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He is Dmitry Firtash, a former fireman and soldier. In little more than a decade, the Ukrainian went from obscurity to wealth and renown, largely by buying gas from Russia and selling it in his home country. His success was built on remarkable sweetheart deals brokered by associates of Russian leader Vladimir Putin, at immense cost to Russian taxpayers, a Reuters investigation shows. Russian government records reviewed for this article reveal for the first time the terms of recent deals between Firtash and Russia's Gazprom, a giant gas company majority owned by the state. According to Russian customs documents detailing...

Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) appeared on Fox News’ “Hannity” this week to discuss the origins of the Steele dossier. He said it should really be called the “Simpson” dossier. Although Christopher Steele likely contributed “stories” to the dossier, and his years of experience in British intelligence lent credence to the document, Nunes believes that Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson may actually have written the majority of it. In his book “Spygate,” journalist Dan Bongino makes the same case. He points out the striking similarities between articles Simpson and his wife, Mary Jacoby wrote for the Wall Street Journal in 2007...

[subtitle: New law bans Soviet street names, statues and other reminders of communist past, as some question priorities.] In a country where at least 4,000 localities had a main thoroughfare named after Lenin, outlawing remnants of the Soviet era like street names and statues was bound to cause problems... The phenomenon is so common now that it has its own name -- "Leninopad" or "Lenin-fall," a phrase that echoes the Ukrainian word for snowfall...

U.S. energy major Chevron plans to withdraw from a $10 billion shale gas deal with Kiev, a senior Ukrainian presidential official said on Monday. Ukraine signed a shale gas production-sharing agreement with Chevron amid great fanfare in November 2013, just months before mass protests in Kiev ousted former president Viktor Yanukovich, plunging the country into a major crisis with Russia. "There is information that they (Chevron) are planning this decision," Valeriy Chaliy told journalists, referring to a report by local media that Chevron had told the government it was pulling out of the deal. Chaliy declined to give further details....

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The most terrifying aspect of the collapse of US power worldwide is the US’s indifferent response to it. In Europe, in Asia, in the Middle East and beyond, America’s most dangerous foes are engaging in aggression and brinkmanship unseen in decades. As Gordon Chang noted at a symposium in Los Angeles last month hosted by the David Horowitz Freedom Center, since President Barack Obama entered office in 2009, the Chinese have responded to his overtures of goodwill and appeasement with intensified aggression against the US’s Asian allies and against US warships. In 2012, China seized the Scarborough Shoal from the...

U.S. mercenaries are not involved in suppressing riots in southeastern Ukraine, the White House said on Tuesday, citing the Greystone private military organization. "I would point you to what the company [Greystone] itself has said in the past, which is that this is not true," White House press secretary Jay Carney said at a press conference.

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) -- Authorities in Ukraine's capital are warning that they are prepared to use force to clear several government buildings that have been seized by pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine. The country's interior minister says the standoff in Luhansk and two neighboring regions must be resolved within the next two days. As he spoke, anti-government protesters in Luhansk raised high barricades along a thoroughfare in front of the security service building. Hundreds of supporters camped outside overnight and chanted the name of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The US Secretary of State spoke today of the unacceptability of invading a sovereign country on phony pretexts in order to assert one’s own interests in the 21st century. But no, he was not speaking about the United States, as one might have thought. “You just don’t invade another country on phony pretext in order to assert your interests,” Kerry said during an interview with NBC. “This is an act of aggression that is completely trumped up in terms of its pretext. It’s really 19th century behaviour in the 21st century.” Kerry has also threatened to isolate Russia economically and...

VIDEO AT LINK On Fox News Channel’s “Special Report” on Tuesday, network senior political analyst Brit Hume concurred with a statement Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) had made earlier in the day about the failings of the President Barack Obama’s foreign policy under the direction of Secretary of State John Kerry. According to Hume, much of what the Obama administration had aimed to accomplish was reliant on Russia, which as of now has a relationship with the United States in disrepair.

American spies have spotted all the signs of an all-out Russian invasion of Ukraine. Why won’t they tell the Ukrainians about the forces on their border? U.S. intelligence agencies now have detailed information that Russia has amassed the kind of forces needed for a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. But the Obama administration hasn’t shared with Ukraine the imagery, intercepts, and analysis that pinpont (sic) the location of the Russian troops ready to seize more Ukrainian land, The Daily Beast has learned. President Obama has repeatedly and publicly expressed solidarity with the Ukrainian people—and warned Russian leader Vladimir Putin that there...

