TBILISI (Reuters) — Georgia accused Russia on Monday of violating its sovereignty by placing border markers on the edge of the South Ossetia region, leaving part of an international oil pipeline in territory under Russian control.

Tbilisi has not controlled South Ossetia or its fellow breakaway region of Abkhazia since fighting a brief war with Moscow in 2008. Both host Russian military bases, but most countries and the United Nations regard them as part of Georgia.

Russian troops have been installing barbed wire and fences around South Ossetia since the war but residents say the soldiers have now erected border signs up to about 1.5 km (one mile) beyond the administrative border.

Condemning the action, Georgia's Foreign Ministry said part of the BP-operated Baku-Supsa oil pipeline was now in territory it regards as occupied by Russia.

"The Georgian Foreign Ministry expresses its extreme concern over the illegal placement of banners by the Russian occupying forces marking the so-called 'border,'" it said in a statement.

"It is noteworthy that ... with this illegal action a certain portion of the (Baku-Supsa) pipeline next to the village of Orchosani fell within the occupied territory."

Russia did not immediately comment on the ministry's remarks.

The 830-km (520-mile) Baku-Supsa pipeline runs from Azerbaijan to the Georgian Black Sea terminal of Supsa and has the capacity to transport up to 100,000 barrels of oil per day.

"As the operator of the Baku-Supsa oil pipeline, BP has been delivering Azerbaijan's oil in a reliable, efficient and secure way to the world market for over 15 years, and will continue to do so in the future," Azeri news agency ANS quoted Tamam Bayatly, BP-Azerbaijan spokeswoman, as saying.

Zurab Abashidze, a special envoy for relations with Russia, called it a "deliberate provocation, a very dangerous provocation" in a region where "security and peace hang by a thread".

Georgia is strategically important for Europe because of the pipelines that run through the country of 3.7 million, bringing it Caspian gas and oil.

The former Soviet republic is seeking membership of the NATO military alliance and the European Union. It has no diplomatic relations with Russia but says a foreign policy goal is not to antagonize Moscow.

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While Ukraine is the central point of conflict between Russia and NATO, economics may be the next battlefront.

According to Robert Dannenberg, a Goldman Sachs security analyst and CIA veteran, Russia's President Vladimir Putin recognizes the importance of gaining power through international economic agencies.

"Putin is conservative and nostalgic, but he also understands that it takes more than just rebuilding or modernizing your nuclear arsenal to create a bi-polar world. You need to have economic power," Dannenberg said during a Q&A in a Goldman note.

Russia seems far from realizing these goals. Lowered oil prices and economic sanctions by NATO due to the Ukraine conflict have crippled the Russian economy in the past few years.

The country's bonds have been downgraded to junk status, and its GDP contracted 1.9% in the first quarter of 2015. It does not seem that Russia is ready to flex its economic muscle. 

In spite of the weak economy, Russia is attempting to boost its fortune by allying with more friendly economic powers, particularly China, and burgeoning markets.

According to Dannenberg, Putin's plan is twofold. The first objective is to create closer formal ties with countries that have similar economic interests.

Last week Russia hosted the BRICS summit, a meeting of economic and political leaders from the growing powers of Brazil, India, China and South Africa. Russia is also a member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which has 14 members including China, India, Iran, Pakistan and Turkey.

They've even begun to court Greece as an economic partner in Europe.

Obviously based on those membership lists, Russia's main focus is maintaining strong ties with China. Dannenberg highlighted this the most important part of Putin's economic plan.

"Putin knows that Russia’s relative economic weakness means there is no possibility of achieving his vision without China’s participation," said Dannenberg.

He noted that Putin is willing to make serious concessions to achieve the goal.

"It is why he agreed to a natural gas deal with China in the spring of 2014 despite very disadvantageous terms for Russia," he said.

In November, Russia and China struck a deal to create pipelines from Siberia into China and transport up to 38 billion cubic meters of gas a year and in April, Russia sold a stake in its Vankor oil fields to the Chinese in an unprecedented move.

Russia plans take aim at international economic institutions Putin believes are controlled by NATO nations. Here's Dannenberg:

"He has consistently articulated, especially over the last year, that all the world’s major economic tools are controlled by the West and available to punish countries that don’t play by Western rules, whether it is the dollar as the world’s reserve currency, the governance of the International Monetary Fund, SWIFT, or Visa and MasterCard for consumer finance."

This notion has already been picked up by the Chinese, who in recent months have made a push for the yuan's inclusion in the IMF's Special Drawing Rights as a reserve currency or even pushing to use the SDR as the base for all investment instead of the US dollar.

By connecting with China and other markets, Putin is expanding his conflict with the West from the streets of Ukraine to the economic markets of the world.

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An Iran nuclear deal could mean bad news for the Russian oil business.

The most obvious source of pain is that the introduction of Iranian oil on the market after sanctions are lifted could push oil prices down again.

But that's not the only sore spot. In the last few years, Russia encroached on Iran's primary markets, Asia and Europe, and that trend could reverse following the deal.

“Iran is going to be competing in Europe head-on with Russia,” Ed Morse, head of commodities research at Citigroup Inc. previously told Bloomberg.

Before the Western sanctions, Iran's crude exports "were a regular fixture for European refineries." But since 2012, Iran has been banned from selling oil to Europe, and additional US sanctions made it harder to buy Iranian oil with US dollars. 

So, "Russia, whose benchmark export grade is similar to Iran’s flagship blend, has been the main beneficiary of that decline," Bloomberg reported recently. "Exports into Iran’s main markets in Asia and Europe have more than doubled, growing by 420,000 barrels a day from 2011 to 2014."

Citi's Edward L. Morse included a chart (to the right) in a June 30, 2015 report to clients, showing Iranian crude exports by destination, where the loss of the European market is clear.

However, things could be change up now: many Mediterranean refiners are ready and excited for the return of Iranian oil.

"Iran has been a long standing valued partner ... We are looking forward to Iran coming back to the market," a spokesman for Greece's biggest refiner Hellenic Petroleum told Reuters.

"The volumes of crude oil that will re-enter the Mediterranean market will ease prices and give more options for refiners in the region," he added.

He stated, however, that they will not buy any crude before sanctions are officially lifted.

