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If he's not wearing a Kevlar suit and riding in the back of an  APC... Mr. Prokhorov may be well-advised to campaign for  next March's Russian presidential election from the States...  or a bunker (or both) Riding a fortune started in the metals industry,  Mikhail Prokhorov is one of Russia's richest men... With the largest Russian political protests in years rattling the Kremlin and activists humiliating current president/Putin lickspittle Dmitri Medvedev online, now a young (46) Russian billionaire says he will challenge Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in next March's presidential election. Saturday's huge demonstration -the largest since the early 90s- called for fresh parliamentary polls over...

It is clear that the United States and Russia are on collision course at the shores of Syria. Russian websites (and here)linked to the military intelligence informs that Kremlin decided to confront NATO forces. Three Russian warships had entered territorial waters near Tartus. It was built-in 1971 as an operational support for the Soviet strategic objective in the Southern Theater. It is the only Russian naval military base abroad with probably 50 military personnel. Moreover the Russian military naval base is in Sevastopol was granted from the Ukraine parliament de facto extrateritorial jurisdiction beyond 2017. Russian sources in the Ministry...

Analysis: Exxon deal sets stage for Putin return to KremlinBy Douglas Busvine | Reuters – Wed, Aug 31, 2011 MOSCOW (Reuters) - Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's blessing of a deal with ExxonMobil to extract oil and gas from the Russian Arctic sends a strong signal that he will return to the Kremlin in an election next year. Neither Putin, 58, who was president from 2000 to 2008, nor President Dmitry Medvedev, 45, has announced whether they will run for the presidency next March. But Putin demonstrated he is firmly in charge and ready to remain Russia's paramount leader by securing...

Anyone naively hoping for Obama's failed Russia policy to work out might be forgiven- I too thought we could forge a far more constructive relationship with them back in the early 90's... then again in the wake of 9/11, considering the common enemies that emerged. But years after those harsh lessons in Russian intransigence and strategic opportunism, you'd think the current administration might have known a little better than to just waltz into the Kremlin and try to lay some hopenchange on 'em... and with no 'Plan B' in sight. Wishful thinking aside, if Russia isn't a full-blown enemy...

A Hidden History of Evil Why doesn’t anyone care about the unread Soviet archives? In the world’s collective consciousness, the word “Nazi” is synonymous with evil. It is widely understood that the Nazis’ ideology—nationalism, anti-Semitism, the autarkic ethnic state, the Führer principle—led directly to the furnaces of Auschwitz. It is not nearly as well understood that Communism led just as inexorably, everywhere on the globe where it was applied, to starvation, torture, and slave-labor camps. Nor is it widely acknowledged that Communism was responsible for the deaths of some 150 million human beings during the twentieth century. The world remains...

Note: Photo included. SNIPPET: "Bout and American-born pal Richard Chichakli were accused of creating a new business, Samar Airlines, which they thought was clean of any connection to their own bloody dealings. Starting in the summer of 2007, Samar Airlines started making deals for airplanes and crews to ferry contraband between the United States and Tajikistan, the indictment said." SNIPPET: "The Russian-born Bout is accused of wiring $1.7 million from bank accounts in Kazakhstan, Cyprus, Russia through banks in New York City and Salt Lake City to finance the scheme." SNIPPET: "Bout, who is accused of supplying weapons to real...

Icky LeaksSensitive diplomatic communications have been published by the Wikileaks Web site, and some of this sensitive material concerns Russia. The importance of Russia as a global power has been downplayed since the fall of the Soviet Union. Leaked U.S. State Department cables give us a glimpse of how dangerous Russia is becoming. The true nature of the Russian regime has not been a popular topic of public discussion; but in secret meetings between diplomats, statesmen and law enforcement officials, there is growing concern. Russia has become the center of international corruption, drawing other states into her orbit.From the leaked...

