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It’s hard to tell who was more angry that President Trump didn’t keep records of some of his phone calls with Russian President Vladimir Putin: the Democrats or the mainstream media. There’s an argument to be made that it’s the Democrats since there are reports that they’re thinking about subpoenaing his Russian interpreter. But no matter who comes out on top in that contest, the reasons which have been suggested are consistently hilarious, ranging from suspicions that Trump is an employee of someone in Russia to the possibility that he’s a deep cover mole.For a dose of reality, though,...

At least six times more Russians are leaving the country than officially estimated, a comprehensive study conducted by the Proekt news outlet said on Wednesday. Proekt’s report highlights discrepancies between official data from the Rosstat federal statistics agency and data compiled by countries where Russians emigrate to. Rosstat estimates 377,000 Russians left the country in 2017, the latest period for which figures are available and a six-year record. “The U.S. Department of Homeland Security counted six times more Russians arriving in 2017 than Rosstat recorded leaving,” Proekt said. “Six times more people left Russia for 24 OECD countries, where foreign...

Newsrooms turned their attention again this week to the never-ending Russia investigation and their storylines on President Trump’s relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin. So it’s as good a time as any to recall the New York Times’ posture on Russia before 2016. The Times editorial board on Monday listed all the ways Trump is perceived by Democrats and liberals in the news media as working to advance Russian interests, including his “secretive communications with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin.” In this case “secretive communications” is short for: Trump had a meeting with Putin, but Trump asked that the American...

Newly minted House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff hinted over the weekend that he could subpoena notes or testimony from the interpreter in several meetings between President Trump and Russia's Vladimir Putin, a move that would dramatically escalate majority Democrats' investigations into the Trump administration. The chamber's newly empowered Democratic committee chairmen already are probing a range of Trump controversies, including calling a hearing with ex-fixer Michael Cohen who has detailed Trump's alleged role in making hush-money payments to mistresses. But a move to obtain interpreter details from Putin meetings would trigger a major confrontation between the executive and legislative...

Legendary journalist Carl Bernstein has said that he’s been told that special counsel Robert Mueller’s report will show how President Donald Trump helped Russia “destabilize the United States.” Bernstein, who is renowned for his coverage of the Watergate scandal that led to the resignation of former President Richard Nixon, appeared on CNN’s Reliable Sources on Sunday to discuss two bombshell reports released this weekend, one from The New York Times and one from The Washington Post, which revealed new details about whether or not Trump and his aides have colluded with Russia.

MOSCOW -- Two have fled the country. Another is in jail, his oil empire in ruins. Russian President Vladimir Putin has largely succeeded in his campaign pledge to make oligarchs -- the powerful tycoons who emerged in the chaos of post-Soviet Russia -- disappear "as a class." Now, most of the country's super-rich are either packing up or hunkering down and trying to stay on the government's good side. Except Mikhail Fridman. Using bare-knuckles business tactics, the 41-year-old built an $8 billion empire spanning oil, telecoms, banking and retail. Now, he's picking a fight with Leonid Reiman, Russia's telecommunications minister...

Shortened title. Full title: BREAKING: Staunch Hillary Supporter is the Same Source Behind the Bogus Trump-Russia Bank Connections and Bogus Elements in Steele Dossier! A review of the data pertaining to the accusations in the phony Steele dossier about a Trump-Russia Bank connection discovered the sources used is most likely the same source the FBI used to obtain a FISA warrant to investigate the Trump-Alfa Bank connection. This person also just happens to be a radical Hillary Clinton supporter! It’s been more than two years since the 2016 election and Americans still don’t really know the sources for the phony...

In a wide-ranging, 5,000-word interview in Kazan’s Business-Gazeta, Moscoc commentator Konstantin Kalachev says that over the last year, five significant things have changed in Russia, but five equally significant ones have not, a pattern likely to continue in 2019. The five things he says have changed include: 1. A growing sense among all Russians that the old model of the system based on confrontation with the West and of Russia as a besieged fortress has exhausted itself without a new model having been put in place or even thought up. 2. Russians feel that the views them with hostility, that...

“Since the year 2000 is that history has been gradually re-politicized. And the Russians started treating history that way. They’ve become more sensitive again about discussing this sort of crimes of their past. For the Russians, understanding the history of the gulag is absolutely crucial. It is also crucial for the West" ...Under President Putin, the Stalin period has come to be viewed with ambiguity by politicians, writers, film makers, and regrettably the public. The stories of the victims of the gulag, told by simple people who had little or no understanding of why this was happening to them, make...

