Free Republic

Author and former spy John Le Carr was tempted to defect to the Soviet Union during the Cold War, he revealed yesterday. The 76-year-old, who wrote his first three books while working as an MI6 agent, admitted he was curious to know what it would be like working for the Russians. When Le Carre whose real name is David Cornwell, was asked if he was genuinely tempted to switch sides, he said: 'Yes, there was a time when I was, yes. 'I wasn't tempted ideologically. But when you spy intensively and get closer and closer to the border . ....

Russia’s Restless Muslim Republics By Uwe Klussmann Although Russia is celebrating the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, it still has its own problems in the region as its Muslim republics are drifting toward a partisan war. Last Monday, an eerie funeral procession passed through the center of Nazran in the Russian republic of Ingushetia. Hundreds of people silently crowded around the coffin of Magomed Yevloyev. The 37-year-old lawyer and founder of a Web site ( www.ingushetiya.ru) that was critical of the government was killed in police custody. The authorities said that he was shot in a police car “inadvertently”...

ST. PETERSBURG, September 3 (RIA Novosti) - Two farms in north-east Estonia have joined forces to declare an independent "Soviet republic" and intend to seek Russia's recognition, a Russian communist organization said on Wednesday. "We no longer want to live in bourgeois Estonia, where nobody cares about the common people...with raging unemployment and corruption, and where everything depends on NATO and the Americans," Russian communists from St Petersburg, who are assisting the 'republic,' quoted its founder, Andres Tamm, as saying. Residents and founders of the 'Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic' have already formed a national 'Soviet government,' a police force, and...

Russia put the West on alert for a new Cold War that the Kremlin is ready to fight, its President said yesterday. President Medvedev set tensions soaring when he recognised the independence of two breakaway republics inside Georgia. “We are not afraid of anything, including the prospect of a Cold War,” he said. Hours earlier he had ordered his Foreign Ministry to start establishing diplomatic ties with the secessionist regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. The move brought instant condemnation from the United States, Britain, France, Germany and other Western countries. President Bush appealed to the Kremlin to “reconsider this...

President Dmitry Medvedev made it clear that Russia is ready to sever its relations with the NATO after they got worsened over the conflict involving Georgia. According to reports, Medvedev said this during a meeting with Russia's envoy to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin. "We are ready to take any decision, up to halting of relations altogether," he was quoted as saying Monday. However, he called on countries of the Western alliance to avert a worsening in ties so that any "difficult decision" could be avoided. Earlier in the day, Russian parliament voted for the recognition of the breakaway provinces of South...

The crimes of georgian's army in S. Ossetia.

Mikhail Gorbachev has accused the United States of mounting an imperialist conspiracy against Russia that could push the world into a new Cold War. With Dmitry Medvedev due to be inaugurated today as Russian president, the Soviet Union's last leader said that the White House's claims of peaceful intentions towards its former superpower rival could no longer be trusted. Delivering one of his most scathing attacks on the US, Mr Gorbachev told The Daily Telegraph that a US military build-up was under way to contain a resurgent Russia. From Nato's expansion plans in the former Soviet Union to Washington's proposals...

Ideology matters again. The big development of recent years is the rise not only of great powers but also of the great-power autocracies of Russia and China. True realism about the international scene begins with understanding how this unanticipated shift will shape our world. Many believe that when Chinese and Russian leaders stopped believing in communism, they stopped believing in anything. They had become pragmatists, pursuing their own and their nation's interests. But Chinese and Russian rulers, like past rulers of autocracies, do have a set of beliefs that guide their domestic and foreign policies. They believe in the virtues...

Why Does Ahmadinejad Want Russian Troops in Iran? 25/04/2008 By Amir Taheri Why is the leadership in Tehran anxious to give Russia the right to land troops in Iran? The question is not fanciful. The Islamic Republic is conducting a devious campaign to prepare public opinion for that eventuality. The message is relayed through deliberately vague terms that diplomats understand immediately while the general public does not. The device is to revive two treaties that most students of Iranian history thought were dead and buried long ago. The first is the 1921 Treaty that the government of Sayyed Ziauddin Tabatabai,...

A Moscow court on Monday convicted an American pastor of smuggling hunting ammunition into Russia and sentenced him to three years and two months in prison. Phillip Miles, pastor of Christ Community Church in Conway, S.C., part of an evangelical fellowship, has been in custody since his arrest Feb. 3, several days after arriving in Moscow. Miles has said he brought the .300-caliber cartridges for a friend who had recently bought a Winchester rifle -- a gun rarely found in Russia. He said he did not know bringing such ammunition into Russia was illegal. "I'm very disappointed. It's a strange...