Additionally, a spokeswoman for Spain's Compania Espanola de Petroleos (CEPSA) reportedly said that "Iranian crude has largely been part of our supply and we maintained a long commercial relationship with them."

"If sanctions are lifted, as it seems, Iranian crudes will definitively be again another alternative to consider,"she added in a statement to Reuters.

Analysts expect the deal could see Iran increase its oil exports by up to 60 percent within a year, according to Reuters.

"It would mean cheaper crude for Mediterranean refineries, especially smaller countries that have been impacted by economic problems – like Greece," Eshan Ul-Haq said, a senior market consultant with KBC told Reuters.

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Russia is making moves to revive and increase the size and scope of its Black Sea submarine fleet, the Russian Ministry of Defense stated. 

Russian Navy Admiral Viktor Chirkov stated during a meeting with the Main Naval Command in Saint Petersburg on Monday that he believes that the submarine fleet will be "revived" and ready for action by 2016.

The submarines will be based at the Novorossiysk port on the Russian mainland across from the Crimean peninsula.

The submarine fleet will be augmented by the inclusion of six new diesel-electric submarines that Russia has been phasing into service since 2014. 

“The construction of 6 diesel-electrical submarines (project 636) for the Black Sea Fleet is under the control of the Main Navy Command. 'Novorossiysk' and 'Rostov-on-Don' submarines were put into service in 2014," Chirkov said. "'Krasnodar' submarine will join the Navy by the end of 2015.”

Three other submarines will additionally be added to the fleet by the end of 2016. The submarines of project 636 have been designed to excel at warfare in shallower water while being arguably the quietest submarines in the world. 

“The formation will consist of a group of 636 submarines, which have a large sea endurance, modern weapon systems, effective radio and navigational systems,” Chirkov said. 

The project 636 submarines are Varshavyanka-class vessels, which are upgraded versions of Russia's previous Kilo-class submarines. Although Varshavyanka-class submarines can not dive as deep or stay submerged underwater as long as nuclear submarines, they are nearly impossible to detect acoustically.

Primarily, the Varshavyanka-class submarines will be used for anti-shipping and anti-submarine warfare in shallower water. According to Naval Technology, the submarines can cruise for a range of 400 miles, can patrol for 45 days, and carry surface-to-air missiles and torpedoes.

The mixture of weaponry onboard the submarines allow the vessels to hypothetically strike both a mixture of land, sea, and underwater targets.  

The revival of the Black Sea fleet coincides with Russia's general drive to modernize its submarine assets as a whole. In addition to the Black Sea, Moscow plans on adding an additional 14 to 18 diesel-electric submarines similar to Lada-class subs over the next 15 years throughout the Russian fleets. 

The Kremlin also plans to replace its Delta III and Delta IV-class subs with Borei II submarines in the coming years. The Oscar II-class sub will be replaced with the entirely new Yasen submarine class after 2020. 

SEE ALSO: US Coast Guard chief: We are 'not even in the same league as Russia' in the Arctic

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NOW WATCH: 11 game-changing military planes from the last 15 years

On Jul. 14, at 09.50 Moscow Time, a Tu-95 bomber crashed in an uninhabited area 80 km from Khabarovsk.

According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, the aircraft was conducting a training mission and it was unarmed. All the crew left the aircraft uninjured.

Newsworthy, this is the second incident in little more than one month: on Jun. 9, a Tu-95 skidded off the runway at Ukrainka airbase, in the Amur region, in an incident that resulted in the death of one crew member.

Following the incident, all the Tu-95 fleet was grounded: a flight ban lifted few days ago and “celebrated” on Jul. 4 with missions over the Pacific that caused the interception of four Bears by two F-15s and two F-22s in two different episodes.

It’s unclear if the Bears will be grounded again. Surely, the latest mishap might be the sign that some quite old Russian warplanes, used to intimidate NATO allies all around the world, are being pushed to their limits, as some reports have highlighted.

Along with the two Tu-95s, the most recent Russian crashes include a Su-24 Fencer, two Mig-29 Fulcrums and a modern Su-34 Fullback.

SEE ALSO: US jets intercepted Russian bombers off the California and Alaska coasts on July 4

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Russia's Air Force has suffered from a string of crashes over the past month that highlight the country's maintenance and modernization woes. 

Since June 4, there have been five major Air Force crashes, USNI News reports. On June 4, a MiG-29 and an Su-34 both crashed. The SU-34 is one of Russia's most advanced fighter jets, and was officially introduced into service in March of 2014.

These incidents were followed by a Tu-95 Bear bomber suffering an engine fire on June 8, another MiG-29 crashing on July 3, and an Su-24 crash on July 6 that killed both of its pilots. 

Most recently, a second Tu-95 crashed on Tuesday close to the Chinese border. The incident has led to Russia grounding its Tu-95 fleet to carry out mechanical inspections of its planes. 

Aircraft incidents are perhaps inevitable even in the most advanced militaries. But the rapid pace of crashes in Russia could point to systemic flaws and problems within the country's Air Force as a whole. A possible contributor to the spate of accidents is the rapid uptick of Russian aerial maneuvers resulting from the Ukraine crisis, along with general poor maintenance and an aging fleet.

Russia has been flying sorties across Europe, the Atlantic, and the Pacific with a frequency unseen since the Cold War. This increased workload has put heavy strain on an aging fleet of Cold War-era bombers and fighters that Russia is only now trying to modernize. 

"The majority of the equipment, apart from the [recent crash] of a newer Su-34, is very old. Under [Defense Ministers] Anatoly Serdyukov and Sergei Shoigu, the planes are being used very extensively," a Russian source familiar with the matter told Defense News. "If you start to extensively use equipment made many years ago, even if the equipment is certified [in good shape], the percentage of failure becomes higher." 

This issue of older equipment is compounded by the fact that replacement parts for the aircraft are themselves in a poor state of repair.

"These old aircraft require a lot of maintenance, and the spare parts currently in stock are old," Vadim Kozyulin, a military expert at the Russian PIR Center think tank, told Defense News. 

This isn't the only sign Russia's efforts to project military power actually mask some dire internal weaknesses: 23 soldiers were killed when a barracks at a training center in Omsk collapsed on July 13th.

