Free Republic

The larger-than-life Russian leader has held power — with one title or another — for 15 years, and is set to reign for at least a decade more. Yet Putin remains inscrutable. With only a smattering of biographical details released to the public and his sometimes puzzling public appearances, scholars — and even many world leaders — still struggle to understand the man at the helm of the Kremlin. To glean a clearer picture, FRONTLINE took a closer look at some of the most identifiable aspects of Putin’s public persona. --------------------------------------------------------- Putin’s Way, FRONTLINE’s investigation into the accusations of criminality...

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro met Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Salman in Riyadh on Sunday as part of a diplomatic tour of OPEC members to discuss falling oil prices, which have hit its economy hard. The Saudi side in the meeting included Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi and several princes including Deputy Crown Prince Muqrin, intelligence chief Prince Khaled bin Bandar and three sons of King Abdullah, who is in hospital, state media reported. No details of the meeting were given by the official Saudi Press Agency and there was no indication that the world's biggest oil exporter was any closer to...

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush appears poised for a presidential run and is currently leading the polls among potential Republican candidates for 2016, but the comments he made in 1994 during his first run for Florida’s highest office may come back to haunt him.The Associated Press reports that Bush described himself then as a “head-banging conservative” and used fiery rhetoric — such as claiming he would do “probably nothing” for African-Americans if he became governor — in his ultimately unsuccessful bid. Bush made that statement in response to a question on what he would for African-Americans if elected to office.“It’s time...

From the first day of 2011, Mitt Romney was the favorite to win the 2012 Republican presidential primary campaign. No one else was even close. The 2016 outlook could not be more different. Offered the choice to bet on one single candidate to win the nomination versus the rest of the field, the choice would have to be "the field." For the first time in years, there is no one next in line. And without a former vice president or powerhouse former candidate looking likely to run, Republicans are shaping up to spend the next year and a half fighting...

Falling world oil prices will hurt countries across the Middle East unless Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest crude exporter, takes action to reverse the slump, Iran’s deputy foreign minister told Reuters. Hossein Amir Abdollahian described Saudi Arabia’s inaction in the face of a six-month slide in oil prices as a strategic mistake and said he still hoped the kingdom, Tehran’s main rival in the Gulf, would respond. Oil prices closed on Wednesday at a 5½ year low, registering their second-biggest ever annual decline after OPEC oil exporters, led by Saudi Arabia, chose to maintain oil output despite a global glut...

Now that President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry have launched their new friendship initiative with Cuba, progressives are thinking more optimistically about what else might be possible in the remainder of the president’s term. After all, since the November 2014 elections, Obama has moved sharply left on immigration, climate change, and net neutrality. So why shouldn’t the Left hope for more? What might be next on the Obama agenda? Breitbart News has obtained one such to-do list: 10. Marijuana to be completely decriminalized under the ever-expanding doctrine of “prosecutorial discretion.” In the meantime, the administration will push...

All three rating agencies are expected to downgrade Russia's debt to junk soon and bailouts to Russian banks are on the rise, but how likely is default? The Financial Times reports ... Russia trebled the size of its bailout of troubled lender Trust Bank to Rbs99bn ($1.9bn) on Friday, laying bare the growing financial fallout from its currency crisis and the slump in the price of oil, its main export. The rapidly rising cost makes the rescue of Trust bank, which foundered as the rouble collapsed early last week, the second-largest seen in Russia. It has now consumed a tenth...

All politics are local, except for oil politics. The Russians think these low oil prices are an American-Saudi conspiracy. American commentators believe that the Saudis have driven down prices to punish North Dakota’s shale oil revolution and drive its high-cost producers out of the game. In Canada, the paranoia in Calgary is that the Saudis and other Gulf oil producers want to drive the oil sands out of business. But what are the Saudis up to and are they powerful enough to control prices? This week the Saudi minister blamed low prices on oversupply from North America. But that is...

When a president is in crisis, it is usually a propitious time for political opponents to pounce. But in Mexico, the controversies, failings and crisis of confidence engulfing President Enrique Peña Nieto have tarred not just his 2-year-old administration but the entire political establishment.

The consortium building the third set of locks for the Panama Canal is making fresh claims for cost overruns totaling $737 million ... Work began in 2007 to expand the canal with a third set of locks to enable it to handle the modern mega-freighters that global shipping companies prefer. But the $5.25 billion project has been plagued by delays, strikes and a bitter dispute over $1.6 billion in cost overruns with the consortium carrying out the upgrade, led by Spanish construction firm Sacyr. Initially scheduled for completion in 2014, the project's due date has been pushed back to early...

