Free Republic

The Su-33 aircraft skidded off the runway while landing on the Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean, Russian news agencies reported on Monday citing a statement from the Russian defence ministry. The pilot ejected from the plane and is safe, the defence ministry was quoted as saying. A statement from the ministry, said: "While landing after completing a combat task in the Syrian sky, a Su-33 fighter jet skidded off the dock because the cable of the stopping device broke. "The pilot ejected and was immediately brought aboard the Admiral Kuznetsov heavy aircraft carrier by rescuers. "His life is...

Russia will begin building new aircraft carriers after 2020, Russian navy chief Viktor Chirkov said on Thursday, in a major boost to Moscow's ability to deploy air power abroad. “At the moment, the construction bureau has received its assignment, the documents are being processed, and the money for the construction program has been allocated,” Chirkov said. If the plans reach fruition, it would be a major boon to the Russian navy, which currently fields only one aging aircraft carrier, the Admiral Kuznetsov. The Kuznetsov, part of the navy’s Northern Fleet, was built in 1985 and has been scheduled to undergo...

Early in the morning of April 16th, Georgian Interior Ministry agents arrested a young Russian man named Alexander Kuznetsov in the Georgian city of Gori.  Kuznetsov had crossed into the disputed territory of South Ossetia a few days earlier, without applying for a Georgian visa, and then entered Georgia proper without legal authority to do so. The territory is internationally recognized as Georgian, but is now controlled by the Russian army after a pitched battle with Georgian forces that caused an international sensation last August. Gori, located a Molotov cocktail's throw from the Ossetian border, is not just any city...

Russia sect holes up in cave to await end of world Thu Nov 15, 2007 10:53am GMT     [] []   By Tatyana UstinovaMOSCOW (Reuters) - At least 30 members of a Russian doomsday cult have barricaded themselves in a remote cave to await the end of the world and are threatening to commit suicide if police intervene, officials and media said on Thursday."They have covered the entrance and refuse to come out and are threatening to blow themselves up," an official in the local prosecutor's office told Reuters by telephone. "They threaten to detonate a gas tank...

Russia's Foreign Ministry said Saturday that it was disappointed with a U.S. court decision to sentence a former Russian diplomat to the U.N. to prison for money laundering and fraud. The ministry said in a statement that it would consider demanding Vladimir Kuznetsov be returned to Russia. The former diplomat, who once chaired the United Nations' powerful budget oversight committee, was sentenced Friday to four years and three months in prison by a U.S. district court after being found guilty in March of laundering money from foreign companies seeking U.N. contracts. He was also ordered to pay a $73,000 (€51,500)...

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's Foreign Ministry poured scorn on a U.S. court's conviction of one of its U.N. diplomats for money laundering, saying on Thursday it had grave doubts about the trial. Vladimir Kuznetsov, 49, who once chaired a U.N. budget committee, was found guilty on Wednesday of helping launder more than $300,000 in bribes and taking a share of the money. He faces up to 20 years in prison. Foreign Ministry spokesman Mikhail Kamynin said in a statement that Russia had been amazed by his arrest, which it considered unnecessary for the investigation. "During the process and trial, the...

UNITED NATIONS - A Russian U.N. official accused of money laundering was released on $500,000 bail posted by his government on Friday, Russia's U.N. Mission said. Vladimir Kuznetsov, 48, who chaired the powerful U.N. budget oversight committee, had been jailed since Sept. 1 on charges that he conspired with a U.N. procurement officer to launder hundreds of thousands of dollars from foreign companies seeking contracts with the world body. He has pleaded innocent to the charges. Maria Zakharova, press secretary at Russia's U.N. Mission, confirmed that Kuznetsov was freed after the Russian government paid his $500,000 bail. Moscow is keeping...

NEW YORK — The scandal engulfing the United Nations Procurement Department () now appears to be bottomless. It also shows signs of growing more sinister, especially where it involves a mysterious private company called IHC Services (), which did big business with the procurement department until it was removed from U.N. rosters in June. New details of how dark the scandal could prove to be have emerged from the private sale of IHC on June 3, 2005, just as the procurement scandal was about to break. It now appears that while doing business with the U.N., IHC had links both to Saddam...

This month, Russia lost two jet fighters during military exercises that simulated a major war with NATO. A naval task force was deployed in the North Atlantic on a mission to intercept and destroy U.S. reinforcements heading to the European theater of war. During exercises on Sept. 5, a Su-33 jet fighter fell off the flight deck of the aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov during landing and sank. The pilot ejected and was rescued. Then on Thursday, seven Air Force jet fighters were sent from the St. Petersburg area to fly over the neutral waters of the Baltic Sea to Kaliningrad....