SEE ALSO: Russia's Black Sea submarine fleet is getting a serious upgrade

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Sheshurino (Russia) (AFP) - More than 70 years after Gennady Vinogradov was born in the small village of Sheshurino, northwest of Moscow, he just asks for one thing: to be able to die there in dignity.

But news that the authorities will be closing the village's clinic -- the only one for miles around -- has driven him and his neighbours to breaking point.

"If they close this clinic, it will be a catastrophe. We pay our (compulsory) insurance fees and have a right to healthcare," the 76-year-old said, surrounded by two dozen of his neighbours.

It seems as if the government "wants to kill us," he said.

While the consequences of Russia's economic downturn are less visible in the capital, remote rural communities like Sheshurino have been left to fend for themselves as the remnants of state support disappear.

Experts say recent attempts to reform Russia's healthcare system with a reduced budget have led death rates to rise from 13.5 per 1,000 in the first quarter of 2014 to 14 this year.

President Vladimir Putin last month ordered his government to take immediate measures against the "significant rise in mortality."

'Skype' doctors

In Sheshurino, residents had just one request for Putin: to keep their clinic open and pay a local health worker to treat residents.

The clinic has been demoted to a convalescent home for elderly patients but it remains the only place where locals can get medical care, whether for chronic conditions or emergencies.

Its head, Galina Lebedeva, gets no money to treat them and does so at her own risk.

"People come to me for help and I help them even though I'm not supposed to," the energetic 41-year-old said. 

"My boss calls me Mother Teresa," she said, referring to the Albanian-born nun, whose work among the poorest of the poor in the Indian city of Kolkata earned her the sobriquet "Saint of the Gutters." 

Lebedeva was recently told "there is no more money" to keep her and her staff of 15, including nurses and care assistants, working in the village.

She expects the facility to close by the end of this year. That means a loss of income for 15 families depending on salaries ranging from under $100 to $200 a month.

Sheshurino, which lies 400 kilometres (250 miles) northwest of Moscow, is quintessential Russia with its scattering of log houses along the edge of a picturesque lake looking much like it did in the tsarist era. 

Alexei Kuropatkin, a local son and Russia's war minister under the last Tsar Nicholas II, built the clinic in 1908.

The facility survived wars, the 1917 Revolution and the collapse of Communism.

Russia has 83,000 villages with less than 100 residents, making it difficult to retain doctors there, Health Minister Veronika Skvortsova said in June. 

Instead, people could use Skype to consult health professionals, she said.

Such a suggestion brings nothing but anger in Sheshurino, where promises to install a fibre-optic cable seem far-fetched. 

"We don't have cellphone coverage here and landline phones only work every couple of days -- if the weather is good," Vinogradov fumed.

The nearest hospital is at least two hours away by car, and when a local resident suffered a stroke recently, the ambulance took five hours to come.

The only bus runs twice a week, while a taxi to the hospital costs more than $50.

The clinic used to have a horse and cart for transport, but the horse was sold for meat last year on orders of regional authorities, who claimed it was too expensive.

Poor Russians left out  

In a Bloomberg ranking of healthcare based on life expectancy and costs, Russia was put in last place in a list of 51 countries. It spends 3.7 percent of the GDP on healthcare, and that budget is set to shrink during recession.

There have been attempts to make the system efficient, modernise hospitals and reduce in-patient treatment.

But while some urban hospitals benefit from better equipment, poor Russians in the countryside are ending up with no care at all.

The country lost 90,000 health workers last year while medicines became more expensive, Russia's audit chamber said last month.

A report by the Committee of Civic Initiatives, a group headed by former finance minister Alexei Kudrin, concluded recently that misguided reforms were the reason for the rise in mortality.

"Small villages have the highest mortality for middle-aged and elderly populations," the report said, with central Russia the worst-hit.

In Sheshurino, people are seeing their already hard lives becoming impossible due to the new policies, said Lebedeva.

"The people who came up with them have never seen rural life, they don't know the reality of how people live, how they struggle to survive."

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We are seeing the emergence of a dual power structure in Central Asia, with China as the dominant economic power and Russia as the big security player.

Or, as Alexander Gabuev, senior associate and the chair of the Russia in the Asia-Pacific program at the Carnegie Moscow Center, told Foreign Policy: "China would be the bank and Russia would be the big gun."

The confluence comes as Moscow shifts its attention toward Asia after being isolating by the West over the war in Ukraine. China, for its part, is seeking to find new countries it can export goods to as Western demands slows and Beijing transitions its economy.

China is taking the lead in economic-power ventures in the region, including the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the potential SCO development bank (which Russia is finally warming up to). Additionally, China has become the main moneylender in Central Asia: Its trade volume with the region surpassed that of Russia in 2009.

At the same time, Russia wants to keep its military bases and arms deals in Central Asia, along with the Collective Security Treaty Organization, a security bloc of former Soviet countries.

"It is Inner Asia — Afghanistan, Mongolia, and the five post-Soviet states of Central Asia — that is likely to see the most impact from the deepening of Sino-Russia integration," Dmitri Trenin, the director of Carnegie Moscow Center, wrote recently in a paper on the Sino-Russo entente.

China "sees economics as power," according to a report by Stratfor. "For Beijing, military might rests on a strong economic base, and global power stems as much from the ability to shape global markets as it does from military force."

The same reports suggest Russia is pursuing the regional muscle role because Moscow "believes military might is the basis for national strength, power, and influence."

That may be partially true, but it's difficult to make that call, as China is the economic leader in the region.

Alternatively, there's the sense Russia is pursuing security power in Eurasia because, simply put, that's the second-best option.

"The Kremlin knows that they won't be able to compete with Chinese investment," Luca Anceschi, a Central Asia expert at the University of Glasgow, told Foreign Policy. "Russia simply can't catch up."

SEE ALSO: Something's brewing in Central Asia and the West 'needs to take this seriously'

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After spending an estimated $51 billion to host the 2014 Olympics, Russia has budgeted nearly $12 billion more for the 2018 World Cup. As a result, it's expected to be the most expensive World Cup in history.