First, some Tire Repair 101 How to set the bead on a giant off-road tire... with just starter fluid and a lighter! while stuck in the boonies: [video clip here] -MechanicsHubdotCom on Vimeo- _________________________________________________________ NOW- speaking of resourceful types...  Russian arms smuggler Viktor Bout -major supplier to Afghanistan's Northern Alliance in their 2001 war against the Taliban- has been extradited from Thailand to the United States to face terrorism charges: CNN: He's known as the "Merchant of Death" and the "Lord of War," -an alleged international arms dealer straight out of a cloak-and-dagger spy novel who eluded authorities for years and...

On 3 December 2007 a curious item appeared in the Russian media. It concerned Igor Ivanovich Sechin, a Russian political figure close to then President Vladimir Putin. Kommersant [2] featured a quote from Oleg Shvartsman, head of the Financial-Industrial Group: "For us, the Party is represented by the power bloc headed by Igor Ivanovich [Sechin]." This statement was offered in response to a journalist's question about Shvartman's strategic task of velvet re-privatization. "Who set this task for you?" asked the journalist. Shvartsman's extraordinary answer slipped inadvertently from his post-Soviet lips: "The party! (laughing)." On 3 December 2007 a curious item...

THE PARASAILING donkey saved by The Sun is to be whisked to the KREMLIN'S five-star stables to help her forget her nightmare ordeal. Anapka the ass will be lavished with VIP treatment including SUNBEDS and ORGANIC CARROTS. In an extraordinary move, the rescued mule will have the red carpet rolled out at stables established by President Dmitry Medvedev's security service for Russia's famed elite ceremonial cavalry horses. The donkey will get Tsar treatment at the prestigious Kremlin Horse Riding School close to Moscow while she undergoes quarantine and medical tests before travelling to her new home in Britain. Here's some...

Russia, in wake of its support for United Nations sanctions, was expected to deliver long-range air defense systems to Iran. A leading Russian analyst said the Kremlin would launch efforts to supply the S-300PMU1 air defense system to Teheran. The analyst said the United States has agreed not to block the S-300 and other Russian defensive exports to Iran. "Clearly, there is realization that this contract will take place," Ruslan Pukhov, director of the Moscow-based Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, said. On June 10, Pukhov said Russia's defense industry has been pressing the Kremlin to implement the S-300...

Russia signalled on Friday it was scrapping the controversial sale of S-300 missiles to Iran in a major shift the Kremlin said was needed after fresh UN sanctions over Tehran's nuclear programme. "S-300 supplies to Iran fall under UN sanctions," a Kremlin source said in Tashkent where President Dmitry Medvedev was attending a summit of a regional security body led by Moscow and Beijing. "Thus this type of weapon cannot be delivered to Iran," said the source, speaking on condition of anonymity. In a flurry of statements, a number of other senior Russian officials made clear that Moscow was changing...

A distinctive feature of the Russian power vertical is that leaders do not bother determining what government officials have already said on a particular subject before preparing their own remarks. At a meeting on security agency budgets on May 24, President Dmitry Medvedev set the goal of modernizing at least 30 percent of Russia’s weaponry by 2015. The president was apparently unaware of the previous arms program, announced by then-Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov three years ago. In 2007, Ivanov told State Duma deputies that the program would rearm 45 percent of the military by 2015. It failed miserably. In addition,...

Russia will hold large-scale naval exercises near North Korea next month that were planned before the current stand-off on the Korean peninsula, naval officials said on Thursday. Tensions between the two Koreas are at their highest level in years, a week after international investigators accused the North of torpedoing a South Korean warship in March, killing 46 sailors. Moscow, which maintains ties with North Korea, has issued repeated calls for calm and restraint from both sides to prevent tension from bubbling over into armed conflict. The Kremlin says it wants more information about the accusations that a North Korea torpedo...

