Moscow Diary: Cold War echoes !

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New era of discord for Russia and West
By Paul Reynolds
World affairs correspondent, BBC News website



President Vladimir Putin's threat to target missiles at Europe indicates that the hostility between Russia and the West is more than a passing phase. It has become a permanent part of world diplomacy.

Russian missiles have not been targeted on European countries for many years. Mr Putin blamed the US plan to develop an anti-missile system in eastern Europe.

Targeting missiles indicates a worsening state of relations. It is more of a political than a military move, since a non-targeted missile remains a threat in any case.


To keep matters in proportion, it is important to note that Mr Putin was not suggesting a return to the wholesale targeting of Europe by the Soviet Union. He hinted that any "new targets" would be connected to the "strategic nuclear potential of the United States...in Europe".

Uneasiness

Mr Putin clearly wants to apply pressure so that the US proposal, which needs the approval of the Polish and Czech governments, is not implemented.

He disregarded US assurances that the system was too small to affect Russian defences and was aimed at countering potential future threats from Iran. Other parts of the system are based in Alaska and California and are designed to prevent potential attacks from North Korea.



It is an era of self-interest, with both sides following and promoting their own agendas, which may or may not coincide or clash


And he appeared to contradict what he himself said in January 2006, when he announced that Russia had a new ballistic missile. "These missiles don't represent a response to a missile defence system," he said at the time.

So his threats have to be put in a wider context.


Update 5 June: President Bush, on a visit to the Czech Republic, made it clear that he would not give up the plan but he went out of his way to try to explain it. "The Cold War is over...Russia is not our enemy" he said, laying out what he would tell Mr Putin: "My message will be: Vladimir -- I call him Vladimir -- that you shouldn't fear a missile defence system. As a matter of fact why don't you cooperate with us on a missile defence system? Why don't you participate with the United States? Please send your generals over to see how such a system would work. Send your scientists. Let us have the ability to discuss this issue in an open forum where we'll be completely transparent."


Later, he commented about Russia: "Reforms that once promised to empower citizens have been derailed, with troubling implications for democratic development."

New era

"A new Cold War" and similar descriptions do not catch the reality of this new and antagonistic relationship. It is possibly a long-term one, based less on the ideology of the Cold War confrontation and more on a big power uneasiness that each side might just have to live with.

It is an era of self-interest, with both sides following and promoting their own agendas, which may or may not coincide or clash.

Indeed, analysts are beginning to discount the current leadership on both sides as incapable of much change and to look ahead to see what might develop after President Putin stands down next spring and President George W Bush at the start of 2009.

G8 and Maine

The G8 meeting this week, and the probably more important bilateral meeting at the Bush family encampment at Kennebunkport in Maine in early July, might not make much difference.

The Maine invitation is at least a gesture by Mr Bush. He has not invited any other foreign leader there. But the fact that he has chosen (with a hint from his father maybe?) the family's inner sanctum shows how bad things have become.



"I very much doubt if the meeting in Maine will produce much," said Margot Light, a Russia watcher at the London School of Economics.

"I don't see a meeting of minds, though Mr Putin likes the idea of Russia being courted and is pleased to go. He argues that Russia is a great power and has to be taken into account.

"However, Bush will not change his mind about anti-missile deployment in eastern Europe and nothing short of that will persuade Putin to relent.

"Putin likened it to scratching your left ear with your right hand. It re-invokes the psychosis of encirclement felt by the Soviet Union after the war. Russia is incensed that its words and interests are being disregarded. That said, it is milking the issue for all it is worth."

The Putin approach

The current problems are partly to do with the legacy of the Yeltsin years, which Mr Putin felt he had to erase by taking a firm, nationalistic line. This of course coincided with the neo-conservative line being taken by the Bush administration.



Russia should keep in mind the adage that 'two wrongs don't make a right' when formulating its responses to the US anti-missile plan
Wade Boese,
Arms Control Association


Washington has gone ahead perhaps too confidently with its plans, assuming that the Russians are now on board.

The key example here is the US withdrawal from the anti-ballistic missile treaty, announced in 2001. This has led directly to the US proposals for the deployment of the missile defence system in the UK, the Czech Republic and Poland.


The Russians, however, are not on board.

And their dissatisfaction goes beyond missile defence. They are threatening not to fulfil their commitments under the conventional forces treaty (CFE) in Europe and the intermediate range nuclear weapons treaty (INF) with the US.

However, according to the independent pressure group, the Arms Control Association (ACA) in Washington, this could be the ground on which the two could come closer together.

The Americans, it suggests, should put the European anti-missile system on hold and engage with Moscow "to reassess and re-energise efforts to help transform their strategic relations from competition to cooperation, in part, by adopting a more ambitious arms control agenda".


HAVE YOUR SAY
The cynic in me sees Russia stirring nationalism ahead of elections
T.B


Russia should offer a more positive approach itself. ACA research director Wade Boese said: "Russia should keep in mind the adage that 'two wrongs don't make a right' when formulating its responses to the US anti-missile plan.
"Russia should remain party to, and fully implement, the INF and CFE treaties, including commitments to withdraw militarily from Georgia and Moldova."

One way forward, the ACA suggests, is for negotiations to start on a follow up to the 2002 strategic agreement under which deployed nuclear warheads on each side will be reduced to 2,200 by 2012.

This is also something that might have to wait until the post Bush-Putin era.

Paul.Reynolds-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk

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Published: 2007/06/05 14:41:03 GMT

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Blair warns over Russia relations
Mr Blair wants a 'frank' conversation with Mr Putin
Tony Blair interview
Tony Blair has told MPs he wants good relations with Russia, but warned they could only be based on "shared values".
He said he had "always had good relations" with the Russian president and there was no point in making "hollow threats" against him.

But he said if there no shared values "people in Europe will want to minimise the business" they do with Russia.

The PM later travelled to Germany for the G8 summit, where he will be speaking to President Vladimir Putin.

'Confrontational way'

Mr Blair was asked about Britain's relations with Russia - and his promise to raise the Litvinenko spy death case with Mr Putin - at prime minister's questions in the Commons.

Former Europe Minister Denis MacShane called on Mr Blair to "talk frankly" with Mr Putin on a range of other issues such as "threat to target missiles at European cities, the fact that Shell and BP have effectively been renationalised there, the boycott of trade with Poland".


Blair's mind is on securing the goals set out at the G8 in Gleneagles
BBC political editor Nick Robinson


Mr Blair replied: "We want good relations with Russia. But that can only be done on the basis that there are certain shared principles and shared values.

"And the consequence if there aren't... and there's no point making hollow threats against Russia... is that people in Europe will want to minimise the business they do with Russia if that happens.

"I personally think a close relationship between Europe and Russia is important. But it will only be a sustainable relationship if it's based on those shared values."

On Tuesday Mr Blair told BBC political editor Nick Robinson there was no danger of a "fresh cold war" developing but said that many people were "concerned about the direction Russia is heading".

"It would be very sensible for the Russians to give reassurance on that," said Mr Blair.

The US missile programme was designed to deal with the threat from "rogue states", rather than Russia, he added.

Mr Blair also said the US had promised to "share the technology" and "suddenly it is put up by Russia in this way, in quite a confrontational way".

He said: "I think behind the scenes at the G8 there will be the opportunity for people to have a frank conversation about Russia, with Russia, because people want a good relationship with Russia but it is a relationship that can only prosper if it is clear that we share certain values and principles."

Europe and Russia

As well as talking about the US missile programme, that frank conversation would include raising Britain's request to extradite former KGB agent Andrei Lugovoi over the murder in London of former Russian agent Alexander Litvinenko.


We need then to go far further but that is the core of a new global deal and that's what we've been working for
Tony Blair
Prime minister


"We have got to try and resolve it, we know what issues the Russians have there but we can't have someone murdered on British soil in that way and nothing happen, so it is a discussion we will have to have," said Mr Blair.

However, Mr Blair said, the end result would not be "some great confrontation" - instead people would see that there was a "difficulty" with Russia's relationship with the outside world.

He added: "And therefore I don't really think that in the end it will be in the long term interest of Russia to have a relationship with Europe or with the western world that is scratchy and difficult."

The row with Russia has been threatening to overshadow the issues of climate change and Africa which Mr Blair had hoped to focus on at his last G8 summit.

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Published: 2007/06/06 15:30:08 GMT

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Cool not cold - Russia's new foreign policy
As the US and Russian presidents prepare for a difficult summit in Maine, BBC News website world affairs correspondent Paul Reynolds assesses Moscow's tough and independent foreign policy.

Western governments were taken by surprise when Russia under President Vladimir Putin started to harden up its foreign and domestic policy, but this is something they will have to learn to live with for the foreseeable future.

A common way of describing this relationship (I have done so myself) is to say it has "echoes of the Cold War" or is even "a new Cold War".

However, this is no longer a useful way of explaining what is going on.


There is a certain hysteria in the West about Russia
Sir Rodric Braithwaite
former British ambassador to Moscow


We are in a new situation for which the Cold War is not a good example. That was a multi-generational, philosophical, epoch-making struggle in which one side won and the other lost.

This is a situation in which Russia is not an enemy but cannot be described as a close friend. It is a competitor, playing by some international rules and by some it has made up itself.

It is a change from the complacent years of Boris Yeltsin, who seemed to roll over and do more or less anything the West suggested, especially over economic reform.

That did lead to economic change in Russia, but it also led to the era of the oligarchs, and to a shattering of Russian national nerve.

A bracing mix

President Putin has put an end to those days.


Russia has decided to take control of the natural resources it feels it gave away too cheaply in what Mr Putin has called "colonialist" deals. So Shell and BP, for example, have been taken out of or bought out of major oil and gas interests.

According to the Economist, Russian GDP has increased nearly three times since 2002 and has grown at 6 or 7% each year since 2003. Inflation fell to under 10% last year and its trade balance has increased threefold in four years.

Abroad, President Putin has criticised the US in extremely harsh terms, even comparing its foreign policy to that of Nazi Germany.

He has rejected Western complaints about the curtailment of rights in Russia (it has a less free press now and protests are regularly broken up).

He has differed with the West over a number of key policies - independence for Kosovo and the US missile defence installations proposed for Poland and the Czech Republic being two leading examples.

He has even threatened targeting nuclear missiles on Europe again in retaliation for the latter. That threat, it has to be said, does have echoes of the Cold War, though it was only a threat.






The Litvinenko affair has raised fears that elements in Russia's secret services have not learned that the bad old days are supposed to be over. Russia in turn objects to the asylum granted by Britain to exiles it wants to put on trial. The episode is an example of the difficult relationship.
On the other hand, as a permanent member of the Security Council, Russia has cooperated over sanctions on Iran for its nuclear activities (while warning against a military attack) and on Sudan over Darfur.

Russia has blown hot and cold and the mix can be a rather bracing one for its opposite numbers.

Western 'hysteria'

Sir Rodric Braithwaite was British ambassador in Moscow from 1988 to 1992; his latest book is on the failed Soviet engagement in Afghanistan.


"The US is disappointed in Putin," he said, "but the Russians like what he is doing because he is making them feel good again.

"After 1991, Russia fell flat on its back. We took it for granted and felt that what was good for us was good for them.

"Russia now has to be taken into account. It has a lot of levers after years of weakness. It has come back quickly from the depth of humiliation and this makes Russians feel better.

"The most sensible way to look at Russia is not as an appendage of the West but, as someone put it recently, as a substantial non-aligned country like China or India.

"We do not worry when those countries define their interests differently from ours. And of course Russia was right to be different over Iraq.


"On the other hand, its domestic policies are not what liberals hoped for and Russia has adopted a noisy, bullying tone towards its near neighbours and they are right to be concerned.

"Talk of a new Cold War, though, is wrong. We are going through a period of bad relations, not the threat of war.

"Russia now has huge interests in the West and wants to invest more. That is, after all, what we told it to do. And it needs our money as much as we need its oil and gas.

"There is a certain hysteria in the West about Russia."

At a recent seminar at the Nixon Center in Washington, Dmitri Trenin, Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Deputy Director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, referred to "Russia's sense of global friendlessness, which its focus on its own interests reflects.

Oil wealth has helped bring Russia back from the depths of its impotence. A $200bn military modernisation project over the next eight years indicates a sense of heightened power."