With 12 stadiums across 11 host cities – Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kaliningrad, Nizhny Novgorod, Kazan, Samara, Saransk, Volgograd, Rostov-on-Don, Sochi, and Ekaterinbur — Russia has had to build several new venues from scratch and renovate many others.

While construction is still ongoing, Russian representatives have said all stadiums will be completed by 2017. With three years to go, a lot of work is still to be done.

*All figures based on exchange rates as of July 2015.

Russia plans to spend $3.6 billion on World Cup stadiums alone.

Source: WSJ

They're building eight stadiums from scratch, including one in Nizhny Novgorod.

Source: Yahoo/Reuters

However, construction hasn't gone beyond excavation and concrete work.

Source: Russia Beyond The Headlines

While the world was seemingly at peace — before the financial crisis, war in Eastern Europe, and chaos in the Middle East — Wall Street's masters of the universe could keep geopolitics in the recesses of their mind.

No more.

Now global unrest has become the central worry of bank executives and hedge fund billionaires alike.

It's the new uncertainty slipping into conversations even when money isn't necessarily at play.

"Greece is a more a humanitarian issue than an economic one," Mary Callahan Erdoes, JPMorgan Asset Management CEO, said Wednesday at CNBC's Delivering Alpha Conference.

But that humanitarian crisis dominated the conversation on a panel made up of Erdoes, two hedge fund managers, and a California pension fund's chief investment officer.

Richard Perry, the billionaire CEO of the hedge fund Perry Capital, said issues in Greece were exacerbated by the country's "adjacencies." By that, more simply, he meant its geography.

If the NATO member Greece, for example, turns to an aggressive Russia for help, Russian President Vladimir Putin's influence in an already fragile region will increase. Greece's historical enemy, Turkey, is also becoming more and more authoritarian. Greece is also susceptible to spillover from Syria, Perry argued.

The spillover isn't just coming from Syria. Violence in North Africa has sent desperate refugees — and far more dangerous migrants, some fear — to Europe en masse. It's a challenge the EU can take on only if it does it together.

But the EU, it seems, can't keep it together. Perry wondered which EU nation "the next Syriza Party come out of," referring to Greece's radical left-wing party.

Suffering over time leads to desperation. Desperation leads to radicalism. This is a domino effect that doesn't just end with Greece's bailout.

To Perry it seemed Germany forgot about that in its negotiations with Greece — luckily France and Italy did not.

Moderator Andrew Ross Sorkin had to turn the conversation back to actionable trades. That's rare on Wall Street, where earnings trump elections and risk is measured and modeled in Excel. It suggests we're living in a particularly dangerous time.

The urgency of these kinds of discussions has increased dramatically even since this spring, too, when investors gathered in Las Vegas for SkyBridge Capital's SALT conference.

Then, Putin and Russia were a problem for Ukraine. Attendees talked about the conflict as more of a worrisome curiosity than an immediate risk.

Now, with Greece on the brink, the specter of Putin is moving west toward a weak and squabbling Europe.

Ultimately, it was Perry who nailed the key way this new obsession with geopolitics would change how Wall Street goes about its business. He was talking specifically about China's now sluggish economy and its volatile stock market, but it applies across the board.

"The way to play the game is to understand what the Chinese are doing," he said.

That goes for oligarchs in Russia and politicians in Germany, fighters in Syria, and protesters in Spain.

It's time to pay attention.

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Under the weight of Western sanctions and with the price of oil dropping, poverty in Russia has reached "critical" levels, according to a government official, reported the Moscow Times. 

Data from the Russian government showed a sharp uptick in the number of people living below the poverty line.

“Unfortunately, predictions are coming true: According to official statistics, the number of poor people has reached 22 million. This is critical,” Deputy Prime Minister Olga Golodets told a Russian television station, news agency Interfax reported, via the Moscow Times. Golodets oversees the Russian government's social policy.

An earlier report from Russia's state statistics service, Rosstat, said that the number of people below the poverty line rose to 22.9 million people in the first quarter of 2015, according to a Moscow Times report in June. That figure is up from 19.8 million for the same period in 2014.

Russia's total population was estimated to be 144 million, according to Forbes, using Rosstat data. If the 22.9 million figure and the Forbes estimate (which removes Crimea from the data) are correct, then about 15.9 percent of Russia's total population lives below the poverty line.

For comparison, the United States' percentage  of the population below the poverty line has hovered at  14 percent to 15 percent in recent years.

Rising inflation in Russia has contributed to more people living in poverty. In March, the inflation rate in Russia hit its highest point in 13 years, with consumer prices rising 16.9 percent from the year before. The price increases were a result of Western sanctions on food imports from the West along with the collapse in the value of the ruble, according to the Moscow Times.

The economic sanctions from the United States and European Union -- which targeted Russia's state finance, arms and energy sectors -- were in response to Moscow's annexation of Crimea and its purported role in the conflict in Ukraine between pro-Russia separatists and the Ukrainian government.

Russia's economy also is heavily dependent on exporting oil, which has seen a drop in prices. The Russian economy is expected to shrink by 3 percent in 2015, with investment tightened by Western sanctions and the steep drop in oil prices.

While inflation eased to 15.3 percent year-to-year in June, real wages were down 7.3 percent in May compared with the same period in 2014, according to Rosstat data. Unemployment in Russia is relatively low at 5.6 percent, but partial unemployment is rising quickly, with the number of part-time workers rising 8 percent.

SEE ALSO: 'China would be the bank and Russia would be the big gun' in Central Asia

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NOW WATCH: 11 facts that show how different Russia is from the rest of the world

Iraq, Iran, and Russia find themselves in the headlines daily because of their ongoing military conflicts, human-rights violations, and oppressive regimes.

Unsurprisingly, a report issued Thursday by the Reputation Institute ranks those countries among the least reputable countries in the world.

On the other side are the most admired and reputable countries, of which Canada leads the pack.

The Reputation Institute's Country Reptrak report "measures the reputation of 55 (largest by GDP) countries based on levels of trust, esteem, admiration and respect based on an online panel of more than 27,000 people representing the G8 countries."

The report looks at 16 attributes for each nation. Evaluations include the country's safety, whether the residents are welcoming, whether the government is effectively progressive socially and economically, and even the beauty of the countryside.

