Free Republic

MOSCOW (Reuters) - The crash of a luxury train in Russia killed 25 people and injured up to 63 more, an official said on Saturday, and sources suggested it may have been an act of terrorism. "Twenty-five people died in the accident," an official reported to Emergencies Minister Sergei Shoigu during a meeting televised by Vesti-25 television, hours after the crash. Several carriages of the Nevsky Express traveling from Moscow to St Petersburg were derailed at 9:30 p.m. (1830 GMT) on Friday near the town of Bologoye, 350 km (200 miles) from Moscow. Estimates of the number of injured ranged...

As the United States and its allies haggle with Iran over its nuclear program, Moscow has fueled Western unease about its military links to Tehran by pledging to continue selling arms to the Islamic republic. This has raised speculation that it may brush aside the strident objections of the United States and Israel and supply Iran with advanced S-300PMU surface-to-air missiles that would greatly enhance its defenses against airstrikes. The Russians, who have rejected the proposed imposition of economic sanctions on Iran as "counterproductive," are keeping the waters muddied with contradictory and ambiguous statements regarding the S-300s. On Wednesday, Russia's...

Russia's new president is trying to show the world a more liberal face, but the body count of murdered human rights activists keeps rising. Being a political critic in Russia is getting more dangerous by the day, and now one prominent human rights organization in Chechnya has decided to close its office. Yet another Russian human rights activist has been silenced in yet another brutal attack. This week unknown gunmen shot anti-corruption activist Albert Pchelintsev in the mouth with rubber bullets, in front of his apartment in the Moscow suburb of Khimki. The 38 year old was seriously wounded in...

Meet Marina Kalashnikova: a Moscow-based historian, researcher and journalist. Last August she criticized foreign “experts� for suggesting that a conflict with Moscow will not happen because Russia’s elite is too closely associated with the West. According to Kalashnikova, “The West does not care to wake from the dream of its wishful thinking, even when Moscow turns to … reanimating Stalin’s cult of personality together with the ideology of the Cheka [i.e., the secret police].� I’m afraid that Marina Kalashnikova is right. The West has been dreaming, and the West will suffer the consequences. If the Kremlin likes Stalin, then there...

July 6, 2009 Barack Obama makes basic error over balance of power in Kremlin Tony Halpin. President Obama has made his first mistake in Russia even before he arrives in Moscow today. His attempt to cast Vladimir Putin as yesterday’s man and to drive a wedge between the Prime Minister and President Medvedev demonstrates a misreading of relations in the Kremlin. Mr Medvedev is in office but not in power and whether he becomes President in more than name depends on Mr Putin’s support and intentions. Mr Medvedev may represent a more accommodating face of Russia but this is only...

Moscow , June 19 Russia will shoot down the North Korean missile if it strays towards its air space, a top military official today said, even as the country's military is monitoring in "real time" the preparations of its renegade neighbour. "If the North Korean missile would veer towards us, we will shoot it down. All our air and missile defence means are ready for this," Deputy Chief of General Staff Lt-Gen Aleksandr Burutin was quoted as saying by' Vesti FM's radio.

When United Auto Workers (UAW) union chief Ron Gettelfinger announced the end of GM's two-day strike in the early hours of September 26, 2007, it was the beginning of the end for the world's largest car manufacturer. The agreement to end the first US nationwide automotive strike in 31 years, which saw General Motors' then 73,000-strong US workforce walk out, was the final death knell in the company's 101-year history. The strike had occurred not over the future of those employees however, but rather of the fate of GM's 460,000 retired workers whose continuing eligibility for healthcare benefits had placed...

A proposed law could make comparing Soviet rule with that of the Nazis a crime. Intellectuals fear a manipulation of Russia’s past.A bitter joke from the Soviet-era has it that Russia is the world's only country with an unpredictable past. That jibe has come winging back in recent days, after the Kremlin announced the creation of a special 28-member panel tasked with examining and combating examples of "historical revisionism" that harm Russia's image. The committee, which has no legal power, is chaired by the head of President Dmitry Medvedev's administration, Sergei Naryshkin, and includes a sprinkling of historians but also...

Something unusual happened a few days ago to Vladmir Putin's party of power, known as "United Russia," which dominates Russia's national parliament and faces no credible opposition there. It lost an election, lost it in a landslide. The poll in question took place in the world's most northerly major city, Murmansk. The race was for mayor, and United Russia's candidate was blown off the electoral map by an upstart independent candidate named Sergei Subbotin. The margin of victory in the runoff election was nearly two to one. The casual onlooker might not have thought Putin's Kremlin would get too worked...

