Russia is ready to participate in a tender to offer Turkey S-300 and S-400 surface-to-air missile systems, the state-controlled arms exporter said on Wednesday.
“The Turkish military has a great need for S-300 and S-400 long-range missile defense systems,” Rosoboronexport CEO Anatoly Isaikin said. “Russia has expressed its readiness to participate in a tender for the delivery of such systems.”
He said leading SAM manufacturers from Western countries would participate in the tender “on a par with Russia.”
He gave no indication as to what specific SAM modifications would be offered or the timeframe for the tender.
Turkish military experts have said Ankara is interested in the Russian missiles, which could effectively protect the country’s southern borders.
The advanced version of the S-300 missile system, called S-300PMU1, has a range of over 150 kilometers (over 100 miles) and can intercept ballistic missiles and aircraft at low and high altitudes, making it effective in warding off air strikes.
The S-300V/Antey 2500 (SA-12 Gladiator/Giant) consists of a new command vehicle, an array of advanced radars and up to six loader vehicles assigned to each launcher.
The S-400 (SA-21 Growler) is capable of simultaneously engaging six targets to a range of 400 km (250 miles) and an altitude up to 30 kilometers, including aircraft, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles
To offer the S-400 to Turkey is very stupid. As it was to sell S-300 to Greece, tough a bit less stupid. NATO countries and Israel have been using the Greek S-300 to train against these system. But at least S-300 is not anymore the most advanced Russian SAM, S-400 is. That is why I hope Russia won’t be stupid enough to sell these to Turkey, even downgraded versions. S-400 should be sold only to reliable partners (and later, as production is still small and Russian air defense forces are need more of these), countries they can trust won’t compromise the effectiveness of these systems, like India, Venezuela, Belarus and Iran.
@Carlo: I tend to agree. I guess the Russians need funds to work on the next S-500 or S-600 generation, and I am quite sure that the software the Turks will be getting will be different from the Russian one. Still, this does offer NATO a terrific opporunity to train against the most advanced air-defense system in the world.
That 2 really bad policy decision the Russians have taken. This is very depressing to me…
@ Carlo/VINEYARDSAKER:
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To offer the S-400 to Turkey is very stupid.
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That 2 really bad policy decision the Russians have taken. This is very depressing to me…
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I don’t understand all the pro-Russian comments: Why put even one iota of faith or hope in the Russians about anything related to anti-imperialism? That’s like giving Barack Obama the Nobel Prize for “changing” the direction of the ship after Bush [oh, wait, they did that already…]. Russian imperialism/nationalism/racism/capitalism is no less evil than the Euro-American variety. It’s just Microsoft vs Apple.
Sorry for the noise and
Peace
I tend to agree with Ishamid to some degree, but with the caveat that it is not Russian policy to interfere with each and every country’s internal affairs. Russian imperialism cannot come close to that of the US or NATO, at least not now. You could argue that if Russia were stronger, it would be more aggressive. Perhaps, but in the here and now, it isn’t.
Additionally, small and mid-level nations do better when there are two or three power centers competing with each other, rather than one dominant power.
Therefore, I do think a stronger Russia is in the interests of anti-imperial forces.
At least for the moment :-)
P.S. I recall an argument I had with an Empire cheerleader, who insisted that Russia was the real imperial power and the US was not. He thought he made a good point when he asked me “how did Russia become such a large country, if it isn’t an imperialist?”
I asked him, “how did the US become as large as it is now?” He thought a moment, and changed the subject.
“Russian imperialism/nationalism/racism/capitalism is no less evil than the Euro-American variety. It’s just Microsoft vs Apple.”
Here I strongly disagree with you. Russia is far from perfect, has made and still makes a lot of mistakes, but your regard is unfair. If you talk about Russian capitalism, then I agree, Russia nowadays is very pragmatic in its economical relations, and this is one of the most important causes of clashes between Russia and Belarus: Lukashenko is the most “Soviet” leader in the former USSR, and he can’t understand why the hell Russians want him to pay the same prize for gas as Western European.
But Russia is not an Empire anymore, it’s not overly nationalist, and it has absolutely no official racist doctrine. Yes, racism has been on the rise among the population in the last 2 decades, but it seems that the Russian police at last began to combat it, and according to Russian statistics attacks on foreigners/”non-slavic” people have decreased this year. And the Russian government actively tries to make allies among countries considered “non-white”, like Latin American or Asian countries (India is one of the closest economical and military partners of Russia, and Nicaragua, Venezuela and the tiny Pacific state of Nauru are the only countries who supported Russia and recognized South Ossetia and Abkhazia). Also, Russia is one of the most important countries resisting the Empire (the only one that exists nowadays), and the only among the resistance that has military technology capable of competing with the US (see e.g. the PAK FA, which the Saker reported here, the only 5th generation fighter developed outside the US). Yes, Russia makes mistakes by not supporting Iran as it should, but it is unfair to consider Russia an ally and a vassal of the Empire, like if Russia behaved like Western Europe.
