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In last 24 hours, an unknown virus (presumed pneumonic plague) infected another 37 thousand and killed 12 more people. The authorities deny that this is pneumonic plague, and insist that people die from influenza, pneumonia and ARI. Meanwhile, an emergency message from the President of Ukraine to the international community to immediately help in the fight against the virus, only reinforces the suspicion that pneumonia and influenza is not the cause. "The current threat to national security of Ukraine, which we can not offset on our own, requires me to turn to our closest friends and strategic partners for emergency...

As the Ford Taurus slowly approached the signal site, hidden FBI agents readied for a possible arrest. For weeks they had been staking out a path in Foxstone Park in Vienna, Virginia, outside Washington, D.C. Their elusive quarry was a Soviet mole in the FBI, codenamed “Ramon Garcia.”  ver the course of more than two decades, “Ramon” had done incalculable damage to the United States’ security, selling Top Secret information to the Soviet GRU (military intelligence) and KGB, and to the KGB’s Russian successor agency, the FSB, and its foreign arm, the SVR. Would “Ramon” stop this time? More than...

The Russian parliament and media refer to him merely as a “Russian businessman.” But to much of the rest of the world, Viktor Bout is known as the “Merchant of Death,” the most notorious member of the dark fraternity of global weapons traffickers who arm terrorist organizations, as well as the tyrannical regimes and brutal warlords and militias responsible for horrendous genocidal slaughters over the past two decades. Since his March 2008 arrest in Bangkok, Thailand, in an elaborate U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration sting, Viktor Bout has been in Bangkok’s Klong Prem Special Prison awaiting trial. The U.S. Department of...

A proposed law could make comparing Soviet rule with that of the Nazis a crime. Intellectuals fear a manipulation of Russia’s past.A bitter joke from the Soviet-era has it that Russia is the world's only country with an unpredictable past. That jibe has come winging back in recent days, after the Kremlin announced the creation of a special 28-member panel tasked with examining and combating examples of "historical revisionism" that harm Russia's image. The committee, which has no legal power, is chaired by the head of President Dmitry Medvedev's administration, Sergei Naryshkin, and includes a sprinkling of historians but also...

IntroductionPresident Barack Obama recently set the wheels in motion to render the ultimate control of our large financial institutions, large insurance companies, large hedge funds and quite possibly our financial markets as well, to a foreign entity. A new international regulatory agency was created at the recent G-20 Summit in London, and all G-20 countries signed onto it. Sadly, you probably have not heard a word about it until now. Prepare to be outraged as you read what follows. And I will tell you how to confirm it on your own. Every freedom-loving American - whether conservative, moderate or liberal...

LONDON (Reuters) - Leaders of the G20 largest developed and emerging economies agreed on Thursday to a $1.1 trillion program to restore global growth and rebuild a financial system, ravaged by the worst financial crisis since the 1930s. Here are the key points in the final G20 communique. -- "To treble resources available to the IMF to $750 billion, to support a new SDR allocation of $250 billion, to support at least $100 billion of additional lending by the MDBs (multilateral development banks), to ensure $250 billion of support for trade finance, and to use the additional resources from agreed...

This is the CORRECT video for the thread.

MOSCOW, March 31 (RIA Novosti) - At least 67 militants have been killed and 233 detained in special operations in the North Caucasus since the beginning of 2009, the head of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) said on Tuesday. "At least 67 militants have been eliminated and 233 detained in antiterrorism operations in the North Caucasus in 2009," Alexander Bortnikov said at a meeting of Russia's National Anti-Terrorism Committee. The committee is meeting in Moscow to consider formally ending the anti-terrorist operation in Chechnya and begin the withdrawal of around 20,000 Russia's Interior Ministry troops from the North Caucasus...

MOSCOW: A Moscow jury ruled unanimously on Thursday to acquit three men in the 2006 murder of the investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya, frustrating state prosecutors' hopes of putting to rest a case that cast a shadow over Vladimir Putin's Russia. Politkovskaya was a strident critic of the Kremlin, and her killing in 2006 underlined the shrinking freedom allowed dissenters in Russian society. Investigators and colleagues concluded that someone had ordered her death to silence her, and some suspected the hand of state officials in the crime. But the three men who were tried on murder charges in a cramped courtroom...