As a former Eastern European who spent 22 years of his life behind the Iron Curtain, my own perception of people's vigilance in the western countries for the security of their freedom, and most of all to safeguard their Catholic Apostolic Faith from the influence of, and possible destruction done by, the atheistic communism, is somewhat blinded by a clearly erroneous belief that people who lived in freedom all their lives want to continue living in it, and will not allow anything so criminal, hideous and ultimately satanic as communism is, to enter their society and take it over, and...

Minutes after protesters unfurled anti-Kremlin banners and chanted "Down with KGB power" and "Russia without Putin," a dozen young men jumped out of cars and started to beat them with fists and metal rods. The thugs first attacked elderly marchers who were walking slowly at the back of the crowd of about 50. When Alexey Kazakov, a protest leader, tried to intervene, some of the assailants surrounded him and started punching and kicking.

President Obama will convene the most ambitious arms reduction talks with Russia for a generation, aiming to slash each country’s stockpile of nuclear weapons by 80 per cent. The radical treaty would cut the number of nuclear warheads to 1,000 each, The Times has learnt. Key to the initiative is a review of the Bush Administration’s plan for a US missile defence shield in Eastern Europe, a project fiercely opposed by Moscow. Mr Obama is to establish a non-proliferation office at the White House to oversee the talks, expected to be headed by Gary Samore, a non-proliferation negotiator in the...

A Brewing Storm in Russia Can Russian liberalism survive the Putin/Medvedev regime? A year ago, Russia was in an odd place between oppressive stagnation and a glimmer of possible change. The ruling party, United Russia, had just consolidated its hold on the parliament in a rigged election; the presidential transition was revealed as the farcical anointment of a handpicked successor to Vladimir Putin—the docile Dmitry Medvedev, who quickly promised to make Putin prime minister. Yet some Russian liberals, and sympathetic Westerners, harbored at least modest hopes that Medvedev might prove more liberal than Putin and that the division of power...

<p>Russia faces a particularly nasty version of the global recession (at a minimum), and perhaps an economic "perfect storm." Regardless of how bad its economy gets, two broad political trends, each carrying profound implications for Russia's foreign policy and U.S.-Russian relations, are bound to emerge.</p>

MOSCOW – A new law drafted by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's Cabinet would allow authorities to label any government critic a traitor — a move that leading rights activists condemned Wednesday as a chilling reminder of the times under Soviet dictator Josef Stalin. The draft extends the definition of treason from breaching Russia's external security to damaging the nation's constitutional order, sovereignty or territorial integrity. ...

Kremlin denies minister's acknowledgment of recession in Russia (RTTNews) - The Kremlin issued a clarification correcting Russia's chief macroeconomic planner's acknowledgment Friday that a recession has begun in the country. Deputy Economic Development Minister Andrei Klepach told reporters that a recession has started. "We will face two quarters of economic decline, and I'm afraid, it won't be over in two quarters," he added. A recession is defined as at least two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth in a country.

As fears grow regarding Russia’s growing militancy and seemingly anti-western posturing after Russian President Dmitry Medvedev announced that he will deploy a short-range missile system on the doorstep of the EU in the enclave of kalingrad a prominent Jewish Refusenik has stated that the US will be at war with Russia within five years.

The fire safety system on a new Russian nuclear-powered submarine malfunctioned on a test run in the Sea of Japan, spewing chemicals that killed at least 20 people and injured 21 others, officials said Sunday. It was Russia's worst naval accident since torpedo explosions sank another nuclear-powered submarine, the Kursk, in the Barents Sea in 2000, killing all 118 seamen aboard. The victims died of poisoning from Freon gas that was released Saturday when the fire-extinguishing system accidentally turned on, said Sergei Markin, an official with Russia's top investigative agency.

BOGOTA (AFP) – A flood of Russian weapons recently sold to Latin American governments could unleash an arms race in the already volatile region, Washington's ambassador to Colombia warned in remarks published in local media here Sunday. "It's important to proceed carefully in introducing new weapons and weapons systems in the hemisphere," said US ambassador William Brownfield, speaking to the El Tiempo newspape

Stung by international criticism of its presidential and congressional elections, Russia is striking back by sending a team of observers to monitor the U. S. presidential poll on Nov. 4. Andrei Nesterenko, a spokesman with Russia's Foreign Ministry, says Moscow will have eight election observers attached to a monitoring mission conducted by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). The OSCE, which has infuriated the Kremlin in the past by criticizing elections in Russia and other post-communist states, is sending 62 election observers to the United States. The mission, headed by Audrey Glover, the top British diplomat, includes...

