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In a car park outside a block of flats in Moscow, a dozen Russian teenagers in camouflage are practising army drills. A young lieutenant barks out orders. They form a wobbly line and march up and down on the spot. Inside another group of kids are learning how to handle weapons - firing blanks down an empty hall way to improve their aim. This after-school club is ostensibly part of a drugs prevention programme: a programme of evening activities with a patriotic military slant, aimed at keeping local kids away from drinking and shooting up. But for the club's organiser,...

We have heard repeatedly about Americans and Europeans fighting for ISIL, but little attention is being devoted to the Russian-speaking foreign fighters that make up the group. Their numbers are estimated at 500 or more. Omar al-Shishani is usually described as a prominent Islamic State fighter who is Chechen. In fact, he was born in the former Soviet republic of Georgia and was trained there. Some reports suggest these fighters are opposed to the Russian-backed Assad regime in Syria and Russia itself. But if this is the case, then why is Russia opposed to U.S. bombing of these terrorists? NBC...

Maj. Andrei Durnovtsev, a Soviet air force pilot and commander of a Tu-95 Bear bomber, holds a dubious honor in the history of the Cold War. Durnovtsev flew the aircraft that dropped the most powerful nuclear bomb ever. It had an explosive force of 50 megatons, or more than 3,000 times more powerful than the Hiroshima weapon. Over the years, historians identified many names for the test bomb.

Forcing Americans to vote under threat of legal penalty would help to fundamentally transform America, President Obama told a town hall-style meeting in Cleveland yesterday.

Picking his way through the Soviet archives that Boris Yeltsin had just thrown open, in 1991 Tim Sebastian, a reporter for the London Times, came across an arresting memorandum. Composed in 1983 by Victor Chebrikov, the top man at the KGB, the memorandum was addressed to Yuri Andropov, the top man in the entire USSR. The subject: Sen. Edward Kennedy.

Russia agreed to provide military training for three leftist regimes in Latin America and increase military visits and exercises following a visit last week to the region by Moscow’s Defense Minister Sergei Shoygu, Pentagon officials said. Shoygu met with defense and military leaders in Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua and signed several agreements on warship visits and military training during the visit, which ran from Feb. 11 to 14. It is not clear whether any new arms deals were completed during the visit. Defense officials said the Russian leader is seeking bases in the region for strategic bomber flights that Shoygu...

Vladimir Putin’s latest victory in Ukraine is turning into a rout. Having already induced Western leaders to endorse a peace plan that virtually guarantees continued Russian control over parts of two provinces, the Russian ruler ordered a large Ukrainian force holding Debaltseve, a key crossroads in the region, to surrender. His forces, including regular Russian army troops, then assaulted the city in brazen violation of a cease-fire. On Wednesday morning, Ukrainian forces withdrew from Debaltseve under fire, suffering a devastating defeat that will further destabilize the shaky Kiev government of Petro Poroshenko. Mr. Putin was so pleased that he indulged...

Russian tanks descending on Warsaw and Berlin? Missiles lobbed at Washington and London? Such are the scenarios aired by a Russian national television program in response to suggestions that world leaders mark the defeat of Nazi Germany somewhere other than in Moscow. In a recent segment broadcast by the St. Petersburg-based Channel 5 station, presenter Nika Strizhak and a reporter suggest sending Russian tanks, fighter jets, and nuclear missiles to Western capitals should world leaders snub Russia's celebration of the 70th anniversary of Victory Day in May. "It's a very intriguing idea to move our Victory Day parade to London...

New Stalin monument in Russia-occupied Crimea At a time when each day brings fresh evidence that Russia is headed in a very dangerous direction and many news items that leave one shaking one’s head or feeling the need to say “I’m not making this up,” there are nonetheless some “smaller” stories that must not be ignored because of the long shadows they cast on the future. Three in the last several days fall into this category and are thus mentioned here, not because they provide a comprehensive picture of what is happening but because they point to trends already well-established...

So here’s Obama’s opinion: Ukraine should not get military aid from the West because even with American help, Russia would still mop the floor with them. And this, according to the Times, is what Obama thinks will intimidate Putin into signing a peace treaty. I’ll offer the president some free advice: telling Putin the world is too weak to stop him isn’t very intimidating. Yet even if the West got Putin to sign on to a new agreement, nothing will have been accomplished. Putin has been violating the last ceasefire agreement, because there’s no one to enforce it. What Obama,...

