Russia has dismissed criticism that its jets 'aggressively' buzzed a US warship in the Baltic Sea and said its pilots had observed all the required safety measures.

The Russian defense ministry today said its Su-24 planes were conducting test flights and claimed the USS Donald Cook was in 'operational proximity of the Russian navy's Baltic fleet base' as the reason for the flypast.

The ministry said its aircraft observed the ship and then 'turned away in observance of all safety measures'.

On Tuesday evening the Russian planes thundered over the US destroyer at a height of just 30ft in what a military official branded the most 'aggressive' incident between Russia and the United States in years.

The 'simulated attack' maneuver saw the jets pass so close to the ocean that they created a 'wake in the water', the defense official said.

The shock move came as a Polish helicopter was taking off from the US warship on Tuesday evening.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3538158/Russian-fighter-jets-aggressively-buzzed-Navy-warship-Baltic-height-just-30-FEET-defense-official-reveals.html#ixzz45xHg7Tf0 
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I would not be surprised to discover that the Yankee ship crew in the Baltic Sea knew that had it fired on the Russian planes, the Yankee ship would have disappeared without trace, torpedoed by a lurking Russian submarine with more firepower than the entire U-Boat fleet of WWII. But we are not told these things... AND THE RUSSIAN PLANES HAD MORE RIGHT TO BE IN THE AREA than the Donald Cook rustbucket. I guess I have misunderstood "Red October", the silly blockbuster. 

The real news:

Putin also talked about Syria, praising the outcome of a ceasefire between President Bashar Assad and opposition forces there.

"The cessation of hostilities actually held as much as I expected. For seven weeks we've seen a significant reduction of violence in that country," he said, adding that he would continue to urge America's President Obama, who despises the Syrian regime for no reasons, to help in the negotiations.

"Keep in mind that I have always been skeptical about Mr. Obama's actions and motives inside of Syria," Putin explained. "He is, along with Saudi Arabia, the pre-eminent backer of murderous regimes worldwide that I don't believe can regain legitimacy in his country, because his predecessor, George W Bush, has murdered a lot of people," the president said.

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The "Western" news:

Obama also talked about Syria, praising the outcome of a ceasefire between President Bashar Assad and opposition forces there.

"The cessation of hostilities actually held longer than I expected. For seven weeks we've seen a significant reduction of violence in that country," he said, adding that he would continue to urge Russian President Vladimir Putin, who supports the Syrian regime, to help in the negotiations.

"Keep in mind that I have always been skeptical about Mr. Putin's actions and motives inside of Syria," Obama explained. "He is, along with Iran, the pre-eminent backer of a murderous regime that I don't believe can regain legitimacy in his country, because he has murdered a lot of people," the president said.

Friday, a Russian SU-27 did a barrel roll over a U.S. RC-135 over the Baltic, the second time in two weeks. Also in April, the U.S. destroyer Donald Cook, off Russia’s Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad, was twice buzzed by Russian planes.

Vladimir Putin’s message: Keep your spy planes and ships a respectable distance away from us. Apparently, we have not received it.

Friday, Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work announced that 4,000 NATO troops, including two U.S. battalions, will be moved into Poland and the Baltic States, right on Russia’s border. “The Russians have been doing a lot of snap exercises right up against the border with a lot of troops,” says Work, who calls this “extraordinarily provocative behavior.”

But how are Russian troops deploying inside Russia “provocative,” while U.S. troops on Russia’s front porch are not? And before we ride this escalator up to a clash, we had best check our hole card.

Germany is to provide one of four battalions to be sent to the Baltic. But a Bertelsmann Foundation poll last week found that only 31 percent of Germans favor sending their troops to resist a Russian move in the Baltic States or Poland, while 57 percent oppose it, though the NATO treaty requires it.

Last year, a Pew poll found majorities in Italy and France also oppose military action against Russia if she moves into Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia or Poland. If it comes to war in the Baltic, our European allies prefer that we Americans fight it.

Asked on his retirement as Army chief of staff what was the greatest strategic threat to the United States, Gen. Ray Odierno echoed Marine Corps Gen. Joseph Dunford, “I believe that Russia is.”

He mentioned threats to Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Ukraine. Yet, when Gen. Odierno entered the service, all four were part of the Soviet Union, and no Cold War president ever thought any was worth a war.

The independence of the Baltic States was one of the great peace dividends after the Cold War. But when did that become so vital a U.S. interest we would go to war with Russia to guarantee it?

Putin may top the enemies list of the Beltway establishment, but we should try to see the world from his point of view.

When Ronald Reagan met Mikhail Gorbachev in Reykjavik in 1986, Putin was in his mid-30s, and the Soviet Empire stretched from the Elbe to the Bering Strait and from the Arctic to Afghanistan. Russians were all over Africa and had penetrated the Caribbean and Central America. The Soviet Union was a global superpower that had attained strategic parity with the United States.

Now consider how the world has changed for Putin, and Russia.

By the time he turned 40, the Red Army had begun its Napoleonic retreat from Europe and his country had splintered into 15 nations. By the time he came to power, the USSR had lost one-third of its territory and half its population. Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan were gone.

The Black Sea, once a Soviet lake, now had on its north shore a pro-Western Ukraine, on its eastern shore a hostile Georgia, and on its western shore two former Warsaw Pact allies, Bulgaria and Romania, being taken into NATO.

For Russian warships in Leningrad, the trip out to the Atlantic now meant cruising past the coastline of eight NATO nations: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Germany, Denmark, Norway, and Great Britain.

Putin has seen NATO, despite solemn U.S. assurances given to Gorbachev, incorporate all of Eastern Europe that Russia had vacated, and three former republics of the USSR itself.

He now hears a clamor from American hawks to bring three more former Soviet republics—Moldova, Georgia, and Ukraine—into a NATO alliance directed against Russia.

After persuading Kiev to join a Moscow-led economic union, Putin saw Ukraine’s pro-Russian government overthrown in a U.S.-backed coup. He has seen U.S.-funded “color-coded” revolutions try to dump over friendly regimes all across his “near abroad.”

“Russia has not accepted the hand of partnership,” says NATO commander, Gen. Philip Breedlove, “but has chosen a path of belligerence.” But why should Putin see NATO’s inexorable eastward march as an extended “hand of partnership”?

Had we lost the Cold War and Russian spy planes began to patrol off Pensacola, Norfolk and San Diego, how would U.S. F-16 pilots have reacted? If we awoke to find Mexico, Canada, Cuba, and most of South America in a military alliance against us, welcoming Russian bases and troops, would we regard that as “the hand of partnership”?

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/buchanan/who-started-the-second-cold-war/

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