Free Republic

A son in Putin's Yule stocking Last Updated: 1:33 PM, December 16, 2009 Posted: 11:50 PM, December 15, 2009 Vladimir Putin has a lot to celebrate this Christmas. Not only has the Russian strongman consolidated his control over the proletariat -- and all their oil and gas -- he's also been given his first son, sources say. Alina Kabaeva, the gorgeous, 26-year-old rhythmic gymnastics champion, recently gave birth to a boy in Moscow and named the baby Dimitry, a moniker he'll share with Putin's handpicked president, Dimitry Medvedev.

Thousands of emails, from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) were first published on a small server in the city of Tomsk in Siberia. So-called ‘patriot hackers’ from Tomsk have been used in the past by the Russian secret service, the FSB, to attack websites disliked by the Kremlin, such as the “denial of service” campaign launched against the Kavkaz-Tsentr website, over its reports about the war in Chechnya, in 2002. Russia, a major oil exporter, may be trying to undermine calls to reduce carbon emissions ahead of the Copenhagen summit on global warming. The CRU emails...

The Devil is in the details. No spare minutes!

Israel's foreign minister met with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Friday and called for closer ties and economic cooperation between the two countries. Avigdor Lieberman, leader of Israel's right-wing ultranationalist Yisrael Beiteinu party, was born in the former Soviet Union, and he spoke with Putin in flawless Russian, throwing in a few words of English. Lieberman was visiting Moscow for a session of a Russian-Israeli Intergovernmental Commission, which mainly focuses on economic ties. He lauded the commission for establishing a visa-free system between the two countries last year. He said the measure will likely to double the number of...

Joseph Stalin sent millions to their deaths during his reign of terror, and his name was taboo for decades, but the dictator is a step closer to rehabilitation after Vladimir Putin openly praised his achievements. The Prime Minister and former KGB agent used an appearance on national television to give credit to Stalin for making the Soviet Union an industrial superpower, and for defeating Hitler in the Second World War. In a verdict that will be obediently absorbed by a state bureaucracy long used to taking its cue from above, Mr Putin declared that it was “impossible to make a...

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin pledged radical measures to end a surge of militant violence in the North Caucasus, but said a new war is not expected in the region. "No new war is in the air in the North Caucasus, but the situation is difficult... illegally armed groups are still active there. We will wage a ruthless fight against them until they are totally destroyed," Putin said in his annual question-and-answer session broadcast live on television and radio on Thursday. Skirmishes between troops and separatists, and attacks on police and other officials have been reported daily in the mainly...

John F. Burns, the chief foreign correspondent for The Times, responded to a common theme among the readers of At War — that the United States should learn from the Soviets’ experience in Afghanistan and withdraw its troops. Q. In Afghanistan, both the Russians and the British, at the height of their power, completely failed to bring the place to heel. So we’re going to succeed? Uh huh… Colin Wright Richmond, Calif.Q. The NY TIMES has the archives of the Soviet experience in Afghanistan. Go read them. If you do, then there is just nothing left to say except.. GET...

The United States is about to lose a key arms-control tool from the closing days of the Cold War -- the right to station American observers in Russia to count the long-range missiles leaving its assembly line. The end of full-time, on-site access will likely ignite complaints in Congress, with insiders from both parties arguing over whether the George W. Bush or the Obama administration is responsible.

CARACAS (Reuters) - Russia is building arms plants in Venezuela to produce AK-103 automatic rifles and cartridges and is finalizing contracts to send 53 military helicopters to the Andean nation, Moscow's envoy to Venezuela saidMonday. Ambassador Vladmir Zaemskiy told a news conference that Russian engineers and Venezuelan construction firms were building the rifle and cartridge plants which, when operational, would employ more than 1,500 workers. He gave no completion date for the plants under construction in the central state of Aragua. Details about Moscow's military shipments and projects have been scarce since socialist President Hugo Chavez's government began signing military...

