Kyrgyzstan kicks America out of it's country

Oh, dear! What can the matter be? Oh, dear! What a calamity.



Fancy such a supposed short-assed, no account, completely crappy kind of crummy country such as Kyrgyzstan having the temerity to tell the mighty US military machine to take a hike.

Oh, dear!

Bet they wouldn't be as big & brave if they didn't have their rich Russian & Chinese chums, eh?

Kyrgyzstan leaves US out in the cold

As the Kyrgyz parliament decides to close the only US military base in the country, Rupert Wingfield-Hayes considers the strategic and political impact of the announcement.

(snip)

Manas airbase is one of those peculiarly American creations. Outside the fence it is Central Asia, inside it is the mid-west of the United States.

A land of large white pick-up trucks, stars and stripes and huge, very polite people who insist on calling you "Sir".

(snip)

But the truth, I knew, is that the Americans are here for one reason only, and it was sitting outside in the shape of 12 large aircraft.

There is nothing very sexy about a KC-135. It is a big drab grey airliner converted to be a flying petrol station.

But KC-135s are hugely important to American and British squaddies on the front line in Afghanistan.

[See map of existing and possible supply routes in the region]

Every time they get into a tight spot with the Taleban, they call in an air strike by fighter jets waiting in the sky above.

Those fighter jets can only remain airborne because of the KC-135s flying out of Manas. There is one circling high over Afghanistan 24 hours a day.

(snip)

... there is little to show for the eight years America has spent here.

Inside the Manas airbase the buildings all look distinctly temporary.

For all their talk of "partnering", the Americans have not even fixed the broken concrete runway.

They pay a paltry $60m a year in rent. And one day, when their war in Afghanistan is done, they will go home. Unlike the Russians, who have already been here for well over 100 years.

Still, as is so often said by some, sometimes that's just the way the cookie crumbles. Others, lots less polite, say such stuff as tough shit, get over it, move on, business is business m'boy and so on & so forth.

Read the rest of this extremely interesting, and telling, report right here.




Hmm. Certainly does seem to be an especially super-duper, sort of sooo strategically globally positioned place of seriously significant importance doesn't it?

*(Cross posted across at 'appletree')

Russia, China And Several Asian States Hold Joint Military Exercises ...

Thus sayeth Russia's President Putin.

"We have decided to restore flights by Russian strategic aviation on a permanent basis," Mr Putin told reporters at joint military exercises with China and four Central Asian states in Russia's Ural mountains.

The BBC reports today:

Russia restarts Cold War patrols

Russia is currently rebuilding its armed forces

Russia is resuming a Soviet-era practice of sending its bomber aircraft on long-range flights, President Vladimir Putin has said.

Mr Putin said the move to resume the flights permanently after a 15-year suspension was in response to security threats posed by other military powers.

He said 14 bombers had taken off from Russian airfields early on Friday.

The move came a week after Russian bombers flew within a few hundred miles of the US Pacific island of Guam.

A few days ago Moscow said its strategic bombers had begun exercises over the North Pole.

(snip)

"Flights by other countries' strategic aircraft continue and this creates certain problems for ensuring the security of the Russian Federation," he [Putin] said.

Remember this?

In last week's incident near Guam, the Russian pilots "exchanged smiles" with US fighter pilots who scrambled to track them, a Russian general said.

The US military confirmed the presence of the Russian bombers near Guam, home to a large US base.

And remember this?

Last month two Tupolev 95 aircraft - dubbed "bears" according to their Nato code-name - strayed south from their normal patrol pattern off the Norwegian coast and headed towards Scotland. Two RAF Tornado fighters were sent up to meet them.

And now we learn this.

Russian bombers have also recently flown close to US airspace over the Arctic Ocean near Alaska.

Seems it isn't only submarines Russia's sending sniffing round the Polar Region, eh?

Read the rest of this Ruski related report right here.