Russia and Cuba: Remembering the Cold War

Cuba's President, Raul Castro and Russia's Prime Minister, Dmitry Medvedev

Russia to lease eight jets worth $650 million to its Cold War- era ally Cuba and will partially write off the country's multi-billion-dollar debt owed during the Soviet-era under agreements signed during Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev's visit to Havana.

Moscow will write off part of the $30 billion debt and will offer a 10-year refinancing plan for the remaining amount, according to the preliminary agreement, Russia's industry and trade minister Denis Manturov told reporters on the sidelines of the talks.

"There was an accumulated debt on loans allocated by the Soviet Union and we have now prepared an agreement that should undergo all the necessary procedures," he said.

Manturov said the final decision on debt settlement will be signed by the end of the year.

Russia will also lease three Ilyushin-96-400 long-haul jets, three AN-158 regional planes and two TU-204SM mid-range aircraft to Cuba under the agreements inked in the presence of Medvedev and Cuban leader Raul Castro.

Moscow will provide sovereign guarantees to a syndicate of Russian banks financing the deal, Manturov said.

Medvedev and Castro were seen chatting informally and broadly smiling during the ceremony. The Cuban leader greeted reporters in Russian.

Russia and Cuba enjoyed close relations during the Cold War which was between the Soviet Union and Washington over world hegemony and supremacy.

The volume of trade between the two countries last year was roughly $200 million. Oil companies from Russia, the world's largest energy exporter, are drilling into Cuba's offshore oil deposits which has also being of interest to the United States.

Nuclear talks between Russia and the United States

                              

                              
The United States is to send a top arms-control official to Moscow to convince the Russians to continue to decommission deployed nuclear weapons by saying it would save the two countries $8 billion a year, Kommersant reported citing an undisclosed source.

The initiative will target weapon categories not covered by the Russian-US agreement, which is called New START. The treaty pretends that strategic bombers can carry only a single warhead instead of up to 20 and does not consider weapons held in storage and smaller-scale tactical weapons.

A more drastic reduction would bring down the number of warhead by another third to some 1,000 to 1,100, according to the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit journalistic organization. The number would be sufficient to maintain US’ deterrence capability and would not require structural changes to nuclear forces, the consensus in Washington says.

White House officials reportedly believe that the approaching limit of 1,550 strategic deployed nuclear weapons, agreed upon in the 2010 New START agreement, could be brought down to 1,000 without compromising nuclear deterrence between the two powers.

Pyotr Topychkanov, a nonproliferation programme coordinator at the Carnegie Moscow Center, said that "in terms of its defence strategy, the US is shifting its focus toward conventional [non-nuclear] weapons, while Russia remains more nuclear-dependent. Therefore, it is easier for the US to talk about further nuclear arms reductions."

"Russia cannot keep up with the pace of these [conventional-weapon] developments and thus still heavily relies on its nuclear might," he added. "In contrast with the US, Russia also finds itself in a close vicinity of many other nuclear-weapon states, such as India, Pakistan and North Korea."

Russia and the United States: No Common Ground

                                                    'The fear of Putin.......'

It seems that US-Russian relations are in a state of pure noises and mere words full of repetitions and sounds and the only option left for the leaders of both countries is to behave like provincial actors repeating a meaningless jumble of words.

The security conference in Munich over the weekend provided a convincing demonstration of this. Both US Vice President Joseph Biden and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov tried to put a positive face on things by emphasizing the New START, cooperation on Afghanistan and Russia's accession to the World Trade Organization, but their words left no doubt that the two countries are at loggerheads and that attempts to break the impasse will be the main focus of US-Russian relations for a long time to come.

No matter how many vague and evasive statements officials might make, it is obvious that US-Russian relations have hit what is probably their lowest point in the past 20 years. Congress passed the Magnitsky Act, which the Kremlin considers an infringement on Russian sovereignty. For its part, in the span of just a few months Moscow evicted USAID, announced its withdrawal from the Nunn-Lugar program, prohibited individuals with US citizenship from holding leadership positions in Russian nongovernmental organizations and banned US citizens from adopting Russian orphans.

On the surface, it would seem that Washington is so frightened by the erratic behavior of President Vladimir Putin that it is ready to accept the rules of his new game and play the whipping boy, thereby lending credence to Putin's claim that he is a tough guy who has forced the US to put up with his abuse. After all, Washington is willing to maintain the appearance of decent relations with Moscow because it desperately needs a northern transit route out of Afghanistan.

Many believe that the Obama administration will end up making concessions to Moscow in the next four years. After all, newly appointed Secretary of State John Kerry and likely new Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel have consistently opposed the very type of global interventionism that infuriates the Kremlin. In this situation, it would be logical to assume that Kerry, Hagel and National Security Advisor Thomas Donilon will push Obama to "appease" the Kremlin.

Concessions could take the form of an agreement not to deploy ships equipped with missile-defense interceptors in the Baltic and North seas, thereby relinquishing even the theoretical US ability to intercept Russian nuclear missiles. What's more, the U.S. could announce that it will postpone for an indefinite period the implementation of the fourth stage of deployment of its missile defense system, a stage that will give the US the ability to destroy long-range strategic nuclear missiles.

But even these bold efforts would be in vain because in reality, US missile defense deployments in Europe are just a pretext. The real reason for Putin's discontent with Washington is based in his sincere belief that the Moscow protests against his regime were US-­sponsored. He is convinced that the US State Department is out to stage a color revolution in Russia and deprive him of power.