Over the last week, Russia was again at the center of two important and contentious issues – both making headlines. One involves an increasingly chilly relationship between Russia and the United Kingdom, as the latter continues to press the former for information about the assassination of a British Citizen – Alexander Litvinenko, which by all accounts was likely carried out by Russians using a poison that was obtained in Russia – Polonium 210 (Po210). Which Russians committed the act, under the authority of whom and for what purpose, remain shrouded in mystery. The name Vladimir Putin is inextricably linked in...

Poles protest US Stalin memorial plan23.11.2009 11:06 The Polish community in the United States is outraged by a plan to honour Josef Stalin by placing his bust on a pedestal at the National D-Day Memorial in Bedford, Virginia.  According to William McIntosh, the director of the Bradford museum, which is coordinating the project, the Soviet dictator deserves to be acknowledged alongside Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt has he was an ally of the US after Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union. The plans have met with protests from Polish war veterans in New York.  President of the Kosciuszko Foundation,...

RUSSIAN investigators have confirmed that the derailment of a passenger train which killed dozens of people was caused by a "terrorist attack", the Interfax news agency reported. "We are indeed talking about a terrorist attack," Vladimir Markin, spokesman for Russia's federal investigative committee... Investigators have found "elements of an explosive device" at the site...

MOSCOW (Reuters) - The crash of a luxury train in Russia killed 25 people and injured up to 63 more, an official said on Saturday, and sources suggested it may have been an act of terrorism. "Twenty-five people died in the accident," an official reported to Emergencies Minister Sergei Shoigu during a meeting televised by Vesti-25 television, hours after the crash. Several carriages of the Nevsky Express traveling from Moscow to St Petersburg were derailed at 9:30 p.m. (1830 GMT) on Friday near the town of Bologoye, 350 km (200 miles) from Moscow. Estimates of the number of injured ranged...

Russia has provided an "unprecedented" 970 billion roubles (22.6 billion euros, 33.8 billion dollars) to its defence industry this year, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Wednesday. State support for the sector had helped it grow by 3.8 percent since the start of the year despite the economic downturn, Putin said in comments reported by Russian news agencies. "During the recession we have allocated enough money to the military-industrial sector, which is a priority for government support. In 2009 funding reached an unprecedented level for our country: almost 970 billion roubles," Putin said. State aid had taken the form of reduced-rate...

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who has often described the collapse of the Soviet Union as “the greatest tragedy” of the 20th century, has now said that the “reunification” of Georgia has “already been decided,” a suggestion some of his listeners believe was a call for restoring Moscow’s control over Georgia and even the former USSR as a whole. In an intriguing commentary published in yesterday’s “Gazeta,” Bozhena Rynska describes both the celebration of the 80th birthday of longtime Soviet and Russian official Yevgeny Primakov and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s two very different toasts on that occasion (www.gazeta.ru/column/rynska/3287611.shtml). The celebration took...

Russia is to build up its navy over the coming decade, President Dmitry Medvedev announced on Monday, as he visited a Russian guided missile cruiser in Singapore. Speaking to sailors on board the Russian Pacific Fleet's Varyag, Medvedev said around half of Russia's military hardware would have to be renewed by 2020. "Yes, an expansion of our naval presence is planned. Russia can only consider itself a full naval power if it has a full fleet that carries out training and combat tasks," he said, according to official Russian news agencies. The Varyag, built in the 1980s under the Soviet...

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, never shy with a photo opportunity, took his man-of-the-people act to the hip-hop dancefloor, where he used a rap music competition to deliver an anti-drugs message. "Graffiti is becoming a true art, fine and delicate," Mr Putin, clad in a beige turtleneck and grey sports jacket, told a young crowd at the "Respect" rap contest. "And breakdance is something peculiar," he said. "This really is propaganda for a healthy lifestyle because it is hard to imagine breakdancing having anything to do with drinking and dope," Mr Putin said. The powerful Russian president-turned-Prime Minister praised the...