A Russian MP has called for officials to investigate claims by a regional president that he met aliens onboard a spaceship -- in case he revealed any state secrets. Kirsan Ilyumzhinov of Kalmykia recently told a TV interviewer that in 1997 he was met by aliens at his Moscow apartment and that he spent several hour with them. He said he'd been falling asleep when he heard someone calling him from his balcony. When he went to look, he was met by human-like aliens in yellow spacesuits. The aliens then apparently took him onboard their spaceship where chatted to them...

Who knew? The nuclear-freeze movement, an enterprise run from the Kremlin during the 1970s and '80s, is alive and well. The Obama administration wants to push the reset button on America's nuclear deterrent, essentially by defining WMDs down. Under George W. Bush and his predecessors, Democratic and Republican, an enemy that launched a biological or chemical attack could face a retaliatory nuclear strike. President Obama would not use nuclear weapons in such an instance unless the attacker had nuclear weapons as well. "Those threats, Mr. Obama argued, could be deterred with 'a series of graded options,' a combination of old...

The tragic news of the 29 March twin suicide bombings of two Moscow Metro stations during the morning rush hour has produced outrage worldwide, with the Kremlin quickly adding that the attacks were carried out by the Caucasus Mujaheddin, a northern Caucasus-based militant Islamist guerrilla group that claimed responsibility for the bombing of a Moscow to St. Petersburg express train last November. The grim death toll can be seen as yet another statistic in the Kremlin’s ongoing war with Chechnya separatists that erupted in December 1994. Underneath and driving the savagery of the last 16 years is a resource that...

For the first time, U.S. and British troops will participate in Moscow's Victory Day celebrations, marking the 65th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany. But if Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov has his way, they may see an old familiar face around town when they get there: Posters of Josef Stalin may be put up in Moscow for the first time in decades as part of the May 9 observance of Victory Day. And they will be marching past the tomb of Lenin!!

At least 25 people are reported to have been killed in an explosion on the Metro system in central Moscow, with a second blast coming shortly afterwards. The first blast happened at the city's central Lubyanka station, reports quoting security sources said. A second explosion happened at the Park Kultury station, Russian news agency Tass reported. Ten people were injured in the first blast, Tass said, quoting the emergencies ministry. The number of casualties at the second blast is not yet clear.

NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen expressed surprise Saturday that Russia still considers the military alliance a major security threat just as their ties are improving. "I was surprised to read that Russia considers NATO a main threat in its new doctrine. This does not reflect the real world," he said, according to his spokesman James Appathurai. "NATO is not an enemy of Russia. We want a strategic partnership with Russia because we share common threats," he said, a day after Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed a new military strategy document, naming NATO as a threat. The document, published on...

A giant triangular UFO was spotted hovering over the Kremlin in Moscow – in a film that has sent shockwaves throughout Russia. The flying object, which witnesses said could be up to a mile wide, was filmed by two amazed spectators – one at night from a car and another during the day. The hovering pyramid has been likened to Darth Vader’s Imperial Cruiser in Star Wars and has been showed repeatedly on Russian news channels. A clip of the UFO, which reportedly hovered over Moscow’s Red Square for hours, has become a Russian YouTube sensation. Nick Pope, who worked...

CARACAS (Reuters) - Russia is building arms plants in Venezuela to produce AK-103 automatic rifles and cartridges and is finalizing contracts to send 53 military helicopters to the Andean nation, Moscow's envoy to Venezuela saidMonday. Ambassador Vladmir Zaemskiy told a news conference that Russian engineers and Venezuelan construction firms were building the rifle and cartridge plants which, when operational, would employ more than 1,500 workers. He gave no completion date for the plants under construction in the central state of Aragua. Details about Moscow's military shipments and projects have been scarce since socialist President Hugo Chavez's government began signing military...

