Free Republic

DONETSK, May 14. /ITAR-TASS/. Oleg Tsarev will prepare a federal agreement for the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, according toa resolution of the coordinating council of the South-East association that was published on Tuesday. According to the document, Tsarev will lead a working group that will be tasked to word a draft agreement for a “unification of the self-proclaimed Luganks and Donetsk People’s Republics into a single entity - the Federal Republic of Novorossia.” Later on, the constitution of the new state and a mechanism for admitting new constituent entities into the would-be federation will be worked out.

There is a tendency, especially today, to reduce all political analysis to an ideological formula, and to judge everything according to this formula. Such a reduction is usually erroneous, even dangerous, when applied to a complicated world. It is, of course, easier to simplify everything in order to make it more comprehensible. But the world does not become simpler when we ideologically simplify. We become simpler – to the point of stupidity. Most people ideologically simplify because they are distracted and have no time for political studies, or historical studies, so they adopt an ideological template. This allows them to...

***WARNING GRAPHIC VIOLENCE*** Ignore propaganda from both sides. Watch video at link and make up your own opinion. Two more videos from different angles at bottom of post.

On Friday, May 9, 2014, Moscow's Red Square was once again the site of massive demonstrations as Russia commemorated the 69th anniversary of the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany. Units representing all branches of the Russian armed forces paraded down the square, as the surrounding buildings, including the Kremlin, were decorated with communist Soviet-era emblems and hammer-and-sickle insignias. Standing alongside top Russian military brass and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, Russian President Vladimir Putin personally oversaw the parade. There was the stereotypical goose-stepping, as a select honor guard of Russian soldiers marched under both the modern Russian flag and the red...

SEVASTOPOL, Crimea (AP) — President Vladimir Putin has hailed Crimea's incorporation into Russia. Putin made a speech Friday in the city of Sevastopol on his first trip to the Black Sea peninsula since Russia annexed it from Ukraine in March. Putin watched a parade of Russian navy ships and a flyby of Russian aircraft marking the Victory Day commemorating the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II. Ukraine has condemned Putin's visit as trampling on international law.

The Associated Press reported Monday that Gen. Herbert Carlisle, Commander of United States Air Forces in the Pacific, acknowledged a significant increase in the activities by Russian long-range strategic aircraft flying along the California coast. There was no comment about whether the aircraft were nuclear capable, but it has not been since the Cold War ended in the early 1990s that Russian patrols have skirted the West Coast and California. Gen. Herbert J. "Hawk" Carlisle is the Commander of Pacific Air Forces; Air Component Commander for U.S. Pacific Command; and Executive Director, Pacific Air Combat Operations Staff, Joint Base Pearl...

"I was born in the Soviet Union," wrote Udaltsov on his movement's website, "and it will always be my homeland. Those who destroyed it and their supporters today will always be my political opponents. The rebirth of the Soviet Union in new forms is necessary, crucial and urgent." Komsomolskaya Pravda journalist Ulyana Skoibeda, whose claim to fame is the scandal last year when she regretted that the ancestors of today's Jewish opposition activists hadn't been killed by the Nazis, was ecstatic over the Crimean annexation. "As I listened to Putin's speech about Crimea, I hugged my child close and said,...

I like Putin. I think he is doing a good job. I like him much better than I like Obama. Funny, ain't it - an old anticommunist admiring the former head of the KGB?

Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada is holding its closed-doors session on May 6 afternoon without Party of Regions members, the faction leader, Mykhailo Chechetov, told reporters.

Ironically, the blizzard of YJ-82X cruise missiles launched from the Chinese subs lying off the coast of Baja California crossed the beach directly over the SEAL training complex on Coronado. America had decided that its special forces were a cheap substitute for the less glamorous hardware and formations that had traditionally been the foundation of American military power. Now, those elite warriors watched helplessly as the missiles roared overhead north toward the two carriers berthed at North Island. The casualties would have been much higher if the Navy had been able to fully man the U.S.S. Carl Vinson and the...

Yesterday there was a facebook post from Igor Rozovskiy, an "Odesa ambulance doctor" who had an eyewitness account about the events that took place in the city. The post was in Russian but was soon translated into English and German. Below is the origional post and the English translation: The problem is the Facebook account is fake - it uses an image of a Stavropol (Russia) dentist (the picture is near the bottom of a page) and spokesman for the Odesa ambulance services had confirmed that no one with that name is employed there.

