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President Vladimir Putin said the Russian navy will get 40 new ships this year, as he attended a naval parade in St Petersburg on Sunday marking the country's Navy Day. The parade in the port city and the nearby town of Kronshtadt featured 200 ships and vessels and over 4,000 troops and aimed to 'demonstrate the growing power of our navy,' Putin said on Friday. He said 40 ships of different classes will enter service this year, and that the Russian navy will be equipped with hypersonic weapons to boost its combat capabilities. Opening the parade, he said that 'six...

The Medallion in the Skull SEPTEMBER 17, 2012 BY NICK Remains unearthed at the PowÄ…zki Cemetery in Warsaw, August, 2012 Today is the anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland on September 17, 1939. The Soviets cooperated with the Nazis to dismember Poland and enslave her people. As we now know, perhaps as many as 200,000 Poles living in the Soviet Union had already been murdered as part of an ethnic cleansing campaign, known as the Polish Operation of the NKVD, in 1937-1938. Nearly 22,000 Polish officers who had been captured by the Soviets in 1939, were executed by the...

Our state informed OSCE about military potential being accumulated by Russia against Ukraine Ukrainian and American experts, as well as the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry, warned that under the pretext of holding strategic exercises Kavkaz 2020, Russia may resort to a large-scale offensive against Ukraine. The other day, the Russian president signed a decree on conscription from the reserve "for military training" - without specific dates for this training. This only increased the likelihood of an offensive – behind the decree may be the attempt of the Russian leadership to conduct a covert mass mobilization for...

Vladimir Putin is heading for victory in a referendum that could extend his rule until 2036 as Russia enters its final day of voting today. The Kremlin strongman would normally reach his term limit in 2024, but voters are set to back a plan to reset his tally to zero and allow him to run for two more terms. The package of constitutional changes would also increase Putin's powers to dissolve parliament and expand his influence over courts and prosecutors.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russians opened the door to Vladimir Putin staying in power until 2036 by voting overwhelmingly for constitutional changes that will allow him to run again for president twice, but critics said the outcome was falsified on an industrial scale. Official results published on Thursday, after 100% of ballots had been counted, showed that the former KGB officer who has ruled Russia for more than two decades as president or prime minister had easily won the right to run for two more six-year terms after the current one ends in 2024. That means Putin, 67, could rule until...

WASHINGTON - Russia is very likely behind a disinformation campaign on coronavirus in the Western media, intended to fuel panic and discord among allies, experts tell VOA. The European Union has accused Moscow of pushing fake news online in English, Spanish, Italian, German and French, using “contradictory, confusing and malicious reports” to make it harder for the bloc leaders to communicate its response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Reuters news agency reported Wednesday that the European External Action Service issued a nine-page internal document March 16 saying that “the overarching aim of Kremlin disinformation is to aggravate the public health crisis...

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., is ratcheting up his condemnation of President Trump's order that lead to the death of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, comparing the killing to Russian President Vladimir Putin "assassinating dissidents." Sanders, who was one of the first 2020 Democrats to call Trump's airstrike on Soleimani an "assassination," lobbed harsh criticism against the Trump administration for the killing. "This guy, you know, was, as bad as he was, an official of the Iranian government," Sanders said of Soleimani, in the CNN interview. "And, you unleash -- then, if China does that, you know, if Russia does that, you...

As top Russian officials were summing up the results of 2019, one subject stood out in President Vladimir Putin's pronouncements: Poland and its role in World War Two. Over the past seven days, he mentioned it no fewer than five times at key meetings - some of which had little to do with history or even foreign policy. In an unusual outburst at a Defence Ministry board on 24 December, he described the Polish ambassador to Nazi Germany as "scum and an anti-Semite pig". Two hours later, he brought the subject up again at a meeting with parliamentary leaders. State...

Western allies fear that Russia will gain sovereignty over Belarus, a former Soviet satellite state that could help preserve Vladimir Putin’s grip on power and sharpen Kremlin threats against NATO members.

SOFIA, Bulgaria — The Russian assassin used an alias, Sergei Fedotov, and slipped into Bulgaria unnoticed, checking into a hotel in Sofia near the office of a local arms manufacturer who had been selling ammunition to Ukraine. He led a team of three men. Within days, one man sneaked into a locked parking garage, smeared poison on the handle of the arms manufacturer’s car, then left, undetected, except for blurry images captured by surveillance video. Shortly after, the arms manufacturer, Emilian Gebrev, was meeting with business partners at a rooftop restaurant when he began to hallucinate and vomit. The poisoning...

