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Ramzan Kadyrov, leader of the Russian Federation’s Muslim-majority Chechen Republic, is prepared to unleash up to 70,000 fighters on Ukraine to support his “commander-in-chief”, Vladimir Putin. State-backed Russian news outlet RT published video footage on Friday showing an enormous rally of, it reported, 12,000 “local volunteers” in the Chechen capital of Grozny, with Kadyrov telling the assembly that his advice to Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky was to “[call] our President, Supreme Commander Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, and [apologise] for not doing so sooner. Do it in order to save Ukraine. Ask for forgiveness and agree to all the conditions that Russia...

Russia Derangement Syndrome: Syria Edition by David Archibald 6 August 2018 The road to hell is paved with good intentions. So it has been with US involvement in Syria. To provide a context to that involvement, let’s start part way through the story with the self-immolation of a Tunisian vegetable vendor on December 17, 2011, driven to despair by harassment from petty officials. That spark set off the Arab Spring. A number of Arab regimes changed; some remained resilient. That wasn’t good enough for David Cameron and Nicholas Sarkozy, the then leaders of the UK and France respectively. Their armed...

The State Department on Thursday unequivocally warned that if Russia invades Ukraine the Nord Stream 2 pipeline will sit unused at the bottom of the ocean.The controversial pipeline has become the U.S. and NATO’s biggest bargaining chip in its attempts to preserve Kyiv’s sovereignty.But reporters questioned the diplomatic agency on whether Germany, which would profit from the functioning pipeline, is on the same page when it comes to countering a Russian incursion."We continue to have strong, clear communication with our German allies," Under Secretary for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland said. "If Russia invades Ukraine, one way or another, Nord Stream...

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday said the U.S. is partly to blame for the gas shortages Europe is currently facing. Putin, during an interview with CNBC at the annual Russian Energy Week, said that while European countries bear part of the blame for the gas shortages, the U.S.’s decrease in supplies has been “the cause of panic.” “You see the problem does not consist in us, it consists in the European side, because, first, we know that the wind farms did not work during summer because of the weather, everyone knows that. Moreover, the Europeans did not pump enough...

Vladimir Putin boasted yesterday that Russia had the power to launch an 'unpreventable strike' against its enemies in a show of strength following the confrontation with Britain in the Black Sea. The Russian president told a navy day parade in St Petersburg: 'We are capable of detecting any underwater, above-water, airborne enemy and, if required, carry out an unpreventable strike.' It comes as military officials announced tests of advanced new weapons – some of which come from an arsenal Mr Putin has described as 'invincible'. He added: 'The Russian navy today has everything it needs to guarantee the protection of...

UKRAINE is like "a tinderbox waiting to explode", a Tory MP has warned amid reports that more than 100,000 Russian troops are massed along the country's eastern border and in Ukraine in what he described as "increasingly destabilised situation". And Daniel Kawczynski has said Germany’s decision to press ahead with its controversial Nord Stream 2 pipeline deal amounts to “pouring petrol” on the region – while revealing he had written to Prime Minister Boris Johnson urging him to “take the lead”. Mr Kawczynski, the MP for Shrewsbury and Atcham, was speaking at a time of high tensions, with Ukraine’s defence...

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday said an Obama-era nuclear weapons pact would lapse unless the US took an interest in renewing it. The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) pact limits the number of deployed nuclear warheads, missiles and bombers and is due to expire in 2021 unless renewed. […] The treaty limits the US and Russia to a maximum of 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads and 700 deployed missiles and bombers, well below Cold War caps. It was signed in 2010 by former US President Barack Obama and then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. It is one of the key...

<p>3:05 p.m.</p> <p>The president of Poland is telling President Donald Trump that he'd like the U.S. to create a permanent American base in Poland that would be named Fort Trump.</p> <p>Trump says that he's considering the idea and that Poland has offered more than $2 billion to the U.S. to pay for such an effort.</p>

Russia President Vladimir Putin looks on, bemused, as the handle on the door of the armored SUV comes off in the hand of General Aleksandr Shevchenko, while th

The 28-nation US-led group agreed to start the entry process at a meeting of foreign ministers in Brussels this morning, Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said. The move will be seen as a warning to the Kremlin that its influence in the region is waning, despite a show of strength during last year's annexation of Crimea and the subsequernt bombing campaign in Syria. In retaliation, Russia has warned that Montenegro will be punished for the action.

