RUSSIA

By Serina Joseph

RUSSIAS PAST FACTS

Olegs great grandson Vladimir I was ruler as far as the black

sea.

Keivan Rus struggled in the 13th century. But was decisively

destroyed by the arrival of a new invador, the Monglos

When Ivan the Terrible died in 1584, he was succeeded by his son Fyodor,

who left most of the management of the kingdom to his brother-in-law, Boris

Godunov, marked by the magnificent Church of St. Demetrius 

THERE FOOD IS BORSHT

LONGTITUDE AND LATITUDE

Moscow: (capital city) 55° 44' N, 37° 36' E 

RUSSIAS BORDERS

Azerbaijan 284 km

Belarus 959 km

China (southeast) 3,605 km

China (south) 40 km

Estonia 290 km

Finland 1,313 km

Georgia 723 km

Kazakhstan 6,846 km

North Korea 17.5 km

Latvia 292 km

Lithuania (Kaliningrad Oblast) 227 km

RUSSIANS FLAG IS W HIT E BLUE W HIT E AN D RED ACROSS THE WAY

CAPITAL

Russias capital is moscow

2 LARGE CITIES

St PetersBurg

Moscow

3 PHISICAL FEATURES OF RUSSIE

The major physical features of Russia are the

North European Plain and the West Siberian

PlainRussian physical features are divided basically

into 3 parts : European Russia Western Siberia

RUSSIA DAILY

Russia’s muscle-flexing is due in part simply to the

fact that the country is spending more on its military

and has re-established abilities eroded during the

post-Soviet chaos of the 1990s. When Mr. Putin first

became president in 2000, Russia spent $9.2 billion

on its military, but this has since risen 10 times and

will increase again this year despite a slumping

economy, hammered by a collapse in the price of oil

and also by Western sanctions.

NATO’s tightening bonds are on display daily at

the Bodo air base, where Norwegian fighter pilots,

idled for years by the absence of Russian planes to

follow, once again have a sense of purpose. A busy

NATO outpost during the Cold War, Bodo served as a

hub for U-2 spy plane flights over the Soviet Union.

Francis Gary Powers, the U-2 pilot imprisoned in

Moscow in 1960, was on his way to Bodo when his

plane was shot down

Linked by secure telephone to the Combined Air

Operations Center of NATO in Uedem, Germany, his

squadron gets a call whenever Russian planes

appear off the Norwegian coast and then has only 15

minutes to get airborne.

But he questioned whether public opinion had

caught up with the fact that a predictable post-Cold

War era of East-West comity was now over. “The

problem in Norway is that we are so rich, fat and

happy that we are not worried enough,” he said.

Ukraine, he added, is very different from Norway,

which is a member of NATO. Ukraine is outside the

alliance and has no prospect of joining any time

soon. However, Mr. Stoltenberg said, Norway and

other NATO countries that share a border with

Russia also have to deal with Russian efforts to

“intimidate its neighbors,” no matter what their

status.

Russian air activity along the borders of NATO, the

northern parts of which are patrolled by fighters

based in Bodo, increased 50 percent from 2013 to

last year, according to the alliance. At the same time,

Russia sharply increased so-called snap military

exercises, training maneuvers that, in violation of

established procedure, were either announced at the

last minute or kept secret.

One such exercise was used to cover Russia’s

furtive seizure of Crimea in March 2014, but most

seem aimed simply at showing NATO that Russia is

back as a serious power. Among those was an

exercise held last month across from Norway’s

northern border with Russia — just a week after

Norwegian forces held their own, much smaller

exercise, Joint Viking, which was announced two

years in advance

Katarzyna Zysk, a researcher at the Norwegian

Institute of Defense Studies, said Mr. Putin had

emphasized strengthening Russia’s military

presence in the Arctic; equipping the Northern

Fleet, based in Murmansk, with new nuclear

submarines; setting up a string of bases along the

vast northern coast; and reopening abandoned

Soviet-era military facilities like the base at

Alakurtti, close to Finland.

Norway, along with all but three other European

members of NATO, still spends less than 2 percent of

its gross domestic product on its military, the target

that all 28 members of the alliance are supposed to

meet

But Ms. Soreide, the defense minister, said Norway

had stopped cutting and would increase military

spending this year by 3.3 percent, despite economic

troubles caused by the collapse in the price of oil,

Norway’s principal export.

Russia is “not viewed as a military threat,” she

said, but it has changed the rules of the game by

creating so much uncertainty about its intentions.

“Until a threat arrives at your doorstep, you don’t

know what will happen,” she added.