* Russia's powerful PM Putin meets local rappers * Rappers chant: "Respect, Vladimir Vladimirovich" MOSCOW(Reuters) - Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin rubbed shoulders with rappers and was hailed with "respect" in a television show on Friday that could help boost his flagging ratings. Putin, wearing a turtleneck sweater and jacket, went on stage to present awards to participants in "Battle for Respect", a hip-hop music contest run by Muz TV, a Russian rival to MTV. "It would have been cool to record a joint track with Vladimir Putin because he is a legendary man and our idol," sang rapper Zhigan...

Communism is alive and well. ....Far from being dead and buried, communism remains a potent force - one that is still a threat to Western nations that value freedom and capitalism. This is because the ideological roots of communism have not been defeated. Rather than being polar opposites, fascism and Marxism are evil twins. They are both socialist ideologies that espouse one-party rule, economic collectivism and social regimentation. They are implacably opposed to capitalism, the sovereignty of the family and Judeo-Christian civilization. They are aggressively imperialist, seeking world domination. The major difference between them is that while Marxism champions the...

Mikhail Gorbachev—the man who pulled the Soviet Union's troops out of Afghanistan after a decade of stalemate—says the US should do the same.

A Russian policeman has triggered a political storm by breaking a code of silence over corruption in the ranks, in videos posted on the internet. Major Aleksei Dymovsky, a senior drugs trafficking investigator, accused corrupt police chiefs of ordering officers to jail innocent people and claimed that it was impossible to live on the official salary, £290 a month, without taking bribes. He made an appeal to Vladimir Putin, the Prime Minister, to order a national inquiry into corruption, saying that he was speaking up for ordinary officers who considered dignity and honour as “words burnt into the mind”. His...

Cold War: The White House has announced our absence at ceremonies marking the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Meanwhile, Russia has been practicing a nuclear invasion of an abandoned Poland. The Berlin Wall has been a famous backdrop for American presidents sounding the battle cry of liberty in the struggle against tyranny. It was there that John F. Kennedy expressed our solidarity with the encircled residents of that outpost of freedom with his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner." And it was there that Ronald Reagan, with a defiant "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall," voiced our...

SNIPPET: "Lula and Chavez have established a "strategic relationship," and recently agreed upon a joint Brazilian-Venezuelan oil venture worth billions of dollars. Lula and Chavez have joined with Daniel Ortega, the returned Nicaraguan Marxist dictator, to form an anti-U.S. Latin American military alliance - all with Russian assistance - funded by the region's abundant oil reserves. Brazil is engaged in its own arms build-up and Lula is determined that Brazil will become at least a first-rate regional power. Unfortunately, Lula is establishing Brazil as an anti-American military power by aligning with nations hostile or potentially hostile to the U.S. Lula...

Russia’s Eternal Military-Industrial Kolkhoz 03 November 2009 By Alexander Golts It seems that professional observers of Russia’s endless political antics have something new to add to their list. People have long ceased to be amazed by the fact that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has a habit of meddling in Russia’s military affairs, national security and foreign policy — all of which belong to the constitutional domain of President Dmitry Medvedev. But the president has unexpectedly stuck his nose into an area that had previously belonged to Putin alone. Last week, Medvedev visited the NPO Mashinostroyenia missile design bureau in Reutov,...

Capitalism and democracy have lost popularity in the former Soviet republics of Eastern and Central Europe, where many people felt better off economically under communism, a poll showed Monday. Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, research by the Pew Research Center showed the percentage of people approving of democracy was markedly lower in the former Soviet bloc compared to a similar 1991 poll.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has said Ukraine might be having problems paying for gas, raising new concerns over European supplies. Mr Putin said the European Union had not yet given Ukraine the money it had promised to help provide stable supplies of Russian gas to Europe. He also blamed Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko for blocking payment. In January, many countries were left short of gas because of a payment dispute between Moscow and Kiev. 'Blocking funds' "It appears we are again having problems with payments for our energy supplies, which is extremely regrettable. The EU has still not provided...

