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MOSCOW, March 17, /ITAR-TASS/. President Vladimir Putin on Monday, March 17, signed a degree recognising the Republic of Crimea as a sovereign and independent state. “1. Considering the will of the peoples of Crimea expressed at the all-Crimea referendum on March 16, 2014, I hereby decree that the Republic of Crimea, where the City Of Sevastopol has a special status, be recognised as a sovereign and independent state,” the decree said. The decree entered into force upon signature, the presidential press service said.

Ukraine's Crimean parliament voted Monday to nationalize energy companies Ukrtransgaz and Chornomornaftohaz, according to a statement on the Parliament's website. A Crimean official said last week that the local authorities may sell the oil and gas company Chornomornaftohaz to a Russian firm "such as Gazprom" once the region assumes control of it. On Sunday, a Russia-backed referendum in Crimea demonstrated overwhelming support for joining the Russian federation. The US and its European allies are expected to announced sanctions against Russia on Monday after Crimea announced that just under 97% of voters in the region supported leaving Ukraine and becoming a...

What is Vladimir Putin up to? The crisis in Ukraine, brought to a boil when Russia’s president sent troops into the Crimean peninsula, has created almost a cottage industry of guessing at the autocratic leader’s intentions from one day to the next. When it comes to Putin’s long-term strategy, however, there is at least one concrete plan that offers some insight, and one specific date that Russia observers are looking ahead to. That date, Jan. 1, 2015, is expected to mark the birth of an important new organization linking Russia with an as-yet-undetermined constellation of its neighboring countries—an alliance Putin...

The London Daily Mail reported this week that “CNN caused a firestorm when it included a war monument in Brest, a city in the former Soviet republic of Belarus, in an article on the 'world's ugliest monuments' published last month.” This isn’t Ted Turner’s CNN, where a reporter would be disciplined for saying the word “foreign” in a sentence. The online article from a travel-piece contributor was intended as humor. A Russian news commentator responded by suggesting the Marine Corps War Memorial – the Iwo Jima sculpture just north of Arlington National Cemetery – is “easy to mock” for its...

Debacle: U.S. intelligence agencies report that developers linked to the Belarus government helped create the Healthcare.gov website and may have inserted malicious code making it vulnerable to cyberattacks and hacking. The disastrous rollout of Healthcare.gov was bad enough. But as if Americans need another reason to avoid Healthcare.gov, we now hear that the Obama administration, through the Department of Health and Human Services, has indirectly contracted with developers in the worker's paradise of Belarus, a former Soviet republic still closely tied to Russia, to write some of the software code used for the website. The Washington Free Beacon's Bill Gertz...

Developers linked to the government of Belarus may have placed malicious code inside the healthcare.gov website allowing it to hack into the personal information of consumers. No - I'm serious. Washington Free Beacon: U.S. intelligence agencies last week urged the Obama administration to check its new healthcare network for malicious software after learning that developers linked to the Belarus government helped produce the website, raising fresh concerns that private data posted by millions of Americans will be compromised.The intelligence agencies notified the Department of Health and Human Services, the agency in charge of the Healthcare.gov network, about their concerns...

U.S. intelligence agencies last week urged the Obama administration to check its new healthcare network for malicious software after learning that developers linked to the Belarus government helped produce the website, raising fresh concerns that private data posted by millions of Americans will be compromised. The intelligence agencies notified the Department of Health and Human Services, the agency in charge of the Healthcare.gov network, about their concerns last week. Specifically, officials warned that programmers in Belarus, a former Soviet republic closely allied with Russia, were suspected of inserting malicious code that could be used for cyber attacks, according to U.S....

EU countries have informally told the European Parliament they want the Union’s foreign service to open an embassy in Iran. Tarja Cronberg, a Finnish Green MEP who chairs the parliament’s Iran delegation, said member states’ ambassadors in Tehran backed the idea when she met them in the Iranian capital on an official trip earlier this month. […] The EU already has embassies in other pariah states, such as Belarus. But Iran and the EU remain wary of each other despite the Geneva breakthrough. …

The Lithuanian Foreign Minister says his country could block land transport to Russia’s Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad if Russia maintains its opposition to stronger trade ties between Ukraine and the European Union. "As you know, the Kaliningrad region is isolated, geographically isolated, so we could apply some measures also to cut something," the Reuters news agency quoted Linas Linkevicius as saying on Wednesday. "Transport, we could cut off trains, but not only trains, also the supply of goods, whatever. It is theoretically possible," the official added. The reporters raised the topic as Lithuania, which currently holds the rotating presidency in...

