Free Republic

Moscow previously issued a new decree requiring "unfriendly states" to pay for Russian gas in rubles. Kremlin includes all countries that have imposed sanctions on Russia "unfriendly". European companies will be able to pay for the Russian gas while meeting Moscow's demands to do so in rubles without violating EU sanctions at the same time. The scheme proposed by the European Commission suggests that companies will wire their payments in euros or dollars to a bank account in Russia, where the currency will be converted into rubles. Brussels' memo said that the European firms' obligations will be complete once the...

An ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin has been found dead alongside members of his family in his multi-million dollar apartment in Moscow.... Avayev was previously employed at Gazprombank, which is a key part of Putin's gas-for-roubles scheme to hit back at Western sanctions.....

A former Kremlin official and Gazprombank vice-president has been found dead in his elite £2 million Moscow apartment by his 26-year-old daughter, police have said. Alongside the body of multimillionaire Vladislav Avayev, 51, was his 'pregnant' wife Yelena, 47, and younger daughter Maria, 13. The bodies - all with gunshot wounds - were found by the couple's distraught adult daughter Anastasia, when she opened the apartment after failing to reach her family. Investigators said they are keeping an open mind on the 14th floor massacre, carried out 'with Avayev's pistol', and investigating any links to his work and personal life....

The Fusion GPS news-for-hire scandal has not only led to the public identification of the source of the “Trump Dossier”—a for-profit company that provides opposition research to whoever could write big checks, which is staffed by four former Wall Street Journal reporters led by Glenn Simpson. The scandal has also lifted the lid off a sewer of corporate information warfare and opposition research that the flailing institutions of the mainstream press now regularly re-package as news, without ever saying where it came from—or who paid for it. While the idea that the products of paid opposition research are being main-lined...