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This should have been a Monty Python sketch, along the lines of the “Dead Parrot” classic. Germany’s leading center-right newspaper Die Welt posted a banner headline at the top of its page last Friday evening just before Shabbat came in here in New York: “[Ukrainian Ambassador to Germany Andrej] Melnyk’s statement trivializes the Holocaust.” In a radio interview last week, Melnyk compared Ukrainian Nazi leader Stephan Bandera to Robin Hood and vehemently denied—in the face of massive historical documentation—that Bandera had helped to murder 800,000 Ukrainian Jews during World War II.” The Banderites also helped to murder between 40,000 and...

According to information from the German Press Agency, there are informal agreements among the NATO states to refrain from delivering certain weapon systems to Ukraine. As the dpa was confirmed in alliance circles in Brussels on Wednesday, the risk of a direct military confrontation between NATO states and Russia should be kept as low as possible. There are fears, for example, that Russia could officially see the delivery of Western battle tanks and combat aircraft as entering the war and then take military retaliatory measures. Weapon systems of this type have not yet been delivered to Ukraine. According to information...

A Russian official has boasted that Russia would destroy NATO countries in "half-an-hour" if conflict escalated to the use of nuclear weapons. Dmitry Rogozin, Head of Russia’s Space Agency Roscosmos and former Deputy Prime Minister, said Sunday that in the event of a nuclear war, "NATO countries will be destroyed by Russia in half-an-hour." ON WORLD WAR II ANNIVERSARY, ZELENSKYY SAYS EVIL HAS RETURNED He stressed that such an event "cannot be allowed because the consequences will impact the [entire] Earth."

Russian troops clad in World War II-era uniforms marched across Moscow's Red Square in a reconstruction of a wartime parade on Thursday. The 1941 October Revolution Parade has become a symbol of Soviet valor and tenacity in the face of overwhelming odds. Thursday's re-enactment of the military event marks the 78th anniversary of march on the 7 November 1941.

Putin’s Activation of ‘Iskander-M’ Ballistic Missile Is a Message to Obama http://observer.com/2016/10/putins-activation-of-iskander-m-ballistic-missile-is-a-message-to-obama/ Putin’s Activation of ‘Iskander-M’ Ballistic Missile Is a Message to Obama The KGB officer in the Kremlin seeks one last, grand strategic humiliation for our president before he leaves office By John R. Schindler • 10/07/16 11:00am Russian President Vladimir Putin meets with Prince Albert II of Monaco (not pictured) at the Kremlin in Moscow on October 6, 2016. / AFP / POOL AND AFP / YURI KADOBNOV Russian President Vladimir Putin. Yuri Kadobnov/AFP/Getty Images It’s long been obvious that Vladimir Putin and his inner circle view Barack...

The nation’s foreign policy is “a manifest disaster.” Its approach to cutting a deal with Iran on nuclear development is “catastrophically reckless.” Its policy on assisting Ukraine in its conflict with Russia is “incoherent.” This White House is home to the “most hostile administration to Israel in modern times.” That’s Sen. Ted Cruz’s scathing assessment of President Barack Obama’s foreign policy, a blistering critique that is positioning him as the most blazingly hawkish Republican to potentially run for president in 2016. He also tellingly dubbed it “the Obama-Clinton foreign policy,” a subtle hint that he’d lob much of the same...

This year, several Russian lawmakers called for an investigation against Mr. Gorbachev, charging him with having caused the collapse of the Soviet Union. To accuse someone of having brought about the end of a state responsible for the murder of millions, the imprisonment of tens of millions and the oppression of hundreds of millions is a bit like accusing someone of having brought down Nazism. But the people who run post-Soviet Russia don’t see it that way. Mr. Putin saw a regime – the regime he served – unwilling to maintain power by force. Unlike the Chinese communists, who in...

Ukrainian nationalists have hurled smoke canisters and stones at riot police during clashes outside the parliament in Kiev. Violence erupted when the protesters demanded that MPs pass a law to recognise a World War Two nationalist group which opposed Soviet forces. Fifteen policemen were injured and at least 50 protesters had been arrested, the Ukrainian interior ministry said.

WASHINGTON, D.C. - The Kremlin-backed Russia Today news network has rolled out a provocative ad campaign that takes a sharp poke at U.S. media and the U.S. decision to invade Iraq in 2003. The pitch is aimed at convincing Americans of the merits of Russia Today - or RT - as an alternate news source to U.S. networks. Featuring a stylized image of former U.S Secretary of State Colin Powell at the United Nations, one ad reads: "This is what happens when there is no second opinion. Iraq War: No WMDs. 141, 802 civilian deaths." The campaign includes two other...

