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Andrzej Zybertowicz, an adviser to Polish President Andrzej Duda, said during a discussion aired by public broadcaster TVP Info that the West decided when the Cold War was over that there was no threat from Russia. It pinpointed terrorism as the greatest threat, resulting in most intelligence and counterintelligence services focusing on combating terror, Zybertowicz said. “This resulted in the activities of Russian agents, including those of agents of influence, cutting through the elites of Western countries like a knife through butter." "We have here is the limited capacity of Western leadership elites to oppose aggressive policies. This could have...

In a stunning sequence of events, the Russian military opened fire then seized three Ukrainian navy vessels in an unprovoked attack on the Black Sea last Sunday. In the melee, several Ukrainian sailors were wounded and 24 captured. Moscow followed up this flagrant act of war by parading the sailors on Russian television to give clearly coerced confessions of guilt. This attack is but the latest escalation in the ongoing Russian war against Ukraine that has been churning since 2014. It’s also the first great test for the Trump administration regarding Russia and one that will have lasting consequences on...

Hungary fully stands by Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovereignty and this will continue to be a part of Hungary’s foreign policy in the future, too, Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó said on Tuesday. Hungary also devotes special attention to the 150,000 ethnic Hungarians living in western Ukraine’s Transcarpathia region, Szijjártó told a press conference in Budapest. Szijjártó noted that when Ukraine began enlisting soldiers due to the conflict in its eastern regions, he held talks with his Ukrainian counterpart at the request of Transcarpathian Hungarian Cultural Association (KMKSZ) leader László Brenzovics about the enlistment of Transcarpathian Hungarians. Szijjártó said his colleague...

Krzysztof Szczerski, chief foreign policy adviser to Polish President Andrzej Duda, was speaking after the Ukrainian navy said Russian special forces had seized three of its ships in the Sea of Azov on Sunday. "We consider the situation serious because it may have far-reaching consequences for both the internal politics of Ukraine and the entire region," Szczerski told Poland’s PAP news agency in an interview. The Sea of Azov is bounded by Ukraine to the north and west, and by Russia to the east. To the south it is linked by the Strait of Kerch to the Black Sea. The...

On October 17, 2018, a student at a technical college in the Crimean city of Kerch carried out a Columbine-style rampage attack. He committed suicide at the end of his attack. He killed 20 people and wounded 70 more, many of them severely. I will not mention his name. It is included in the excerpt below. There are very restrictive gun control laws in place in Crimea.The murderer legally obtained a shotgun by performing all that was required, including a medical exam, and joining a local gun club. He purchased 150 rounds of ammunition a month before the attack. In...

Kul-Oba an ancient archaeological site, a Scythian burial tumulus (kurgan), located near Kerch in eastern Crimea. Kul-Oba was the first Scythian royal barrow to be excavated in modern times. Uncovered in 1830, the stone tomb yielded a wealth of precious artifacts which drew considerable public interest to Scythian world. Of particular interest is an intricately granulated earring with two Nike figurines and Serpent-Legged Goddess, now in the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg.The tomb was built around 400 to 350 BC. The body of the king lay by the east wall on a sumptuous wooden couch. His social position was highlighted by...

Russia, through its 2014 invasion of Ukraine and its attempted annexation of Crimea, sought to undermine a bedrock international principle shared by democratic states: that no country can change the borders of another by force. The states of the world, including Russia, agreed to this principle in the United Nations Charter, pledging to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state. This fundamental principle — which was reaffirmed in the Helsinki Final Act — constitutes one of the foundations upon which our shared security and safety rests. As we did...

Russian President Vladimir Putin has claimed that the attack on Kerch Technical College, and the deaths by now of 21 people, most of them teenagers, was the result of ‘globalization.' It is not a view shared by many people who have watched with concern the mounting militarization of Crimean society in general, and children in particular, under Russian occupation. While we do not know, and perhaps never will, what went on in the head of 18-year-old Vladislav Roslyakov before he went on his killing rampage, the atmosphere in Crimea and the attitude to war and weapons have certainly changed alarmingly...

On Orthodox Easter, Russian Patriarch Kirill addressed scores of the faithful, including Russian President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. He likened the resurrection of Christ—who, in Orthodox parlance, “trampled down death by death”—to the Russian, née Soviet, victory over the Nazis. Kirill’s religious praise of Soviet victory is nothing new. Under Josef Stalin, the Soviet Union tried tapping into the nation’s “enormous spiritual strength” by reviving the Orthodox Church in Russia, albeit in a limited capacity. Realizing the power the church had to unite Russia and its near abroad—and seeking to bring Nazi-controlled territory back under Soviet influence,...

"It all started with the tragic events in the United States, in the schools of the United States," Vladimir Putin told the Valdai discussion forum in Sochi in southern Russia. As Russians struggle to come to terms with a horrific US-style school shooting in Crimea, which has left at least 20 people dead and dozens injured, Kremlin-controlled media are blaming the "corrupting influence" of the West for inspiring the attack. This person was under the strong influence of Western subculture," said Sergey Mikheyev, a political analyst speaking on a nightly current-affairs show on Russian state television. "Western subculture builds its...

