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Russian military officials announced today that machine gun wielding "battle bots" have entered the final stage of testing, ushering in a dangerous new era of warfare. While initial plans for the "Terminator-like" death robots are initially slated to guard intercontinental missile sites as early as 2020, military experts predict we could see non-human infantry as a primary weapon to be used in ground assaults and defense in the not too distant future. Major Dmitry Andreyev of Russia's Defense Ministry Strategic Missile Force made the announcement Friday that testing of the battle bots was entering its final stages. "Trials will be focused...

Falling world oil prices will hurt countries across the Middle East unless Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest crude exporter, takes action to reverse the slump, Iran’s deputy foreign minister told Reuters. Hossein Amir Abdollahian described Saudi Arabia’s inaction in the face of a six-month slide in oil prices as a strategic mistake and said he still hoped the kingdom, Tehran’s main rival in the Gulf, would respond. Oil prices closed on Wednesday at a 5½ year low, registering their second-biggest ever annual decline after OPEC oil exporters, led by Saudi Arabia, chose to maintain oil output despite a global glut...

By now, you probably already know that Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) once addressed a crowd of people in the same hotel where a white nationalist conference was being held in 2002. Scalise, a state representative at the time, spoke hours before the white nationalist meeting began, so it looks like this story turned out to be a big nothing burger. Republicans and Democrats came to Scalise’s aid, with Rep. Cedric Richmond (D-LA) saying that his colleague doesn’t have a “racist bone in his body.” With David Duke in the mix, Scalise, who’s the House Majority Whip, was bound to get some media attention over...

There is no end in sight for Russia’s economic crisis, as crippling sanctions and tumbling oil prices leave the country staring into an abyss, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has warned. Catherine Mann, the OECD’s chief economist, said Russia was moving closer to shutting itself off from the rest of the world, while the West’s sanctions against Moscow over its annexation of Crimea in Ukraine had left no end in sight for the country’s woes. “It’s very difficult to tell what will get Russia back on track,” she told The Sunday Telegraph. “The end game is autarky, and...

MOSCOW — With Russia scrambling to contain a currency crisis, the country’s central bank, in a surprise middle-of-the-night move, increased its key interest rate to 17 percent, from 10.5 percent. Aleksei L. Kudrin, a former Russian finance minister who is widely credited with having steered Russia through the 2008 financial crisis by convincing President Vladimir V. Putin to build up sovereign reserves, said that uneven policy making was adding to the erosion of confidence. “The fall of the ruble and the stock market is not only a reaction to lower oil prices and sanctions, but also distrust in the government’s...

The Central Bank's midnight decision to hike Russia's key interest rate to 17 percent set off clashing waves of support and opprobrium Tuesday as Russia struggled to come to terms with its new economic reality. The regulator's decision to raise rates by 6.5 percent followed the ruble's 10 percent nosedive against the U.S. dollar on Monday, its steepest single-day decline since the financial crisis of 1998. Despite the measure, the Russian currency fell sharply on Tuesday, at one point weakening 20 percent to touch a new low of 80 rubles to the dollar. Western sanctions over the Ukraine crisis, oil...

The world was slow to wake up to the new reality in which China is now the de facto IMF sovereign backstop, as Zero Hedge described two weeks ago in "China Prepares To Bailout Russia" when we noted that a PBOC swap-line was meant to reduce the role of the US dollar if China and Russia need to help each other overcome a liquidity squeeze, something we first noted over two months ago in "China, Russia Sign CNY150 Billion Local-Currency Swap As Plunging Oil Prices Sting Putin."In fact, it was only this week that Bloomberg reported that "China Offers Russia Help With...

All three rating agencies are expected to downgrade Russia's debt to junk soon and bailouts to Russian banks are on the rise, but how likely is default? The Financial Times reports ... Russia trebled the size of its bailout of troubled lender Trust Bank to Rbs99bn ($1.9bn) on Friday, laying bare the growing financial fallout from its currency crisis and the slump in the price of oil, its main export. The rapidly rising cost makes the rescue of Trust bank, which foundered as the rouble collapsed early last week, the second-largest seen in Russia. It has now consumed a tenth...

MOSCOW — Russia’s central bank said on Friday that its bailout of Trust Bank – the first major lender to fail as a result of the sharp decline in the ruble – would cost about $2.5 billion, far more than previously anticipated, and the country’s finance minister said emergency measures to rescue the banking system would push the federal budget into deficit.

There is no end in sight for Russia’s economic crisis, as crippling sanctions and tumbling oil prices leave the country staring into an abyss, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has warned. Catherine Mann, the OECD’s chief economist, said Russia was moving closer to shutting itself off from the rest of the world, while the West’s sanctions against Moscow over its annexation of Crimea in Ukraine had left no end in sight for the country’s woes.

