Free Republic

Moscow has categorically stated that it will not accept a US military presence in the Central Asian region. This reiteration has come at the level of Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, who told TASS that Afghanistan had been discussed at a meeting with Victoria Nuland, the visiting US Undersecretary of State, in Moscow on Tuesday. Ryabkov added: “We emphasized the unacceptability of a US military presence in Central Asian countries in any form whatever.” Prima facie, Ryabkov has squashed the disinformation media campaign by Washington that at the Russia-US summit in Geneva in June, President Vladimir Putin had offered...

Russia: America's old Cold War adversary is acting more and more like it used to, exerting power from Crimea to Havana to Singapore. Think it might be related to the shrinking of our conventional forces? It might sound crazy today, but historians (writing in Russian or Mandarin, of course) could look back one day at the killing of Osama bin Laden and see it as the beginning of the demise of America as a superpower. As Center for Political-Military Analysis director and Hudson Institute senior fellow Richard Weitz noted some months after the bin Laden operation, rather than "overwhelming force...

(CNSNews.com) – At a time of escalated tensions with the West over Ukraine, Russia says it is negotiating with eight governments around the world for access to military facilities, to enable it to extend its long-range naval and strategic bomber capabilities. Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Wednesday the military was engaged in talks with Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Algeria, Cyprus, the Seychelles, Vietnam and Singapore. “We need bases for refueling near the equator, and in other places,” ITAR-Tass quoted him as saying. Russia is not looking to establish bases in those locations, but to reach agreement to use facilities there when...