MOSCOW (Reuters) - The crash of a luxury train in Russia killed 25 people and injured up to 63 more, an official said on Saturday, and sources suggested it may have been an act of terrorism. "Twenty-five people died in the accident," an official reported to Emergencies Minister Sergei Shoigu during a meeting televised by Vesti-25 television, hours after the crash. Several carriages of the Nevsky Express traveling from Moscow to St Petersburg were derailed at 9:30 p.m. (1830 GMT) on Friday near the town of Bologoye, 350 km (200 miles) from Moscow. Estimates of the number of injured ranged...

As the United States and its allies haggle with Iran over its nuclear program, Moscow has fueled Western unease about its military links to Tehran by pledging to continue selling arms to the Islamic republic. This has raised speculation that it may brush aside the strident objections of the United States and Israel and supply Iran with advanced S-300PMU surface-to-air missiles that would greatly enhance its defenses against airstrikes. The Russians, who have rejected the proposed imposition of economic sanctions on Iran as "counterproductive," are keeping the waters muddied with contradictory and ambiguous statements regarding the S-300s. On Wednesday, Russia's...

Russia's new president is trying to show the world a more liberal face, but the body count of murdered human rights activists keeps rising. Being a political critic in Russia is getting more dangerous by the day, and now one prominent human rights organization in Chechnya has decided to close its office. Yet another Russian human rights activist has been silenced in yet another brutal attack. This week unknown gunmen shot anti-corruption activist Albert Pchelintsev in the mouth with rubber bullets, in front of his apartment in the Moscow suburb of Khimki. The 38 year old was seriously wounded in...

Meet Marina Kalashnikova: a Moscow-based historian, researcher and journalist. Last August she criticized foreign “experts� for suggesting that a conflict with Moscow will not happen because Russia’s elite is too closely associated with the West. According to Kalashnikova, “The West does not care to wake from the dream of its wishful thinking, even when Moscow turns to … reanimating Stalin’s cult of personality together with the ideology of the Cheka [i.e., the secret police].� I’m afraid that Marina Kalashnikova is right. The West has been dreaming, and the West will suffer the consequences. If the Kremlin likes Stalin, then there...

July 6, 2009 Barack Obama makes basic error over balance of power in Kremlin Tony Halpin. President Obama has made his first mistake in Russia even before he arrives in Moscow today. His attempt to cast Vladimir Putin as yesterday’s man and to drive a wedge between the Prime Minister and President Medvedev demonstrates a misreading of relations in the Kremlin. Mr Medvedev is in office but not in power and whether he becomes President in more than name depends on Mr Putin’s support and intentions. Mr Medvedev may represent a more accommodating face of Russia but this is only...

Moscow , June 19 Russia will shoot down the North Korean missile if it strays towards its air space, a top military official today said, even as the country's military is monitoring in "real time" the preparations of its renegade neighbour. "If the North Korean missile would veer towards us, we will shoot it down. All our air and missile defence means are ready for this," Deputy Chief of General Staff Lt-Gen Aleksandr Burutin was quoted as saying by' Vesti FM's radio.

When United Auto Workers (UAW) union chief Ron Gettelfinger announced the end of GM's two-day strike in the early hours of September 26, 2007, it was the beginning of the end for the world's largest car manufacturer. The agreement to end the first US nationwide automotive strike in 31 years, which saw General Motors' then 73,000-strong US workforce walk out, was the final death knell in the company's 101-year history. The strike had occurred not over the future of those employees however, but rather of the fate of GM's 460,000 retired workers whose continuing eligibility for healthcare benefits had placed...

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...

Something unusual happened a few days ago to Vladmir Putin's party of power, known as "United Russia," which dominates Russia's national parliament and faces no credible opposition there. It lost an election, lost it in a landslide. The poll in question took place in the world's most northerly major city, Murmansk. The race was for mayor, and United Russia's candidate was blown off the electoral map by an upstart independent candidate named Sergei Subbotin. The margin of victory in the runoff election was nearly two to one. The casual onlooker might not have thought Putin's Kremlin would get too worked...

