Free Republic

It's necessary now to put both the word "former" and the word "president" in quotation marks when referring to Vladimir Putin. He stands accused of rigging his elections (both by purging the ballot form and stuffing the ballot box) and therefore can't be considered a properly chosen "president," and rather than leaving government after his term as "president" ended he chose to assume the position of prime minister, vastly expanding the powers of that office. Thus, he's still ruling Russia, and by no means as a freely chosen president but rather as a conspiratorial dictator. The New York Times reported...

Dmitry Medvedev may be Russia's president but Vladimir Putin has kept his place in the Kremlin. When Putin came to his old office in the Kremlin on Monday to propose the names of ministers for his government, the former president made for his customary seat on the left of the desk. But he paused before sitting down and told President Medvedev: "Now this is your place," Russia's Kommersant daily reported. "Oh, what's the difference?" Medvedev answered and immediately sat on the right of the desk, where Putin's guests traditionally perched for the eight years of his presidency.

You do not really know what arrogance is until you have seen tanks come snarling down your street. The sight does something to the heart and the mind that nothing else has the power to do. I know this because tanks did come down my Moscow street with evil intent one bright August morning in 1991, the spearhead of a KGB putsch that nobody then knew would fail. We - my Russian neighbours and I - stood unspeaking in helpless knots at the side of the road as the monsters, barrels slanting romantically in the sun, tore up the road...

KIEV: A gloomy Vladimir Putin wears a Czarist crown, clutching a bag full of dollars and a miniature television tower. Filipp Pishchik says this and similar cartoons, depicting the former president as a corrupt leader who stifles free speech, got him in trouble with authorities and forced him to leave Moscow last year for neighboring Ukraine. "Ukraine is just great," said Pishchik, 37, a designer and architect. "Here there is hope." Since the 2004 Orange Revolution ushered in a vigorous, sometimes chaotic democracy, Ukraine has become an island of freedom and tolerance in an ex-Soviet bloc still dominated by authoritarian...

"Nuclear missiles and tanks paraded Friday across Red Square for the first time since the Soviet era but new President Dmitry Medvedev warned other nations against "irresponsible ambitions" that he said could start wars. Marching bands and 8,000 troops goose-stepped across the square, followed by a huge display of heavy weapons including Topol-M ballistic missiles and T-90 tanks, and a fly-by of warplanes. Reviewing his first parade as commander in chief, Medvedev warned against "irresponsible ambitions" that he said could spark war across entire continents. In an apparent attack on US foreign policy and Western backing for Kosovo's independence, Medvedev...

SHORTLY AFTER being sworn in as Russian president yesterday, Dmitry Medvedev declared that "my most important task is to further develop civil and economic freedoms." Above all, said the 42-year-old former law professor, "we must achieve true respect for the law and end the legal nihilism that is seriously hindering modern development." That was a remarkable statement under the circumstances. Mr. Medvedev, after all, owes his position to the "legal nihilism" of outgoing president Vladimir Putin, who grossly abused both the letter and the spirit of Russia's nominally democratic constitution to install a handpicked successor. Mr. Putin, who takes over...

MOSCOW (AP) — When Boris Yeltsin left the Kremlin eight years ago, he gave Vladimir Putin the pen he had used to sign important documents and decrees, a gesture symbolizing the transfer of power to Russia's new president. When Putin left the Kremlin, he took the pen with him. Putin, who became prime minister Thursday, has signaled that he intends to remain Russia's principal leader, at least in the short term — and possibly much longer. He is keeping the trappings of his presidency and many of its powers as well. It was not always meant to be this way....

Mikhail Gorbachev has accused the United States of mounting an imperialist conspiracy against Russia that could push the world into a new Cold War. With Dmitry Medvedev due to be inaugurated today as Russian president, the Soviet Union's last leader said that the White House's claims of peaceful intentions towards its former superpower rival could no longer be trusted. Delivering one of his most scathing attacks on the US, Mr Gorbachev told The Daily Telegraph that a US military build-up was under way to contain a resurgent Russia. From Nato's expansion plans in the former Soviet Union to Washington's proposals...

