Vedomosti
Azerbaijan to buy Russian surface-to-air missiles
Russia and Azerbaijan have signed an unprecedented $300 million contract for the delivery of S-300-PMU-2 Favorit (SA-20 Gargoyle) surface-to-air missile (SAM) systems to Baku. No other post-Soviet republic has received so many of these SAMs to date.
In 2009, the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry and Russia's state arms exporter Rosoboronexport signed a contract for the delivery of two S-300-PMU-2 battalions, according to the managers of two defense companies that are manufacturing components for this SAM system.
The sides have started fulfilling the contract and may implement it in the next couple of years, one of the managers said. A Rosoboronexport spokesperson declined to comment on the issue, and the Azerbaijani president's spokesman, Azer Kasimov, said he knew nothing about it.
S-300-PMU-2 SAMs have been previously delivered to Algeria and China. A similar Russian-Iranian contract was never fulfilled after Moscow stopped supplies in April 2009. In June 2010, the UN Security Council declared sanctions against Tehran, with Moscow interpreting them as banning their S-300 deliveries.
In Soviet times, Baku had the third most powerful air-defense system after Moscow and Leningrad (today's St. Petersburg), an officer in the Defense Ministry told the paper. The system fell into disrepair throughout the 1990s, and the desire of Azerbaijani leaders to upgrade it is quite understandable.
The officer said S-300 deliveries were unlikely to upset the balance in relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan because neither country had any modern strike aircraft, as well as cruise or ballistic missiles, which are the primary S-300 targets. He said Baku probably wanted to protect itself against possible contingencies in case the situation against Iran became aggravated.
The Russian-Azerbaijani contract is the single most expensive arms purchasing deal involving any post-Soviet republic, except Russia, since 1991. Russia delivered earlier surplus S-300 models to Belarus and Kazakhstan under much cheaper contracts.
Azerbaijan is using its petro-dollar revenues to actively modernize its armed forces and is buying weapons from Ukraine, Belarus, Israel and South Africa, Ruslan Pukhov, director of the Moscow-based Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, told the paper.
Baku has acquired Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-29 Fulcrum fighters and armored vehicles from Ukraine, advanced Spike anti-tank guided missiles, unmanned combat air vehicles (UCAVs) and other weapons from Israel, as well as upgraded Mi-24 Hind helicopter gunships from South Africa.
Analysts say South Africa and Israel would have supplied advanced SAM systems to Baku if Moscow had backed out, and that the S-300 contract is absolutely correct in the context of Russian interests.
Kommersant
No budget cuts
The Russian government intends today to approve the basic draft of the federal budget for 2011. With Vladimir Putin focused on social commitments, the Finance Ministry was unable to cut spending - compared with 2010 it will grow by 200 billion rubles. On Wednesday, the Budget Projections Commission postponed as a minimum until 2012 the sale of a 24% stake in Rosneft and government stakes in Russian Railways (RZD) and the Agency for Housing Mortgage Lending (AIZhK), though it still plans to receive 1 trillion rubles from privatization through 2013. The three-year budget appears to be facing a new dilemma: sovereign borrowings or selling state property.
At Wednesday's government Budget Projections Commission meeting, Putin gave the main details of the 2011 budget. Its revenues are planned at 8.6 trillion rubles while spending will be 10.4 trillion. The budget will have a deficit of 1.8 trillion rubles, or 3.6% of GDP. The deficit will be met with borrowings (1.4 trillion rubles) from the Reserve Fund (245 billion rubles) and the National Prosperity Fund (5 billion rubles). It is worth recalling that the recently updated figures for the current 2010 budget (the president signed the relevant decree on July 22 but it is not yet in force) are as follows: revenues of 7.8 trillion rubles, and spending of 10.2 trillion rubles.
So contributions to the state treasury in 2011, compared with this year, will rise by 0.8 trillion rubles, and spending will increase by 0.2 trillion rubles. But, as Deputy Prime Minister Alexei Kudrin said at the end of the commission's meeting, the increase in revenues is formal - as a percentage of GDP they will remain at the present level in 2011 and fall in 2012 and 2013. Spending, however, is going to be maintained at the current "sufficiently high" level, according to the deputy prime minister.
The commission, while endorsing the overall budget figures, also approved the results of work on finding additional revenues carried out by the ministries over the past few months. A total of 300 billion rubles in 2011 (1 trillion in three years) will be made available by increasing taxes and customs duties on oil, gas and metals and excise taxes on gasoline and tobacco. Another 300 billion rubles is expected to come from privatization. Government stakes in 11 large companies and banks have been slated for sale.
Spending priorities remain the same, Putin said on Wednesday. These are welfare commitments to the population. In 2011, pensions will grow by 9%, pay for army and law enforcement personnel by 6.5%, and wages and salaries for public-sector workers and scholarships for students, by an unnamed percentage. Healthcare is to be allocated 375 billion rubles, or 10% more than in 2010. Through state support more money will be provided for agriculture, the prime minister said.
GZT.ru
Russians support ban on late-night sale of alcohol
The majority of Russians support the government's plan to prohibit nighttime sale of strong beer and spirits. They say this should enhance safety and reduce alcohol-related crime.
As many as 74% of the respondents support the ban on the sale of alcohol from 11 p.m. to 8 a.m. Only 21% are against the measure.