Bombed apartment building in Moscow. Source: liveinternet.ru In 1999, a series of apartment bombings shook Russia and propelled the country headlong into the Second Chechen War. Nearly nine years after the attacks, which claimed 292 lives, many Russians remain unconvinced by the official version of events, which holds that Chechen separatists were responsible. Two sisters, who lost their mother in the attack, have written an open letter to President Dmitri Medvedev, urging him to mount a fully open, independent investigation. The sisters, Tatyana and Alyona Morozov, currently reside in Missouri. Their appeal (below) was published in the Wall Street...

MOSCOW, March 19 (Reuters) - Russian law enforcement agencies were on Wednesday searching the headquarters of Russian oil firm TNK-BP TNBPI.RTS, half owned by BP Plc (BP.L: Quote, Profile, Research), industry sources told Reuters. The company declined to comment. "Searches began this morning and are still continuing," one of the sources said. The reason for the searches was not immediately clear. One source said the searches were being conducted by the Federal Security Service, main successor agency to the Soviet-era KGB secret police. TNK-BP is half owned by a group of Russian billionaire shareholders. Many analysts have said they were...

WHEN Nikolai Patrushev, head of Russia's federal security service (FSB), spoke to his staff to mark the 90th anniversary of the Soviet secret service last year, he made an odd historic diversion. “Those who study history know that security existed before. Sophia Paleologue married Ivan III, and being a niece of the last Byzantine emperor, paid close attention to questions of security.” Few understood what he was talking about. The mystery was cleared up a few weeks later, when Russia's state television channel aired an hour-long film, “The Destruction of the Empire: a Byzantine Lesson”. It proved so popular that...

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...

MOSCOW — A man formerly held in the U.S. facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was killed Wednesday in a shootout with security agents in a restive North Caucasus republic, Russia's top security agency said. Ruslan Odizhev was killed amid gunfire that erupted when agents tried to arrest him and another man in Kabardino-Balkariya, a region near Chechnya that is plagued by violence linked both to crime and to religious tensions, the Federal Security Service said in a statement. The service, known by its Russian acronym FSB, said Odizhev had been held at Guantanamo Bay and was believed to have been...

Eurasian Secret Services Daily Review AIA FSB Director: terrorists seek nuclear weapons in Russia Nikolai Patrushev Director of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), Nikolai Patrushev, who is also chairman of the National Antiterrorist Committee, speaking at today’s session of the National Anti-Terrorist Committee, said terrorists were trying to get hold of nuclear weapons in Russia. The powerful FSB leader confirmed that the National Counter-Terrorism Committee has credible information on the issue, news agency RIA Novosti reports. According to the agency, the intelligence information stems from the Russian FSB, as well as from foreign intelligence partners. Organized terrorist groups...

THE NUMBER TWO PERSON IN AL QAEDA, AYMAN AL ZAWAHIRI, IS AN OLD AGENT OF THE FSB (KGB). AYMAN AL ZAWAHIRI, IN 1998, WAS IN THE TERRITORY OF DAGESTAN, WHERE FOR HALF A YEAR HE RECEIVED SPECIAL TRAINING AT ONE OF THE EDUCATIONAL BASES OF THE FSB. AFTER THIS TRAINING HE WAS TRANSFERRED TO AFGHANISTAN, HE PENETRATED THE MILIEU OF BIN LADEN AND SOON BECAME HIS ASSISTANT IN AL QAEDA. TOP OFFICIALS FROM THE UFSB OF DAGESTAN, WHO HAD DIRECTLY WORKED WITH AYMAN AL-ZAWAHIRI WERE CALLED TO MOSCOW AND RECEIVED HIGH POSTS...

