Russia & CIS

Tickets for the Baku 2017 Islamic Solidarity Games, which takes place between 12-22 May, go on sale and are available online and at city centre outlets across Baku.

A truck plowed into a crowded Christmas market in the German capital on Dec. 19, 2016, killing 12 people and wounding 49 others.

A car bomb attack in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad killed at least 23 and injured dozens, Sky News Arabia reported.

David Rockefeller has died at the age of 101.

Spring came to Azerbaijan on March 20 at about 2:29 pm, Shamakhi Astrophysics Observatory named after N.Tusi told APA.

The multi-purpose aircraft carrier will have a total displacement of about 95,000 tons. Its length, width and draft will make up 330×42×11 meters. The width of the flight deck will be 85 meters. The project stipulates for the autonomy of 90 days. The vessel will be able to carry a stock of jet fuel of up to 6,000 tons and the crew of up to 4,000

Azerbaijan is the main strategic partner of Georgia. We are interested in further strengthening and developing this partnership.

Over the past 24 hours, Armenia’s armed forces have 143 times violated the ceasefire in various directions along the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian troops, the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry told APA on March. 20.

China’s Liu Rongbing won the gold medal in competitions on parallel bars at the FIG Artistic Gymnastics Individual Apparatus World Cup in Baku on March 18.

The recent international relations have shown that unfortunately, international organizations do not have great influence anymore. Great powers pursue their own interests and distort international law as they want. In such cases, power is the main factor and we know it.

The Baku-Tbilisi-Kars (BTK) railway will be launched in the next two months, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Mar. 18, the Turkish media outlets reported.

“The main issue of our policy, including foreign policy is the settlement of Armenia-Azerbaijan, the Nagorno Karabakh conflict”, President of Azerbaijan said at the Nowruz festivities.

Ganja, has hosted a ceremony as the city is assuming its new role as a Cultural Capital of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) 2017.

Russia's Security Council develops a strategic forecast for 12 years. The strategic forecast is to become the ground for making decisions under various circumstances that may appear inside and outside Russia. Is it possible to make long-term forecasts under modern conditions? Will concepts of today be relevant, say, in two or three years?

Valery Gerasimov, the Chief of the Russian General Staff, has published a new article on the nature of modern warfare. Given how much attention has been paid to his 2013 article on this topic, it seems worthwhile to quickly review what’s changed in the last four years.

The most important observation, though, is how much hasn’t changed. Gerasimov still focuses on the American origin of hybrid warfare, both attributing the origin of the term to American theoretical writings and discussing its implementation in the Middle East, and particularly in Syria.

Gerasimov’s discussion of the origins of the conflict in Syria is worth citing at length. He notes that in the first stage, internal Syrian tensions were transformed into armed actions by the opposition. The opposition was supported by foreign trainers and an active information war from abroad. Subsequently, terrorist groups supplied and organized from abroad then entered the conflict against Syrian government forces. The conclusion that Gerasimov draws is that hybrid warfare is actively practiced by the United States and other NATO members, in large part because this type of action does not fall under the definition of aggression.

Nevertheless, Gerasimov isn’t eager to assume that the hybrid warfare concept is here to stay or to introduce it into official Russian discourse. Instead he focuses (as in the 2013 article) on the continuing erasure of the boundary between conditions of war and peace. He highlights that it is more and more common for a country’s sovereignty and national security to be threatened in peacetime. The spectrum of reasons for use of military force is continually expanding, with force being more often used to secure a state’s economic interests or to enforce democratic values in another country.

Much of this is a repeat of the 2013 argument, with the focus on Western states using a wide spectrum of measures (political, economic, diplomatic, informational) combined with the “protest potential of the population,” to ensure that their interests are observed. Cyber warfare is added to this list, with an example of cyber attacks on Iranian energy infrastructure.

What seems interesting to me is the second half of the article, where Gerasimov discusses how Russia is responding to this heightened risk of “new generation” warfare. Here, Gerasimov drops all the discussion of hybrid and information warfare. Instead, his focus is very much old school: a discussion of strategic deterrence with nuclear weapons and long range aviation. To this is added the development of long range cruise missiles and other precision-guided munitions, next generation fighter aircraft, modern ships, etc. There is also a discussion of advances in automation and electronic warfare. In other words, Russia is preparing to respond to this threat environment by strengthening its conventional and nuclear military capability. There is virtually no discussion of Russian efforts to engage in information warfare or hybrid warfare of any kind. “Little green men” play no role in this vision of Russian military power. Instead, we are given to understand that Russia will respond to any aggression with overwhelming force.

Specialists of the United Aircraft Corporation are ready to start designing a combat aircraft of the 8th generation. The new development will be more than just an aircraft. The designers plan to create a conceptually new multipurpose combat aviation system with highly developed technical intelligence

Russian settlements need to be "liberated" from monuments to Vladimir Lenin, while Lenin's Tomb in the heart of Moscow on Red Square should be closed. What shall Russia do about 70 years of its history? Not all people may like it, but even if they do not like it, they can not strike this period out from history

U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday invited Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to the White House, in a first phone call between the two leaders since Trump took office.

The European premiere of the film “Ali and Nino” has been held at the European Parliament.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Saturday deals with the European Union, including an agreement on stemming the flow of migrants, would be jeopardized if the bloc failed to implement promised visa liberalization for Turks.