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Russia's deployment of extra troops in the breakaway Georgian region of Abkhazia has brought the prospect of war "very close," a minister of ex-Soviet Georgia said on Tuesday. Separately, in comments certain to fan rising tension between Moscow and Tbilisi, the "foreign minister" of the breakaway Black Sea region was quoted as saying it was ready to hand over military control to Russia. "We literally have to avert war," Temur Iakobashvili, a Georgian State Minister, told reporters in Brussels. Asked how close to such a war the situation was, he replied: "Very close, because we know Russians...

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Russia's deployment of extra troops in the breakaway Georgian region of Abkhazia has brought the prospect of war "very close", a minister of ex-Soviet Georgia said on Tuesday. Separately, in comments certain to fan rising tension between Moscow and Tbilisi, the "foreign minister" of the breakaway Black Sea region was quoted as saying it was ready to hand over military control to Russia. "We literally have to avert war," Temur Iakobashvili, a Georgian State Minister, told reporters in Brussels. Asked how close to such a war the situation was, he replied: "Very close, because we know Russians...

For the first time in 17 years, Russia will celebrate the victory over Nazi Germany with a display of the country's big military hardware. Red Square will host a monumental procession of tanks and missiles on May 9, including the country's new Topol-M intercontinental ballistic missile and the S-300 missile-defense system that Russia now sells to Iran. More than 30 military airplanes and helicopters will roar overhead. "This is not saber-rattling," Vladimir Putin told the last cabinet meeting he will preside over as Russian president before stepping down in two days. "We are not threatening anybody and we are not...

Russia's display of heavy weapons in this year's Victory Day parade in Moscow is "not sabre-rattling", President Vladimir Putin insists. Tanks and intercontinental missiles are to be paraded for the first time since the collapse of the USSR in 1991. The outgoing Russian leader said that Friday's parade to mark the end of World War II would demonstrate Russia's growing defence capabilities. "We do not threaten anyone and do not intend to do so," he said. A dress rehearsal for the parade was conducted on Monday. Mr Putin is stepping down as president on 7 May to be replaced...

Ideology matters again. The big development of recent years is the rise not only of great powers but also of the great-power autocracies of Russia and China. True realism about the international scene begins with understanding how this unanticipated shift will shape our world. Many believe that when Chinese and Russian leaders stopped believing in communism, they stopped believing in anything. They had become pragmatists, pursuing their own and their nation's interests. But Chinese and Russian rulers, like past rulers of autocracies, do have a set of beliefs that guide their domestic and foreign policies. They believe in the virtues...

Garry Kasparov criticizes Western countries for providing the autocratic regime in Russia with much needed legitimacy and for ignoring violations of basic human rights in Russia ("Russia's Pre-Olympic Nightmare," op-ed, April 26). Mr. Kasparov ignores the truth that there is only so much that other countries can do to encourage Russia to be freer and less autocratic. It is the job of Mr. Kasparov and other leaders of the Russian opposition to invent and promote a social and economic model that combines freedom and governability. They need a model that combines Russian traditions deeply rooted in the country's autocratic history...

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia has endured years of criticism over its human rights record but now it is hitting back by setting up watchdogs in New York and Paris to challenge the West over its own rights record. Natalya Narochnitskaya, one of the leaders of the project, said the Institute of Democracy and Cooperation will offer a fresh perspective on human rights that is not hostage to the political agenda of Western governments. "American policy under the flag of democracy and human rights in actual fact is a Trotskyist permanent revolution which serves the aim of giving them (political) mastery,"...

With the fall of communism and the rise of globalisation in the 1990s, the West believed democracy had won. How wrong it was, says the neocon and foreign policy adviser to John McCain. He warns the forces of freedom are losing ground as the autocracies of Russia and China reassert themselves as world powers In recent years, as the great autocracies of Russia and China have risen and the radical Islamists have waged their struggle, the liberal world has been divided and distracted by issues both profound and petty. The great democracies have squabbled and jostled for the moral high...