In post-Soviet Russia, you don’t make memes. Memes make (or unmake?) you. That is, at least, the only conclusion we can draw from an announcement made this week by Russia’s three-year-old media agency/Internet censor Roskomnadzor, which made it illegal to publish any Internet meme that depicts a public figure in a way that has nothing to do with his “personality.” Sad Keanu? Nope. Sad Putin? Absolutely not. “These ways of using [celebrities’ images] violate the laws governing personal data and harm the honor, dignity and business of public figures,” reads the policy announcement from Roskomnadzor. To be clear, this isn’t a new law passed by parliament...

United Nations: The UN Security Council will hold an emergency meeting today morning on Ukraine. Britain's UN Mission said yesterday it requested the meeting and later tweeted that it is set for 10 am today. The request follows Wednesday's downing of a Ukrainian air force fighter and yesterday's downing of a Malaysia Airlines passenger plane carrying 295 people over eastern Ukraine. Britain has proposed a Security Council press statement calling for "a full, thorough and independent international investigation into the incident." The statement, obtained by The Associated Press, was circulated to all 15 council members, who must approve it before...

A senior Russian official held a meeting with Iran’s ambassador to Moscow on Wednesday to solicit advice on ways the Russian government can skirt U.S. sanctions that were leveled in wake of its invasion of Ukraine. Russian Deputy Finance Minister Alexei Moiseev summoned Iranian Ambassador to Russia Mehdi Sanayee for a meeting in Moscow to learn strategies for avoiding the brunt of U.S. sanctions.

Russia's Vladimir Putin has committed a grave strategic blunder by tearing up the international rule book without a green light from China. Any hope of recruiting Beijing as an ally to blunt Western sanctions looks doomed, and with it the Kremlin's chances of a painless victory, or any worthwhile victory at all. Mr Putin was careful to thank China's Politburo for its alleged support in his victory speech on Crimea. Foreign minister Sergei Lavrov has been claiming with his usual elasticity that “Russia and China have coinciding views on the situation in Ukraine.” This is of course a desperate lie....

At the end of WWII the Russian army raped and pillaged as they pushed the Nazis back into Germany [that barbarian nature that they have - yet are so sensitive about]. One thing that would cause them to pause [halt their knee-jerk barbarism] was being called nekulturny. No matter how uncouth and barbaric a Russian is by nature, they are very sensitive to being called on it. Someone with authority [which leaves out Obama and Kerry] needs to paint Putin as being nekulturny - UNCULTURED! Kerry did exactly this when he said Putin was acting so 19th Century, not like...

<p>Russian President Vladimir Putin has apparently rejected a U.S. proposal to resolve the dispute over Ukraine that had been put forward by Secretary of State John Kerry over the past week, according to senior Russian and U.S. officials.</p> <p>Mr. Putin's decision led Mr. Kerry to put off a Russian invitation to meet Mr. Putin in Russia, as early as the beginning of this week in Sochi, to discuss the Ukraine crisis, according to these officials.</p>

From Putin's op-ed on Syria, in the NY Times, September 11, 2013 " We need to use the United Nations Security Council and believe that preserving law and order in today’s complex and turbulent world is one of the few ways to keep international relations from sliding into chaos. The law is still the law, and we must follow it whether we like it or not. Under current international law, force is permitted only in self-defense or by the decision of the Security Council. Anything else is unacceptable under the United Nations Charter and would constitute an act of aggression."

It appears we have a spectrum of opinion on FR regarding the upheaval in Ukraine. On the one end of the spectrum there is passionate support, with a firm belief that the uprisings are purely indigenous Ukrainian groups. There is the belief that the Ukrainian people themselves have risen up against a corrupt and tryannical regime that is a puppet of Moscow. While some at the extreme end of this opinion say the protests are not really about the EU, it appears that most now concede that it is, and say that a majority of the Ukrainian people want to...

Television pictures of revolutions can make them seem like a spectator sport. Having Vitali Klitschko, the world heavyweight boxing champion, playing a starring role in the events in Kiev reinforces that impression. But the implosion of the Ukrainian state in the last 48 hours is a political earthquake. Chaos in Kiev could set off a tsunami that will toss Western Europe from its moorings too. It is a mistake to think we are watching from a safe distance. Maybe Ukraine is as foreign to the British people today as it was when an obscure crisis on its southern coast in...

Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev said Sunday that the crisis in Ukraine stems from the government’s failure to act democratically. […] “Ultimately this is the result of the failure of the government to act democratically” and to engage in dialogue and fight corruption, Gorbachev said during an address to a forum on government communications in the city of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates. He added that the root cause of the unrest in Ukraine was an “interruption of perestroika,” referring to his reform policies, and of the democratic process there. …