Venezuela, Nicaragua, Iran, even China, would be in a much more difficult situation if it wasn’t for Russia, which supllies them with modern weapons and in some cases with finantial support, like they did with some Latin American countries.
Hi Carlo,
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But Russia is not an Empire anymore
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Counterexample: The brutal crushing of Chechnyan independence — the implosion of the Chechen liberation struggle into gangsterism notwithstanding. Such gangsterism is a natural sociological response to severe oppression and repression over decades. Otherwise, Chechnya has been on the forefront of resistance to Russian imperialism for over 150 years.
Other victims of Russian imperialism, such as the Daghestanis and Tatars, have been systematically repressed and prevented from seeking independence.
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it’s not overly nationalist
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Russia seems to promote Slavic nationalism whenever it can; it was one of Milosovic’s biggest defenders, not to mention gangsters like Mladic and Karadic.
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Yes, racism has been on the rise among the population in the last 2 decades, but it seems that the Russian police at last began to combat it, and according to Russian statistics attacks on foreigners/”non-slavic” people have decreased this year.
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That sounds quite apologetic ;-) Russia may not be fascist, but the racism in Russia runs deeper than most European countries. Talk to anyone of Central Asian citizenship or heritage who lives in Moscow or other cities. Police stop non-whites all the time — racial profiling –, and any non-white who is caught without one’s “papers” WILL be taken to jail. Ask any Chinese businessman in Moscow as well.
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And the Russian government actively tries to make allies among countries considered “non-white”, like Latin American or Asian countries
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Strategic, not principled. Selling the S-400 to Nato but not the lesser S-300 to Iran is not stupid, but strategic. Russia has always been in strategic competition with Western Europe. See below.
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South Ossetia and Abkhazia
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Georgia, South Ossetia and Abkhazia are just pawns on the chessboard between Nato and Russia. If South Ossetia and Abkhazia were pro-US — with Abkhazia offering the US a base, and Georgia pro-Russia, all other sociological variables being the same, would you still support South Ossetia’s and Abkhazia’s independence?
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Yes, Russia makes mistakes by not supporting Iran as it should, but it is unfair to consider Russia an ally and a vassal of the Empire, like if Russia behaved like Western Europe.
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Not a vassal for sure, perhaps even ‘ally’ is not the best word. Russia is a full member of the Imperial Empire, but its relationship with the US-pole of the Empire is dialectical. Russia plays footsy with the anti-imperial states, but to what end? The Soviet Imperial Empire was just as imperialist as the Western Empire, with which it remains in dialectical symbiosis. Medvedev recently joined the anti-Iran chorus with full gusto. Why? Stupid? No, it’s strategic!
Whatever Iran’s faults — many for sure –, its most important contribution is a truely independent ideological, political, and anti-imperial path. Even Cuba cannot claim this. This independence threatens the Empire, Nato- and Russia-wings alike. As I’ve written in comment elsewhere on this blog, Iran is a useful tool for Russia in certain contexts, but it is one that cannot be allowed to grow but so far. S-300 cancellation, Bushehr-plant delays, SCO-stalling on Iran membership: If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and waddles like a duck…. well, I leave the conclusion to you :-)
Peace
Hi Lysander:
You are largely right, I think… but your points appear to be quite different from placing faith or hope in Russia to “do the right thing”.
On another point:
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“how did Russia become such a large country, if it isn’t an imperialist?”
“how did the US become as large as it is now?”
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I rest my case :D
Peace
Russia did what a Russian patriot would do in the face of international oligarchs (Jewish mostly)that tried to take over after the fall of the USSR. The situation in the US is that international capitalism means everything is for sale, including the “free” press, which is not exactly free but not too expensive either. Putin said no to this crowd which is not used to people standing up on their hind legs and asserting National prerogatives.
