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Euronazis: Who Supports Putin in the West? 26.04.2014 | 22:33S.Parkhomenko, T.Stezhar Full list of foreign observers to a Crimean pseudo-referendum has become public. Names of “friends of Putin” (who doesn’t stop claiming that there has been a “fascist coup” in Ukraine) will make you consider very carefully, who should be called a fascist. Names of “friends of Putin” will make you consider very carefully who should be called a fascist. / REUTERS Back in early March of 2014, two weeks ahead of the pseudo-referendum and annexation of Ukrainian Crimea, in one of the Russian newspapers, a prominent historian and religious...

VILNIUS, Lithuania -- Latvia is joining Lithuania in banning Russian state television broadcasts because it found that several programs about the Ukraine crisis were tendentious and not in the Baltic nation's security interests. Latvian media council spokeswoman Sanita Blomniece told the AP on Monday that a three-month suspension of RTR Rossiya broadcasts will begin April 8.

Eighteen countries, including five of the world’s leading arms exporters, ratified a landmark treaty regulating the multibillion-dollar global arms trade on Wednesday, giving a significant boost to the campaign for the treaty’s entry into force. […] Five of the world’s top 10 arms exporters—Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain—turned in their ratification documents at the ceremony. The other 13 were Bulgaria, Croatia, Denmark, El Salvador, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Latvia, Malta, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. Among the hold-outs is the United States, the world’s largest weapons exporter. The Obama administration has signed the treaty but there is strong resistance in...

Four years ago, Poland was set to become the staging ground for advanced U.S. ballistic missile interceptors. But after the plan collapsed—and seeing defense budgets in the rest of Europe on the decline—Polish political leaders decided they needed their military to fend for itself. And now with an aggressive Russia bearing down on Ukraine, Warsaw is getting even more worried—and prepared.

Is the Republican Party's Middle East policy up for bid? For four days ending Sunday, a quartet of presidential hopefuls trooped to Las Vegas to attend the annual gathering of the Republican Jewish Coalition. Impresario: Sheldon Adelson, the Vegas-Macau casino mogul whose fortune is estimated at $39 billion -- 8th richest man on the planet -- and who dumped $92 million into the election of 2012. Adelson kept Newt Gingrich alive with a $15 million infusion of ad money, gutting Romney, and then sank $30 million into Mitt's campaign. This time Sheldon wants to buy himself a winner. Ari Fleischer,...

A new classified intelligence assessment concludes it is more likely than previously thought that Russian forces will enter eastern Ukraine, CNN has learned. Two administration officials described the assessment but declined to be identified due to the sensitive nature of the information. The officials emphasized that nothing is certain, but there have been several worrying signs in the past three to four days. “This has shifted our thinking that the likelihood of a further Russian incursion is more probable than it was previously thought to be,” one official said. The buildup is seen to be reminiscent of Moscow’s military moves...

Inflammatory language: Nina Shtanski, foreign minister of Transdniestria The glamorous foreign minister of a breakaway region of Moldova is calling on Vladimir Putin to make her country his next conquest in eastern Europe. Few may have heard of Transdniestria, the unofficial and fictitious-sounding statelet whose head of international relations is 36-year-old Nina Shtanski. However, senior Western figures are alarmed that following the annexation of Crimea it is step two in a Kremlin masterplan to redraw the frontiers of Europe. This top diplomat in staunchly pro-Russian Transdniestria, who has a penchant for revealing black dresses, is gushing in her praise of...

It seems the words of Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk warning that “the world stands on the brink of conflict, the consequences of which are not foreseen... Not everyone in Europe is aware of this situation," are a little more real than some (US equity buyers) might suspect. As The Week's Crispin Black reports, at least 7,000 Polish workers in Europe have received call-up papers as army reservists in the last few weeks. Polish authorities dismiss it as "routine" but the men note this has never happened before. As The Week's Crispin Black goes on to note, At least 7,000...

Russia is winning the Ukraine crisis. While Moscow may have suffered some economic sanctions, the world saw a disobedient Russian neighbor being forcibly brought to heel. The land grab was no doubt designed to encourage the others—Estonia, Latvia, Hungary, Georgia – all those unfortunates who live nearby. And it will. There are other winners, even on the side of the somewhat hapless angels. Like Germany, which is currently less an angel, and Poland, which is currently more. Before taking a mildly more aggressive position on sanctions Friday, Germany had been the least enthusiastic major European power about aggressively confronting Russia....

Watchdogs from several European countries have noticed no indication of a massive build-up of Russian military that would threaten the security of neighboring states, Russian Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov said Sunday. According to Mr. Antonov, as many as seven inspection groups paid visits to Russian border territories over the past month. “Our facilities and deployment areas along the Russian-Ukrainian border were twice checked by the Ukrainian military,” he noted.Monitors from the US, Canada, Germany, France, Switzerland, Poland, Latvia, Estonia and Finland scrutinized Russia’s military camps stationed on its borders with neighboring nations. “It must have been a simple...