He summed up: "The Russian leadership is not seeking confrontation with the West but is seeking a basis for remaking the relationship. That new paradigm has yet to be found."

Paul.Reynolds-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk

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Published: 2007/06/28 09:07:16 GMT

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Difficult menu at 'lobster summit'
By Jonathan Beale
BBC News, Washington



It has been dubbed the "lobster summit". Lobster is the seafood of choice at Kennebunkport, the small town on the Maine coast that is home to President Bush senior's summer retreat and is now the venue for talks between his son and Vladimir Putin.

But the menu of issues to be discussed by both leaders will prove more difficult to digest: missile defence; Kosovo; democratic reform; and how to deal with Iran - to name a few that are already causing heartburn.

Why Kennebunkport? Well, President Putin was on his way to Guatemala and the Russians suggested that it might be a good time to talk.


HAVE YOUR SAY
The two should put their individual egos aside
Ashipa James Olashupo, Abuja


President Bush responded positively and thought that his father's compound would be a congenial setting for informal discussions - in other words, away from the White House and the media spotlight.
Serious miscalculation?

US officials want to avoid another blast of Cold War rhetoric from President Putin. They want the two leaders to work out their differences in private.

For President Bush, it is another opportunity to look into President Putin's "soul".

At their first meeting in June 2001, Mr Bush famously said: "I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy... I was able to get a sense of his soul."


That now looks like a serious miscalculation. Does the US president now see more the darker side of this former KGB officer?

President Putin's recent rhetoric has alarmed Washington.

First, his oblique comparison of US foreign policy to the Third Reich, his criticisms of the war in Iraq and then his threat to point Russian missiles at Europe if America located missile defence bases in the Czech Republic and Poland.

In turn, Mr Bush criticised Moscow for rolling back on democracy.

Echoes of the Cold War certainly. But US officials say they want to avoid "a rush to the bottom".

Opportunity

The G8 summit in Germany saw an attempt by both leaders to draw back from the brink.

President Putin appeared to catch Mr Bush by surprise by offering the use of an ageing Russian radar base in Azerbaijan for America's missile defence shield.

The Russians clearly see that as an alternative to sites in eastern Europe - once part of the Soviet empire.


But President Bush is ignoring the gamesmanship and taking it as an opportunity to co-operate.

At Kennebunkport he will repeat his offer for US and Russian experts to sit down together to try to find a solution.

But do not expect any breakthroughs on missile defence - or for that matter any other issue.

US officials have been stressing that there is unlikely to be any "grand announcement". They say this is not about "deliverables".

It is as much an acknowledgement that the US is still working out how to deal with a more assertive Russia. But that diplomacy is the only way forward.

Perhaps the presence of George Bush Senior will help his son learn a few tricks on that front.

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Published: 2007/06/30 10:46:10 GMT

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Inside Russia's missile defence base
By Richard Galpin
BBC News, Gabala, Northern Azerbaijan

High on the agenda at the Kennebunkport summit between US President George W Bush and the Russian President Vladimir Putin is the US plan to install a missile defence shield in Poland and the Czech Republic, close to Russia's border.
Alarmed at the prospect of interceptor missiles and a sophisticated radar system being set up so close to its own territory, Moscow at first responded with threats.
It said its own missiles would be re-targeted on Europe, warning there would be a new arms race similar to that during the Cold War.
But then Mr Putin surprised the Western world by offering the US an alternative location for their missile defence system - at a Russian military base near the town of Gabala, in Azerbaijan.
The offer, made during last month's G8 summit in Germany, initially got quite a favourable response from the Bush administration, which described it as "interesting".
But, since then, the US seems to have cooled on the idea, making it increasingly obvious they do not regard the Gabala base as an alternative to their original plans for Eastern Europe.
Warning
In a bid to shape public opinion on the eve of the Kennebunkport summit, the Russian military did something they have never done before.

They took Western journalists to the Gabala base to try to prove it is a realistic alternative, and therefore a solution, to the current missile crisis stoking tensions between Russia and the West.

We were driven from our hotel in Gabala town with a large contingent of Russian counter-intelligence officers on board our bus and a police escort out in front.

It was clear this was to be a strictly supervised visit. We would only be able to see what the military wanted us to.

The base itself, nestling in the mountains of northern Azerbaijan, is home to a huge radar station built during the Cold War as part of an early-warning system.

It was designed to detect any US missile strike against the Soviet Union.

It comprises two strange-looking concrete structures which could easily be mistaken for office blocks, until you see their sloping fronts.

Before we were allowed inside, our guide for the day, Maj Gen Alexander Yakushin from Central Command Space Troops, warned us that everything we filmed or photographed would be subject to censorship.

Indeed a team of military censors had already lined up in front of us in the midday heat.

After managing to talk him out of a diversionary visit to the school and hospital at the base, we were finally able to enter the radar station itself.

It was a step back in time to an era now almost forgotten.

The musty corridors, heavy metal doors and creaking lifts were decorated with fading Soviet military memorabilia.

Our group of foreign and Russian journalists assembled on the seventh floor and was ordered to switch off all phones and cameras.

We were about to enter the command centre.

James Bond-style

But this was no state-of-the-art, high-tech operations room.

Instead, it seemed to have been borrowed from the set of a very old James Bond film - life imitating art.
Uniformed men sat stiffly at dimly-lit desks. In front of them ancient computers and even an old teletext machine chattering in the background.

But for all our incredulity, Gen Yakushin was adamant the radar station was effective.

At the official briefing he told us the station was in good technical condition and could be easily modernised.

With a range of 6,000km it could cover the Indian Ocean, Arabian Sea and the Middle East.

"During the Iran-Iraq war, we proved the station worked, detecting the launch of 150 Scud missiles," he said.

"And, in January this year, we detected the launch of the Shehab-3 [missile] in Iran."

Peace initiative

Later, at the equally old-style radar transmission area, we managed to corner the general and press him more about the reality of Gabala being used by the US as part of their cutting edge (and still unproven) "son of Star-Wars" missile defence system.

"This station works perfectly for the Russian missile defence system," he insisted.

"What the Americans want I don't know. But if there is the political will, we'll try to figure out how to modernise this radar station."


But independent Russian military analysts ridicule any suggestion that Gabala is a viable alternative to what the US would install in Europe.

"The radar in Azerbaijan is an early warning radar," says Pavel Felgenhauer, a defence specialist at the newspaper Novaya Gazeta.

"It was not designed to guide interceptor missiles onto their targets. It's also in the wrong place and does not fully cover all the territory of Iran because it's targeted due south.

"It was designed to monitor US bases in the Indian Ocean."

The question is whether Mr Putin was badly briefed by his military chiefs before proposing the Azeri alternative at the G8 summit or whether it was ever a serious offer.

Pavel Felgenhauer has his own theory: "It smacks of a Soviet peace initiative, put forward only to be rejected to make the Americans look like the evil ones."


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Published: 2007/07/02 16:05:32 GMT

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Putin's hold on the Russians
BBC News profiles Vladimir Putin, whose presidency has seen Russia make a bold bid to justify its place among the world's most powerful nations.

His face may not adorn the rouble, but Vladimir Putin's image is very much stamped on 21st-Century Russia and its citizens are only too aware that the money lining their pockets was largely minted under his presidency.

After the hungry, often desperate years of the Yeltsin era, it is a prosperity few Russians may stop to question.

But his critics believe that it has come at the cost of some post-communist democratic freedoms.

Mr Putin rapidly ascended the political ladder in 1999 when Boris Yeltsin first made him prime minister, then acting president in his place.

The former Federal Security Service (ex-KGB) director's talents and instincts continue to show through: to his admirers he represents order and stability, to his critics - repression and fear.


PUTIN IN THE KREMLIN
2000: Putin elected president in first round; Kursk submarine disaster; restoration of Soviet national anthem with different words
2003: General election gives Putin allies control over parliament
2004: Putin re-elected by landslide in February; a year of Chechen attacks on civilian targets culminates in Beslan
2005: Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Russia's richest man, jailed for tax evasion
2006: Russia briefly cuts gas supplies to Ukraine in January; St Petersburg hosts G8 events
2007: Putin likens US foreign policy to Nazi Germany's and threatens to target missiles at EU states in response to US anti-missile plans

Independent media and civil society have struggled under his rule and he has taken a consistently hard line in the Chechen conflict.

Yet he strikes a chord with those who remember the chaos of the 1990s, when basic machinery of state such as the welfare system virtually seized up and the security forces looked inept.

Investor confidence has climbed back since the nadir of the 1998 rouble devaluation, and economic recovery, buoyed by high prices for oil and gas exports, has helped restore a sense of stability not known since communist times.

Political opposition is weak, partly because of a genuine feel-good factor but also because his rule has discouraged democratic debate.

In the 2000 election, he took 53% of the vote in the first round and, four years later, was re-elected with a landslide majority of 71%.

The 2004 ballot result "reflected [Mr Putin's] consistently high public approval rating", outside (OSCE) observers noted, but also talked of the contest's "dearth of meaningful debate and genuine pluralism".

Black belt

Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin became a KGB spy after graduating from university, and served in East Germany.


He enjoys a macho image, helped by election stunts like flying into Chechnya on a fighter jet in 2000, and his possession of a black belt in Judo.


PUTIN BASICS
Born 7 October 1952 in Leningrad (now St Petersburg)
Studied law and economics before joining the KGB
Served as KGB agent in East Germany 1985-90
Married, two daughters
Speaks German and English
Sound bite: "I'd like the Russian public to see me as the person they've hired for this job"

source: Russian presidential website

He has been described as a workaholic by his wife and mother of his two daughters, Lyudmila.

For many Russian liberals, Mr Putin's KGB past is disturbing, with its authoritarian associations.

A decade after Boris Yeltsin famously offered Russia's regions "their fill of sovereignty", Mr Putin brought in a system of presidential envoys seen by some as overseers for elected governors.

Putin allies control much of the media and his rule has seen creeping controls over foreign-funded non-government organisations, which largely focus on exposing human rights abuses.

The man who sent troops back into Chechnya as prime minister in 1999 has kept it under Moscow's control through military force, direct or proxy, and strict non-negotiation with the rebels.

The price has been increasingly violent attacks by the separatists, which reached a horrifying level in 2004 with the Beslan school seizure.

Mr Putin's patriotic rhetoric and evident nostalgia for the USSR - he once famously called its collapse "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe" of the 20th Century - play well with much of the public.

But the flip side may be a disturbing rise in nationalism, taking its most sinister form in hate crimes directed at ethnic minorities such as African foreign students.

Wielding clout

Mr Putin has gradually eased liberals out of government, often replacing them with harder-line allies or neutrals seen as little more than yes-men.


Yeltsin-era "oligarchs" like Boris Berezovsky and Vladimir Gusinsky - businessmen who grew rich in the chaos of the first privatisations - have ended up as fugitives living in exile abroad.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky, once head of oil giant Yukos and Russia's richest man, is now in jail for tax evasion.

Mr Putin's Kremlin is accused of abusing its huge energy clout, allegedly punishing fellow ex-Soviet states like Ukraine with price hikes when they lean to the West.

Further abroad, Mr Putin allied himself with Washington's "war on terror", comparing Chechen separatists to al-Qaeda, but he also opposed the invasion of Iraq and caused consternation in the US by inviting Hamas to Moscow for talks after their Palestinian election victory.

The biggest diplomatic test may still lie ahead, as Iran defies the US with a nuclear programme based largely on Russian technology.

However, Mr Putin is due to leave the Kremlin by 2008 since by law he cannot stand for a third consecutive term.

Rather like Boris Yeltsin in 1999, he has no obvious successor but, unlike Russia's first elected president, he has no convincing rival yet.


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Published: 2007/06/28 13:47:15 GMT

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What the real Cold War meant
By Patrick Jackson
BBC News


With the Litvinenko affair and Russia's tough new image under Vladimir Putin, there is much talk of another Cold War but what was the original one like?

Two things can be said about the Cold War with some certainty: the dates it was formally announced and formally ended.

Bernard Baruch, a US financier who advised President Harry Truman, coined the term to describe the conflict emerging between the former World War II allies in a speech to Congress on 16 April 1947. Just over a year earlier, Britain's Winston Churchill had talked of a Soviet "iron curtain" descending on Europe.

On 3 December 1989, the US and Soviet presidents, George Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev, officially declared the "war" over at a summit aboard a Soviet cruise ship in the Mediterranean.

