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ANDREWS AIR FORCE BASE, Md., May 17, 2008 – The historic humanitarian efforts of the Berlin Airlift 60 years ago demonstrated to U.S. allies and enemies alike that the country would not be deterred from its commitments, the Air Force secretary said today. Two Oracle bi-planes perform aerial acrobatics during the Joint Service Open House at Andrews Air Force Base, Md., May 17, 2008. Thousands attended the event, which coincided with the 60th Anniversary of the Berlin Airlift. Defense Dept. photo by Fred W. Baker III  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. “It displayed a U.S. dedication to a...

The last members of a Russian doomsday cult yesterday left the underground cave where they had spent the past six months after the stench of two dead colleagues became too much to stand. Nine disciples of Pyotr Kuznetzov, a self-styled prophet who predicted the world would come to an end this month, emerged from their manmade cavern in the Penza region, bringing an end to a protracted standoff between the cult and the police. According to regional officials, one female adherent of the cult died from “severe Lenten fasting” last month, while the other succumbed to cancer. As the corpses...

MOSCOW - Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has created an inner cabinet of key ministers that will meet weekly, further strengthening his grip over Russia's levers of power. The new forum mimics a format used by Putin as president before he handed over the Kremlin to his close ally Dmitry Medvedev last week. "The full government is a rather big body," Putin's chief spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday. "That is why it was decided to set up a managerial staff that can handle certain issues without the need to summon the full cabinet." Medvedev could in theory choose to attend...

Lebanon is legendarily fractious, and some observers claim Hezbollah, too, will have trouble running the country. That is perhaps why they decline to try: They'll leave to Siniora and others the chores of seeking foreign aid, caring for the non-Shiite population, and so on. But we saw this week what happens when the caretaker government interferes with Hezbollah's preparations against Israel. Iran and its proxies are in the ascendant all across the Middle East. Foolishly, President U.S. George W. Bush still refuses to negotiate with Iran, or with Syria, and that can't help.

Commercial satellite imagery has revealed an extensive nuclear missile site in central China with nearly sixty launch pads for medium-range missiles capable of striking Russia or India, a researcher said Thursday."The US government often highlights China's deployment of new mobile missiles as a concern but keeps the details secret, so the discovery of the deployment area provides the first opportunity for the public to better understand how China operates its mobile ballistic missiles," he wrote."From these launch pads DF-21 missiles would be within range of southern Russia and northern India (including New Delhi), but not Japan, Taiwan or Guam," he...

FP: Paul Kengor, welcome back to Frontpage Interview. Kengor: Always great to be back, Jamie. FP: We’re here today to revisit Ted Kennedy’s reaching out to the KGB during the Reagan period. Refresh our readers’ memories a bit. Kengor: The episode is based on a document produced 25 years ago this week. I discussed it with you in our earlier interview back in November 2006. In my book, The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism, I presented a rather eye-opening May 14, 1983 KGB document on Ted Kennedy. The entire document, unedited, unabridged, is printed in the book,...

UST LUGA, Russia, May 14 (Reuters) - Russia's Prime Minister Vladimir Putin urged on Wednesday to grant tax breaks to new oil provinces to revive output growth and add over a tenth to current production levels by 2015. The Russian stock market, dominated heavily by oil stocks, rose 3.5 percent on the news with the oil and gas index jumping 5.14 and No.4 oil firm Surgutneftegaz soaring almost 11 percent. Putin said Russia should grant tax breaks for a period of up to seven years to oil companies developing fields located on Russia's continental shelf, the Yamal peninsula and the...

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...

"Russia's air force chief on Saturday accused NATO fighters escorting Russian bombers on patrol flights over neutral waters of violating safety rules. Air Force chief Col.-Gen. Alexander Zelin said NATO aircraft were approaching Russian bombers too closely and too often, creating risky situations."

A week before the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in February 1989...

Caption photos of soldiers at Kremlin's Red Square.

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...

Over the weekend, Foreign Ministry official Valery Kenyaikin cautioned Georgia against using NATO forces to resolve the territorial conflicts in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, saying Moscow would take "all possible measures to protect its citizens if fighting broke out" in these areas. It seems as though Russia is preparing for war with Georgia. A few days ago I returned from Chechnya, where I observed the swift, bloodless routing of the Vostok regiment by military groups loyal to Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov. Vostok is a local military unit in Khankala, Chechnya, composed of ethnic Chechens that is formally a part of...

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....