MOSCOW (AP) — The financial crisis has irreparably damaged the image of the U.S. as the leader of the free world and the global economy, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Thursday. Putin's remarks during a Communist Party meeting were the latest Russian attack singling out the U.S. as the chief culprit in the global financial turmoil. "Trust in the United States as the leader of the free world and the free economy, and confidence in Wall Street as the center of that trust, has been damaged, I believe, forever," Putin said. "There will be no return to the previous...

The Russian's alleged role was disclosed in a document, obtained by the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which describes complex and highly sensitive experiments supposedly conducted inside Iran.

Russian markets closed until Friday Russia ordered its main stock exchanges closed for another day Thursday as President Dmitry Medvedev called for pouring 500 billion rubles ($20 billion) into financial markets in an effort to stabilize them. The government is struggling to stem a dizzying plummet in share prices and restore confidence in the economy _ a plummet that has revived memories of the 1998 financial collapse. "We have sufficient reserves and a strong economy, which guarantees the avoidance of any shocks," Medvedev said in televised comments.

Getting to the bottom of the shadowy depths of Kremlin decision-making is tricky. Machiavellian power struggles, dark paranoia of security chiefs and long fingers of corruption can turn seemingly rational and transparent explanations inside out. But even public signals are instructive, and in the wake of the Georgia crisis, Russia's leadership is taking stock and has several messages for the West. The first key question about Russia is - who is really in charge? The standard answer is President Medvedev as Commander in Chief. He, and only he, ordered Russian troops across the border to hit back when Georgia attacked...

Link:Hitpiece on Palin Part 2. Palin=Goldwater 1964

Virtually everyone believes Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili foolishly provoked a Russian invasion on August 7, 2008, when he sent troops into the breakaway district of South Ossetia. “The warfare began Aug. 7 when Georgia launched a barrage targeting South Ossetia,” the Associated Press reported over the weekend in typical fashion. Virtually everyone is wrong. Georgia didn't start it on August 7, nor on any other date. The South Ossetian militia started it on August 6 when its fighters fired on Georgian peacekeepers and Georgian villages with weapons banned by the agreement hammered out between the two sides in 1994. At...

Poland, Ukraine and the Baltics Nervous neighbours Aug 21st 2008 | MOSCOW AND WARSAW NOBODY has watched the war in Georgia more anxiously than Russia’s western neighbours. Recently the Russians have been bellicose towards Ukraine, the three Baltic states and Poland. It was no surprise when leaders from the other four flew with the Polish president to Tbilisi to express solidarity with Georgia’s Mikheil Saakashvili. It was also no coincidence that Poland signed a deal with the Americans to host missile-defence interceptors. The deal marks the end of a game of hardball, with the Poles turning down many American offers...

Pictures of triumphant Russian soldiers sitting on armoured personnel carriers as they were driven through towns in Georgia will be among the lasting images of the seven-day war. But the victory did not tell the whole story, analysts said yesterday. The ageing vehicles were so lightly armed and so uncomfortable and hot to sit in that the Russian soldiers felt safer perched on top. “At least they could then react quickly if there was an attack,” Colonel Christopher Langton, an expert on Russian armed forces at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, said. For an invading force from what...

A top Russian general said Friday that Poland's agreement to accept a US missile defense battery exposes the country to attack, pointing out that Russian military doctrine permits the use of nuclear weapons in such a situation, the Interfax news agency reported. *** Interfax said he added, in clear reference to the agreement, that Russia's military doctrine sanctions the use of nuclear weapons "against the allies of countries having nuclear weapons if they in some way help them." Nogovitsyn said that would include elements of strategic deterrence systems, according to Interfax.

Dmitry Medvedev may be Russia's president but Vladimir Putin has kept his place in the Kremlin. When Putin came to his old office in the Kremlin on Monday to propose the names of ministers for his government, the former president made for his customary seat on the left of the desk. But he paused before sitting down and told President Medvedev: "Now this is your place," Russia's Kommersant daily reported. "Oh, what's the difference?" Medvedev answered and immediately sat on the right of the desk, where Putin's guests traditionally perched for the eight years of his presidency.

MOSCOW (AP) — When Boris Yeltsin left the Kremlin eight years ago, he gave Vladimir Putin the pen he had used to sign important documents and decrees, a gesture symbolizing the transfer of power to Russia's new president. When Putin left the Kremlin, he took the pen with him. Putin, who became prime minister Thursday, has signaled that he intends to remain Russia's principal leader, at least in the short term — and possibly much longer. He is keeping the trappings of his presidency and many of its powers as well. It was not always meant to be this way....