Given these criteria, here are the 20 most reputable countries in the world:

The Reputation Institute's Fernando Prado told CTV, "We all love Canada because of several things ... absence of corruption ... a high level of welfare for the inhabitants, and with friendly and welcoming people."

Eight of the top 10 nations are very far north, seven of them (all European nations) are or have been militarily neutral in the past, and five are NATO members.

Surprisingly, the US falls just short of cracking the top 20.

Prado explains: "The US has an average reputation ... because they don't have the highest scores in all the different attributes. They have very strong ones in technology, in having strong brands, but not as much in other ones." Prado describes a negative "emotional halo" surrounding the US, citing that the US scored well in rational areas but less so in emotional ones.

Significantly, the most improved countries included Iran (+10.8%), China (+7.9%), and India (+7.4%).

The chart below displays all 55 countries rankings, with the US floating just above the global average.

This year's report also offers interesting data on how countries' reputations have changed since 2014.

The chart below shows Egypt and Iran among nations that are actually gaining a fair amount of credibility:

The chart below shows includes Qatar among countries with a declining reputation, most likely related to reports of human-rights violations and Qatar's involvement with the FIFA scandal that blew up earlier this year.

Russia and Ukraine also lost points, as they spent much of the year mired in a bloody conflict.

SEE ALSO: Canada is on the brink of a full-blown recession

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When President Ronald Reagan met Mikhail Gorbachev in Geneva in November 1985, he whispered to the Soviet leader: "I bet the hard-liners in both our countries are bleeding when we shake hands."

Reagan had a point. His inclination to negotiate with the Evil Empire left many of his conservative friends aghast. In an otherwise touchingly affectionate assessment of the 40th president's tenure, my Post colleague George F. Will said that Reagan had "accelerated the moral disarmament of the West . . . by elevating wishful thinking to the status of political philosophy."

Further right, the conservative activist Howard Phillips accused Reagan of being "a very weak man with a very strong wife and a strong staff" who had become "a useful idiot for Kremlin propaganda." Wow!

Few metaphors are perfect; Iran is not the Soviet Union. But the Reagan legacy is worth pondering to understand why, barely hours after the nuclear deal with Iran was announced, so many of President Obama's critics leapt to conclude that the accord, as House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said, would "only embolden Iran — the world's largest sponsor of terror." Many of the president's supporters were just as fast off the mark in backing him.

No doubt the instant responses can be explained partly by partisanship and by whether the responder has faith in Obama. But these reactions also had much to do with attitudes toward the proper approach to an adversary.

Are negotiated deals ever to be trusted? Should the United States be influenced by its allies' wishes? Are imperfect compromises ever acceptable? Is hope that a hostile regime might gradually transform itself always wishful thinking? Is avoiding war a legitimate goal, or is every negotiation a repetition of Munich and every promise of "peace in our time" shortsighted?

Those of us inclined to support what Obama and Secretary of State John F. Kerry have achieved answer these questions with a combination of Reaganite practicality and Reaganite hopefulness — and may conservatives forgive someone who voted against Reagan twice for invoking him.

Of course negotiations can work. John F. Kennedy, no softie, got the balance right when he declared: "Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate."

It's worth remembering that Reagan's willingness to bargain with Gorbachev weakened the hard-liners in the Soviet Union, creating the opening for its collapse. And there are parallels between the two-step approaches that both Reagan and Obama took to a problematic foe. The Gipper was very tough at the outset of his presidency, and the Soviet Union realized it could not keep up with U.S. defense spending. Gorbachev came to the table. Obama got our allies to impose much tougher sanctions, and Iran came to the table.

There is no way of knowing if this deal will lead to a dramatic transformation inside Iran, and there are some legitimate doubts that it will. But then, Reagan's conservative skeptics were also insistent that the Soviet Union could never change, and surely never fall. They were wrong and Reagan's bet paid off. Obama is now making a comparable wager.

Critics of this agreement fear that, at best, it will keep Iran from getting a nuclear weapon for "only" 10 years. The administration says the timeline is longer, but what if it's 10 years? Walking away from the table wouldn't buy us more time. On the contrary. Former undersecretary of state Nicholas Burns noted in Financial Times that, absent a deal, "the ayatollahs would have been just a month or two away from a weapon."

If the administration had torpedoed these talks, our partners would have been hard-pressed to maintain the current sanctions, let alone toughen them. The United States will now need to be vigilant in containing Iran. But, again, Reagan — like every president from 1945 forward — successfully contained the Soviet Union.

Three days after the Senate approved the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in May 1988 (Democrats sped it through even as some Republicans tried to drag out the process), Reagan was his classic optimistic self at Moscow University. "We may be allowed to hope," he declared, "that the marvelous sound of a new openness will keep rising through, ringing through, leading to a new world of reconciliation, friendship and peace."

Obama was a long way from being as ebullient about Iran at his news conference Wednesday. He was all about verify, not trust. But like Reagan, he's willing to take a chance on the idea that reaching our goals through negotiation can be wiser than the alternatives.

SEE ALSO: Here's what's really wrong with the Iran deal

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The field outside Hrabove, littered one year ago with bodies and smelling of burnt flesh and plastic, now smells of wild flowers.

But the downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 still haunts residents, who remember the bodies that fell from the sky above their sleepy village in eastern Ukraine.

"People came out of their houses to see a boy without the head, who was lying there" on the street, recalled villager Nadezhda Tsyb. "Then I saw a girl: She was coming down from the sky, whirling in the air, then she fell into my neighbor's vegetable patch."

All 298 people onboard MH17 were killed when the plane was downed on July 17, 2014, over rebel-controlled territory in eastern Ukraine, where government forces and the Russia-backed separatists had been fighting for months. Ukrainian and Western officials said the plane was shot down by a rebel missile, most likely by mistake, and that Russia supplied the weapon or trained rebels to use it. Both the rebels and Moscow denied that.

A preliminary report released in the Netherlands last year said the plane had no technical problems in the seconds before it broke up in the sky after being struck by multiple "high-energy objects from outside the aircraft," which could have been a missile.