In 10 years, Russia's national defense spending has risen by more than 965 percent as its military renews strategic air patrols, reasserts its interests throughout the former Soviet space, and actively pushes back against competing security interests from the U.S. and Europe. Last year, Russian national defense spending surpassed $32 billion, compared with less than $3 billion in 1998. Looking forward, Russian defense spending is expected to trend upward; however, Moscow's strategic bandwidth may be constrained by a confluence of defense economic factors.

MOSCOW, Russia (CNN) -- Russia's new president Dmitry Medvedev wasted no time in knuckling down to work--naming his predecessor Vladimir Putin as his new prime minister two hours after he was sworn in Wednesday, agencies report. Medvedev, 42, was inaugurated as president at the Kremlin before 2,300 invited guests in an elaborate ceremony with marching soldiers and military music. He became the third Russian president since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The Associated Press reported that one of his first acts as President was nominating his predecessor Vladimir Putin as prime minister. The announcement came about two...

A Republican U.S. senator said Tuesday he will try to block a U.S.-Russia civilian nuclear power deal if President Bush sends it to Congress, because he fears it could undermine efforts to prevent nuclear proliferation in Iran. Sen. Norm Coleman said he is teaming with Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh in circulating a letter that will urge Bush not to send the pact to Congress. Under the deal signed Tuesday, the United States would get access to Russian state-of-the art nuclear technology. The pact would help Russia establish an international nuclear fuel storage facility by importing and storing spent fuel. The...

Cologne, Germany - A senior executive at Russian gas monopoly Gazprom is under investigation in Germany over the claim that he was a German secret-police officer in the communist era, a prosecutor confirmed Tuesday. The newspaper Die Welt was set to name the man on Wednesday as Felix Strehober, chief financial officer of Gazprom Germania. It said it was possible he would be charged in Cologne with perjury after making a statutory declaration last year, 'I have never been a salaried employee of the Ministry of State Security (Stasi) or the equivalent.' Die Welt said more than 100 pages in...

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...

The Real Joe McCarthy Fifty-four years ago today, Sen. Joseph McCarthy started his televised hearings on alleged Soviet spies and communists in the Army. The spectacle grabbed the country's attention for the next two months. By the end of the McCarthy hearings, the senator's career was over; before an audience that often numbered 20 million Americans, he came across as bullying and unscrupulous. Yet today, more and more conservative writers are trying to vindicate the late senator. Authors M. Stanton Evans and Ann Coulter, for example, have claimed that McCarthy was more right than wrong because he, along with dozens...

Could Russia be divested of the 2014 Winter Olympic Games, which have been awarded to its southern city of Sochi? For several reasons, it’s becoming a distinct possibility. And Russia might be better off if it happened. At a press conference in Moscow on April 10, timed to coincide with the Kremlin’s first formal progress report to the International Olympic Committee, a coalition of anti-Kremlin activists, including Garry Kasparov, warned that several of the Kremlin’s planned construction sites have become infeasible due to the unforeseen height of the water table. The IOC, in an unusual move, granted the games to...

Researchers have found alarming evidence that the frozen Arctic floor has started to thaw and release long-stored methane gas. The results could be a catastrophic warming of the earth, since methane is a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. But can the methane also be used as fuel? AP It's always been a disturbing what-if scenario for climate researchers: Gas hydrates -- hard clumps of ice and methane, conserved by freezing temperatures and high pressure -- could grow unstable and release massive amounts of methane into the atmosphere. Since methane is a potent greenhouse gas, the result would...

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 (AFP) — Georgia has called on the United Nations to send more observers to the separatist Georgian region of Abkhazia to check on the increase in Russian troops there, a parliamentary spokesman said Saturday. "We have serious suspicions that there have been violations," said Nika Sturoua the vice-president of the defence and security committee, the Interfax news agency reported. Sturova said they believed that Moscow had exceeded the quota of troops allowed for its contingent in the pro-Russian province and that "illegal weapons" had been deployed there. Sturovas said that the UN was going to send extra observers to...

MOSCOW: World powers have proposed Iran cease uranium enrichment during international talks with Tehran on its nuclear programme; Interfax news agency quoted Russia’s foreign minister as saying on Saturday. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, speaking after his return from a London meeting of major powers on Iran, said uranium enrichment would have to be suspended for the talks. “Our first condition is the freezing, suspension of uranium enrichment,” Lavrov was quoted as saying in Moscow by Interfax.” The view of the six (powers) is that Iran must cease enrichment of uranium only for the period in which talks last.” “It is...

