After the record heat wave this summer, Russia's weather seems to have acquired a taste for the extreme.

Forecasters say this winter could be the coldest Europe has seen in the last 1,000 years.

The change is reportedly connected with the speed of the Gulf Stream, which has shrunk in half in just the last couple of years. Polish scientists say that it means the stream will not be able to compensate for the cold from the Arctic winds. According to them, when the stream is completely stopped, a new Ice Age will begin in Europe.

So far, the results have been lower temperatures: for example, in Central Russia, they are a couple of degrees below the norm.

“Although the forecast for the next month is only 70 percent accurate, I find the cold winter scenario quite likely,” Vadim Zavodchenkov, a leading specialist at the Fobos weather center, told RT. “We will be able to judge with more certainty come November. As for last summer's heat, the statistical models that meteorologists use to draw up long-term forecasts aren't able to predict an anomaly like that.”

In order to meet the harsh winter head on, Moscow authorities are drawing up measures to help Muscovites survive the extreme cold.

Most of all, the government is concerned with homeless people who risk freezing to death if the forecast of the meteorologists come true. Social services and police are being ordered to take the situation under control even if they have to force the homeless to take help.

Moscow authorities have also started checking air conditioning systems in all socially important buildings. All the conditioners are being carefully cleaned from the remains of summer smog.

Ukraine gas peace threatens to unravel

Ukraine gas peace threatens to unravel

By Roman Olearchyk in Kiev and Neil Buckley in London

Just months ago, peace seemed to have broken out in the long gas wars between Ukraine and Russia. Yet as autumn turns chillier, the same volatile mix of factors that has sparked two shut-offs of Russian gas to Ukraine since 2006 is creating at least the chance of a new winter stand-off.

The unravelling of the gas peace is a surprise. While warmer relations had been expected, the speed with which Russia-leaning president Viktor Yanukovich tilted Ukraine back towards Moscow after his February election startled western capitals.

Amid a series of economic rapprochements, Mr Yanukovich in April secured a 30 per cent cut in gas prices. In return, he extended by 25 years Russia’s lease on a naval base in Crimea – home to its Black Sea fleet.

That followed last year’s agreement between Yulia Tymoshenko, then Ukrainian prime minister, and Vladimir Putin, her Russian counterpart, regulating other aspects of the gas relationship. The deal cut out of the supply arrangement RosUkrEnergo, a controversial gas trader, which previously made hundreds of millions of dollars of profit a year from a position as middleman between Russia’s Gazprom monopoly and Ukraine.

However, with winter approaching, familiar factors are complicating talks between Moscow and Kiev: new Ukrainian demands for cheaper prices, Moscow’s long desire to take control of the crucial gas export pipeline running across Ukraine and a return to the stage by RosUkrEnergo.

“A clash seems imminent – and not only on the gas issue,” says Oleh Rybachuk, a Ukrainian political pundit and former presidential chief of staff. He notes Russia is pushing hard not only for closer gas industry integration but urging Kiev to join an economic union and merge both nations’ sizeable aviation and nuclear power industries.

Sergei Kupriyanov, a Gazprom spokesman, said he saw “no basis for a new gas crisis”. But Ukraine surprised everyone last month by suggesting it would seek a new price cut.
Even after April’s discount, Kiev’s ruling coalition now says its $10bn annual gas bill is too big a burden on its heavy industrial economy. Ukraine is struggling to recover from a 15 per cent plunge in output last year.
In response, Mr Putin hinted this month lower prices might be possible, but only as part of broader economic reintegration.

“Let’s form a unified economic space, unify our economic legislation ... and then we can extend our internal [energy] prices to our partners,” Mr Putin told foreign journalists.

Along with the price wrangling, RosUkrEnergo – which had been essentially dormant for more than a year – has re-entered the picture.

The Stockholm Arbitration Tribunal, which adjudicates on international business disputes, in June ordered Ukraine to return 11bn cubic metres (bcm) of gas, worth more than $5bn today, to the trader.

Its Ukrainian part-owners had claimed in a lawsuit the gas was illegally expropriated from it when it lost its supply role in last year’s agreement. The Swiss-registered trader is 45 per cent owned by Dmytro Firtash, and 5 per cent by Ivan Fursin, both Ukrainian businessmen; Russia’s Gazprom owns the other half.

The disputed 11bcm of gas was resold by Gazprom to Naftogaz, the Ukrainian state gas company.

The idea of returning it to RosUkrEnergo is contentious. Ms Tymoshenko, now an opposition leader, has repeatedly claimed the gas trader’s Ukrainian shareholders are closely linked to members of Mr Yanukovich’s team.