At least 19 people were killed and dozens injured at a college in the Black Sea region of Crimea on Wednesday when a student went through the building shooting at fellow pupils before killing himself, Russian law enforcement officials said. Eighteen-year-old Vladislav Roslyakov turned up at the college in the city of Kerch on Wednesday afternoon carrying a firearm and then began shooting, investigators said. His body was later found in the college with what they said were self-inflicted gunshot wounds. There were no immediate clues as to his motive in mounting such an attack, which recalled similar shooting sprees...

MOSCOW — It would be one of the world’s more unusual direct flights. But bringing Syrian soldiers and civilians to a Black Sea resort is exactly what was on offer Tuesday, when a delegation from Crimea visited Damascus, the Syrian capital. “We understand that restrictions related to trade, money transfers and tourism are similar to what we have in Crimea,” said Prime Minister Sergei Aksyonov, Russia’s top official there. Both Syria and Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine four years ago, have been hit by Western sanctions, and their economies are struggling. “We should turn our minuses into our advantages,”...

At least 17 people, mostly teenagers, were killed and 50 more wounded when a student went on a shooting spree in his high school in Russia-annexed Crimea on Wednesday, Russian authorities said. Russian investigators identified 18-year-old Vladislav Roslyakov as the attacker, saying he fatally shot himself after the rampage in Kerch, a city in the east of Crimea, which Russia seized from Ukraine four years ago. Reports had initially described the attack as involving explosives with possibly terrorist motives. Russian investigators had initially opened a terrorism probe into the attack, but later changed it to murder. “A preliminary examination of...

At the top of the news the latest on Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. A "candid discussion" was reported in Saudi Arabia between US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Saudi officials including King Salman. President Trump spoke by phone with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. He says both the king and crown prince have denied any involvement or knowledge of what happened to Khashoggi. Trump told the Associated Press that Saudi Arabia was being treated as: "guilty until proven innocent"..... Turkish officials say their search of the Saudi consulate where Khashoggi disappeared after entering October 2nd revealed more evidence of...

The Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate has faced open attempts on the part of the occupation authorities in Crimea to drive it out of the peninsula or underground. In just the first year of the occupation, 38 out of 46 parishes ceased to exist, and in at very least three cases, churches were seized by the occupation regime: in Sevastopol; Simferopol and in the village of Perevalne. On October 9, Archbishop Klyment, the Head of the Church in Crimea, explained that up till now, the Russian occupation regime has been at least somewhat restrained in its offensive out...

When Russian president Vladimir Putin celebrated the annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, he claimed the disputed peninsula was “spiritually” inseparable from Moscow. But Mr Putin’s military intervention is now threatening to undermine the “Russian world” beyond Moscow’s borders that he sought to protect. An arcane canonical dispute has become a geopolitical flashpoint after Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, the Istanbul-based spiritual leader of Orthodox Christianity, said on Thursday that he intended to grant full recognition to a breakaway church in Ukraine that split from the Russian patriarchate in the early 1990s. The Russian church has warned it may...

Patriarch Bartholomew I -- considered the leader of roughly 300 million Orthodox Christians, or "first among equals" of Eastern Orthodox clerics -- to "proceed to the granting of autocephaly to the Church of Ukraine" marked a clear step closer to another remarkable break from Moscow and its reach into Kyiv's affairs. After taking a moment to say a prayer, Natalia, a retired schoolteacher and parishioner of St. Volodymyr's, told RFE/RL that her previous prayer -- for her church to be legitimized by the Ecumenical Patriarchate and broken free from Russia -- had been answered. The push for independence, "was our...

The head of global Orthodox Christianity has decided to grant Ukraine its own church independent of Russia’s patriarchate, in a politically charged move that defies sharp warnings from Moscow. The decision is a victory for Ukraine in a wider struggle against Russia that encompasses Moscow’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and its continued support for separatists fighting against Kiev in the east of the country. But it has been condemned by Russian officials, who have warned it threatens to trigger the biggest Christian schism in a millennium. While both Ukraine and Russia share the same orthodox Christian roots that date back...

While Catholicism has been embroiled in a crisis of sexual abuse and episcopal malfeasance reaching to the highest levels of the Church, Eastern Orthodoxy may be on the verge of an epic crack-up with major ecumenical and geopolitical consequences. The Ecumenical Patriarchate in Constantinople has indicated that it is considering a proposal to recognize the autocephaly, or independence from Moscow, of Ukrainian Orthodoxy. The Moscow Patriarchate has responded with fury. First, the Moscow Patriarchate is terrified. Moscow's claim to be the “third Rome” would be gravely imperiled. Russian Orthodoxy would shrink drastically by the loss of the large Orthodox population...

Russia’s Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov has openly called for the annexation of two eastern Ukrainian regions amid media reports of a possible escalation of hostilities. Ukraine has been at war for control of the Donbass region after an uprising of pro-Russian separatists there in 2014. Russia has been accused of stoking the conflict that has claimed thousands of lives and displaced more than 1.6 million people, a charge that the Kremlin denies. Separatist leaders quoted by Russian state media have claimed that Kiev is readying an offensive in the region following the assassination of Alexander Zakharchenko, the leader of...