The temperature in Moscow that night was about 15C below zero. I know because I was out a lot that week, coming back late through the frost.


could not fall asleep at night trying to figure out how I possibly will be able to take all my teddy bears with me when the nuclear bomb is dropped and I have to run to a shelter as fast as I can
Linda, Riga
BBC News website reader


I had been living secretly with some Soviet student friends in a high-rise suburban flat after "escaping" from a horrible student hostel in the city centre.

My friends could have got into serious trouble at their university for consorting with a foreigner, let alone putting one up in their flat.

They still lived in dread of stukachi (informers), the Komsomol and the gebeshniki (KGB) but showed none of the ideological mistrust of the West and Westerners associated with previous Soviet generations.

Instead, I remember our mutual enthusiasm for getting to know people from a country, a political system, which had seemed for decades as remote as a different planet.

Churchill's card

Though the greatest crisis in US-Soviet relations was probably the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, it was the first years of the Cold War which were the coldest, Russian historian Eduard Radzinsky argues.


"After World War II, Joseph Stalin wanted to cut the USSR off from the rest of the world because he had a deep fear of cold drafts coming in under a badly shut door - this talk of human rights and other things which would have landed a Soviet citizen in prison," Mr Radzinsky told the BBC News website.

"When Churchill delivered his Iron Curtain speech, Stalin must have danced for joy because no dictator can live without an external threat and Churchill handed it to him.

"Poor Truman tried to play down the Churchill speech but Stalin would hear none of it: he instantly shut the door and began preparing the country for World War III."

After Stalin's death in 1953, he says, Cold War rhetoric was put on the back burner, to be turned up again on occasion, as in 1962.


COLD WAR MILESTONES
5 March 1946: Churchill's "iron curtain" speech
16 April 1947: Baruch coins the term
1947-48: Berlin blockade marks first test of resolve
4 April 1949: Nato is created
29 August 1949: USSR explodes its first atomic bomb
1950-53: First major proxy war is fought in Korea
5 March 1953: Stalin dies
1962: Cuban missile crisis brings USSR and US to brink of actual war
3 December 1989: Bush and Gorbachev declare Cold War to be over

In the West, he argues, Cold War rhetoric became a card to be played at election time.

Margot Light, professor of international relations at the London School of Economics, is less cynical about the origin of the Cold War, preferring to see it as a straight struggle between two belief systems.

"The central fact of world politics was the bipolar split between two very strong ideologies because America's anti-communism was almost as strong as communism," she told the BBC News website.

It was a division which deadlocked the United Nations Security Council for decades and brought foreign espionage to new levels.

Prof Light, who began visiting the USSR in 1967, found "great suspicion of foreigners and a great suspicion within the Soviet Union that anyone associated with foreigners was capable of treachery".

Superpower rules

One of the few positive effects of the "Cold War" situation, Mr Radzinsky adds, is that countries lived by fixed rules and there were few surprises in international life.


"The nuclear bomb made a world war impossible and everybody was afraid without being afraid," he says.

The Cold War can only be seen as a period of international security in retrospect, according to Prof Light.

"We now know that there was, in fact, a set of rules that both sides were following but we did not know that at the time so there was a lot of fear," she says.

Tacit rules that the sides were following meant that nuclear weapons access could be strictly controlled and borders, in Europe for example, were sacrosanct.

Yet if both sides understood that direct conflict was just too dangerous, they were involved indirectly in "hot" wars on their peripheries, Prof Light notes.

"Proxy" wars fought between the US and the USSR in Africa once reduced much of that continent to a state of chaos not unlike what is happening in Iraq today, says Mr Radzinsky, but ordinary Soviet citizens "did not take such conflicts seriously".

"Africa was the Soviet government's way of proving the success of its world view to its own people," he argues.

Disillusionment

Both sides know there will be no new Cold War because money binds them so closely, Eduard Radzinsky believes.


The only people who stand to suffer are students who may have visa problems and perhaps some small businessmen, he says.

Margot Light also believes there cannot be another Cold War.

"You only have to look at how the supply of oil and gas has divided Europe to understand that there isn't that same kind of solidarity on the Western side while Russia has no real allies," she says.

"Nor is there any ideological divide. There is probably more belief in socialism in the West now than there is in Russia."

What does divide Moscow from the West, she says, is a deep sense of disillusionment: Westerners accuse Vladimir Putin of undermining democratic reform while "on the Russian side, they feel very feel let down by the process of dismantling communism".


Do you have any striking memories of the Cold War in your country? Send us your comments using the form at the bottom of the page.


The crew did not know at this point as to whether or not it was a drill or a real missile launch
Jim, Richland, WA, USA
BBC News website reader

I was stationed aboard a US ballistic missile submarine during the late 70's. On occasion we would hold missile launch drills which were initiated with an announcement over the public address system stating "Man Battle Stations Missile". The crew did not know at this point as to whether or not it was a drill or a real missile launch. I recall that my shipmates would always be in a very somber and reflective mood once they reached their assigned battle stations. Although many of us believed that a launch would never occur, we were still held by thoughts of home - wondering if our families were safe, wondering if there would be anything to return home to. There was always a collective sigh of relief when the ship's captain would announce over the PA "This is the captain, this is an exercise". At that point, even though we were still at battle stations, the crew became jovial and talkative...life went on.
Jim, Richland, WA, USA


Hi guys from the "other side". In 1986-88 as a conscript soldier of the Warsaw Pact I was allocated to an antiaircraft command post watching in "real time" war games over the Aegian, and laughing my bottom out at the few taking themselves seriously enough to think that WW III was coming. As service men we knew that our life expectancy was about 3-5 minutes, so there was not much to worry about anyway. Meanwhile, the "dreaded red" officers in our regiment were dreaming mostly of seaside vacations, pay rises, new pair of jeans, and perhaps a little romance with the service ladies from the communication department. Fear, I am afraid to say, was nowhere in sight. My only annoyance, at the time, was that instead of climbing with friends and wild camping at our favorite secluded sunny beaches (now almost completely destroyed by idiocity and greed), I had to rot underground watching out for an impossible enemy and feeding an occasional mice with my 6 o'clock wafer...
vergil, tombstone, vanuatu


I must be a lucky one. I lived in a small city in north Poland. Nuclear attack or hiding under the desk wasn't debated, thought of or drilled. Being teenager I figured out that because of the 'final' nature of those weapons, nether side will provoke a war as than, sooner or later Nukes would be used and and "bye bye Charlie"! I thought that if I can figure that out, the Leaders know it even better! And I was right! Soviets knew the technical and economical superiority of the West and would never initiate war as chances of winning were slim at best. Russians, in such matters used rational thinking too. Today 'things' are somewhat different!
krystofik123, Brisbane Australia


Amazing - almost only boys' memories. Now some from a girl - I grew up in Riga and remember I quite often, at the age of 7 to 9 or something, could not fall asleep at night trying to figure out how I possibly will be able to take all my teddy bears with me when the nuclear bomb is dropped and I have to run to a shelter as fast as I can. Leaving them behind in my understanding of those days was something like what today would tantamount for me to leaving my child behind in danger. Or - my mother, being a manager at a chemists store, had some military rank and she told me she may have to join the army if the war breaks out. My other fear was she might not come home from work one day because she has had to go to war. I don't know which of the two were worst.
Linda, Riga



There was a bright flash in the eastern dawn sky. Less than an hour later, there was a huge thud of a shock wave, almost like an earthquake
Steve, USA
BBC News website reader

One morning, in 1958, I was delivering the morning Los Angeles Times newspaper, riding on a bicycle. At about 5:30-6:00 AM, there was a bright flash in the eastern dawn sky. Less than an hour later, there was a huge thud of a shock wave, almost like an earthquake. I read in the newspaper later that this was the day of one of the last above-ground atomic tests. No one else commented about it--they were all asleep, I suppose. The tests were in Nevada, about 400 miles east of us. Light travels faster than sound. I was sixteen. Five years later, I was in the US Army in the Far East. My nutshell theory of the cold war? Bullies start fights, but bullies only pick on weaklings.
Steve, USA


Cold War to the Chinese could be very hot. In 1950s, the Americans fought against the Chinese in Korea. In 1960s and 1970s, Vietnam War also involved the Chinese at its border. As a kid, I participated several demostration parades together with millions of people in many cities of China. "Down with the U.S. imperialists!" was the solgan that we often shouted. The peak was on May 20, 1970. Chairman Mao and Lin Biao stood at the Tian An Man and issued the announcement "People of the World, Unite and Defeat the U.S. Aggressors and All Their Running Dogs!" The Washington Post called it "the declaration of World War III." However, very soon, President Nixon visited China and the Cold War was gone. After Nixon's visit, a lot of people in China began studying English. In 1980s, we came to the U.S. that we used to shout to "DOWN WITH". The history is very dramatic.
Edward Deng, Virginia, USA


I was a volunteer worker in Angola when the conflict in that country ended (temporarily) in 1991, as a result of the end of the Cold War. We were outside in a huge crowd watching a gigantic TV screen with the peace treaty being signed between the former US- and Soviet-backed factions (MPLA and UNITA). It was like the old folk song "I'm gonna lay down my sword and shield...down by the riverside", a very utopian feeling. ...By the end of the year the civil war in Angola had broken out again, this time without a "Cold War" angle, a very disillusioning thing just like the talk of a new "Cold War" is now.
Frank Tamborello, Los Angeles USA


My mother grew up in Los Alamos and I have memories of her telling me that during the Cuban Missile crisis that she, her mother, father and brother were hunkered down in some bunker as Los Alamos was a primary target during the Cold War. My father was in NROTC in Wisconsin and thought that he was going to have to be called up to aid in the war effort.
Jon, Jinju, Korea originally Maryland USA


I was child at this time. I remember that there was many war drill for pupils in our school that how we can habit if enemy attack with nuclear bomb. What is signal and where we must run. There were some bunkers for protect against explosion wave and nuclear pollution in town. We had to made some masks - from cotton wool and gauze. It was ridiculous and anybody knew that Russian propaganda was over the top, sovjet staff was always a little funny and stupid at this time and sometime scary. Mayby some people are waiting war, but not nuclear war.
Ivar, Tartu, Estonia


I remember the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Having spent most of my life under a dictatorial regime - courtesy of the US - I could only dread the prospect of the Americans being left alone to bully the whole world as they pleased. It was not that I was an admirer of the Soviet Union, but the idea of the two of them balacing each other out seemed much better to me than having one of them becoming a world hegemon. And to top it all, I could only look in disgust to the fact that that was probably brought about by the policies of Ronald Regan - the guy that wanted to bring the arms race into space. That sold guns to both sides in the Iran-Iraq war and used the proceeding to bring chaos to Nicaragua. The same fellow that invaded Panama and Granada. I had no love lost for communism, but right-wing facists frighted me a whole deal more.
Andre, Brazil


I remember my mother once told me when she was about 4 years old and the threat of nuclear war was in the air, her mother was sewing masks for my mother and her 3 siblings. There was nothing else she could protect them with so that was the only thing she could do. What a horrific feeling that must have been.
Helen, former USSR country


Thanks to the cold war, my country and many other african counties got their students educated in Soviet Union!...Who can deny the fact?
Yona Kimori


I was a British soldier in 1954, had just been posted to West Germany (Federal Republic). The Berlin Wall had not yet been errected. I was in transit in Duisburg. I was given a temporary job in the company office. When asked by the chief, who was a friendly English civilian (as apposed to the army's nasty sergeants), where I would like to be posted, I immediately replied -"Berlin". The chief sucked in a breath of air and said in a warning tone- "You don't want to go there. It's too dangerous. Squaddies are being murdered on a weekly basis by communist extremists. I'm sending you to the Sudan."
Bill Bradbury, Wroclaw Poland


I remember being on exercise in the Weser valley, waking up under a camoflage net and watching the sunrise over the town of Alfeld. The wonderful sight was only marred by the thought that the might of the Soviet 3rd Shock Army was just a few kilometres further east - waiting to stomp all over us!
Lawrence Kelly-Jones, AMLWCH


Whenever the hammer and sickle appeared people would become afraid. Now it sells lots of t-shirts. Here in Miami, the older cubans are still fighting the cold war. It's sad and pathetic to seem them still stuck in time while the whole world moves forward.
Fernando Martinez, USA, Miami


