Free Republic

House Republicans are probing whether the Department of Justice retaliated against one of their impeachment witnesses — a former business associate of Hunter Biden who revealed a 2014 conversation then-Vice President Biden had with his son and the former mayor of Moscow. Jason Galanis, who is currently serving a 14-year federal prison sentence for defrauding an American Indian tribe, disclosed a May 4, 2014, speaker phone conversation between Hunter and Joe Biden and Russian oligarch Yelena Baturina and her husband, the ex-Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov. Galanis was interviewed last month from his prison cell in Montgomery, Ala., and during his...

Russia's richest woman sues Forbes magazine MOSCOW, Feb 14 (Reuters) - Russia's richest woman, who is also the wife of Moscow's mayor, is suing the Russian edition of Forbes magazine for defamation over a story detailing her business interests, her company said on Wednesday. A spokesman for Yelena Baturina's Inteko firm said it had filed a suit against the magazine and its editor in Russian courts seeking compensation totalling 213,000 roubles ($8,100). "The article published in the December edition of Forbes magazine contains information which is not true," said Inteko spokesman Gennady Terebkov. That information included "the incorrect reproduction of...

Hunter Biden once met with a controversial Russian oligarch who’s been sanctioned by the UK over the deadly invasion of Ukraine — but hasn’t faced any punishment from the US. An itinerary for a three-day visit to the US by billionaire Vladimir Yevtushenkov shows a breakfast scheduled with President Biden’s son at the swank Ritz-Carlton hotel near Central Park from 9 to 10 a.m. on March 14, 2012, investigative journalist Vicky Ward revealed on her Substack account Wednesday. -snip- Online reports, including one cited in a secret US government cable posted online by Wikileaks, have said he is married to...

Gore's, Talbott's Red Russian roots How they 'Hammer'-ed out Washington-Moscow policy Posted: October 3, 2000 Loutchansky's name surfaced again last year, when the Washington Post revealed that first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton's two brothers, Tony Rodham and Hugh Rodham, were involved in a $118 million scheme to grow and export hazelnuts in the former Soviet republic of Georgia. Their partner in the venture was Aslan Abashidze, who said his financial adviser was Loutchansky. Abashidze is a reputed member of a Russian organized crime family.The Rodham brothers at first balked and then agreed to national security adviser Sandy Berger's request that...

February 2, 2011, 3:33 pm Investment Banking | Legal/Regulatory Police Search Deutsche Bank Office in Russia By ANDREW E. KRAMER 6:10 p.m. | Updated MOSCOW — Masked policemen raided Deutsche Bank’s main Moscow office on Wednesday, questioning bankers and unnerving employees. Police said they were searching for documents in a real estate deal linked to a member of the Russian Parliament, now living in exile in the United States. The parliamentarian, Ashot Yegiazaryan, had business dealings with companies tied to the former mayor of Moscow, Yuri M. Luzhkov, who fell from favor and resigned last fall. Deutsche Bank said in...

Prominent gay activist and lawyer Nikolai Alexeyev was arrested at Domodedovo airport on Wednesday evening as he tried to board a plane bound for Geneva. He sent text messages on Thursday morning telling friends he had been taken out of the city and did not know exactly where he was, while he faced pressure to halt his law suit against mayor Yury Luzhkov. “It is quite possible that the arrest was connected with a picket demanding the resignation of the homophobic mayor of Moscow Luzhkov,” Alexeyev’s colleague Nikolai Bayev said in a press release on Gayrussia.ru. Gay activists had previously...

MOSCOW (AFP)--The defense Moscow mounted during World War II should serve as a warning to Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili and the U.S., Moscow's mayor said following last month's war in Georgia. "In the tough times of war, Moscow's defense against the enemy was crushing," Yury Luzhkov said during celebrations for the 861st anniversary of the founding of Moscow, standing alongside Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. "Let that be a stern and appropriate reminder to those who surround Russia with their missiles and bases. Let it be a warning to Saakashvili's regime," Luzhkov said in televised comments, in reference to NATO and...

A ramshackle plywood house on a plot worth hundreds of thousands of dollars on the edge of Moscow is at the center of a fierce battle that is pitting its residents and several federal officials against the seemingly omnipotent Moscow government. The outcome promises to show how far and for how long politicians are ready to support a real grassroots protest. The case could also help raise the status of the Public Chamber as a defender of public interests. "This is the barbaric persecution of us here. My mom had to be treated by doctors and is now resting at...

The campaign against the alleged harassment of Hindus in Russia by the Orthodox Church and the Mayor of Moscow is getting more intense in Britain. Ashok Kumar, MP is launching the "Defend Russian Hindus Campaign" at the House of Commons in January. There was umbrage here when it was learnt that Archbishop Nikon wrote a letter to the Mayor of Moscow urging him not to allow the construction of a Hindu temple in Moscow because according to him, Lord Krishna who is worshipped by the Hindu community was an "evil demon". "Such untenable words in an age where interfaith harmony...

Russia's capital city is a golden egg. The Kremlin aims to seize it in yet another play for power and privilege. Dec. 19, 2005 issue - Moscow is not merely Russia's capital. It is a treasure chest. The city is home to four fifths of the country's national wealth. It boasts more billionaires than New York or London. Everything and everyone is here: banks, businesses, trade. Whoever rules Moscow, Russians like to say, rules the country. The undisputed master of Moscow just now is its current mayor, Yuri Luzhkov. For more than a decade he has ruled the city...

Imagine yourself sitting at home, unable to move because you are nursing a broken leg. Suddenly you hear a roar outside... and realise a bulldozer is attacking your front porch. This is what happened to Alexei Syomov, who thought he owned his home in Gavrikovo, just outside Moscow. Speaking in front of the huge apartment block that now stands on the site of his wooden house, he says: "They took all of my furniture out. Then they began destroying the house. After a couple of minutes the place where it stood was flat." By "they", he refers to bureaucrats who,...

Ukraine’s foreign policy body will announce Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov and political strategist Gleb Pavlovsky personae non gratae for their support of pro-Moscow presidential candidate, Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich. The two political leaders, in a formal statement to be released Monday, are accused of “inciting nationalist strife, war, propaganda of fascism, and making statements discrediting the democratic process in the Ukraine,” the Russki Kurier daily reported. Yuri Luzhkov earlier traveled to the Russian-speaking Donetsk region to endorse Yanukovich, as did President Vladimir Putin in several statements. Speaking at the All-Ukrainian Congress of Deputies in Severodonetsk, Luzhkov criticized the opposition for...

On Ukraina television last week, viewers caught images of Viktor Yushchenko, the opposition candidate in this country's contested presidential election, greeting voters and kissing babies, standard glad-handing by a pol on the stump. The broadcast of benevolent images of Yushchenko on a Russian language channel that stridently supports his opponent, Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, was short-lived. Just as suddenly, the sequence cut to historical footage of Adolf Hitler, also greeting supporters and caressing the foreheads of German children thrust toward him by their beaming parents. The message, one that has been hammered home for months now, was clear: Yushchenko is...

<p>Making monuments is rarely simple, as New Yorkers debating the right memorial for Sept. 11 can attest. But for controversial trends in the commemoration business, it's hard to top modern Moscow. Making a post-Soviet break with the past has meant scrapping some of communism's many trappings, including the goose-stepping honor guard at Lenin's tomb, the plethora of Soviet place names, and, most famously, a huge bronze statue of the KGB's founding father, Felix Dzerzhinsky. But the landscape remains littered with mementos of state-sanctioned mass murder--put there as an exercise in self-exaltation by the former Soviet rulers, who ordained the murdering.</p>