On May 9, Russia unveiled its new third-generation Armata tank during its Victory Day parade in Moscow. 

The Kremlin hopes the Armata will revolutionize Russia's ground-based military capabilities. The Armata features considerable upgrades in armor, engine, and armaments compared to previous Russian and Soviet tank models.

But the tank has one major downside: The Armata is vastly over-budget. It's just too expensive to ever become the workhorse of the Russian armored corps.

Moscow will have trouble procuring as many of the tanks as it had previously envisioned — especially with the current economic troubles that Russia is facing thanks to US and EU sanctions imposed in the wake of the Ukraine crisis.

According to an Oxford Analytica brief by Harvard scholar Dmitry Gorenburg, which he shared on his blog Russian Military Reform, the cost of the Armata is 2.45 times higher than had been projected in the State Armaments Program for 2020, the military reform package the Kremlin devleoped in 2010. 

"As a result, the Defense Ministry is expecting to reduce the number of Armata tanks it will procure, focusing instead on continuing to modernise existing T-72 tanks in the medium term," the brief notes. "According to Russian media reports, Uralvagonzavod [the company responsible for manufacturing the Armata] has agreed to lower some Armata costs, but the program will still be expensive."

This economic reality undercuts the overall deployment of the Armata, an enormous vehicle that believed to be reistant to nearly all NATO anti-tank weapons.

Gorenburg estimates that there will be a maximum of 330 Armata tanks in service by 2020, a fraction of the 2,300 the State Armament Program had projected. And that also assumes production of the tank proceeds seamlessly and that no serious flaws are found as the current stock of Armatas undergo field testing which could last until 2018. 

Even at lesser production than planned, the Kremlin still promotes the Armata as Russia's tank of the future.

The Armata will feature a 1,500 horsepower turbo-charged disel engine, an unmanned turret, a separate armored capsule for its crew that will improve soldier survivability, and a host of sensors and radar for defense. 

Additionally, one of the most important pieces of technology added to the Armata is the Afganit active protection complex, a system that uses Doppler radar to detect incoming projectiles such as rocket-propelled grenades and anti-tank missiles. Once detected, the system launches an interceptor rocket that destroys the incoming projectile. 

SEE ALSO: Russia thinks its monstrous new super-tank can resist just about all of NATO's anti-tank weapons

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NOW WATCH: Why Putin is the most powerful man in the world

Earlier this year, Brooklyn Nets majority shareholder Mikhail Prokhorov was looking to sell his share of the team and their stadium, but now it looks like the Russian oligarch has changed his mind.

According to Mitch Abramson of the New York Daily News, Prokhorov's seeking to buy out the team and its $1 billion home stadium, the Barclays Center.

The word is that the 10th wealthiest man in Russia might want to settle a debt of an undisclosed amount that Bruce Ratner, the team's minority shareholder, owes him — though no one can be for sure.

The team, which is currently juggling debt due to a bad television deal and high payroll for players, is worth about $1.5 billion, reported Forbes.

The sense within the industry is that Prokhorov wants to buy the team to sell it at a higher profit later, the Daily News reported.

"We can confirm that Onexim Sports and Entertainment is looking at various ways to restructure debt owed to the company in connection with its US assets," said a spokesperson for Prokhorov and his holding company, ONEXIM, over email to the Daily News. "One possibility is the conversion of such debt into equity and consolidation of shares, but there are other scenarios also under consideration by Onexim and its partners, and no decision has yet been made."

In other words, it's a proposed debt-to-equity swap. 

Prokhorov owns 80 percent of the team, and 45 percent of the stadium. 

At the time of purchase, Prokhorov agreed to pay 80 percent of the team's $220 million debt, ESPN reported. Russia's own tenuous economic situation may also be a factor in Prokhorov's decision.

Read the full Daily News article here, and check out the ESPN article.  

SEE ALSO: Back when Prokhorov was selling the Brooklyn Nets

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It was the day Moscow's dreams of empire cost European lives. It was the day the Kremlin lost its last vestiges of credibility.

It was the day when it became impossible to continue even pretending that Vladimir Putin's regime was anything close to respectable.

It was the day the mask came off. July 17, 2014 was the day Russia became a rogue state.

It wasn't just that the downing of Flight MH17 killed 298 people from 10 countries and four continents. It wasn't just that 80 of the victims were children. It wasn't just that the Netherlands alone lost 193 people, the largest Dutch loss of life since World War II.

And it wasn't even that Russia made this all possible by, according to all credible accounts, providing pro-Moscow separatists with a sophisticated BUK surface-to-air missile system capable of shooting down a civilian airliner flying at an altitude of 10,000 meters.