"Operation Bite" : the much-ballyhooed "sneak attack" by US forces on Iran was SUPPOSED to happen yesterday...but didn't. It's beginning to look as if the whole story -including the "high-ranking Russian official" - was an Alex Jones 9/11 "Truther" scam from the get-go ! Could it have been a ploy to raise gold prices ???

A senior Russian journalist who embarrassed the country's powerful military establishment with a series of damaging stories has been found dead outside his flat in mysterious circumstances. The body of Ivan Safronov, the 51-year-old defence correspondent for Russia's progressive Kommersant newspaper, was discovered on Friday. He apparently fell from a fifth-floor window. Although prosecutors say they suspect Mr Safranov committed suicide, colleagues of the dead journalist today insisted that he had no reason to kill himself. He is also the latest in a long line of Russian journalists to have died in unexplained circumstances, they added. "Nobody believes he could...

Who decides when to kill?The technical aspects of extrajudicial retribution had been worked out well in Chechnya. There were thousands of Russian citizens who dissapeared without a trace there - sounds like whole new ways to uphold the law and order have been discovered. An ex-army officer, who had served in Chechnya had told me how people "dissapear", in such a way that neither their relatives nor the law enforcement agencies can find them. The captives are being interrogated under torture, then taken to a remote location, piled into 3-5 men pile and then blown up using a powerfull explosive...

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4The security agencies intimidateThe document that was quoted is naturally against the Constitution, the norms of criminal law and any ideas that we may share about a state where extrajudicial punishments are not possible. In any case, this is exactly what the leadership of our country has been saying. But it is quite obvious that inside our country there exists a dedicated system of security agencies aimed exactly at carrying out extrajudicial punishments. But should the quote from an undated and unsigned document be trusted? The person who had leaked the document to...

Litvinenko Shooting Gallery At a Special Forces Training Center The Western media is circulating reports alleging that the Russian Interior Ministry's Vityaz Special Forces use targets featuring a picture of poisoned former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko for shooting practice. The target is visible in the background of a photograph of Russian Federation Council speaker Sergei Mironov visiting the Vityaz Training Center near Moscow. The authors of the reports claim that their source was a promotional video about the Russian Special Forces. The scandal exploded on January 25 with the publication of the picture in the well-known Polish newspaper Dziennik, which...

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3Do the interests of the state require to kill?There is yet another example. In Kaliningrad a gang was uncovered by RUBOP agents. Apparently behind the gang stood officers from a local FSB branch. One of the gang members whose job was kidnapping and extortion, was an intelligence agent himself. While being videotaped durign his interrogation he confessed to having shot a businessman, well known in the city, using an automatic weapon. He also claimed that he was acting under orders from... the head of the "department of counterterrorism and protection of constitutional order" of the...

Part 1 Part 2Demolition crew from the FSBIn the middle 90's a series of terrorist acts took place in Moscow. The most tragic one was a trolley bus exploding on Strastny Boulevard. Much was being said about a coordinated attack on Moscow (by the Chechens - comm. JadeEmperor). But all of a sudden it was uncovered that the bus was blown up not by the Chechen militants, but... by an ex-KGB colonel. He was found guilty by a trial. Also it was found out that the attempted bombing of a railroad bridge across the Yauza river also was not carried...

Part 1Part 2 The Wetwork SpecialistsThe journalist Dima Holodov was murdered in Vladivostok in 1994 - the same time frame, when the two gangs were uncovered, which had ties to GRU and MVD. An investigation of his murder during the first two month led to those very same two organizations. The suspects were a group of servicemen from the 45-th regimen of the VDV, which belonged to the GRU. During the investigation it was found out that the group supposedly did not report directly to the unit commander. Are such things possible in an ordinary military unit? Of course they...

SPARE ORGANSHow secret services have created parallel structures for carrying out extrajudicial sentences.How murders are carried out in the interests of the state. A secret instruction. After the death of Alexander Litvinenko in London something seemed to change in Russia. Not everyone has formulated exactly what, but everyone has felt on order of their own "gut feelings" something, which makes the insides tense in anticipation of some unknown danger. Although our state has nothing to do with this murder. So say the officials. But somehow we don't believe them. Perhaps, one of the reasons for this is we remember, how...