I was in the Army in the late 70's and early 80's. One posting was not far from the East German border and we had the opportunity to do a border patrol along the "iron curtain" We were followed by the East German border guards on their side and photographed constantly. It was a very surreal experience.
Roger Brookes, Worcester, UK


I was in the RAF in the 70´s in Germany and every Friday we used to arm every aircraft we had available just incase WW3 started over the weekend.Also we had a few armed with nukes and a number of personnell on readiness.Then on Monday downlóad everthing and back to Normal ( but always the nukes where waiting.
steve, Lindenberg, Germany



I found myself watching the skies and wondering if I would see the explosion before being annihilated!
Sue Moore, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England
BBC News website reader

I was born and brought up in North London, which meant that I would certainly be destroyed following a nuclear attack. I still vividly remember walking home from school on a lovely summer's afternoon in the very early 80s when the sirens went off. I knew that this was the 4 minute warning and I knew I was about to die. It went through my mind that my mother would be at home on her own, my Dad was at work, and I didn't know where my sister was. I knew that I couldn't run home in time, nor was there anybody else, either friends or family, within a 4 minute running distance, so I just sat down on a nearby garden wall. I found myself watching the skies and wondering if I would see the explosion before being annihilated! There were about 4 other people within sight and all of us were just stopped dead in our tracks. After a while we realised that it must have been a test of the sirens and we continued our journeys. In the scheme of things it is a very small experience, but was frightening enough that I still remember it, and the associated emotions, very clearly 25 years on!
Sue Moore, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England


I was at a Conference when the announcment was made that the Berlin Wall was coming down. There was a standing ovation except for the man next to me, a Latvian. When I asked him why he wasn't celebrating, he pointed out that now there would be a powerful reunified Germany again, which he didnt think was such a good thing for his country.
Pete Marshall, Macclesfield UK


I served in the 11th Armored Cavalry, patrolling the West German/Czech border, 1957-1958. We were to be a delaying force giving the 3rd Armored Division time to set up in the event that the Russians might try to invade western Europe through West Germany. We were on constant alert. My brother served in the Air Force as a co-pilot on a B-47, spending 30 days in Alaska every 3rd month. The planes were armed and kept running on the runways 24 hours a day. It was a tense time.
Jack Alman, Knoxville, TN, USA


I remember in America, we were told that Russian women were not pretty. Then much later we saw Sharapova on TV.
Jay Fishell, Des Moines, Iowa


I travelled by train with my mother from West Germany to Berlin in 1961 the night the wall went up. I was only 9 years old at the time but I'll never forget the anxiety on the faces of the people waiting on the platform in Berlin when we arrived.
James Broughton, London, UK


One memory occured on me while reading comments. As a ten year old boy I once showed a drawing of a house to fellow schoolboys and one of them responsed: "You've written >police < here, it's in English, you'll go to jail for that!" Police means "bookshelf" in Czech. The remark was meant partially as a joke but the sole fact the child came up with it is shocking to me now. I'm glad my children will be free to write and tell whatever they want to.
Radek, Budweis, Czech Republic


In 1985, I remember going to Lubeck in West Germany as part of a school exchange and seeing the look-out towers over in East Germany complete with guards and spotlights. I regret being very naive at 15 and just thinking that the guards were 'the enemy' and where they were was the 'other world'.
Matt Hanks, Edinburgh, Scotland


When I was about 12 we visited my mum's relatives in Prague in the mid '80s. I remember the 2 hour rainy night-time border crossing on the train into East Germany with stony-faced DDR border guards going through our stuff. And the Cold War experience was greatly enhanced by "The Final Countdown" (Asia? Toto?) blaring out of a tannoy somehwere down the platform!
nick burton, macclesfield


I remember that we had a grey 'atomic box' in a house where we moved to in the early seventies. It was connected to the telephone and sat next to the phone. It was called an x120 or something. A man came round and talked to my dad about it and after the meeting my dad was very stern faced. We used to have to test it from time to time. And it occasionally made odd noises. I never really knew what it was for. But if the phone broke down and we mentioned we had an X120, then there was an engineer round extremely smartly!
Pete Porchos, Stratford upon Avon


I remember, growing up in South Africa in the 70's, the Government's propaganda machine constantly churning out dire warnings of the deadly cost of communism. How silly is all seems now.
Louis Brandt, Grantham, UK


I remember nuclear strike exercises at school, when all the children had to go into the basement. I was fascinated with the Cold War back then, and still am today as a historian. While today's threats can be frightening enough, people in Europe tend to forget what the Cold War was really like: 30,000 nuclear warheads on hair triggers, poised to strike at any time. Given what "we now know" we were all very lucky. No "new cold war" is in the offering - the situation in 1945 is nothing like today.
Erling Nielsen, Copenhagen, Denmark


I would suffer nuclear nightmares (dreams of experiencing nuclear war) every couple of months during the early 1980's. I think it was Ronald Reagan's rhetoric that worried me most, although in hindsight it's apparent that his tough stance on Communism was a factor in bringing down the wall. I still vividly remember feeling a small earthquake once and for just a split second thinking that World War III had started before I came to my senses. This is the kind of "everybody was afraid without being afraid" feeling that you describe so well. It's going to be very difficult, as my son gets older, to explain to him what we all felt during this period, although it does in many ways seem more cut and dried than the world we live in now.
Gerry, Ottawa, Canada



I remember hauling through Angola on operations, hiding from MiGs by day and moving by night
John, Gauteng, RSA
BBC News website reader

I remember hauling through Angola on operations, hiding from MiGs by day and moving by night, and being party to either the destruction and/or capture of Russian supplied kit (tanks, radar etc.). Africa seemed a bit more chilly in the late 80's
John, Gauteng, RSA


I remember growing up in England during this time and we lived off of a RAF base there. They would scramble the bombers and we would practice our little drills of getting under a table or desk..ATomic bombs can't get you if you are under a desk....
Thex, Indianapolis, IN


I can remember air raid drills as a schoolboy in the 1950's in which we would practice getting under desks. We lived in fear that Bear and Bison Soviet Bombers with atomic weapons would fly over the North Pole and drop nuclear weapons on American Cities. I can remember trained civilian observers watching the skys for signs of the feared Soviet Bombers and the strategic necessity of constructing radar facilities in Canada to watch for Soviet Bombers. I can remember as a boy the first appearance of American B-52 'H-Bombers' as they were called then, and the ambition of every American boy was to join the American Air Force so that he could pilot the first 'H-Bomber' over Moscow.
Stephen Kerr, Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA


I was 4 years old during the Cuban missile crisis in October, 1962, living with my parents in San Antonio, Texas. I vividly remember my parents stocking up on canned food and distilled water. They heard that San Antonio might be in range of Soviet missiles, and were so concerned about a possible nuclear attack that they took themselves and me to stay with my grandmother on a farm in the Texas panhandle about 500 miles to the northwest. On the drive up, I clearly remember missiles sticking up out of the Texas pastures, with steam venting from some of them. On the way back after the crisis was diffused, there were only cattle and oil wells to be seen. I have had an abiding interest in international affairs and politics ever since... I was totally paranoid about the possibility of a nuclear holocaust after Reagan's "the missiles are on their way" gaffe, so much so that I just partied hard and neglected my career. Thank God I was wrong. What really bothers me is that so many Americans seem to actually MISS being that afraid, and seem to be constantly searching for an enemy as implacable as the old Soviet Union once seemed. I hope they never find one. And no, the "terrorists" just don't come close.
William, Cleveland, USA


I can recall as a child around the late seventies and early eighties my father joining the ROC (Royal Observer Corps) and explaining their role should a nuclear war unfold. He once took me down one of the bunkers and it was only then that I realised that if war did break out, if he would be there, then i would be at home only with my mother. I also remember him bringing home pamphlets on how a normal family should prepare for nuclear war, and what a family should do if a bomb was dropped. We started to follow the guidelines by buying a lot more groceries in tins for example. It all would have been quite futile if a nuclear bomb had exploded near us.
Mark, munich, Germany


I grew up in New Hampshire near Pease Airforce base which housed a strategic bomber wing. I vividly remember when the base would have drills and "flush" the bombers, usually in the early hours of the morning. The flight path was over my town and I would lie awake listening and counting as the B-52's would scramble. It's a sound and a feeling I will never forget.
Jonathan Fitts, Sarasota, Florida


My family lived in military housing in a small town in Germany. My father was assigned to an armor unit. About once every month or so, the phone would ring at about 4 a.m. and he would rush out of the house. About an hour later the whole neighbor would be shaken by an earthquake created by columns of armor that rolled by our quarters. They were making the 'rush to the Fulda Gap' where it was predicted soviet armor would attack from East Germany. It was an ominous, and made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. It also, somehow, made me proud and feel safe.
George, Columbus, U.S.A.


I am 34 years old, which means I grew up during Cold War in USSR. My childhood wish was for The Atomic War not to happen and as I went to bed I thanked destiny (God was forbidden) that I was not born in U.S.A. or England where "kids were suffering". Only after Perestroika and independence (Latvia is a EU member now), I understood to what extent propoganda machine washed brains of millions of people. Very true in this article - nothing better than image of The Enemy for dictatorship. Much like what's happening now in Russia...
Guntis, Riga, Latvia


I served in the Royal Navy 1955 to 1967. The Cold War to me was on Iceland Patrol, that really was cold. If we had of been Nuked at any time then that was the end of mankind as we knew it. I don't think even the Russians wanted that.
Tommy Short,


In Germany I remember the sonic booms of the lightning fighters scrambled to intercept the russian planes. There was a man who would come and replace windows for free if they were broken by it.
Paul King, Ashford Kent


I remember the Cuba Crisis as a young child using my bed blankets as protection from both the shadow of an electric street light, not many years since being changed from a gas lamp, and my glass window which I expected to explode inwards from the awaited "big bomb".
Mike, Chelmsford, England



I went to Staff College at Greenwich in mid 80s and attended a lecture by a senior soviet diplomat...
Tony Douglas, ripon,n yorks
BBC News website

I went to Staff College at Greenwich in mid 80s and attended a lecture by a senior soviet diplomat. He gave a fascinating account of their foreign policy at the time and then invited questions. One of my fellow students asked "If I was an angel of Lenin looking down from my cloud at an oppressed people could I not be forgiven for thinking here was a country ripe for revolution?" - he replied - "I think the cloud would have to be very high up!"
Tony Douglas, ripon,n yorks


I remember meeting an East German girl in Budapest in 1990 who travelled for years to get from East Berlin to West Berlin. First she went to (then)Czechoslovakia, Hungary, (then)Yugoslavia, Austria and Germany, even marrying to get residence permits just to arrive in West Berlin to see the wall come down. Although I think she had a better life over those years than she'd have had in East Germany waiting for the unimaginable.
A Nemeth, Budapest, Hungary


Living out in East Berlin as a child in the late 80's was at times a bizarre experience. My father was posted at RAF Gatow air base. Imagine the scene on the base, which was 2 miles from the East German border when a suspected 'Eastie Beastie' was on the loose! You couldn't even go to the NAFFI for a coke!
Simon, Cambridge


In November 1990 I was staying with a Polish friend in Warsaw as part of a "post iron curtain" tour of Eastern Europe one year on. Margeret Thatcher came on the Polish TV news (she was in her evening dress in Brussels vowing to fight on after failing to secure victory in the first round of the Tory leadership contest - she went a few days later) and my host hailed her as the leader who single-handedly brought down the iron curtain. I said in my country we bestowed that honour on Mikhail Gorbachev, but he was having none of it. Gorbachev was as disliked in Soviet bloc as much as any of his predecessors.
mark serby, Sheffield


I was a Cold War army brat in Germany. Our house was designed to double as a hospital ward and our cellar as an air raid shelter. There were plans to evacuate non-combatants back to the UK which included destroying our pet dog. Travelling through the GDR to Berlin was the most exciting thing ever - we weren't allowed to converse with the GDR border guards as we didn't recognise East Germany so we could only liaise with the Soviet soldiers.
Obadiah Snooks, London