That was all bad enough. But it was what came after that really sealed it.

There was the disrespect the pro-Moscow rebels showed to the victims' remains — the images of separatist fighters, smiling with cigarettes dangling from their lips, rifling through and looting the belongings of the dead.

And as the evidence poured in — audio recordings, satellite images, and forensic data — showing that the aircraft was almost certainly shot down by a surface-to-air missile fired from rebel-held territory, there was the obfuscation.

There was the Kremlin's formidable disinformation machine adding insult to injury by cranking out a dizzying barrage of crackpot theories about who really shot down the plane. And with this there was the realization that not only was Moscow responsible for a terrible tragedy, they were mocking the world — and the victims — in its aftermath.

MH17, of course, did not change everything. Russia's war on Ukraine continues. Crimea remains annexed. Pro-Moscow separatists and Russian troops are still in Donbas. And nobody has been held accountable for killing nearly 300 people.

But MH17 did change a lot.

European leaders, most notably German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who had been inclined to work with Putin and give him the benefit of the doubt, turned into harsh critics. 

Russia was transformed from a troublesome — and often tiresome — partner you could do do business with into a potentially lethal problem that needed to be addressed.

According to the Pew Research Center, attitudes toward Russia in the European Union — which were positive in 2013 — tanked in 2014 and 2015. 

Russia is now not viewed favorably by more than one-third of the population in any single NATO country, according to Pew. 

These trends did not start on July 17, 2014. They commenced in earnest months earlier when Russia annexed Crimea. But they accelerated as a result of that day and its aftermath.

After MH17, it became a lot harder to be a Putin apologist. And a lot easier to be a critic.

One year after that ill-fated flight crashed into the sunflower fields of Donetsk Oblast, Russia is coming under renewed pressure over the tragedy.

An investigation by Dutch authorities that has been distributed for review by agencies in numerous countries will pin the blame for the tragedy squarely on pro-Moscow separatists in eastern Ukraine, CNN reported, citing officials who have seen the text. 

And Malaysia, which lost 43 citizens on MH17, has drafted and circulated a UN Security Council resolution that calls for an international tribunal.

This puts Russia in a difficult spot.

Vetoing the resolution, as Russia has vowed to do, would be tantamount to an admission of guilt. Putin's protestations in a telephone call with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte that a tribunal would be "premature and counterproductive" don't really have a lot of traction.

And in the unlikely event that Moscow pulls an about-face, supports the resolution, and allows the tribunal to proceed?

That opens the door to some very uncomfortable questions being asked in open court — not just about the pro-Moscow separatists, but about who in the Kremlin leadership approved giving them a surface-to-air missile system.

MH17 is already a watershed. And it could well turn out to be Vladimir Putin's Lockerbie moment.

SEE ALSO: The top 20 countries as ranked by reputation

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In Bellingcat’s report, "Forensic Analysis of Satellite Images Released by the Russian Ministry of Defense," we exposed how Russia had falsely claimed satellite imagery from June 2014 was from July 14 and July 17.

As with nearly all of Bellingcat’s work, we used open-source information, satellite imagery from Google Earth, to expose the fake images. It’s possible for anyone to find this imagery with a few easy steps.

1. Download, install, and run Google Earth Pro.

2. Enter the co-ordinates 48.098203, 37.754731 into the search box on the top left of the screen.

3. Under the view menu, select “Historical Imagery.”

4. A slider will appear on the top left of the map allowing you view imagery from all available dates.

Now you can examine the imagery of the area provided by the Russian Ministry of Defense (here, here, and here), and compare it to the historical imagery on Google Earth.

In this example we can see the rows in the field in the July Google Earth imagery are missing from the Russian Ministry of Defense imagery, and another track mark faintly visible in the May Google Earth image is present in the Russian MoD image.

So in a few simple steps, anyone can see the evidence that the Russian Ministry of Defense shared wrongly dated imagery in its July 21 MH17 press conference.

If you believe you’ve found any new discrepancies, please share them in the comments below.

SEE ALSO: Proof that Russia's evidence for the downing of MH17 is bogus

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NOW WATCH: 11 Facts That Show How Different Russia Is From The Rest Of The World

In this report, Bellingcat examines satellite images released by the Russian Ministry of Defence as part of the July 21st 2014 press conference on the downing of Flight MH17.

The Russian MoD stated at the press conference that the satellite photos show the activities of Ukraine’s air defences on the day that Flight MH17 was shot down.