...Vaclav Havel, one of the very few truly great men of our time,... [a] lifelong advocate of nonviolent resistance, the last president of Czechoslovakia and the first president of the Czech Republic, is a very old 71, a frail survivor of cancer and years in Communist cells. But he's as passionate as ever about freedom. The climax of his speech to NATO's military and civilian leaders was a stark warning about Russia: "A dictatorship of a fairly new type is coming into existence to the east of the area under NATO protection. All basic human and civic freedoms are gradually...

Kremlin hawks feed conspiracy theories with 3,200 white mice Mark Franchetti RUSSIANS bored by today’s predictable presidential election have turned their attention to a puzzle that emerged from the corridors of power last week: what on earth did the Kremlin want with 3,200 white mice worth more than £10,000? The Federal Guard Service, the Russian equivalent of the American Secret Service and guardian of both Vladimir Putin’s security and the Kremlin grounds, advertised for the rodents, specifying that they should be female, white, laboratory-bred and weighing no more than 18 grams (just over half an ounce). Delivery to be arranged...

The Kremlin is planning to falsify the results of this Sunday's presidential election in Russia by compelling millions of public sector workers to vote and by fraudulently boosting the official turnout after polls close, the Guardian has learned. Governors, regional officials, and even headteachers have been instructed to deliver a landslide majority for Dmitry Medvedev - Russia's first deputy prime minister, whom President Vladimir Putin has endorsed to be his successor. Officials have been told they need to secure a 68% to 70% turnout in this weekend's poll - with around 72% casting votes for Medvedev. However, independent analysts believe...

<p>One year ago, Kremlin critic Paul Joyal was gunned down in the driveway of his suburban Maryland home. The case remains unsolved — but some see the hand of Russia in the shooting.</p> <p>Joyal, 53, is the former chief of security for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and a former business partner of retired Soviet KGB Gen. Oleg Kalugin.</p>

What killed Badri Patarkatsishvili? As the police scour his home for clues and a pathologist conducts a post-mortem examination, conspiracy theorists will point to the company he kept on the day he died. On Tuesday afternoon, hours before his death, Patarkatsishvili was with Boris Berezovsky at the law offices of Lord Goldsmith, the former attorney general, in the City. Berezovsky is at the centre of London-based opposition to Russian president Vladimir Putin's government and on Tuesday he, Patarkatsishvili and their friend Yuli Dubov swore witness statements related to various cases in the former Soviet Union involving seizure of assets and...

Putin Threatens to Target Neighbors AP February 14, 2008 MOSCOW -- President Vladimir Putin on Thursday repeated his threat to aim Russian rockets at former Soviet satellite states if U.S. missile defense facilities are deployed there. Speaking about U.S. plans for interceptors in Poland and a radar system in the Czech Republic, Mr. Putin said that "our experts consider that this system threatens our national security and if it appears, we will be obligated to adequately react to this." "We are warning people ahead of time: if you take this step, then we will make this step," Mr. Putin told...

Putin holds final annual news conference of 8-year Russian presidency AP MOSCOW: Vladimir Putin extolled Russia's economic revival and staked a claim to a role in ruling the country for the foreseeable future as he responded to questions Thursday at the final annual Kremlin news conference of his eight-year presidency. Putin used the nationally televised marathon of more than 4 1/2 hours to burnish his image as a competent, caring president in control of a resurgent country with growing influence. He stressed that Russia wants good relations with the West, but will stand up to any perceived threat from the...

via translation - MOSCOW - Dmitry Medvedev, candidate of presidential power to the Russian in 2008, called Tuesday for Putin to the post of prime minister once from the Kremlin. "It is important to maintain the effectiveness of the team. So I think important for our country to remain extremely important to the post of executive power, the Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin," he said in a affidavit to Russian television.

In 1984 a book was published with the title New Lies For Old. It was written by Soviet KGB defector Anatoly Golitsyn. The book claimed that the Soviet Union had a secret long-term strategy to disarm and defeat the United States through a controlled collapse of the Soviet empire that would take place in the last decade of the twentieth century. In the book's most remarkable chapter, titled "The Final Phase," Golitsyn accurately described the future of the Soviet bloc. Communism would give up its monopoly of power in Russia, he explained, as apparent freedom and democracy would be introduced....

Among the neon and the glitz of Moscow's car-choked streets, a new hoarding stands out for its stark simplicity. Apart from the colours of the Russian flag, there is no image and its wording is short: "Putin's plan, Russia's victory".