A year after the crash, the families of the victims are still waiting for the results of the investigation, while residents of Hrabove keep finding personal belongings and parts of plane in the area. One local resident pointed to a piece of fuselage, the size of a car hood, bearing the blue emblem of Malaysian Airlines.

The body of the boy that fell on the street next to Tsyb's house was lying there, in the summer heat, for days. Villagers asked rebels who controlled the area to take them away, Tsyb said, because "it was too scary to go out."

The West accused the separatists of hampering the investigation by blocking access to the site and tampering with evidence. Aviation experts said at the time that the site was compromised since investigators had no access to it during the first few days after the crash. First, rebel commanders blocked OSCE observers from reaching the area, and then clashes along the route to the site made it unsafe to travel there. The first sizeable team of investigators arrived at the scene only two weeks after the crash.

Asked about claims that rebels removed or even destroyed some of the bodies, Alexander Borodai, a Moscow spin doctor who headed the rebel government at the time, told The Associated Press that they had to take away bodies because they were decomposing fast in the scorching heat.

"There is a moral, human dimension here: You could not leave the bodies for a long time, and many of the bodies were fragmented," he said. "We could not just leave them there."

Hours before the MH17 went down, AP journalists saw a Buk M-1 launcher moving through the rebel-controlled town of Snizhne, carrying four 18-foot (5.5-meter) missiles. Three hours later and six miles west, the plane was shot down.

The rebel denials have been increasingly challenged by resident accounts, observations of journalists on the ground, and the statements of one rebel official. The Ukrainian government has also provided purported communications intercepts that it says show rebel involvement in the downing.

Borodai, speaking to AP in his first interview to a Western media organization since returning to Moscow in October, dismissed eyewitness reports and photographic evidence pointing to the rebels' complicity as fakes. But he seemed to drop his guard in acknowledging that the separatists had no idea that civilian planes were allowed to fly over the war zone.

The rebels had shot down several Ukrainian transport jets in the weeks before the MH17 crash, including an Il-76 on June 14, killing 49 people onboard.

Borodai, who seems to live a comfortable middle-class life in Moscow after going around Donetsk with a posse of burly Chechen gunmen, said he does not really care about the conclusions of the official probe.

"Whether there will be a tribunal or any other official results of the investigation, I have to admit I am already quite indifferent to this story," he said, sitting in a posh Moscow restaurant. "I just know that it is not our fault that the Boeing went down. It is obvious to me that this is the result of some actions of the Ukrainian side."

___

Vasilyeva reported from Moscow. Albina Kovalyova contributed to this report from Moscow.

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MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia plans to supply Syria with 200,000 tonnes of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) per year via the Crimean port of Kerch, two trading sources told Reuters.

The plans are a further sign of cooperation between the two countries despite hopes in the West that Russia might stop shielding President Bashar al-Assad from pressure to step aside.

Moscow had been shipping significantly lower volumes of LPG to Syria via Kerch before Russia annexed the Crimea peninsula from Ukraine in March 2014.

The United States and the European Union, which say the seizure of Crimea violates international law, have imposed sanctions on individuals and business in Crimea, which include restrictions on use of the Kerch port.

Russia is a staunch ally of Syria and an exporter of arms to Damascus. President Vladimir Putin reaffirmed support for Assad last month, saying Moscow opposed any use of external force to try to end four-and-a-half years of conflict.

"There are talks about LPG to first be shipped to Kerch and then to Syria, about 200,000 tonnes per year," one trader said.

A second trader confirmed this separately, adding: "Syria needs the Russian fuel badly."

SANCTIONS

It was not immediately clear when supplies of the fuel, which can be used in cars, household utilities or to produce electric power, would start.

Sources said the LPG would initially be bought from Russia's top petrochemical firm Sibur by state-connected traders, who would then ship it to Syria themselves.

A spokesman for Sibur said the company had not and would not supply LPG to Syria and that it had not been in talks about LPG shipments to the country.

Traders familiar with the plans said cargoes would first be sent to Kerch from Russia and then on to Syria. The scheme, they said, was aimed at concealing the supplier's identity due to the possibility of sanctions from the West.

Supplies of cargoes to Crimea from Russia via the Kerch Strait are constrained by a lack of infrastructure and the sanctions. Moscow is considering building a bridge from Russia to Crimea through the strait.

"It would be logical for those countries who do not care about international sanctions to work via Kerch," a trading source said.

Only two of the four terminals in Kerch are now working and then only intermittently, because the business has been dampened by the sanctions.

A trader said Syria used to announce tenders for LPG purchases worth between 10,000 tonnes and 20,000 tonnes a month. LPG, or propane and butane, is cheaper than many other kinds of fuels, such as gasoline.

Russia's top LPG consumer is Turkey, which buys about 1.1 million tonnes of the fuel per year from Russia. Turkey has in the past resold LPG to Syria but the trader said those sales had been halted in December.

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The head of the Chechen Republic, Ramzan Kadyrov, has vowed that the Islamic State (IS) group will not gain a foothold in Chechnya.

"We hear from 'Iblis State' that they have opened some kind of affiliate in the North Caucasus and that their scope is expanding," said Kadyrov, using his own term for IS that replaces the word "Islamic" with an Arabic word meaning the devil.

"I want to say that these Satans shouldn't expect anything, and in the Chechen Republic they won't have a base, an affiliate, and there won't even be a whiff of them," added Kadyrov, a staunch Kremlin loyalist.

'Wilayat al-Qawqaz'

Kadyrov's remarks, published on the official website of the Chechen government on July 15, are the first time the Chechen strongman has openly responded to IS's declaration of a new "province" in the North Caucasus. 

IS spokesman Abu Muhammad al-Adnani announced the establishmentof "Wilayat al-Qawqaz" ("Caucasus Province") on June 26, some days after militants from Chechnya, Ingushetia, Daghestan, and Kabardino-Balkaria issued an audio statement pledging allegiance to IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

IS lauded the development in a recent edition of its English-language magazine, Dabiq, on July 13.

'IS Devils'

While IS has made much of Wilayat al-Qawqaz, in reality the extremist group has no territorial control over the North Caucasus. Neither has IS shown any signs that it is prepared to inject fighters or money into the local insurgency.

But the move has clearly rattled Kadyrov, who has always been extremely sensitive to the fact that Chechen militants are fighting in Syria and Iraq.