In particular, the position of two Ukrainian Buk missile launchers south of the village Zaroschinskoe were shown to be within firing range of MH17.

The Bellingcat investigation has found the following:

– Satellite images presented by the Russian Ministry of Defence claiming to shown Ukrainian Buks linked to the downing of MH17 on July 14th and 17th are in fact older images from June 2014.

– The discrepancies visible in the Russian MoD satellite map imagery which shows they are incorrectly dated are visible in publicly available imagery on Google Earth.

– Error level analysis of the images also reveal the images have been edited.

– This includes a Buk missile launcher that was removed to make it appear the Buk missile launcher was active on July 17th, and imagery where Buk missile launchers were added to make it appear they were within attack range of Flight MH17.

With this new report all four major claims made at the Russian Ministry of Defence press conference have now been shown to be false:

These claims, representing the majority of information publicly presented by the Russian government since the downing of Flight MH17, are a clear attempt by the Russian government to deceive the public, global community, and the families of the Flight MH17 victims, only days after Flight MH17 was shot down.

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The Russian government's English news outlet, Russia Today, released a 26-minute documentary about the "untold story" of the MH-17 tragedy.

The film's major thesis is that a BUK missile did not — and could not — have been what hit the MH-17 plane. Instead, it was actually a cannon fire from a (presumably) Ukrainian jet.

"The film attempts to establish what might have brought down the ill-fated airline and all 298 people abroad," RT's website says.

The mainstream consensus is that the plane was hit by a BUK missile fired by pro-Russia Ukrainian separatists.

And interestingly, Bellingcat's Eliot Higgins points out that another Russian propaganda outlet disproves that the plane was shot down by a cannon.

RT: It Was A Fighter Jet 

In the film, one female witness says that the plane "was flying, but there were literally no windows. Well, [the plane was] on the level of the tallest trees."

"Within a couple of minutes, there was the sound of a plane flying away. There were two planes," she insists.

This second plane, according to the RT documentary, is the jet that allegedly fired at the MH-17.

Later on in the film, a team tests the cannon fire on aircrafts, and compares the damage to the damage of the MH-17.

"Here the results of the strike," a man says, and points to the damaged aircrafts. The documentary also shows a side-by-side comparison to the MH-17 debris.

However, Higgins has seen all of this and explain how the comparisons actually prove the opposite of what's intended:

"Another example of MH17 entry holes comes from ANNA News, a Russian language news channel embedded with separatists in Ukraine. ... as we can see, compared to the [RT] piece on the damage done to MH17 there's a significant size difference."

"Based on the Russian channel’s own tests it seems clear that the entry holes visible in the above examples do not match what’s shown in the Russian channel’s own tests. It seems that rather than prove MH17 was shot down by cannon fire as they claim, they’ve inadvertently provided evidence that it wasn’t," he adds.

RT: Why it "could not" have been the BUK missile

The documentary also attempts to disprove why the BUK missile could not have hit the MH-17.

Ivan Andrievsky, the vice president of the Russian Union of Engineers, says: "When a BUK missile is launched, it leaves a long vapor trail ... This huge vapor trail would be about 15 kilometers long."

"And given the meteorological conditions, [it would be visible for] up to 10 minutes. Imagine a huge vapor trail like that not being noticed by anyone," he adds.

Nevertheless, all non-Russian analysis of the debris have concluded that the plane was most likely hit by a missile.

The documentary concludes with an poignant interview of a victim's parents, who visited the scene of the crash.

They were hoping that their daughter might have still been alive, and went to investigate for themselves.

"We are for peace. She was for peace. She is for peace. And she will forever be for peace," says the father.

You can watch the whole documentary here.

SEE ALSO: This Photo Tells Us A Lot About How MH17 Was Shot Down

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Footage from the MH17 disaster shows Russian-backed rebels handling bodies and rummaging through the bags of dead passengers while expressing shock that the aircraft they brought down was a commercial aircraft.

Describing the footage as "sickening to watch," Julie Bishop, Australia's foreign minister, said it was further evidence that the plane was deliberately targeted by a missile.

"It is certainly consistent with the intelligence advice that we received 12 months ago, that Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 had been shot down by a surface-to-air missile," she told Channel Nine.

"[The victims'] grief is inconsolable and the burden of grieving and then seeing this footage will be almost too much to bear."

The footage appears to be an extended clip from video filmed and released last summer.

The 17 minutes of footage, apparently smuggled out of a rebel base in Ukraine, was released by Sydney's Daily Telegraph on the anniversary of the attack, which left all 298 passengers and crew dead.

