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The U.S. Treasury and the State Department have tacitly asked major U.S. banks, including JPMorgan and Citigroup, not to refuse to cooperate with "certain strategic Russian companies" to minimize the adverse effects of sanctions. In particular, officials urged banks not to refuse to provide "basic services" (money transfers and conversion into dollars) to companies that are not directly under sanctions, such as Gazprom, Uralkali, and PhosAgro. The Biden administration has repeatedly said it wants banks and businesses to keep the money flowing to nonsanctioned sectors of Russia's economy. But the extent of its conversations with the banks hasn't been previously...

President Joe Biden reportedly lost his temper after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky asked for more U.S. assistance just days after $1 billion in aid was approved. NBC News, citing four sources familiar with the situation, reported on Monday that during the June 15 phone call, “Biden had barely finished telling Zelenskyy he’d just greenlighted another $1 billion in U.S. military assistance for Ukraine in its fight against Russia’s invasion, which started on Feb. 24, when Zelenskyy started listing all the additional help he needed and wasn’t getting. Biden lost his temper.” Biden remarked that Zelensky should be more appreciative of...

Russian forces could be just weeks away from seizing control of the key Luhansk region in eastern Ukraine — as Ukrainian officials continued to appeal for more heavy weapons and ammunition from the West. An unnamed senior US defense official told The Washington Post that the cities of Severodonetsk and Lysychansk, which have seen some of the fiercest battles in recent weeks, could fall to Russia in the coming days. Russia has been making steady gains in the strategically important Donbas region — comprised of Luhanks and Donetsk — by pounding the area with heavy artillery day after day and...

LOS ANGELES (AP) – President Joe Biden, speaking to donors at a Democratic fundraiser, said Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky “didn’t want to hear it” when U.S. intelligence gathered information that Russia was preparing to invade. The remarks came as Biden was talking about his work to rally and solidify support for Ukraine as the war continues into its fourth month.

President Biden on Friday declined to rule out Ukraine having to cede part of its territory to Russia in order to end Moscow’s more than three-month-old invasion.“Does Ukraine have to cede territory to achieve peace?” a reporter asked Biden after his remarks on the May jobs report.“But it appears to me that at some point along the line, there’s going to have to be a negotiated settlement

A video unearthed from 2001 by the Republican National Committee’s research team revealed then-Senator Biden praising Russian President Vladimir Putin for embracing the West, heralding his actions as comparable to Peter the Great. “I’m close to amazed by how far Putin seems to have come in making – throwing – his lot in with the West,” Biden said as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “He seems to have – out of all the briefings I’ve gotten – actually stiff-armed his military and stiff-armed some of the browns and reds in his government and out of government.”

A trio of aging sleuths - homeopath Leonhard Blume, 73, scientist Günter Eckardt, 67, and georadar specialist Peter Lohr, 71 - are convinced the missing Amber Room of the Russian Tsars lies in the Prince's Cave in the Hartenstein hills near Dresden. Third Reich scientists used the cave complex during the war - but all records of what went on there have mysteriously vanished from local archives. Lohr used radar imaging to detect underground booby traps and what appear to be bunkers under the soil.  He scanned the hill in September after claiming that a 'reliable source' told him of...

The hunt for the missing Amber Room of the Czars has taken a new twist with treasure hunters in a small town in east Germany about to break into a bunker they believe may hold one of the lost wonders of the modern world. The priceless room which once belonged the the King of Prussia Peter the Great was looted by Nazis during WWII and the original walls have been missing ever since.

Image: via Food Court LunchAmong the chaos of the collapse of Hitler’s empire in April 1945 the biggest heist in history took place. Gold bars, jewels and stolen foreign currency with an estimated worth of $3.34 billion vanished from the Reichsbank vaults, in Germany.Reichsbank, Berlin 1933Image: German Federal Archive In the ensuing decades small quantities of this bounty have turned up in Portugal, Switzerland, Turkey, Spain and Sweden but the majority remains missing. Across the world search teams look for this missing treasure and the supreme prize of the legendary Amber Room, an acquisition from St. Petersburg during WWII,...

Stolen Nazi gold may be in German cavern Last Updated: 3:11am GMT 20/02/2008 Treasure hunters claim they have may have found a haul of looted Nazi gold said to be part of a Russian collection that was dubbed the "eighth wonder of the world" before it was stolen. The resting place of the Amber Room treasures was reportedly made at the weekend near the German village of Deutschneudorf. Tests showed a man-made cavern 20 metres below ground that contained a large amount of precious metals. Treasure hunter Christian Hanisch [left] and Heinz-Peter Haustein at the site where the gold is...

