Putin Continues To Do Whatever He Wants As Russia Announced The North Pole Belongs To Them While Unveiling A Giant Military Base
Daily Mail - Russia is building up its military in a remote Arctic airbase prime with missiles, radar and a runway as the Kremlin seeks to assert its dominance in the disputed oil-rich area which it declared this week it 'our land'.
The Nagurskoye airbase in the Franz Josef Land archipelago was built in the 1950s as a weather station and communications outpost between the Eurasian mainland and the North Pole.
It was previously a home for polar bears with temperatures plunging to minus 42 Celsius in winter, and snow only disappearing from August to mid-September.
Now, Russia's northernmost military base is bristling with activity and its extended runway can handle all types of aircraft, including nuclear-capable strategic bombers.
The site projects Moscow's power and influence across the Arctic amid intensifying international competition for the region's vast resources, as the country's foreign minister Sergey Lavrov declared this week: 'We hear whining about Russia expanding its military activities in the Arctic.
'But everyone knows that it's our territory, our land. We bear responsibility for the Arctic coast to be safe, and everything our country does there is fully legitimate.'
(Strongly suggest clicking that link and looking at the pictures of the base, the aircraft, and the size of everything set up there. It's a pretty insane undertaking they completed. I can't embed or post them because we'll get in trouble and I'll get my nuts clipped. But go look at them.)
As anybody that watched our Misfits vs. Nightmare Dozen match can tell you, I'm no KB when it comes to flags of the world. But I am decent at geography so yah, I get that Russia taking control of the North Pole is a little different than say Venezuela. It's in their backyard.
But with that said, we're talking about Santa Claus' homeland. Wasn't this place designated as off-limits just like Antarctica by every country in the world?
Not like Putin gives a single fuck, as he just operates however he wants, with reckless abandon, yet cunning strategery, asking questions later.
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The class clown is burning down the school meanwhile, we're like the nerd in the corner of the room, frustratingly jotting down all these misgrievances on a pad of paper that we're gonna turn into the teacher once she's back from her bathroom break.
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And the worst part of this news is that this bastard said he was going to do this 6 years ago and everybody mocked him!
The audacity! (Of us, not him)
So what does he get in the North Pole besides an even larger set of balls to drag across the free-world's forehead you ask?
The approximately 460,000 square miles that Russia is claiming contains some of the world’s largest untapped reserves of fossil fuels, as well as valuable minerals. It also contains a potentially important northern shipping route that has been slowly opening up as Arctic Ice melts due to global climate change.
Putin has cited estimates that put the value of Arctic mineral riches at $30 trillion. No big deal.
As well as an easier attack point if shit ever went down with a North American super power… according to military experts. I suck at RISK so don't take my word for it.
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Look at that giant base.
The shamrock-shaped facility on the 3,470-mile Northern Sea Route along Russia's Arctic Coast consists of three large pods extending from a central atrium called the Arctic Trefoil and it is painted in the white-red-and-blue of the national flag.
Other buildings on the Island, which is called Alexandra Land, are used for radar and communications, a weather station, oil storage, hangars and construction facilities.
Russia has sought to assert its influence over wide areas of the Arctic in competition with the United States, Canada, Denmark and Norway as shrinking polar ice from the warming planet offers new opportunities for resources and shipping routes.
China also has shown an increasing interest in the region, believed to hold up to one-fourth of the Earth's undiscovered oil and gas.
The base, which sits about 600 miles south of the geographic North Pole, was built using new construction technologies as part of Kremlin efforts to bolster the military amid spiraling tensions with the West following Russia's 2014 annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula.
The following year, Russia submitted a revised bid for vast territories in the Arctic to the United Nations, claiming nearly 500,000 square miles of Arctic sea shelf, extending more than 350 nautical miles from shore.
Of course the official statement from the U.S. on all this is that "we don't recognize this assertion that Russia lays claim to the North Pole and it's waters." Which to use another high school metaphor is the equivalent to being so self-deluded that you refuse to acknowledge that the girl you're obsessed with is dating the starting quarterback. Even while he's balls deep in her in the parking lot during study hall.
Last question, why should we care that Russia wants an uninhabitable piece of land? Sure its sitting atop trillions in natural resources, but what other value does it have? Besides being a real life Hoth
Well you know who else saw one of the poles as valuable and sought out to conquer, and set up shop on it?
That guy Hitler.
So yah, maybe this isn't a big deal or maybe we look back on this in 10 or 20 years when we're all speaking Russian and say hey we shoulda been paying attention.
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мир земли и хлеба