Addressing foreign diplomats in Kiev this month, she alleged the shareholders were associates of Serhiy Lyovochkin, Mr Yanukovich’s chief of staff, and Yuriy Boyko, Ukrainian energy minister.

Mr Lyovochkin has admitted being friends with RosUkrEnergo’s Mr Firtash and Mr Fursin, but denied being a business partner. Mr Firtash, Mr Fursin and Mr Boyko did not respond to requests for interviews or questions e-mailed to them.

Answering questions in front of a parliament investigatory committee this month, Mr Boyko denied having an interest in RosUkrEnergo.

Nonetheless, the energy minister appears to have personal links with Mr Firtash. Documents seen by the FT show Mr Boyko served as Mr Firtash’s legal representative in a recent divorce.

Ms Tymoshenko has gone as far as suggesting associates of Mr Yanukovich deliberately presented a weak case to the Stockholm tribunal, so helping RosUkrEnergo to win. The Ukrainian administration adamantly denies this.

Transferring $5bn of gas to the trader would be problematic for other reasons, putting huge pressure on Ukraine’s stretched public finances.

Ms Tymoshenko warned the foreign diplomats it could raise questions over Ukraine’s ability to repay a $15.2bn loan from the International Monetary Fund negotiated by Kiev’s new government.

An IMF official played down Ms Tymoshenko’s warning, saying handing over the gas posed no big financial risks for Ukraine.

But analysts warn losing 11bcm of gas would severely stretch the cash-strapped Naftogaz.

Ultimately, either Ukraine’s desire for lower gas prices or a financial squeeze on Naftogaz could be used by Moscow to further its desire to regain control of the trans-Ukraine gas pipeline. That pipeline carries 80 per cent of Russia’s lucrative gas exports to western Europe.

In an apparent gambit aimed at that goal, Mr Putin suddenly proposed in May merging Gazprom and Ukraine’s Naftogaz, which operates the pipeline.


Additional reporting by Catherine Belton in Moscow

Russian Spy Anna Chapman Finds Celebrity at Home

Russian Spy Anna Chapman Finds Celebrity at Home

By Matthias Schepp in Moscow

Back to Russia, With Love

Former Russian spy Anna Chapman, arrested in the United States and sent back to her home country as part of an exchange of agents, is cashing in on her sex appeal. Ex-spook Vladimir Putin welcomed her home with open arms and she is on her way to becoming a star.

The Starlite is in a small park in downtown Moscow, a two-minute walk from the monument to legendary poet Vladimir Mayakovsky. The restaurant serves steak and french fries, and the wall is decorated with Life magazine covers from the 1960s and a license plate from the US state of Michigan. CNN flickers on a TV screen.

Anna Chapman, the spy with the Bond-girl image, has selected a restaurant for lunch that reminds her of her former life, of the four exciting years she spent in the United States before the FBI arrested her in June and exchanged her for American spies in Russia.

The Starlite is a little bit of Americana in the middle of Moscow, and a popular meeting point for people who are at home in more than one world. A Syrian with an American passport is ordering a hamburger at one of the tables. Western intelligence agencies believe he is the right-hand man of Viktor Bout, a notorious arms dealer. The Starlite has the reputation, not unjustifiably, of having been thoroughly bugged by Russian intelligence.


Hands Off Our Anna


Chapman is sitting in the far corner of the terrace. She is wearing a tight-fitting dress, and her face looks pale in contrast to her red hair. She sits with her back to the room. "I wear sunglasses and a hat on the street," she says.

And with good reason. Russia has been consumed by a Chapman cult since her return. The tabloids print page after page of love confessions by her previous boyfriends. In her hometown of Volgograd, known as the "City of Heroes" for its role in World War II, members of the city council have proposed making the 28-year-old an honorable citizen.

The local newspaper is sponsoring a contest for the most beautiful song written for Anna. The lyrics of the frontrunner are: "America is spying on everyone, and its enemies cannot sleep in peace. They're looking for bin Laden, but what does our girl have to do with it? Hands off our Anna."


A Face for Anti-American Sentiment


Chapman has become a fetish for a resentful nation, embodying most Russians' deep dislike of the United States. Most of all, the Anna cult helps to gloss over the severely battered reputation of Russia's intelligence agencies, which are infected by the same ailments afflicting the entire country: nepotism, corruption and greed.

The head of Russian foreign intelligence, for example, spends his weekends relaxing at a country house on a 10,000-square-meter (roughly two-acre) property. His annual salary of €140,000 ($178,000) is hardly sufficient to pay for the estate or, for that matter, for his 587-square-meter (6,300-square-foot) apartment in Moscow. Russians are very familiar with these figures, because President Dmitry Medvedev has forced the heads of the intelligence agencies to disclose their assets.

