Free Republic

Cold War: The White House has announced our absence at ceremonies marking the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Meanwhile, Russia has been practicing a nuclear invasion of an abandoned Poland. The Berlin Wall has been a famous backdrop for American presidents sounding the battle cry of liberty in the struggle against tyranny. It was there that John F. Kennedy expressed our solidarity with the encircled residents of that outpost of freedom with his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner." And it was there that Ronald Reagan, with a defiant "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall," voiced our...

A Republican-oriented political action committee says if ObamaCare can be defeated, the rest of President Barack Obama's radical agenda can also be derailed. During the August recess, Democratic lawmakers have found themselves in the unusual position of seeing their efforts to push the Obama healthcare agenda challenged by ordinary citizens, whom they have described as "angry mobs." In addition, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) accused town hall protestors of "carrying swastikas" and being "un-American" in the way they are voicing their opposition. Republicans have seized on the protests as evidence of a lack of public support for President Barack Obama's...

In an interview five years ago with the Weekly Standard magazine, former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky described the “brilliant moment” when he and his fellow prisoners in Siberia learned of Ronald Reagan’s “Evil Empire” speech. Speaking to the National Association of Evangelicals in 1983, president Reagan urged delegates against taking a moral equivalence stance on nuclear proliferation. When voting later in their convention on whether to support a freeze in the nuclear arms race, it would be too easy, Mr. Reagan said, to "label both sides equally at fault." That would "ignore the facts of history and the aggressive...

MOSCOW — Negotiations over gas prices between Russia and Ukraine unraveled Wednesday and executives at Gazprom, the Russian natural gas monopoly, said they were preparing to halt supplies early Thursday morning. If they do, customers in Western Europe will see shortages as the same pipelines in Ukraine are used for export and internal distribution. It is a problem that has bedeviled Europe’s energy supplies from Russia for years. How quickly Western Europe would feel a shortage of natural gas was unclear, and would depend on the scale and duration of any Russian embargo of Ukraine. The fuel is used for...

Georgian Foreign Minister Eka Tkeshelashvili said Wednesday that Russian forces were erecting a "Berlin Wall" as part of a campaign to cut off rebel regions from the rest of the country. Russia is trying to divide Abkhazia and South Ossetia from the rest of Georgia, she said in a speech to the International Institute for Strategic Studies think-tank in London. Tkeshelashvili said Russia was building a wall at Zugdidi, a city at the Abkhaz border. "Russia physically destroys physical links between the regions of Georgia," she said. "It is blowing up bridges in Gali region so that it is harder...

Relations between Russia and Germany have not been good since Vladimir Putin's nationalist sabre-rattling this summer, but they are about to get a whole lot worse. A new film about to be released in Germany will force both countries to re-examine part of their recent history that each would much prefer to forget. Yet it is right that the ghastly truth should finally be acknowledged. The movie, A Woman In Berlin, is based on the diary of the German journalist Marta Hillers and depicts the horror of the Red Army's capture of the capital of the Third Reich in April...

MOSCOW — Russia’s stock market is suffering its worst correction in nearly a decade as sliding oil prices, political attacks on private companies and instability after last month’s war in Georgia spook investors. On a bad day globally for stocks, Russia’s markets took an exceptional fall Friday. The Russian Trading System index lost 7.6 percent and recovered later to close down 4.45 percent after rumors circulated that the government would use state oil money to halt the decline. A Russian central bank official said the bank had sold large amounts of foreign currency a day earlier to shore up the...

Moscow-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, speaking in the midst of one of the lowest points in the Russia-West relationship since the breakup of the Soviet Union 17 years ago, said Tuesday that his country did not seek a new Cold War-but neither was it afraid of one.

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Fears that Russia might sell advanced weaponry to Syria kicked up a mini-storm of concern in Israel on Thursday. Syrian President Bashar Assad, in Russia for talks with President Dmitry Medvedev, has been campaigning to acquire weapons systems that include long-range surface-to-surface missiles, according to Russian media reports. The news of Assad's reported ambitions prompted immediate hand-wringing among Israeli officials and analysts. Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Israel was "analyzing the ramifications" of Assad's visit.

IGOETI, Georgia -- Russia and its allied forces today destroyed a key railway bridge linking war-weary Georgia's capital to the Black Sea coast, effectively severing all east-west transportation routes within the small country, the Georgian Foreign Ministry announced.

President Saakashvili was forced to accept defeat yesterday as he signed a peace agreement that gives the Russian Army the right to patrol on Georgian soil.

IGOETI, Georgia (Reuters) - A Russian military convoy advanced to a village 45 km (30 miles) from Tbilisi on Friday, in the deepest incursion since conflict with Georgia erupted last week.