Sure Russia is a pain for people in their sphere, but a victory against the forces that have destroyed the US as a free country makes me hopeful. Looked at through the lens of our problems in the US, I prefer nationalist croneyism over a cabal which steers the national destiny to advance the national interests of a foreign country. Neither are idea. Short of a philosopher king ,
I would like to return to a balance of power between great nations that respect one another in their respective back yards. This bunch that runs the US thinks the are masters of the universe, and that they define a new world order run by themselves. The USSR is gone, the fourth international etc, and good riddance. Russia, given respect by the US in their own back yard, I can live with.
Continuing: I admire Iran, and I mostly agree with what you say about this country, that it probably has the most consistent anti-Imperial policy in the world. And remember that Iran has never supported the so-called “liberation” movements in the Northern Caucasus. Why? I guess not only not to be at odds with their powerful Northern neighbour, but also because they saw that, if the “Ichkeria Republic” one day gained independecy, it would be either a Turkish (therefore, pro-NATO) satellite, or more probably a carbon-copy of Taliban Afghanistan.
Ishamid, again I can’t agree with you. Your discourse is the typical pro-Chechen “independence” we find in the Western press, and in fact pretending to denounce Imperialism you are falling to it, by supporting US and NATO policy of “Balcanization”. There was a long and strong history of resisting the Russian empire in the Caucasus, but what we saw in Chechnya in the 1990’s was largely a Wahhabi movement supported by foreign powers (Turkey and other Middle East countries, and more covertly the US and NATO), which wanted to implement what they called “sharya” all over Northern Caucasus. And just like Muslim Bosnians were US paws in the Yugoslavian civil wars (I know you and Saker had a disagreement over this, and I agree with Saker in this subject), the same goes for Chechens. After the two wars and all the mess they had to suffer during the years of de facto independecy (1991-1994, 1996-1999), ask the Chechens if they want independency, and most will surely say “no”. And in other republics inside the Russian federation, separatism is even lower, absolutely insignificant. Tartars have a very good standart of living (for a Russian region), there is no serious racial or religious tension between Orthodox Russians and Muslim Tartars. Yes, in the early 90’s Tartarstan refused to sign the Federation Treaty for a while, but accepted after they received more autonomy and saw that independence would be useless, as this republic is deep inside Russia. As for Daghestan, it was an island of stability and peace in the Northern Caucasus in the 1990’s, till Chechen Wahhabis began acting there. And due to a very reinforced security in Chechen, these “freedom fighters” have mostly moved to Daghestan and Ingushetia.
About racism, my point is that we have to make a difference between the government policies and the population. In the government policies, domestic and (specially) foreign, there is no racism whatsoever. I agree completely with Saker when he says that Israel is the last racist state in the world. Among the population, yes, unfortunately there is a strong racism, and the Russian authorities didn’t care about this problem as much as they should, but it seems that since last year they began to care, and I have hopes that it is beginning (just beginning, there is still a long way to go) to drop. Anyway, if Russians are so terrible against “non-Slavic people”, why do these continue flooding Russia? Russia takes the second place amongst countries that most receive immingrats, and this counting only legal immigrants. Hundreds of thousands of people from the South Caucasus and Central Asia keep going to Russia every year, most of them illegally.
About the supposed Russian support of the Empire, it seems to me that the cause is the never solved argument between Slavophiles and Westerners. There is still a large portion of people in Russia who think that their country belongs to the West, to Europe, and nowadays this largely means integrating with North Atlantic institutions. NATO is hugely unpopular in Russia and no politician will ever propose joining this alliance, but many think that Russia should cooperate more closely to it. And it seems that Medvedev is implementing more “Westernizing” policies than Putin in his second presidency, and I regret this. But, like I’ve commented in another post, we can see there is a strong disagreement inside the Russian political elite, as one day one official says Russia will supply S-300 to Iran, then the following day another one denies. I hope that at last the “anti-NATO”, “anti-Western” tendency will win, as the last 20 years should have taught the Russians not to trust the US and its vassals.
@ishamid
Brutal crushing of Chechen independence my ass.
Chechnya declared independence in 93 but the war did not start until 94 so it was not about separatism.
The Chechens were launching a genocidal campaign of mass rape killing kidnapping and ethnic cleansing as well as being a base for the mayor organised crime groups in Russia the is what sparked an intervention which Chechnya was never an independent country and the Northern area was attached and incorporated into Chechnya under Khrushchev
http://conrad2001.narod.ru/english/genocide/genocide_1.htm
They are a part of British/Rothschild control of the Caspian oil basin with British/Polish former Solidarity member and intelligence asset Mansour Yahimchik who became a citizen of Chechnya under the Mashkadov regime and acted as a liaison for British oil and business interest helping set up the Caucasus-American Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Washington.