<p>Russian bomber aircraft approached a US Aircraft carrier in the Pacific on Saturday and were intercepted by American fighter jets, a US Defense official said on Monday.</p>

MOSCOW, Feb. 8 - President Vladimir Putin said Friday that "a new arms race has been unleashed in the world" as the United States moves forward with a missile defense system in Eastern Europe. Russia will field new weapons in response, he said, dismissing American assurances that the missile system is not directed against Russia as nothing more than "diplomatic cover." "It's not our fault. We didn't start it ... funneling multibillions of dollars into developing weapons systems," Putin declared in what may be his final major address before he leaves the Kremlin after presidential elections March 2, to become...

The China-Russia-Iran Axis   By Jamie Glazov FrontPageMagazine.com | Tuesday, January 22, 2008 Frontpage Interview's guest today is Steve Schippert, co-founder of the Center for Threat Awareness and managing editor for ThreatsWatch.org.FP: Steve Schippert, welcome to Frontpage Interview. Schippert: As always, my pleasure, Dr. Glazov. FP: We've gathered here today to discuss the Iran-Russia-China alignment. I think a good place to start is with Russia sending nuclear fuel to Iran. What do you make of this development? Schippert: The 11-shipment Russian supply underway of 80 tons of enriched uranium nuclear fuel for the Russian-built 1,000 megawatt light water reactor...

MOSCOW - Though more than a dozen parties are on the ballot for Russia's parliamentary election Sunday, one would hardly know it. The pro-Kremlin United Russia (UR) party, whose standing has jumped more than 25 percent since President Vladimir Putin announced he would head its candidate list last month, could fairly win up to two-thirds of votes for the 450-seat State Duma, according to most polls. But in what some experts say may be the least democratic election since the USSR collapsed, boycotted by Europe's election-monitoring body, the campaign has been marred by complaints from opposition parties of official interference,...

Ben, a mine dog with the 49th Mine Dog Detachment and his handler, Army Pfc. Thomas Martin, also of the 49th, clear a path to a “wounded� soldier during a training exercise at Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan, Sept. 14. U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Jim Wilt Efforts Continue to De-Mine Afghanistan Afghanistan is one of the most heavily mined countries in the world, and removing them is no easy task. By Sgt. Jim Wilt Combined Joint Task Force-82 BAGRAM AIRFIELD, Afghanistan, Sept. 24, 2007 — For most people, running over a land mine equates to a bad day. For contractors...

Nothing but an announcement on Fox at this time.

Just a reminder for some, vital info for others: "Chavez pledged that his country would 'stay by Iran at any time and under any condition,' state television reported. Ahmadinejad said he saw in Chavez a kindred spirit." "'We do not have any limitation in cooperation,' Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying. 'Iran and Venezuela are next to each other and supporters of each other. Chavez is a source of a progressive and revolutionary current in South America and his stance in restricting imperialism is tangible.'":http://www.worldthreats.com/latin_america/Iran-Chavez%20Alliance.htmFrom National Public Radio (NPR):"Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has been visiting countries such as China, Iran and...

Remember the mammoths, say the clean-cut organisers at the youth camp's mass wedding. "They became extinct because they did not have enough sex. That must not happen to Russia". Obediently, couples move to a special section of dormitory tents arranged in a heart-shape and called the Love Oasis, where they can start procreating for the motherland. With its relentlessly upbeat tone, bizarre ideas and tight control, it sounds like a weird indoctrination session for a phoney religious cult. But this organisation - known as "Nashi", meaning "Ours" - is youth movement run by Vladimir Putin's Kremlin that has become a...

MOSCOW -- Russia may have turned its back on Vladimir Lenin's revolutionary ideology, but Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez on Thursday told Russians they should revere and revive the ideas of the Soviet Union's founder. ''We should remember Vladimir Lenin and come back to his ideas, especially when it comes to anti-imperialism,'' Chávez told the audience at the opening of a Moscow cultural center named for the South American revolutionary hero Simon Bolivar. The rhetoric was vintage Chávez -- mainly aimed at portraying Venezuela as a bastion of defiance of the United States. Chávez's comments emphasized Venezuela's solidarity with the Kremlin...

Former commander in chief of the Soviet Ground Forces Gen. Valentin Varennikov, left, presents a saber to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, during the opening of Venezuela's cultural center in Moscow, Thursday, June 28, 2007. Chavez arrived in Moscow for talks with his Russian counterpart as Russian news media speculated about a major weapons deal. As deputy head of the Soviet General Staff from 1979-84, Varennikov was a key planner of the Soviet Union's strategy in Afghanistan Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, 2nd from left, and Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov share a joke while opening Venezuela's cultural center in Moscow, Thursday,...