Russia is a resurgent competitor for strategic importance. They are going to gobble up as many non-nato countries as possible in order to gain strategic value to counter the USA. Expect more brush wars and trouble from Venezuela, Iran, Russia, and others. WHY ARE WE NOT DEFENDING OUR ALLIES... PUT SOME PARA's INTO TBLISI MR. PRESIDENT!!!!

U.S. to take control of Georgian ports: Saakashvili Wed Aug 13, 2008 1:07pm EDT TBILISI (Reuters) - President George W. Bush's pledge to send aid to Georgia means that the U.S. military will take control of the ex-Soviet state's ports and airports, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili said on Wednesday.

Solzhenitsyn's Warning The faculty of Harvard University admired Alexandr Solzhenitsyn for his literary achievements, so they were thrilled that he agreed to deliver the university’s 1978 commencement address. But almost as soon as he began to speak, the professors changed their minds: too late. As I wrote this month in Christianity Today, they realized that Solzhenitsyn was charging them with complicity in the West’s surrender to liberal secularism, the abandonment of its Christian heritage, and of all the moral horrors that followed. For example, describing the Western worldview as “rationalistic humanism,” Solzhenitsyn decried the loss of “our concept of...

RUSSIA is preparing to deploy 9000 troops to bolster its forces inside the separatist Georgian region of Abkhazia, reports say. "The group is based on a subdivision of paratroopers. It consists of more than 9,000 troops and more than 350 armoured vehicles,'' Alexander Novitsky, a spokesman for Russia's peacekeeping forces in Abkhazia, was quoted by Interfax news agency as saying. "The strengthening of the peacekeeping force is aimed at ruling out a repetition of the situation Russian peacekeepers faced in Tskhinvali," Mr Novitsky was quoted as saying. Tskhinvali is the capital of South Ossetia, another breakaway region of Georgia where...

After 50 years, an American state secret has been revealed, about the arrest of 12,000 people because of Hoover’s “red” paranoia. The former director of the FBI, Edgar Hoover made plans for the arrest of 12,000 American citizens which he considered to be threats to national security – documents reveals that no longer bear the status of state secret. Hoover sent this request to the president at the time Harry Truman at the beginning of the Korean war during the 50s. He justified the move as necessary for protection from “treason, spies and sabotage”. For now there is no evidence...

Russia’s G5 system of missile defense leaves far behind the S-400 systems that are coming into operation today. It is able to counter space attacks, said Russia’s Air Force Commander-in-Chief Col.-Gen. Alexander Zelin.

Russian and Chinese troops are joining forces this week in the first military exercises by an international organisation that is regarded in some quarters as a potential rival to Nato. Thousands of soldiers and 500 combat vehicles will take part in “Peace Mission 2007”, organised by the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in the Chelyabinsk region of Russia. Russian officials have also proposed an alliance between the SCO and a body representing most of the former Soviet republics. Scores of Russian and Chinese aircraft begin joint exercises tomorrow before a week of military manoeuvres from Thursday that will include Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan...

MOSCOW, Russia (AP) -- An expedition aimed at strengthening Russia's claim to much of the oil and gas wealth beneath the Arctic Ocean reached the North Pole on Wednesday, and preparations immediately began for two mini-submarines to drop a capsule containing a Russian flag to the sea floor.

Now in their 70s and 80s, children of the victims of Josef Stalin's political repressions remembered one of the darkest pages of Russia's history at a ceremony Wednesday in central Moscow. Several hundred people laid flowers and lit candles to honor the victims of the Great Purge of 1937, when millions were labeled "enemies of the state" and executed without trial or sent to labor camps. The 70th anniversary comes as the Kremlin, focused on restoring Russians' pride in their Soviet-era history, has been trying to soften public perception of Stalin's rule and hushing up the full horror of his...

(On This Day In History) June 26, 1948 : Berlin Airlift Begins In response to the Soviet blockade of land routes into West Berlin, the United States begins a massive airlift of food, water, and medicine to the citizens of the besieged city. For nearly a year, supplies from American planes sustained the over 2 million people in West Berlin. On June 24, 1948, the Soviet Union blocked all road and rail travel to and from West Berlin, which was located within the Soviet zone of occupation in Germany. The Soviet action was in response to the refusal of American...

Russia is deploying a new series of nuclear tipped missiles with warheads designed with the aid of US supercomputers. The new Russian SS-X-27 missile is being moved directly into deployment with an advanced 550 kiloton nuclear warhead made by the Arzamas-16 nuclear design bureau. The original version of the TOPOL - mod 1 version - is designated the SS-25. This mobile missile is quite capable and can reach the US with a variety of weapons packages, including nuclear warheads of Russian design. In early 1997 Russian Atomic energy officials (MINATOM) admitted that an IBM super-computer was purchased from Europe by...