For the first time, Russia, which is in the midst of a major strategic nuclear modernization, has more deployed nuclear warheads than the United States, according to the latest numbers released by the State Department. Russia now has 1,643 warheads deployed on intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles and heavy bombers. The United States has 1,642, said the fact sheet released Wednesday.

People in the Baltic states cannot feel secure. Russian President Vladimir Putin has a plan he has been working on for over a decade. So says former adviser to President Putin, Andrey Illarionov. Giving a presentation at a conference in Palanga, Lithuania, Illarionov, who advised Putin on economic policy in 2000-2005, referred to a question that was raised in the recent Riga Conference 2014: Can people in Riga sleep peacefully at night? “The same question could be raised in Tallinn, Vilnius, Palanga, Bucharest and other cities. No one in Riga could reply to it in the positive,” Illarionov said. “From...

The man who convened the meeting that buried the Soviet Union in 1991 has warned that it is being restored in his native Belarus and across the post-Soviet space. Stanislav Shushkevich – the politician who hosted the 1991 summit at which Belarus, Ukraine and Russia signed the USSR into obsolescence and paved the way for independence – said a mixture of despotic leaders, KGB-revivalism and Putin’s Ukraine interference all remind him of the worst of the Soviet Union. “What we see now is the restoration of Soviet order, in Belarus most of all,” Shushkevich said in his study in the modest central Minsk...

Russian workers will parade on Red Square on May 1 for the first time since 1991, organisers said on Tuesday, the latest Soviet tradition to be revived as a wave of patriotism sweeps the country. "Crimea has returned to Russia and the trade unions are returning to the Red Square!" said Sergei Chernov, president of Moscow's trade union federation told a news conference. International Workers Day, or May Day, was a key date in the Soviet calendar, instituted after the Bolshevik Revolution. The celebrations became increasingly elaborate in the later years of the USSR, with party bosses presiding over ranks...

http://live.wsj.com/video/sen-ted-cruz-putin-attempting-to-reassemble-ussr/60F884E5-A709-4B39-AEF2-F9EBF51422A1.html

Some naive conservatives are still in blind love with Communist KGB dictator, pretender, fake Christian and crook Putin: Warning: Moscow Continue with their old Soviet miss-information strategies and lies: Putin's KGB Long Range Plans Explained by His Communist Mentor: MIKHAIL GORBACHEV's speech at the 70th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution (1917): "....In October 1917, we parted with the old world, rejecting it once and for all. We are moving toward a new world, a world of Communism. We shall never turn off that road." And from his speech to the Soviet Politburo, November 1987: "Gentlemen, comrades, do not be concerned...

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney and his family are featured in a worshipful profile in this month's Washingtonian magazine. It's the sort of adoring journalistic exercise reserved for only the most handsome of the power elite. In it you can find out details about the Carney dog (a cousin to presidential pooch Sonny!), and how much the press secretary's tie costs ($135). But keen observers may notice the kitchen decor in the photo: Soviet propaganda posters. They really are the perfect pop of color whether you are the dour and sincere Nikita Khrushchev or the cheeky press-wrangler for a...

Vladimir Putin mobilised more than 150,000 troops and an armada of ships yesterday for a drill to test the combat readiness of forces in western Russia as tensions over Ukraine continue to grow. In addition to the soldiers – nearly twice the British Army’s manpower after planned cuts – 880 tanks, 210 aircraft and 80 warships will take part in the operation. The manoeuvres raised fears that the Russian president may be planning to send forces into Ukraine after the toppling of its Moscow-backed president Viktor Yanukovych.

KIEV, Ukraine — An opposition unit took control of the presidential palace outside Kiev on Saturday, as leaders in Parliament said Ukraine’s president, Viktor F. Yanukovych, had fled the capital a day after a deal was reached aimed at ending the country’s spiral of violence.

Ukraine's parliament is seeking to take charge, appoint new leaders and schedule a new presidential election by May.

As violent mobs shouting Islamist slogans rampaged against U.S. diplomats across the Middle East and Southeast Asia in the weeks following the fatal Sept. 11, 2012 attack on U.S. officials in Libya, Russian President Vladimir Putin saw a chance to kick the United States when it was down. He did it by expelling the U.S. Agency for International Development, whose work -- advising private groups on democracy, as it has done since the 1990s -- he evidently resented. For good measure, he just cancelled the longstanding Nunn-Lugar program of cooperation on destroying and securing old Soviet weapons of mass destruction....