Free Republic

In an interview five years ago with the Weekly Standard magazine, former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky described the “brilliant moment” when he and his fellow prisoners in Siberia learned of Ronald Reagan’s “Evil Empire” speech. Speaking to the National Association of Evangelicals in 1983, president Reagan urged delegates against taking a moral equivalence stance on nuclear proliferation. When voting later in their convention on whether to support a freeze in the nuclear arms race, it would be too easy, Mr. Reagan said, to "label both sides equally at fault." That would "ignore the facts of history and the aggressive...

MOSCOW — Negotiations over gas prices between Russia and Ukraine unraveled Wednesday and executives at Gazprom, the Russian natural gas monopoly, said they were preparing to halt supplies early Thursday morning. If they do, customers in Western Europe will see shortages as the same pipelines in Ukraine are used for export and internal distribution. It is a problem that has bedeviled Europe’s energy supplies from Russia for years. How quickly Western Europe would feel a shortage of natural gas was unclear, and would depend on the scale and duration of any Russian embargo of Ukraine. The fuel is used for...

Georgian Foreign Minister Eka Tkeshelashvili said Wednesday that Russian forces were erecting a "Berlin Wall" as part of a campaign to cut off rebel regions from the rest of the country. Russia is trying to divide Abkhazia and South Ossetia from the rest of Georgia, she said in a speech to the International Institute for Strategic Studies think-tank in London. Tkeshelashvili said Russia was building a wall at Zugdidi, a city at the Abkhaz border. "Russia physically destroys physical links between the regions of Georgia," she said. "It is blowing up bridges in Gali region so that it is harder...

Relations between Russia and Germany have not been good since Vladimir Putin's nationalist sabre-rattling this summer, but they are about to get a whole lot worse. A new film about to be released in Germany will force both countries to re-examine part of their recent history that each would much prefer to forget. Yet it is right that the ghastly truth should finally be acknowledged. The movie, A Woman In Berlin, is based on the diary of the German journalist Marta Hillers and depicts the horror of the Red Army's capture of the capital of the Third Reich in April...

MOSCOW — Russia’s stock market is suffering its worst correction in nearly a decade as sliding oil prices, political attacks on private companies and instability after last month’s war in Georgia spook investors. On a bad day globally for stocks, Russia’s markets took an exceptional fall Friday. The Russian Trading System index lost 7.6 percent and recovered later to close down 4.45 percent after rumors circulated that the government would use state oil money to halt the decline. A Russian central bank official said the bank had sold large amounts of foreign currency a day earlier to shore up the...

Moscow-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, speaking in the midst of one of the lowest points in the Russia-West relationship since the breakup of the Soviet Union 17 years ago, said Tuesday that his country did not seek a new Cold War-but neither was it afraid of one.

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Fears that Russia might sell advanced weaponry to Syria kicked up a mini-storm of concern in Israel on Thursday. Syrian President Bashar Assad, in Russia for talks with President Dmitry Medvedev, has been campaigning to acquire weapons systems that include long-range surface-to-surface missiles, according to Russian media reports. The news of Assad's reported ambitions prompted immediate hand-wringing among Israeli officials and analysts. Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Israel was "analyzing the ramifications" of Assad's visit.

IGOETI, Georgia -- Russia and its allied forces today destroyed a key railway bridge linking war-weary Georgia's capital to the Black Sea coast, effectively severing all east-west transportation routes within the small country, the Georgian Foreign Ministry announced.

President Saakashvili was forced to accept defeat yesterday as he signed a peace agreement that gives the Russian Army the right to patrol on Georgian soil.

IGOETI, Georgia (Reuters) - A Russian military convoy advanced to a village 45 km (30 miles) from Tbilisi on Friday, in the deepest incursion since conflict with Georgia erupted last week.

Russia is a resurgent competitor for strategic importance. They are going to gobble up as many non-nato countries as possible in order to gain strategic value to counter the USA. Expect more brush wars and trouble from Venezuela, Iran, Russia, and others. WHY ARE WE NOT DEFENDING OUR ALLIES... PUT SOME PARA's INTO TBLISI MR. PRESIDENT!!!!

U.S. to take control of Georgian ports: Saakashvili Wed Aug 13, 2008 1:07pm EDT TBILISI (Reuters) - President George W. Bush's pledge to send aid to Georgia means that the U.S. military will take control of the ex-Soviet state's ports and airports, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili said on Wednesday.

Solzhenitsyn's Warning The faculty of Harvard University admired Alexandr Solzhenitsyn for his literary achievements, so they were thrilled that he agreed to deliver the university’s 1978 commencement address. But almost as soon as he began to speak, the professors changed their minds: too late. As I wrote this month in Christianity Today, they realized that Solzhenitsyn was charging them with complicity in the West’s surrender to liberal secularism, the abandonment of its Christian heritage, and of all the moral horrors that followed. For example, describing the Western worldview as “rationalistic humanism,” Solzhenitsyn decried the loss of “our concept of...

RUSSIA is preparing to deploy 9000 troops to bolster its forces inside the separatist Georgian region of Abkhazia, reports say. "The group is based on a subdivision of paratroopers. It consists of more than 9,000 troops and more than 350 armoured vehicles,'' Alexander Novitsky, a spokesman for Russia's peacekeeping forces in Abkhazia, was quoted by Interfax news agency as saying. "The strengthening of the peacekeeping force is aimed at ruling out a repetition of the situation Russian peacekeepers faced in Tskhinvali," Mr Novitsky was quoted as saying. Tskhinvali is the capital of South Ossetia, another breakaway region of Georgia where...

After 50 years, an American state secret has been revealed, about the arrest of 12,000 people because of Hoover’s “red” paranoia. The former director of the FBI, Edgar Hoover made plans for the arrest of 12,000 American citizens which he considered to be threats to national security – documents reveals that no longer bear the status of state secret. Hoover sent this request to the president at the time Harry Truman at the beginning of the Korean war during the 50s. He justified the move as necessary for protection from “treason, spies and sabotage”. For now there is no evidence...

Russia’s G5 system of missile defense leaves far behind the S-400 systems that are coming into operation today. It is able to counter space attacks, said Russia’s Air Force Commander-in-Chief Col.-Gen. Alexander Zelin.

Russian and Chinese troops are joining forces this week in the first military exercises by an international organisation that is regarded in some quarters as a potential rival to Nato. Thousands of soldiers and 500 combat vehicles will take part in “Peace Mission 2007”, organised by the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in the Chelyabinsk region of Russia. Russian officials have also proposed an alliance between the SCO and a body representing most of the former Soviet republics. Scores of Russian and Chinese aircraft begin joint exercises tomorrow before a week of military manoeuvres from Thursday that will include Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan...

MOSCOW, Russia (AP) -- An expedition aimed at strengthening Russia's claim to much of the oil and gas wealth beneath the Arctic Ocean reached the North Pole on Wednesday, and preparations immediately began for two mini-submarines to drop a capsule containing a Russian flag to the sea floor.

Now in their 70s and 80s, children of the victims of Josef Stalin's political repressions remembered one of the darkest pages of Russia's history at a ceremony Wednesday in central Moscow. Several hundred people laid flowers and lit candles to honor the victims of the Great Purge of 1937, when millions were labeled "enemies of the state" and executed without trial or sent to labor camps. The 70th anniversary comes as the Kremlin, focused on restoring Russians' pride in their Soviet-era history, has been trying to soften public perception of Stalin's rule and hushing up the full horror of his...