Free Republic

SURKHAKHI, Russia (Reuters) - More than 3,000 people gathered Monday in the Russian republic of Ingushetia to bury an opposition campaigner whose murder rights groups say has underlined the slide into violence across the North Caucasus. Concern has mounted in recent months over the murders of human rights activists and reporters with links to the patchwork of republics which make up Russia's southern flank in the Caucasus mountains. ..." "There needs to be a clear condemnation of this kind of killing by the Russian leadership because what happens at the highest level sends a signal to those below," Allison Gill,...

As the United States and its allies haggle with Iran over its nuclear program, Moscow has fueled Western unease about its military links to Tehran by pledging to continue selling arms to the Islamic republic. This has raised speculation that it may brush aside the strident objections of the United States and Israel and supply Iran with advanced S-300PMU surface-to-air missiles that would greatly enhance its defenses against airstrikes. The Russians, who have rejected the proposed imposition of economic sanctions on Iran as "counterproductive," are keeping the waters muddied with contradictory and ambiguous statements regarding the S-300s. On Wednesday, Russia's...

US army bases will appear on the Black Sea Coast – in Bulgaria and Romania. About $50 million will be assigned to build the base in Romania, and the Pentagon plans to spend $60 million more for the same purpose in Bulgaria. The Romanian base is expected to be put in operation in 2010, whereas the second one will most likely be launched in 2011 or 2012. Over 4,000 US military men are expected to serve at the two bases: 1,600 in Romania and 2,500 in Bulgaria. The authorities of the two nations expect that the US military men will...

The United States and Georgia will begin military exercises on October 26 in preparation for sending troops to Afghanistan, a foreign liaison officer in the US embassy in Tbilisi said on Saturday. The US embassy on Friday said the exercises would begin on October 24. "The program is specifically designed to enhance Georgia's ability to conduct joint counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan together with US forces," the embassy statement said on Friday. The two-week joint military exercise, code-named Immediate Response, will be held in Georgia and will include training in counterterrorist operations. US military instructors have already arrived at the Krtsanisi...

US President Barack Obama called French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Saturday, to reaffirm their commitment to a UN-backed plan that would ship most of Iran's uranium abroad for enrichment.

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...

Iran, Russia and America met in Vienna under the supervision of the IAEA.The meeting is to discuss the shipment of nuclear fuel with about %20 of enrichment to Tehran's research reactor which produces radioactive medicine for hospitals.IRI's representative in the IAEA Ali-Asghar Soltaniyeh is leading Iran's delegation. IAEA's director-general Mohammad Elbaradei is also attending the meeting.The Islamic Republic of Iran demands that up to %5 of enrichment for Tehran's research reactor to be done in Iran and then be sent to Russia, France or America for more enrichment.

Note: The following text is a quote: American Forces Press Service Gates Finds Broad Support for New Missile Defense Approach By Donna Miles American Forces Press Service BRATISLAVA, Slovakia, Oct. 23, 2009 – NATO defense ministers are expressing broad support for the new U.S. approach to missile defense in Europe and the opportunity it may offer to make Russia a partner in the effort, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said today. Speaking to reporters during a NATO defense ministers conference here, Gates said he’s hearing “quite broad support for the new approach,” as well as “interest in extending our hand...

Enter the Russian Ministry for Emergency Situations. This is anything but a minor ministry in the Russian government. Shoigu has essentially run the ministry since 1994. He is a member of the powerful and selective Russian Security Council -- a key advisory body to the Russian executive on national security -- and has roots in the foreign military intelligence directorate, better known as the GRU, which is one of the most powerful and shadowy institutions in Russia. The ministry is an unofficial wing of the GRU and an outgrowth of its activities. It handles more than natural emergencies: It is...

Are we winning the diplomatic battle with Iran? Are we, for that matter, winning the diplomatic battle with Russia, which, with China, serves as Iran's principal protectorate? To put it necessarily bluntly, there is no indication that we are and every indication that we are indeed losing. Not simply losing, but ceding. A brief but careful examination of language reveals the unfortunate and frustrating truth. A Washington Times editorial calls it "Incorrigible Iran." The messianic and tyrannical regime is certainly that. While most of us recognize the Iranian regime for precisely what it is - a maniacal theocratic dictatorship bent...