In a new poll of likely Republican primary voters nationwide by Zogby Analytics, 2012 GOP nominee Romney leads the pack with 14%, followed by former Florida Governor Jeb Bush (12%), Kentucky Senator Rand Paul (10%), New Jersey Governor Chris Christie (8%), former Arkansas Governor and now Fox News Host Mike Huckabee (7%), Florida Senator Marco Rubio (7%), Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker (5%), Rep. and former Vice Presidential nominee Paul Ryan (4%), Texas Governor Rick Perry (4%), Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal (3%), Texas Senator Ted Cruz (3%), South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley (2%), former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum (1%), and both...

Florida has long been the home of a large Cuban-American community. The issue of American-Cuban relations is a major issue in the state. Charlie Crist, Florida's former governor, joined CBSN on Wednesday to discuss how President Obama's move to restore diplomatic ties with Cuba will impact the state. According to Crist, the economic impact will be significant because the easing of restrictions on the island will spur redevelopment. Former Florida gov. Charlie Crist GETTY IMAGES "You talk about housing changes, schooling, infrastructure, the natural launching pad for much of that redevelopment is the state of Florida," Crist said. Cuba is...

The ongoing plunge in global oil prices is pushing Venezuela toward economic collapse just as President Nicolas Maduro — the hand-picked successor to the late socialist Hugo Chavez — faces mounting international criticism for jailing opposition figures after months of street protests. Where Chavez once drew praise from the world’s leftist elite for using the high price of crude oil during the 2000s to underwrite a socialist revolution, a growing number of analysts in Washington say Mr. Maduro is clinging to power in a country on the edge of becoming a failed state. Venezuela still boasts some of the world’s...

As a conscripted soldier during the Contra War of the 1980s, Esteban Ruiz used to flee from battles because he didn't want to have to kill anyone. But now, as the 47-year-old farmer prepares to fight for his land, Ruiz insists, "I'm not going to run." Ruiz's property on the banks of Nicaragua's Rio Grande sits in the path of a $50 billion transoceanic waterway set to break ground on Monday. Nicaraguan officials will start building access roads on state-owned land as the first step in creating a canal expected to rival that of Panama - a project supporters say...

Gallows humour is back in Moscow. Asked what he would do to stop the rouble spiralling out of control, the former governor of Russia’s central bank replied: “I would pick up a pistol and shoot myself.” This was the week when the country’s long-festering crisis turned virulent. A last-ditch attempt to defend the exchange rate by raising interest rates to 17pc failed within hours, yet the shock is surely enough to set off a chain of corporate failures and push banks over the edge. Traders in the City watched open-mouthed as the dam broke on Black Tuesday. The event exposed...

The West shouldn’t stoke the fires engulfing Russia’s wounded economy. Talk in Washington and Brussels this week of levying further economic sanctions on Russia seems counterproductive and will only make matters worse for all parties involved. Like it or not, Russia’s economy has grown simply “too big to fail,” and its political and military might is too dangerous to ignore. The West might have better luck in advancing its goals in the region by helping, not hurting, the Russian bear in its time of need.

Diplomacy: As the Castros rejoice at President Obama's move to normalize ties, extend trade credits, take their country off the terror list and free its deadly spies, the queasy question remains: What did the U.S. get in return? The question is being asked by the more serious leaders in Washington. Marco Rubio for one. "(Obama's) foreign policy is, at a minimum, naive and perhaps truly counterproductive to the future of democracy in the region," said the Florida senator in the wake of the giveaway. "Barack Obama is the worst negotiator that we've had as president since at least Jimmy Carter,...

Fresh off his 2012 re-election victory, President Barack Obama summoned senior advisers to a series of meetings, asking them to “think big” about a second-term agenda, including the possibilities of new starts with long-standing U.S. foes such as Iran and Cuba. Two years later, after painstaking secret diplomacy on separate but surprisingly similar tracks, efforts with Tehran and Havana are in full swing. The nuclear negotiations with Iran continue and are far from a guaranteed success. But Wednesday’s announcement that the U.S. and Cuba will normalize relations after more than 50 years of hostility suggests one of the last chapters...

WASHINGTON, DC -- U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, today released the following statement regarding the President’s announcement to change U.S. policy with Cuba and lift economic embargos. “We rejoice that Alan Gross’ wrongful imprisonment by the brutal Castro regime has finally come to an end, and that he will be able to spend the holidays with his loved ones. But make no mistake, although we are glad Alan is now free, the agreement the Obama Administration has entered into with the Castro regime has done nothing to resolve the underlying problem. Indeed, it has made it worse. “Fidel and Raul...

So who benefits the most from this new ‘relationship’ between the United States and Cuba? Aficionados’ will soon be able to smoke fine Cuban cigars without having to smuggle them into the U.S., but beyond that what exactly has the U.S. gained by Barack Obama’s diplomatic overture towards the brutal communist dictatorship in Havana? The Caribbean island has been locked in the 1950’s for decades as the rest of the world moved into the twenty-first century. But while trapped in the past Cuba has certainly been involved over the years in current events, and usually not in a particularly positive...