The armed forces are said to have carried out "war games" in which nuclear missiles were fired and troops practised an amphibious landing on the country's coast. Documents obtained by Wprost, one of Poland's leading news magazines, said the exercise was carried out in conjunction with soldiers from Belarus. The manoeuvres are thought to have been held in September and involved about 13,000 Russian and Belarusian troops. The documents state the exercises, code-named "West", were officially classified as "defensive" but many of the operations appeared to have an offensive nature. more...

Wow. I just noticed something. Our commander-in-chief is the least alpha of any of the leaders of our former enemies from World War II and the Cold War: Germany, Italy, and Russia. While I knew Obama exhibited beta behavior, I had no idea it was this bad. Give me a minute and I’ll lay out pictorial proof. We all know that Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi holds the title of “Intergalactic Alpha”. The 73 year-old silverback is banging 18 year-olds, has amassed a fortune, laid the smack down on his wife, and avoided indictment and/or lynching for his shenanigans....

A BUST of Russia's muscle-flexing strongman Vladimir Putin is being created as a gift for ex-Hollywood bodybuilder and California's current governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. The bust is currently being made in Putin's home city of Saint Petersburg on an order of Russia's Bodybuilding and Fitness Federation and will be delivered to the movie star-turned-politician in March. "Putin is such a complex personality. He's left no one indifferent," Alexander Chernoshchyokov, a Saint Petersburg-based sculptor who has been working on the Putin bust since June... In 1991 the Russian artist made a sculpture of Schwarzenegger and Vladimir Dubinin, the president of the bodybuilding...

The Dragon and the Amoeba 21 October 2009 By Yulia Latynina At a meeting in New York in September, President Dmitry Medvedev and Chinese President Hu Jintao signed a wide-ranging cooperation agreement through 2018. It calls for Russia to become a raw-materials appendage of China. Russia will provide China with raw materials such as coal, iron, gold and manganese, and China-based factories will process it all. In reality, though, this is only a preliminary agreement because the Kremlin has a compulsive fear of China. Russians love conspiracy theories, and they avidly read the apocalyptic prophecies of Alexander Khramchikhin about how...

MOSCOW — Nearly two decades after the collapse of the Communist Party, Russia’s rulers have hit upon a model for future success: the Communist Party. Or at least, the one that reigns next door. Like an envious underachiever, Vladimir V. Putin’s party, United Russia, is increasingly examining how it can emulate the Chinese Communist Party, especially its skill in shepherding China through the financial crisis relatively unbowed. United Russia’s leaders even convened a special meeting this month with senior Chinese Communist Party officials to hear firsthand how they wield power. ..." “The accomplishments of China’s Communist Party in developing its...

A Russian historian investigating the fate of Germans imprisoned in the Soviet Union during the second world war has been arrested, in the latest apparent clampdown on historical research into the Stalin era by the Russian authorities. Mikhail Suprun was detained last month by officers from Russia's security services. They searched his apartment and carried off his entire personal archive. He has now been charged with violating privacy laws and, if convicted, faces up to four years in jail. Suprun had been researching Germans sent to Russia's Arctic gulags. A professor of history at Arkhangelsk's Pomorskiy university, his study included...

Vladimir Putin, No Sanctions on Iran: Obama Sold Out Poland for Nothing By Beth Shaw It appears that Barack Obama sold out Poland for nothing. In spite of his preemptively giving in to Russia and promising to not use a missile shield to protect Poland and the Czech Republic, Vladimir Putin is saying no to sanctions on Iran. After all, how can we be absolutely 100% certain they are going to nuke us! Let’s just wait and see before we do anything. It seems the only preventative measures the United States can take against our enemies anymore is to give...

