Free Republic

The newly revealed exploits of spies who operated in underground tunnels The CIA dug a tunnel under the Kremlin and installed a hi-tech bugging system to eavesdrop on the Soviet Union's most senior figures, according to the former US intelligence officer who executed the plan. The device was put in by a US agent who had to wear a protective suit and was guided by satellite and sonar images of Moscow's underground. The bugging formed part of audacious operations to rescue a key defector, a KGB officer with responsibility for eavesdropping, and to alert Boris Yeltsin to the attempted coup...

<p>Russia has added a new chapter in the post-Cold War Europe under the leadership of Vladimir Putin. His decision to invade Ukraine on February 24 has altered the US-led global liberal power calculus. The quiet “Spy Guy” Putin, who took over as the Prime Minister in ailing Boris Yeltsin’s Government in 1999, was largely unnoticed by the West. Probably, the policymakers in the Western capitals could not visualise how this man would pose a serious threat to both the European Union (EU) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in the days to come. Putin’s was a solo journey laced with a hidden agenda of reclaiming the lost Soviet empire. Thus, he quickly took up the reins as the second President of the newly created Russian Federation in the year 2000, immediately after Yeltsin left the scene as he was seriously unwell.</p>

Russia upped the ante Monday in its dangerous standoff with Ukraine, openly warning of military action if President Biden and America’s NATO allies ignore a list of demands Moscow announced late last week — a far-reaching list that some key U.S. lawmakers have dubbed a “pretext to war.” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said his country is fully prepared to respond through “military-technical means” if Western powers fail to address those demands. He said NATO must not expand to include Ukraine or Georgia and the U.S. must not base additional military assets in former Soviet republics in Central Asia....

09/16/1989 - Boris Yeltsin and a handful of Soviet companions made an unscheduled 20-minute visit to a Randall's Supermarket after touring the Johnson Space Center. Between trying free samples of cheese and produce and staring at the meat selections, Yeltsin roamed the aisles of Randall's nodding his head in amazement. A post earlier this year on Houston’s Reddit that mentioned late Russian president Boris Yeltsin’s wide-eyed trip to a Clear Lake grocery store led to a trip to the Houston Chronicle archives, where a batch of photos of the leader were found. It was September 16, 1989 and Yeltsin, then...

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr., the founder and editor in chief of The American Spectator. [Snip] FP: What inspired you to write this book? Tyrrell: The rogue himself. He is one of the most preposterous figures in American political history. [Snip] FP: Illuminate for us a few of the ingredients that make Bill Clinton a tortured man in his retirement. Tyrrell: He senses that he has failed as a President—there are many examples of this in the book. Hence you see his angry outbursts in the book. But he also, being a sociopath, cannot perceive that...

It is impossible to evaluate events in Russia today without understanding the mysterious series of bombings in 1999 that killed 300 civilians and created the conditions for Vladimir Putin to become Russia’s dictator for life. The bombings changed the course of Russia’s post-Soviet history. They were blamed on the Chechens. In the wake of initial success, Russia launched a new invasion of Chechnya. Putin, who had just been appointed prime minister, was put in charge of the invasion and his popularity soared. Six months later, he was elected president. On July 14, 2016, I filed a request for documents on...

It was a typical December night in Moscow. The cold was biting, the snow thick and dry. In the Federal Security Service's headquarters on Lubyanskaya Ploshchad, hundreds of intelligence officers met as they did every year to celebrate the founding of the Cheka, the Soviet secret police. Champagne glasses tinkled as the officers spoke in jubilant tones. Classical music played softly in the background. The hall grew quiet as Vladimir Putin -- the former FSB director who had been appointed prime minister a few months earlier -- stood to speak. "Dear comrades," Putin said. "I would like to announce to...

Caputo called for an “investigation of the investigators” and said he wanted to know who was “coordinating this attack on President Donald Trump.” “Forget about all the death threats against my family. I want to know who cost us so much money, who crushed our kids, who forced us out of our home, all because you lost an election,” Caputo said. “I want to know because God damn you to hell."

Moscow, April 26, Interfax - Former Russian prime minister Sergey Stepashin told how in 1998 acting Russian president Boris Yeltsin gave him an order to demolish Lenin's mausoleum. "Boris Nikolayevich charged me with demolishing the mausoleum. It was 1998," Stepashin said in his interview with Istorik magazine. Then Stepashin chaired the Ministry of Interior and made an official visit to England. "When I came back, I went to his cabinet and Yeltsin said: "Sergey Vadimovich, I made a decision to demolish the mausoleum." I told him: "Well, but how does it relate to the Ministry of Interior?" "The Ministry of...

Communists waving Marxist pamphlets and Twitter storms praising the Soviet Union are probably not what the thousands of Russians who rallied in 1991 against a coup by hardliners expected to see 25 years later. And yet as Russia marks the symbolic anniversary of the August 1991 putsch this week, pro-Kremlin media have concentrated on nostalgia for the Soviet era, while officials have barred a rally by those who manned the barricades. On August 19, 1991, a group of security chiefs and Communist bosses who opposed Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms declared themselves in charge, ushering in three days of turbulence. Calling themselves...

