The world is facing a serious systemic crisis, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said in an article published on his election website and in the Izvestiya daily.

“By their scale, today’s global imbalances are such that they can hardly be overcome within the framework of the current system,” the premier wrote.

“Fundamentally, what the world is facing today is a serious systemic crisis, a tectonic process of global transformation. This is a visible manifestation of a transition to a new cultural, economic, technological and geopolitical era,” Putin said.

He said the world is entering a turbulent period.

“This period will be long and painful. No illusions should be cherished,” the prime minister said.

Russia will hold presidential elections on March 4, 2012. Putin, who held the presidential post in 2000-2008, is considered the most likely candidate to win them.

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Russia has given Iran its bear hug and warns Israel and the West that an attack on Tehran would be considered an attack on Moscow. The threat heightens the prospect of World War III in the event of a military strike on Iran.

“Iran is our neighbor,” Russia’s outgoing ambassador to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, told reporters in Brussels. “And if Iran is involved in any military action, it’s a direct threat to our security.”

Kremlin Security Council head Nikolai Patrushev accused Israel of provoking the United States towards war against Iran, the Russian Interfax news agency reported Friday. “But at the same time, we believe that any country has the right to have what it needs to feel comfortable, including Iran,” he added.

Rogozin warned on Friday that more attacks on Iran could cause “a scorching Arab Summer.”

Russia also has come to the defense of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, warning Western nations not to intervene in Syria with military forces. Russia is a major arms supplier to Syria and has a heavy investment in Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Japan also is drifting towards Iran, backtracking from its promise last week to back American sanctions aimed at persuading Iran to halt its unsupervised nuclear development.

Last week’s assassination of an Iranian nuclear scientist has aroused more “Death to America” and “Death to Israel” protest rallies in Iran, where the scientist was buried on Friday.

Iranian state radio said the 32-year-old scientist was involved with enriched uranium, a key ingredient for a nuclear weapon.

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Russian authorities seized radioactive material from the luggage of a passenger on a flight from Moscow to Tehran on Friday.

The luggage, belonging to an Iranian citizen, contained 18 metal objects packed in individual steel cases, Russia’s Federal Customs Service said in a statement. The agency said the material, the radioactive isotope sodium-22, can be obtained in a nuclear reactor.

Initial tests showed that radiation levels of the objects were 20 times above normal, the customs service said.

The Russian atomic agency Rosatom, however, said sodium-22 is exclusively used for medical and scientific research and does not have a high radiation level. Rosatom contradicted the custom agency’s claim that the material can only come from a nuclear reactor.

Radiation expert Paddy Regan, a professor at England’s University of Surrey, said the material was unlikely to present a major radiation hazard. He said sodium-22 can be made in medical accelerators and is usually not produced in reactors. It is also not used in reactors as a component of fuel.

The Federal Customs Service said the objects were sent to a Moscow prosecutor’s office that deals with air and water transport.

A criminal investigation is under way. The whereabouts of the Iranian passenger was not immediately clear.

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The Russian customs service said today it had seized radioactive material found in the luggage of a passenger bound for Tehran at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo international airport.

The service said in a statement that tests showed the material was a radioactive isotope which could be obtained only ‘as a result of a nuclear reactor’s operations’.

More follows.

Russia’s foreign minister has warned of a repetition of its 2008 war with Georgia if the South Caucasus state joins NATO.

Speaking at a news conference after the NATO-Russia Council in Brussels on Thursday, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said he had warned NATO foreign ministers against “pushing the current Georgian regime towards a repetition of their August 2008 gamble.”

Georgia has been pursuing NATO membership but the five-day war in 2008 over Georgia’s breakaway territory of South Ossetia has made the alliance wary of taking it on.

Speaking during a visit to Georgia last month, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said the country had “come a lot closer” to joining, but added that Tbilisi should pursue reforms.

“Further reforms will be Georgia’s ticket to membership and NATO is here to help,” Rasmussen told Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili.

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U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has called for an investigation into Sunday’s parliamentary elections in Russia amid reports of widespread vote fraud and election violations, in comments a senior Russian official described as “strange.”

Speaking to the foreign ministers of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) member-countries in Vilnius, Clinton said Russia’s elections were neither free nor fair.

“Russian voters deserve a full investigation of all credible reports of electoral fraud and manipulation, and we hope in particular that the Russian authorities will take action,” Clinton said, on Tuesday.

OSCE said the contest was slanted in favor of the pro-Kremlin United Russia party and cited numerous violations during the vote.

With almost all the votes counted as of Tuesday afternoon, electoral officials said Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s party had just under 50 percent.

President Dmitry Medvedev said the election was free and democratic.

Konstantin Kosachev, the chairman of the Russian lower house of parliament’s foreign affairs committee, said Clinton’s “strange” comments would “not help improve bilateral relations.”

“If there are actions from the American side aimed at supporting those who Mrs. Clinton calls ‘democrats,’ we will react harshly and consistently,” Kosachev said.

Earlier, Clinton said the United States had “serious concerns” about the conduct of the vote.