Bush: Russians have derailed reforms By JENNIFER LOVEN, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 2 minutes ago President Bush risked further stoking a testy dispute with Russia over a new U.S. missile defense system on Tuesday, saying Moscow has "derailed" once-promising democratic reforms. In a speech celebrating democracy's progress around the globe — and calling out places where its reach is either incomplete or lacking — Bush said that free societies emerge "at different speeds in different places" and have to reflect local customs. But he said certain values are universal to all democracies, and rapped several countries for not embracing...

MOSCOW, March 29 (Itar-Tass) - Russian President Vladimir Putin has sent a letter to participants in the Arab summit in Al-Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, the Kremlin press service said on Thursday. “The development of the situation in Iraq causes concern. In order to hold country from sliding to a full-scale civil war and disintegration, a speedy achievement of real national reconciliation and accord is necessary. A way to the realization of this priority task lies through the development of a broad dialogue with the participation of all leading Iraqi political forces and ethic-confessional groups with the clear determination of a timeline...

Russian President Vladimir Putin and his aides at the Kremlin say they feel surrounded, and they're not going to take it anymore. Russian corporations are being foiled abroad; the Russian state is being unfairly blamed for volatility in global energy markets; and suggestions that the state is eliminating its critics are just preposterous. Why all the bad press? Because of "Russophobia" — an unreasoning Western hostility toward Russia — according to the Kremlin. "I see a campaign here," Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said in a TV interview last week. Amid all the allegations that the Kremlin — in a...

RUSSIA is to replace its military doctrine with a more hawkish version that boldly identifies NATO and the West as its greatest danger. In a statement posted on its website, Russia's powerful Security Council said it no longer considered global terrorism to be its biggest danger. Instead, Russia was developing a new national security strategy that reflected changing "geo-political" realities, and the fact that rival military alliances were becoming "stronger" - "especially NATO". "There have been changes in the character of the threat to the military security of Russia. More and more leading world states are seeking to upgrade their...

While U.S. weapons development stalled almost completely during the 1990s - both Russia and China have continued to field a new generation of missiles for which the west has no equal nor defense. A popular new weapon is the Russian long range air-to-air Vympel R-77 missile, NATO code named AA-12 Adder. The R-77 is designed to destroy other aircraft beyond visual range and reported to be equal to or better than the U.S. made AIM-120 AMRAAM missile...

Boeing has lost a huge potential order from Russian state-owned airline Aeroflot for 22 787 Dreamliners, company sources said. The deal was all but sealed last June, requiring only the approval of the Russian government. Worth $3.2 billion at list prices, it would have been about $2.2 billion with standard discounts as estimated by aircraft-valuation firm Avitas. But steadily worsening political relations between the U.S. and Russia have killed it and given Airbus a big, though still-unannounced, win for its A350 rival to the 787. In an August interview, Sergei Koltovich, Aeroflot's head of fleet planning, said "both Boeing and...

Russia's foreign minister Wednesday warned the United States not to take military action against Iran. "The Russian foreign minister said Wednesday U.S.-led multinational foreign forces in Iraq must not conduct military operations outside the country, including against Iran," the RIA Novosti news agency reported. "The multinational force in Iraq should abide strictly by the UN Security Council's mandate, which does not provide for any operations outside the country," Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told the Lebanese magazine Al-Watan Al-Arabi in an interview. "The escalation of the conflict and its possible spread beyond the Iraqi borders will inevitably result in catastrophic consequences...

Mr Putin said the US "has overstepped its borders" The Munich security conference was born in the 1960s - the height of the Cold War. Forty years on, there been talk of a new chill. Given the tone and content of Russian President Vladimir Putin's address to the gathered defence ministers, parliamentarians and pundits, it is not, perhaps, hard to see why. Warming quickly to his task after only the briefest of greetings, President Putin accused the US of establishing, or trying to establish, a "uni-polar" world. "What is a uni-polar world? No matter how we beautify this term,...

THE BEAR GOES WALKABOUTby Mark Steyn You gotta love these alternative theories for the murder of Alexander Litvinenko, the late “Russian dissident” (and there’s a phrase one hadn’t expected to make a comeback quite so soon). Relax, say the Kremlinologists (and there’s another), it wasn’t Putin who had the guy whacked. It was rogue elements within the state apparatus who gained access to supposedly secure facilities and then contaminated five international jets and dozens of joints all over London in order to pull off the world’s first radiological assassination. Oh, well, that’s okay then. Nothing to worry about. The late...