On a recent visit to Italy, President Vladimir Putin was asked about a Russian newspaper report that he was divorcing his wife of many years to marry a 24-year-old rhythmic gymnast famous in Russia for her lithe beauty. Putin denied the report in his usual charming way, scolding the media "with their snotty noses and their erotic fantasies." Then the newspaper that published the rumor was shut down. Or, to be more precise, the newspaper that published the rumor, in a paroxysm of self-loathing and czar-love, shut itself down. And a few days later, just to make sure, the lower...

According to the AIVD, the Dutch secret service, the terrorist threat from radical Islamic quarters is increasing, both in the Netherlands and elsewhere in the world. In its annual report for 2007 the AIVD also confirms what other intelligence sources have said previously: al-Qaeda is gaining influence after being effectively out of action for years. Each year the secret service presents a central theme in its annual report. This year it's international cooperation and the exchange of information between intelligence services. The AIVD explains that such cooperation might be necessary but it isn't without its complications. The identities of intelligence...

A Moscow court on Monday convicted an American pastor of smuggling hunting ammunition into Russia and sentenced him to three years and two months in prison. Phillip Miles, pastor of Christ Community Church in Conway, S.C., part of an evangelical fellowship, has been in custody since his arrest Feb. 3, several days after arriving in Moscow. Miles has said he brought the .300-caliber cartridges for a friend who had recently bought a Winchester rifle -- a gun rarely found in Russia. He said he did not know bringing such ammunition into Russia was illegal. "I'm very disappointed. It's a strange...

It’s official, the Moscow newspaper reporting rumours that President Vladimir Putin had secretly divorced and was planning to marry 24-year-old rhythmic gymnast, Alina Kabaeva, has suddenly ceased publication....

Putin denies romance reports, Moscow paper shut By Dmitry Solovyov Fri Apr 18, 4:10 PM ET A Moscow newspaper that reported Vladimir Putin had divorced his wife and planned to marry an Olympic gymnast was closed by its publishers on Friday, just hours after the Russian president angrily denied the report. Moskovsky Korrespondent said last week Putin had secretly divorced his 50-year-old wife, Lyudmila, and would wed Alina Kabayeva, a 24-year-old Olympic gold medalist in rhythmic gymnastics, in the summer. The 55-year-old Kremlin leader reacted furiously when asked about the report at a news briefing in Sardinia with Italian prime...

It was the story with everything – sex, power, spies and the extraordinary claim that President Putin intended to marry a beautiful Olympic gymnast half his age. So alluring was the idea of romance between Mr Putin and Alina Kabaeva that publications all over Europe rushed to reprint a little-known Moscow newspaper’s report that the former KGB officer had divorced his wife Lyudmila secretly and would marry his lover on June 15. Yesterday, however, Moscow Korrespondent admitted that the story had “no factual basis” after Aleksandr Lebedev, the billionaire owner of the newspaper, challenged staff to back up the claims...

Vladimir Putin, the outgoing Russian president, on Wednesday accelerated Moscow’s creeping annexation of Georgian territories to sweeping annexation. This is a victory for hardliners who pressed Mr Putin to give the order before he moves from the Kremlin to the Russian White House as prime minister. It comes as Georgian proposals for peaceful settlements in the territories, Abkhazia and South Os­setia, languish. The west must shake off its torpor, condemn Mr Putin’s gambit and support the Georgian proposals. Ignoring Moscow’s Soviet-style land-grab would intensify strife in the south Caucasus. According to Mr Putin’s “instruction”, Russia will open “representations” in the...

"...The agreements and multi-billion contracts signed during the visit were fully consistent with the interests of both countries, he said.

The Russian tabloid "Moskovsky korrespondent" alleges that the outgoing president secretly divorced his wife, Lyudmilla, over two months ago and will wed Kabayeva on June 15, the day Russia celebrates the Holy Trinity this year. "His close entourage knows well that Putin, like all healthy men, is not indifferent to beautiful, sporty women," the tabloid wrote.The rumors have been the talk of Russia since their publication earlier this month. Putin's alleged affair with the attractive young gymnast, who has posed nearly nude for a number of magazines, certainly clashes with the churchgoing, family man image that he has carefully cultivated.The...