Compassion Play: Pope Francis vs. Boris Yeltsin by Daniel Clark In 1989, Boris Yeltsin visited a Houston-area supermarket, and was amazed by the variety of meats, cheeses, fruits and vegetables that were available to the general public in the United States. According to biographer Leon Aron, the future Russian president sat with his head in his hands after that experience, before finally remarking, “What have they done to our poor people? … I think we have committed a crime against our people by making their standard of living so incomparably lower than that of the Americans.” Yeltsin, who died in...

<p>Yeltsin, then 58, “roamed the aisles of Randall’s nodding his head in amazement,” wrote Asin. He told his fellow Russians in his entourage that if their people, who often must wait in line for most goods, saw the conditions of U.S. supermarkets, “there would be a revolution.”</p>

After a September 1989 tour of Houston's Johnson Space Center, Boris Yeltsin -freshly elected to the new Soviet Politburo- made an impromptu visit to a typical American grocery store -'Randalls'- in Clear Lake, Texas, to have himself a look around... And more than anything he'd seen at the advanced NASA facility, what really blew Yeltsin away was the sheer variety of goods at the supermarket. The fact that such stores where to be found in just about any town in America was said to be beyond comprehension for the Soviet politician- the pictures tell a thousand words- A mesmerized Yeltsin wandered the isles, marveled...

Many Western experts today portray Russia as a country spiraling down into totalitarianism, slowly (or not so slowly) following the path of the Soviet Union, whose authoritarian regime crumbled under growing pressure from an emerging civil society. Prevailing opinion attributes this authoritarian U-turn to the nature of the contemporary Russian political elite. Members of this elite (as argued by many Western analysts, including Ian Bremmer) are recruited disproportionately from the so-called siloviye structury, that is, the law-enforcement bodies and security services, which trace their roots to the Soviet-era military and secret services.1 These assumptions join to offer what is on...

California's Joe Shumate, who left an indelible mark on the politics of the Golden State and spun his magic around the globe as consultant to Russian President Boris Yeltsin, has died at the age of 69. Our thoughts and prayers go out to his family, and we'll be hearing and writing much more on this in days to come from friends and associates. Shumate, the former deputy chief of staff to Gov. Pete Wilson, was advising the GOP campaigns of U.S. Senate candidate Carly Fiorina and also Attorney General candidate Steve Cooley.

Former Russian president Boris Yeltsin got so drunk during a visit to Washington that he was found standing outside the White House in his underpants trying to hail a cab to go and buy a pizza. The following night he was mistaken for a drunken intruder when he was discovered stumbling around the basement of his guest house by secret service agents. The drunken behaviour of Yeltsin, who was known for his fondness for vodka and died two years ago aged 76, were revealed by former US president Bill Clinton. Clinton, who is no stranger to indiscretions of his own,...

In the first of three special reports, Bridget Kendall, the BBC's diplomatic correspondent, reports from Russia on life and attitudes in the provincial city of Nizhny Novgorod. Nizhny Novgorod, like much of Russia, has changed significantly At 7 am on a sunny spring morning I step down onto the platform in Nizhny Novgorod. The other passengers on the overnight train from Moscow are well dressed and carrying briefcases - businessmen and women returning from meetings in the capital, it seems.

It was the fall of 1996, and Boris N. Yeltsin was running for re-election as Russia’s first president in the post-Soviet era. But he faced a crisis far more threatening than any opponent: he was desperately ill. Mr. Yeltsin had had a heart attack. He was experiencing chest pain from angina. He needed a coronary bypass operation. But his Russian doctors said he could not survive such surgery. For independent advice, Mr. Yeltsin reached out to an American doctor as renowned in Russia as he was in the United States: Dr. Michael E. DeBakey, the pioneering Houston heart surgeon. Dr....

AS I walked behind Boris Yeltsin’s coffin at Novodevichy Cemetery on Wednesday, I found myself thinking about the man I worked with closely for nearly eight years and the role he played in changing the world, mostly for the better. Every time I met with him, Mr. Yeltsin left no doubt that he had two objectives above all others. The first was to make sure that the Russian people never again had to live under communism, or autocratic ultranationalism. The second was to form a solid, lasting partnership between a democratic Russia and the West. On the big issues that...

Russia may stop implementing a key defence treaty because of concerns over US plans for a missile shield in Europe, President Vladimir Putin said. Mr Putin made the threat during his annual address to parliament - which he said would be his last as president. He also hit out at an influx of foreign money which he said was being used to meddle in Russia's internal affairs. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice dismissed Russian concerns over the missile shield as "ludicrous". BBC diplomatic correspondent Jonathan Marcus says Mr Putin's speech marks a significant raising of diplomatic stakes. The Russian...