Pentagon prepares for possible war with Russia 08.02.2007 /PanARMENIAN.Net/ U.S. Defense Secretary thinks that American armed forces must be ready for a large-scale war, the Associated Press reports. “We need a full set of measures to conduct a war, including both special military units necessary for war against terrorists and infantry troops to be able to fight against large regular armies. We do not know what changes can take place in such countries as Russia, China, North Korea, Iran and others,” Robert Gates stated. He made this statement February 7 during hearings in the U.S. House Committee on Armed Services,...

PALO ALTO, Calif.--Those who were born in Year One of the Russian Revolution are now entering their 10th decade. Of the intellectual class that got its vintage laid down in 1917, a class which includes Eric Hobsbawm, Conor Cruise O'Brien and precious few others, the pre-eminent Anglo-American veteran must be Robert Conquest. He must also be the one who takes the greatest satisfaction in having outlived the Soviet "experiment." Over the years, I have very often knocked respectfully at the door of his modest apartment ("book-lined" would be the other standard word for it) on the outskirts of Stanford University,...

Russia has suffered terribly at the hands of Islamic terrorism over the centuries and continues suffer today. Yet, Russia is the best friend of the terrorism-exporting Muslim countries. Russia is actively helping Iran towards its ambition to extiprate Israel. Will Russia learn a lesson?

In an article of their own MEMRI has brought to light two articles published in December of 2006 from the Syrian government daily: Teshreen, and the Iranian government daily: Tehran Times. The articles give evidence to Russia's global ambitions to re-establish Russia's international power by increasing Russian presence, influence, and participation in the oil rich Middle-East. The article posted at MEMRI is from January 12, 2007 and entitled: Iranian and Syrian Government Papers on Renewed Superpower Role for Russia to Counter U.S. in Middle EastThe following are selected excerpts from the two articles cited by MERMI: "We must acknowledge that...

President Vladimir Putin insists he wants Russia to be a respected member of the community of nations. Why, then, does he keep doing things that remind us of the bad old days of the USSR? Russia talks a good game about wanting more trade and investment with the West. But then it goes and does something crazy: seizing the assets of Shell Oil off Sakhalin Island. ... Russia never had the technology to fully exploit its oil and gas reserves; it needed outside expertise. Which explains why Shell was in Sakhalin, one of Russia's most promising offshore oil sites. But...

No Mystery Here. You don’t need a convoluted device to explain Alexander Litvinenko’s demise. The poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko, renegade Russian spy and fierce critic of Vladimir Putin’s government, is everywhere being called a mystery. There is dark speculation about unnamed “rogue elements” either in the Russian secret services or among ultra-nationalists acting independently of the government. There are whispers about the indeterminacy of things in the shadowy netherworld of Russian exile politics, crime and espionage. Well, you can believe in indeterminacy. Or you can believe the testimony delivered on the only reliable lie detector ever invented — the deathbed...

Don't play dead for Putin Author: Max Boot, Senior Fellow for National Security Studies December 6, 2006 Los Angeles Times There are a lot of ways to make a man’s death look like an accident, suicide or a street crime. That wasn’t the intent of whoever murdered former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko in London. By using such an exotic murder weapon—a radioactive isotope known as polonium-210—his killers sent a message: Don’t mess with the powers that be in Russia. The identity of his murderers is likely to remain unknown, but in all probability Litvinenko was poisoned because of his campaign...

TERRORISM MONITOR Volume 2 Issue 1 (January 15, 2004) A RUSSIAN AGENT AT THE RIGHT HAND OF BIN LADEN? By Evgenii Novikov The Arabic television channel Al Jazeera broadcast an audiotape on December 19, 2003, that was said to be from Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, the right hand man of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. In it, Zawahiri claimed that his group was chasing Americans everywhere, including in the United States. This claim helped raise the terror threat level. But where is Zawahiri, whose head now carries a price of US$25 million? Recent media reports have said that he is...

"Oh, come on, Rush! It's much ado about nothing. It's just one spy wiping out another spy." It's Russians wiping out a spy. Now you've got Putin sending air defense systems to Iran who's going to bail us out of Iraq, threatening Israel. You've got Putin sending missiles and rockets and warheads and helping Iran with its nuclear program, and all of this combined, then you've got the Baker report, the Iraq study group report and Chuck Hagel and a bunch of courageous, brave American Democrats and Republicans saying, "We gotta honorably pull out of there. We gotta get out...