Orthodox Christianity and Islam are based on the same fundamental values, President Vladimir Putin said in an address to a religious conference in Kyrgyzstan. The conference, titled "Orthodoxy and Islam — Religions of Peace," aimed to promote interethnic and interreligious dialogue between Russia and Kyrgyzstan. "Islam and Orthodox Christianity, just like other world religions, are based on fundamental humanistic values that are of enduring importance — on mercy and love for one’s near, justice and respect for human beings," the state-run TASS news agency quoted Putin as saying Thursday. The address, which was read out to the conference by Russian...

Russia has stationed troops between the Syrian army and Turkish forces in an attempt to prevent fresh clashes in northern Syria. Moscow said its soldiers are now patrolling land outside the flashpoint city of Manbij, which was taken over by Syrian government forces on Tuesday, to prevent an anticipated Turkish attack. Russia, which backs the Syrian government, said 'no one is interested' in fighting between Syrian government troops and Turkish forces and that Moscow 'is not going to allow it.'

Full title: A secret Russian assassination squad has proven 'they can get to anyone' in Europe but there's just one problem — they're really sloppy about itRevelations of an alleged Russian intelligence operation to murder opponents and spread chaos across the European Union were met with a mix of wonder and derision in the intelligence community. Russia's decision to return to formalized violent operations in the West has "proven they can get to anyone," a source told Insider. But in many cases, the Russians' sloppy tradecraft has meant their "secret" operations are almost immediately noticed. Two current European intelligence officials...

  Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi are Putin's puppets. Let's see why. For the last three years Donald Trump has been falsely under assault from he left. Why? The phony dossier and more. Russia-linked accounts were said to have spent a grand total of $4700 in Google ads in 2016 to influence the elections. NADLER: According to meda reports, Google found evidence that Russian agents spent thousands of dollars to purchase ads on its advertising platforms that span multiple Google products as part of the Russian agents’ campaign to interference in the election, two years ago. Additionally, Juniper Downs, head...

On the day Donald Trump stood before the United Nations advocating that the world embrace nationalism, Nancy Pelosi decided to protect our nation from Donald Trump. And that means Trump’s days in the White House are numbered. The past week revealed that Trump solicited foreign assistance from Ukraine for his 2020 election, hid the transcript of that request on a separate, highly secure computer system designed for national security purposes, and acknowledged that Russia interfered in the 2016 election and deemed it acceptable in a White House meeting with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak and Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov....

Amid reports that the Russians will keep the cause of an air leak discovered at the International Space Station in 2018 secret, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine has promised to speak personally with the head of the Russian space agency. "They have not told me anything," Bridenstine said during a Houston energy conference question session Thursday (Sept. 19), according to the Houston Chronicle. But he emphasized that he wants to keep good relations with the Russians, one of the two chief partners on the orbiting complex. "I don't want to let one item set [the relationship] back, but it is clearly...

The results of the Knesset election are very important to Moscow, and it hopes politicians will be elected who will maintain close ties with Russia, Russian President Vladimir Putin said alongside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Sochi on Thursday. Netanyahu traveled to the Black Sea resort to meet the Russian leader – just five days before the election – in a move widely seen as an effort to woo elder Russian-speaking immigrants who form an important base of support for Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beytenu party.

In events marking 80 years since Nazi invasion of Poland that started the war, genocide of Jews was swallowed up like it never happened. The right-wing nationalist government in Poland can celebrate a great victory. In the long war over the “culture of memory,” an objective it set for itself upon coming to power in 2015, the last bastion was conquered yesterday. After Israel’s recognition last year of the Polish narrative – which emphasizes the suffering of the Polish nation and minimizes its part in causing suffering to another nation – now Germany and the United States have also been...

United States carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from the power sector and the broader economy have declined 61 percent between 2006 and 2014, mainly from "switching from coal-to-gas-powered generation," according to the U.S. Department of Energy's Second Installment of the Quadrennial Energy Review, January 2017.  These environmentally sound numbers from higher use of natural gas can also be translated globally to help with pollution in countries such as China, India, and the entire continent of Africa. The U.S. now uses natural gas converted to liquid natural gas (LNG) from shale deposits in states such as Texas, North Dakota, and Pennsylvania to...

The US has formally withdrawn from a key nuclear treaty with Russia, raising fears of a new arms race. The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) was signed by US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987. It banned missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 km (310-3,400 miles). But earlier this year the US and Nato accused Russia of violating the pact by deploying a new type of cruise missile, which Moscow has denied. The Americans said they had evidence that Russia had deployed a number of 9M729 missiles - known to Nato as SSC-8. This accusation...