Clinton also said Washington was concerned about harassment of Russia’s election monitors and political sites. Independent election watchdog Golos and several political media said their websites suffered sustained cyber-attacks on Sunday.

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Columns of military trucks carrying fresh troops rolled into Moscow on Tuesday, a day after a record protest rally ended in clashes with police.

Several bloggers reported seeing columns of Interior Troops driving into central Moscow via major thoroughfares, including Yaroslavskoye Shosse, Leningradskoye Shosse and Shosse Entuziastov, Gazeta.ru reported.

Among the divisions spotted was the Dzerzhinsky division of the Interior Troops, which specializes in suppressing mass protests, Vesti.ru said.

An Interior Ministry spokesman said police had requested the soldiers, Interfax reported. A police spokesman said security is being stepped up Dec. 1 to 6 in connection with the State Duma vote last Sunday.

Big power gunboat diplomacy is in full spate in the Mediterranean and Persian Gulf. Washington is underscoring its military option against Iran’s nuclear program, while Russia is demonstrating its resolve to prevent NATO attacking Syria after Libya and defending Bashar Assad’s regime. Monday, Nov. 21,

Russia’s foreign minister Sergey Lavrov accused Western nations of “political provocation” by urging the Syrian opposition to refuse to negotiate a settlement with Assad.

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, for his part, advised Assad: “You can only continue with tanks and guns to a certain point, the day will come when you will go.”

DEBKAfile’s military sources note that Russia and America adopted aggressive postures on Nov. 12, when two American carriers, the USS Bush and USS Stennis sailed through the Strait of Hormuz side by side and took up position opposite the Iranian coast.

That was also the day when a mysterious explosion at the Revolutionary Guards base near Tehran wiped out the entire leadership of Iran’s ballistic missile program.

Five days later, on Nov. 17, the Syrian news agency reported three Russian naval vessels on the Mediterranean were heading toward Syria.

Monday, Nov. 21, presidential sources in Damascus announced three warships had entered Syrian territorial waters outside Tartus port.

Those sources stressed the Russian ships would not anchor in the Syrian port, indicating that their mission was not just to show the flag for the Assad regime but was on operational duty along its coasts to resist any foreign intervention in Syria unrest.

Our military sources are watching to see whether the Russian flotilla targets the small craft transporting arms from Lebanon and Turkey to Syrian rebels fighting the regime. If so, Moscow would be able to present these strikes as actions against piracy which would fall under a UN Security Council resolution.

While Moscow and Damascus kept the identity of the Russian warships dark, Arab sources said at least two of them are equipped for gathering intelligence and electronic warfare.

As the Russian warships entered Syrian territorial waters, Canadian Defense Minister Peter McKay announced that in the light of the Syrian crisis, the Royal Canadian Navy would keep back in the Mediterranean until the end of 2012 certain vessels which took part in the Libyan campaign.

DEBKAfile’s military sources report he was referring to two frigates:

HMCS Vancouver will stay in the Mediterranean Sea until early next year,” he said, taking part in “locating, tracking, reporting (and) boarding vessels of interest suspected of international terrorism.” It would be relieved by HMCS Charlottetown until the end of 2012.

Defense Minister Mckay explained: “…a lot of dictators are on notice that this type of behavior isn’t going to be tolerated. How we go about it and what comes next is done on… an escalating scale before making any final decisions about intervention.”

The Canadian defense minister was the first prominent Western official to admit the possibility of Western military intervention in Syria.

Three more events affecting the fate of the Assad regime, Tehran’s closest ally, followed in quick succession Monday:

British Foreign Secretary William Hague received a delegation of the opposition Syrian National Council in London. Shortly before the interview the SNC published its plan for the transition of power from the Assad regime in Damascus, calling also for “international protection for Syrian civilians.”

In Syria itself, three buses carrying Turkish pilgrims home from Mecca were accosted by a Syrian checkpoint at Cizre near Homs. The passengers were ordered to disembark for their papers to be inspected. The Syrian soldiers then started shooting at them, injuring a passenger and one of the drivers.

This incident will not be treated lightly by the Erdogan government.

Until now, despite vocal threats, Ankara has not intervened directly in the nine-month Syrian uprising aside from arming and training rebels.

Also Monday, Jordan’s King Abdullah II paid a surprise visit to Ramallah for talks with the Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas. One of the items on his agenda was an attempt to find out where the Palestinian leader stands vis-à-vis the Arab Revolt, especially on the conflict in Syria.

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Bloomberg – The Moscow city government plans to expand video surveillance and offer residents more services through the Internet in the next five years in a project worth 329.5 billion rubles ($11.7 billion).

Video cameras will be installed in 95 percent of apartment buildings and 75 percent of infrastructure in the Russian capital by 2016, City Hall said today in e-mailed materials before its weekly meeting. It also plans to provide all government services electronically.

President Dmitry Medvedev is keen to develop an “innovative” economy and has urged governments at all levels to switch to paperless services. Russia ranked 59th in a 2010 United Nations survey of world e-government readiness, one place below Saudi Arabia and one above Montenegro.

Moscow will finance 60 percent of the project, City Hall said, without specifying the source of the remaining funds.