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Donald Trump, the US president, has warned Russia’s Vladimir Putin that there would be a “big price to pay” for a suspected Syrian chemical weapons attack that killed 70 people, including children. In his harshest criticism of the Russian leader since taking office, Mr Trump said Mr Putin was partly “responsible” for the attack on rebels in Douma, a town in Eastern Ghouta. The US president also criticised Barack Obama’s failure to police a “red line” over chemical weapons, while a senior White House official said no form of response was “off the table”. The comments raise the possibility of...

Alexander Dugin is the intellectual who has Vladimir Putin’s back in the emerging ideological conflict between Russia and the West. At home, Putin uses him to create a nationalist, anti-liberal voting bloc, while abroad Dugin is the lynchpin of numerous irregular networks of anti-liberal political resistance and sabotage. No individual better represents the tactics of the current Russian regime. Since the late 1990s, Dugin has organized his views into a geostrategic ideology and a complex political metaphysics known respectively as Neo-Eurasianism and Fourth Political Theory. The former posits an ongoing archetypal clash between land and maritime civilizations and holds that...

"The US state department said it is monitoring the "very disturbing" reports, and that Russia - which is fighting alongside the Syrian government - should be held responsible if deadly chemicals had been used."

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev with his wife Svetlana Medvedev have arrived to the Easter Service in Moscow's Christ the Savior Cathedral. The service, conducted by Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, is also attended by Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin and other prominent political and public figures. Shortly before midnight, a capsule containing the Holy Fire from Jersualem has been brought to the cathedral. In line with a longstanding tradition, Putin attends the night-time service at the Cathedral of Christ the Savior on Easter.......

Among those who were sent into retirement: - Chief of the Research Institute of the FSIN Major-General of Internal Service Andrey Bykov - Major General of Police, Head of the Ural Law Institute of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation Alexander Guk - The head of the Academy of the Ministry of Emergency Situations, Shamsutdin Dagirov - The head of UFSIN in Udmurtia, Vladimir Doronin - The head of the department of the SKR in the Sverdlovsk region, Valery Zadorin - Head of the State Security Service of the Russian Federation for the Krasnoyarsk Territory, Igor Napalkov...

The United States imposed major sanctions on Friday against 24 Russians, striking at allies of President Vladimir Putin in one of Washington’s most aggressive moves to punish Moscow for what it called a range of “malign activity.” The sanctions are aimed at seven Russian oligarchs and 12 companies they own or control, plus 17 senior Russian government officials. They freeze the U.S. assets of the people and companies named and forbid Americans in general from doing business with them. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said in a statement, “The Russian government operates for the disproportionate benefit of oligarchs and government elites.”...

CBS Films has optioned Michael Isikoff and David Corn’s “Russian Roulette,” the story of the Russian attempt to interfere with the 2016 presidential election. The book is currently on top of nonfiction titles on the New York Times bestseller list. Isikoff and Corn will serve as executive producers. Nick Wechsler, whose credits include “American Assassin,” is on board to produce. The deal, announced Thursday, came following an auction of the movie rights. It was made on behalf of the Ross Yoon Agency by Hotchkiss & Associates. Wechsler is represented by Carlos Goodman at Bloom Hergott Diemer Rosenthal LaViolette Feldman Schenkman...

Today, the Stalinists in Russia are enjoying their greatest heyday since 1953. And the West doesn't understand nor want to admit it. The Kremlin’s strategy toward the West has been in place for some time and is based on a vision of Russia as a great power in the Stalinist style for namely under him, the country experienced the peak of "great power" status..." Stalin, who in their estimation, ‘saved Western civilization from Nazism/fascism.” The only difference is that Stalin strove to Sovietize Western countries while Putin and company seek the fundamental weakening of the West, Western institutions, and the...

Iran's President Rouhani, Turkey's President Erdogan, and Russia's President Putin shake hands as they meet in Ankara on Wednesday and pledge to create a 'lasting ceasefire' in Syria. Russia and Iran are strategic partners, with Russia providing military and financial support in return for influence over the Middle East. Putin supplies both countries with sophisticated military equipment. President Erdogan recently signed a $2.5 billion arms deal with Russia for S-400 sophisticated anti-aircraft missiles, which has caused consternation among Turkey's fellow Nato members. And Russia helps both countries on energy. It is also building Turkey a $20 billion nuclear power station,...

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that the "excessive demonization" of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin "is one means of attacking the Soviet Union and Russia." Putin made the comments in the last of four installments of a series of interviews that he gave to U.S. filmmaker Oliver Stone, which was aired on June 15, 2017. In the past, Putin has praised Stalin as an "effective manager," and Stalin's reputation in Russia has been growing steadily since Putin came to power in 2000. A poll in April by the independent Levada research center found that 25 percent of Russians consider Stalin's...