I was born in the last week of official 'war' in 1945. I remember the entire Cold War very well. The Cuban Missile Crisis forced us all to 'grow up' in ways not intended by either our parents or our teachers. One result of the Cold War was the emergence of a highly politicised world youth movement, which led on to the Hippy 'Counter Culture', which in turn spawned the 1970's 'Agitprop' revolutionary left wing radicalism, which also produced the Bader-Meinhof gang in Germany and the Brigadi Rossi in Italy. Then came the reaction as the next generation embraced 'yuppyism' and all things 'market driven'. Now we are faced with the prospect of Russia establishing a stranglehold on the E.U. by turning the oil and gas taps on and off. As the French say "Plus &#231;a change . . . " Congratulations and thanks to "Ancient Biker" in Edinburgh for pointing us all in the right direction.
Old Fool in Spain, Alicante, Spain


I was a baby boomer and child of the Cold War - I recall the 1962 Cuban Missile crisis vividly, the country could not wait for Kennedy to press the button, later when he was killed [executed?] we immediately thought 'it's the Russians' until were were told it was an American assasin. We were brought up to mistrust Russia, my father as a soldier in Berlin in 1945/6 told of not only Nazi inhumanity when he visited their concentration camps, but also of the evil of the Communist dogma which allowed their 'heros' to rape their way through... Berlin and remove everything of value from E Germay & Austria to Russia. Later, I learned of Stalin's orchestrated purges... Let's have no doubt this is the same country, ready to wage economic warfare with oil & gas as a weapon. It takes millenia to change a leopard's spots, and probably as long to cure a nation of decades of brutality, received & given. Embrace Russia as a democracy? With care!
ancient biker, edinburgh


In the summer of 1960 I was 7 years old and went with my mother to visit my maternal grandmother in Berlin for the first. She lived in East Berlin, the wall had not been built yet and you could pass into each sector. On the flight in we were escorted by two Soviet MIG jets. I clearly remember the pilot announcing that this was routine, they were just checking us out. I visited both sectors and the contrast was startling, the west was modern and prosperous the east was drab and still scared by the war and full of soviet troops. My mother and I never saw my grandmother gain as the wall was built in 1961.
Bill Kramarenko, Nottingham



However difficult it was to travel abroad back towards the end of communism, people were able to find the way to get out
Iwo Bohr, originally Poland, currently in M&#252;nster, Germany
BBC News website reader

A dominant feeling back then, I think shared by many other people in Poland was a feeling of being encircled, kept isolated from the better side. There were different consequences of this feeling in people actions, also leading to the engagement in underground opposition. I would like to tell about other response, about a drive to go outside, to escape. However difficult it was to travel abroad back towards the end of communism, people were able to find the way to get out. As a youngster I travelled a lot too to Western countries. I didn&#191;t mind long and tedious process of application for a passport (you could not keep one at home!), going through political police meticulous checks and then towards the end of the process queuing for the whole day to pick up the document of freedom, pass to the better world. I still keep quite vivid images of some package tours: an old Polish coach, about to fall out. However it has one advantage: it was very easy to find it in busy streets of European cities, the only one with such a dodgy look Some trip-mates were so desperate to stay at the "brighter side of the Iron curtain" that they weren&#191;t coming back from such trips at all, staying somewhere in West Germany or France with only one rucksack and applying for asylum seeker status &#191; I heard of some buses coming back completely empty, well at least except for some secret police members &#191; I am so pleased that there is no longer the Iron curtain between my homeland and the rest of Europe and that I can live anywhere in Europe without a risk that I won&#191;t be let come back&#191; and no more queues for a passport, it is still with me: my pass to freedom!
Iwo Bohr, originally Poland, currently in M&#252;nster, Germany,


Living on an RAF base with the RAF Police landrovers driving round with their sirens on getting all of the airmen out of bed for either a scramble or an exercise - RAF Scampton (Vulcan Bombers) and RAF Bruggen (Tornados)
S Johnston, Tring


On the 24th September 1964, i joined the Royal navy at the Heart of the Cold War. I went aboard HMS HERMES. In 1965, with my squadron 849 A Flight where we learnt about Russia, and the Threat. I was told then that the USAF, strategic Strike force under General Lemay, had 70 nuclear bombs to drop on Russia, should it be required, Do you know, that statement had no affect on me what so ever, it was as if it were normal, i was 16 years old.
jim evans, brighton


I'm only just old enough to remember the Berlin Wall toppling and the tearful shudders of my family as they realised Europe could become whole again. The whole house seemed to breathe a sigh of relief, and wine was opened...
office temp, London, UK


I remember the cuba crisis of 1963 and not being able to go to sleep as a thirteen year old because I was afraid of nuclear war. We all lived under that shadow during the post war era and thankfully it came to an end in 1989 -91, a watershed in world history. While not attempting to minimise the present dangers of terrorism they are relatively minor compared to that era and we in the west should not become too paranoic about this as it may do more damage than good to our society in the long run. As regards the present generation of Russian people, they live in a society which is in many ways more socially insecure than soviet society, but there is a freedom from the paranoia and associated fear that was prevalent at that time. There is a chance that it will return to a certain extent but I do not believe ever to the same degree as then. Russia has moved on.
Edward Bonney, Helsinki, Finland


I spent 5 years in the Royal Air Force in the 1970's as a linguist at a secret signals intercept station in West Berlin, listening to Russian pilots on operations in East Germany. The Cold War seemed very relevant and real then, but on looking back it was obviously just another stupid episode in mankind's long saga of obsession with war and conflict - how I wish we could all live in peace together!
mikey, london


I visited East Germany in 1984 as a teenager, at a time when East/West relations were at a very low point. I was followed everywhere, but not just by the police. Fortunately as a Westerner I was a great prospect for escaping the regime through marriage, so I had no shortage of female admirers throughout my stay. So the Cold War had some positive aspects after all.
Steve Rumbold, London, UK


Sadly, there will be no world peace, in the society we know, for 3000 years, some have to suffer for others to prosper until there will be a big change in its structure...(no more use of money) there is no world peace ! PS: i live a country that is a democracy for 17 years and a new member of EU... we still have the biggest ratio of secret service agents for citizen, in the WORLD !!!
jan, Bucharest, Romania


The cold war never went away. Al Qaeda was created with American money to fight one of these proxy wars, in Afghanistan. The Americans never did understand the proverb "if you sup with the Devil, use a long spoon".
Phil, London, UK



The sight of a western car [in communist Poland] made people stop and stare
Al, England
BBC News website reader

I remember in my younger days when my parents took us to visit their homeland in Poland we had to pass through East Germany. The communist built concrete buildings where westerners had to buy transit visas where bleak and looked daunting to a youngster. These were all surrounded by armed guards and by barbed wire fences. The whole ambience was very bleak and stark compared to West Germany. When crossing the Polish border we were subjected to thorough searches of the car. It appeared it was a search for the sake of a search. Nothing was ever found. It was just to be unpleasant. Communist Poland was much the same as Communist East Germany. Everywhere was bleak. Rural areas used horses and carts. There was very little mechanisation evident on farms. The sight of a western car made people stop and stare. When the car was parked on the streets, crowds used to gather to view it. Not all petrol stations had 4 star petrol in those days. Most had very low octane and the higher octane fuel had to be sought out. However, the black market for foreign currency was strong. The pound went a very long way there. Western goods were prized posessions. A pair of Levis or Wranglers were the ultimate things to aspire to. These were not available in the country, or at least if they were, they were either on the black market or, if on sale somewhere in a state run shop would have been priced in dollars at a price higher than back home. Upon entry and exit into communist countries you had to declare the amount of foreign currency you brought in and how much you took out and had to have receipts to prove where you changed the money and at what official Government exchange rate. Having been back to Poland following the fall of the Iron Curtain, how things have changed. It even seems that the clouds are no longer over the country. I no longer see the pollution that used to hang over steel mills and power stations. New stylish buildings have been erected in Warsaw that contrast starkly the old post war aparments built of concrete. The whole country seems to have re-awoken and emerged and is proud of itself once more. No graffiti, mindless vandalism or chavs. People respect one another.
Al, England


In the 1970s, the years of detente, you knew that the Soviet Union and the eastern European countries tended to be highly secretive and unco-operative but a Third World War seemed a remote prospect. It all changed with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan at the end of the decade. Things seemed to get worse with, among other things, the deployment of cruise missiles in the early 1980s and there was a lot of hysteria whipped up in the media, convincing many people a nuclear war was inevitable. Then Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in 1985 and everything started to change. Looking back the possibility of nuclear war was much exaggerrated but it is good we do not have the nuclear paranoia of the 1980s nowadays. Mikhail Gorbachev was one of the most deserving recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize.
Robert, Campbeltown, Scotland


I hope the conflict will not escalate to the new level. I am quite sure it will not reach Cold War period tension, but average citizens may suffer from consequences of Litvienko case.
Sergey Vtorushin, Moscow, Russia



Today, just like after WWII, Britain is tirelessly looking to instigate and exploit old or create new divisions
Yevgeni, Moscow, Russia
BBC News website reader

What a perverted view of recent history - all for the sake of fitting it to the current drift in British foreign policy. I am no Stalin sympathizer but I know one thing for sure - he did not want to "cut the USSR from the rest of the world". Get real - on the eve of Cold War USSR badly needed peace and quiet to recover from WWII. The country suffered immense - without any comparable precedent in history of mankind - loss of human life, and was essentially destroyed as economy. In these circumstances the blame for instigating the Cold War firmly rests on the British who never - both then and now - wanted to see strong and stable in-land power (the fleet is usless to deal with it). Stalin is only guilty of swallowing the British bait. In any case, the talk of human rights and authoritarianism has never been the real reason for starting the Cold War. Britain never wanted to see stable Continent for fear of becoming just an island that no one needs. Pre-condition for that stability has always been existence of strong and stable Russia on good terms with the rest of Europe. Today, just like after WWII, Britain is tirelessly looking to instigate and exploit old or create new divisions. This time Russians will not swallow the bait. Sooner or later Russians will find a way to show British their place. Britain is only an island.
Yevgeni, Moscow, Russia


Yevgeni, thank you for letting everyone in the West understand what the (not so regular) Russian think. You don't seem to be bothered by the fact that when Churchill was making that speech, the whole Eastern Europe was occupied by Red Army (liberated, you will no doubt tell us). Also for your lot, is not of concern that none of these countries wanted to be communist. None. "Stable continent"? Right. The communists destroyed entire generations, starting with the emerging middle class is all these countries. Their place was taken by a greedy gang of thugs and thief that ruined and kept these countries backward. Even after 17 years from the fall of the wall the Eastern Europe is not where it could have been without big brother's help. So, please, have the decency to shut up at least, I'm not expecting you will ever say sorry for what you did. Such a shame! Russia could have been a great nation without these KGB guys in power.
Brad Vrabete, Shannon, Ireland


I visited Berlin (east & west) in the late eighties. I remember how the bustle and bright lights of west Berlin contrasted with grey, stark, empty east Berlin, where it could take ten years on a waiting list to buy a Trabant. East Berlin was very cheap though - and we ate at the top restaurant, complete with musicians to accompany our meal, for about 12 Ostmarks (&#163;4). I also remember being filmed in west Berlin because I was wearing a David Bowie 'Heroes' T-shirt. It's all so different now, and Berlin is fast becoming one of the greatest cities in Europe.
Rob Holman, Chislehurst, Kent, England


Here in America, the word "Communist" is still used as an insult or slur, even by the young. This no doubt came from the hatred of anyone of Red persuasion that the Americans were taught as children in the Cold War. Land of the Free? Right. You're free to believe whatever you like, support whichever political party you like, so long as the government approves.
Daniel Clarke, Atlanta, USA


The cold war wasn't just a military stand off, it affected every part of life for 40 years. Like a previous contributor, I suffered "nuclear nightmares" as a teenager in the earlier 80s. I wonder, if there wasn't a cold war, would cultural movements such as hippies, punks, yuppies have evolved, and would there have been such a decline in the West in religious practice ? As people began to realise that nuclear war was not survivable, psychologically they changed to start living for 'the now' rather than for the future or for the society around them. I think we are still years away from assessing the true historical and social impact of that period. In the nineties we were just glad that it was 'over', but the shadow has not yet receded, and many of today's problems can be traced to the political games in the cold war.
Rob, Southampton, UK