Its not that Russian's aren't giving birth to children, its just that the number of births is exceeding the number of deaths for the first time in fifteen years. Russia's Health Ministry is taking credit for increase in birth rate, citing the economic stimulus program approved by the Kremlin as the reason why more mothers in Russia are giving birth and fewer people are dying. But you can't argue with the numbers. On an annualized basis, Russia's birth rate is up between 7 and 8 percent. In August alone, 1000 more people were born than died. According to UN, Russia's...

MOSCOW (AP) - A top Russian security official says Moscow reserves the right to conduct pre-emptive nuclear strikes to safeguard the country against aggression on both a large and a local scale, according to a newspaper interview published Wednesday. Presidential Security Council chief Nikolai Patrushev also singled out the U.S. and NATO, saying Moscow's Cold War foes still pose potential threats to Russia despite what he called a global trend toward local conflicts. The interview appeared in the daily Izvestia during a visit by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, as U.S. and Russian negotiators try to hammer out...

Just a little follow-up to Ed’s post earlier, tracking the progress of The One’s global disarmament efforts. Hey — the committee did say that Nobel was aspirational. In an interview published today in Izvestia, Nikolai Patrushev, the secretary of the Kremlin’s security council, said the new doctrine offers “different options to allow the use of nuclear weapons, depending on a certain situation and intentions of a would-be enemy. In critical national security situations, one should also not exclude a preventive nuclear strike against the aggressor.” What’s more, Patrushev said, Russia is revising the rules for the employment of nukes to...

Link only, due to Wired's copyright complaints. Inside the Apocalyptic Soviet Doomsday MachineI'm posting this without any text, because I think it's important. The "Doomsday" machine is apparently real, and still operational. Read the article for more details.

BEIJING (Reuters) - Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Wednesday warned major powers against intimidating Iran and said that talk of sanctions against the Islamic Republic was "premature". "There is no need to frighten the Iranians," Putin told reporters in Beijing. "We need to look for a compromise. If a compromise is not found, and the discussions end in a fiasco, then we will see," he said, adding that talks of sanctions was "premature" at present.

Russia practices war in the west The last ten days of September have seen the final phase of the Zapad-2009 and Ladoga-2009 military exercises of the Russian Armed Forces in cooperation with the Belarusian army. The two drills were the largest exercises to be held on the western borders of Russia and Belarus since the end of the Cold War. The field exercices taking place in Russia and Belarus' border districts from Murmansk to Brest, in the Kaliningrad oblast and on the Baltic Sea featured a total of at least 30,000 soldiers and navy servicemen. From the military perspective, the...

Mr. Podrabinek is one of a literally dying breed: Russian journalists who are not afraid to tell the truth even if it gets them murdered. Reuters reports: “New York-based press watchdog the Committee to Protect Journalists ranks Russia the world’s third most dangerous country for journalists, with 17 killed since 2000 including Kremlin critic Anna Politkovskaya in 2006.” Over at my blog La Russophobe, we’ve translated Podrabinek’s column on the valiant Russian website Yezhedevny Zhurnal many times. He’s written about official corruption, state propaganda, human rights atrocities in the Chechnya region, persecuted dissidents and opposition leaders, and the essential lack...

After Russia invaded the Nation of Georgia last year, Senator John McCain quickly condemned the action by the Russians, and declared that we are all "Georgians" today. Considering we have had at least two freedom movements in the past eight months which have been ignored by Obama, that should have been reason enough to support McCain in the Presidential election. Obama at first blamed both the Russians and the Georgians in an utter disregard for the Nation of Georgia, a small yet staunch ally of the United States, after several days of being called out by John McCain, Obama quickly...

Iran's traditional emblem has been the Persian lion. Russia's should be a vulture: Prime Minister Vladimir Putin intends to feed on the carcass left by any confrontation with Iran. For Moscow, this crisis isn't about Tehran's acquisition of nukes. It's about Russia's acquisition of a stranglehold on global energy markets. Putin's playing with fire -- but he's sure we'll be the ones burned. As for the Obama administration's desperate (and stunningly naive) hope that economic sanctions can deter President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad and his fellow thugs-for-Allah from pursuing nuclear weapons, forget it.

