Russia

Chechen Insurgency

1. For more than a decade now, the lethal reach of Chechen separatist commander Shamil Basayev’s Riyad ul-Saliheen Martyrs Brigade has been repeatedly demonstrated.
2. In 2004, it seized control of a school in the town of Beslan, sparking a siege that claimed 334 lives, 186 of them children. In 2002, the Brigade took 800 people hostage at the Nord-Ost theatre in Moscow, leading to the death of 129 of them. In 2009, 29 were killed when the group bombed a Moscow-bound high-speed train. In 2010, a similar attack claimed the lives of 39 commuters.
3. In October 2013, Naida Asiyalova, 30, killed six persons and wounded 32 others in a suicide-bombing on a bus in Volgograd — almost identical to Dec 2013 attack where Volgograd railway station was bombed.
4. The Chechen battle against a great power has, however, inspired jihadists across the world.
5. History : 
1.  In the 1700s, as imperial Russia expanded into territories until then controlled by Iran and Turkey, it faced resistance from local Muslim rulers. Then, in 1940, central Asian Islamists allied with the Nazi Germany in an effort to gain independence from the Soviet Union. The historian, Ian Johnson, has documented the United States’ subsequent sponsorship of these jihadists, seeking to use them against the Soviet Union.
2. Even as the Soviet Union crumbled in 1991, a war for independence broke out between Russia and the newly formed Chechen Republic of Ichkeria. Basayev was appointed vice-prime minister of the Chechen Republic by President Aslam Maskhadov in an attempted peace deal.
3. In 1999, though, he attempted to stage a coup in neighbouring Dagestan, and fighting broke out again. President Vladimir Putin’s troops laid siege to Grozny in 1999-2000, reducing it, the United Nations reportedly said, to “the most destroyed city on earth.”
6. Present : From the mid-2008 though, the jihadist movement in Chechnya began to gather momentum again. In November that year, Mr. Umarov declared himself the Emir of the so-called Islamic Emirate of the Caucasus. For the past decade, Mr. Umarov has faced a determined adversary in the former warlord Ramzan Kadyrov. Helped by generous assistance from Moscow, Mr. Kadyrov has turned Grozny into an economic hub. But he has been alleged to be complicit in violence directed at human rights activists and political opponents — and criticised for shari’a laws that discriminate against women, introduced in a bid to outflank his Islamist opponents. 

Russia-India Ties

• Russia has lifted the ban on import of non-basmati rice and oilseeds from India

Russia-Iran Ties

• Russia has taken a “principled” decision to sell Iran an improved version of the S-300 air defence missiles and to build a second nuclear reactor at Bushehr,


• President Vladimir Putin instructed the government to prepare the two proposals for his meeting with his Iranian counterpart, Hassan Rouhani, in Sep 2013 on the sidelines of a Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.

Russia-China Ties

• Since March 2013, Xi Jinping has traveled overseas three times. His first visit after taking office was to Russia. On the same trip, he took in three African countries and attended the BRICS Summit in South Africa.


• In June 2013 , Xi visited three Latin American countries and held a summit with U.S. President Barack Obama in California. For this forthcoming G20 and SCO trip, Xi will again meet with Putin in St. Petersburg and Bishkek.


• The third trip (for G20 and SCO summit in Russia) will also be Xi’s second visit to Russia in six months, itself rare enough in the neighborhood diplomacy of top Chinese leaders in recent years and not especially common for leaders of other countries either.


• Russia is a diplomatic priority for Beijing. Some Chinese scholars see close links between China and Russia as a counterweight to the U.S.-Japan alliance, offsetting the pressure of the United States and Japan on the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands issue. For Russia, ties with China can also balance U.S. policy.


• It is worth noting that coinciding with Xi's first visit to Russia, Beijing and Moscow signed the largest weapons procurement contract in the past decade, in which China is to buy 24 Su-35 fighters and four Lada-class submarines (although some reports have denied this deal actually going through). Since then, China and Russia have held a "routine" military exercise, again showing the growing sophistication of military cooperation between the two countries.

USA

1. National Security Agency(NSA)  of America communication snooping : Boundless Informant collects information from computer and telecom services.Order of spying : Iran,Pakistan,Jordan,Egypt,India.


2. The U.S. National Security Agency snooped on the Indian embassy and considered it a “target” along with 37 other embassies and missions here, according to the latest revelations by The Guardian.The Guardian exposé on the spying methods used against embassies said a key method was code-named ‘Dropmire,’ which, according to a 2007 document, is “implanted on the Cryptofax.”It is unclear whether the Indian embassy uses such a device.

US - Russia relations

• Russia’s decision to grant asylum to the whistle-blower has strained its relationship with the U.S.


• U.S. President Barack Obama’s decision cancel a planned summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin early Sep 2013.It is for the first time since the end of the Cold War that a summit meeting between the Russian and U.S. leaders gets cancelled.

Russia Relations

• U.S.-Russia compromise formula on defence co-operation ,pledging to cooperate on missile defences and not to use them against each other.
• Russia will re-establish its permanent naval presence in the Mediterranean, more than two decades after it withdrew from the region.
  
  
  India And Russia Relations  
  
  
• Russia was unhappy with India’s refusal to waive civil liability for units III and IV of the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant (KNPP) and failure to secure Russian telecom company Sistema’s massive investment in the joint venture, Sistema Shyam TeleServices Ltd (SSTL)
• India was concerned over a year-long delay in the delivery of the Vikramaditya aircraft carrier. 
• Russia reaffirmed its readiness to share cutting-edge weapons technologies, leasing out the nuclear submarine Chakra and offering to jointly develop the fifth-generation fighter aircraft.
• According to an agreement signed on November 12, 2007 between ISRO and Roskosmos, the Russian Federal Space Agency, ISRO had the primary responsibility to provide both the orbiter and the rover, while Roskosmos was to design and build the lander for this combined orbiter-rover-lander mission.Due to failure of Roskosmos’ Phobos-Grunt mission,, as well as financial problems, the Russian agency apparently expressed its inability provide the lander to meet even the revised time frame of 2015 for the Chandrayaan-2 launch.
• The two countries have set the goal of boosting bilateral trade to $20 billion by 2015
• The only Hindu temple in Russia- the Iskcon Krishna temple in Moscow is facing the threat of demolition by the Russian authorities.
• As per Russian authorities, the temporary Iskcon temple violates the urban building code and has no legal grounds for existence. Indian embassy has sought an extension to the temple which is set to expire on December 31, 2012, until they complete the construction of a Vedic cultural centre.
• In 2011, Russia had sought to ban Bhagavad Gita. The move caused furore in Lok Sabha  and the Parliament had unanimously asked Russia to prevent the ban. 
• On Russian president Vladimir Putin’s visit to India, both nations moved further to strengthen their economic relations by inking a pact on a Kremlin-backed $2 billion investment fund and consenting to open talks on a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) that will also involve Belarus and Kazakhstan
• Finalised 10 agreements
• Two military contracts, worth about Rs. 20,000 crore
• To take the initial steps towards operating a “ranging station” that will help accurately fix the location of satellites.
• Equity participation through ONGC-OVL in existing and new projects in Siberia, Russia’s Far East and the Arctic Shelf.
• Both nations also decided to further their partnership in the energy sector, which has moved beyond investment (Sakhalin-I) to direct trade (Gazprom-Gail) and is now moving towards joint investment in downstream and upstream sectors.
• To encourage investments b/w the two nations, India’s State Bank of India (SBI) and Russian sovereign wealth fund Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) came together to ink an MoU for setting up a $2 billion investment consortium. Both the groups would invest up to $1 billion each in the consortium.