Tag: S-300s

LIVE UPDATES: Russia sold $14.5 billion in armaments last year, many to the world’s conflict zones and has a record $56 billion in arms orders for 2016 after showcasing its weapons in the Syrian war. Welcome to our column, Russia Update, where we will be closely following day-to-day developments in Russia, including the Russian government’s […]

Staunton, October 16 – Having already shown its contempt for the other Caspian littoral states by launching cruise missiles from its squadron on that sea, Moscow will be conducting joint naval exercises with Iran, again apparently without consulting Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan or Turkmenistan, according to Iran’s Fars news agency. Ahmad Reza Baqeri, an Iranian naval captain, […]

Among the many debates surrounding the endless bloodshed in Syria, one of the loudest has been over Russia’s defense of its sale of advanced anti-aircraft missiles (S-300) to the Assad regime. Pointing to the fact that the contracts were signed before the conflict, and justifying their fulfillment as legal under international law, the sale has nevertheless […]

Here’s a quick summary of some of today’s biggest news. -Current Moscow Mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, has stepped down and called for snap elections, despite his previous statements that he would not call for an early election. It seems a calculated move on the part of Sobyanin and the Kremlin, designed to take advantage of his […]

A quick recap of top Russia stories today: – Pussy Riot member Maria Alyokhina has ended her hunger strike after prison officials finally conceded to her demands. One of three members of the female punk rock band, jailed for performing a protest song inside Moscow’s main cathedral, went on a hunger strike in protest of […]

Here are some of the biggest Russia-focused stories from the past week: – In the wake of the Ryan Fogle spy debacle, and the endless debate on Syria, Obama and Putin have reverted to the 19th-century method of writing courier-delivered letters to each other instead of picking up a phone to discuss bilateral relations. According […]

Drawing on some of the material first translated and published at The Interpreter, I’ve made another attempt to explain why, in spite of the United States’ dogged efforts, the Kremlin is not abandoning its position on Syria — if anything, it’s digging in further. My column at NOW Lebanon this week: The United States pretends to […]

The New Times has gone to London, Moscow, Tel-Aviv and Damascus to learn about the new diplomatic duel between the Kremlin and the West, the Russian missile systems provided to Assad and its impact on regional dynamics. The talks between US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian President Vladimir Putin with Russian Foreign Minister […]

Within the space of the last 24 hours, the New York Times and The Wall Street Journal have shed more light on the steady and unchanged nature of the Russian-Syrian military relationship. First, the Times reported that Russia has sent advanced Yakhont anti-ship missiles to Syria “outfitted with an advanced radar that makes them more […]