Russia has lost a vote by the global chemical-weapons watchdog for a new joint investigation, including Russian participation, into a nerve-agent attack in Salisbury, England, against a former Russian spy in England. Moscow, accused by the British government of carrying out the attack, was seeking to be involved in a new investigation by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) into the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter. Reuters reports that China, Azerbaijan, Sudan, Algeria, and Iran backed the Russian motion at the OPCW's April 4 closed-door meeting, while 17 members abstained.

In November 2013, the president of the National Rifle Association, David Keene, was introduced as an honored guest at the conference of the Right to Bear Arms, a gun lobby in Moscow. "There are no peoples that are more alike than Americans and Russians," Keene said. "We're hunters. We're shooters. We value the same kinds of things." Keene underscored his friendship with Alexander Torshin, a top politician in the ruling party of Vladimir Putin; for the past three years, Keene said, "I've hosted your senator Alexander Torshin at the National Rifle Association's annual meetings." In words that now carry a...

Ramzan Kadyrov ruled Chechnya for eight years without Russian president Vladimir Putin publicly rebuking him, until December 2014, when armed insurgents killed 24 in central Grozny. A few days later, the Chechen authorities applied a collective punishment (an approach they favour), destroying the homes of the rebels’ families. On live television, Putin stressed that ‘everyone in Russia must observe the law.’ As a sign that this was more than a momentary irritation, he then cast doubt on the renewal of Kadyrov’s mandate as head of the republic in March 2016. Kadyrov said he was thinking of resigning, but according to...

In 1920, under Bolshevik rule, Russia was the first country to legalize abortion up to birth without restrictions. The method by Lenin’s political faction was a way to destroy the family unit and to free women into the workforce. The Bolsheviks even designed the machine for suction abortions that is still used widely in abortion clinics across America. Joseph Stalin outlawed the practice in 1936, and it remained illegal in the country until after his death in 1953. Until recently, Russian women reportedly had seven abortions over their lifetime. In 2003, BBC reported there were 13 abortions for every 10...

Vladimir Putin is listening both to “a peace party” within his administration and “a war party,” responding positively first to the appeals of the first that Russia cannot afford an arms race and saying there won’t be one and then positively to the arguments of the second that Russia must be ready to defend itself." The peace party, which includes Finance Minister Anton Siluanov, Central Bank chief Elvira Nabiullina, Presidential assistant Andrey Belousov, and former Finance Minister Aleksey Kudrin, argues that Russia must cut military spending to meet social needs and thus must reduce tensions with the West. Without such...

MOSCOW, March 30 (RAPSI) – Nearly 28,000 Russian officials were found liable for violating rights of entrepreneurs and investors in 2017, the press-service of the Prosecutor General’s Office announced Friday. According to reports read during the meeting dedicated to protection of investors’ rights in Siberia, the Ural and Far Eastern regions of Russia, last year prosecutors revealed over 157,000 cases of law violations concerning business rights. 28,000 officials were brought to disciplinary and administrative liability and 126 criminal cases were launched. In 2017, prosecutors challenged over 24,000 of related documents as well.

Maxim Suraikin, the leader of the "Communist of Russia" Party, who had been one of candidates for taking part in presidential election, has filed lawsuits demanding to abolish voting results at 13 polling stations in the Karachay-Cherkessian Republic (KChR). The "Caucasian Knot" has reported, earlier, the KChR's Central Election Commission (CEC) demanded to cancel the election results at three polling stations because of possible violations. On March 18, the voting took place at the presidential election in Russia. Observers reported numerous violations.

The liquidation of labor unions threatens to further weaken the entire system of protection of labor rights in the Russian Federation. On January 10, 2018, by decision of the St. Petersburg City Court, one of the strongest Russian trade unions was liquidated - the Interstate Trade Union Workers Association ( MPRA ). The union was accused of receiving foreign financing with simultaneous participation in political activities. The MPRA appealed the decision of the court and is awaiting further hearings. The judgment on the MPRA is not just a neutralization of the protest mechanisms before the elections. The extension of the...

President Trump reportedly warned Russian President Vladimir Putin during a phone call last week that if the two Cold War foes were to reignite the arms race, the U.S. would come out on top. NBC News reported Thursday that Putin's claim of new nuclear-capable weapons that can reach the United States "really got under the president's skin," according to one official. "If you want to have an arms race we can do that, but I'll win," Trump reportedly told his Russian counterpart. The comment came in the same phone call in which Trump congratulated Putin for his recent win in...

Putin controls the Russia's state institutions, its secret police and its big state companies. Together with a few old friends from St. Petersburg, the president is tapping the big state companies through overpriced no-bid procurement, transfer pricing, asset stripping and stock manipulation. They are also making money by extorting old oligarchs and taking loans from state banks, not to be returned. Overall assessments indicate a personal enrichment of Putin and his closest cronies of some $20 billion to $25 billion a year since 2006, a pilfering from Gazprom of $60 billion from 2004 to 2007...By now, this group would have...