In an interview with a local newspaper, Georgy Drachev, head of the Pskov Region’s FSB (heir to the KGB's domestic section), accused Protestants of being spies and "destructive" cults, and encouraged citizens to call the FSB with denunciations of their activities. Drachev told the local newspaper Pskovskaya Pravda that foreign religious organizations often "approach families of military personnel, relatives of officials who work for intelligence agencies" and have access to state secrets. "Many of these so-called 'preachers' were trained in camps by Western intelligence agencies," Drachev claimed. He presented an enemies list: "Religious organizations that are represented in the Pskov...

It is not for nothing that Vladimir Putin, the president of the Russian Republic, is a former member of the KGB. From its earliest days, Soviet Russia maintained a vast army of spies around the world and penetrating the United States remained high on its list of priorities. In 2001, the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested Robert Hanssen, a FBI special agent who was a Russian spy, judged to be one of the most damaging moles in U.S. history. As Bill Gertz, a Washington Times reporter, notes in his latest book, “Enemies: How America’s Foes Steal Our Vital Secrets—and How...

Four out of five political leaders and state administrators in Russia either have been or still are members of the security services, a study suggests. The unprecedented research implies a huge expansion of KGB-FSB influence in politics and business in recent years. Many of the officials concerned have been appointed under President Vladimir Putin - himself a former spy chief. This has led many liberal commentators to claim their influence is growing unchecked, and threatening democracy. Politics and business This new research was conducted by Olga Kryshtanovskaya, a respected academic, for the Centre for the Study of the Elite, part...

'Walking Dirty Bomb' Tells of London Meetings By Anna Sadovnikova, Hans Hoyng, Thomas Hüetlin and Uwe Klussmann A few days before he was put in quarantine in a Moscow hospital, Russian businessman Andrei Lugovoi, believed to be one of Scotland Yard's main suspects in the killing of Alexander Litvinenko, spoke to DER SPIEGEL about his meetings with the former spy. Russian businessman Andrei Lugovoi during an interview on Ekho Moskvy radio in Moscow, November 23. Andrei Lugovoi, 40, former KGB agent, currently a kind of mini magnate in the Russian soft drinks industry, is the man British investigators believe left...

MOSCOW, December 11 (RIA Novosti) - The ex-wife of a witness in the case of a murdered former Russian security officer, her two children and boyfriend have been hospitalized in Germany with suspected polonium-210 poisoning, the head of the investigation team in Hamburg said Monday. He said a medical examination will show if their organisms contain a dangerous concentration of the radioactive element. Authorities did not identify them by name. Businessman Dmitry Kovtun met with defector Alexander Litvinenko around the time of his poisoning at the beginning of November. Litvinenko, an outspoken critic of President Vladimir Putin's administration and a...

British investigators are now treating the poisoning death of former Federal Security Service agent Alexander Litvinenko as murder. "It is important to stress that we have reached no conclusions as to the means employed, the motive or the identity of those who might be responsible for Mr. Litvinenko's death," Scotland Yard said in a statement.

MOSCOW, December 6, 2006 (RFE/RL) -- A team of British investigators today is continuing work on the case of Aleksandr Litvinenko. The former Federal Security Service (FSB) officer died in London last month from poisoning by the rare radioactive isotope polonium-210. Since then, British authorities have literally followed the polonium trail to more than a dozen locations in London, three British Airways jets, and a handful of potential suspects in Moscow.

LONDON: British intelligence services are convinced that the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) was behind the poisoning of former spy Alexander Litvinenko. The FSB orchestrated a "highly sophisticated plot"and was likely to have used some of its former agents to carry out the operation on the streets of London, the Times said on Tuesday. "We know how the FSB operates abroad and, based on the circumstances behind the death of Litvinenko, the FSB has to be the prime suspect,"a source said. The involvement of a former FSB officer made it easier to lure Litvinenko to meetings at various locations and...