FROM the day Alexander V. Litvinenko, a former K.G.B. officer, died of polonium poisoning in London last November, officials in Russia treated the investigation of his death as if it were simply a matter of bad public relations. They dismissed accusations of Russian involvement as nonsense fabricated by President Vladimir V. Putin’s enemies. Britain last week punctured Russia’s strategy. A decision by the Crown Prosecution Service to accuse another former K.G.B. officer of the murder and demand his extradition pushed Russia out of the international court of public opinion and into the international court of law. If recent history is...

The more Russian leaders pontificate about the importance of democracy and the more they swear to protect democratic values and principles, the less democracy is left in real Russian life. When Moscow bade farewell to the outstanding Russian democrat and reformer Boris Yeltsin last month, many ordinary people told me it was not just Yeltsin who was being buried in the Novodevichy cemetery but Russian freedom itself.

Federal and local law enforcement authorities are investigating a shooting in Prince George's County that critically injured a prominent intelligence expert who specializes in the former Soviet Union. Paul Joyal, 53, was shot Thursday, four days after he alleged in a television broadcast that the government of Russian President Vladimir Putin was involved in the fatal poisoning of a former KGB agent in London... Joyal was shot by two men in the driveway of his house in the 2300 block of Lackawanna Street in Adelphi about 7:30 p.m. Thursday... The identity of the shooters was unknown, and Prince George's police...

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...

Moscow requests U.S. explanation for Gates' Russia remarks - Kamynin MOSCOW. Feb 12 (Interfax) - The Russian authorities have requested a U.S. explanation for remarks made by Pentagon chief Robert Gates regarding Russia, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mikhail Kamynin told Interfax on Monday. "Acting through the U.S. ambassador in Moscow, we have requested a clarification of the extent to which Robert Gates' remarks match the official position of the U.S. administration," he said. At a U.S. congressional committee meeting last Wednesday, Gates spoke about the uncertainty surrounding the future development of the situations in Russia, North Korea, Iran and China....

A pot of a familiar colour Lorne Gunter, National Post, Page A-1 Published: Monday, February 12, 2007 No doubt the left-wing blogosphere -- not to mention most of the Western world's faculty clubs, undergrad political science seminars, public television networks and anti-American conspiracy nuts -- will be indulging in paroxysms of ecstasy over the blistering attack on U.S. foreign policy by Russian President Vladimir Putin at an international security conference in Munich on the weekend. In uncharacteristically undiplomatic language even for him, Mr. Putin accused the Bush administration of destabilizing the world by mishandling the Iraq war, ignoring multilateralism...

Opponents of Poland's former communist regime reportedly want to pay a posthumous homage to US President Ronald Reagan by erecting his statue in the place of a Soviet-era monument. In an open letter to the mayor of the southwestern city of Katowice, the former anti-regime activists said that the staunchly anti-communist Reagan had been a "symbol of liberty," the Polish news agency PAP reported. As a result, they said, he deserved to become the centrepiece of the city's Freedom Square, replacing a monument to the Soviet troops who drove out the occupying Nazis in 1945. They also said that they...

A raid by US troops on an Iranian office in Iraq was "absolutely unacceptable" and violated international law, Russia's foreign ministry has said. The raid Thursday in the northern Iraqi city of Arbil was "absolutely unacceptable" and "the crudest possible violation of the Vienna convention on consular relations," ministry spokesman Mikhail Kamynin said in a statement. The statement referred to the raid as being directed against "the Iranian consulate general" and described five Iranians arrested as "diplomats." Iraq's foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, denied this Friday, saying that the Iranians had been working officially in Iraq but as part of a...

December 21, 2006 (RFE/RL) -- Nearly every week in the month of December features a key date in the history of the Soviet collapse. This year, which marks the 15th anniversary of the death of the USSR, finds some in Russia looking back wistfully as there seems to be a rise in historical revanche. The last days of the Soviet Union began on December 8, 1991, when the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus announced that the USSR had "ceased to exist as a geopolitical reality." They culminated on December 31 -- a week after the resignation of the first...

The Moscow headquarters of IBM and several other computer companies were raided Wednesday by masked law enforcement officials toting automatic rifles. It remained unclear Wednesday evening which branch of law enforcement was conducting the raids on IBM and two other companies, Lanit and R-Style, and what might have been the purpose of the raids. An unidentified law enforcement source told Interfax that a total of 10 locations in the city had been raided. Agents from the Interior Ministry's economic crimes department Wednesday raided the headquarters of the State Pension Fund, Gazeta.ru reported.