A Russian website alleged that Alina - seen here in one of her more provocative poses - was seen kissing Putin in a Moscow restaurant Alina Kabaeva, is one of a number of young and beautiful Russian dancers and athletes who, under Mr Putin's patronage, have lately become deputies in the Duma - Russia's lower parliament. Known as Putinskie Krasotki - 'Putin's Babes' - they were brought in with the cynical but successful aim of 'sexing up' his United Russia party. The bloc took more than 60 per cent of the vote in the December elections. One Russian spin-doctor boasted...

<p>Vladimir Putin on Tuesday graciously accepted his nomination as chairman of the United Russia (UR) party that dominates Russia's legislature, a stepping-stone to his expected confirmation as Prime Minister on May 8.</p> <p>And if there was something rather Soviet about the rituals of the congress of the dominant party in Russia's legislature, the new distribution of power between Putin and his successor, President Dimitri Medvedev, is not entirely unfamiliar.</p>

Report: Russia's Putin is divorced and plans to marry ex-gymnast Posted : Tue, 15 Apr 2008 17:42:02 GMT Author : DPA Moscow - A Russian tabloid broke taboo by reporting Russia's president Vladimir Putin had divorced his wife Lyudimilla and plans to wed 24-year-old former Olympic gymnast Alina Kabayeva. The Kremlin Tuesday refused to comment on the article which was posted on the daily's Moskovsky Korrespondent website on Friday. The article cited a source close to event planning firm Art-management in Putin's native St. Petersburg, saying the company was competing for the right to host the wedding. Compared to most...

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, Washington’s favorite Latin American bete noir after Fidel Castro, unsettled Washington again last year by negotiating a $1 billion deal with Moscow to purchase a number of 636-model Varshavianka-class (NATO designation “Kilo”) diesel electric submarines (Agentstvo Voyennykh Novostei, April 4). Various Russian and Venezuelan media reports say that the initial delivery will consist of three to four boats with an eventual nine submarines from Russia. President Chavez is reportedly traveling to Moscow next month for the inauguration of Russia’s new president, Dmitry Medvedev, and while there will sign an agreement for the delivery of the first...

MOSCOW – President Bush and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia — “two old war horses,” as Mr. Bush put it on Friday at the NATO summit – are meeting for talks this weekend in Russia. How can the two reach compromises, given the many tensions that have arisen in their relationship? We put that question to the Russian blogosphere, seeking the opinions of Russians about the options for the two leaders, who are both ending their second terms. The comments were collected on the Russian-language blog that is operated by the Moscow bureau of The New York Times. The...

Stepping up a campaign to join a Eurasian security and economic bloc dominated by Russia and China, Iran is looking for allies within the organization to back its bid, but political analysts doubt it will succeed. Late last month, Iran secured the support of one of the members of the six-country Shanghai Cooperation Organization, Tajikistan, which later this year will host the bloc's annual summit. Established in its current form in 2001, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) comprises Russia, China, and four Central Asian states -- Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Together they control a large proportion of the non-Arab...

AN ALLEGED attempt to kill a former Russian spy who defected to Britain was being investigated by police last night. Oleg Gordievsky was admitted to a hospital in Guildford after falling ill in November last year. And yesterday he claimed he had been poisoned with the highly toxic metal thallium in a botched assassination attempt. Gordievsky, a KGB double agent who spied on Russia for British intelligence during the 1980s, claims he was targeted by a Russian assassin who visited him at his safe house in Surrey. The 69-year-old was unconscious for 34 hours after falling ill last year and...

The President and Mrs. Bush concluded their trip to Sochi today and are on their way home in AF-1. Last night, our First Couple were entertained at a dinner. Red caviar and veal were served. President Bush and his wife sat next to each other, flanked by Putin and Dmitry Medvedev, who takes over on May 7 as president of Russia. (NB: No sign of Ludmilla Putin this weekend. What's up with that?) Later, the two leaders joined each other on stage during entertainment at dinner and took part in a traditional folk dance featuring a Cossack chorus. Today,...

