Russian Submarine Operation In North Atlantic: Largest Since Cold War

Extensive Russian submarine operation in North Atlantic: Norway

Russia has sent about 10 submarines into the North Atlantic in the largest such operation since the end of the Cold War, the Norwegian military said on Tuesday.

Since last week, the Russian submarines -- based on the Kola Peninsula in Russia's far north -- have been dispatched for manoeuvres in the Atlantic Ocean, according to information from the Norwegian Intelligence Service, first reported by broadcaster NRK and later confirmed to AFP.

"There's a lot of activity in the North Atlantic at the moment and Norway together with other Nato states are monitoring with air and surface capabilities," Brynjar Stordal, a spokesman for the Norwegian armed forces, told AFP.

This is the largest operation of its kind conducted by Russia "since the end of the Cold War by the number of assets operating at the same time," he added.

According to sources cited by NRK, the Russian submarines, which all left their base in submerged mode, are seeking to reach as far into the Atlantic as possible -- ideally waters west of Greenland -- without being detected.

The operation is planned to last about two months with the suspected goal "to show that they are able to threaten the east coast of the United States."

"Of course they're showing their capabilities both in numbers and as to what they can deploy at the same time," Stordal said.

On Saturday, Russian news agencies reported two nuclear submarines, the Nizhny Novgorod and Pskov, were preparing for "deep dives to test certain equipment and weapons" in the neutral waters of the Norwegian Sea.

"During these dives, which will last a week, their crews will practice tactical procedures and different techniques for deep manoeuvres," according to a statement from the Russian North Fleet, quoted by the agencies.

The Norwegian Sea has depths of several thousand meters, unlike the Barents Sea outside the Russian port of Murmansk which only has an average depth of about 200 metres.

According to Russian media the two submarines are so called Kondor-class -- or Sierra-class -- multi-purpose subs, which are equipped to launch cruise missiles and designed to detect and destroy enemy air and sea targets.

Russian ballistic missile hits a target 3,500 miles away after it is fired from nuclear submarine

Russia fired a ballistic missile from its new submarine for the first time and hit a target thousands of miles away, Moscow has revealed. 

In a show of strength, Russia's defence ministry released footage of the Bulava missile being launched from the nuclear-powered submarine Prince Vladimir. 

The 'successful' test launch from the northern White Sea hit a target 3,500 miles away in Kamchatka on the country's Pacific coast, the Russian military said.  

The state-of-the-art submarine is expected to enter active service in December. 

The Knyaz Vladimir is the first upgraded 955A model to be produced in the Borei class of Russian nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines. 

It will enter service with Russia's Northern Fleet at the end of this year once it has completed trials including weapons tests, the fleet's commander said. 

The Bulava - or Mace - is seen as a cornerstone of the Russian military triad comprising sea, land and air launched weapons.   

The launch was carried out with a dummy payload and reached a test site in the far east of Russia.     

As many as eight Russian nuclear-powered submarines sailed from their Kola Peninsula bases ahead of the test launch, reported Norwegian media.

On top of that, flight tests on Russia's new Sarmat ballistic missile are expected to begin early next year, according to Russian media. 

The hypersonic missile, also known as Satan-2, is due to be deployed in 2021 after Vladimir Putin hailed progress on its development.

Moscow says Satan-2 can evade the United States' defence shield and is capable of destroying an area the size of England and Wales - or Texas. 

The weapon is seen as a crucial part of Russia's ongoing push to modernise its nuclear arsenal.

The initial stage of testing is said to involve two missile launches with a 'mass-scale mock-up of the warhead' from an underground installation at the Plesetsk cosmodrome 650 miles north of Moscow.

The 'target' will be at the Kura training ground in Kamchatka on Russia's Pacific coast, newspaper Vedomosti reported.  

Following these, tests could be conducted from a location in the Siberian region of Krasnoyarsk where the 62nd Strategic Missile Forces missile division is deployed.

It is believed to be the first time since the Soviet era that advanced missile tests have been conducted from this site. 

The test launch comes amid growing fears of a new arms race between Moscow and Washington. 