THE COLD WAR was supposed to have ended 15 years ago, but the death in London of Alexander V. Litvinenko presents Scotland Yard with more than your average murder mystery. The former Russian spy and fierce critic of the Kremlin was poisoned. But how and by whom? The tale began Nov. 1 at itsu, a busy London sushi restaurant near Piccadilly Circus that features a Madame Butterfly Zinger, Squirrels Dreams and something called Bang Bang Free Range Chicken. Poison is definitely not on the menu. Litvinenko, an outspoken critic of Russian President Vladimir V. Putin and a KGB successor agency,...

“Well you’re the obvious guy, uh, spirit, to ask about this stuff, because you spent most of your career watching the KGB didn’t you?” It was rhetorical, needless to say. I had finally connected with the shade of the late James Jesus Angleton after several dropped communications via the ouija board, and now that I had him I wanted to find out what he thought about the melodramatic death of former KGB agent (or FSB…whatever) Alexander Litvinenko in London. Ian Fleming couldn’t have invented a wilder story.....

Tensions between Britain and Russia burst into the open today when a leading Cabinet minister voiced criticism of President Putin's "huge attacks" on liberty and democracy.Peter Hain, the outspoken Northern Ireland Secretary, indicated that relations with Moscow had hit a low as he exhorted the Russian leader to return to democratic processes. Outspoken: Peter Hain, Northern Ireland Secretary His comments come as the Government has been treading carefully with Russia amid claims that the Kremlin ordered the poisoning of former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko in London. The Foreign Office asked Moscow on Friday to hand over any material which might...

Just a headline, as of 10AM.

LONDON — Former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned by radiation, Britain's Health Protection Agency said Friday. Agency scientist Roger Cox said polonium-210 had been found in Litvinenko's urine. Earlier, Home Secretary John Reid said Litvinenko's death Thursday night was "linked to the presence of a radioactive substance in his body." Reid, the country's top law-and-order official, said experts were searching for "residual radioactive material" at a number of locations. The former KGB agent dictated a statement in the waning hours of his life, blaming Russian President Vladimir Putin and describing him "as barbaric and ruthless as your most hostile...

Poisoned Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko died on Thursday in an intensive care ward, London's University College Hospital said. Litvinenko, a fierce critic of the Russian government, suffered a rapid deterioration in his health on Thursday, but doctors still were unable to determine the cause of his death, a spokesman said in a statement.

LONDON - A former KGB agent turned Kremlin critic who was poisoned three weeks ago was moved into intensive care Monday after his condition deteriorated, and his doctor said the toxin has attacked his bone marrow. Prominent Russian exiles claimed Litvinenko was poisoned at the behest of the Kremlin... Thallium causes hair loss and interferes with the cardiovascular and nervous systems, attacking the vital organs. Litvinenko's white cell count is down to nearly zero, said Dr. John Henry, a clinical toxicologist treating him. "It shows his bone marrow has been attacked and that he is susceptible to infection," Litvinenko, who...

It appears that the Kremlin has attempted to assassinate Russian defector Alexander Litvinenko, whose warnings to the West have been repeatedly cited in this column. A former lieutenant colonel of the KGB/FSB, Litvinenko wrote a book titled Blowing Up Russia: Terror From Within. During an interview with Rzeczpospolita in July 2005 he explained that al Qaeda’s number two man, Ayman al-Zawahiri was trained by the FSB (KGB) in Russia along with other al Qaeda leaders. According to Litvinenko, “[there is] only one organization which has made terrorism the main tool of solving political problems.” And that organization, he said, “is...

How ironic. On somewhat of a lark, I recently stopped by a liquidation sale at a nearby, soon-to-be-extinct, Tower Records store. On even more of a lark, I purchased a CD which content was originally recorded in late 1977 and early 1978 by the British progressive / classical rock band "Rennaissance." I was a bit tired of listening to more recent things I have and remembered that I had quite liked the album when I had a tape of it during the late 70s and early 80s (long since worn out and degraded then eventually misplaced). Little did I realize...

While interacting with a select gathering of "Russia hands" from Western academia, media and think tanks recently, President Vladimir Putin ventured onto the topic of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in terms, as he put it, that would be a "revelation ... something probably I have never said to anyone before". Putin, known for his reticence and choice of words, revealed that the Kremlin did not "plan" for the SCO's present standing, but had only set its sights on the organization's potential to resolve the "utilitarian question of settling borders" between China and its post-Soviet neighbors. SCO includes China, Russia,...

While Soviet troops occupied Afghanistan in 1980, Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) worked in close concert with high level Kremlin officials to alter the direction of U.S. policy, according to documents made available through a KGB defector.