details in twenty minutes with. three pm in moscow i match president good to have you with us here on r t our top story on this day two decades ago the world's largest country ceased to exist the fall of the soviet union meant the end of the cold war and the birth of a dozen new countries but twenty years later the collapse of the u.s.s.r. still raises some unanswered questions or he's a catarina groucho becks planes. even today many generate their own explanations for the full of a global goliath but some putting it down to the rule of just a few i'll give you two reasons go because of guilt. the nineteen ninety one august coup was a turning point in the country's history with images of yeltsin standing on

a tank creating a new hero yet for most here even that wasn't seen as causing a fatal crack in the soviet union it was all very sudden and. shocking i mean there were people here even months before who are hearing us that this was going to go on forever so all the billions and billions and billions that the u.s. and put into intelligence and forecasting all proved to be completely useless the collapse of the soviet union was not so much a revolution rather it was a peaceful divorce of former republics longing for independence but the breakup led to long lasting and painful consequences pushing your savings goal so use the collapse of the soviet union was the biggest geopolitical disaster of the twentieth century. and in that assessment lead him or putin is not alone older many russians began enjoying freedoms never imagined in the u.s.s.r.

sixty percent still believe the collapse did more harm than good twenty years on russians still seem undecided over how to treat of the legacy of the u.s.s.r. in moscow most soviet names have long been a race from the streets and people's memories but some symbols of the parts stand out so rigidly it can feel like those two decades never happened this one human to worker who wasn't so took six years some thirty million dollars to restore but even the government would consider taking down what is among the most famous unofficial symbols of the u.s.s.r. . and strong worker and a portly collective farmer were a symbol of perspire a chance to billeted in a country with a planned economy everyone knew they would be provided with their metaphorical hammer and sickle and knew exactly how much to produce with them. one thousand nine hundred ninety one changed all that the post soviet economies were shattered their

deficits skyrocketed production plunged and it took them years to get back on their feet in the last years of soviet union there was a possibility before for your you know to continue with a no for terror and political regime but to liberalize the economy and the market in the same way as authorities. but among the political elite many didn't want to support the drive to modernize and in turn save the union instead they wanted to destroy it and during that descent many republics were plunged into ethnic violence after gaining independence. when it was clear the union was falling apart it seems for you and the national minorities started dragging the blanket to their side but it was at that time that georgia votes really included self-assertive and applies here into its territories similar ethnic clashes between armenia and azerbaijan claimed the lives of over thirty thousand people one thousand people were killed in the trans nice trick conflict russia remains on

a peacekeeping mission there at least a thousand people were killed in a post break up clashes between georgia and south of the search here and over one hundred thousand were displaced in tajikistan the consequences were the worst sixty thousand killed and over a million people displaced even mosco itself didn't feel secure after the fall of the berlin wall the world briefed as sigh of relief but it didn't last long when nato said about creating a new wall made of me so the allies steadily move towards russia incorporating former soviet republics but leaving most out of europe's new security framework the west broke a number of promises to russia often russia could have expected that there wouldn't be a nato expansion that. russia itself. join nato will become . a new system of european. collective security

the feel of the u.s. says sarc put an end to the cold war era forever a fundamental shift in global geopolitics with just a few known calling the shots and without a powerful counterweight today's world remains far from secure exceedingly great children r t. r t dot com are asking what you think the collapse of the soviet union meant to the world so far thirty nine percent say would only be good if nato collapsed along with it just over a quarter believe communism actually offered hope for a better future if if say having no soviet union lead the us to go on check than fifteen percent think the world is better off without the so-called evil empire and your voice what do you think click on r t dot com and have yourself. former libyan rebels are now chanting for syrians to follow their revolutionary path hundreds of mercenaries some of whom are said to be former terrorists are ready to

pick up arms again to help overthrow president assad are these acts on a boy who reports from tripoli. a butcher our dad made the owner of this keep up shop in tripoli still undecided what's the most fitting term for syria's bashar al assad. jealous of his economic the biggest game in the end the one that syria. other syria. you can't make it a lot of the people in syria. out of solidarity with their arab brothers the owners of the shop have even put on display the syrian rebels tricolor but they're very firm on where the revolutionary support should be and we don't want syria and its soldiers we have. and our people such as syria these are just. only for the subject we have we have enough but i think yeah we want to leave. in less than three months libyan rebels have gone from being celebrated as

