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Kiev, Ukraine (CNN) -- Russia recalled its ambassador to NATO for consultations Thursday, two days after NATO member countries suspended cooperation with Russia over the Ukraine crisis, Russian state media reported. Col. Gen. Valery Yevnevich will return to Moscow in light of NATO's actions, official news agency ITAR-Tass said, citing Russian Deputy Defence Minister Anatoly Antonov's remarks to journalists. "The policy of (deliberately) whipping up tensions is not our choice. Nonetheless, we see no possibility to continue military cooperation with NATO in a routine regime," Antonov is quoted as saying. He accused NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen of making...

Russia says it wants answers from NATO regarding activities in eastern Europe, after the Western military alliance said it would step up defenses for its eastern members. Russia's move to annex the Crimea region from Ukraine last month has sparked the worst East-West crisis since the Cold War, and raised fears among its eastern European neighbors.

Amid Economy Disaster, French Socialists Get Crushed in Election 02 April 2014 With France's economy falling apart under Socialist President Francois Hollande, the French voted this weekend for change — real change — in massive numbers. ... Full Article:http://www.thenewamerican.com/world-news/europe/item/17964-amid-economy-disaster-french-socialists-get-crushed-in-election

The soldiers guarding the entrances to the surrounded Ukrainian military base here just south of the capital, Simferopol, had little in common with their predecessors from past Russian military actions. They were lean, fit and sober. Few if any seemed to be conscripts. Their uniforms were crisp and neat, and their new helmets were bedecked with tinted safety goggles. And there was another indicator of an army undergoing an upgrade: compact encrypted radio units distributed at the small-unit level, including for soldiers standing such routine duty as guard shifts beside machine-gun trucks. The radios are a telltale sign of a...

The Libyan civil war did more harm to the country, its people, economy and its neighbors in North Africa when NATO intervened at the behest of U.S. President Barack Obama, concluded a University of Texas-Austin professor Alan Kuperman. He gave his remarks at the libertarian think tank Cato Institute. Associate professor of public affairs Alan Kuperman is an associate professor of public affairs and he criticized NATO’s intervention in the Libyan civil war. The civil war pitted rebels against government forces loyal to dictator Muammar Qaddafi. Kuperman was grateful to Obama for outlining the definition of success in Libya for...

Eighteen countries, including five of the world’s leading arms exporters, ratified a landmark treaty regulating the multibillion-dollar global arms trade on Wednesday, giving a significant boost to the campaign for the treaty’s entry into force. […] Five of the world’s top 10 arms exporters—Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain—turned in their ratification documents at the ceremony. The other 13 were Bulgaria, Croatia, Denmark, El Salvador, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Latvia, Malta, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. Among the hold-outs is the United States, the world’s largest weapons exporter. The Obama administration has signed the treaty but there is strong resistance in...

France's socialist prime minister Jean-Marc Ayrault resigned yesterday. Joined by his entire government following meltdown in local elections .. Resignation is huge blow to France's social President Francois Hollande. Last night, Hollande admitted mistakes and said priority was to cut taxes ... last night socialist President Francois Hollande – whose rule has become synonymous with a 75 per cent top rate of income tax – admitted to mistakes and said his priority was now to cut taxes. The government’s resignation is a huge blow to the president, who was elected to a five-year term in 2012 but whose first two...

Four years ago, Poland was set to become the staging ground for advanced U.S. ballistic missile interceptors. But after the plan collapsed—and seeing defense budgets in the rest of Europe on the decline—Polish political leaders decided they needed their military to fend for itself. And now with an aggressive Russia bearing down on Ukraine, Warsaw is getting even more worried—and prepared.

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin warned that if Senator Barack Obama were elected president, his "indecision" and "moral equivalence" may encourage Russia's Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine. Palin said then: "After the Russian Army invaded the nation of Georgia, Senator Obama's reaction was one of indecision and moral equivalence, the kind of response that would only encourage Russia's Putin to invade Ukraine next." For those comments, she was mocked by the high-brow Foreign Policy magazine and its editor Blake Hounshell, who now is one of the editors of Politico magazine. In light of recent...

Poland asked Nato to station 10,000 troops on its territory on Tuesday as a visible demonstration of the Alliance's resolve to defend all its members after Russia's seizure of Crimea. Nato foreign ministers met in Brussels to consider requests for soldiers to be deployed in Poland and the Baltic States, all of which share borders with Russia. Nato generals and admirals have been ordered to devise ways to better protect alliance members that feel threatened by Russia, and "all practical civilian and military cooperation" with Russia. President Vladimir Putin has massed about 40,000 troops near Ukraine's eastern frontier, giving himself...