For twenty years now, the Western politicians, journalists, businessmen, and academics who observe and describe the post-Soviet evolution of Russia have almost all followed the same narrative. We begin with the assumption that the Soviet Union ended in 1991, when Mikhail Gorbachev handed over power to Boris Yeltsin and Russia, Ukraine, and the rest of the Soviet republics became independent states. We continue with an account of the early 1990s, an era of “reform,” when some Russian leaders tried to create a democratic political system and a liberal capitalist economy. We follow the trials and tribulations of the reformers, analyze...

Runs on the bank. Hyperinflation. A plummeting ruble. It sounds like today's Russia, but these were also the symptoms of its last economic meltdown, in 1998. That would eventually force Russian President Boris Yeltsin out of power, and put an awkwardly shy and relatively unknown KGB official named Vladimir Putin in his place. No one believed Putin would survive more than a few months in the Kremlin. But 'Putinism' - a mix of authoritarian rule and economic prosperity based almost entirely on vast oil and natural gas reserves - has kept its namesake in power for the past 15 years....

Pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine have freed four Ukrainian prisoners a day after the two sides exchanged hundreds of captives. The release was announced by a Ukrainian defence ministry adviser, Vasyliy Budik, who said three were soldiers and the fourth a civilian.

Victoria Nuland, U.S. secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, said the U.S. has been internally preparing more financial support to Ukraine.“Senior IMF leadership was in Ukraine this week issuing a public validation of the reform program going forward but also confirming that the program agreed last year is going to need a significant adjustment – that there is a fiscal hole to the tune of $10-15 billion,” Nuland said at the American Enterprise Institute during a discussion examining the Ukrainian revolution one year later.“We expect that the IMF and the World Bank will have to increase their support...

Russian mid-sized lender Trust Bank is to receive up to 30 billion rubles ($530 million) from the central bank to stop it going bankrupt in the first bailout of its kind during the current rouble crisis. The central bank also said its Deposit Insurance Agency, responsible for managing crisis-hit lenders, would take over interim supervision of Trust Bank as of Monday. The measures "will make it possible for Trust to continue smooth payments operations. All the bank's clients, including depositors, can use its services as usual", the central bank said in a statement. Trust, which hired actor Bruce Willis as...

Ouch! Russian billionaires have lost more than $50 billion this year due to the country's unfolding economic nightmare. Western sanctions, low oil prices and the falling ruble have wiped billions off the wealth of Russia's 15 richest men, according to data from Bloomberg. The chairman of Russian gas producer Novatek has suffered the biggest losses, seeing his portfolio shrink by an estimated $8.7 billion. That's equivalent to a loss of nearly 50%.

Karen Dawisha's new book Putin's Kleptocracy: Who Owns Russia shows how Russian president Vladimir Putin has enabled his cronies to become enormously wealthy under his kleptocratic rule. Copyright © 2014 NPR. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required. ARUN RATH, HOST: Karen Dawisha, professor of political science at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, spent the last five years investigating how Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, came to control so much of that country's wealth. Her new book is "Putin's Kleptocracy: Who Owns Russia?" Karen Dawisha, welcome to the program. KAREN DAWISHA: Thanks for...

resident Obama has ramped up his second round of economic and financial sanctions on Russia, and on Vladimir Putin in particular. Some of this is already working. But if anybody believes it will be easy to financially deflate Russia, they better think again. Russia holds $132 billion of U.S. Treasury securities. That's a big number, and it could be sold in the event of financial warfare. That won't kill the United States. But it will undoubtedly cause interest rates to rise. Would Putin spend it all? Who knows? His central bank just spent $50 billion to defend a sinking ruble,...

In his annual year end press conference, Russian President Vladimir Putin showed beyond the shadow of a doubt that he is in fact mentally unhinged. For three hours, by turns he demonstrated signs of schizophrenic paranoia, pathological dishonesty, deep seated passive-aggressive tendencies, woeful ignorance of world affairs and economics, and delusional confidence in Russia’s future prospects. Putin evokes the national self-image of the Russian bear. Putin’s bear is a natural hunter contentedly chasing pigs and boars, but otherwise minding his own business in his own sovereign forest. But somebody wants this bear to have a makeover, and to give up...

Is Russia a potential ally for the United States? G. Murphy Donovan recently argued on AT that Russia is such a great partner of the United States that it could be admitted to NATO.  To back his assertion up, he provided a number of "reasons," including Harley Davidson motorbikes and Russian women. Donovan argues that Russia, with a balanced budget, very low public debt, and huge reserves of oil and natural gas, is a rich uncle the U.S. could use.  Does he really want the U.S. to be dependent on Russia for loans and fossil fuels?  Isn't America already exposed...