liberators to being called occupiers tripoli residents rally almost every week calling on the armed militia to leave and for some of the young man who looked on adrenaline and willing to part with their rifles syria seems like the next logical destination. i don't know what we're all ready to join the syrian revolution and with the help of allah we will make sure that what happened in libya will repeat itself in syria. the portraits of shaky bar i now ubiquitous on the streets of tripoli some rebels even styling themselves to resemble the famous revolutionary. with the help of allah we can all belong to give aren't fighting for peace and freedom around the world. and it seems that che guevara's idea of exporting revolutions have gotten a second birth in the middle east the arab spring has created a buoyant marketplace for soldiers of fortune they moved from one revolution to

another some motivated by personal gain some by conviction all there is by the venture if i put out on the vision of freedom and for now at least is the freedom to live by the gun. as a romantic and spontaneous as it may appear aiding the syrian uprising with mercenaries may not be such a genuine move video women and children in syria gunned down by snipers are involved on you tube while it's still unclear who is pulling the trigger there are terrorists my prayers who are shooting at civilians men women and children blind terrorism random killing simply for the purpose of destabilizing the country or from libya they're from afghanistan or pakistan foreign fighters have been brought in here by the cia and the other western services. one man's terrorist could easily be anonymous freedom fighter but for the united states it's now. a day hiking but

hodge one of the leaders of tripoli militia was once on the cia most wanted list today he's the face of the democratic leader who according to r.t. sources not a group of several hundred li been rebels to syria just last month. we can't do any help to support the syrian people because we are they are facing the same situation as before and do because she hated who comes to lead and we will and if we could see why the syrian people who they need help to get their freedom i think we should do what the use of soldiers of fortune is hardly new in this troubled region middle eastern rulers hard done for centuries a save gars against their own populations and it now looks like the history of mercenaries in the middle east has got to its new and no less bloody chapter actually we are at sea tripoli. as the arab league observers mission arrives in syria the opposition insists that the number killed by government forces in the

interest has surged well past five thousand but french peace campaigner terry mason says the atrocities are far from one sided they say there is five thousand people killed the. security forces of course it's absolute. there is a lot of people killed but very few by the security forces most of them he was by this armor groups they put inside the crowd and with the same armor groups they use in libya you know you were with some different situation between six and the people coming from media who are now in syria especially the military government of tripoli libya is now in turkey to organize all the fight and to tripoli which was the people from my kid no responsible for security in tripoli tonight they are you know all of them inside syria and the. spanish reporter was

first in libya recognized them here in the inside of the top of beasts so-called free. syrian army but not syria. you can always had online for more world news at our t dot com here's what's a click away right now how would dollars make you seem deadly suspicious security advice in the u.s. that says paying with cash could highlight you as a terrorist suspect. hope floats south korea sending humanitarian aid on its way to their struggling leaders in the north all the details and looked away at our team doctor. pakistan has its eyes on the east for future partnerships with the president now firming up the country's partnership with china this after our rocky year in relations with the u.s. where ties were all but severed from the raid that killed osama bin laden without alerting is not islam about to last month's deadly drone strike for more on this i'm joined by joseph chang a professor of political science at hong kong university thanks very much for being

with us here on r t so president the dollar you called his country's ties with china the top foreign policy priority but why would beijing want to strengthen ties with pakistan. well pakistan has been beating spece throughout the history of the people's republic of china increasingly pakistan has. a certain strategic value to china because of the completion of the highway as well as the almost completion of the port china certainly hopes that it can prove lend names to pakistan then open up seedlings to the indian ocean and bring the good voiding the overcrowded straits of malacca obviously china is no longer interested to side with the united states to pakistan against indows soviet our lines as in the

days of the cold war but pakistan remains a very important ally of china in the region as person b. when the tire central asian region becomes more important to china in strategic as well as in energy supply terms now within the last ten years especially china has been encroaching on the u.s. economic dominance do you think it challenges the charges that opposes to washington and now go beyond just being financial ones. well i don't think pakistan this willing to give up a military a as well as you can be a from washington to be replaced by a system from china but certainly as we all know pakistan's relations with the united states are in difficulties because of the nato attack on is a military outpost last year last month and washington d.c.