As a former Eastern European who spent 22 years of his life behind the Iron Curtain, my own perception of people's vigilance in the western countries for the security of their freedom, and most of all to safeguard their Catholic Apostolic Faith from the influence of, and possible destruction done by, the atheistic communism, is somewhat blinded by a clearly erroneous belief that people who lived in freedom all their lives want to continue living in it, and will not allow anything so criminal, hideous and ultimately satanic as communism is, to enter their society and take it over, and...

Minutes after protesters unfurled anti-Kremlin banners and chanted "Down with KGB power" and "Russia without Putin," a dozen young men jumped out of cars and started to beat them with fists and metal rods. The thugs first attacked elderly marchers who were walking slowly at the back of the crowd of about 50. When Alexey Kazakov, a protest leader, tried to intervene, some of the assailants surrounded him and started punching and kicking.

President Obama will convene the most ambitious arms reduction talks with Russia for a generation, aiming to slash each country’s stockpile of nuclear weapons by 80 per cent. The radical treaty would cut the number of nuclear warheads to 1,000 each, The Times has learnt. Key to the initiative is a review of the Bush Administration’s plan for a US missile defence shield in Eastern Europe, a project fiercely opposed by Moscow. Mr Obama is to establish a non-proliferation office at the White House to oversee the talks, expected to be headed by Gary Samore, a non-proliferation negotiator in the...

A Brewing Storm in Russia Can Russian liberalism survive the Putin/Medvedev regime? A year ago, Russia was in an odd place between oppressive stagnation and a glimmer of possible change. The ruling party, United Russia, had just consolidated its hold on the parliament in a rigged election; the presidential transition was revealed as the farcical anointment of a handpicked successor to Vladimir Putin—the docile Dmitry Medvedev, who quickly promised to make Putin prime minister. Yet some Russian liberals, and sympathetic Westerners, harbored at least modest hopes that Medvedev might prove more liberal than Putin and that the division of power...

<p>Russia faces a particularly nasty version of the global recession (at a minimum), and perhaps an economic "perfect storm." Regardless of how bad its economy gets, two broad political trends, each carrying profound implications for Russia's foreign policy and U.S.-Russian relations, are bound to emerge.</p>

MOSCOW – A new law drafted by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's Cabinet would allow authorities to label any government critic a traitor — a move that leading rights activists condemned Wednesday as a chilling reminder of the times under Soviet dictator Josef Stalin. The draft extends the definition of treason from breaching Russia's external security to damaging the nation's constitutional order, sovereignty or territorial integrity. ...

Kremlin denies minister's acknowledgment of recession in Russia (RTTNews) - The Kremlin issued a clarification correcting Russia's chief macroeconomic planner's acknowledgment Friday that a recession has begun in the country. Deputy Economic Development Minister Andrei Klepach told reporters that a recession has started. "We will face two quarters of economic decline, and I'm afraid, it won't be over in two quarters," he added. A recession is defined as at least two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth in a country.

As fears grow regarding Russia’s growing militancy and seemingly anti-western posturing after Russian President Dmitry Medvedev announced that he will deploy a short-range missile system on the doorstep of the EU in the enclave of kalingrad a prominent Jewish Refusenik has stated that the US will be at war with Russia within five years.

The fire safety system on a new Russian nuclear-powered submarine malfunctioned on a test run in the Sea of Japan, spewing chemicals that killed at least 20 people and injured 21 others, officials said Sunday. It was Russia's worst naval accident since torpedo explosions sank another nuclear-powered submarine, the Kursk, in the Barents Sea in 2000, killing all 118 seamen aboard. The victims died of poisoning from Freon gas that was released Saturday when the fire-extinguishing system accidentally turned on, said Sergei Markin, an official with Russia's top investigative agency.