Three great new pieces up on Timesonline(UK). Links to eah article provided by the numbers. 1. FORMER bodyguard to President Vladimir Putin was murdered with a poison that produced symptoms remarkably similar to those of Alexander Litvinenko it emerged yesterday, writes Jonathan Calvert. Roman Tsepov died aged 42 in 2004 after suffering severe radiation sickness brought on by a mystery substance he had ingested with food or drink. The case suggests that use of radioactive poisons - similar to the polonium-210 that killed Litvinenko - may be more widespread than previously thought. The nature of the poison is still a...

Putin's Poison?By Ariel CohenFrontPageMagazine.com | November 29, 2006 The radioactive poisoning in London of Alexander Litvinenko and the murder of journalist Anna Politkovskaya, a fierce opponent of Vladimir Putin’s on the Russian president’s birthday, are mysteries of great importance for the West – and Russia. They need to be solved, and the sooner the better. Is Vladimir Putin out of control – or has he lost control? Are his secret police taking people out on his orders, or is he being framed by his own people? And if so, why? Litvinenko had a murky past. A Federal Security Service (FSB) colonel...

The radioactive material that killed a former Russian spy in Britain can be bought on the Internet for $69. Polonium-210, which experts say is many times more deadly than cyanide, can be bought legally through United Nuclear Scientific Supplies, a mail-order company that sells through the Web, based in Sandia Park, N.M. Chemcial companies sell the Polonium-210 legally for industrial use, such as removing static electricity from machinery. United Nuclear claims that it's "currently the only legal Alpha source available without a license." The type of Polonium-210 sold emits alpha radiation, which can't penetrate the skin, but is deadly if...

Report: Poisoned ex-spy feared alleged agent; body set for autopsy LONDON - A British Cabinet minister accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of "attacks on individual liberty and on democracy" and said Sunday that relations with Moscow were strained after a former KGB agent was poisoned to death in London. Peter Hain, the government's Northern Ireland Secretary, said Putin's tenure had been clouded by incidents "including an extremely murky murder of the senior Russian journalist" Anna Politkovskaya. They were the strongest comments leveled at Moscow since Alexander Litvinenko died Thursday from poisoning by the radioactive element polonium-210. In a dramatic statement...

HPA Update Statement 25 November 2006 Update Statement on the Public Health Issues related to Polonium-210 The Health Protection Agency is providing expert advice on the public health issues surrounding the death of Mr Alexander Litvinenko. Following the results of further assessments we are updating our advice. Some small quantities of radioactive material have been found in a small number of areas at the Itsu sushi restaurant at 167 Piccadilly, London , and in some areas of the Millennium Hotel, Grosvenor Square , London , and at Mr Litvinenko's home in Muswell Hill. We are therefore asking anyone who was...

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.

On Sunday, the British press exploded with reports about the poisoning in London of KGB defector Colonel Alexander Litvinenko (pictured above, circa 2002), who had been in the process of investigating the murder of Anna Politkovskaya to see whether the KGB (now called the FSB) was involved. The Associated Press reported that “Toxicologist Dr. John Henry, who has been treating Litvinenko, told the BBC that the former agent had been poisoned by thallium — a toxic metal commonly found in rat poison. ‘It points to that in his blood stream,’ he said.” The Times of London reported that the symptoms...

Scotland Yard has launched an investigation into an audacious attempt to murder – using a deadly poison – a leading Russian defector at a restaurant in London. Alexander Litvinenko, a former colonel in the Russian secret service and a fierce critic of President Vladimir Putin, was seriously ill under armed guard at a London hospital last night. Alexander Litvinenko defected to Britain six years ago A close friend of Mr Litvinenko said last night: "Alexander has no doubt that he was poisoned at the instigation of the Russian government." He has been living at a secret address in London with...

Analysis: Moscow wants to rein in its pro-NATO neighbor, and a spy scandal may have provided an opening By Yuri Zarakhovich in Moscow Russia has escalated its showdown with its small, NATO-inclined neighbor of Georgia by closing all transport and postal communications. No trains, no flights, no ships, no vehicles, no mail money orders — nothing can cross the border. This time, it's much worse than just another Russian spat with a former satellite state. The Georgia standoff may soon create a major headache for the Bush Administration, because of U.S. support for Georgia's right to align itself with the...

