Free Republic

More and more people, including Pope Francis, are asking Ukraine to drop its defense and sit at the negotiation table with Russia. Citing the stalemate on the battlefield and Russia’s superior resources, they urge Ukraine’s leadership to consider a deal. What exactly that would involve is largely left unsaid. But it would clearly involve freezing the conflict, resigning Ukraine’s occupied territory to Russia in exchange for an end to the fighting. My country, Moldova, knows all about that kind of bargain. A small western neighbor of Ukraine, Moldova experienced Russia’s first post-Soviet war of aggression, which ended with a cease-fire...

Ukrainian diplomat: Russia has no special relationship with other ex-Soviet states Mar 09 2006, 17:23 (AP) Russians must abandon the idea that Moscow has a special relationship with ex-Soviet republics or plays a civilizing role in the post-Soviet region, a senior Ukrainian diplomat said Thursday. "If we want to talk about having normal relations, we must reject some of these myths," Deputy Foreign Minister Volodymyr Ohryzko said at a round-table with Russian and Ukrainian political analysts in Kyiv about how Ukraine's March 26 parliamentary elections will affect the neighbors' relations. "You have to understand and accept that Ukraine is not...

U.S. Presence in Asia Concerns Moscow By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV Associated Press Writer December 1, 2005, 4:39 PM EST MOSCOW -- The chief of the Russian military general staff said Thursday that Moscow was concerned about U.S. interference in the political affairs of other ex-Soviet nations. Gen. Yuri Baluyevsky also said that Russia's relations with the United States and other NATO nations were clouded by Western efforts to expand their military presence on ex-Soviet territory.

<p>Want to do business in Russia? Hire an ex-KGB man. Nothing like good old-fashioned experience in the secret police to keep Russia's criminal gangs out of your shop. Such is the implied advice of 73-year-old Moscow businessman Victor Cherkashin -- by no surprise an ex-KGB man. Even "prominent liberals," he claims, agree that the KGB produced "among the least corrupt members of the new society."</p>

Bigotry Monitor: Volume 5, Number 35 (September 9, 2005) Volume 5, Number 35 Friday, September 9, 2005 BIGOTRY MONITOR A Weekly Human Rights Newsletter on Antisemitism, Xenophobia, and Religious Persecution in the Former Communist World and Western Europe EDITOR: CHARLES FENYVESI (News and Editorial Policy within the sole discretion of the editor) Published by UCSJ: Union of Councils for Jews in the Former Soviet Union ‘WE HAVE TO BE LISTENED TO,’ PUTIN TELLS WEST. Addressing a group of Western academics and journalists in the Kremlin on September 5, President Vladimir Putin denied that he was an authoritarian and ruled himself...