HONG KONG, May 2 (UPI) -- Russia will deliver to China four battalions of 200-kilometer-range S-300PMU2 surface-to-air missiles this summer, the last batch in a series ordered by China. The first batch of four battalions of the same missiles was delivered in July 2007. Starting in 1993, China received 12 battalions of S-300 SAMs, four of them S-300PMUs and eight S-300PMU1s. This means there are a total of 20 battalions of S-300 SAMs deployed in China. These missiles are expected to play a major role in China's core air defense system. These missiles now cover the whole of the Chinese...

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...

Global Warming Affects World's Largest Freshwater LakeThis well-known landmark, Shaman Rock on Lake Baikal in Russia, stands guard over an ancient lake whose pristine condition is changing quickly. (Credit: Nicholas Rodenhouse) ScienceDaily (May 1, 2008) — Russian and American scientists have discovered that the rising temperature of the world's largest lake, located in frigid Siberia, shows that this region is responding strongly to global warming. Consensus of scientists regarding global warming Drawing on 60 years of long-term studies of Russia's Lake Baikal, Stephanie Hampton, an ecologist and deputy director of the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) in...

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...

"The steps that have been taken (by Russia) and the rhetoric that has been used concerning the threat of force have increased tensions and have undermined Georgia's territorial integrity," NATO spokesman James Appathurai said. "The allies are unanimous in supporting, endorsing Georgia's territorial integrity and will not recognise or support steps that undermine that sovereignty," he said. NATO announced at a summit early this month that Georgia would one day become a member of the 26-nation military alliance, in the face of fierce Russian opposition. Russia objects to NATO moving closer to its borders and is deeply concerned that the...

So the Kremlin can't buy every retiring European leader. Romano Prodi, for one, won't soon be bunking with Gerhard Schröder in Moscow. Vladimir Putin personally tried to tap the outgoing Italian Prime Minister to become chairman of South Stream, a new pipeline project by Russian gas monopolist Gazprom to link Russia to Europe. Mr. Prodi was "flattered" by the offer, his spokesman said, but won't be available. While in government, Mr. Prodi backed the 50-50 joint venture between Gazprom and Italy's Eni to pump 30 billion cubic meters of Russian gas through South Stream, scheduled to go on line in...

MOSCOW (AP) - For nine decades after Bolshevik executioners gunned down Czar Nicholas II and his family, there were no traces of the remains of Crown Prince Alexei, the hemophiliac heir to Russia's throne. Some said the delicate 13-year-old had somehow survived and escaped; others believed his bones were lost in Russia's vastness, buried in secret amid fear and chaos as the country lurched into civil war. Now an official says DNA tests have solved the mystery by identifying bone shards found in a forest as those of Alexei and his sister, Grand Duchess Maria. The remains of their parents—Nicholas...

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,"...

Nato has warned Russia that its recent troop build-up in Georgia's two breakaway regions undermines its neighbour's territorial integrity. Russia's moves in Abkhazia and South Ossetia were raising tensions in the area, a Nato spokesman said. Moscow has accused Georgia of preparing to invade Abkhazia, and says it is also boosting Russian peacekeeping forces there and in South Ossetia. Tbilisi has described the Russian move as "irresponsible". "The steps that have been taken [by Russia] and the rhetoric have increased tensions and undermined Georgia's territorial integrity," Nato spokesman James Appathurai said. He also urged both Moscow and Tbilisi to avoid...

MOSCOW, April 26, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com)- The Moscow City government has made it clear that it will not tolerate the public promotion of sodomy during Labor Day celebrations on May 1st. "The city authorities will act decisively, just as they have in years past, to impede those actions," said Serguéi Tsoy, a spokesman for Moscow's mayor, Yuri Luzhkov. "The absolute majority in society rejects those demonstrations, as well as the gay lifestyle and philosophy," Luzhkov added, and warned that if homosexuals took to the streets they could be injured by attackers, according to Interfax. "Homosexuals intend to create disharmony to obstruct...

Why Does Ahmadinejad Want Russian Troops in Iran? 25/04/2008 By Amir Taheri Why is the leadership in Tehran anxious to give Russia the right to land troops in Iran? The question is not fanciful. The Islamic Republic is conducting a devious campaign to prepare public opinion for that eventuality. The message is relayed through deliberately vague terms that diplomats understand immediately while the general public does not. The device is to revive two treaties that most students of Iranian history thought were dead and buried long ago. The first is the 1921 Treaty that the government of Sayyed Ziauddin Tabatabai,...

