Free Republic

According to new details leaked to The Guardian (UK) by NSA leaker Edward Snowden, American and British intelligence directed snooping efforts against internet and phone data from foreign officials at the G20 in 2009. According to the documents, which were created by the NSA and handed over to the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s phone calls were bugged, and emails and calls from other delegates’ phones were monitored as well. Fake internet cafes were created to grab keystrokes from attendees. Forty-five analysts were given round-the-clock updates on who was calling whom at the summit. The...

President Barack Obama wants Russia to be friends. Since he and former president Dmitry Medvedev, now the country’s Prime Minister, discussed a “reset” of relations, the Cold War’s Punch & Judy have been more like frenemies than friends.

<p>The Pentagon is canceling the planned fourth phase of an anti-missile system that had been scheduled for deployment in Poland in 2022. The SM3 IIb missile was significant for two reasons: It was the only interceptor planned for the Europe-based system that could have defended the United States against an attack from Iran; and it was the component of the system most decried by Russia, which claimed that it could be used against its intercontinental missiles.</p>

Prime Minister Medvedev says Syrian president's chances of keeping power are getting "smaller and smaller" as war rages Russia's prime minister has said Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had made a "grave," and possibly "fatal" mistake by delaying political reforms and not speaking to members of the country's oppositon sooner. "[Assad] should have done everything much faster, attracting part of the moderate opposition, which was ready to sit at the table with him, to his side," Dmitry Medvedev said according to the transcript of an interview with CNN released by his office on Sunday. "This was his grave mistake, and possibly...

IN FOCUS: Russian's next-generation bomber takes shape Confirmation came on the occasion of the Russian air force centennial celebrations in August. Addressing media, air force commander-in-chief Lt Gen Victor Bondarev revealed that development of a new strategic bomber, the PAK-DA, had commenced. Its name is a Russian acronym that approximates to "future aviation complex for long-range aviation", and the aircraft is intended to supplement and partially replace the Tupolev Tu-160s, Tu-95MSs and Tu-22M3s now forming the backbone of Russia's land-based strategic bomber fleet. Vladislav Perminov Touching on a recent meeting with Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, during which long-term procurement issues...

........Of all the waste by the Federal government and with all the other Federal agencies that could be moved to privatization, Obama selects our space program. This detracts from the progress of our missile technology that is shared with our military, it inhibits our national defense, and it damages our national identity.Space X is Obama's choice for supplanting NASA. It appears Obama has picked another loser. Move over Solyndra.Let's begin with the performance to date of the ersatz space program called Space X....."Thus far, NASA has awarded at least $2.1 billion in SAA money to private space companies,including a total...

Obama "This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility" Medvedev "I understand. I will transmit this information to Vladimir"

The violence unleashed in Kyrgyzstan is being spun as ethnic rioting. The reality is a good deal more complex, and the blame can be laid directly at Russia's door. Russia's coup against the Bakiyev government which took power in the Tulip Revolution leveraged Uzbek separatists in the Osh Province to suppress Kyrgiz nationalist supporters of Bakiyev. Russia had been trying for a while to force out Manas Air Base, a US air force base that serves as a vital link to US forces in Afghanistan. Russia tolerated Bakiyev, so long as he was against the US base. But once Bakiyev...

AFP - Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari was expected in Moscow on Wednesday for talks with Russian leaders on his first major foreign visit since the killing of Osama bin Laden by US forces. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev will host Zardari for talks on Thursday at the Kremlin where officials from the two countries were also expected to sign agreements on cooperation in agriculture, aviation and energy, a spokesman for the Pakistan Embassy in Moscow told AFP. "Economics will be the focus of the visit," said the spokesman, Raja Abdul Qayyum. The three-day visit to Russia will be Zardari's first...

National security and foreign policy have received short shrift in the 2012 presidential-election campaign. Mitt Romney made a quick swing through Britain, Israel, and Poland to suggest he would repair strained relations with America’s closest allies. President Obama has repeatedly reminded voters that he gave the order to kill Osama bin Laden. That’s about it. For the most part, each campaign has sung a single note: Romney has tried to convince voters he can fix the broken economy. Obama has tried to convince voters that Romney is a heartless, plutocratic tax cheat and, possibly, a murderer to boot. Consequential international...

(Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin oversaw the start of construction of one of Russia's newest generation submarines on Monday and vowed to boost nuclear naval forces to safeguard the country's position as a leading sea power. Warning that its navy would protect top energy producer Russia's interests in the oil-rich Arctic, Putin led the ceremony to begin building the submarine Prince Vladimir, named after the ruler who founded a precursor state to modern Russia. The vessel is the fourth Borei class submarine, designed to carry one of the country's newest and most powerful intercontinental nuclear missiles, the Bulava, or Mace....

