Free Republic

Yuri Nosenko, who died on August 23 aged 80, was a KGB intelligence officer who defected to the West at the height of the Cold War; after initial doubts about his authenticity, the CIA came to consider him one of its most valuable, if troublesome, defectors. Codenamed "Foxtrot" by the CIA, Nosenko was a KGB Second Chief Directorate (SCD) officer when he approached the CIA in Geneva in June 1962. He was in Switzerland as a member of the Soviet Union's disarmament delegation. ....he unexpectedly defected in Geneva during a second visit, in February 1964, having claimed to have reviewed...

WHEN Nikolai Patrushev, head of Russia's federal security service (FSB), spoke to his staff to mark the 90th anniversary of the Soviet secret service last year, he made an odd historic diversion. “Those who study history know that security existed before. Sophia Paleologue married Ivan III, and being a niece of the last Byzantine emperor, paid close attention to questions of security.” Few understood what he was talking about. The mystery was cleared up a few weeks later, when Russia's state television channel aired an hour-long film, “The Destruction of the Empire: a Byzantine Lesson”. It proved so popular that...

Last Saturday, four Russian Tupolev-95 bombers took off in the middle of the night from an airfield at Ukrainka. Two of them headed for the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Nimitz and its escort, the guided missile cruiser USS Princeton. As two of the bombers got within cruise-missile range of the American ships, 500 miles away, four F/A-18 Hornets were launched from the Nimitz and intercepted them 50 miles out. One Tu-95 was escorted as it flew 2,000 feet above the Nimitz. The other Tupolev was followed as it circled at a distance of 58 miles. One of the Tupolevs from...

In presenting the draft treaty text to the 65-member U.N. Conference on Disarmament, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned there could be no international security without preventing an arms race in space. Speaking through an interpreter, he said the world's military and political equilibrium would be endangered unless strategic stability is maintained. "Apart from this, weapons deployment in space by one state will inevitably result in a chain reaction," Lavrov said. "And, this, in turn, means a new spiral in the arms race both in space and on the Earth... The task of preventing an arms race in space is...

Russia is waging a "little Cold War" against its Baltic neighbors, while luring Western Europe into energy deals that will later allow Moscow to extend its political influence through intimidation, a former president of Lithuania warned yesterday. Russia has returned to its historical aggressive behavior, harboring "deep suspicions of the rest of the world" and dashing the "short-lived hopes that Russia would become a democracy" after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Vytautas Landsbergis said at the National Press Club. Now a conservative member of the European Parliament, Mr. Landsbergis predicted that Russian President Vladimir Putin and his supporters aim...

What killed Badri Patarkatsishvili? As the police scour his home for clues and a pathologist conducts a post-mortem examination, conspiracy theorists will point to the company he kept on the day he died. On Tuesday afternoon, hours before his death, Patarkatsishvili was with Boris Berezovsky at the law offices of Lord Goldsmith, the former attorney general, in the City. Berezovsky is at the centre of London-based opposition to Russian president Vladimir Putin's government and on Tuesday he, Patarkatsishvili and their friend Yuli Dubov swore witness statements related to various cases in the former Soviet Union involving seizure of assets and...

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Vladimir Putin said on Thursday he saw no need to hang his successor's portrait in his office once he steps down as Russia's president. It is accepted etiquette in Russia for all officials to hang up a portrait of the head of state. But Putin's protege Dmitry Medvedev is expected to win next month's election while he stays on as a very influential prime minister. "In order to establish my relationship with Dmitry Anatolyevich (Medvedev) I won't need to hang his portrait on my wall if he is elected president," Putin said. "As for my relations with...

As Yogi Berra once said, "This is déjà vu all over again." On May 9, heavy military equipment will once again roll down Moscow's Red Square for the Victory Day military parade. Tanks, missiles, and 6,000 troops will be joined overhead by Su-27 and MiG-29 fighter aircraft and military helicopters. The last time Moscow saw such a display of military hardware on Red Square was in November 1990, before the collapse of the Soviet Union. The world should take notice of Russia's increasing militarism. The parade is designed to generate nostalgia among the Russian people and to signal to the...

WASHINGTON (AFP) — Chinese leader Mao Zedong proposed sending 10 million Chinese women to the United States, in talks with top envoy Henry Kissinger in 1973, according to documents released Tuesday. The powerful chairman of the Chinese Communist Party said he believed such emigration could kickstart bilateral trade but could also "harm" the United States with a population explosion similar to China, according to documents released Tuesday by the State Department on US-China ties between 1973 to 1976. In a long conversation that stretched way past midnight at Mao's residence on February 17, 1973, the cigar-chomping Chinese leader referred to...

MOSCOW, Feb 13 (Reuters) - Lawyers for The Bank of New York (BK.N: Quote, Profile, Research) on Wednesday insisted on questioning a close ally of President Vladimir Putin who heads Russia's customs service, which is pursuing a $22.5 billion lawsuit against the bank. The move to quiz customs chief Andrei Belyaninov -- which the service's top lawyer said was "absurd" -- threatens to further politicise the highly charged case as BoNY seeks to turn the tables on the plaintiffs. The customs service is suing the bank for damages related to a U.S. money-laundering case from 2000, in which a rogue...