The also started the second war with they were obviously training and preparing for setting up and extending international networks and camps with the Taliban and the KLA.
All the info and organisations operating in the North Caucasus are financed by the CIA through NED, Soros, British Foreign Office, etc were we get our info like the hyper-inflated death toll not back up by any evidence.
Imperialism what imperialism? The majority of Russia’s wars historically have been defensive and is responding to regional states as US lead threats to its security and stability from sponsorship of terrorism in the Caucasus and Central Asia to cutting of Russian oil and gas transit routes to the EU.
Why not talk of Turkey’s imperialism especially since the collapse of the USSR in 89.
You know, I was reading antiwar.com when I noticed a clip saying Turkey faces “payback” in congress for its wicked deeds of late. (And they weren’t talking about Kurdistan)
And it occurred to me that as the US was throwing its most reliable ally in the Middle East (or pretty much anywhere) under the bus, the Russians have been actively courting Turkey. With trade deals, nuclear energy and now arms sales.
While it’s too early to say where all this will lead, I’m beginning to view this as all to the good.
Ishamid,
You are right. No one can “count” on Russia. But nevertheless, Russia, simply by existing, is a check on imperial freedom of action. We all wish it would do more, but it is still doing quite a lot.
Carlo,
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Your discourse is the typical pro-Chechen “independence” we find in the Western press
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That’s a straw-man argument :-)
In any case, the left-wing/alternative press in the West has been as bitterly opposed to Muslim movements of liberation as the right-wing/mainstream press, and just as full of it.
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but what we saw in Chechnya in the 1990’s was largely a Wahhabi movement supported by foreign powers
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Another straw man. More to the point, the Chechnyan liberation struggle was coopted by Wahhabism, not instigated by it.
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ask the Chechens if they want independency, and most will surely say “no”.
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ask most Palestinians if they wil accept an [unjust] 2-state solution, and most will say “yes”. When one is under the boot, the most immediate priority is getting the pain to stop.
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we can see there is a strong disagreement inside the Russian political elite, as one day one official says Russia will supply S-300 to Iran, then the following day another one denies.
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They are just stringing Iran along, and most any Iranian analyst will agree.
Best regards and
Peace
@ John,
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Brutal crushing of Chechen independence my ass.
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This is the kind of ideologically tinged tunnel vision that harms opportunities for mutual conversation between various wings of anti-imperialist discourse.
Before making absolute judgments about Chechnya, look at some of the progressive Islamic movement perspective on that conflict, eg
http://www.crescenticit.com/
[BTW: I would hope that Saker adds this to his alternative media links]
I don’t endorse all of their analyses, I’m very critical of them in some respects, but it’s probably the best site of its kind in English. For the history and context of the Chechnyan liberation struggle, it proved to have a deep understanding of the issues and context.
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Imperialism what imperialism? The majority of Russia’s wars historically have been defensive
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[jaw hits the floor] ??!! You can’t possibly be serious about THAT claim :-) And any educated person living in Central Asia or South Asia will be utterly shocked by such a statement.
The tunnel vision of Western anti-imperialists when it comes to Russia’s anti-Muslim imperialism in the Middle East, the Caucasus, Central Asia, even the Balkans, never ceases to astound me.
One thing that has been missing from much of anti-imperialist analyses in the West, especially the pro-Russia bias wrt to Muslim resistance to Slavic oppression, is an understanding of the sociology of oppression and oppressed peoples, especially Muslim victims of imperialism. A study of post-slavery Black America, post Apartheid South Africa, Post-communist Muslims, Palestinians and other peoples who have been systematically savaged reveals certain psychoses and pathologies. Ignoring these issues makes it easy to, eg, dismiss the Chechen liberation struggle as mere Wahhabist mischief and similar cannards.
We must all be wary of propaganda, and even more wary of our OWN propoganda.
John et al.: I invite you to learn more about the liberation struggles of Muslim peoples from a Muslim-liberation perspective. Then judge as you like.
Peace
Idris
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The Chechens had their chance back in 94 and they blew it. Majority of the Russians back then wanted to get rid of the whole bunch of all autonomies and republics. Including Chechnya, Dagestan, Ingushetia… all of them. Thus in 94 the army felt like it was fighting for a foreign land. The Russian army has a history of bad performance when fighting abroad. Funny but Dagestan had no desire to leave back then. They actually took it very personal when the Chechens struck at Dagestan in 1999. The locals in huge numbers went to form self defence units before the Russian military moved in.
The Chechens had their independence but it turned out that it wasn’t what they wanted.