President Barack Obama’s eagerness to cut deals with Cuba at almost any cost could yield a “strategic disaster” in which the Russian military winds up controlling Guantanamo Bay, Cuba scholar Jaime Suchlicki told “MidPoint” host Ed Berliner on Newsmax TV. The historic re-start of diplomatic and economic ties with Cuba ordered by Obama does not alter the fact that the communist nation’s rulers neither want nor feel they need improved relations with the United States, said Suchlicki, director of the Cuban Institute at the University of Miami. Just look at all the demands issued by Cuban leader Raul Castro, said...

Members of the Russian parliament are creating a task force to estimate the damages inflicted on Russia by Germany during WWII, in a bid to demand financial compensation from the German state almost 70 years after the end of the conflict, Russian daily newspaper Izvestia reported on Tuesday. The initiative is a direct response to trade sanctions imposed on Russia by the US and EU, for its annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in March and continuous support of separatist fighters in Eastern Ukraine since, according to Mikhail Degyaterov, an MP from the Liberal Democrat Party of Russia, who has proposed...

I remember our daily food always coming from a long, long line at the end of which was a loaf of bread, a liter of milk, a stick of butter, a bottle of murky cooking oil, or a kilo of bones with traces of meat and fat on them. [...] If we wanted to eat, we learned at a very young age that we had to stand in long lines every day, often in bitter cold at 4 a.m. in hopes that the store would not run out of bread or milk by the time we made it to the...

"A war of this kind would unavoidably lead to a nuclear war," the 1990 Nobel Peace Prize winner told Der Spiegel news magazine, according to excerpts released on Friday. "We won't survive the coming years if someone loses their nerve in this overheated situation," added Gorbachev, 83. "This is not something I'm saying thoughtlessly. I am extremely concerned."

Happy Birthday to the Soviet Union! In 1922, in post-revolutionary Russia, a bunch of commies got together and officially established the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Russia, Belorussia, Ukraine and the Transcaucasian Federation called a meeting, and created the world’s first union based on Marxist Socialism… It shaped up to be such a rousing success, Joseph Stalin celebrated by killing 50 million fellow countrymen. During the Russian Revolution of 1917 the Bolsheviks managed to win over the hearts and minds of their fellow commie forces using their message of Hope and Change; which lead to a pretty clear direction for...

The scars left on the soul and minds of so many surviving victims of communism are hard to heal On Christmas 1989, twenty-five years ago, the brutal communist dictatorship of Romania ended with the execution of the tyrant Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena in front of a firing squad at Tirgoviste, following a brief trial. His reign of terror lasted 24 years (1965-1989). The first communist despot, Gheorghe Georghiu-Dej (1945-1964) was so ruthless, the citizens felt like “hunted” animals during his regime. Almost forty-four years of brutal communism left a deep and festering wound that would be hard to...

Very few people understand what Putin is doing at the moment. And almost no one understands what he will do in the future. No matter how strange it may seem, but right now, Putin is selling Russian oil and gas ONLY for physical gold. How long will the West be able to buy oil and gas from Russia in exchange for physical gold? And what will happen to the US petrodollar after the West runs out of physical gold to pay for Russian oil, gas and uranium, as well as to pay for Chinese goods?

EASTERN UKRAINE -- Ukraine's evangelical Christians are bearing the brunt of the country's conflict, often with deadly consequences. It's a scene that has played in Elena Velichko's head over and over. Pro-Russian rebels took over her hometown in early April. Her husband Vladimir told her to take the kids and leave the city. "He took us to the train station and we said goodbye. He said, 'I love you.' He kissed me and kissed the children and left," Elena said. Several days later, her life and that of her eight children, ages 2 to 16, suddenly turned upside down. Surreal...

Viorel Florescu/staff photographer Retired Washington Township math teacher Miriam Moskowitz, 98, leaving federal court in New York City on Thursday with Caren Ponty, left, and her nephew Ira Moskowitz, after U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein ruled against her petition to reverse her 1950 felony conviction related to atomic espionage. Miriam Moskowitz has been called a lot of things in her 98 years of life — feisty, aggressive and possessing a violent temper, among them. But the one label that bothers her most is spy for the former Soviet Union — a moniker given to her by the government.  That...

More than 150 kilometres of concrete, wire and guard towers ringed West Berlin from 1961 to 1989. But it’s not easy to carve up a city - and construction of the Wall threw up many freak instances. [....] "The owners had to pass through the death strip to reach their plots -- and for that there was an iron door in the Wall with a doorbell,...."