<p>"And I confess the progress didn't come quickly, and it did not come easily," President Obama said about his time as a community organizer in Chicago. "Sometimes it didn't come at all. There were times where I thought about giving up and moving on. But what kept me going day in and day out was the same thing that has sustained the Urban League all these years. The same thing that sustains all of you. And that is the belief that in America, change is always possible. That our union may not be perfect, but it is perfectible."</p>

The Fiscal 2013 Defense spending bill that passed the House 326 to 90 with bipartisan support Thursday evening included an amendment that would prohibit President Barack Obama from making good on a deal with Russia that he appeared to hint at earlier this year. Introduced by Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), the amendment bars the administration from sharing classified missile defense information with Russia. In late March, an inadvertent hot-mic moment caught Obama asking Russian president Dmitri Medvedev for “space” until after the election, saying he would then have more “flexibility” to

Moscow has recently reacted with caution and patience following the announced suspension of Uzbekistan’s membership of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), while leading Russian military officials and experts continue to emphasize that the General Staff regard the risk of military conflict in Central Asia to be growing. In fact, Moscow closely coordinated the resolution to the impasse with Tashkent in the CSTO through its strong defense relations with Minsk, in order to convey a message to Uzbekistan that it either had to cooperate more closely within the body or find a way to leave (RIA Novosti, July 5). Colonel-General...

The Obama Record: In pursuit of a world without nuclear weapons, the president finalizes plans to decimate our nuclear deterrent and reduce our warhead count beyond even treaty commitments. (snip) President Obama has decided that indeed we are going to tempt them with weakness. According to an Associated Press report on conversations with current and former administration officials, Obama is finalizing plans, perhaps to be released later this month, to cut the U.S. nuclear arsenal to between 1,000 and 1,100 warheads with the goal "in the longer term, (of) eliminating nuclear weapons."

Two Russian strategic nuclear bombers entered the U.S. air defense zone near the Pacific coast on Wednesday and were met by U.S. interceptor jets, defense officials told the Free Beacon. It was the second time Moscow dispatched nuclear-capable bombers into the 200-mile zone surrounding U.S. territory in the past two weeks. An earlier intrusion by two Tu-95 Bear H bombers took place near Alaska as part of arctic war games that a Russian military spokesman said included simulated attacks on “enemy” air defenses and strategic facilities. A defense official said the Pacific coast intrusion came close to the U.S. coast...

The Obama administration is moving toward decisions that would further cut the number of U.S. nuclear weapons, possibly to between 1,000 and 1,100, reflecting new thinking on the role of nuclear weapons in an age of terror, current and former officials say. The reductions under consideration are in line with President Barack Obama's vision of trimming the nation's nuclear arsenal without harming national security in the short term, and in the longer term, eliminating nuclear weapons.

Northcom says Russian nuclear bombers violated U.S. airspace during arctic war games The U.S. Northern Command and joint U.S.-Canadian North American Aerospace Defense (NORAD) Command said two Russian bombers violated U.S. airspace near Alaska during recent arctic war games.Disclosure by the command in charge of U.S. homeland defense followed a report in the Free Beacon quoting U.S. officials who said the Russian aircraft had threatened U.S. air space but did not cross into it and were met over the Pacific by U.S. F-15 interceptor jets. “There was a single out-of-area patrol by two Russian
long range bombers which entered the Alaska...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. forces using a new Raytheon Co interceptor missile downed another missile in space in a high-stakes test of a shield built to thwart growing capabilities of countries like North Korea and Iran. The mission off Hawaii late Tuesday was against a medium-range, separating ballistic missile, the Pentagon agency responsible for it said. The mock warhead split from the target's booster section, presenting what is supposed to be a more realistic attack scenario. "Initial indications are that all components performed as designed resulting in a very accurate intercept," the Missile Defense Agency, or MDA, said in a...

NEW RUSSIAN ICBM IS NO SOLUTION Russian plans to upgrade their "Voyevoda R-36M2 Satan" intercontinental ballistic missile began in 2009, but are only now coming to fruition. Russian weapons maker NPO Mashinostroyeniya predicts the creation of a new liquid fueled ICBM will take a decade to design and deploy. And when it does do so, it won't be a panacea for current Kremlin concerns over European missile defenses; Russian experts fear that the missile, as currently designed, won't be capable of piercing the missile defense shield currently under construction by the United States and NATO. (RIA Novosti, May 8, 2012)...