Washington Post columnist David Ignatius passes on a report in Nucleonics Week that Iran's uranium enrichment may be stuck at 3.5% due to impurities. The Iranians have not been able to remove low percentages of metallic fluorides from the UF-6 feed stock that they've laboriously enriched to 3.5% U-235 over the past five years. This has the potential to stop their enrichment program cold -- at the level used for civilian nuclear power. Thus, the Obama administration's offer to have the Iranians' impure 3.5% UF6 shipped to Russia where it can be enriched to 19.75% in that nation's modern, high-capacity...

MOSCOW — Russia on Thursday said it would continue military cooperation with Iran amid widespread unease in the West over Moscow's controversial contract to sell advanced anti-aircraft missiles to Tehran. "The Russian Federation implements and plans to further implement the military-technical cooperation with the Islamic Republic of Iran in strict accordance with existing legislation and its international obligations," Russia's Federal Service for Military and Technical Cooperation said. The service released a rare statement after the Interfax agency, citing a Russian government source, reported ealier this week that Iran had not yet paid Russia for the S-300 anti-aircraft missiles.

START 'cheating' Republicans in the Senate are gearing up to battle the Obama administration over the high-priority plan to finish a new arms-control treaty with Russia before the end of the year.

The former VP is at it again. Former Vice President Dick Cheney said Wednesday that the Bush administration had developed a new strategy on the war in Afghanistan before leaving office -- a strategy that he said "bears a striking resemblance" to the one announced by President Obama in March. In a speech to the Center for Security Policy, Cheney said the Bush administration handed Obama's transition team a policy review of the Afghan war conducted last fall to meet the new challenges posed by the Taliban. "They asked us not to announce our findings publicly, and we agreed, giving...

The case for supporting Georgia is fundamentally based on American ideals. "The leader of the free world does not abandon its friends," Mr. Bakradze told us. "American diplomacy is more than European-style realpolitik. Yours is a country of values. We share the same values. They are worth defending." "In the end, America stands for something," he said. We fervently hope that this is still true.

Yes, they could by a Western nation that actually gives a d*mn! I'm a son of Sweden, a nation that likes to take on Russia. The background: The Romans called us Vikings barbarians, but at least one Roman intellectual acknowledged our superiority. In his world of sagas and reports, we were named "superior ship builders". The shape of things to come. We kept on raiding, but then turned into well disciplined, Lutheran businessmen after some while. We got tamed by the way of making money as well as building culture preached by the South (The Germans). We even learned Latin....

BELGRADE -- Russian Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu says that Serbia, as a part of Europe, will be part of a common European security concept. Sergei Shoigu (Beta, archive) He refused to get into details regarding the concept after his meeting with Serbian Interior Minister Ivica Da�ić, and advised journalists to them to ask Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who was in Serbia yesterday. “It is best to ask Medvedev about it, because he has discussed it several times, even in detail recently, so I would not like to give any misinformation on the issue,� Shoigu said. Da�ić added that the...

18.10.2009, 20.31 BELGRADE, October 18 (Itar-Tass) -- The October 20 visit of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to Belgrade will have a historic significance for Serbia from the point of view of political and economic cooperation, Serbian Vice-Premier, Interior Minister and Cochair of the Serbian-Russian Intergovernmental Committee for Trade and Economic Cooperation Ivica Dacic said on Sunday. Medvedev will visit Serbia at the invitation of Serbian President Boris Tadic to celebrate the 65th anniversary of the Belgrade liberation from the Nazi. “The sides think alike about many important international problems, including the Kosovo status and preservation of Serbia’s territorial integrity,� Dacic...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8LHOdZGRdo

BERLIN — Poland, smarting after President Obama announced last month that he would scrap Bush-era plans to deploy an antiballistic missile system in Eastern Europe, will accept an offer to host parts of a new, more mobile missile defense system, Polish officials said Tuesday. The plan for so-called SM-3 missiles, first proposed in Washington last month, will be spelled out in more detail on Wednesday when Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. holds talks with leaders in Warsaw. “The elements of this new missile defense system will be based in Poland,” said Mariusz Handzlik, the chief foreign policy adviser to...