Putin has frequently boasted about Moscow's hypersonic missiles, saying after a test last year that they were 'impossible to intercept'. 

Petrodollar Armageddon Approaches

Petrodollar Armageddon Approaches as One of the World’s Largest Oil & Gas Companies Dumps Greenback

Petrodollar Armageddon Approaches as One of the World’s Largest Oil & Gas Companies Dumps Greenback from Sputnik News

The US dollar currently enjoys the coveted status of the world’s de-facto reserve currency, with all oil purchased from the powerful cartel known as the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) priced in greenbacks. However, some countries have recently attempted to challenge this state of affairs.

Russian energy giant Rosneft, the world’s eighth largest oil and gas company by total revenue, and the largest in terms of production volume and reserves, has completed the switch away from the dollar in favour of euros in export contracts, company CEO Igor Sechin has announced, speaking to participants at the Eurasian Economic Forum in Verona, Italy this week.

“We haven’t just started this work, but already competed it. All of our export contracts are already being implemented in euros and the potential for working with the European currency is very high,” Sechin said, The energy giant’s decision was “a forced measure in order to limit the company from the impact of the US sanctions,” the official explained.

Sechin also commented directly on the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency, saying he believed China had the potential to challenge the dollar in the near future.

“I think that the yuan will have the best chances of being used as a reserve currency due to the growth of the Chinese economy,” he said. According to the official, although the dollar is being used in over 60 percent of global trade today, including a whopping 90 percent of trade in oil and oil products, this picture will change over the next decade.

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Russia, China & India to set up alternative to SWIFT payment system to connect 3 billion people

Russia, China & India to set up alternative to SWIFT payment system to connect 3 billion people from RT

Members of the BRICS trade bloc Russia, India, and China have decided to connect their financial messaging systems to bypass the SWIFT international money transfer network.

Russia’s financial messaging system SPFS will be linked with the Chinese cross-border interbank payment system CIPS. While India does not have a domestic financial messaging system yet, it plans to combine the Central Bank of Russia’s platform with a domestic service that is in development.

The new system is expected to work as a “gateway” model when messages on payments are transcoded in accordance with a certain financial system.

According to Izvestia, the parties involved will work on a single platform, without experiencing any difficulties with transactions.

Russia began development of SPFS in 2014 amid Washington’s threats to disconnect the country from SWIFT. The first transaction on the SPFS network involving a non-bank enterprise was made in December 2017.

“We have an opportunity to connect both foreign banks and foreign legal entities to the SPFS. Today, about 400 users are participating in the system. Agreements have already been concluded with eight foreign banks and 34 legal entities,” Alla Bakina, the director of the Bank of Russia’s national payment system, was cited as saying by Vesti.

Bakina explained that traffic through the system has been growing and currently accounts for around 15 percent of all internal traffic, up from 10-11 percent last year.

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Britain To Have General Elections On December 12: First December Election Since 1923

It’s happening! Britain WILL head to polls this winter as lawmakers vote for December 12 snap election

UK MPs have voted for a pre-Christmas general election to take place on December 12. After multiple attempts by PM Boris Johnson to force a poll, he’s finally got his way in a bid to break the Brexit impasse.

Lawmakers in the House of Commons on Tuesday voted in favor of Johnson’s early parliamentary general election short-bill by 438 votes to 20. It will be the first December election since 1923.

MPs had earlier rejected the Labour Party’s proposal to move the date of the general election forward to December 9. Some 315 MPs voted against moving the election forward by three days, while 295 voted in favour. If MPs had backed the opposition plan to move the election forward, parliament would have needed to be dissolved by Thursday night.

The British prime minister had tried and failed to get an election on three previous occasions having seen his Fixed-term Parliaments Act motions defeated by MPs. Under the law, there must be at least 25 working days before an election can take place.

Britain’s parliament has ostensibly been in a state of paralysis over the past year, with both Johnson and his predecessor, Theresa May, failing to get their respective Brexit deals signed, sealed, and delivered.

Johnson is hedging his bets that his Tory Party can win a healthy majority to change the parliamentary arithmetic in his favor and, in his words, “get Brexit done.” However, Labour, led by Jeremy Corbyn, will be hoping that the election is not solely dominated by the issue of Brexit and that other key issues such as the NHS, education, and climate change will come to the fore.