Anna, looking self-conscious as she sits in the Starlite, personifies the country's misery. She is no master spy, no creation of the KGB, feared, in part, for its efficiency. She is an attractive intern, not a warrior.


A New Mata Hari?


"My website will be up and running soon," she says. "The contact information for my PR people will be listed there. I am not permitted to talk about my time in America." Her handlers are probably the ones who issued the instructions.

But they apparently did not bar her from capitalizing on her story. She has already posed for the men's magazine Zhara ("Heat") in Moscow's Baltschug Kempinski Hotel.

The publisher characterizes the photos as "revealing," and promises that "Anna's mysterious eyes will drive men to distraction. Next to Mata Hari, Anna is simply the spy with the greatest sex appeal."

Zhara is owned by News Media Russia, the country's most successful tabloid publisher. An associate of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin holds the majority stake in the company.


Welcomed by Putin With Open Arms


Putin, himself a former agent, warmly welcomed Chapman and the other nine spies expelled from the United States, and even sang old fighting songs with them. There is speculation in the media over whether Chapman will run for office in next year's elections.

She wouldn't be the first agent to land a seat in the Russian parliament, the Duma. Andrey Lugovoy made it to second place on ultra-nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky's list of candidates for the parliamentary elections. Lugovoy is believed to be one of the suspects in the murder of Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian agent who defected to the United Kingdom and was poisoned with radioactive polonium-210 -- charges that Lugovoy, of course, denies.

Anatoly Korendyasev, the deputy who represents Chapman's native Volgograd in Putin's United Russia party, is about to retire. Chapman, it seems, would be an ideal replacement, because the seat would remain in the family, so to speak. Korendyasev was also an intelligence agent; in fact, he even held the rank of general.

Political scientist Andrey Mironov has proposed establishing a Chapman museum at her former school. Tatyana Badyeshko, the principal of High School No. 11, remembers her most prominent former student well. She says that she was a respectable girl, but -- as one would expect -- with a thirst for adventure. "Perhaps that's what drove her to get involved in these spy games," says the principal. "But everything Anna did was out of love for her fatherland."


Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

Dangerous Crossroads: U.S. Moves Missiles And Troops To Russian Border

Dangerous Crossroads: U.S. Moves Missiles And Troops To Russian Border

Nuclear and Conventional Arms Pacts Stalled

by Rick Rozoff

2010 is proceeding in a manner more befitting the third month of the year, named after the Roman god of war, than the first whose name is derived from a pacific deity.

On January 13 the Associated Press reported that the White House will submit its Quadrennial Defense Review to Congress on February 1 and request a record-high $708 billion for the Pentagon. That figure is the highest in absolute and in inflation-adjusted, constant (for any year) dollars since 1946, the year after the Second World War ended. Adding non-Pentagon defense-related spending, the total may exceed $1 trillion.

The $708 billion includes for the first time monies for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq which in prior years were in part funded by periodic supplemental requests, but excludes what the above-mentioned report adds is the first in the new administration’s emergency requests for the same purpose: A purported $33 billion.

Already this month several NATO nations have pledged more troops, even before the January 28 London conference on Afghanistan when several thousand additional forces may be assigned for the war there, in addition to over 150,000 already serving or soon to serve under U.S. and NATO command.

Washington has increased lethal drone missile attacks in Pakistan, and calls for that model to be replicated in Yemen have been made recently, most notably by Senator Carl Levin, Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, who on January 13 also advocated air strikes and special forces operations in the country. [1]

The Pentagon will begin the deployment of 1,400 personnel to Colombia to man seven new bases under a 10-year military agreement signed last October 30. [2]

This year the U.S. will also complete the $110 million dollar construction of new military bases in Bulgaria and Romania to house at least 4,000 American troops. [3]

The Pentagon’s newest regional command, Africa Command, will expand its activities on and off the coasts of that continent beyond current counterinsurgency operations in Somalia, Mali and Uganda and drone flights from a newly acquired site in Seychelles. [4]

But this month has brought even more dramatic and dangerous news. The Pentagon has authorized the completion of a $6.5 billion arms deal with Taiwan with an agreement to deliver 200 Patriot Advanced Capability anti-ballistic missiles. The People’s Republic of China is infuriated, as Washington would be if the situation were reversed and Beijing provided a comparable arsenal of weapons to, for example, an independent Puerto Rico. [5]

As though that action was not provocative enough however, on January 20 the Polish Defense Ministry announced that a U.S. Patriot missile battery, and the 100 American soldiers who will operate it, would not be based on the outskirts of the capital of Warsaw as previously announced but in the Baltic Sea city of Morag, 35 miles [6] from Poland’s border with Russia.