Air is crucial to human life, and the absence of a breathable atmosphere is one of the main obstacles to discovering other planets. Russian scientists have reproduced a gas mixture that human beings may breathe on the way to Mars and when on the Red Planet. Staff at the Moscow Biomedical Problems Institute have constructed an experimental capsule and reproduced within it the conditions that might be encountered during a mission to Mars. The gas inside accounts for only one per cent of the Earth’s atmosphere but there’s plenty of it on Mars as the gas inside is argon. Mixed...

Roman Abramovich was an undeclared member of President Putin’s regime in Russia when he bought Chelsea Football Club in 2003, documents in a clash-of-the-oligarchs court battle suggested yesterday. The football boss emerges from legal papers signed by Boris Berezovsky, his friend turned rival, as an “enforcer” figure, passing on alleged threats so that the Kremlin could get its way over media and business. Mr Berezovsky, accompanied by minders, arrived at the Commercial Court in London to hear legal arguments in his $4 billion (£2 billion) case against Mr Abramovich over oil and aluminium assets that he claims he was forced...

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...

Ukraine's Pursuit of Genocide Designation Upsets Russians Who Say Others Died, Too MOSCOW -- Relations between Russia and Ukraine, bedeviled by disputes over natural gas supplies and NATO expansion, have lately been roiled by one of the great tragedies of Soviet history: the famine of 1932-33, which left millions dead from starvation and related diseases. Ukraine is seeking international recognition of the famine, which Ukrainians call Holodomor -- or death by hunger -- as an act of genocide. When Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin forced peasants off their homesteads and into collective farms, special military units requisitioned grain and other food...

There can be no question of foreign troops being withdrawn from Iraq at present, Russia's foreign minister said on Tuesday. "Iraq's law enforcement structures are not in a position to assume complete responsibility for ensuring security in the country and to effectively counter terrorist groups," Sergei Lavrov told an international conference on Iraq in Kuwait City. He said that although some successes had been achieved in the security sphere, the situation remained volatile. "Positive changes are yet to be irreversible. Consider the recent fighting in Basra and Baghdad, the echo of which is still resounding [throughout the country], and the...

Russia's greatest living novelist, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, is working feverishly to complete his collected works and is writing every day despite failing health, a missing vertebra and being unable to walk, his wife, Natalia, revealed yesterday.

KIEV (AFP) - Ukraine paid homage Saturday to victims of the Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe, a "planetary" drama as Kiev called it, 22 years after the world's worst nuclear incident. Overnight, some hundred Ukrainians including President Viktor Yushchenko and other top state officials laid wreaths at the monument to the victims of Chernobyl in Kiev and lighted candles during a religious service held for the tragedy, the presidential press service said. In Slavutich, a small town 50 kilometers (30 miles) away from the wrecked nuclear power station, where most of its personnel live, an overnight vigil was due to be held....

www.gunowners.org/a042408.htmApr 2008 Contact George Bush, The Department Of State And Your Congressmen -- Ask them to intervene on behalf of a US pastor in a Russian jail for having one box of ammo Gun Owners of America 8001 Forbes Place, Suite 102 Springfield, VA 22151 (703)321-8585 Thursday, April 24, 2008 GOA has learned that the Russian Republic has sentenced an American pastor to 3 years in prison because he had 20 rounds of hunting ammunition in his luggage. The pastor -- Phillip Miles of Conway, South Carolina -- hadn't realized that carrying the twenty rounds in his luggage was in...

MOSCOW, April 23 (AFP) Apr 23, 2008 Russian fire services were on Wednesday battling blazes across Siberia blamed on an exceptionally mild winter and illegal logging. The emergency situations ministry said on its website that 36,000 hectares (89,000 acres) were burning in the Amur, Buryatiya, Khabarovsk, Primorsky and Jewish Autonomous provinces. Another 11,000 hectares (27,000 acres) of forest had been consumed by fire in the previous 24 hours, the ministry said. "To extinguish the fire, 6,551 people and 1,779 firefighting vehicles, including eight aircraft, have been deployed," the ministry said. The Interfax news agency reported the air was thick with...

The crew of the Soyuz capsule that landed in Kazakhstan hundreds of kilometers off-target after an unexpectedly severe descent was in serious danger, a Russian news agency reported Tuesday. Interfax quoted an unidentified space official as saying that the capsule entered the atmosphere improperly, with the hatch-first, instead of with its heat shields leading the way. As a result, the hatch suffered significant damage. The official said the TMA-11 capsule's antenna burned up during the descent, meaning the crew couldn't communicate properly with Russian Mission Control. Also damaged was part of the valve that equalizes pressure inside and outside the...

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...