Skip to main content

Not the Actions of a Friendly Nation

Picture: MOD
The picture is a recent one and shows an RAF Typhoon intercepting a Russian Tu-95 Bomber, NATO designation "BEAR". This is skirting British air space after having overflown Norway. It is a deliberate military incursion by the Russian Air Force: it is an entirely hostile act.
It is also far from unique. According to the House of Commons Defence select committee there have been at least 18 such unauthorised military incursions into British air space in the past two years.
The point of the RAF releasing this photograph is, however a pointed one. The Tupolev 95 may not be as primitive as it looks, it has turbo prop- not piston- engines and a very long range. However the weapons systems on the Typhoon could have shot down the Russian craft well before the Russians were even aware that a Typhoon was in the area- after all the Typhoon only came into service less than two years ago and carries highly advanced systems. Comparing the 1960s era Bomber and the latest fighter underlines that Russia's challenge to the West lacks a certainly level of credibility.
However it also underlines the fact that Russia- through its own choice- has returned to being a hostile power. As the Defence committee points out these are "not the actions of a friendly power".
As even IKEA chooses to abandon its plans to invest in Russia and the level of corruption under Vladimir Putin reaches utterly incredible levels, Russia is retreating into poverty and isolation- and deep hostility. The criminally corrupt cabal that controls the Kremlin is using pride in its military as a rallying cry to turn the growing unrest in the country outwards.
The poor, isolated and paranoid bear still has the capacity to create murder and mayhem on its borders: as the people of Georgia know only too well. As the defence committee says: the time has come to be much more robust in dealing with Putin. Holding the line now may prove a good deal safer than when Russia has decided to make a direct military threat to NATO.
Labels:

Comments

Peter Mc said…
The Russians got one of their Tupolevs very close to the East Coast a couple of years ago and the RAF missed it until it was well with nuclear mayhem range. Those Bears are old airframes and my worry would be that one just falls out of the sky an causes an incident: a colleague bought a former Warsaw Pact shipyard and inherited a load of Naval maintenance records. Eyewateringly bad.
5:34 pm
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Post Truth and Justice

The past decade has seen the rise of so-called "post truth" politics.  Instead of mere misrepresentation of facts to serve an argument, political figures began to put forward arguments which denied easily provable facts, and then blustered and browbeat those who pointed out the lie.  The political class was able to get away with "post truth" positions because the infrastructure that reported their activity has been suborned directly into the process. In short, the media abandoned long-cherished traditions of objectivity and began a slow slide into undeclared bias and partisanship.  The "fourth estate" was always a key piece of how democratic societies worked, since the press, and later the broadcast media could shape opinion by the way they reported on the political process. As a result there has never been a golden age of objective media, but nevertheless individual reporters acquired better or worse reputations for the quality of their reporting and ...
1 comment
Read more

Liberal Democrats v Conservatives: the battle in the blogosphere

It is probably fair to say that the advent of Nick Clegg, the new leader of the Liberal Democrats, has not been greeted with unalloyed joy by our Conservative opponents. Indeed, it would hardly be wrong to say that the past few weeks has seen some "pretty robust" debate between Conservative and Liberal Democrat bloggers. Even the Queen Mum of blogging, the generally genial Iain Dale seems to have been featuring as many stories as he can to try to show Liberal Democrats in as poor a light as possible. Neither, to be fair, has the traffic been all one way: I have "fisked' Mr. Cameron's rather half-baked proposals on health, and attacked several of the Conservative positions that have emerged from the fog of their policy making process. Most Liberal Democrats have attacked the Conservatives probably with more vigour even than the distrusted, discredited Labour government. So what lies behind this sharper debate, this emerging war in the blogosphere? Partly- in my ...
20 comments
Read more

One Year On

  Head vabariigi iseseisvuspäeva! Happy Estonian Independence Day! It is one year since I stood outside the Estonian Parliament for the traditional raising of the national flag from Tall Hermann tower. Looking at the young fraternities gathered with their flags, I was very sure that Estonia too would soon be facing the aggression of the criminal Russian regime. A tragic and dark day. 5 eyes intelligence had been clear: an all out invasion was going to happen, and Putin´s goals included- and still include- "restoration" of Russian imperial power across Europe, even to the Atlantic. Yet there was one Western intelligence failure: we all underestimated the guts of the Ukrainian armed forces, the ZSU, and its President and people. One year on, Estonia, and indeed all the front line states against Russia, knows that Ukraine saved us. Estonia used that time to prepare itself, should that "delayed" onslaught ever be unleashed, but equally the determination of Kaja Kallas, ...
Post a Comment
Read more