China will invest US$5 billion in building an industrial city on the outskirts of Minsk, capital of Belarus, according to a recent report from Bloomberg. Since establishing diplomatic tiesd with Belarus in 1992, China has been developing an increasingly close economic relationship with the country, as evidenced by the signing of the US$3 billion currency swap agreement between the two nations in 2009. According to Chinese and Belarusian officials, Alexander G. Lukashenko, president of Belarus, has earmarked a plot of land near Minsk International Airport, with a space 40% larger than Manhattan, for the industrial city project, which will accommodate...

With thousands of air defence units in its armoury, Syria will be no easy target for a Western attack, a former Russia military commander warned. “Syria’s air defences are capable of giving an adequate response to strikes by the United States and its allies in the anti-Syrian coalition if they unleash war,” a former commander of Russia’s air defence forces told the Interfax news agency on Friday. “Damascus today has about a thousand units of anti-aircraft rocket systems, and more than 5,000 anti-aircraft artillery systems of various types,” the former commander said. The official did not rule out that Syria...

Reminds me of an old press conference with Coach Dennis Green... (video)

How is it the most wretched dictatorships are  always blessed with such beautiful women? Just don't seem right! Alas, Maryia Vialichka will be representing  'Europe's last dictatorship' Belarus at the Miss World 2013  finals this September in Indonesia... More at Reaganite Republican... _________________________________________ BeautyPageantNews   Missosology   Photobucket   VK.com

KIEV, June 18 (RIA Novosti) – Self-styled “sextremist” topless protesters from Ukrainian feminist group Femen were dispersed by police in Kiev overnight after attempting to storm a building where the Belarusian president was staying, the group said on its website on Tuesday. President Alexander Lukashenko, once dubbed by US officials as the “last dictator in Europe,” is in the Ukrainian capital for a two-day official visit. The activists, carrying burning torches and with slogans including "Viva Belarus", "Dictator, Get Out!" daubed on their bodies, tried to break through security at the residence in downtown Kiev where Lukashenko was staying. They...

A beaver has attacked a 60-year-old fisherman in Belarus, slicing an artery and causing him to bleed to death. It was the latest in a series of beaver attacks on humans in the country, as the rodents, who have razor-sharp teeth, have turned increasingly aggressive after wandering near homes, shops and schools. "The character of the wound was totally shocking," said the village doctor Leonty Sulim. "We had never run into anything like this before." Once hunted nearly to extinction in Europe, beavers have made a comeback as hunting has been banned or restricted and new populations were introduced. In...

China is building an entire city in the forests near the Belarusian capital Minsk to create a manufacturing springboard between the European Union and Russia. Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko allotted an area 40 percent larger than Manhattan around Minsk’s international airport for the $5 billion development, which will include enough housing to accommodate 155,000 people, according to Chinese and Belarusian officials. Lukashenko, who’s led his former Soviet state of 9.5 million for two decades, is turning to China to help revive a $60 billion economy that’s needed $6.5 billion of bailouts from the International Monetary Fund and Russia since 2009....

Still cleaning out the draft folder, and it's worth mentioning this one just for the headline. It happened in Belarus in 2011, where dinosaurish old-school dictator Alexander Lukashenko was (as he still is) happily oppressing his people and presiding over the collapse of whatever economy remained in the former Soviet state. Lukashenko was elected in 1994 and has been president ever since, having repeatedly won in the kind of elections where the winner gets 93.5 percent of the vote with the remaining 6.5 percent going to his mustache. He has charmingly described his own son as "a useless weakling" and...

Note: The following text is a quote: http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=53214 Obama Nominates Defense Acquisition Undersecretary By Donna Miles American Forces Press Service WASHINGTON, Feb. 24, 2009 – President Barack Obama announced yesterday that he will nominate Ashton Carter to be the next undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics. Carter is the chairman of the International and Global Affairs faculty at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. He served as assistant secretary of defense for International Security Policy from 1993 to 1996. If confirmed to the post held by John Young since 2007, Carter would oversee a sweeping defense...

Avigdor Lieberman responded Thursday to the recent indictment of fraud and breach of trust brought against him, saying he has been the target of suspicion and questioning for a long time now. Hinting that he has no intention of resigning, he said he hopes the matter will be settled as soon as possible. The Attorney General charged that Lieberman used his influence to promote the former Israeli ambassador to Belarus because the ambassador illegally leaked information about an investigation against him. "The investigation against me has been going on for sixteen years," said Lieberman. "From July 1996 there has not...

Putin has called for Communist leader Vladimir Lenin's body to be preserved in its mausoleum on Red Square, comparing the embalmed body of the founder of the Soviet state to the relics of saints. "Many are saying that having Lenin's Mausoleum runs counter to the tradition. But what runs counter to tradition?" Putin told a meeting with celebrities who campaigned for him in the March 2012 presidential election, according to the Kremlin website. "Just go to Kiev Pechersk Lavra or check out Pskov Monastery or Mount Athos. You'll see the relics of saints there." Putin cited almost word-for-word the present-day...