The footage shows the uniformed rebels examining the contents of backpacks and collecting phones and other items as they try to find the black box.

The rebels seem surprised that the aircraft was a commercial airliner, not a fighter jet, and can be heard saying "civilians, civilians," and "this is a passenger plane" in Russian.

Tony Abbott, Australia's prime minister, said the video further highlighted that "this was an atrocity; it was in no way an accident."

"They may not have known that they were shooting down a passenger plane, but they were deliberately shooting out of the sky what they knew was a large aircraft," he told ABC News.

"Rebels don't get hold of this kind of weaponry by accident. I mean, this was obviously very sophisticated weaponry. We are confident that it was weaponry that came across the border from Russia, fired, and then shortly thereafter, once it was realized what had happened, went back into Russia."

Australia, Belgium, the Netherlands, Malaysia, and Ukraine have been conducting a criminal investigation into the attack and have asked the United Nations Security Council to establish an international criminal tribunal to try those responsible. Twenty-eight Australian citizens and 10 residents were aboard the plane.

Abbott urged Russian President Vladimir Putin to cooperate with those investigating the attack.

"I am not suggesting that the Russian president knew anything about this in advance," he said. "I suspect, based on my own conversations with him last year, that he is horrified that all of this has happened."

This video fits with accounts of the crash but also sheds new light on the immediate aftermath of the crash.

One fighter I met on the scene the following night said his unit had arrived shortly after the crash expecting to find the wreckage of a Ukrainian military aircraft and described being shocked at what he found.

He also told me they had gone through belongings to look for documents — that appears to fit with this footage — but strongly denied looting.

That fighter, as most others, said he was convinced the Ukrainians had shot down the aircraft, insisting that the separatists had no technology capable of reaching that altitude.

The desperate search for the "black boxes" fits with an intercepted phone call earlier released by the Ukrainian Security Service, which it says is of a prominent separatist commander, Alexander Khodakovsky, instructing his men at the scene to find the flight recorders.

The separatists did recover the black boxes, and they handed them over to a Malaysian delegation in Donetsk on July 21, four days after the crash.

There is also a lot of confusion. The talk about five parachutists, about the pilot "crawling" in Rosipnoye is typical of the chaos and muddled information you get in a war zone, especially in the aftermath of a big event like this.

Often, it turns out to be half-true — the cockpit did come down in Rosipnoye, but the pilots would have been killed instantly. No one would have parachuted out of a civilian aircraft, but the search party was expecting to find military wreckage, and Ukrainian pilots and crew had survived shoot-downs and been captured in the past — so as confused reports come in, they set off to find the "parachutists."

Then there is talk about a second aircraft — a Sukhoi jet that supposedly shot down MH17 and was in turn shot down by the separatists:

As far as we know, there was no second shot-down plane — if a Sukhoi had been hit, the wreckage would have been found if not by the fighters, then by the army of journalists who shortly afterward descended on the area.

Three things seem to be going on here:

It could simply be a matter of confusion.

It could be a quickly thought-up excuse, a cover story to tell civilians and journalists to excuse what had happened: the fighters getting their story straight.

But it could also be the quick work of a subconscious mind in denial.

One of the features of the war in Ukraine is the ability of soldiers on either side to perform seemingly impossible feats of double-think in order to convince themselves of their virtue and their opponent's guilt.

To take a depressingly mundane example: Ask a Ukrainian about the shelling of civilians in rebel-held areas, or a rebel about rocket attacks on Ukrainian-held towns, and they'll often tell you — with a straight face — that the enemy attacked themselves as a "provocation."

Often, these are straight out, cynical lies by people who know are guilty. But equally often they appear to be the incredible yet genuinely believed excuses people tell themselves to avoid facing up to uncomfortable truths.

It is that bizarre human ability that has made the lies and propaganda surrounding the war in Ukraine — and the MH17 tragedy — so effective, and deadly.

Here is the full video:

SEE ALSO: 298 PEOPLE KILLED AS PASSENGER PLANE SHOT DOWN IN EAST UKRAINE

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A new video has emerged appearing to show Russian rebels rifling through the remnants of the Malaysian passenger plane that was shot down over Ukraine last year.

The video, obtained by News Corp Australia and published by the Sydney Daily Telegraph, shows Russian-speaking men wearing camouflage fatigues inspecting the wreckage and going through bags as they realise the flight they shot down is a civilian passenger plane, not a military flight. Some of the men can be seen carrying guns.

The apparent-rebels say in the video "civilians, civilians" and "this is a passenger plane," in Russian.

Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 was shot down over Ukraine a year ago, leaving 298 passengers and crew dead. You can watch the video below — be warned, it's not pleasant.

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NOW WATCH: 9 things you didn't know about Air Force One

The Arctic is full of mineral and oil resources, and international sea lanes are opening up there as global warming melts more of the ice.

Though ownership of the resources has been largely settled for years, rising international tensions between Russia and most of the other countries with Arctic claims could lead to a confrontation in the ice.

The U.S. and four of its NATO allies have rights to Arctic shipping and minerals. Russia has probed the defenses or otherwise threatened each of them in recent months. (Iceland, Norway, Denmark, and Canada.)

While Russia has shown some cooperation in the Arctic, they’ve also staged massive war games there including “38,000 servicemen, more than 50 surface ships and submarines and 110 aircraft,” according to the Canadian Broadcasting Company. NATO allies have staged sub-Arctic exercises since, but they were conducted further south and later in the Spring, meaning two factors combined to make the rigors of fighting in the frozen North less pronounced.

Russia is simply better prepared to fight there. Here’s how.

Icebreakers

Icebreakers are perhaps the biggest difference between the two nations. The Coast Guard has two heavy icebreakers, one of which has been sidelined for years due to a need for repairs and the other risking becoming stranded every time it pushes north. Meanwhile, Russia has over 40 icebreakers including the only nuclear icebreakers, and it is building the world’s largest icebreaker in St. Petersburg.

Russia has better maps and more experience

Russia’s maps of the Canadian Arctic are better than Canada’s, according to The Globe and Mail. While the U.S. Navy rarely sails surface ships there and maintains limited submarine patrols, Russia spent the Cold War under the Arctic ice. Their military still has many of the maps and other documents on how the Soviets learned to operate, and Russia still conducts large exercises like the one described above.

The U.S. has held few exercises and had to cut a February exercise short. America is working on this, predominantly through an air role. This is partially because most Navy surface ships can’t exercise in the cold waters.

Navy surface vessels need to be “ice-hardened”

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

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Despite suffering economic sanctions and the falling price of oil, Vladimir Putin is pushing forward with an estimated 20 trillion ruble ($351 billion) program to modernize the Russian military by 2020.

But the Russian defense sector is struggling to meet its goals.

"The objective reasons for the failure to meet state defense procurement orders include restrictions on the supply of imported parts and materials in connection with sanctions, discontinuation of production and the loss of an array of technologies, insufficient production facilities,"Deputy Defense Minister Yuri Borisov said in videoconference with Putin on Thursday, according to The Moscow Times.

Borisov said that navy guard ships, 200 amphibious aircraft, antitank missiles, radio equipment for surface-to-air missiles, and launchers for Tupolev-160 bombers are behind schedule.

Putin was not happy.

"I will especially emphasize that those who are delaying production and supplies of military technologies, who are letting down related industries, must within a short term ... correct the situation," Putin reportedly said.

"And if that does not happen, the appropriate conclusions need to be made, including, if necessary, technological, organizational, and personnel [changes]," Putin added.

The extravagant plans for military spending were drawn up before the ruble crashed and oil prices bottomed out, back when the government was expecting 6% GDP growth annually.

Nevertheless, Russia has continued with their hike in military spending, which is estimated to reach $29.5 billion in 2015, with around $4.4 billion to $4.7 billion going towards research and development alone.

The Moscow Times notes that Putin is looking to defense spending to bolster employment, investment, and technological development.

As he said on his call-in show in March, "without a doubt, this program will be fulfilled," adding that, "Our goal is to make sure that by that time, by 2020, the amount of new weapons and military technologies in our armed forces reached no less than 70%."

Given that Russia's troubles will likely continue — sanctions will likely remain in place as fighting in eastern Ukraine continues and oil may drop as Iranian oil hits the market — Putin's big push may meet a harsh reality sooner than later.

"Russia has already spent more than half of its total military budget for 2015,"Russian economist and former rector of the New Economic School in Moscow Sergei Guriev wrote in May. "At this rate, its reserve fund will be emptied before the end of the year."

On Thursday, Deputy Defense Minister Borisov said that 38% of Moscow's defense purchases planned for this year have been completed.

Michael B. Kelley contributed to this post.

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

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NOW WATCH: Russia reveals new high-tech weapon vehicles in a rehearsal for the country's biggest military parade

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.

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The US Army is far more heavily engaged around the world than projected when it began slashing force size several years ago, and its commitments will be hard to maintain in the long run as troop numbers shrink, General Ray Odierno said on Friday.