This creates an obvious impasse. Washington cannot give the one guarantee that is most important for the Kremlin — that there will not be any more mass protests — for the simple reason that the State Department and CIA have no control over Russia's street demonstrations.

The Obama administration has recognized the futility of trying to appease Putin. For example, the US announced that it was withdrawing from the Civil Society Working Group of the US-Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission. Deputy Secretary of State Thomas Melia did not mince words, saying the US was withdrawing because "recent steps taken by the Russian government to impose restrictions on civil society … called into serious question whether maintaining that mechanism was either useful or appropriate." In the end, Washington refused to take part in what had become a hypocritical farce.

If the decision to walk away from the civil society working group was linked to the new team in the State Department, then it is a clear sign of a major change in Washington's policy toward Russia. Biden's comments in Munich seem to confirm this. Yes, Russia remains a key player in solving global security issues that are important for Obama, but Biden made it clear that the US has no intention of pretending for the Kremlin's sake that Russia is a democracy. "It's no secret that we have serious differences on issues like Syria, missile defense, NATO enlargement, democracy, human rights. These differences are real," Biden said in Munich.

Washington does not want to pursue its old policy of engagement, which was based on the assumption that by working with Moscow on issues important to both sides, the US would gradually instill democratic values in Russia. This approach has never worked with the Putin regime. In Obama's second term, it seems that the US will treat Russia as it does any other authoritarian government and will express its disapproval when the regime violates the rights of its citizens.

If the first result of that new approach is the withdrawal from the Civil Society Working Group, then eventually the question of Russia's membership in the Group of Eight will be called into question. Last year, Putin ignored the G8 summit in the US, and the day may not be far off when the presidents of the seven leading democratic countries decide they have nothing to discuss with their Russian counterpart.

Russia and the Gay Ban: Distancing Herself from Europe

Russia has distanced itself from the homosexual 'madness' sweeping across Europe and North America by passing anti-gay law. The bill was passed by the State Duma and it has been criticised by international rights group.

The bill has the backing of 338 deputies, with only one lawmaker opposing it, Sergei Kuzin of United Russia, and one abstaining, Dmitry Gudkov of A Just Russia.

The bill, which stipulates fines for promoting homosexuality among minors, was introduced in the Duma in March by Novosibirsk regional lawmakers. The date for its consideration in the Duma had been pushed back several times before being voted on in a first reading Friday.

Gudkov wrote on Twitter that the bill was being used to distract people from "more important" topics, such as a bill passed in a first reading this week giving regions the option not to hold gubernatorial elections.

Human rights organizations said the bill would aggravate divisions in society over the issue of gay rights.

The bill is already being protested against by gay activists. A protest led to a clash between the activists and the pro-bill supporters. Police arrested 20 people in connexion to the clashes.

Similar laws have been passed in St. Petersburg and several regions including Novosibirsk, Ryazan, Arkhangelsk and Kostroma.

"A similar bill in the Ryazan region was recognized as being discriminatory by the UN Committee on Human Rights in October," said Yulia Gorbunova of Human Rights Watch. "We are concerned that instead of adjusting Russian legislation to international norms, our government wants to make the law work on the federal level."

Russia seems to be proving that she is a distinct entity in Europe with certain indigenous standards and customs.

Another Nigeria and Libya: Mali Forces and undue Executions

Mali could be on the verge of creating a haven for a long-term insurgency-style of continuous attacks that could gradually consume West Africa with the constant human rights abuses the Malian army has been accused of committing.

Mali's army has sealed off a central town amid allegations that some of its soldiers had summarily executed dozens of people allegedly connected to rebel fighters. The experience of Nigeria in the Boko Haram menace ought to be a foundation structure for counter-activities on the rebels.

The International Federation of Human Rights Leagues said on Thursday that in the central town of Sevare at least 11 people were executed in a military camp near a bus station and the town's hospital, citing evidence gathered by local researchers.

Credible reports also pointed to around 20 other people having been executed in the same area and the bodies having been dumped in wells or otherwise disposed of, the organisation said. At Niono, two Malian Tuaregs were executed by Malian soldiers, according to the FIDH. All these executions and killings are properly documented.

The rights group, Human Rights Watch, said its investigators had spoken to witnesses who saw the executions of two Tuareg men in the village of Siribala, near Niono. The group also said witnesses had reported "credible information" of soldiers sexually abusing women in a village near Sevare, and called on the government to urgently investigate these incidents, AFP news agency reported.

The majority of the al-Qaeda-linked rebels being hunted by the armies are either Tuaregs or Arabs, reports say.

 But Mali's army has denied the claims. General Ibrahima Dahirou Dembele, the Malian army chief, promised that any soldier involved in abuses would be brought to book.

"One mustn't get confused. Every white skin is not a terrorist or a jihadist and among the enemy which attacked our different position were many black skins. We are among brothers, whether one is black or white."

Jean-Yves Le Drian, the French defence minister, urged extreme "vigilance" against any abuses, saying the "honour of the (Malian) troops is at stake".

Laurent Fabius, the French foreign minister, said: "We cannot accept any rights violations. The international community will face a very serious situation if (the intervention force) is identified with abuses." The rebels in Mali are the same people NATO and the West armed against Gaddafi in Libya a Russian official said.

A circulating news now is that the rebels have become factional and one group is ready for negotiation. How credible this group will be is yet to be known as it is almost a tradition for rebel groups to split under such intense firepower.

Mali could end up becoming another Libya in which weapons will be freely circulated among groups after being delivered by Western powers. The Kremlin confirms this as well as Hillary Clinton in her statement delivered to congress on Wednesday.