Russia Begins the Blockade of Georgia // The enormous country arises The Russian officers accused by Georgian authorities of espionage were returned to Russia yesterday. At the same time, Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili announced that he is ready to begin a dialog with Moscow. The Kremlin has imposed a number of sanctions against Georgia and concessions by that country will not stop the process. The Country Got What It Was Waiting For Georgian Foreign Minister Vano Merabshvili and Prosecutor General Zurab Adeishvili were met at the palace of the prosecutor general in Tbilisi by a huge crowd of reporters. All...

Top Chechen rebels have tried without success to convince Hamas and Hezbollah to send fighters to the North Caucasus and might have had a hand in the killing of four Russian diplomats in Iraq in June, a senior Federal Security Service official said. Warlords Shamil Basayev and Khattab "actively tried to convince" the leadership of Hamas, based in the Palestinian territories, and Hezbollah, based in Lebanon, to rotate fighters through the North Caucasus in exchange for military assistance from Chechen rebels, General Yury Sapunov, director of the Federal Security Service's international terrorism department, told Rossiiskaya Gazeta in comments published Friday....

VLADIMIR Putin would like it to be seen as the "energy security" summit, or the "Russia regains its pride" summit, or perhaps even the "Putin leads the world" summit. But this weekend's gathering in StPetersburg of leaders of the Group of Eight nations would more accurately be called "the KGB summit". The streets are crawling with FSB officers, the modern incarnation of the KGB, trying to impose remarkably tight security for the first G8 summit in Russia. The host himself is a former KGB agent. Dozens of his ministers, regional governors and top Kremlin aides are former KGB men, as...

A former employee of an Austrian industrial group was detained in Innsbruck on suspicion of spying for Russia, Austrian television said Thursday. Reports say that the 48-year old detained individual transferred confidential information to a Russian company about technological processes, specifications and clients of the Plansee Group, which specializes in producing refractory metal products and special materials. Plansee chief executive Michael Schwarzkopf said the company would seek compensation from the detained employee adding that Plansee was currently evaluating the material damages. He said the employee had been detained Wednesday after the company had contacted the country's Interior Ministry, which had...

Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered special services to "find and destroy" the killers of four Russian diplomats taken hostage in Iraq. The head of Russia's security services immediately pledged to see Putin's order carried out.

The Federal Security Service will soon have the power to fight terrorists in foreign countries. A State Duma bill, set to be passed in a second reading this month, gives the security service, known as the FSB, the authority to go beyond information-sharing with its foreign counterparts and dispatch commandos to strike terrorist groups and bases. "The amendments provide for special-operations units of the FSB to be used at the discretion of the president against terrorists and bases that are located outside the Russian Federation for the purpose of interdicting threats to the Russian Federation," Mikhail Grishankov, deputy chairman of...

MOSCOW — Its only known address is a half-collapsed abandoned building, and its only telephone number doesn't work. But somehow a secretive lobby group, with reputed links to Russia's intelligence services, has emerged as a possible source of inspiration for President Vladimir Putin's state-of-the-union speech. When Mr. Putin gave his annual televised address on May 10, military analyst Ivan Safranchuk immediately thought the President's words about national defence sounded different from the rest of the speech. "That part seemed out of place," the Moscow director of the World Security Institute said a few hours after Mr. Putin's appearance. "Maybe there...

A “Purge” has been conducted on the FSB, MVD Prosecutor’s Office, Customs and the Federation Council. On Friday the Prime Minister was directed by the Russian president to order the forced retirements and firing of high ranking members of the FSB, MVD Prosecutor’s and Custom’s office and the Federal Customs Service. Federation Council members were also told to step down. These “retirements” were conducted in accordance with the government’s anti-corruption campaign. A government source told “Interfax” that this action was not a witch hunt, but was conducted in order to counteract the criminal elements that have taken hold in the...