As a member of the group People to People High School Ambassador Program I visited what was then Czechoslovakia in 1988 at the age of 17 (seven countries on this trip). What a wake up call for us to have machine guns pointed at our faces, passports confiscated (luckily returned). We were watched at all times by authorities and you felt as you were walking on egg shells. One morning we got off our bus in Prague after visiting orphanages and there was a check point with soldiers on a corner. It seemed an odd place for it - until I saw that across the street was the US Embassy. The soldiers were taking photos of everyone coming in and out. Once inside I felt a rush of a deep breath as I realized for that brief moment I was back on US soil. A very unforgetable experience.
Diana, Akron Ohio USA



I have a serial obssession with old Cold War bunkers
Roberto, London
BBC News website

I remember during the early 1980's being totally paranoid about the prospect of a nuclear holocaust. Especially after watching the film 'The day after' and a British drama called 'Threads' about a nuclear attack on Shefield (of all places.) I was only about 10 at the time and I remember reading the book 'War Plan UK' which detailed UK civil defence strategy during a nuclear conflict. I still have the occasional nuclear war nightmare and I have a serial obssession with old Cold War bunkers. I want to buy one!
Roberto, London

In 1968, when I was 18, I and 26 other students visited Moscow and Leningrad. We travelled by train starting in Europe at the Hook of Holland. There was a marked difference in the attitude and attention on the train when we crossed from West to East Berlin. From East Berlin to Warsaw, we were sent outside our compartments and told to face the wall while the guards went through our things. All of them were armed, which startled us as we'd never seen such a thing at home. Every twenty minutes the guards would come into the compartments and demand to see our passports and we were woken up if asleep. On arrival in the USSR (at a place called Brest), I remember being constantly stared at with amusement until our guide informed me that it was because I was wearing "men's jeans" - in other words with a fly in the front! We were constantly asked for biros and chewing gum. And we were followed everywhere, presumably by the KGB. It was a very tightly-organised trip and our gr! eatest pleasure was had in evading the man following us whenever we had some free time to ourselves (only in the evenings and very rarely).
Ruth Greene, London


This is an appaling article. It implies that the cold war was initiated by Churchill, when in fact it was initiated by the clear fact that Stalin was imposing his will on the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. That's why Churchill made his speech! He wasn't making it all up. Also, it was not the issue of the USSR cutting itself off from the world, it was the issue of the USSR seizing territory in the heart of Europe! In your timeline for instance you don't mention these key facts. As for the Berlin blockade, you should state the truth clearly: it was the Soviets blockading West Berlin (which was administered by the West) in order to extract concessions. The Americans organised an air-lift to save West Berlin from falling to Soviet bullying - something that West Germans were grateful for for decades. And please, why don't you mention Hungary 1956, Prague Spring 1968? And how about the mass deportations of Baltic peoples to Siberia and the forced Russification of those territories? Those were key events that again demonstrated to the whole world the extent of Soviet aggression.
Edward Christie, Vienna, Austria


I still remember the Cold War as a child in the 1960's, an adolescent in the 1970's, and an adult in the 1980s. While the Republicans, Democrats, and Communists were playing mind games with people, Latin America was being destroyed including Cuba. Cuba in heart and soul was destroyed by Castro who with the help and cooperation of Russia and the USA managed to tear up families, destroy a country, and impose an apartheid on the Cuban people. I myself was in Germany [as an 11 year old exchange student] in 1973 and crossed the border with Switzerland to see my Grandfather who had come from Cuba to do a lecture on Biochemistry. I myself almost created a crisis with my family in the USA flying over to Switzerland. Regardless, I had three weeks with my grandfather before he went back to Cuba and I went back to the USA [via Italy, France, and Spain]. I was unable to see family in Cuba or even visit Cuba because of these stupid laws practiced by the governing elites. What helped me through it all was the BBC. Another result of the changes of the Cold War; On Christmas Eve 1989: as Romania overthrew its dictator Ceaucescu, the Republicans and Democrats in my family sitting on the Dinner Table that Christmas Eve declared that the Cold War was all pre arranged. My Uncle and Aunt who had come from Cuba on a humanitarian visa were there to have their first Christmas Dinner in thirty years. My response to the Republicans and Democrats in that table was to declare myself a member of the Libertarian Party in America. The Republicans and Democrats choked on their food. My uncle and aunt returned to Cuba to announce that I had declared my independence.
Roberto Alvarez-Galloso,CPUR, Miami Florida


Back then the countries had ideas. People were defending their ideals. There was talk going on. What now? Outright struggle for control and resources and much less some remnants of humanitarism. Pathetic. Shameful. The muslim guys have idealogical agenda. We in the west do not, or have lost it. It is critical that there is an idealogical response to global terrorism, open discussion on the reasoning of it. If this kind of guys want to be enemies of everybody, lets face it and talk about it and let the muslim population hear that and have a say...
Dennis, New York, USA


With the end of the Cold war and the death of the Soviet Union, the third world was orphaned. With the absense of the cold, as absurd as this may sound, the US has become the only, and by extension irresponsible, policeman on the streets of the world scene. While we rejoice in the end of an era that has caused fear and insecurity we see ourselves in an uncertain future where the world lies at the mercy of same crazy man "empwered by God", G.W. Bush, and his cronies toying with the nations of the third world as if they were some plastic toys in a child's bedroom.
Samir Kablaoui, Freehold, NJ


...please do not criticize USSR's contact in Eastern Europe after 1945: everything was agreed with US and UK at Yalta and later Potsdam conference. As far as the "Iron curtain" speech is concerned, Churchill was lamenting the fact that due to the Yalta agreement he could not get his hand over Czechoslovakia or Poland or Hungary. However, he did get his hand over my country Greece and instigated a Civil War (followed by decades of civil strife) and at the same time tricked us over Cyprus (which he had promised to be united with Greece). Between him and Moscow, most Greeks would have preferred the latter since the Russians have always been our friends, allies and orthodox brothers. But we were allocated to the "free world"...
Kleandros Exarhiotis, Athens, Greece


Living in Poland in th 70s I remember all the crying that took place in "western" Europe when Reagan deployed Pershing missiles there. To us in Poland it looked like the "westerners" chicken again, and without the US they would gladly capitulate to the USSR or became another "Finland" just for comfort of their live. In Poland my generation had a clear understanding that we are still under soviet occupation, mainly because "allies" abandoned Poland, and that communists only understand tough facts. Unfortunately the three "core" countries of "western" Europe looked like spineless conformists to those over the curtain at that time.
Jerzy, Warsaw, Poland


It's worth remembering that the Twenties and Thirties were also a period of cold relations between the USSR and the "West". Tony Judt's book "Postwar" makes clear the real Cold War started in the early 20s. The wartime alliance was a break; the Cold War resumed quickly once World War II was over. And let's not forget that from August 24, 1939 until June 22, 1941, the Third Reich and the USSR were allies, under the guise of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, also known as the Hitler-Stalin Pact or the Nazi-Soviet Pact, and formally known as the "Treaty of Non-aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics". The Western allies did not acquit themselves well in the period leading up to September 1, 1939, but they didn't form an alliance with Hitler, either. Franklin Mount Brooklyn, NY USA
Franklin Mount, Brooklyn, New York, USA


Two things stand out in my memory of the Cold War: How liberals stabbed their communist allies in the back after WWII, purging them from labor unions, academia, etc. In this case I agree with conservatives: You can't trust a liberal. Second, how everyone and their mother wants to take credit for ending, or "winning", the Cold War. Reagan, the Pope, even Osama Bin Laden are claimed to be responsible. I believe the Russian people simply got tired of it.
Fox Berlin, San Diego, USA


I was serving in the Air Force at Elmendorf AFB, Alaska between 1985-1991. We had a sign outside of the 21st Tactical Fighter Wing Headquarters that listed the number of Soviet bombers that we're intercepted during the month. It was a fairly common to watch pairs of fully armed F-15 Eagles scramble down the runway in full afterburner on there way to intercept "enemy" bombers making simulated cruise missile attacks on us. I knew the cold war was over when in the summer of 1989 or 1990. I noticed two unfamiliar aircraft flying over the base preparing to land. They were MIG-29s of the Soviet Air Force stopping in Alaska to refuel on their way to an air show in Canada.
Mike Shapiro, West Point, Utah, USA


My father was in the Norwegian military during the cold war and I did a stint in uniform myself from 1977 to 1979, so I grew up and then served in the Arctic where Norway shared a border with the Soviet Union. Once, while out on patrol and sleeping in tents we measured the temperature to minus 43 degrees C. Minus 20 - 25, which is colder than in your average deep freeze, was quite normal during the long winters. So although there wasn't actually a war it was certainly cold.
Sven, Norway



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Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/6902345.stm

Published: 2007/07/18 09:42:15 GMT

&#169; BBC MMVII

 

[genmirajborgza786]

Russia restarts Cold War patrols
Russia is resuming a Soviet-era practice of sending its bomber aircraft on long-range flights, President Vladimir Putin has said.
Mr Putin said the move to resume the flights permanently after a 15-year suspension was in response to security threats posed by other military powers.

He said 14 bombers had taken off from Russian airfields early on Friday.

The move came a week after Russian bombers flew within a few hundred miles of the US Pacific island of Guam.

A few days ago Moscow said its strategic bombers had begun exercises over the North Pole.

Flexing muscles

"We have decided to restore flights by Russian strategic aviation on a permanent basis," Mr Putin told reporters at joint military exercises with China and four Central Asian states in Russia's Ural mountains.

"In 1992, Russia unilaterally ended flights by its strategic aircraft to distant military patrol areas. Unfortunately, our example was not followed by everyone," Mr Putin said, in an apparent reference to the US.
"Flights by other countries' strategic aircraft continue and this creates certain problems for ensuring the security of the Russian Federation," he said.

In Washington, state department spokesman Sean McCormack played down the significance of Russia's move, saying: "We certainly are not in the kind of posture we were with what used to be the Soviet Union."


"If Russia feels as though they want to take some of these old aircraft out of mothballs and get them flying again, that's their decision," he told reporters.

One of the reasons Russia halted its flights 15 years ago was that it could no longer afford the fuel.

Today Moscow's coffers are stuffed full of oil money, says the BBC's Rupert Wingfield-Hayes in Moscow, and the Kremlin is determined to show it is still a military power to reckon with.

'Shadowed by Nato'

Russian media reported earlier on Friday that long-range bombers were airborne, and that Nato jets were shadowing them.

Itar-Tass quoted Russian air force spokesman Alexander Drobyshevsky as saying: "At present, several pairs of Tu-160 and Tu-95MS aircraft are in the air over the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, which are accompanied by Nato planes."

Nato said it was aware of the flights but had no comment on whether Nato planes were in attendance.

In last week's incident near Guam, the Russian pilots "exchanged smiles" with US fighter pilots who scrambled to track them, a Russian general said.

The US military confirmed the presence of the Russian bombers near Guam, home to a large US base.

Last month two Tupolev 95 aircraft - dubbed "bears" according to their Nato code-name - strayed south from their normal patrol pattern off the Norwegian coast and headed towards Scotland. Two RAF Tornado fighters were sent up to meet them.

Russian bombers have also recently flown close to US airspace over the Arctic Ocean near Alaska.

Story from BBC NEWS:
BBC NEWS | Europe | Russia restarts Cold War patrols

Published: 2007/08/17 16:37:09 GMT

&#169; BBC MMVII

 

[genmirajborgza786]

Russian air patrols 'a show of might'
By Jonathan Marcus
BBC diplomatic correspondent
It was one of the great military shadow-plays of the Cold War era.
Nuclear-armed bombers based in Russia's Kola Peninsula regularly flew patrols that took them close to Nato airspace.

Nato jets would be scrambled to intercept. Often the opposing aircrews would wave at each other and the Soviet bombers would return home.

In the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russian military activities of this kind dwindled.

It was not just the bomber patrols. The Russian navy reined in its operations far from its home ports.

But now all this is changing. President Vladimir Putin's announcement of the resumption of bomber patrols seems to have been previewed by recent Russian air force activity.

Image-building

Last month, two Tupolev 95 aircraft - "Bears" according to their Nato code-name - strayed south from their routine patrol pattern off the Norwegian coast and headed towards Scotland.


Two RAF Tornado fighters were sent up to meet them. This month, two similar Russian aircraft flew thousands of miles across the Pacific towards the major US military base of Guam where an air and naval exercise was under way.
The Russians have also been making noises about re-establishing a naval presence in the Mediterranean, probably utilising Syrian ports.

