Daily Telegraph – Russia is to build eight nuclear submarines by 2015 as part of an ambitious plan to overhaul the country’s ailing navy.
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Daily Telegraph – Russian warships are sailing towards the Caribbean for the first time since the Cold War to take part in a joint naval exercise with Venezuela.
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RIA Novosti – Russia’s new carrier-based fighters will replace the Su-33 naval fighter in service with the Russian Navy after 2016.
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Los Angeles Times – The Venezuelan government announced Sunday that four Russian naval vessels will participate in joint exercises in the Caribbean this year, a move that could heighten already strained relations between Washington and Moscow.
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The Times – A new Cold War between Russia and the West grew steadily closer yesterday after the Kremlin gave a warning about ìdirect confrontationî between American and Russian warships in the Black Sea.

Associated Press – US cancels plan to send military ship to Poti.

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Reuters – Russia’s flagship cruiser re-entered the Black Sea on Monday for weapons tests hours after the Russian military complained about the presence of U.S. and other NATO naval ships near the Georgian coast.
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Defense Technology International – Moscow is flexing its muscles again in the eastern Mediterranean, and aims to reactivate old cold war naval installations with its ally, Syria.
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Washington Times – Ukrainian military officials on Thursday vowed to uphold a decree ordering Russia to seek permission to move its Black Sea warships based in the Ukrainian port of Sevastopol, setting up a conflict between Russia and another pro-Western former Soviet republic.
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Defense Technology International – During the recent conflict with Georgia, Russia has mobilized part of its fleet toward the East Black Sea region. There have been reports that Russia has plans to move elements of its Black Sea fleet to Ochamchira, Abkhazia, ostensibly to protect Russian civilians.
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Reuters – The Russian Navy is partaking in combat operations against Georgia, but exact details are sketchy???

Xinhua – Russian navy blockade Georgia

RIA Novosti – Russian Navy carries out Black Sea anti-terror exercise.
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Reuters – Russia announced plans Sunday to revive its navy by building several aircraft carriers and improving its fleet of nuclear submarines.
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Daily Telegraph – Russia has raised the stakes in the international scramble for the Arctic by announcing it will boost its military presence in the region to protect its “national interests”.
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Defense Technology International – No less than three NATO submarines are ending up on the bottom off the southern coast of Norway this week. Not that you’ll see this as Breaking News on any major news network. ???
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StrategyPage – The Russian Navy’s shipbuilding plans are still mostly plans. For the last seventeen years, most of their construction effort went into finishing a few subs, and building for export.
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Russian Navy – A Russian rescue system coupled with a NATO submarine for the first time on Wednesday in a joint exercise off Norway.
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Associated Press – U.S. fighter planes intercepted two Russian bombers, including one that buzzed an American aircraft carrier in the western Pacific during the weekend. One Russian Tupolev 95 flew directly over the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz twice, at a low altitude of about 2,000 feet, while another bomber circled about 58 miles out.
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Defense Technology International – Russia’s aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov is returning home after its saber-rattling voyage into the Mediterranean and participation in naval live firing exercises near French and Spanish waters.
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Defense Technology International – Russia’s aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov with its flight deck loaded with Su-33 Flanker fighters, Su-25 Frogfoot close air support aircraft and Ka-27 helix helicopters??? that scene could be witnessed off Gibraltar in January.
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The Times – RAF fighters scrambled to track Russian long-range bombers joining a naval task force yesterday as Moscow practised strike tactics off the coast of France and Spain and test-launched nuclear-capable missiles.
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Defense Technology International – The Russian carrier Kuznetsov starts a cruise which will take the ship and its consorts through the Mediterranean.
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Reuters – Russia said on Wednesday it would start the first major navy sortie into the Mediterranean since Soviet times, the latest move by an increasingly assertive Moscow to demonstrate its military might.
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Daily Telegraph – Nato vessels are closely monitoring the sea trials of Russia’s latest submarine, following Moscow’s increasingly provocative tests of Western airspace.
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BBC – Russia is resuming a Soviet-era practice of sending its bomber aircraft on long-range flights, President Vladimir Putin has said.
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BBC – Russian bombers have flown to the US Pacific island of Guam in a manoeuvre reminiscent of the Cold War era.
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Christian Science Monitor – Call it the global warming sweepstakes.

As milder temperatures make exploration of the Arctic sea floor possible for the first time, Russia’s biggest-ever research expedition to the region is steaming toward the immense scientific prestige of being the first to explore the seabed of the world’s crown.

In the next few days, two manned minisubs will be launched through a hole blasted in the polar ice to scour the ocean floor nearly three miles below. They will gather rock samples and plant a titanium Russian flag to symbolize Moscow’s claim over 460,000 square miles of hitherto international territory ñ an area bigger than France and Germany combined in a region estimated to contain a quarter of the world’s undiscovered oil and gas reserves.

The issue of who owns the North Pole, now administered by the International Seabed Authority, has long been regarded as academic since the entire region is locked in year-round impenetrable ice. But with global warming thinning the icecaps, the question has vaulted to the front burner.
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