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Vladimir Putin has approved a 31-page "humanitarian policy" which says Russia should "protect, safeguard and advance the traditions and ideals of the Russian World". The foreign policy concept of a "Russian World" is a notion that hardliners have used to justify intervening abroad to support Russian speakers, such as in parts of Ukraine. It means that the idea is now enshrined in official policy, though it was presented as a soft power strategy. The new policy stated that Moscow should further deepen its ties with the self-styled Donetsk People's Republic and the Luhansk People's Republic - two breakaway entities in...

Two little-noticed news stories capture the true picture of the state of the global culture war today. The first is from the American deep red state of Idaho, where The Satanic Temple is holding a "Pride" event that features a "Drag Dance Party" and "Unbaptisms" – a ritual in which people who were once baptized as Christians publicly renounce Jesus Christ.The other is from Russia, where the national Duma (legislature) has just introduced legislation to expand its 2013 ban on LGBT propaganda to children to include ALL LGBT propaganda throughout the society.To my knowledge, I am the only culture war...

At that time, then Senator Barak Obama, already a presidential candidate, inserted himself into the crisis by calling for UN condemnations and urging Georgia to “refrain from using force” in Abkhazia and Ossetia, where the Russians had already occupied nearly a third of Georgia’s territory. So much for the interference of political candidates in foreign affairs, undermining US policy!

T wo months after announcing plans to hold a referendum on the incorporation of Georgia's breakaway region of South Ossetia into the Russian Federation, the de facto president of the largely unrecognized Republic of South Ossetia, has set a tentative timeframe for doing so. He told journalists on December 28 that the referendum should take place "long before" the presidential ballot due in April 2017. Tibilov simultaneously proposed renaming the region the Republic of South Ossetia -- Alania, by analogy with the contiguous Republic of North Ossetia -- Alania, which is a Russian Federation subject. The Ossetians, an Indo-European people,...

U.S. security officials are investigating a recent intelligence report that a group of 25 Chechen terrorists illegally entered the United States from Mexico in July. The Chechen group is suspected of having links to Islamist terrorists seeking to separate the southern enclave of Chechnya from Russia, according to officials familiar with intelligence reports. Members of the group, said to be wearing backpacks, secretly traveled to northern Mexico and crossed into a mountainous part of Arizona that is difficult for U.S. border security agents to monitor, said officials speaking on the condition of anonymity. The intelligence report was supplied to the...

Russian security forces dealt a double blow to the al Qaeda-linked Caucasus Emirate during operations in the southern Russian republics late last week. Emir Magas, the military commander of the Caucasus Emirate, was captured and Yasir Amarat, a wanted terrorist commander from Jordan, was killed during raids by Russia's Federal Security Service, or FSB. On June 9, the FSB captured Emir Magas, whose real name is Ali Taziyev, during a raid in the village of Malgobek in the Republic of Ingushetia. Kavkaz Center, a jihadist website that supports the Caucasus Emirate, confirmed Magas' capture and noted his importance. Magas has...

From RT on YouTube: A new EU report may finally answers the question as to which country started the Russo-Georgian war in August 2008. The European Union conducted a nine-month investigation into the issue and has concluded that it was Georgia, more specifically Saakashvili, who triggered the conflict. So why was the U.S. Government, along with the mainstream media, so intent on blaming Russia for the war? And what will these new revelations mean for Georgian relations with the United States and Europe? RT's Dina Gusovsky talks to Tsotne Bakuria, former member of the Georgian Parliament.

A year ago, Moscow recognised South Ossetia as an independent state, but the population of the tiny Caucasus country has still not figured out what that is supposed to mean. South Ossetians celebrated through the night on August 26 last year when they heard Russia had recognised their independence, which they proclaimed after winning a war against Georgian troops in 1991-2. A year later, they say they feel safer knowing Russia will protect them, but locals say the government was not ready for an independent status and may not even want it. “Perhaps it is about adapting to the new...

MOSCOW. Aug 21 (Interfax) - South Ossetia is equipping its own borders strictly in accordance with international agreements, said its president Eduard Kokoity. "We are acting strictly in accordance with the regulations, and we are equipping our border in accordance with the arrangements and agreements signed between Russia and South Ossetia," Kokoity told journalists in Moscow on Friday. All possible measures are being taken "to protect our republic and people and to prevent a repeat of the August 2008 tragedy," he said. Kokoity has denied Georgia's accusations that South Ossetia is moving its borders deeper into Georgia. "I would not...

MOSCOW, August 21 (RIA Novosti) - South Ossetia will seek to join the union being formed by Russia and Belarus, the former Georgian republic's leader said on Friday. "We will seek this with great pleasure," Eduard Kokoity told reporters, suggesting that Belarus would recognize South Ossetia as an independent state soon. The only country so far to have followed Russia's example in recognizing South Ossetia and the other self-proclaimed Georgian republic, Abkhazia, is Nicaragua. Belarus has sent mixed signals on whether it will recognize the two regions. Last month, Belarus's foreign ministry advised Belarusian nationals to abide by Georgian laws...