Citing the right to intervene wherever Russians are deemed to be in trouble, Vladimir Putin has set a possible precedent for future Russian intervention across Eastern Europe and Central Asia.This map, from Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty, highlights the regions in neighboring countries that have the highest concentrations of Russian citizens, ethnic Russians, and native Russian speakers. www.rferl.org Kazakhstan and Belarus, both countries with large Russian populations, are already within Russia's sphere of influence. Both countries are members of the Eurasian Economic Community and have strong ties to Russia.Still, according to Wikistrat senior analyst Mark Galeotti, Russia could take advantage...

WASHINGTON, D.C. - With a few strokes of his pen, Vladimir Putin has in recent days both created the Republic of Crimea and annexed that new entity into the Russian Federation, thereby violating the territorial integrity of Ukraine. To hear Putin tell it in his address to the Duma, this action is not only perfectly legal, it also rights a historical wrong in which Russia was “robbed” of its rightful claim to the Crimean peninsula in 1954. President Obama has disputed the legality of these actions, observing that “President Putin seems to have a different set of lawyers making a...

Last week, I warned that the next step for Russia after seizing the Crimea over the status of ethnic Russians would take place in the Baltic states of Estonia and Latvia. All it would take, I argued, would be for Moscow to foment unrest in those ethnic-Russian communities, antagonize the governments in both states, and then insist that Russia had to intervene to protect them. More than a quarter of the population in both countries consist of ethnic Russians, while in Ukraine it only came to 18%.Now it looks like Moscow will skip over the unrest pretext and demand the...

Vacationing in Florida, President Barack Obama continued his telephone consultations with world leaders on Ukraine, speaking one on one Saturday with the leaders of three European powers and collectively with the heads of the three Baltic states, White House said. Obama held individual conversations with British Prime Minister David Cameron, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi and French President Francois Hollande. He also held a conference call with Latvian President Andris Berzins, Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite and Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves. On the conference call, Obama reaffirmed the United States' "unwavering commitment" to its collective defense commitments under NATO and...

RIGA, Latvia—Russian Ambassador Aleksandr Veshnyakov created a new wave of concern in Latvia with recent remarks saying it may soon become easier for ethnic Russians in Latvia to obtain Russian citizenship. Mr. Veshnyakov told Latvian Radio 4, a Russian-language public broadcasting channel, that proposed legislation in Russia would allow granting Russian citizenship to ethnic Russians in Latvia to "save the Latvian noncitizens out of poverty by giving them citizenship and a pension without having to stay in Russia." Russians constitute 27.6% of Latvia's population of 2 million, the largest ethnic group among the minorities living in Latvia.

Welfare spending in Britain has increased faster than almost any other country in Europe since 2000, new figures show. The cost of unemployment benefits, housing support and pensions as share of the economy has increased by more than a quarter over the past thirteen years – growing at a faster rate than in most of the developed world. Spending has gone up from 18.6 per cent of GDP to 23.7 per cent of GDP – an increase of 27 per cent, according to figures from the OECD, the club of most developed nations. By contrast, the average increase in welfare...

Latvia observed three minutes of silence on Monday morning to honor the victims of last week’s Maxima supermarket collapse in the capital Riga, the deadliest accident to befall the Baltic state since it regained its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. Over the weekend, the death toll rose to 54 and the third and final portion of the building’s roof caved in. Several remain unaccounted for—rescue teams asked family members to call their missing relatives’ cell phones in an attempt to locate them in the rubble. But on Sunday workers began the process of razing the remaining structure, signaling...

AFTER 40 years of hesitation and seven hard years of reform and lobbying, Turkey is basking today in the most qualified of invitations to begin the process of joining Europe - a continent whose eastern half the Ottoman empire controlled for centuries. A European Commission report released yesterday, which paves the way for a deciding vote by the 25-member European Union at its December summit, was heavily qualified, and Turkish leaders were muted in their expressions of delight at their initial success. Presenting the decision to the European parliament last night, commission president Romano Prodi said it was a "qualified...

European banks would leave London “in very short order” if Britain voted to exit the European Union, a senior Goldman Sachs executive said in a newspaper interview published on Monday. Michael Sherwood, a vice-chairman at the bank, said the prospect of a British withdrawal was a real worry given Prime Minister David Cameron’s plans to hold a referendum on the subject if re-elected in 2015. … Goldman’s Sherwood predicted European banks would quickly relocate if Britain did sever its EU ties. “Forget what we would do. Every European firm would be gone in very short order,” he was quoted as...

Latvia’s government has approved the extradition of a man accused by the United States of helping create a virus that affected over a million computers worldwide and allowed hackers to steal millions of dollars from bank accounts. Deniss Calovskis was accused by U.S. authorities in January of participating in a conspiracy to infect computers with a virtually undetectable virus that intercepted and sent out sensitive data such as bank account numbers and passwords to unauthorized users. …