The Chechen strongman made his anti-IS threats during a snap inspection of Chechnya's special units, who carried out counterterrorism training drills in Kadyrov's ancestral village of Tsentaroy on July 14.

Kadyrov insisted the drills were to help special forces prepare to deal with "small groups and especially against lone terrorists."

Kadyrov's 'Cubs'?

In a strange twist, Kadyrov's show of strength against would-be militants ironically, and perhaps subconsciously, echoes IS propaganda.

A video of the drills and inspections posted on Kadyrov's VKontakte account shows the Chechen strongman with a group of armed children dressed in military fatigues. IS has regularly produced videos of child militants, whom it calls "cubs."

Footage of Kadyrov inspecting his troops recalls video images of IS's ethnic Kist commander, Umar al-Shishani, reviewing his fighters. 

Kadyrov's video also shows troops traveling in camouflaged cars, a popular feature of photos shared by IS's North Caucasian brigade, Al Aqsa.

Blame Western Intelligence (Again)

Kadyrov's concern over IS's establishment of a "province" in the North Caucasus is further apparent in remarks the Chechen leader made on his VKontakte social media account on July 14.

Although he did not refer to IS's announcement of affiliates in the North Caucasus, Kadyrov said that the country needed "more hard work to identify with those who even sympathize with the 'Iblis State'."

The Chechen leader reiterated views expressed previously that Islamic State is a foreign organization aided by Western intelligence that seeks to undermine and even destroy the Chechen Republic.

"Severe measures" must be taken to prevent Chechens from thinking they can "commit crimes in Chechnya to someone else's tune," he said.

"However, our main task is preventative work," Kadyrov added. "The Iblis State was generated by the devil so that Muslims would destroy each other."

By framing IS militants in Chechnya as agents of a foreign group, Kadyrov is able to treat the domestic insurgency as an outside plot whose goal is to use disloyal Chechens as pawns in an ideological battle that has no connection with reality in the North Caucasus.

IS has "money, resources, human resources, and technology" that are provided by "Western intelligence agencies who not only do not clip the terrorists' legs and wings but rather reinforce them," he said.

The West was doing this, Kadyrov explained, in order to "destroy Islamic countries, undermine their economies, cause controlled chaos, and get unlimited access to energy resources."

Crackdown?

Kadyrov's show of strength against real or imaginary IS militants could mark the start of a crackdown in the Chechen Republic.

Such a crackdown is already happening elsewhere in the North Caucasus. Over the last month, the Russian federal security service (FSB) in Daghestan and Kabardino-Balkaria have conducted several counterterrorism operations against militants.

The Chechen leader also hinted that things could get tougher for those who return home after fighting in Syria.

"Not a single IS devil should remain in Chechnya. If someone left, then let him get what he left for," Kadyrov said in a VKontakte post on July 14. "There is no turning back! He is our No. 1 enemy!"

In a new post on July 16, Kadyrov said Russian citizens could be sure that no "Al-Qaedas or Iblises [IS militants] will come through the North Caucasus" and advised those who wanted to fight in Syria to "rent a couple of meters of land for a grave."

"None of them are going to return to Chechnya," Kadyrov vowed.

The few Chechens who have returned home after fighting in Syria have been given prison terms. However, one former IS militant, Said Mazhayev, had his sentenced slashed from two years to eight months in February, as Chechnya adopted a new approach to dealing with radicalization.

Mazhayev, 22, who says he spent six months with IS, has given talks to Chechen youth warning them about the horrors that await anyone who joins the militant group.

SEE ALSO: Locals describe what it was like when MH17 was shot out of the sky in eastern Ukraine

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Where people live affects their worldviews, and fear makes that fact particularly apparent.

In May, the Pew Research Center conducted a global survey in which it asked 45,435 people in 40 different countries what they view as the greatest threat to the world.

The following data reflects what respondents in various countries reported they felt "very concerned" about.

Check out the full report at Pew »

ISIS

Worldwide, 41% of people surveyed report they're "very concerned" about ISIS and with good reason. The Islamic extremist group has seized large swaths of land in Iraq and Syria since they first captured the international spotlight in June 2014. The group's swift growth as well as its use of gruesome violence to strike fear and recruit new followers has alarmed people around the world.

Hassan Hassan, author of the book "ISIS: Inside The Army of Terror," told the Wall Street Journal that ISIS will benefit from a recently signed nuclear deal between Iran and the United States and its allies by making disaffected Sunnis feel even more like the US and Iran are conspiring against them.

Frederic Hof, a former State Department policy planner on Syria says the Iran deal will in turn help ISIS recruit more people in Syria, being that Iran supports the unpopular regime of Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad, who is accused of bombing his own people. Hof believes Syrians will look to ISIS now more than ever as their only salvation.

Meanwhile, new ISIS beheading videos continue to pop up on Youtube.

Iran

Iran and its nuclear program rate as the second largest concern for Americans (62% are "very concerned") and the top concern for Israel, where 53% of people are "very concerned," the most of any issue on the survey for Israelis. 

The news of a nuclear deal signed between Iran and the United States and its allies that will curb Iran's nuclear capabilities in exchange for relief from economic sanctions was met with mixed reactions in the United States and a resoundingly negative reaction in Israel.

"This is a bad mistake of historic proportions,” Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said after news of the deal broke, believing that lifting sanctions on Iran, an enemy of Israel, will now have a sure path to developing nuclear weapons. 

President Barack Obama, however, believes the deal is the best way to lessen tensions between the United States and Iran.

"My hope is that building on this deal, we could continue to have conversations with Iran that incentivize them to behave differently in the region,"Obama said at a White House press conference on Wednesday. 

China

Chinese aggression is a concern largely centered in Asia, where 31% of respondents report they're "very concerned." The nations most concerned about China are Vietnam (60%), the Philippines (56%), and Japan (52%).

Their concerns are likely rooted in China's construction of military bases in the South China Sea, many of which are uncomfortably close to neighboring states. 

"As China seeks to make sovereign land out of sandcastles and redraw maritime boundaries, it is eroding regional trust and undermining investor confidence,"US Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in May. "Its behavior threatens to set a new precedent whereby larger countries are free to intimidate smaller ones, and that provokes tensions, instability and can even lead to conflict."