The missile battery and troops are scheduled to arrive in March or April. As part of the Obama administration’s new missile shield project, one which will be integrated with NATO to take in all of Europe and extend into the Middle East and the Caucasus, the Patriots will be followed by Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) interceptor deployments on warships in the Baltic Sea and, for the first time ever, a land-based version of the same. “The Pentagon will deploy command posts of SM-3 missiles, which can intercept both short- and mid-range missiles...” [7] An SM-3 was used by the Pentagon to shoot a satellite out of orbit in February of 2008 to give an indication of its range.

Further deployments will follow.

The new, post-George W. Bush administration, interceptor missile system will employ “existing missile systems based on land and at sea... Deployment of the revised missile defense would extend through 2020. The first step is to put existing sea-based weapons systems on Aegis-class destroyers and cruisers. [8]

“Subsequently, a mobile radar system would be deployed in a European nation... More advanced, mobile systems would be put in place later elsewhere in Europe. Their centerpiece would be... Lockheed’s Terminal High Altitude Defense interceptor missiles and improved Standard Missile-3 IB missiles made by... Raytheon.” [9]

Last December Washington signed a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) that formalizes plans for “the United States military to station American troops and military equipment on Polish territory” and “opens the way for the promised Patriot missiles and US troops to be stationed in Poland... as part of an upgrading of NATO air defences in Europe.” [10]

In October, shortly after U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden visited Warsaw to finalize the plan, Polish Deputy Defense Minister Stanislaw Komorowski met with his opposite number from the U.S., Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs Alexander Vershbow, and announced that the American missiles “will be combat-ready, not dummy varieties as Washington earlier suggested.” The same report added that “Earlier, Ukrainian and American officials stated that Ukrainian territory may be used in some way in the new antimissile shield.” [11] Poland borders Russia’s Kaliningrad enclave, but Ukraine has a 1,576 kilometer (979 mile) border with Russia.

The State Department issued a press release on the agreement to deploy American troops to Poland, the first foreign forces to be based there since the end of the Warsaw Pact in 1991, which stated “The agreement will facilitate a range of mutually agreed activities including joint training and exercises, deployments of U.S. military personnel, and prospective Ballistic Missile Defense deployments.” [12]

A Pentagon spokesperson said “U.S. Army Europe will help the Polish Armed Forces develop their air and missile defense capabilities. Considering the cooperative training we already do with the Polish Armed Forces, this Patriot training program is just another extension of that effort.” [13]

If earlier plans to deploy ground-based midcourse missiles to Poland evoked, however implausibly, an alleged Iranian missile threat, the Patriots can only be meant for Russia.

Russian Lieutenant-General Aitech Bizhev, former commander of the United Air Defense System of the Commonwealth of Independent States, told one of his nation’s main news agencies:

“It’s completely unclear why the air defense group of the northern flank of NATO needed strengthening – NATO has manifold superiority over Russian conventional armaments as it is.

“It can’t be ruled out that the stationing of the Patriots in Poland may be followed by other actions in building up the American military infrastructure in Eastern Europe...” [14]

The 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) on the Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms expired on December 5 and has been extended, but no agreement has been reached on a new pact, 48 days later.

At the end of last year Russia’s Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was asked about the delay and identified the main impediment to resolving it: “What is the problem? The problem is that our American partners are building an anti-missile shield and we are not building one.”

He further defined the problem: “If we are not developing an anti-missile shield, then there is a danger that our partners, by creating such ‘an umbrella,’ will feel completely secure and thus can allow themselves to do what they want, disrupting the balance, and aggressiveness will rise immediately.”

In respect to how prospects for the reduction, much less elimination, of nuclear arms in Europe and North America were faring, Putin added, “In order to preserve balance... we need to develop offensive weapons systems,” [15] reiterating a statement by his nation’s president, Dmitry Medvedev, a week before. The timing of the announcement that the Pentagon will soon station Patriot missiles so close to Russian territory will not help matters. Nor was the State Department’s contention that “the START follow-on agreement is not the appropriate vehicle for addressing” the issue of “missile offense and defense.” [16]

A month before, Russian news media revealed that “Russia’s Strategic Missile Forces (SMF), the land-based component of the nuclear triad, will put on combat duty a second regiment equipped with Topol-M mobile missile systems by the end of 2009.