we feel used to look that kind of apology demanded by the pakistani government and at the same time it is very significant that the top chinese diplomat when he was in pakistan he met the president the prime minister the army chief of staff arguably the most powerful soldier in pakistan as well as the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff the head of the internal intelligence into services intelligence so it seems that china would she would have been asked to give more military aid to pakistan to balance against the weakening power between pakistan and the united states and this also possible that china me play a certain mediating role between the military and the government and certainly tensions between the two have been high in the recent year also pakistan's previously closed nato supply routes and recently backed out of

a conference on afghanistan's future and a snub to the u.s. do you think that it's going to be even bolder with chinese support. there's a limit to days certain media is quite a bit of anti american emotion in pakistan and both that go them and the military are careful. and be believed they have to show respect to this kind of emotions and have to stand stand up firm against the united states but as we've been saying certainly peggy's thing tend not do without you cannot make a military aid from the united states china is always very helpful in terms of trade investment as well as economic and military a so having an ally like china will help too much strengthen the bargaining power of this of this closely to see. just a professor of political science at hong kong city university thanks for your input

. and still to come ashore early we continue our look at the year's most significant events today focusing on japan's devastating earthquake and tsunami as seen through the eyes of our correspondent on the ground. suddenly the tempo changed when there was this is an explosion and then the fool's explosion and this reacts is in in fukushima one morning the happening very quick succession and suddenly. everyone was very scared so. several of the news crews were. just on the packed up and left and the woman that really difficult for me was i was on my own i didn't have anyone else to consoles. and i just realized at that point ok i'm going to get out. with this is. to history in the making. testimony. ten stories that shapes two thousand and seven on our t.v. . turned out of some other stories making headlines across the globe

a suicide car bomb exploded outside the iraqi interior ministry in baghdad killing seven injuring dozens the attacker detonated an explosive filled car at a checkpoint leading up to the ministry during morning rush hour a wave of bombings have struck iraq since all u.s. troops pulled out earlier this month. a south korean delegation has been allowed into north korea to mourn the death of the late leader kim jong il a former south korean first lady ended and the head of the carmaker hyundai across the heavily fortified border to pay their respects to north korean leader died from a heart attack nine days ago in two countries are still technically at war so all visits require government approval. r.t. is looking back at the ten key events of two thousand and eleven today we look at japan's massive earthquake and tsunami that killed more than ten thousand people and also led to a series of explosions at the fukushima nuclear plant and put the world on watch

fearing an atomic disaster or he's ever been it was in japan hours before the tragedy struck. covering the earthquake and tsunami in japan was very difficult because i was actually on my own the camera man and producing the visas so they had to wait and i went with a flip camera a laptop when i was there and got a satellite phone and so on the road i was trying to do long lines whenever i could set up a satellite phone trying get a link. and only when i actually got there that was when i fully understood the full force of the tsunami i didn't i didn't appreciate that until i actually saw the sea of every left. and i remember actually at one point setting up the lamp to want on for a boat being perched on a on a on

a road just been dumped by the tsunami. and i was quite a surreal experience definitely. to begin with very strange if you are in a building suddenly you. could feel yourself shaking slightly and it was difficult to walk in a straight line for about thirty seconds and gradually these three days i actually got used to the tremors as strange as that sounds suddenly there was there was panic i was outside of the car about to film a stand up. and the police and the emergency workers suddenly just like the sound seeing. it was all in jack things but i could understand there was the can see the fear and panic and also they were shouting and tsunami literally yelling in my face to get back into the car there's no news crew there to shouting at them and to get back into the car and go inland as fast as possible because there was this. as the

threat of another another tsunami there'd been a tremor the tide proceed in and they thought another tsunami was coming so in those moments when. we were racing inland as fast as we could weaving our way in between all the day every. member looking around and thinking hang on a minute there's no shelter here. what it was he was destroyed in the previous tsunami and there's no high ground and the only way we're going to be safe is to actually. beat the water. i had to take a taxi to sendai from tokyo it took about ten hours because all the transport links were down and arrived in the middle of the nights no hotels were open the only place to stay was actually a relief center and this was inside the local government offices and though people there who just lost everything all they had were the clothes on their bank whatever positions they had with them at the time the earthquake struck and clearly their