Chinese President Xi Jinping has also been accused of human rights abuses, and recently drew outrage from the international community after detaining 145 human rights lawyers and activists perceived as foes to the Communist Party in China. 

SEE ALSO: The 12 most corrupt countries in the world

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President Obama was well into his feisty and freewheeling news conference on the Iran nuclear deal when Major Garrett of CBS News got under the presidential skin.

"As you well know, there are four Americans in Iran, three held on trumped-up charges," Garrett said. "Can you tell the country, sir, why you are content, with all the fanfare around this deal, to leave the conscience of this nation, the strength of this nation, unaccounted for in relation to these four Americans?"

The normally cool president reacted slowly, as though trying to control his anger.

"The notion that I am content — as I celebrate — with American citizens languishing in Iranian jails?" Obama asked, icily. "That's nonsense, and you should know better." After that extraordinary scolding, the president went on to explain that he didn't link the American captives to nuclear talks because doing so may have made Iran think "we can get additional concessions out of the Americans," and would have made it "much more difficult for us to walk away" from a deal.

Garrett's question, though loaded, was legitimate; one of those being held on bogus charges in Iran is Jason Rezaian, The Washington Post's Tehran bureau chief. And Obama's answer was revealing: Full of Sturm und Drang, he ultimately acknowledged that the United States just doesn't have the clout to enforce its will.

This was an undercurrent of the whole news conference Wednesday afternoon, and of Obama's overall defense of the Iran deal. He was tough and strong, but in service of the argument that American power is limited — that this is the best deal we could get with our declining leverage. His defenders call it realism; it also may amount to ratifying retreat.

Obama took on those who said a better deal would have stripped Iran of all nuclear capability. "The problem with that position is that there is nobody who thinks that Iran would or could ever accept that, and the international community does not take the view that Iran can't have a peaceful nuclear program," he said. "And so we don't have diplomatic leverage."

As for those who argue for continued economic sanctions? Obama said that sanctions "required the cooperation of countries all around the world, many of whom really want to purchase oil from Iran." If they saw the United States walking away from a deal, "the sanctions system unravels," he said, and "we have lost credibility in the eyes of the world."

He positioned the nuclear deal as the work of a nation trying to triage its problems in global affairs. "The argument," he said, "that because this deal does not solve all those other problems, that's an argument for rejecting this deal, defies logic . . . and it loses sight of what was our original number one priority, which is making sure that they don't have a bomb."

Broadly, Obama offered his view that "it's not the job of the president of the United States to solve every problem in the Middle East," and he said he couldn't end the Syrian civil war without "buy in" from Russia and Iran. He acknowledged that the nuclear deal might mean more money for Hezbollah, but said, "Is that more important than preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon? No."

Even when the news conference took a brief detour into domestic issues — revoking Bill Cosby's Presidential Medal of Freedom — Obama spoke of powerlessness. "There is no precedent for revoking a medal," he said. "We don't have that mechanism."

A couple of dozen seats at the news conference were empty, so a smaller-than-usual crowd got to see the rare spectacle of Obama going off script. After finishing his list of pre-selected questioners (and posing a few questions to himself about various objections to the deal), he opened the floor to all comers. "Have we exhausted Iran questions here?" he asked. "I really am enjoying this Iran debate."

There's little that Obama's Republican critics in Congress can do about the deal other than vote their symbolic disapproval, and the president seemed to be speaking as much for the history books as for contemporary critics, using phrases such as "historic chance" and "future generations." But mostly what came through was a defense of what future historians may describe as the Obama doctrine: an America that recognizes the limits of its power and acts less ambitiously.

"No one suggests that this deal resolves all the threats that Iran poses to its neighbors or the world," he said, returning repeatedly to the argument that none of his critics has "presented to me or the American people a better alternative."

He's right. And this is why it was, sadly, a powerful case — for American weakness.

SEE ALSO: The startlingly simple reason Obama continues to ignore Syria

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Russian buyers are scrambling to buy bargain properties in Greece as the financial meltdown has eroded luxury real-estate prices, Damien Sharkov reported for Newsweek.

Just to give you an idea of the scale of sales: The Greek real-estate agency IRM Aegean Estate has put properties in package deals, with two villas in Corfu —private beach and all — selling together for $4.9 million.

According to the German magazine Bild, the number of luxury Greek villas bought by Russians has more than doubled in the past year, Newsweek reported.

That's partially because of Russia's own currency crisis — rich people are looking for safe places to park cash — but also because real-estate prices in Greece have fallen roughly 50% since 2009, Bild reported.

"If a villa on the Greek island of Syros still cost €1.6m a few years ago, it is now selling for just €800,000," IRM founder Isabelle Razi told Newsweek. That's a fall to roughly $870,000 from $1.74 million with today's exchange rates.

The strengthening relationship between Russian buyers and their Greek holdings is mirrored by ties between their national governments.

Last month the two countries agreed to build a $2.27 billion gas pipeline, Sharkov reported for Newsweek, and some critics are concerned the move signifies a tug-of-war between the West and Russia, as Athens may be inching toward the Kremlin's umbrella of influence.

Read the original story at Newsweek.

SEE ALSO: Greece is flirting with Russia to make Europe jealous

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Eugene Kaspersky is the Russian entrepreneur behind the antivirus company Kaspersky Lab. His company is known as a leader in the industry, frequently discovering important cybersecurity weaknesses.

But his Soviet upbringing and early business life inform the man he is today.

He's now worth over billion dollars and has quite a few stories to tell ...

SEE ALSO: The inspiring rags-to-riches career of 'Shark Tank' judge and internet-security guru Robert Herjavec

Eugene Kaspersky was born in 1965 in the city of Novorossiysk, which was then part of the Soviet Union.

At an early age he knew he liked math and all things technical. By the age of 12 he was already studying advanced mathematics. His parents realized his talents early on, and had him take extracurricular classes to further excel.

Source: Info Security Magazine

He went to university in Moscow at the Institute of Cryptography, Telecommunications, and Computer Science. His major was mathematical engineering, and he focused on cryptography and other computer technologies.

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