Fate of Russia's lost art treasure revealed after 60-year cover-up John Ezard, arts correspondent Saturday May 22, 2004 The Guardian (UK) Steven Spielberg would have called it Indiana Jones and the Eighth Wonder, and supplied a happy ending. In a damp cellar, guarded by deadly snakes and senile but savage SS men, the holy grail of Russian art treasures would triumphantly have been liberated. According to evidence disclosed today in Guardian Weekend, the truth is more squalid. Peter the Great's 18th century Amber Room, rated as the world's prime missing art treasure, valued at £150m, perished in the chaos of...

In the old times there were two suns above the Earth. Unfortunately one got broken to pieces; the pieces dropped into the ocean that now casts bits of "the solar stone" ashore. People call these pieces amber. It is a nice legend about amber; it slightly reminds of the story of creation, loss and restoration of the famous amber chamber in Tsarskoye Selo. One woman from the Russian city of Rostov was one of the first people who believed that the amber chamber could be restored. What is more, she made first considerable contribution into the reconstruction process. In 1976,...

<p>Hidden for now behind a white screen from the prying eyes of visitors to Catherine Palace, the painstakingly re-created Amber Room glows with the yellows, oranges, reds of the late-afternoon sun. Intricately carved frames of amber showcase four elaborate mosaic pictures made of semiprecious stones. Amber roses and amber people and amber landscapes festoon the walls.</p> <p>It is, as museum official Yuri Dumashin put it today while marveling once again at its baroque extravagance, "the world's biggest jewelry box."</p>

CRAFTED entirely out of amber, gold and precious stones, it was a masterpiece of baroque art and widely regarded as the world?s most important art treasure. When its 565 candles were lit, the famous Amber Room was said to glow a fiery gold. Looted by the Nazis , its whereabouts have been a mystery since the dying days of the Second World War. But now a new German investigation believes it has found where the treasure, worth £120 million today, lies - in abandoned mine workings in the former East Germany. One of the few facts all historians seem to...

There is perhaps no lost-treasure mystery more seductive than that of the priceless Amber Room of Peter the Great, which disappeared in the chaotic closing hours of World War II. Now Bartlomiej Plebanczyk, an unassuming historian and museum director in northeastern Poland, believes he has found it. Elderly villagers told Mr. Plebanczyk that they had seen a German convoy unloading big crates into a secret chamber in a stark, moss-covered Nazi bunker near the Russian border in early 1945. So the Mamerki Museum, whichhe leads, recently completed a ground-penetrating radar scan of the derelict bunker that he said confirmed the...

During a recent reception for naval officers serving in Russia’s Northern Fleet hosted by Dmitry Dmitriyenko, the governor of Murmansk Oblast, changes to combat training and the achievements of the 2011 training year were highlighted. Admiral Vladimir Korolev, the Commander of the Northern Fleet, outlined these issues after reminding his audience of the significance of the fleet in protecting Russia’s security. Korolev claimed that combat training in the Navy intensified during 2011, saying that crews of the nuclear submarines in the Northern Fleet had carried out eight successful launches of ballistic missiles, including four in the framework of the Bulava...

September 30, 2008 Putin Wants to Follow Peter the Great By Carlos Alberto Montaner Russian ships no longer carry the names of heroic comrades but rather of figures from imperial history. As I write this column, the nuclear cruiser Peter the Great is sailing toward Latin America heading a flotilla of four imposing vessels. Some ships from the Venezuelan Navy will meet up with them to conduct joint maneuvers. Moscow wants to send a bill to Washington for the latter's support of Georgia, as well as for the independence of Kosovo. The Peter the Great is the largest cruiser in...

Stalin and Tsar Nicholas II neck and neck for title of greatest Russian Tony Halpin He sent millions to their deaths in the gulag, but that has not deterred Russians from voting en masse for Josef Stalin as the face of their nation. The Soviet tyrant and Second World War leader is battling Tsar Nicholas II for first place in The Name of Russia, a domestic version of the BBC series Great Britons. Stalin had been well ahead in the online vote until the show's producer appealed to members of a popular Russian social networking site to back Nicholas II....

Eight people were detained by police in Lund on Friday during demonstrations to mark the anniversary of the death in 1718 of King Karl XII. Two people were formally arrested for violent resistance. One of those arrested is also suspected of attempted assault. Six others were detained. A few dozen people were involved in the march, according to police. Demonstrators from the '30th November Association' gathered outside Lund Cathedral at lunchtime on Friday. The association is made up of nationalist groups from the university town and was founded following the First World War. Counter-demonstrators met in the Lundagård park. A...

September 20, 2004, 8:14 a.m. No Peter the Great Vladimir Putin is in the Andropov mold. By Ion Mihai Pacepa Vladimir Putin looks more and more like a heavy-handed imitation of Yuri Andropov — does anyone still remember him? Andropov was that other KGB chairman who rose all the way up to the Kremlin throne, and who was also once my de facto boss. Considering that Putin has inherited upwards of 6,000 suspected strategic nuclear weapons, this is frightening news. Former KGB officers are now running Russia's government, just as they did during Andropov's reign, and the Kremlin's image —...