The move to force a snap poll was triggered after the European Union granted the UK a three-month ‘flextension,’ with the new deadline now moved to January 31, ostensibly meaning Johnson could not deliver on his “do or die” Brexit pledge by October 31.

India's Largest Nuclear Plant Shuts Down From Cyberattack

Cyberattack Shuts Down India's Largest Nuclear Power Plant

Via GreatGameIndia.com,

India’s second (and largest) nuclear power unit stopped operating on 19th October 2019. It is suspected that the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant was hit by a cyberattack and the authorities were already alerted of the threat months in advance. Even as cybersecurity experts are investigating the case, the authorities were quick to dismiss any occurrence of a spyware infiltrating their systems. The power plant project built in collaboration with Russia has been a target of foreign players since its inception.

 The atomic power plant stopped generation about 12.30 a.m. on Saturday owing to “SG level low”, the company added. The expected date of the unit’s revival is not known. The NPCIL has two 1,000 MW nuclear power plants at Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project (KNPP) built with Russian equipment.

More than a month before the unit stopped operating, the National Cyber Security Coordinator Office was notified of an intrusion of their systems by cyber threat intelligence analyst, Pukhraj Singh. The alert was generated on investigation by cybersecurity firm Kaspersky into spy tools dubbed DTrack.

According to a secret Intelligence Bureau document in possession of GreatGameIndia the protests were spear-headed by Ohio State University funded, SP Udaykumar, and a host of Western-funded NGOs. The larger conspiracy was unraveled when a German national provided Udaykumar a scanned map of all nuclear plant and uranium mining locations in India. The map included contact details of 50 Indian anti-nuclear activists revealing an intricate Network aimed to ‘take-down’ India’s nuclear program through NGO activism.

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1.5 Million Without Power In California

Anger mounts as utility imposes more blackouts in California

By JANIE HAR and JOCELYN GECKER

With no electricity for the fourth straight day Tuesday, chef and caterer Jane Sykes realized she would have to throw out $1,000 worth of food, including trays of brownies, cupcakes and puff pastry.

She also had little hope of getting a good night’s sleep — there was no way to run the machine she relies on to counter her apnea.

“I don’t think PG&E really thought this through,” she lamented.

Frustration and anger mounted across Northern California on Tuesday as the state’s biggest utility, Pacific Gas & Electric, began another round of widespread blackouts aimed at preventing its electrical equipment from sparking wildfires in high winds.

Millions of people have been without power for days as fire crews race to contain two major wind-whipped blazes that have destroyed dozens of homes at both ends of the state: in Sonoma County wine country and in the hills of Los Angeles.

Across Northern California, people worried about charging cellphones and electric vehicles, finding gasoline and cash, and keeping their food from spoiling and staying warm. They donned headlamps at home and parked their cars outside inoperable automatic garage doors.

Some ended up at centers set up by PG&E where people could go to power their electronics and get free water, snacks, flashlights and solar lanterns.

“There’s a hidden cost,” Sykes said. “Absolutely public safety above all else, but there’s a big financial loss for my profession, having to throw away a lot of hard work.”

PG&E said Tuesday’s blackouts — the third round in a week — would affect about 1.5 million people in 29 counties, including 1 million still without power from a shut-off over the weekend.

PG&E, which is in bankruptcy after its equipment was blamed for a string of disastrous fires over the past three years, including a blaze that all but destroyed the town of Paradise and killed 85 people, has said its foremost concern is public safety.

But Gov. Gavin Newsom and top utility regulators have accused the company of mismanaging its power system and failing for decades to make the investments needed to make it more durable. He and others have also complained that the utility has botched the outages by not keeping the public adequately informed.

The commission said it also plans to review the rules governing blackouts, will look to prevent utilities from charging customers when the power is off and will convene experts to find grid improvements that might lessen shut-offs next fire season.

The state can’t continue experiencing such widespread blackouts, “nor should Californians be subject to the poor execution that PG&E in particular has exhibited,” PUC President Marybel Batjer said in a statement.