DNIPROPETROVSK, Ukraine — From his office atop the world’s biggest Jewish community center, Shmuel Kaminezki, the chief rabbi of this eastern Ukrainian city, has followed with dismay Russian claims that Ukraine is now in the hands of neo-Nazi extremists — and struggled to calm his panicked 85-year-old mother in New York. Raised in Russia and a regular viewer of Russian television, she “calls every day to ask, ‘Have the pogroms happened yet?' ” Rabbi Kaminezki said. He tells his mother that they have not, and that she should stop watching Russian TV. “It is a total lie,” he said. “Jews are...

UkrInform.ua reports that the deputy head of Ukraine’s Presidential Administration, Andriy Senchenko, has announced that an agreement has been reached on the return of Ukraine’s ships from Russian-held Crimea. The first ships to return will be the corvette Ternopil, the missile boat Priluki and the tanker, Fastov, all of which are currently in Sevastopol. Simultaneously, the head of the Ukrainian Defence Ministry’s Crimean media centre, Vladislav Seleznev, announced that an agreement had been made on the return of Ukrainian aircraft from Crimea, adding that: One plane will fly home under its own power following maintenance, several more will be transported...

Russia is to return Tupolev Tu-22M3 ‘Backfire’ long-range supersonic bombers to Crimea by 2016 as part of a build-up of maritime aviation assets on the strategic peninsula, which was seized by Moscow’s military forces earlier this month, reports Jane’s. The nuclear-capable bombers were the backbone of Soviet naval strike units during the Cold War but were subsequently withdrawn from bases in Crimea as part of the consolidation of Russian naval aviation and force level restrictions on the peninsula imposed by the Kiev government.

A senior Christian Democrat criticized German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier's stance on Ukraine and Russia in a signal of a possible rift appearing within Chancellor Angela Merkel's right-left coalition over relations with Moscow. Conservative leader Merkel and Steinmeier, who is a senior member of the Social Democrats (SPD), have been at pains to stress how closely they are coordinating on policy since the Ukraine crisis began, despite the traditionally warmer ties to Moscow maintained by the leftist SPD.

<p>Secretary of State John Kerry on Tuesday threatened Russia with tougher economic sanctions if it fails to back down from its chaotic involvement in Ukraine.</p> <p>"What we see from Russia is an illegal and illegitimate effort to destabilize a sovereign state and create a contrived crisis with paid operatives across an international boundary," Kerry told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.</p>

If you've been following events in Ukraine closely, you may have seen maps, available at electoralgeography.com, showing how the ethnic Russian areas voted heavily for one candidate and the ethnic Ukrainian areas for another. However, as the eminent historians of Eastern Europe Timothy Snyder and Anne Applebaum have written, the division is not simply based on ethnicity or language. Almost all Ukrainians can speak Russian and most can speak or at least understand the closely related Ukrainian. The maps suggest a different story. This division of Ukraine is based, most of all, on history. Consider the far western part of...

Russia warned Tuesday that any use of force in Ukraine's eastern region could lead to civil war, as Kiev seeks to regain control after pro-Moscow uprisings in three cities. Pro-Russian protesters seized government buildings in the three cities of Donetsk, Luhansk and Kharkiv on Sunday. Rebels occupying Donetsk's regional government building Monday declared a "people's republic" and called for a referendum on secession from Ukraine to be held by May 11.

Police detained 70 people occupying a regional administration building in eastern Ukraine overnight, but pro-Moscow protesters held out in a standoff in two other cities in what Kiev called a Russian-led plan to dismember the country. Kiev says the seizure of public buildings in eastern Ukraine's mainly Russian-speaking industrial heartland on Sunday night is a replay of events in Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula Moscow annexed last month.

Ukraine's state security service on Tuesday said that pro-Russian separatists have placed explosives in a building they seized in the eastern city of Luhansk and are using weapons to hold around 60 people against their will. Pro-Russian separatists occupied the SBU building on Sunday evening in one of a series of attacks in the east of the country. At least nine people were injured when the separatists broke doors and windows throughout the building and raised the Russian flag.