Simferopol (Undefined) (AFP) - Several dozen Russian planes including what appeared to be strategic bombers and fighter jets have been spotted in the sky above the Moscow-controlled peninsula of Crimea, witnesses and experts said. According to Russian media, President Vladimir Putin is poised to visit Crimea on Friday after overseeing the main military parade on Red Square when Russia celebrates its victory over Nazi Germany in World War II. A local aviation expert told AFP on Sunday that he had sighted a number of planes over the peninsula's main city of Simferopol on Saturday, including supersonic heavy strategic bombers and...

ODESSA, Ukraine (AP) — Hundreds of pro-Russian demonstrators stormed police headquarters in Odessa on Sunday and won the release of 67 people detained after deadly clashes in the Ukrainian port city. More than 40 people died in the riots two days earlier, some from gunshot wounds, but most in a horrific fire that tore through a trade union building. Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who hinted strongly that he saw Moscow's hand in the unrest spreading through southeastern Ukraine, visited Odessa on Sunday to try to defuse the mounting tensions. Odessa is the major city between the Crimean Peninsula, which...

Putin has become a Great-Russian nationalist, a bigoted throwback to the days before the Bolsheviks arrived. His intent is to regain all the lands that once belonged to the czars. When President Obama declared in March that Putin “has no ideology,” he betrayed his ignorance of both history and Putin. Who’s briefing this guy? Putin’s ideology is nationalism, the only belief system that may have killed as many human beings as Marxism. And when a “post-modern” talk-talk America president faces a Russian leader who’s a man of action and whose concept of nationhood refers to the late 19th century, our...

Western policymakers have long been in denial. One needed only to read his own pronouncements to understand Mr Putin’s intentions. A decade ago he spoke of the collapse of the USSR as “the biggest geopolitical catastrophe” of the 20th century. Stalin is rehabilitated in schools. Dissidents are punished. Journalists go missing. Television stations, newspapers and the Internet regurgitate Kremlin propaganda. Mr Putin has played a double game with the West, with considerable success. He encouraged oligarchs to buy up blue chip investments abroad and as many properties as they wanted. He promised to leave them alone to make and spend...

Former United States congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul has called on the US to stay out of the intensifying Ukraine conflict, saying it was Western powers that initially stirred unrest there and which continue to incite the tense situation

http://live.wsj.com/video/sen-ted-cruz-putin-attempting-to-reassemble-ussr/60F884E5-A709-4B39-AEF2-F9EBF51422A1.html

MOSCOW — Russian President Vladi­mir Putin demanded Thursday that the Ukrainian government withdraw its troops from the troubled eastern part of the country, where pro-Russian separatists have been gaining ground. Putin made the demand in a conversation with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who called the Russian leader Thursday about the deteriorating security situation in eastern Ukraine. She reached out to Putin a day after Ukraine’s acting president said he had lost control of that portion of his country. Merkel, who will meet with President Obama on Friday in Washington, pressed Putin to help secure the release of seven international observers...

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia staged a huge May Day parade on Moscow's Red Square for the first time since the Soviet era on Thursday, with workers holding banners proclaiming support for President Vladimir Putin after the seizure of territory from neighboring Ukraine. Thousands of trade unionists marched with Russian flags and flags of Putin's ruling United Russia party onto the giant square beneath the Kremlin walls, past the red granite mausoleum of Soviet state founder Vladimir Lenin. Many banners displayed traditional slogans for the annual workers' holiday, like: "Peace, Labour, May". But others were more directly political, alluding to the...

May Day celebrations in Donetsk, eastern Ukraine, have turned violent as pro-autonomy activists seized the local Prosecutor’s Office. Police responded with tear gas and stun grenades but later relinquished their weapons. The storming of the Donetsk Region Prosecutor’s Office began as several dozen shield-holding protesters pelted rocks and petrol bombs at the building while chanting “Fascists!,” as they tried to break in. There were no immediate reports about those injured, but as was seen on a live stream, at least one person was carried from the scene, with someone shouting: “Call an ambulance!” According to the Ukrainian UNIAN agency, several...