WASHINGTON (AFP) — The chief of the US Navy said Tuesday an overflight of a US aircraft carrier by a Russian bomber off Japan was "benign" and unprovocative, adding that US crew were not called to combat stations. Admiral Gary Roughead said he had not asked Moscow for an explanation, but offered one of his own: the Russian military is trying to re-emerge as a global force. "But I did not consider it to be provocative," he said of Saturday's overflight of the USS Nimitz in the western Pacific. "And, again, the way that our forces responded, our commanders responded,...

Russia could aim nuclear missiles at Ukraine if the former Soviet republic joins NATO and accepts the deployment of anti-missile defenses on its territory, President Vladimir Putin said. It was Putin's strongest warning to date against Kiev's efforts to join the Western alliance. Speaking Tuesday at a news conference in Moscow after holding four hours of talks with Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, Putin said that Ukraine's aspirations to join NATO would restrict its sovereignty. "That of course is Ukraine's internal process ... and we don't have the right, and we won't, interfere in this process," Putin said. But "that raises...

The last 20 years of the USSR were characterized by very poor economic results, at least compared to the economic performance of the leading western economies. With the fall of communism, new hopes for a better life came to millions of people living in the different republics and satellite countries. However, the transition was difficult, and although some countries like the Czech Republic and Slovenia were able to overcome the early years of transition, becoming the prosperous democracies that they are now, some others eventually adopted new types of autocracies. In the case of Russia, the early years of the...

It's now been more than two years since Moscow cut off gas supplies to Ukraine. Yesterday, it threatened to do so again. Many in the European Union said back in 2006 that they had finally woken up to the risks of overdependence on a single supplier. Consequently, the EU began promoting several non-Russian gas pipeline projects to increase diversification and market competition. But in the absence of a unified EU energy security policy, Moscow has been able to play divide and rule with Europe, cementing its gas monopoly power on the Continent. Unless the EU starts treating energy as a...

The cleverly titled Wall Street Journal column, “Gazprom Drills Deeper Into Europe,” explains how the Russian energy giant (Gazprom) is invading Western retail energy markets. While Russian bombers and warships conduct war exercises in the Atlantic, the real 2008 Russian Winter Offensive is along economic lines. Not only has Russia protected itself financially, with bolstered currency reserves, we also find that Russian grain production is up. Here the Kremlin’s watchword is self-sufficiency. If global financial collapse occurs, the Russian people will survive. In fact, Russia sees opportunity as currencies devalue and markets fall. If we look at rising food costs...

Vladimir Putin accused the West of triggering a fresh arms race today and gave warning that Russia was now rich enough to respond with a new generation of high-tech weaponry. President Putin attacked the United States and Europe for expanding Nato close to Russia's border at a time when Moscow had closed military bases abroad. He said that Russia would stand up to the West and defend itself against US plans to establish a missile defence shield in Eastern Europe. “A new arms race has started to unfold,” Mr Putin told ministers and regional governors in a televised address. “It's...

It was a typical December night in Moscow. The cold was biting, the snow thick and dry. In the Federal Security Service's headquarters on Lubyanskaya Ploshchad, hundreds of intelligence officers met as they did every year to celebrate the founding of the Cheka, the Soviet secret police. Champagne glasses tinkled as the officers spoke in jubilant tones. Classical music played softly in the background. The hall grew quiet as Vladimir Putin -- the former FSB director who had been appointed prime minister a few months earlier -- stood to speak. "Dear comrades," Putin said. "I would like to announce to...

Russia's foreign minister called U.S. plans to build a global missile defense shield an example of "imperial thinking," and suggested in comments published Thursday that Washington was using the system to try to encircle Russia. Sergey Lavrov said in an interview with the Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza that elements of the missile defense system "exist or will be built in Alaska, California, northeast Asia." "If we look at a map, it's clear that all of it is concentrating around our borders," he was quoted as saying. "Most likely in the near future, we are going to hear about hundreds, and...

Sixty years ago the Berlin Airlift highlighted the menace of Stalin's Kremlin. Forty years ago Soviet tanks crushed both the Prague Spring and any remaining illusions about the Kremlin's grip on the captive nations. Twenty years ago we began dropping our guard, as totalitarianism withered under Mikhail Gorbachev. Now it is time to acknowledge the inconvenient truth. Russia is back: rich, powerful and hostile. Partnership is giving way to rivalry, with increasingly threatening overtones. The new Cold War has begun - but just as in the 1940s, we are alarmingly slow to notice it. The loudest alarm signal is Russia's...

So you thought the Cold War was over, did you? Welcome to Vladimir Putin's new Russian Empire. Using the wealth generated by soaring oil and gas prices, the Kremlin has intimidated its former satellites in Eastern Europe, while treating most of America's North American Treaty Organization allies as if they too could be pushed around. Russian revanchism for the supposed humiliations of the Yeltsin era in the 1990s drives this agenda. President Putin calls the collapse of the Soviet Union the "greatest geopolitical catastrophe" of the twentieth century, and the suggestion is that everything that has happened since 1991, or...