WASHINGTON — With a key arms control treaty set to expire soon, the Obama administration is searching for ways to keep inspectors in Russia or else it risks losing American eyes on the world’s second most formidable nuclear weapons arsenal for the first time in decades. The administration has been negotiating a replacement for the pact, the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or Start, which goes out of force on Dec. 5. But even if the talks produce a new agreement by then, the Senate and the Russian Parliament will not have time to ratify it before the old one expires...

If there was upside to White House foreign policy this past week, I didn’t see it. Since the inauguration, the complaint has been that the president never switched from campaigning to governing. Now that administration plans for foreign policy and national security are finally starting to emerge it looks pretty much like an extension of the campaign – lots of talk. The president’s preferred strategy appears to be, what is called in the current jargon, “soft” power or “smart” power, which places a premium on negotiations and international institutions to get things done. Sadly, we are seeing scant signs that...

Libya to buy Russian fighter jets: report (AFP) – 19 hours ago MOSCOW — Libya is planning to buy more than 20 Russian fighter jets in a billion-dollar arms deal with Moscow, the Interfax news agency reported on Monday, citing a military-diplomatic source. "Libya is planning to buy 12 to 15 Su-35 multipurpose fighters, four Su-30s and six Yak-130 combat training planes from Russia," the unnamed source was quoted as saying. The contracts could be signed at the end of this year or the beginning of 2010 and would have a total value of about one billion dollars (670 million...

BEIJING, October 14 (RIA Novosti) - Russia is ready to consider using the Russian and Chinese national currencies instead of the dollar in bilateral oil and gas dealings, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday. The premier, currently on a visit to Beijing, said a final decision on the issue can only be made after a thorough expert analysis. "Yesterday, energy companies, in particular Gazprom, raised the question of using the national currency. We are ready to examine the possibility of selling energy resources for rubles, but our Chinese partners need rubles for that. We are also ready to sell...

The 20th century was famously called “the American century”, yet its being so called occurred in an improbable way. The phrase itself was actually not used until Time publisher Henry Luce coined it in a special issue of Life magazine in 1941—by which time 40 percent of the 20th century had already passed. Moreover, 1941 was a year in which the superiority of America and of the American way of life appeared decidedly problematic. Only the year before had the United States finally exited, statistically speaking, the decade of the Great Depression. Nazi Germany’s armies occupied most of Europe, stretching...

Eight years into the war in Afghanistan: the most senior defence official running the conflict receives a letter from one of his officers. It is a depressing list of political and tactical failures. "We should honestly admit," he writes, "that our efforts over the last eight years have not led to the expected results. Huge material resources and considerable casualties did not produce a positive end result – stabilisation of military-political situation in the country. The protracted character of the military struggle and the absence of any serious success, which could lead to a breakthrough in the entire strategic situation,...

<p>To believe this, you have to be a dreamy adolescent (preferably Scandinavian and a member of the Socialist International) or an indiscriminate imbiber of White House talking points. After all, this was precisely the spin on the President's various apology tours through Europe and the Middle East: National self-denigration - excuse me, outreach and understanding - is not meant to yield immediate results; it simply plants the seeds of good feeling from which foreign policy successes shall come.</p>

Moscow, October 17, Interfax ""A bag containing a Vepr hunter carbine, a Baikal handgun and 100-gram TNT mine with an electric detonator was found under reinforced concrete slabs at the church construction site," a source at law enforcement agencies told Interfax on Friday."