“The Topol-M missile, with a range of about 7,000 miles (11,000 km), is said to be immune to any current and future U.S. ABM [Anti-Ballistic Missile] defense. It is capable of making evasive maneuvers to avoid a kill using terminal phase interceptors [for example Patriot missiles], and carries targeting countermeasures and decoys.” [17]

Just as supplying Taiwan with Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) theater anti-ballistic missiles led China to conduct a ground-based, midcourse missile interception on January 11, so moving U.S. military hardware and troops nearer Russia bodes poorly for a nuclear arms reduction agreement.

On the non-strategic front, the 1990 Treaty On Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) limiting the amount and expansion of major armaments on the continent is also seriously jeopardized by U.S. and NATO missile shield plans. The adapted CFE (Agreement on Adaptation of the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe) of 1999 has not been ratified by any member of NATO, which has linked it with so-called frozen conflicts in the former Soviet Union. The August 2008 Georgia-Russia war was a consequence of that obstructionist and belligerent policy. The establishment of permanent U.S. and NATO military bases in Kosovo, Bulgaria, Romania, Lithuania and now Poland is a gross violation of and may prove the death knell for the CFE.

Russia suspended the observance of its treaty obligations under the CFE on July 14, 2007 because of “extraordinary circumstances... which affect the security of the Russian Federation and require immediate measures.” [18]

The circumstances alluded to were the U.S. project of establishing missile interception facilities in Eastern Europe and the general movement of NATO bases and forces to the Baltic and Black Sea regions.

On November 29 of last year Russia “released a draft of a proposal for a new European security agreement the Kremlin says should replace outdated institutions such as NATO and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).” [19]

Chinese analysts Yu Maofeng and Lu Jingli contend that Moscow was motivated by its concerns over U.S. and NATO missile plans, NATO’s eastward expansion to its borders, the 1999 war against Yugoslavia, Western-sponsored “color revolutions” in other former Soviet states and NATO members’ non-ratification of the Treaty On Conventional Armed Forces in Europe. [20]

For the past thirty years each successive American president has unveiled an ostensible plan to eliminate nuclear weapons, if none before now has received the Nobel Peace Prize while in office [21]. Each in turn then escalated reckless arms buildups and armed aggression abroad in an effort to achieve global military dominance. The current U.S. commander-in-chief with his foreign policy entourage of Robert Gates, James Jones and Hillary Clinton is no exception. [22]


Notes


1) Yemen: Pentagon’s War On The Arabian Peninsula

Stop NATO, December 15, 2009

http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/12/15/yemen-pentagons-war-on-the-arabian-peninsula


2) Rumors Of Coups And War: U.S., NATO Target Latin America

Stop NATO, November 18, 2009

http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/11/18/rumors-of-coups-and-war-u-s-nato-target-latin-america


3) Bulgaria, Romania: U.S., NATO Bases For War In The East

Stop NATO, October 24, 2009

http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/10/25/bulgaria-romania-u-s-nato-bases-for-war-in-the-east


4) AFRICOM Year Two: Seizing The Helm Of The Entire World

Stop NATO, October 22, 2009

http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/10/22/africom-year-two-taking-the-helm-of-the-entire-world


5) U.S.-China Military Tensions Grow

Stop NATO, January 19, 2010

http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/01/20/u-s-china-military-tensions-grow


6) New York Times, January 21, 2010


7) Voice of Russia, December 14, 2009


8) U.S. Missile Shield System Deployments: Larger, Sooner, Broader

Stop NATO, September 27, 2009

Black Sea, Caucasus: U.S. Moves Missile Shield South And East

Stop NATO,September 19, 2009

http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/09/19/283

U.S. Expands Global Missile Shield Into Middle East, Balkans

Stop NATO, September 11, 2009

http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/09/11/u-s-expands-global-missile-shield-into-middle-east-balkans


9) Bloomberg News, January 14, 2010


10) Polish Radio, December 11, 2009


11) Russia Today, October 16, 2009


12) Stars and Stripes, December 21, 2009


13) Ibid


14) Interfax Ukraine, January 20, 2010


15) Reuters, December 29, 2009


16) Ibid


17) Russian Information Agency Novosti, November 18, 2009


18) Time, July 14, 2007


19) Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, November 30, 2009


20) Strategic considerations behind Russian proposal for new European security treaty

Xinhua News Agency, December 1, 2009

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-12/02/content_12571639.htm


21) Obama Doctrine: Eternal War For Imperfect Mankind

Stop NATO, December 10, 2009

http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/12/11/obama-doctrine-eternal-war-for-imperfect-mankind


22) White House And Pentagon: Change, Continuity And Escalation

Stop NATO, March 19, 2009

http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/08/27/white-house-and-pentagon-change-continuity-and-escalation

Global Research Articles by Rick Rozoff