The Nord Stream 2 pipeline is running into some trouble amid withering opposition from the Trump administration. As it stands, Russia still needs to ship large volumes of gas to Europe via Ukraine. Nord Stream 2 would allow Russian gas to bypass Ukraine, giving Russia more leverage to meddle in Ukraine while still reliably delivering gas to Europe. Merkel has been supportive of the project, not least because several major western European companies have stakes in the pipeline, including Royal Dutch Shell, as well as major German companies Wintershall and BASF. Last year, Merkel, under intense pressure from the Trump...

When two of Russia’s most modern, nuclear-capable bombers landed in Venezuela earlier this week, American officials quickly took note. #Russia's government has sent bombers halfway around the world to #Venezuela. The Russian and Venezuelan people should see this for what it is: two corrupt governments squandering public funds, and squelching liberty and freedom while their people suffer. pic.twitter.com/bCBGbGtaHT — Secretary Pompeo (@SecPompeo) December 11, 2018 The arrival of the Tu-160 “White Swan” strategic bombers in Caracas on Monday serves to remind the United States that Russia can still project military might into the Western hemisphere. The Tu-160 bombers were manufactured...

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro says he is open to the possibility of the United States some day opening a military base in the South American country and added that Brazil was concerned about Russia’s ties to Venezuela. "Depending on what might happen in the world, who knows if we might have to talk about a U.S. base in the future," the 63-year-old far-right president, who assumed office on January 1, told SBT television in an interview. Bolsonaro, who said he is a fan of President Donald Trump, said he supports U.S. policy with regard to opposing the "authoritarian regimes" of...

President Vladimir Putin defended the jailing of a 77-year-old veteran activist over calls to a protest, saying that Russia doesn’t want a repeat of events like the “yellow vest” demonstrations that have rocked France in recent weeks. Moscow’s District Court sentenced human rights activist Lev Ponomaryov to 25 days in jail for allegedly called for a rally against the detention of a group of young people... Ponomaryov, whose sentence was later reduced to 16 days, was barred from attending the funeral of his longtime friend, veteran rights activist Lyudmila Alexeyeva — a ceremony Putin attended. “We don’t want to have...

Earlier this month, Putin said the constitution is “not some fossilized legal construct but a living, developing organism.” The speaker of Russia’s parliament raised the possibility of changing the constitution as speculation grows that the Kremlin is considering ways to allow President Vladimir Putin to remain in power beyond the end of his current term, when current law requires him to step down. “This is about the transfer of power,” said Gleb Pavlovsky, a political analyst and former Kremlin aide. “Putin encourages this game, dropping ambiguous hints. The comments from Vyacheslav Volodin, speaker of the State Duma and a top...

A former commander of NATO said allies of the U.S. are asking whether President Trump was blackmailed by Turkey to pull U.S. military forces out of Syria. In a CNN segment Monday, Wesley Clark, a retired Army general and former Democratic presidential candidate, said there was no apparent strategic logic for the move that critics view as an abdication to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. "You have to ask why was the decision made?" Clarke said on Christmas Eve. "People around the world are asking this and some of our friends and allies in the Middle East are asking, did...

MOSCOW - The number of Russians who regret the break-up of the Soviet Union has risen to its highest since 2005, amid rising economic concerns and nostalgia for the Soviet welfare system, the Levada pollster said on Wednesday. President Vladimir Putin famously dubbed the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union the greatest catastrophe of the 20th century and he and many Russians have long lamented the blow its demise dealt to Moscow’s great power status. In the survey, 66 percent of Russians said they regretted the Soviet break-up, a level not seen since 2005 when Levada recorded 65 percent and...

Putin won another term in March with 77 percent of the vote, but, as in every election in the Putin era, researchers have found statistical evidence of vote rigging. Although the fraud worked for Putin, it failed to produce results in a series of gubernatorial elections this year...Voters are finding it easier to resist manipulation and cheating. The discontent developed in large part because of Putin’s decision to raise the retirement age to 63 from 55 for women and to 65 from 60 for men, a step that successive Russian governments haven’t had the courage to take since the Soviet...

No, the current leader in 2019 calendar sales at a popular chain store in Japan is not a fresh-faced young idol, nor is it a sexy heart-throb actor. Rather, Vladimir Putin, the 66-year-old President of Russia, takes the cake in that category. That’s right, the very same exercise buff that also has claim to a fragrance in his home country and a manga in Japan is currently contributing to an unprecedented number of calendar sales in a foreign country.

The US is planning a total withdrawal of its military forces from Syria... “We have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump Presidency,” the president tweeted Wednesday morning.

Whether you like it or not, Joseph Stalin was one of the greatest anti-fascists in the history of the anti-fascist movement. Under Stalin's command, the Red Army defeated the nazis and saved several ethnic groups from nazi extermination. This is a legacy we cannot forget.