Russia is a very disorganized part of the World. In what way have they contributed to humanity? Russia simply isn't fit for life and furthermore lacks true a sense of leadership. How my country could contribute to getting rid of Russia: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eENe0bBhvSM

Some Russians rethink Alaska sale142 years later, sale still a sore spot in Russian history, fuels nationalist rhetoric By Pat Forgey | JUNEAU EMPIRE Is Russia having a case of seller's remorse for letting Alaska go for a pittance? And if so, why did it take so long? It was today in 1867 that Russia formally let Alaska go, peddling its Russian America territory to the underdeveloped United States for $7.2 million to ensure that its rival European power, Great Britain, didn't get it. Now, some Russian nationalists are talking of a return of Alaska to Russia, and blaming corruption...

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. In truth, the Russians express no desire to return to Communism as...

A week ago the world was split into two camps: those who said Robert Fisk was an idiot and that anyone who believes him is a tinfoil hat wearing paranoid sociopath, and those who said Robert Fisk was brilliant and that anyone who does not believe him is an unimaginative, unintelligent, conservative boor. Yet nobody tried to confirm or deny his data. Today, Russia's Prime Minister and de facto viceroy Vladimir Putin finally made it clear that the presumably insane Fisk was not making stuff up. RIA Novosti reports: BEIJING, October 14 (RIA Novosti) - Russia is ready to consider...

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 week of hard negotiations between the United States and Russia netted what Secretary of State Hillary Clinton classified as “significant breakthroughs in our two countries’ relationship.” Among the breakthroughs cited by Secretary Clinton—Russia will be allowed to inspect US nuclear weapons sites, Russia retains the right to preemptive, first-strike use of nuclear weapons, and Russia will not assist the United States in seeking sanctions against Iran’s acquisition of nuclear warheads. “By acceding to their demands we are showing them that we do not pose a threat to their interests,” Clinton explained. “A gesture of submission on our part eases...

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. Aleksandr D. Zhukov, a Russian deputy prime minister, praised the Chinese Communist Party at a meeting in Suifenhe, China. 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...

VIEWED from the outside, things have been going quite well for Russia recently. The United States has scrapped, at least for now, the plan to base missile defense sites in Poland and the Czech Republic. Germany and Russia seem to have overcome opposition in Europe to their Nord Stream pipeline, despite fears that it will solidify Russia’s dominance of the European natural gas supplies. Oil prices have recovered from the disastrously low — for Russia — levels of last winter. And, far from buckling under pressure from the United States over sanctions against Iran, Russian leaders felt confident enough to...

Disarming America by J. R. Nyquist Weekly Column Published: 10.16.2009 Print As part of the next arms reduction treaty between superpowers, the United States has tentatively agreed to unprecedented Russian access to American nuclear missile sites. According to published accounts, Russian weapons inspectors will be given an open door to American nuclear sites in order to monitor the number of missiles and warheads. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is quite satisfied with the deal. Perhaps it is an error of omission, but there is no news of a similar concession from the Russian side. This is psychologically and strategically significant:...

A military delegation from Iraq will visit Moscow in the near future to discuss the purchase of Russian weaponry, an Iraqi parliament member has said. "A large delegation from the Iraqi Defense Ministry will travel soon to Moscow for talks on arms purchases [from Russia]," Abbas al-Bayati said in an interview with the Al Iraqiya television. According to the Iraqi MP, Baghdad is seeking to sign arms contracts with Russia, Germany, France, Serbia and the United States by the end of 2011 "to complete the creation of Iraqi Armed Forces and security forces." Al-Bayati said the Iraqi leadership is interested...

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A Russian court on Friday jailed a Serbian national for eight years for attempting to pass secrets about Russian missile and other defense projects to a Pentagon intermediary, Interfax news agency reported on Friday. Aleksandar Georgijevic took his orders from a U.S. citizen who worked for a firm acting on behalf of the U.S. Department of Defense, Interfax reported. In 1998, Georgijevic attempted to collect information on a number of Russian military projects, including the Iskander tactical missiles and the R-500, a supersonic cruise missile. But only information on the "Arena" tank protection system was passed on...