(AGI) - Bucharest, apr. 4 - US policy towards Iran is wrong: the Islamic republic must be helped out to come out of isolation and must not be threatened. This is the sense of the solution proposed by Vladimir Putin to handle relations between Washington and Teheran. According to a diplomatic source Putin said that "No one can seriously think that Iran would dare to attack the US. Instead of backing Iran into a corner it would be much more sensible to jointly dream up a way to help Iran gain greater transparency".

Bucharest - Urging cooperation from Western leaders, Russian President Vladimir Putin insisted Friday that NATO cannot solve the world's security problems without Russian help. 'What can be done without Russia?' Putin repeatedly asked after a meeting with alliance leaders in Bucharest which touched on such diverse global concerns as terrorism, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and security in Afghanistan. Putin underlined the 'constructive' and 'positive' spirit of the talks in the Romanian capital. But in a speech that mixed conciliatory tones with veiled threats, he also cautioned the alliance against spreading its influence to include former Soviet republics...

RUSSIAN President Vladimir Putin last night let fly at one of his last meetings with his US counterpart, George W.Bush, saying some NATO countries had demonised Moscow and failed to reward Russia for helping end the Cold War. A source in the Russian delegation to the NATO summit in Bucharest said Mr Putin - who is due to hold talks with Mr Bush at the Black Sea port of Sochi early today - challenged US policy towards Iran and said the Islamic republic should be helped to emerge from isolation, instead of being threatened. In his address to the 26...

German police and state security officers have launched a wide-scale hunt for a Russian artist and critic of Vladimir Putin's government who disappeared from her Berlin flat 10 days ago. Anna Mikhalchuk, 52, who has lived in the German capital since November, went for a walk on Good Friday and failed to return. At the weekend, police divers and sniffer dogs trawled a lake and searched allotments close to the home she shares with her husband, Michail Ryklin, a prize-winning philosopher and author. "On that afternoon she said goodbye to me and said she wanted to go for a short...

MOSCOW - This week's NATO summit in Romania will be Vladimir Putin's last appearance at a top-level international forum before he steps down as Russian president, still pushing to halt NATO's expansion into the stomping grounds of the former Soviet Union. The Kremlin realizes it doesn't have the power to force the West to reverse its recognition of Kosovo's independence or persuade Washington to drop its plan to deploy missile defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic. But Putin has had notable success in blocking NATO membership for its former Soviet neighbors — Ukraine and Georgia. "Georgia's accession into NATO...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush left on Monday for his farewell NATO summit and a final heads-of-state meeting with Russia's Vladimir Putin as he tries to salvage a foreign policy legacy frayed by the Iraq war. Seeking to reassert himself on the world stage in the twilight of his term, Bush will press NATO for more troops in Afghanistan, try to keep up momentum in the alliance's eastward expansion and attempt to ease strains with Russia. But with Bush even more unpopular overseas than at home, he could have a hard time swaying world leaders at this...

BRUSSELS, March 28 (Xinhua) -- Russia's ambassador to NATO dismissed on Friday NATO's call for Russian President Vladimir Putin to avoid "unhelpful rhetoric" at next week's NATO summit. In an interview with the Financial Times published on Friday, NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said he hoped the Russian leader would refrain from making anti-West comments. "Let's try to avoid unhelpful rhetoric, like 'We will target missiles on nations A, B and C.' That is not only unhelpful, but it makes me remember a time when I was growing up when there was a Berlin Wall and an Iron...

Two Russian newspapers, Nezavisimaya gazeta and Moskovsky korrespondent, reported today, March 28, that Vladimir Putin will be named head of United Russia at a party congress that will be held in April. Noting that Putin used the occasion of a United Russia congress last October to announce that he would head the party’s federal list of candidates in the December 2007 State Duma election, and then used the occasion of a United Russia congress in December to accept Dmitry Medvedev’s invitation to serve as prime minister under a future Medvedev presidency, Nezavisimaya gazeta reported that Putin will use a United...

