Free Republic

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...

A bishop from Kazakstan has suggested the preparation of an authoritative document to expose major errors in the interpretation of the teachings of Vatican II. Bishop Athanasius Schneider, an auxiliary of the Karaganda diocese, argues that the Church has been damaged by inaccurate interpretations of the Council documents, which suggest “an anthropocentric, secularizing, or naturalistic shift by the Second Vatican Council” and a dramatic break from previous Church teachings. Bishop Schneider says that the teaching of the Church has been distorted because of secular influences and because too many Church leaders failed to uphold traditional teachings. The result, he says,...

MOSCOW – Russia and China could take a step closer to forming a Eurasian military confederacy to rival NATO at a Moscow meeting of the six-member Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Wednesday, experts say. The group, which started in 2001 with limited goals of promoting cooperation in former Soviet Central Asia, has evolved rapidly toward a regional security bloc and could soon induct new members such as India, Pakistan, and Iran. One initiative that core members Russia and China agree on, experts say, is to squeeze US influence - which peaked after 9/11 - out of the SCO's neighborhood. "Four years...

MOSCOW, July 12 (RIA Novosti) - Ukraine's possible refusal to participate in the Common Economic Space (CES) will not stop Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus from continuing integration processes, a high-ranking official said Tuesday. Dmitry Sukhoparov, Russia's national coordinator in the High-Level Group on the CES, told a RIA Novosti news conference: "The CES can work even without Ukraine. We [Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan] can work when there are three of us." However, Sukhoparov stressed, "It should not be forgotten that Ukraine means almost 50 million people, and the bigger the market in terms of area, number, GDP and capital, the more...