Odierno, the Army chief of staff, said decisions about cutting the size of the force from 570,000 to the current 490,000 were made several years ago when Pentagon planners expected a peaceful Europe, a declining commitment in Afghanistan and no return to Iraq.

Instead, he said, the Army is regularly using three brigades in eastern Europe because of concerns about Russia's support for rebels in Ukraine.

It has another three brigades in Afghanistan, a brigade in Iraq, a brigade in Kuwait and is rotating a brigade to South Korea, Odierno added.

"These are all pretty significant requirements. If they do not reduce, it will be hard for us to maintain that over a long period of time," he told reporters.

Odierno, who is due to leave office in a few weeks, said he thought insecurity in eastern Europe and the fight against Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria were both long-term problems.

He predicted defeating Islamic State could take 10 to 20 years, far longer than the administration has projected. But without some relief, either in budget cuts or the breadth of commitments, the Army may not be able to sustain the pace.

"At some point we're going to have to say what we're not going to do because we're not going to be able to do everything we're being asked to do right now," he said.

Odierno said he had been warning for two years that tight budgets would require the Army to cut the active-duty force to 450,000 troops from the current 490,000. He said he was surprised by the recent outcry when the service specified which bases would be hit in the coming years.

"We've been very clear that the Army will have to move down to 450,000 with the current budget we have," he said, noting that a further reduction to about 420,000 could be required if spending reductions continue.

The Pentagon is currently trying to absorb nearly $1 trillion in projected cuts to spending over a decade. The reductions were ordered as part of the Budget Control Act passed in 2011.

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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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NOW WATCH: 11 amazing facts about Vladimir Putin

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

The KGB colonel knew his cover was almost blown.

He had been suspiciously summoned to Moscow. They had got him drunk on cognac while a KGB general grilled him for four hours. He'd be executed if they could catch him. They seemed to be closing the net. But the MI6 double agent couldn't risk openly fleeing.

After he sobered up at home, Oleg Gordiyevsky turned to his last resort -- an emergency escape plan devised by the British intelligence services that was hidden in invisible ink in a collection of Shakespeare sonnets.

Pulling bed sheets over his head to elude surveillance cameras in the ceiling and walls of his Moscow apartment, Gordiyevsky soaked the book cover in water, revealing a set of instructions. He set about memorizing them.

The plan sketched out a risky rendezvous with two British diplomatic cars at the bend of a road near Finland. From there, Gordiyevsky would be smuggled across the border in the trunk of a car right under the nose of Soviet guards. 

If the plan failed, the British security services would lose a prized asset, sometimes considered the West's most valuable Cold War intelligence source. The plan was backed by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher: if uncovered it would spark a major diplomatic incident; for Gordiyevsky, it would mean certain death.

Recruited in 1974 in Copenhagen by MI6, Gordiyevsky, a KGB colonel, was an unparalleled source within the secretive Soviet state, passing reams of information to the British, who shared it with the CIA. It led to him being compromised. Gordiyevsky blames Aldrich Ames, a KGB mole in the CIA, who he says told Moscow there was a leak in the KGB London station where Gordiyevsky was posted.

'Toward Death's Embrace'

Gordiyevsky was summoned to the KGB's Lubyanka headquarters in Moscow, ostensibly so that he could be confirmed him as station chief. But Gordiyevsky suspected something was up. 

"I realized I was going toward death's embrace. But I still decided to go to show that I'm not scared," he said. He took with him a backup escape plan written by British spy John Scarlett, the man who went on to become "M," the head of MI6. 

"It was all arranged ahead of time," Gordiyevsky said 30 years later in an interview with RFE/RL's Russian Service at his two-floor house in a town near London. 

All he had to do was inform the British of the proposed date of his extraction. But even that proved hard. 

A first "control" meeting arranged at Kutuzovsky Prospekt was botched. A second rendezvous was planned at St. Basil's Cathedral, where he was meant to pass a note to a British spy on the narrow staircase leading up to the iconic tourist site's second floor. 

But after walking for three hours to shake off his KGB tail, Gordiyevsky arrived to find the plan had been foiled -- the whole of Red Square was closed for renovations. 

Finally, a third control meeting was successful. The plan was on. 

​At five o'clock on a Friday afternoon on July 19, 1985, a short, thick-set man in a worn jacket and corduroy trousers stepped out of a west Moscow apartment. Staying close to the bushes to avoid detection by a surveillance vehicle, he quietly slipped across to an adjacent street. 

Within an hour Gordiyevsky was at Moscow's Leningrad train station, where he bought tickets to Leningrad before travelling by suburban electric train to Zelenogorsk. From there, he jumped on a bus to Vyborg. 