LONDON, July 20 (Itar-Tass) - Georgia’s hopes of joining NATO are “almost dead,” which is tragic, Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili said in an interview with the U.S. Wall Street Journal Europe printed in London. “It is tragic,” Saakashvili stressed. “It means the Russians fought for the right reasons,” he added. The newspaper noted that the Georgian leader referred to the situation around South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s visit to the Georgian breakaway region of South Ossetia has not contributed to promoting stability following last year’s brief war, the US State Department said Tuesday. Medvedev made the controversial trip to South Ossetia Monday and offered financial and military support in defiance of the West and the Georgian government. “Certainly I don’t think that it was any kind of step forward in terms of establishing stability in the region,” US State Department spokesman Ian Kelly told reporters. The situation in Georgia over the separatist regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia has been a source of...

Russia defied international criticism on Sunday by deploying troops along Georgia's internal border with the two breakaway provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Hundreds of troops mounted their first patrols along the contested frontier three days after Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian President, announced that Moscow was assuming formal control over the boundaries of the two rebel provinces. The President's declaration prompted accusations from Georgia that Russia was attempting the stealth annexation of the two regions, which were at the heart of last year's war in the Caucasus. Both the European Union and the United States strongly condemned Russia's actions, saying...

BEFORE A TEARY AUDIENCE of war-fatigued residents and young Russian soldiers standing on tanks, Valery Gergiev conducted a concert last August in Tskhinvali, the devastated capital of South Ossetia in Georgia. The burned-out hulks of bombarded buildings testified to the fury of the fighting that took place when Georgia unsuccessfully tried to seize control of its breakaway region. Russian troops had occupied the town barely a week earlier, in support of the secessionist Ossetians. Speaking in English as well as in Russian on a live television broadcast, Gergiev told the crowd, “I am Ossetian myself,” and explained that he had...

TBILISI (Reuters) – Georgia said on Saturday hundreds of Russian soldiers had moved into a disputed Georgian village near breakaway South Ossetia and had pushed out Georgian police, fuelling fears of confrontation. A regional police official and an interior ministry spokesman said between 500 and 600 Russian soldiers were in the village of Perevi, close to the de facto border with the region.

An explosion hit a minibus unloading passengers in the capital of Russia's North Ossetia province on Thursday, killing 11 people, federal investigators said. A duty officer at the Emergency Situations Ministry in North Ossetia, who was not authorized to give his name, said the blast was caused by a roadside bomb. Passengers were getting off the bus near the entrance to the central market in Vladikavkaz when the blast went off, Russia's Investigative Committee said on its Web site. NTV television showed footage of the minibus with windows shattered and an axle destroyed, with shards of glass and what looked...

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia blamed Georgia on Saturday for an explosion that killed Russian soldiers in Georgia's breakaway region of South Ossetia. A senior Russian peacekeeping officer was among seven soldiers killed on Friday when a car blew up at the Russian peacekeepers' base in Tskhinvali, the South Ossetian capital, the Russian military said. Russia's Interfax news agency quoted South Ossetia's Interior Ministry as saying a total of 11 people had been killed, including civilians. The RIA agency quoted a military spokesman as saying Colonel Ivan Petrik, the Russian peacekeepers' chief of staff, had been killed in his office.

Moscow - A Russian military chief was one of those killed in Friday's car-bomb blast in the Georgian breakaway region of South Ossetia, Interfax news agency reported Saturday, citing a military spokesman in Moscow. Colonel Ivan Petrik, who was the commander of the Russian troops in South Ossetia, was fatally wounded in his office when the 20- kilogram bomb went off next to a Russian army base. The spokesman was confirming a report in Saturday's Kommersant newspaper. Seven Russian soldiers were killed in the attack and seven injured.

MOSCOW — A car bomb in the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali killed seven Russian peacekeepers and two others on Friday, raising tensions in the separatist enclave days before a scheduled pullback of Russian troops from Georgian territory. President Eduard Kokoity of South Ossetia said he had “no doubt” that Georgian special forces were behind the explosion. The acts, he said, “undermine international efforts to stabilize the situation and torpedo the Medvedev-Sarkozy plan.” The blast comes six days before a Russian deadline to pull back from the so-called buffer zone outside South Ossetia, returning a large swath of land to...

A car bomb blast near Russia's peacekeeping headquarters in South Ossetia has left six military personnel killed and four others injured. The explosion took place on Friday near the command post of the Russian peacekeepers in Tskhinvali, the capital of the independence-leaning republic. The car, with some quantities of arms in it, was seized earlier in a nearby village, said South Ossetia's press department, AP reported.