Russia is literally decades behind the US in all military sectors outside of HAVs/tanks. Regardless, it all amounts to a hill of dicks when you arrive at the fact that both countries have thousands of Teller-Ulam devices.
We just need to keep a lid on it (self-destruction)and wait it out. Dictators DIE, regimes change...the human race gets smarter..and experienced at living together a little bit more over time. Relief of abject poverty, restoring hope is a great start! When hopeful this life, you're not looking so much to get to the next one
Russians could spend 55% of income on food "Things could be about to get even tougher for ordinary Russians, with rampant inflation and a reduction in real wages in the country meaning that more than half of their annual income could be spent on food. A report by Russian bank VTB Capital into food retail warned the dire situation was set to be exacerbated by rising inflation, which it said could pass 20 percent soon. "In 2015, we forecast household consumption to slide 8.5 percent year-on-year and average food inflation to total 18 percent year-on-year, peaking at 21.6 percent year-on-year in the first quarter of 2015," VTB analysts Maria Kolbina and Nikolay Kovalev said in the report, released Friday. "As a result, the share of food in consolidated household budgets is to rise further from 46 percent to 50-55 percent by autumn."..." http://www.cnbc.com/2015/03/03/ouch-russians-could-spend-55-of-income-on-food.html
Russia bombs CIA-trained rebels "Hundreds of Iranian troops have arrived in Syria to join a major ground offensive in support of President Bashar al-Assad's government, Lebanese sources said on Thursday, a sign the civil war is turning still more regional and global in scope. Russian warplanes, in a second day of strikes, bombed a camp run by rebels trained by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, the group's commander said, putting Moscow and Washington on opposing sides in a Middle East conflict for the first time since the Cold War...." http://www.cnbc.com/2015/10/01/iran-troops-in-syria-as-russia-bombs-cia-trained-rebels.html
"...No seeds have ever been withdrawn, according to Lainoff, but Syria's civil war has brought such chaos that it has the guardians of the so-called "Doomsday Vault" sounding the doomsday alarm..." http://edition.cnn.com/2015/09/24/world/norway-seed-vault/index.html DEFENSE CONDITION: 4
Nial Furgeson claims Obama got it wrong. What I wonder is, why doesn't the rest of the world get it wrong? Why does this fall all under the US shoulders? Furgeson says Putin got this one right. I think his analysis is impeccable. My beef is the US is tired of being the worlds police and carrying the burden of keeping these people from killing each other. Saddam Hussein's oust has caused a domino to tip over for another fifty years. Maybe that is the responsibility for that action that we have to ultimately come to terms with. Putin exploits Obama blunder http://www.cnbc.com/2015/10/16/kissinger-biographer-putin-exploits-obama-blunder.html
One advantage of this huge exodus is, it will be far easier to tell the good guys from the bad guys when the fight is taken to them. Surgical strikes will gain confidence and escalating fierceness that they are not accidentally killing innocents. Much easier to fight a war then. I say, let it play out until millions more leave the region. When the tide goes out, we see who is swimming naked. Taking in all the refugees is Europe's part in fighting this war.
Half of Russia's Richest People Are Planning to Cash Out "It’s been a quarter century since the fall of the Soviet empire triggered one of history’s greatest wealth transfers. Now bankers are preparing for another as Russia’s first generation of capitalists makes way for the next. Confidential surveys of dozens of millionaires and billionaires conducted since European and U.S. economic sanctions began last year show Russia’s wealthy are finding little support within the country’s legal framework to pass down businesses. A majority say they’re taking the issue of succession seriously for the first time. “Owners of major enterprises are basically hostages,” said Alena Ledeneva, a professor of politics at University College London, who has studied the workings of power networks in Russia for two decades. “They can suggest their kids as hostages to take their place, but only Putin’s system will decide whether to incorporate them or not.”..." http://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...e-russia-s-rich-are-facing-cash-out-conundrum