Hours Of Waiting

The meeting place was somewhere along the way, but he had only a description of the meeting place and no precise location.

Unsure exactly where to get off, but having passed a big bend in the road that resembled the meeting place, he feigned sickness and nausea to convince the driver to let him off, and walked back along the road until he found the designated meeting place. 

"I was surrounded by woodland where I laid down waiting for the diplomatic car of the [British] embassy. I lay there three hours waiting for the moment when the car was meant to come. At 2:20 a.m. two cars with two drivers arrived. They managed to hide around the bend for a few minutes away from the KGB car following them from Leningrad." 

"I dived into the trunk of one of the cars. The whole operation took no longer than a minute, we managed to get going again before the KGB tail appeared round the corner." 

Luckily, a slow goods train chugging through a railway crossing had separated the British diplomats from the KGB tail and put considerable distance between them. The KGB sped forward to catch up, but the British cars had waited by a small hill out of sight and the KGB overshot them.   

"Our pursuers, having reached a traffic police post, asked the police: 'Where are the English cars?' – 'what cars? No one has passed.' And then our cars appeared. They surrounded the English: 'Right, that's it, now they're going to arrest us,' they thought. But the KGB were also tired. It was half past five, Saturday, end of the working day. They'd been on duty since about 7 that morning and let us go through to the border point without checking us." 

From the trunk of the car, all Gordiyevsky could hear was the driver turn on a piece of music by Sibelius called Finlandia. 

"That's how I realized we were on Finnish territory."

In Finland, Gordiyevsky was let out of the stuffy trunk of the car and met by a young British diplomat named Michael Shipster. He called MI6, Gordiyevsky recalls, and announced: "The luggage has arrived. It's all in order."

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Low oil prices haven't been great for countries that heavily rely on the commodity.

Governments in oil-producing states need oil's price to stay above a certain price so that they can meet their spending commitments.

In a note to clients, Deutsche Bank's strategist Michael Hsueh shared a chart that shows the fiscal break-even price per barrel for major OPEC and non-OPEC countries — the price that they need to balance their national budgets.

Libya needs the highest price, above $180/barrel, to break even. Qatar can get by with oil below $80/barrel. Russia and Saudi Arabia's break-even prices are both around $105/barrel, and Iran's is neary $130.

Meanwhile, Brent Crude is currently trading around $56/barrel — far below what these major producers would ideally like to see.

SEE ALSO: OIL EXPERT: 'A potential return of Iranian oil to the market could not have come at a worse time'

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If oil can maintain a fairly low price of $60 per barrel, Russian energy companies can survive a drawn-out depression in the global industry, according to Wood Mackenzie, the energy and mining consultancy based in Edinburgh.

The reason is that the costs of extracting oil and gas are based on a devalued ruble, which makes them low for producers such as the state-run Rosneft and Gazprom, respectively. But the two companies products are sold on the world market for dollars, not rubles, making their profit margins higher, according to a Wood Mackenzie analysis published July 17.

The average global price of oil began dropping in the early summer of 2014, plunging from more than $100 per barrel in June to below $50 early this year. At that time, the value of the ruble plunged 41 percent against the dollar as a result of the drop in oil prices and the sanctions imposed by Western countries on Russia because of its role in the Ukraine unrest.

The price of oil has since recovered somewhat, now nearing $60 per barrel. And a month ago, Russia’s economic development minister, Alexei Ulyukayev, said he believed that “the oil market has attained certain stability.” Meanwhile, the ruble also began recovering and is valued at about 56 per dollar.

As a result, oil and gas production in Russia are very inexpensive from a global perspective, not only because of the ruble’s low value but also because the country already has in place a longstanding energy culture and infrastructure, Wood Mackenzie Research Director Valentina Kretzschmar said in a statement that coincided with the release of the firm’s analysis.

“This combination will help Russian producers stay competitive even if oil prices remain low,” she wrote.

That doesn’t mean the news for Russia’s economy is altogether rosy. In December, the World Bank forecast a recession in the country in 2016, saying its gross domestic product was likely to contract by 0.7 percent. And that was predicated on oil priced at $78 per barrel.

Yet if Wood Mackenzie’s analysis is on track, then the World Bank may have to revise its view of the direction the Russian economy is taking. In her statement, Kretzschmar acknowledged that Russian energy companies at first were hit especially hard because low oil prices were followed by the sanctions, which kept some companies from doing business in Western markets.

But she added that “the slight rebound in oil prices this year, [a] stronger Russian ruble and higher dividend yields have led to stronger performance within the industry peer group in the recent months.”