A row has broken out between the US and Russia at a security summit in Brussels after Washington accused Moscow of bullying its smaller neighbours. The spat erupted at the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) summit in Brussels. Senior US state department diplomat Nicholas Burns said "some" countries were imposing "economic and financial pressure" on Georgia and Moldova. Russia retorted, saying the OSCE was exacerbating conflict in the region. Tense relations between Russia and former Soviet republic Georgia erupted earlier this year, and led to Moscow imposing tough sanctions on its smaller neighbour. Moldova has also suffered...

IMAGINE you were a foreign power that wanted to get rid of a dissident who had set up home in London. Would you (a) push the troublemaker under a bus, (b) have him mown down by a hit-run driver, or (c) arrange for him to be poisoned while eating in a crowded restaurant? If you wanted to make the death look natural, or just to keep things simple, you would presumably avoid the restaurant scenario. And yet, if many Russia-watchers are to be believed, the country's Federal Security Service (FSB) has carried out just such an assassination. On November 1,...

Alexander Litvinenko’s final testament, released after his death on Thursday evening, is deeply moving. It is also political dynamite. He thanked the hospital that battled to save him. He thanked his friends and the British authorities and paid tribute to the country that had granted him citizenship a month before his death. And dramatically accusing President Putin of having no respect for life, liberty or any civilised value, he said the Russian leader may have succeeded in silencing one man, “but a howl of protest from around the world will reverberate in your ears for the rest of your life”.His...

Russia has begun delivery of Tor-M1 air defense missile systems to Iran, a Defense Ministry official said Friday, confirming that Moscow would proceed with arms deals with Tehran in spite of Western criticism. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the issue, declined to specify when the deliveries had been made and how many systems had been delivered. Ministry officials have previously said Moscow would supply 29 of the sophisticated missile systems to Iran under a $700 million contract signed in December, according to Russian media reports. The United States called on...

Russia has begun deliveries of the Tor-M1 air defence rocket system to Iran, Russian news agencies quoted military industry sources as saying, in the latest sign of a Russian-US rift over Iran. "Deliveries of the Tor-M1 have begun. The first systems have already been delivered to Tehran," ITAR-TASS quoted an unnamed, high-ranking source as saying Friday. The United States has pressed Russia to halt military sales to Iran, which Washington accuses of harbouring secret plans to build a nuclear weapon. Moscow has consistently defended its weapons trade with Iran. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said the contract for 29...

Just a headline, as of 10AM.

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.

The poisoned Russian spy breathed defiance at the Kremlin as the effects of a mystery cocktail pushed him to the brink of death.“I want to survive, just to show them,” Alexander Litvinenko said in an exclusive interview just hours before he slipped into unconsciousness. Too weak to move his limbs and visibly in great pain, the former Russian intelligence officer suggested that he knew that he may not win his struggle against the lethal chemicals destroying his vital organs. But he said the campaign for truth would go on with or without him. “The bastards got me,” he whispered. “But...

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 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.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia's potential to regain genuine global power has been discounted by many as a conspiracy theory or a remnant of Cold War mentality. With world leaders transfixed on the rise of China, Russia has been relegated to the category of a spent force. Strategic-forecasting expert and Asia Times Online contributor Joseph Stroupe's new book goes against the tide of Western smugness and makes a brilliant case for sitting up and taking notice of how the Russian bear is opportunistically wrestling to divest the United States of its world hegemony. Notwithstanding disarming public proclamations,...

MOSCOW Russia wants to know whether it will be included in or shut out of a putative European missile defense system, the nation's top military officer said Monday after a meeting with a top NATO general. Gen. Yuri Baluyevsky spoke as Russia and NATO began a joint exercise simulating a coordinated response to missile threats — the third of its kind under a cooperation agreement meant to boost coordination between the former Cold War foes. "It's necessary to decide: What next?" said Baluyevsky, the chief of staff of Russia's armed forces. "Will we create a joint missile defense (system) for...

Monday, Rush Limbaugh interviewed me on Epicenter for the November issue of The Limbaugh Letter. For about 45 minutes, we discused how since taking office in 2000, former KGB chief-turned Russian President Vladimir Putin has built strong personal, political and military ties to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il. Putin has sold Iran and North Korea billions of dollars worth of arms and even nuclear technology. He is arming America's worst enemies for war, and in so doing, Russia has joined the "Axis of Evil." Yet on this critical issue, official Washington seems to be...

"The clouds of the coming war are converging upon Israel. But our political and military leaders refuse to look up at the darkening sky. The Russian bear has awakened after 15 years of hibernation. Under the leadership of former KGB commander President Vladimir Putin, Russia is reasserting its traditional hostility towards Israel. ... With the deployment of former Chechen rebels as Russian military commandos in Lebanon, the report this week exposing Russia's intelligence support for Hizbullah during the recent war takes on disturbing strategic significance. According to Jane's Defense Weekly, the Russian listening post on the Syrian side of the...