Most Russians said they drink beer and spirits, and 28% said they are teetotalers. According to a recent survey conducted by the Levada Center, 42% of the respondents drink alcohol once a month or more rarely, 14% drink two to four times a month, 9% every week and 6% several times a week.
The group of teetotalers consists mostly of pensioners, students, housewives and other groups of women, people aged over 55 and with an incomplete general education, Muscovites and people from rural areas.
The majority of respondents from all surveyed groups welcome the ban on late-night sale of hard alcohol, even those who drink much and often. A total of 84% of teetotalers and 58% of drinking Russians support the ban, while 9% of teetotalers and 26% of drinkers do not like the idea.
Some respondents offered a rational explanation for supporting the ban, saying that this should enhance public safety and social stability. However, analysts say the bulk of Russians support the idea also because it was proposed by the government. Bans are one of the government's functions, and many people think this is right.
On May 2, the Moscow Region government imposed a ban on the sale of hard alcohol (more than 15% alcohol content) from 9 p.m. to 11 a.m. everywhere excluding cafes and restaurants and duty-free shops at airports. The authorities of several other Russian regions plan to do the same.
Mikhail Blinov, chairman of the State Duma council on state regulation of the alcohol market and a co-author of the federal law banning late-night sales of alcohol, said the law should enhance public safety.
Its goal is to reduce the number of drunken brawls and alcohol abuse in general, he said, adding that limits on alcohol sales kept alcoholism in rein during the Soviet period.
Vzglyad
EU commissioner speaks up against South Stream pipeline
EU Commissioner for Energy Gunther Ettinger said modernization of Ukraine's gas transportation system was a better business project than the Russia-proposed South Stream pipeline.
He said during a meeting with Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov in Kiev Wednesday that there is no other more profitable and reliable transit route than across Ukraine. Gas will continue to play a substantial role in Europe's energy balance in the next 40 years, Ettinger said.
Azarov responded that Ukraine was interested in transiting as much natural gas as the EU and Russia would guarantee.
According to Ettinger, a trilateral summit meeting of Ukrainian, Russian and EU leaders could clarify the issue of possible use of gas pipelines in southern Ukraine as an alternative to the South Stream project.
The European Union and Ukraine have been trying to convince Russia to abandon South Stream, a proposed gas pipeline to transport Russian natural gas across the Black Sea to Bulgaria and on to Italy and Austria.
Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych said on July 2 that Russia and the EU should build one more gas pipeline across Ukraine to increase the transit of Russian natural gas to Europe.
Ukraine is against the construction of the South Stream pipeline because it would dramatically reduce the transit of gas across Ukraine, which currently accounts for 80% of gas transit to Europe.
Seeking to reduce its dependence on Russian gas, the EU is advocating a rival Nabucco project, designed to connect the world's richest gas regions - the Caspian region, the Middle East and Egypt - to the European consumer markets. Currently, 25% of gas consumed in the EU comes from Russia (37% in Germany).
However, analysts say that Ukraine cannot offer a reliable alternative, primarily because of its non-transparent gas transit fees and also because of recent commercial conflicts with Russia over gas transit, which badly affected European consumers.
Russia will continue to lobby South Stream, especially since the agreements signed in the last few months point to western companies' interest in building the pipeline, analysts say.
Ukraine's proposed pipeline project is still being coordinated, while the construction of South Stream is to start in November 2010.
Strategic Culture Foundation
Can Moscow stop the war against Iran?
Moscow is seriously concerned about the anti-Iranian actions of Washington and Brussels, said Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko.
He said they undermined joint efforts to search for a political-diplomatic settlement of the situation surrounding Iran's nuclear program and showed contempt for UN Security Council resolutions.
On July 26, European foreign ministers agreed to freeze European investment in the Iranian oil and gas sector and to ban industrial technology and equipment transfers. The new sanctions also aim to ban exports of products that could be used by Tehran for military purposes.
Unilateral resolutions proposed by the United States and the European Union and rubberstamped by the United Nations, as well as other ways of exerting political-diplomatic pressure on Tehran, are leading toward a large-scale conflict in the Middle East which would inevitably focus on Iran.
The conflict scenarios being published in international media sound entirely realistic. Analysts say air strikes against Iran could be launched before the year is out. Radio Liberty notes that the United States Central Command (USCENTCOM), the U.S. Armed Forces theater-level Unified Combatant Command unit in charge of Middle East operations is planning high-precision air strikes.
Relations between Moscow and Tehran soured after Russia supported the UN Security Council resolution No. 1929 stipulating further sanctions on Iran, and after it decided to suspend delivery of S-300PMU Favorit (SA-20 Gargoyle) surface-to-air missile systems (SAMs) to Iran.
Previously, a number of Russian companies, including LUKOIL, Russia's largest oil company and oil producer, either renounced promising energy projects in Iran or assumed a cautious stance.
Russian Energy Minister Sergei Shmatko recently visited Tehran, where the sides signed a roadmap for bilateral energy cooperation. Shmatko said he saw no restrictions hindering such cooperation.
Moscow's European partners are now siding with Washington and thus limiting Russia's diplomatic maneuvering room. No one can say for sure whether Moscow will assist any hypothetical anti-Iranian aggression under an Afghanistan-type scenario, by providing "civilian" and "military" corridors in its air space.
Russia can still play a positive role by preventing a worst-case scenario around Iran. This can be accomplished by positively reexamining a 2008 contract for the delivery of defensive Russian weapons to Tehran.
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MOSCOW, July 29 (RIA Novosti)