Besides, despite their bite, the sanctions appear to have inspired Moscow to look beyond its traditional Western customers to sell its energy. Russian oil and gas producers have begun to increase their sales in the world’s developing countries with their growing economies, and Kretzschmar said she expects that effort to intensify.

“The sanctions imposed on Russia are pushing its majors abroad to new resource bases in Latin America, Africa and Asia – with most of the global hot spots still open for business with Russia,” she said.

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Shanghai (AFP) - A new bank dedicated to the emerging BRICS countries opened for business in China's commercial hub of Shanghai on Tuesday, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

The so-called emerging BRICS countries are made up of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, and their "New Development Bank" has been seen as a challenge to the Washington-based International Monetary Fund and World Bank.

The institution's management was "working on initiation of operations", Xinhua quoted bank president K. V. Kamath, formerly a private banker in India, as saying, including "making business policy" and "developing project preparations".

Operations would begin late this year or early in 2016, he added.

The opening -- announced in a short report -- comes two weeks after a BRICS summit hosted by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Moscow -- which has suffered huge currency fluctuations and struggled to attract investors since the outbreak of the crisis in Ukraine -- sees the bank and a BRICS currency reserve pool as an alternative to international financial institutions such as the IMF and World Bank, which are dominated by the United States.

At the time of the summit, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in a statement that BRICS "illustrates a new polycentric system of international relations" demonstrating the increasing influence of "new centres of power".

The BRICS nations represent 40 percent of the world's population and previously agreed to establish the bank, with estimated capital of $100 billion (90 billion euros).

A Chinese analyst denied the BRICS bank was aimed at challenging other multilateral agencies.

"It's a complement, instead of a challenge, to existing international institutions," Li Daxiao, chief economist of Yingda Securities, told AFP.

The BRICS countries have also agreed to set up a $100-billion reserve fund, aimed at shielding them from short-term liquidity pressure and promoting greater financial cooperation.

"It can help avoid another crisis through establishing a fund pool within the BRICS, which can help cushion instability in the currency market," Li said, referring to the 2008 global economic crisis.

China, the world's second-largest economy, is also leading the setting up of another new multilateral lender, the Asian Infrastructure Infrastructure Bank (AIIB), which will be headquartered in Beijing.

China will be the biggest AIIB shareholder at about 30 percent, according to the legal framework signed late last month by 50 founding member countries.

The United States and Japan -- the world's largest and third-largest economies, respectively -- have declined to join the AIIB.

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Shanghai (AFP) - A new bank dedicated to the emerging BRICS countries opened for business in China's commercial hub of Shanghai on Tuesday, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

The so-called emerging BRICS countries are made up of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, and their "New Development Bank" has been seen as a challenge to the Washington-based International Monetary Fund and World Bank.

The institution's management was "working on initiation of operations", Xinhua quoted bank president K. V. Kamath, formerly a private banker in India, as saying, including "making business policy" and "developing project preparations".

Operations would begin late this year or early in 2016, he added.

The opening -- announced in a short report -- comes two weeks after a BRICS summit hosted by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Moscow -- which has suffered huge currency fluctuations and struggled to attract investors since the outbreak of the crisis in Ukraine -- sees the bank and a BRICS currency reserve pool as an alternative to international financial institutions such as the IMF and World Bank, which are dominated by the United States.

At the time of the summit, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in a statement that BRICS "illustrates a new polycentric system of international relations" demonstrating the increasing influence of "new centres of power".

The BRICS nations represent 40 percent of the world's population and previously agreed to establish the bank, with estimated capital of $100 billion (90 billion euros).

A Chinese analyst denied the BRICS bank was aimed at challenging other multilateral agencies.

"It's a complement, instead of a challenge, to existing international institutions," Li Daxiao, chief economist of Yingda Securities, told AFP.

The BRICS countries have also agreed to set up a $100-billion reserve fund, aimed at shielding them from short-term liquidity pressure and promoting greater financial cooperation.

"It can help avoid another crisis through establishing a fund pool within the BRICS, which can help cushion instability in the currency market," Li said, referring to the 2008 global economic crisis.

China, the world's second-largest economy, is also leading the setting up of another new multilateral lender, the Asian Infrastructure Infrastructure Bank (AIIB), which will be headquartered in Beijing.

China will be the biggest AIIB shareholder at about 30 percent, according to the legal framework signed late last month by 50 founding member countries.

The United States and Japan -- the world's largest and third-largest economies, respectively -- have declined to join the AIIB.

Join the conversation about this story »