Russia Invites Ukraine To Join Ex-Soviet Security Bloc

[Ryan Ruck]

Russia Invites Ukraine To Join Ex-Soviet Security Bloc

May 18, 2010

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Tuesday invited Ukraine to join a security bloc of former Soviet republics, a step that would draw Ukraine closer into Moscow's embrace.

Ukraine has forged warm ties with its former Soviet masters since the February election of President Viktor Yanukovich as president. Yanukovich, an ex-mechanic from the Russian-leaning east of the country, frequently speaks Russian at public events.

Former Ukrainian president Viktor Yushchenko shunned Russia and attempted to take his country into NATO, despite considerable public opposition. NATO members put Ukrainian membership on the back burner in 2008.

Medvedev, on his first state visit to Ukraine, said he would welcome the former Soviet republic into the Russian-dominated Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO).

"If in the future you would consider it proper to join the CSTO, we would be happy to accept you," Medvedev said in Kiev. "The CSTO is not the Warsaw Pact... we do not need confrontation with NATO or other military blocs."

The CSTO includes Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. It originally began in 1992 as the CST. Members have conducted military exercises and in recent years some of them agreed to set up a peacekeeping force and a rapid reaction force.

Ukraine agreed last month to allow Russia's Black Sea fleet to extend its lease on a base in the Crimean port of Sevastopol until 2042 in exchange for cheaper gas imports from Russia.

[Ryan Ruck]

Russia Set To Use Naval Pilot Training Facilities In Ukraine

6/25/2010

Russia will use facilities on Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula for naval pilot training in the next few years, the Russian defense minister said on Friday.

In line with a 1997 bilateral agreement, Russia used the Nitka Naval Pilot Training Center in Ukraine as the only training facility for its naval pilots, but Kiev has been less willing to allow Russian pilots to train at the facility in the past few years and, according to some sources, was even planning to rent it to China.

"Russia is interested in the continuation of its naval pilot training at this [the Nitka] facility," Anatoly Serdyukov said after a session of a Russian-Ukrainian sub-committee on security.

The Russian minister said Moscow and Kiev were preparing an agreement on the conditions of a new rental deal.

The Nitka Center was built in the Soviet era for pilots to practice their skills in taking off from and landing on an aircraft carrier's deck.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, the facility remained under Ukrainian jurisdiction. The Ukrainian Navy does not have an aircraft carrier.

The center provides naval aviation training facilities such as a launch pad, an aerofinisher, a trampoline, a catapult launching device, a glide-path localizer, a marker beacon, and an optical landing system.

Meanwhile, Moscow has announced plans to start construction of a naval pilot training facility on the Sea of Azov in southern Russia in 2010.

The new center will be built at an old airfield near the town of Eisk on the Sea of Azov, which is separated from the Black Sea by the Kerch Strait between the Crimean and Taman peninsulas.

According to the head of Russia's naval pilot training, Col. Alexander Mudrenov, the new center will cost some 24 billion rubles ($730 million) and will take two years to complete.

Russia, which has only one aircraft carrier - the Admiral Kuznetsov - is aiming to finish drafting plans for a new nuclear-powered aircraft carrier for its Navy by 2012 and build at least three of the ships for its Northern and Pacific fleets.

[American Patriot]

Invites? Or threatens?

LOL

[American Patriot]

I'm with you Michael. I have always thought the "Fall" of the Soviet Union was pretty much a ruse.

[vector7]

The Bear is quickly regaining strength with special ties to a growing Dragon.

[vector7]

Companion Thread:

• Ukraine extends Russia naval base lease for 25 years

Ukrainian armed forces to join Belarus and Russia in first “post”-Soviet trilateral war game in September; Medvedev woos Lukashenko, Yanukovich in Sochi; Kiev: Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian mercenaries may be fighting for deposed Qaddafi

2 Comments Posted by periloustimes1 on August 31, 2011



Last week, Russia’s Chief of the General Staff, Nikolai Makarov, former commander of the Group of Soviet Forces in (East) Germany, announced that this year Ukraine will for the first time participate in the regular Russian-Belarusian military exercise known as Union Shield.

“With great pleasure I want to announce that for the first time in the post-Soviet time, a [airmobile] unit of the Armed Forces of Ukraine will take part in the joint maneuvers,” Makarov told journalists on August 26. He noted that Russia and Ukraine participate in the annual joint naval exercise Farvater Mira (Fairway of Peace). “I think it’s time to go to a new level of cooperation,” he added, no doubt remembering his career in the multi-national Soviet Armed Forces.

This year’s Russian-Belarusian military drill, Union Shield 2011, will take place between September 16 and 22, and will involve 12,000 servicemen, among them 7,000 from Russia and 5,000 from Belarus, as well as up to 50 airplanes and helicopters and 200 pieces of military hardware, including 100 tanks. The joint exercise will be held at the Gorokhovetsky training ground in Russia’s Nizhny Novgorod region and the Ashuluk training ground in the Astrakhan region. The program of the maneuvers was prepared by the General Staffs of Belarus and Russia, together with the staff of the Russian Armed Forces’ Western Military District.