Today Putin, Tomorrow a Prison Toilet 23 September 2009 By Yulia Latynina There is a rather wealthy fellow named Andrei Boiko who co-owns the Burevestnik Yacht Club on the Moscow River. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin recently paid a visit to the club. Boiko couldn’t have been happier. He showed the prime minister around, saying, “This is mine, and that over there is mine, too.” A week later, Boiko was in jail. Maybe Putin didn’t like the club members’ opulent lifestyle during the economic crisis. Or maybe someone in Putin’s retinue has his eye on Boiko’s business. Either way, it is...

Russia and Islam are not Separate: Why Russia backs Al-Qaeda By Konstantin Preobrazhensky Konstantin Preobrazhensky, a former Lt. Colonel in the KGB who defected to the United States in 1993, is an intelligence expert and specialist on Japan, about which he has written six books. His newest book Russian-American, A New KGB Asset will be published in late 2007. This article was first published by Gerard Group International, Intel Analyses, 31 August 2007.Americans generally believe that Russia is afraid of Islamic terrorism as much as the U.S.A. They are reminded of the war in Chechnya, the hostage crisis at the...

Czechs are used to betrayal by their Western allies. It was at Munich in 1938 that British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain sealed their doom in exchange for a piece of paper promising "peace in our time." The fact that this further gutting of missile defense came on the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland on Sept. 17, 1939, is an eerie coincidence. "Just after midnight I was informed in a telephone call by President Barack Obama that (his) administration had decided to pull out from the planned missile defense shield installations" in the Czech Republic and Poland, the...

It's the Obama administration that has pressed the "reset button" on relations with Russia, scrapped plans for a missile-defense system in Eastern Europe, and toned down the rhetoric on NATO expansion. But it seems Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin still pines for Obama's predecessor. At his annual meeting with academics, think-tankers, and journalists, Putin barely mentioned Obama but "repeatedly expressed fondness for his friend 'George,' " says Cliff Kupchan, a Russia analyst at the Eurasia Group consultancy. "He clearly has a personal softness for George Bush," says Kupchan, who attended the meeting. Why the nostalgia? After all, Bush put in...

The AP Reports from Havana, Cuba: —  Obama's anti-American agenda or a call for action on climate change and his admission that capitalist nations have a particular responsibility to lead has received strong praise from his communist ally — U.S. nemesis and mass murderer Fidel Castro.

When a tyrannical regime dies, you can see the symptoms in the little things. Late Friday afternoon, after millions (yes, millions–this according to Le Monde, France 2, and L’Express, with the BBC saying that the demonstrations were bigger than those at the time of the Revolution) of Greens mobbed the streets and squares of more than thirty towns and cities to call for the end of the regime, there was a soccer game in Azadi Stadium in Tehran. It holds about a hundred thousand fans, and it was full of men wearing green and carrying green balloons. When state-run tv...

I was reading an article from The New York Times and this jumped out at me: Although the White House denied that its decision was made to curry favor with the Kremlin, it took some satisfaction in comments by Russian leaders suggesting more flexibility. Obama advisers pointed to a few specific areas where they have won concessions from other countries. Russia, for example, has agreed to a framework for nuclear arms cuts and gave permission for American troops to fly to Afghanistan through its airspace.(emphasis added) Then I read an article on RFERL that had the following: BISHKEK -- A...

SNIPPET: "Most importantly, Chavez has friends - powerful friends -- around the world who are assisting him in his goal of establishing communism as the dominant force in the world. Both Russia and China are assisting Chavez in spreading the message that the United States is "the most savage, cruel, and murderous empire that has existed in the history of the world," and Chavez's solution: 21st Century Socialism." SNIPPET: "The Moscow elite are not only supporting Chavez the dictator with weapons, but also Chavez the Marxist revolutionary with a high profile platform for his revolutionary rhetoric. In early September 2009...