Russia and China have just held highly visible military exercises along with troops from four Central Asian states and President Putin has warned of Russia's need to modernise its nuclear arsenal in the face of the Bush administration's plans to deploy limited anti-missile defences.

So what is going on?

Well it is not quite a Cold War mark II. But it is part of a new, more muscular Russian foreign policy; a result of a growing perception in Moscow that Russia's interests have been ignored for too long.

Domestic political factors are at play too. It is all about image-building; something that must be set against the enigma of Vladimir Putin's political future once his presidential term expires.

International player

Russia's armed forces are also badly in need of modernisation. The aircraft involved in these long-range patrols, the ageing Tupolevs, date back to the 1950s.


As a key element of Russia's nuclear forces they are being modernised with new avionics and improved weaponry.
Russia's military is slowly recovering after more than a decade of neglect.

Nonetheless, Russia can project only a shadow of the Soviet Union's military might. That is one good reason why this is not a reprise of the Cold War.

And while money from oil and gas will help to pay for new equipment it looks as though Moscow's nuclear forces will continue to receive preferential treatment in terms of funding.

Above all else the resumption of long-range bomber patrols must be seen as largely diplomatic symbolism; part of a new Russian military strategy of heightened visibility.

You could add in Russia's recent planting of an underwater flag in the Arctic.

But it is not just show of course. Real issues are involved and the message is simple: Russia wants it to be known that it is back as a player on the international stage.

Story from BBC NEWS:
BBC NEWS | Europe | Russian air patrols 'a show of might'

Published: 2007/08/17 17:38:20 GMT

&#169; BBC MMVII

 

[genmirajborgza786]

BBC radio ordered off Russian FM
The BBC's Russian-language service will no longer be heard on Russian FM radio, after the country's media regulator ordered that it be removed.
The broadcaster's last FM distribution partner in Russia, Bolshoye Radio, said it had been told to remove BBC content or risk being shut down.
Two other Russian FM stations have dropped BBC programming recently.

The BBC's Russian Service can still be heard online and on medium and short wave frequencies in Russia.

BBC executives said they would appeal against the decision.

'Propaganda'

"The BBC entered into the relationship with Bolshoye Radio in good faith," said Richard Sambrook, Director of BBC Global News.

"We cannot understand how the licence is now interpreted in a way that does not reflect the original and thorough concept documents."

He said the licensing agreement allowed for 18&#37; of Bolshoye's content to be foreign-produced.

Bolshoye Radio's owners, financial group Finam, told the BBC that Russia's media regulators required that all programming be produced by the station itself.

A spokesman for the company said management had made the decision without outside prompting and that it was well known that the BBC was set up to broadcast foreign propaganda.

"Any media which is government-financed is propaganda - it's a fact, it's not negative," the spokesman, Igor Ermachenkov, told the BBC.

A BBC spokesman, Mike Gardner, said: "Although the BBC is funded by the UK government... a fundamental principle of its constitution and its regulatory regime is that it is editorially independent of the UK government."

Critics say Russia is taking measures to curb media freedom ahead of parliamentary elections in December and a presidential poll in March.

Story from BBC NEWS:
BBC NEWS | Europe | BBC radio ordered off Russian FM

Published: 2007/08/17 17:18:30 GMT

&#169; BBC MMVII

 

[genmirajborgza786]

Rice encourages Russian activists
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has pledged support for human rights activists in Moscow, during a Russian visit that has been coolly received.
Ms Rice said she wanted to hear from local activists about the state of human rights and democracy in Russia.

She emphasised, however, that she had no wish to interfere in Russia's internal affairs.

The US has accused President Vladimir Putin of rolling back democracy and trampling rights, charges he denies.

One of the activists who met Ms Rice told the BBC she wanted the United States to condemn what she called the Kremlin's stifling of democratic society.

The activist said she would tell the secretary of state that Russia is sliding towards an authoritarian regime, where constitutional and human rights are constantly violated.

Ms Rice told the activists she wanted to support them, but was also very careful to point out that the US is not interfering in Russian domestic politics but supporting organisations that are entirely indigenous to Russia, the BBC's Rupert Wingfield-Hayes reports from Moscow.

US Defence Secretary Robert Gates, who is travelling with Ms Rice, was expected to address military students at the Academy of Russia's General Staff on Saturday.

On Friday, talks about US plans to base a missile shield in Eastern Europe ended acrimoniously.

The secretary of state was due to have dinner later with her Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, while the defence secretary will meet Viktor Zubkov, the prime minister.


It gets really bad, when [NGOs] start to be used by some states against other states as a tool in pursuit of their foreign policy aims
President Vladimir Putin

Their trip comes as Russia prepares for parliamentary and presidential elections over the next five months.

Mr Putin must step down in March after two terms in office.

But he has already hinted he may become prime minister and return as president in 2012, as the constitution allows.

Analysts say Ms Rice's visit to Russian non-governmental organisations could make the Kremlin wary.

The Russian Itar-Tass news agency said Mr Putin this week sounded a note of caution about NGOs in comments to visiting French President Nicolas Sarkozy.





"It gets really bad, when such organisations start to be used by some states against other states as a tool in pursuit of their foreign policy aims," the agency quoted Mr Putin as saying.

Russia is furious at US plans to base an anti-missile system in its geographical backyard, in Poland and the Czech Republic.

But the White House team rejected Russian appeals at Friday's meetings in Moscow to halt the scheme.

Mr Putin was not convinced by US assurances that the system would be to counteract "rogue" states such as North Korea and Iran.

He threatened to abandon a key nuclear missile reduction treaty if Washington forged ahead with the plans.

Story from BBC NEWS:
BBC NEWS | Europe | Rice encourages Russian activists

Published: 2007/10/13 10:23:24 GMT

&#169; BBC MMVII

 

[genmirajborgza786]

US and Russia fail to bridge gap
By Rupert Wingfield-Hayes
BBC News, Moscow


It is not unusual for senior diplomats to disagree. It is, however, extremely unusual to see them do so as obviously and as publicly as the Russians and the Americans have done in Moscow.

As Condoleezza Rice and her Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, sat down to face the world's media you could have cut the atmosphere with a knife.

Two of the world's most experienced diplomats stared straight ahead, stony faced, barely acknowledging the other's existence.

Mr Lavrov was the first to speak and he did not pull his punches.

He made it painfully clear that the talks had achieved nothing, and demanded that the United States immediately freeze its plans to deploy a missile defence system in Eastern Europe.

When her time came, Condoleezza Rice did her best to sound much more conciliatory.

Ever the diplomat, she insisted the discussions had been constructive, and that in general US-Russian relations were still in a much better state than they were in the bad old days of the Cold War.

Rogue states

But it was all too obvious that Ms Rice was trying rather too hard to sound upbeat, and that the talks had been a disaster.

The only thing the two sides appeared to agree on was that they had talked, and that they should continue to do so in the future.



It is hard not to draw the conclusion that Russian-US relations are now at their lowest point since the end of the Cold War.

The biggest single cause is the now notorious US missile defence system.

At one level, Moscow simply does not trust the United States when it says the system is no threat to Russia.

The system consists of a high-powered radar, to be established in the Czech Republic, and a group of interceptor missiles, which will be based in Poland.

Washington says the system is designed to shoot down conventional or nuclear tipped missiles fired by "rogue states" towards Europe. For "rogue state" read Iran.

Russia, not unreasonably, points out that Iran does not presently possess the long range missile technology, or nuclear warheads, the system is designed to protect against.

From Moscow's point of view there is no need to deploy a system to defend against a threat that, so far, does not exist.

On another level, Moscow is extremely angry that the United States has chosen to base its new missile system in two countries that were once part of the Warsaw Pact.

Russian defence experts say that in the mid-1990s Washington made a promise to Moscow that, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, it would not push its military deployment up to the borders of the old Soviet empire. The US, they say, is breaking its word.

Levers of power

But there is another dimension to this argument that should not be forgotten. That is the domestic dimension. In Russia these are nervous days.

In five months time, Mr Putin must step down as president after eight years. In recent weeks he has made it increasingly clear that he intends to stay on in power, perhaps as Russia's prime minister, perhaps in some other capacity.

If Mr Putin wants to continue to dominate Russia's political system, he must continue to control the levers of power.

To do that he needs to be able to change the constitution, and to do that he needs his party, United Russia, to win a two-thirds majority in December's parliamentary elections.

One sure-fire way of drumming up support for himself, and his party, is to have a fight with the United States.

Story from BBC NEWS:
BBC NEWS | Europe | US and Russia fail to bridge gap

Published: 2007/10/12 21:15:46 GMT

&#169; BBC MMVII

 

[genmirajborgza786]

Putin sees Medvedev as successor
Russian leader Vladimir Putin has backed First Deputy PM Dmitry Medvedev to replace him as president next year, Russian media report.
"I fully support this candidacy," Mr Putin was quoted as saying.

Mr Medvedev was nominated by Mr Putin's United Russia Party and three other pro-Kremlin parties on Monday.

Mr Medvedev was previously Mr Putin's chief of staff and is chairman of the gas giant Gazprom. He hails from Mr Putin's native St Petersburg.

The 42-year-old former lawyer managed Mr Putin's election campaign in 2000. As first deputy prime minister he has overseen national programmes in the areas of health, housing and education.
Story from BBC NEWS:
BBC NEWS | Europe | Putin sees Medvedev as successor

Published: 2007/12/10 12:14:14 GMT

&#169; BBC MMVII

 

[genmirajborgza786]

Profile: Dmitry Medvedev
Dmitry Medvedev, the Kremlin's choice for president in 2008, is seen as one of the economic liberals in President Vladimir Putin's entourage.

He is not only a first deputy prime minister, but also chairman of Russia's enormous state-run gas monopoly, Gazprom.

Mr Medvedev, 42, trained as a lawyer in Leningrad - now St Petersburg. The son of a professor, he became an assistant professor in his own right at St Petersburg State University in the 1990s.

While there, he became involved in the city council and joined Vladimir Putin's external affairs team as an expert consultant working for the mayor. It was a key period in Russia's transition from communism.

Putin insider

Endorsing his nomination as presidential candidate, Mr Putin said "I have known him for more than 17 years, I have worked with him very closely all these years".
Before Monday's announcement, Mr Medvedev was seen as one of several potential candidates to succeed Mr Putin.
Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov and First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov are also close associates from Mr Putin's time in St Petersburg.

Mr Medvedev, unlike Mr Ivanov or President Putin, has no background in either the Soviet KGB or its successor, the Federal Security Service (FSB).

Mr Putin, who headed the FSB, was chosen as a successor by the late President Boris Yeltsin, and it was not long before Mr Medvedev followed him to the Kremlin, to serve as deputy chief of staff.



RISE OF A KREMLIN INSIDER
1990-95: Consultant to St Petersburg mayor
1999: Kremlin deputy chief of staff
2000: Head of Vladimir Putin's election campaign
2002: Chairman of Gazprom
2003: Putin's chief of staff
2005: First Deputy Prime Minister, in charge of social programmes


In 2000, Mr Medvedev took charge of Vladimir Putin's presidential election campaign and in October 2003 he was appointed Kremlin chief of staff.

Almost from his arrival at the Kremlin, Mr Medvedev took an active role at Gazprom.

Earlier this month, he said it was time for Gazprom, as the world's biggest gas company, to promote its international image by positioning itself on stock exchanges in New York and Shanghai.

Social projects

Perhaps most important to his credentials as a presidential candidate was his promotion to the post of first deputy prime minister in charge of national projects.

Mr Medvedev has overseen major social initiatives in the areas of agriculture, health, education and efforts to boost Russia's low birthrate. He has spearheaded measures to support foster families and develop pre-school education.

He has been an ally of President Putin in helping to restructure the Kremlin's relations with powerful billionaire oligarchs who made fortunes in the Yeltsin years.

In January 2007 he told the World Economic Forum in Davos: "We aim to create big Russian corporations and will back their foreign economic activities.

"But the role of the state certainly should not involve telling any particular company or sector how to carry out diversification.

"Even if the state retains a controlling interest... we aim to create public companies with a substantial share of foreign investment in their capital."


He is known to dislike labels, considering ideology harmful, and is not a member of any political party.


But he does consider himself a democrat: "We are well aware that no non-democratic state has ever become truly prosperous for one simple reason: freedom is better than non-freedom."

He is married with one son.