Debacle in Moscow - WASHINGTON -- About the only thing more comical than Barack Obama's Nobel Peace Prize was the reaction of those who deemed the award "premature," as if the brilliance of Obama's foreign policy is so self-evident and its success so assured that if only the Norway Five had waited a few years, his Nobel worthiness would have been universally acknowledged. To believe this, you have to be a dreamy adolescent (preferably Scandinavian and a member of the Socialist International) or an indiscriminate imbiber of White House talking points. After all, this was precisely the spin on the...

Russia and India will start the development of a new supersonic missile nearly invincible to interception. No army in the world has anything similar to it. The sum of the investment has not been defined yet, but it can be expected to reach billions of dollars. The missile is to become a successor of the supersonic missile BrahMos (known as Yahont in the Russian army) that is now installed on ships, land missile complexes and may soon be installed on Su-30 MKI fighter jets and submarines. This possibility was discussed on Tuesday at the meeting of an intergovernmental committee on...

--snip--The Russian leadership, hardly believing its luck, needs no interpreter to understand that when the Obama team clownishly rushes in bearing gifts and "reset" buttons, there is nothing ulterior, diabolical, clever or even serious behind it. It is amateurishness, wrapped in naivete, inside credulity. In short, the very stuff of Nobels.

An American company is offering two Su-27 fighters, for the bargain price of $5 million each. The aircraft are demilitarized, but recently refurbished. Since the refurbishment, the aircraft have been in the air only 16 hours, and the engines only have 19 hours of use. The aircraft were purchased, from Ukraine, last year by an American firm (Tac Air), to assist the U.S. Air Force is determining how the Su-27 performs. This work is apparently done, and now the Su-27s are no longer needed. The electronics are up to date, and qualified maintenance services are available, in Nevada (where Tac...

The government is very touchy about its nuclear weapons, apparently because it's only the nukes that can dissuade a foreign nation threatening invasion. The Russian armed forces can do it, as it has shrunk 80 percent since the end of the Cold War in 1991, and fallen apart as well. Lack of money means that Russian military technology has not kept up. This includes the nuclear weapons. While Russia got the new Topol M ICBM into service since 1991, this was a Cold War era project, meant to replace the older, and much less effective and reliable ICBMs. But while...

About the only thing more comical than Barack Obama's Nobel Peace Prize was the reaction of those who deemed the award "premature," as if the brilliance of Obama's foreign policy is so self-evident and its success so assured that if only the Norway Five had waited a few years, his Nobel worthiness would have been universally acknowledged

‘No one was willing to embroil himself with … Russia over a small country, somewhere far away in the Caucasus.’ How many times did one read that sentence or come across that sentiment in news reports, analyses and opinion pieces on the conflict between Georgia and Russia or on the uneasy peace brokered by President Sarkozy, or on the current status quo, which sees Russia in breach of the terms of the ceasefire by still having troops in previously uncontested Georgian territory? But there was a crucial word left out of that first quote: Soviet. Here’s the full passage: ‘The...

HILLARY CLINTON’S words of support for Georgia during her visit this week to Moscow did little to calm fears in Tbilisi about Russia’s intentions in the turbulent Caucasus mountains. Two of Russia’s most powerful men sent shivers through Tbilisi during the US secretary of state’s stay in Moscow, with statements that fuelled worries the Kremlin’s fight with rebels in its own restive Caucasus republics could spill into neighbouring Georgia. The struggle between Moscow’s security forces and militants, once confined to Chechnya, is equally intense in two other Russian regions, Dagestan and Ingushetia, where police and soldiers come under daily attack...

KAZAN, Russia — US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Wednesday visited Kazan, the capital of Russia's predominantly Muslim Tatarstan region, lauding it as an example of multi-ethnic tolerance and peace. .... Over half of the region's population are Tatars, a Muslim Turkic people who live alongside a large ethnic Russian Orthodox Christian population and other minorities. Clinton, donning a yellow headscarf and taking off her shoes in line with Islamic custom, visited the gigantic Kul Sharif mosque in the Kazan Kremlin alongside the regional leader Mintimer Shaimiyev. "You are well known as someone who has fostered religious tolerance. It's...

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...