President Putin of Russia, in traditional Russian realpolitik, has made various bold statements that make some people concerned abroad, especially in the US. One such statement that he recently made was about Russia attempting to fulfill soy and wheat deficits to China as a replacement to the US, which Shoebat.com reported was a non-statement since neither of these areas would matter because they do not produce soy and China has no wheat issues as she is the largest producer of wheat in the world and the largest importers of wheat are in the Muslim world.
Putin has made another statement saying that Russia’s new missile defense systems can overcome any attack by missiles from the outside.
Russian leader Vladimir Putin is confident that Russian strike systems will be able to overcome any missile defense system. Work is underway on such complexes, and it is already obvious that the goal will be achieved, he said in an interview with Arab television channels.
The President recalled that missile defense systems work against ballistic missiles, and in Russia ballistic missiles have been improved many times, in addition, a unique weapon has no analogues in the world, reports TASS .
At the same time, Moscow is concerned that NATO infrastructure is approaching the Russian borders, and this block is of a military nature, reports “Interfax”. (source)
This is another non-story. To this point, the state of Russia’s missile defense systems, which are known to be well-behind those developed in the west, is not even the issue of note.
Russia has a lot more to be worried about not from missiles above, but people walking on foot.
Shoebat.com has explained many times that the “refugee crisis” in Germany has been happening in Russia for an equally long time, and is not discussed but is far more serious because while it has been encouraged due to immigration policies, it is also an organic process meant to assist Russia’s declining population due to choices made by her people as well as her decaying infrastructure. While the average Russian fertility rate is well-below replacement rates, all of the Central Asian nations save for Uzbekistan (and even that is higher than Russia) have a fertility rate at or above the replacement rate minimums, as well as do many of the Turkic regions throughout Russia. This is why Putin appointed Sergei Shoigu, a mixed race man of Russian Slav and Central Asian Turkic background, to be the head of the Russian military, as he represents the mixed union of Russia’s diverse and changing peoples.
The other issue that Russia faces is that of China. Russia and China are the second and third most powerful militaries in the world, and while they speak of each other as allies, they do not like each other and do not trust each other. Russia knows well that China wants to and has the ability to take over Siberia and Central Asia by her mere physical presence, for there are approximately ten Chinese citizens for every one Russian. Russia does not speak about it vocally, but she has been aggressively militarizing the borders with China in Central Asia in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, as well as now is starting to move a stronger armed forces presence into cities on her eastern border with China such as Khabarovsk and Blagoveshchensk.
A map of the current Power of Siberia pipeline
Currently, Russia is working on a major pipeline called the “Power of Siberia,” which has been promoted on state television. It begins in oil and gas fields at Chayanda in southern Yakutia, a major province in eastern Russia, and goes all along the Mongolian and Chinese borders into Primorsky Krai (the area of Russia that borders China and North Korea, where Vladivostok is located and is across from Japan by sea) and then into China. The reason for promoting this as well as Chinese propaganda on Russian state TV is because Russia is making gas deals with China in order to keep her interests away from Siberia, essentially buying her out at least temporarily.
Russia knows well that a war is coming, and while there is much conflict between her and Japan, it would not be surprising if the Russians were secretly helping the Japanese in some capacity. There is no public evidence to support this which I have currently found, but I say this on the basis that while Russian and Japan are historical enemies and Russia has been invaded by Japan before during the 1905 Russo-Japanese war and Japanese troops controlled half of Russia to Novosibirsk until 1920 when they withdrew, Russia knows that another invasion will happen. The question is not how to stop the invasion, but how to mitigate the damage by who to pay to keep out of Siberia.
If the Chinese choose to invade Siberia, they not only have the ability to do it, but they have the ability to permanently occupy and annex it to China. Russia will not have this, but there would be little that she could do to stop it. Japan, by contrast, hates China far more than Russia, and Japan has a long history of successfully subduing China, and her return against towards past militancy is a sign that another war with China is coming. The Japanese, while being able to walk into Siberia in theory, would likely focus more of their efforts against the Chinese, and at the same time, the Russians not only would claim an inability to help the Chinese, but the oil being sold to the Chinese now could “accidentally” get seized by the Japanese, at which time the Russians would claim there is nothing they can do, yet in truth the Japanese are paying the Russians for oil what the Chinese paid before, the difference being only that they are the new buyer. Japan, a nation whose empire tends to move into the Pacific Ocean, would likely be content to control China and move eastward, and not towards Russia or if so, less so by comparison that in the past, especially if she and Russia were able to make deals for raw materials. Her small population, at approximately twenty million fewer than Russia, would not have the physical ability to hold Siberia and permanently seize it in the way that the Chinese would be able to potentially execute.
Putin can talk all he wants about missile attacks, and those may happen. However, that would be on the western front. The larger danger is losing control of large amounts of Russian territory to Chinese forces, or having rebellions from the Central Asian Turks that results in a fragmentation of Russian power in Siberia and Central Asia. Both of these scenarios could be disastrous for Russia and it is possible that in her current state, she would be unable to recover from them.
Putin and his advisers know all of this well. Any other language is meant to misdirect public opinion from these realities.