Story from BBC NEWS:
BBC NEWS | Europe | Profile: Dmitry Medvedev

Published: 2007/12/10 14:48:14 GMT

&#169; BBC MMVII

 

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Gazprom
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Gazprom
&#1043;&#1072;&#1079;&#1087;&#1088;&#1086;&#1084;

Type Public/Joint stock company (RTS: GAZP MICEX: GAZP)
Founded 1989
Headquarters Moscow, Russia
Key people Alexei Miller, CEO
Industry Natural gas extraction
Products Natural gas
Revenue Rb 2152 bn (2006, ~US$83.6 bn)
Net income Rb 636 bn (2006, ~US$24.63 bn)
Employees 432,000 (as of 2006)
Parent Russian Government
Slogan &#1052;&#1077;&#1095;&#1090;&#1099; &#1089;&#1073;&#1099;&#1074;&#1072;&#1102;&#1090;&#1089;&#1103;! (Dreams come true)
Website Gazprom
JSC Gazprom (RTS: GAZP MICEX: GAZP LSE: OGZD; Russian: &#1054;&#1040;&#1054; &#1043;&#1072;&#1079;&#1087;&#1088;&#1086;&#1084;, sometimes transcribed as Gasprom[1]) is the largest Russian company and the biggest extractor of natural gas in the world. With sales of US$31 billion in 2004, it accounts for about 93 percent of Russian natural gas production; with reserves of 28,800 km&#179;, it controls 16 percent of the world's gas reserves (as of 2004[2], including the Shtokman field.) After acquisition of the oil company Sibneft, Gazprom, with 119 billion barrels of reserves, ranks behind only Saudi Arabia, with 263 billion barrels, and Iran, with 133 billion barrels, as the world's biggest owner of oil and oil equivalent in natural gas.[3]

By the end of 2004 Gazprom was the sole gas supplier to at least Bosnia-Herzegovina, Estonia, Finland, Macedonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova and Slovakia, and provided 97 percent of Bulgaria's gas, 89 percent of Hungary's, 86 percent of Poland's, nearly three-quarters of the Czech Republic's, 67 percent of Turkey's, 65 percent of Austria's, about 40 percent of Romania's, 36 percent of Germany's, 27 percent of Italy's, and 25 percent of France's. [2] [3] The European Union as a whole gets about 25 percent of its gas supplies from this company. [4] [5]

Apart from its gas reserves and the world's longest pipeline network (150,000 km), it also controls assets in banking, insurance, media, construction and agriculture.

As measured by its market capitalization as of December 2007 (US$345 billion),[4] Gazprom is the world's third largest corporation following this measure. [6] [7] Gazprom chairman Dmitry Medvedev says the company's market capitalization should quadruple to reach one trillion dollars by 2017, which would make it the world's biggest corporation.[8]

Gazprom conducted dubious transactions with the gas-trading company Itera and a Gazprom/Itera joint-venture, Purgaz, in the late 1990s, which allegedly benefited various management members and their relatives. Additionally, large-scale asset-stripping of Gazprom was going on by corrupt management and board members through various transactions involving the Gazprom daughter Stroitransgaz and the regional gas company Sibneftegaz. The Gazprom auditor PwC apparently had signed off and covered these transactions.[5]

The investment fund Hermitage Capital Management, a minority shareholder of Gazprom, reported on the scandals in October 2000: "Investors are valuing this company as if 99 percent of its assets have been stolen. The real figure is around 10 percent so that's good news". [6]

On the fourth annual shareholders' meeting on June 26, 1998, Farit Gazizullin, the new Chairman of Russia's State Property Committee, was elected Chairman of the Board of Directors.

On the fifth annual shareholders' meeting on June 30, 1998, Viktor Chernomyrdin became the Chairman of the Board of Directors.

On the seventh shareholders' meeting on June 30, 2000 (the sixth took place on August 26, 1999), Deputy Head of Russia's Presidential Administration Dmitry Medvedev occupied this position.


2001-2003: Reform years
Russian President Vladimir Putin was actively pursuing reforms in the management of the company in the years following the scandals. This was aided by shareholder activism by Hermitage CEO William Browder and former Russian finance minister Boris Fyodorov.

On May 30, 2001, the Board of Directors replaced Rem Vyakhirev, whose contract had expired, with Alexei Miller as the new CEO to guide the reforms; Rem Viakhirev was moved to the position of Chairman of the Board at the 8th shareholders' meeting on June 29, 2001, temporarily replacing Dmitry Medvedev who became his deputy.

In April 2001 Gazprom took over NTV, Russia's only nationwide state-independent television station held by Vladimir Gusinsky's Media-Most holding, which caused major changes in its editorial policy. [9][10][11] On November 8, 2001 by the decision of a Moscow court of [[May 4, 2001, a block of shares comprising 25 percent of stock capital of the Media-Most holdings was transferred to Gazprom Media[12], a media holding founded in 1998 and owned by Gazprom (In 2006 it was transferred to Gazprombank, another subsidiary of Gazprom[7]). In July 2002 Gazprom Media acquired all Gusinsky's shares in media companies of the holding, which resulted in dramatic changes of their editorial policy and closure of some publications. [13] In June 2005 Gazprom Media purchased the influential Russian newspaper Izvestia.

Until 2004, the Russian government held a 38.37 percent stake in the company, and had a majority on the company&#8217;s board of directors. Gazprom provides 25 percent of all Russian tax revenues (averaging over US$4 billion annually between 1993-2003) and accounts for 8 percent of the nation's gross domestic product. Non-Russian investors may legally buy Gazprom shares only through Depositary Shares, which cost more than locally-traded shares.

In 2004, Putin announced that Gazprom was to acquire the state-owned oil-company Rosneft and that this will "eventually lead to the lifting of foreign ownership restrictions on Gazprom shares," as the stake of the Russian government in Gazprom will rise from 38.37 percent to a controlling position. [8]

However, Gazprom was foiled both in its attempt to acquire Rosneft, and its earlier attempt to buy the core asset of Yukos, when Yukos filed for bankruptcy in Houston. Fearing that it would fall foul of US law, Gazprom backed away from buying Yukos' main asset when the Russian government auctioned it in December 2004, leaving the more gung-ho Rosneft to buy it. After Rosneft had appropriated such a large and controversial asset, the technicalities of merging it into Gazprom became too complicated. Instead, Rosneft remained independent, to the delight of its own management. The state increased its stake in Gazprom to over 50 percent instead by paying cash for a 10.4&#37; stake, thus fulfilling the main pre-condition for the abolition of restrictions on foreign ownership of Gazprom shares. At the time of writing, the market is still awaiting this move.

On July 26, 2004, Gazprom sold 49.979 percent out of its 100 percent share of the SOGAZ Ltd. insurance group to an unnamed purchaser for 1.69 billion Russian rubles [14], and 26 percent more of SOGAZ in August 2004 for 879.3 million rubles. [9] [15] In January 2005 it turned out that ABRos, a subsidiary of the Russia bank, held a 49.97 percent share of SOGAZ.[10] [16]


[edit] 2005-2006
In June 2005, Gazprombank, Gazpromivest Holding, Gazfond and Gazprom Finance B. V., subisidiaries of Gazprom, agreed to sell a 10.7399% share to the state-owned company Rosneftegaz for $7 bn, which was widely considered as an understated price[11], by December 25, which, combined with the 38% share of the State Property Committee, would give the state a controlling share. [17]

In September 2005, Gazprom bought 72.633% of the oil company Sibneft (now Gazprom Neft) for $13.01 billion, aided by a $12 billion loan from the West, which consolidates Gazprom's position as a global energy giant and Russia's biggest company. On the day of the deal the company was worth &#163;69.7 billion/US$123.2 billion, about the GDP of Ireland in 2004.

On November 15, 2005, Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller and Saint Petersburg governor Valentina Matviyenko announced that Sibneft is going to build the Gazprom City business center including a 300 meters high skyscraper with its headquarters on the right bank of the Neva River in front of the Smolny Cathedral in St. Petersburg, despite current regulations forbid construction of a building of more than 42 (48 with expertise approval) meters high there (See Gazprom City).

On January 1, 2006, at 10:00 (Moscow time zone), Gazprom ended the delivery of gas for the Ukrainian market, calling on Ukraine's government to pay increased fees that partially reflect the globally increased fuel prices. See: Russia-Ukraine gas dispute.

During the night of January 3 - January 4, 2006, Naftohaz Ukrainy and Gazprom negotiated a deal that has resolved the long-standing gas price conflict between Russia and Ukraine, to the satisfaction of both parties.

As the Russian state had acquired a controlling share of Gazprom, in the very beginning of 2006 20% restriction on foreign investment was lifted and Gazprom became fully open to foreign investors.[12][13]

In April 2006, Gazprom market cap was US$ 270 billion.

On July 20, 2006, the Russian federal law On Gas Export granting Gazprom exclusive right to export natural gas was published and hence came into force (Full text in Russian: [18]). It was almost unanimously approved by the State Duma on July 5, by the Federation Council of Russia on July 7 and signed by Vladimir Putin on July 18.[14]

On April 3, 2006, Gazprom indicated it would triple the price of natural gas sold to Belarus after December 31, 2006. In December 2006 Gazprom threatened a cut-off of supplies to Belarus at 10 a.m. Moscow time on January 1, 2007, unless it agrees to raise the price it pays for the gas from $47 to $200 per 1,000 cubic metres or cedes control over its distribution network.[15] Analysts suggested Moscow could penalise Alexander Lukashenko, President of Belarus, for not delivering on pledges of closer integration with Russia[16], while others noted that other friendly countries like Armenia pay for the gas as much as Belarus with the new level and this had nothing to do with any punishments[19]. Later Gazprom requested $105 price[17], yet Belarus was still firm on the demands refusing the agreement. It responded that if supplies were cut, it would deny Gazprom access to its pipelines, which would hurt gas transportation to Europe.[18] However, on January 1, 2007 (Moscow time zone), just few hours before the deadline, Belarus and Gazprom signed the last-minute agreement. Under the agreement, Belarus undertook to pay $100 per 1,000 cubic metre in 2007. The agreement also calls for Gazprom to purchase 50% of the shares in Beltransgaz, the Belarusian pipeline network.[19] Immediately following the signing of this agreement Belarus declared a $42/ton transportation tax on Russian oil travelling through the Gazprom pipelines crossing its territory. (See Russia-Belarus energy dispute)

On December 21, 2006, Gazprom took control over a 50%-plus-one-share stake in Royal Dutch Shell's Sakhalin-II project[20][21] after Russian regulators had withdrawn an environmental permit for Sakhalin-II on September 18, 2006, citing damage to salmon streams. The latter event was widely interpreted as a move by the Russian government to force a renegotiation of the Sakhalin-II deal.[22].

2007
On July 4, 2007 the State Duma passed a bill giving Gazprom and Transneft the authority to create their own security forces with greater powers than other private security firms.[23] Gennady Gudkov, a deputy in the State Duma who opposed the bill, raised concerns by calling it a &#8220;Pandora&#8217;s box... This law envisages the creation of corporate armies. If we pass this law, we will all become servants of Gazprom and Transneft.&#8221;

Deputy chief executive Alexander Medvedev announced the company would aim to achieve a market capitalization of $1 trillion dollars "in a period of seven to ten years." He added: "we'd like to be the most-valued and most-capitalised company in the world."[24]

In June 2007, TNK-BP, a subsidiary of BP Plc agreed to sell its stake in Kovykta field in Siberia to Gazprom after the Russian authorities questioned BP's right to export the gas to markets outside Russia.[25][26][27][28] On June 23, 2007, the governments of Russia and Italy signed a memorandum of understanding to cooperate on a joint venture between Gazprom and Eni SpA to construct a 558-mile (900 km) long gas pipeline to carry 1.05 Tcf (30 billion cubic meters) of gas per year from Russia to Europe. The South Stream pipeline would extend under the Black Sea to Bulgaria with a south fork extending to Italy and a north fork to Hungary.[29][30][31]

Following the alleged violation of previous agreements and the failure of negotiations, on August 1, 2007 Gazprom announced that it would cut gas supplies to Belarus by 45% from August 3 over a $456 million debt.[32] Talks are continuing and Belarus has asked for more time to pay. Although the revived dispute is not expected to hit supplies to Europe, the European Commission is said to view the situation 'very seriously'.
Gazprom - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

official gazprom site address:
Gazprom