Investigator: Journalist's killer known By STEVE GUTTERMAN Associated Press Writer MOSCOW - After a year and nearly a dozen arrests, the main mystery in the slaying of a Russian journalist strongly critical of the Kremlin remains unsolved — who ordered her killed, the chief investigator said in an interview published Monday. Investigators know who pulled the trigger in the fatal shooting of Anna Politikovskaya at her Moscow apartment building, Petros Garibyan, a senior investigator in the Prosecutor General's Office, told the newspaper she worked for, Novaya Gazeta. "As for those who ordered it, we have interesting suggestions, let's put it...

President Vladimir Putin appears to have solved a riddle that has puzzled Kremlin watchers and investors alike: how will Putin keep power without office? Putin's answer seems to be: stay in office -- but this time as the most influential member of parliament's biggest party, and even as prime minister. He told a congress of the United Russia party on Monday that he could be a future prime minister and that he would head the party's list in December parliamentary elections. Kremlin officials, ministers, deputies and members of United Russia roared with applause and gave a Putin a standing ovation....

Can anyone control the forces the Russian president has unleashed? A couple of weeks back, while news readers were averting their gaze from photographs of a shirtless Vladimir Putin fishing in Siberia, two videos circulating on the Internet laid bare a different, much more chilling, portion of the Russian body politic. The first was a crude bit of agitprop thought to originate with the Nashi, a Kremlin-funded youth movement loyal to Putin whose work involves denouncing the president's critics as fascists, homosexuals or foreign-controlled traitors. The eight-minute clip, which eventually found its way to YouTube, was ostensibly meant to persuade...

Russian Youth Group Encourages "More Sex" to Save Motherland from Dwindling Population By John Jalsevac MOSCOW, Russia, July 30, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A Russian nationalist youth group is encouraging youth to have more sex in an effort to combat the nation's devastating demographic crisis, reports the Daily Mail. In a lengthy special report the Daily Mail documents the activities of the Nashi youth movement, which is sponsoring a summer camp attended by some 10,000 Russian youth this summer. Not only are Nashi organizers encouraging the youth to have more sex, but they have designated a special area at the dormitories,...

Excerpt - RAF fighter jets were scrambled to intercept two Russian strategic bombers heading for British airspace yesterday, as the spirit of the Cold War returned to the North Atlantic once again. The incident, described as rare by the RAF, served as a telling metaphor for the stand-off between London and Moscow over the murder of Alexander Litvinenko. While the Kremlin hesitated before responding to Britain’s expulsion of four diplomats, the Russian military engaged in some old-fashioned sabre-rattling. Two Tu95 “Bear” bombers were dispatched from their base on the Kola Peninsula in the Arctic Circle and headed towards British airspace....

Vladimir Putin, the 21st Century Politician Young Russians love their President who, according to all reports, is immensely popular and not just in Russia. The 21st Century Politician: Common Decency, Honesty and Fair Play Covering the wide range of issues in the interview given to the G8 nations’ reporters, published in full Monday on the official Kremlin web site, the most popular man in Russia — President Vladimir Putin — demonstrates the level of personal integrity and wisdom the international political stage has been devoid of during the entire century, if not longer. In the world of international politics polluted...

Estonian authorities annulled a visa for a Russian woman who protested against the recent dismantling of a Soviet-era memorial in the Estonian capital, and are considering deportation of another two protesters. Alexandra Bondarenko, apprehended earlier Monday, has already had her visa annulled, and is to be deported shortly. The other two detainees, identified only by their first names - Alexandra and Nadezhda - could also face expulsion. All the three detainees are 21 years old, and entered Estonia on tourist visas. The young women affiliated with the pro-Kremlin youth movement Nashi were detained in central Tallinn at the former site...

Russia tested new missiles Tuesday that a Kremlin official boasted could penetrate any defense system, and President Vladimir Putin warned that U.S. plans for an anti-missile shield in Europe would turn the region into a "powder keg." First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov said Russia tested an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of carrying multiple independent warheads, and it also successfully conducted a "preliminary" test of a tactical cruise missile that he said could fly farther than existing, similar weapons. "As of today, Russia has new tactical and strategic complexes that are capable of overcoming any existing or future missile defense...

Russia is deploying a new series of nuclear tipped missiles with warheads designed with the aid of US supercomputers. The new Russian SS-X-27 missile is being moved directly into deployment with an advanced 550 kiloton nuclear warhead made by the Arzamas-16 nuclear design bureau. The original version of the TOPOL - mod 1 version - is designated the SS-25. This mobile missile is quite capable and can reach the US with a variety of weapons packages, including nuclear warheads of Russian design. In early 1997 Russian Atomic energy officials (MINATOM) admitted that an IBM super-computer was purchased from Europe by...