BOGOTA (AFP) – A flood of Russian weapons recently sold to Latin American governments could unleash an arms race in the already volatile region, Washington's ambassador to Colombia warned in remarks published in local media here Sunday. "It's important to proceed carefully in introducing new weapons and weapons systems in the hemisphere," said US ambassador William Brownfield, speaking to the El Tiempo newspape

Stung by international criticism of its presidential and congressional elections, Russia is striking back by sending a team of observers to monitor the U. S. presidential poll on Nov. 4. Andrei Nesterenko, a spokesman with Russia's Foreign Ministry, says Moscow will have eight election observers attached to a monitoring mission conducted by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). The OSCE, which has infuriated the Kremlin in the past by criticizing elections in Russia and other post-communist states, is sending 62 election observers to the United States. The mission, headed by Audrey Glover, the top British diplomat, includes...

MOSCOW (AP) — The financial crisis has irreparably damaged the image of the U.S. as the leader of the free world and the global economy, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Thursday. Putin's remarks during a Communist Party meeting were the latest Russian attack singling out the U.S. as the chief culprit in the global financial turmoil. "Trust in the United States as the leader of the free world and the free economy, and confidence in Wall Street as the center of that trust, has been damaged, I believe, forever," Putin said. "There will be no return to the previous...

The Russian's alleged role was disclosed in a document, obtained by the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which describes complex and highly sensitive experiments supposedly conducted inside Iran.

Russian markets closed until Friday Russia ordered its main stock exchanges closed for another day Thursday as President Dmitry Medvedev called for pouring 500 billion rubles ($20 billion) into financial markets in an effort to stabilize them. The government is struggling to stem a dizzying plummet in share prices and restore confidence in the economy _ a plummet that has revived memories of the 1998 financial collapse. "We have sufficient reserves and a strong economy, which guarantees the avoidance of any shocks," Medvedev said in televised comments.

Getting to the bottom of the shadowy depths of Kremlin decision-making is tricky. Machiavellian power struggles, dark paranoia of security chiefs and long fingers of corruption can turn seemingly rational and transparent explanations inside out. But even public signals are instructive, and in the wake of the Georgia crisis, Russia's leadership is taking stock and has several messages for the West. The first key question about Russia is - who is really in charge? The standard answer is President Medvedev as Commander in Chief. He, and only he, ordered Russian troops across the border to hit back when Georgia attacked...

Link:Hitpiece on Palin Part 2. Palin=Goldwater 1964

Virtually everyone believes Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili foolishly provoked a Russian invasion on August 7, 2008, when he sent troops into the breakaway district of South Ossetia. “The warfare began Aug. 7 when Georgia launched a barrage targeting South Ossetia,” the Associated Press reported over the weekend in typical fashion. Virtually everyone is wrong. Georgia didn't start it on August 7, nor on any other date. The South Ossetian militia started it on August 6 when its fighters fired on Georgian peacekeepers and Georgian villages with weapons banned by the agreement hammered out between the two sides in 1994. At...

Poland, Ukraine and the Baltics Nervous neighbours Aug 21st 2008 | MOSCOW AND WARSAW NOBODY has watched the war in Georgia more anxiously than Russia’s western neighbours. Recently the Russians have been bellicose towards Ukraine, the three Baltic states and Poland. It was no surprise when leaders from the other four flew with the Polish president to Tbilisi to express solidarity with Georgia’s Mikheil Saakashvili. It was also no coincidence that Poland signed a deal with the Americans to host missile-defence interceptors. The deal marks the end of a game of hardball, with the Poles turning down many American offers...

Pictures of triumphant Russian soldiers sitting on armoured personnel carriers as they were driven through towns in Georgia will be among the lasting images of the seven-day war. But the victory did not tell the whole story, analysts said yesterday. The ageing vehicles were so lightly armed and so uncomfortable and hot to sit in that the Russian soldiers felt safer perched on top. “At least they could then react quickly if there was an attack,” Colonel Christopher Langton, an expert on Russian armed forces at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, said. For an invading force from what...