houses have been destroyed and they will all they had been in the relief center was was a cardboard sheet of cardboard to lie on and i spent one not one night that i was pretty unbearable because it was very cold there's very little food around and one thing they were rations but people would all they had was just a cucumber and a slice of bread so that was that was one meal actually. on top of this was also the fear of radiation because the situation it was just going from bad to worse and i was always in my mind it was a very real fear you could see it. amongst everyone else also. there wasn't any visible panic scene like it wasn't in japanese culture to panic and such but more there was certainly fear this is a town of war i around half way between tokyo and fukushima i'm still one hundred fifty kilometers south of the nuclear power plant but already the radiation levels

here over double that of those in tokyo began to make meeting one young family one young couple with a newborn baby actually just. i think a week old also being born the cover of a before the before the earthquake and. the mother wasn't particularly well some of the she was very weak and obviously she wanted to stay put there from sendai but they had left they just didn't trust what the government was saying that the sister. fukushima was under control and they just wanted to get out they were heading heading to turkey by whatever means possible. but then suddenly the tempo changed when there was a third explosion and then the fourth explosion and different reactors in in fukushima one morning the happening very quick succession and suddenly. everyone was very scared. so all the news crews were. just suddenly packed up and left and

that really difficult for me was i was on my own i didn't have anyone else to consult. and i just realized at that point ok i'm going to get out this is the start of japan's ravaged east coast norene like father day every just lie strewn all over the place here a wall collapsed over here is a fallen down such as the force of the tsunami this is also the point where we're going to turn back because the dog account is reading the highest it has done all day one point zero four microsleep it's plain how obviously when i left japan. i felt great relief because covering the story been very stressful bending eaten up any sleds but the story for me wasn't over though until when i was back in moscow. the next day i had to get to the hospital rooms checked for radiation and thankfully i was clear. we've got more on the year's ten key global events as seen by archie's international

correspondents and you can also check them out at our t. dot com ok he joins us next with a business update stay with us here on our team. welcome to the business up day here and i'll say christmas is over in most parts of the wild but i run the festive season has only just begun despite that concerns in europe and the u.s. shop is steadily slowing down in a cluster of a found out russian men are at the forefront of the seasonal spending. years eve as when the russians give gifts and this year they're going all out at least eighty one billion dollars will be spend this the stamper and a fifth of that will go towards presents consumer spending is expected to increase by twenty eight percent and muscovites will withdraw twenty percent more cash than any of the month of the year that's about five hundred sixty dollars each if you

are a russian woman you can look forward to a particularly lavish gift as mandible spent twice as much as i sir partners so what kind of gifts are we're looking at it's well the most popular items are expected to be alcohol then we have a choice and finally household appliances so not all that romantic on the christmas tree and the russians are not the only ones refusing to tighten their belts many experts had predicted americans and europeans would trim their spending but it's turned out to be a different story most surveys now suggest we will see an increase actually the average american is expected to spend up to twenty two percent more while in the u.k. some shops already seen an increase in sales more than last year but this may be because it's been such a tough year for ordinary working people now about the holiday season this year so

feel that they have an excuse to finally spend some money on themselves and their loved ones. like hey let's take out. all your pain try this are enjoying boxing day the russian indices are gaining the most trading session was on the back of optimism the u.s. economy will continue to recover up healthy beast like allow us. despite the lingering global finance of uncertainty russia is still laboring to the trial of a. five percent more foreign investment in two thousand and twelve presidential i talk of it says he expects investors to start bringing their cash in the second quarter a good investment into russia grew around twelve percent the ship but most of the money will ship term credit which doesn't provide fundamental support for the economy. but just because this is a step closer to welcoming will guess as russia and france register

a joint venture to develop tourism in the region it plans to build five world class d. resorts and create over three hundred thousand jobs that by twenty twenty eight says the money is needed back as hope to bring in between fifteen and twenty videos to make the project a reality. by not restricting cyprus who got the first project of a credit package from russia before they used the country agreed at the weekend to take a two and a half they did your eyes from moscow to support its economy orders top price waterhouse coopers calculates that around fifteen percent of cypresses g.d.p. is from foreign companies using the arbet as an off shore sent up the majority of the fans are pretty heated with. a muzzle for me today my colleague dmitri medvedev will be head next hour good bye now.

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three thirty pm in moscow these iraqi headlines twenty years since the world largest country was wiped off the map the breakup of the soviet union ended communism in the region before three dozen new states but its legacy continues to divide those who mourn and celebrate its collapse. former libyan rebels are taking their revolution on the road to syria mercenary groups including former terrorists have arrived in the country saying they're ready to pick up arms against president assad.