For decades, Soviet schoolchildren flocked to the Moscow Planetarium to gaze at the stars. Now plans to reopen the landmark silver-domed structure, shut for repairs 14 years ago, are mired in a struggle for control of an institution situated on a pricey patch of real estate. The conflict took a startling turn Wednesday when staffers say about 20 uniformed men forced their way onto the grounds, beat an unarmed employee and proclaimed that a new boss was in charge. It was a development that longtime director Igor Mikitasov described as a hostile takeover, Russian style. In the struggle for property...

MOSCOW, March 26 (Reuters) - Russian firm Stroytransgaz has signed a protocol with Iraq to reactivate an oil export pipeline to Syria's Mediterranean terminal of Banias, the Russian firm said on Wednesday. It said it had signed the deal in Amman, Jordan, with Iraqi North Oil Company. "The participation of Stroytransgaz in this project will represent a substantial contribution by Russian firms to reconstruction and modernisation of Iraqi economic infrastructure," the statement said. Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin wrote a letter to Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki calling on him to support Russian investments in the country. The letter...

Moscow has stepped up its attempts to become Washington's main rival in the Middle East with an audacious attempt to win a large stake of Iraq's oil wealth. Glossing over his opposition to the American-led invasion and a prolonged period of poor relations with Baghdad, President Vladimir Putin wrote to Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, this week setting out the case for Russian investment in the energy sector. The move comes at a time when Russia is aggressively expanding its influence in the Middle East, an offensive that some say echoes the Cold War competition for patronage once waged...

What is it about Russia that drives the Anglo-American world mad? Soviet communism collapses, the empire is relinquished. Then come the wild hopes and failures of the 1990s—including the 1993 half-coup and the tank assault on Russia's legislature, the results-adjusted referendum on a new constitution (still in force), the dubious privatisations, the war in Chechnya and the financial default in 1998. But after all that, in December 1999 Boris Yeltsin apologises, steps down early—and names his prime minister and former secret police chief Vladimir Putin as acting president. To widespread consternation, Yeltsin predicts that the obscure spy is the man...

Looks like they got into Putin's secret stash of vodka or something.

PRAGUE (Thomson Financial) - Former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev attacked US plans to site an anti-missile system in central and eastern Europe, saying that it was aimed at Russia and China and not Iran. 'You believe that (the system) will be used against Iran? No, the whole system is aimed against Russia and China,' Gorbachev said in an interview broadcast by Czech public television today. He dismissed sustained US statements that the anti-missile system is aimed exclusively at countering the threat from 'rogue states' such as Iran. 'The US radar is a serious question and the Czech government has been...

Russian Oscars censored24/03/2008 13:13  - (SA)    Moscow - A series of jokes about President Vladimir Putin and president-elect Dmitry Medvedev were censored from the screening of Russia's equivalent of the Oscars film awards ceremony, newspapers reported on Monday. The jokes - mild by Western standards of satire - at Friday's "Nika" awards, were cut by private television station CTC in its broadcasting Saturday of the event, according to Moskovsky Komsomolets. "All the juicy stuff from the broadcast was edited out," the daily said. One of the comments axed, the newspaper said, was an allusion to uncertainty over whether Medvedev or his...

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin asked ministers on Monday to draw up plans to send humanitarian aid to Serb-populated enclaves of Kosovo, Russian media reported. Moscow has joined its ally Belgrade in opposing Kosovo's independence from Serbia and has refused to recognise it as a sovereign state. The United States and most European countries have recognized Kosovo's independence. Russian television showed a meeting between Putin and his ministers at which Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the Serbian government had requested the aid, citing a deterioration of the situation in Serb-populated areas of Kosovo. "We considered it important to...

Vladimir Putin is to fulfil an unrealised dream of Joseph Stalin's by creating a grandiose state cemetery. In a corner of northern Moscow bulldozers began churning the earth his week in a section of wasteland where Mr Putin and Stalin, the dictator he is said to revere, could one day be laid side by side. The Federal Military Memorial Cemetery, its designers boast, will be Russia's answer to America's Arlington. Arguably the most ambitious architectural project undertaken since the fall of the Soviet Union, it remains to be seen whether the cemetery, due to be completed by 2010, will become...