In order to allay the fears of NATO states that the Union Shield drills target the West, Makarov soothed: “One must stress that we have made a decision to hold the exercise called Union Shield 2011 on the territory of the Russian Federation, far from the borders with NATO member states to demonstrate the Union State’s transparent and peaceful policy and confirm the defensive nature of the [Belarusian-Russian] Regional Group of Forces.”

Together, Russia, Ukraine and Belarus comprised the European nucleus of the Soviet Union, which in December 1991 the Communist Party deceptively dismantled as part of a stealthy, long-range plan for global conquest. Founded in 1996, the Union State of Russia and Belarus is one of several international organizations that have incrementally restored some of the political, economic, and military alliances that once bound the 15 Soviet republics. A proposed flag for the Union State, pictured above, was consciously modeled on that of the USSR.

On August 11, President Dmitry Medvedev received Ukrainian counterpart Viktor Yanukovich in Sochi, the Russian leader’s subtropical getaway on the Black Sea. There the two “ex”-communists considered several bilateral issues, such as the relationship between Ukraine and the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and between Ukraine and the Customs Union of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan, both of which Kiev has yet to join.

Medvedev and Yanukovich also focused on “strengthening the legal framework” of the presence of the Russian Navy’s Black Sea Fleet on the territory of Ukraine (Sevastopol, Crimea). The Sochi summit was an important step in the preparation for the next meeting of the Ukrainian-Russian Intergovernmental Commission. The Russian and Ukrainian presidents also addressed the issue of the arrest on corruption charges of Ukraine’s ex-prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, like Medvedev a graduate of the old Soviet Komsomol.

On August 22, it was the turn of Medvedev’s embattled Belarusian counterpart, Alexander Lukashenko, to show up in Sochi. There for two and a half hours, Medvedev and Lukashenko, another “ex”-communist, discussed the transformation of the Customs Union into the Common Economic Space of Belarus, Russia and Kazakhstan, starting January 1, 2012. The heads of state agreed to hold the Supreme Council of the Union State in November. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, Medvedev’s mentor, is chairman of the Union State’s Council of Ministers.

Medvedev and Lukashenko also discussed Rosatom’s construction of a nuclear power plant in Belarus, which to this day suffers from the deadly radioactive effects of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. Rosatom lately constructed a NPP in the Kaliningrad exclave, wedged between Poland and Lithuania.

Medvedev and Lukashenko then turned their attention to details related to the equipping of a rapid response force for CSTO, as well as the conditions of hosting foreign (US) military bases on the territory of the CSTO states. They also considered the prospects of Ukraine’s pro-Moscow government leading that former Soviet republic into CSTO membership, a prospect definitely improved through Ukraine’s participation in Union Shield 2011.

Finally, Lukashenko related the details of his recent visit to the Arabian country of Qatar, and the prospects of cooperation with Communist Venezuela, a close ally of both Russia and Belarus. Loans from the Moscow-dominated Commonwealth of Independent States prop up Belarus’ Soviet-era command economy, while the International Monetary Fund has demanded that Lukashenko release all political prisoners as a stipulation for receiving financial aid from the West. The Belarusian KGB regularly intimidates and incarcerates the dictator’s political opponents.

Meanwhile, Anatoliy Hrytsenko, head of the Ukrainian parliament’s Committee for National Security and Defense, former defense minister and leader of Ukraine’s Civil Position Party, does not rule out the possibility that Ukrainian, Russian, or Belarusian mercenaries are fighting on behalf of deposed Libyan strongman Muammar al-Qaddafi. “The state of Ukraine hasn’t sent its soldiers or civilians to fight on either side, that’s for sure,” the legislator said in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine. Hrytsenko continued:

Can there be theoretically mercenaries from Ukraine? Yes, there can be, but just as likely, or even more likely, there may be Russian or Belarusian mercenaries. Because, there have been cuts in their armies by hundreds of thousands, and many people, so called migratory birds, are trying to find a job on all continents.

A rebellion that began in mid-February, backed by UN-sanctioned NATO air strikes, toppled Qaddafi’s 42-year-old terrorist regime last Tuesday, the third Arab dictatorship to fall this year as a result of the so-called Arab Spring uprisings. Shortly after the war began, reports surfaced that Qaddafi was importing mercenaries from Eastern Europe and sub-Saharan Africa, as well as guerrillas from Western Sahara, to fight for his tottering government. About the same time, the 69-year-old strongman’s Ukrainian nurse fled to her homeland, leaving a trail of questions concerning Qaddafi’s long-time links to the old Soviet Bloc.