Public backs continued NATO commitment (Poll) by Peter Moore Tue April 1, 2014 6:55 a.m. PDT Most Americans still back the US's defense commitment to other members of NATO, though doubts creep in when asked about specific countries The Russian annexation of Crimea, which is still a part of Ukraine in the eyes of the international community, has raised fears in other former Soviet states that they may soon lose parts of their territory. Most of these countries don't have an alliance with the United States, but three - Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia - are members of NATO. As...

GOOGLE TRANSLATION: Representatives of the Alliance members have also stated that they would consider NATO's relationship with Russia at the next meeting in June NATO suspends practical civil and military cooperation with Russia. This is stated in the statement adopted by the Foreign Ministers - NATO members after the meeting. "We have decided to suspend all practical civil and military cooperation between NATO and Russia," - said in a statement . "Our political dialogue in the NATO-Russia Council can continue, if necessary, at the ambassadorial level and above, allowing us to share their views, especially with regard to this crisis,"...

Why Poland Loves Ukraine ... For Now MARCH 28, 2014 Slawomir Sierakowski Eastern Europe, which beginning with Poland is celebrating its 25th anniversary of freedom from Communism, has suddenly awakened from a beautiful dream about the end of history. No less an authority than Adam Michnik, the legendary Polish anti-Communist dissident, recently announced that 2014 marks the end of the best period in Poland’s history in three centuries. We are entering uncertain times: In contrast to Eastern Europe’s foray into independence after World War I, no close intraregional alliances were formed in the aftermath of 1989; rather, each country placed...

NATO's foreign ministers ordered an end to civilian and military cooperation with Russia on Tuesday and told their generals and admirals to quickly figure out ways to better protect alliance members that feel threatened by Vladimir Putin's Kremlin. The 28-member alliance, the keystone of U.S. and European security since the end of World War II, was reacting to its most serious crisis in years: Russia's unilateral annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula, which the U.S. and its allies have condemned as an illegal land grab. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and the other ministers, meeting at NATO headquarters in Brussels...

NATO sees no sign that Russia is pulling its forces back from the border with Ukraine, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said Tuesday, despite Moscow's claim of a partial pullback. The alliance's foreign ministers also decided to suspend all civilian and military cooperation between NATO and Russia, according to a joint statement. "Unfortunately I cannot confirm that Russia is withdrawing its troops," Rasmussen said at the opening of a two-day meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Brussels, Belgium. "This is not what we're seeing. And this massive military buildup can in no way contribute to a de-escalation of the...

Germany has said its air force is ready to increase security on NATO’s border with Russia, despite Moscow’s promise not to escalate the crisis in Ukraine. A German defense ministry spokeswoman told the Reuters news agency on Sunday (30 March) “the army could take part in flights to patrol airspace with AWACS machines [surveillance planes] over Romania and Poland as well as training flights in the framework of a NATO air policing mission over Baltic states”. The statement comes after Denmark and the US in the past few weeks agreed to send more than a dozen extra F-16 fighter jets...

NATO No More: One for all and all for naught by Daniel Clark Ukraine is not a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organizaion, but it did have an agreement with us, which has proven to be all but meaningless. That realization, driven home by Russia’s annexation of Crimea, has got to have recently admitted Eastern European NATO members wondering just how worthless, or even counterproductive, their alliance with the U.S. and its Western European partners has been. The Budapest Memorandum of 1994, signed by President Clinton, British Prime Minister John Major, and Russian President Boris Yeltsin, promised on behalf...

The Obama administration has been secretly giving Russia free Multiple Integrated Laser Engagement System (MILES), a tactical force-on-force trainer, which uses a system of lasers and dummy ammunition to simulate ground combat for soldiers.

LONDON — President Obama spent Wednesday in Brussels talking up the importance of the security relationship between Europe and the United States, but it is considered unlikely that Russia’s seizure of Crimea will prompt increased European military spending at a time of economic anemia and budget cuts. NATO and the European Union regard the Russian move in Ukraine as a wake-up call, a reminder that hard power can easily trump 21st-century assumptions about Europe as a sphere of trade, international law and cooperation. Despite the newly militant tone, NATO members will continue to spend paltry amounts on defense, experts say....

Halfway home from Saudi Arabia, US secretary of state John Kerry has abruptly changed course. He will now stay in Europe for talks on Ukraine. The news followed reports from Russia that Kerry had spoken to the Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, by phone, a day after President Vladimir Putin called President Barack Obama. The Russian foreign ministry said Washington had initiated the call between Kerry and Lavrov, adding that they discussed Ukraine and plans for further contact. Flying from Riyadh to Ireland for a refuelling stop on Saturday, Kerry decided to turn around after speaking to Lavrov from the...