Free Republic

The protests come in advance of Russia’s March 4 presidential elections. Putin served two terms as president before term limits forced him from office in 2008. Putin announced in September he would run for a third non-consecutive presidential term as allowed by the Russian constitution. Dmitry Medvedev, whom Putin picked to succeed him as president in 2008, is stepping aside to allow Putin to return to power. Reports have estimated the Moscow turnout at 50,000 to 120,000 people. Similar Anti-Putin protests erupted in December with demonstrators alleging election fraud by Putin’s United Russia party, which managed to hold onto a...

In a move that was decried by the U.S., France, and Arab countries, Russia and China on Saturday vetoed a U.S.-backed proposal at the UN Security Council to condemn Syrian leader Bashar al-Assed for violence against Syrian citizens. The resolution that had demanded that Assad resign was backed by the Arab League, and the League on Saturday night called on Arab countries to shut down their embassies and consulates in Syria, and remove Syrian ambassadors from their countries. U.S. Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice said that Washington was "disgusted" by the vetoes. The vetoes followed a particularly bloody night...

Imperial regimes can crack when they are driven out of their major foreign outposts. The fall of the Berlin Wall did not only signal the liberation of Eastern Europe from Moscow. It prefigured the collapse of the Soviet Union itself just two years later. The fall of Bashar al-Assad’s Syria could be similarly ominous for Iran. The alliance with Syria is the centerpiece of Iran’s expanding sphere of influence, a mini-Comintern that includes such clients as Iranian-armed and -directed Hezbollah, now the dominant power in Lebanon; and Hamas, which controls Gaza and threatens to take the rest of Palestine (the...

Updated at 12 p.m. ET: Amid fresh bloodshed in the Syrian city of Homs, the U.N. Security Council on Saturday failed to pass a resolution calling on the Syrian president to step down. Russia and China vetoed the draft resolution endorsing an Arab League call for Bashar Assad to leave power. The unusual weekend U.N. session came as Syrian forces pummeled the city of Homs with mortars and artillery. Activists said more than 200 people were killed in what they called one of the bloodiest episodes of the uprising. The U.N. says more than 5,400 people have been killed over...

The Russian Navy Grows from Bottom up While the nation’s leaders work at overhauling the Navy organization, the Navy itself continues to order new ships. Last year’s persistent scandals over nuclear submarine contracts proved a hard nut to crack when assigning government contracts in 2011. For a time, the submarine scandals confused the process for ordering surface ships. Meanwhile the focus there is being shifted to the production of time tested projects built around today’s armaments. “Due to the lack of funding, the Navy has come close to a numerical minimum required to fulfill its mission,” Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry...

Russia will start producing six submarines and one aircraft carrier annually starting in 2013, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said on Thursday. “By 2013, production capacity [at Russian shipyards] will allow us to build six submarines and an aircraft carrier every year,” Rogozin told reporters, adding that the number includes both nuclear and diesel-powered submarines. As a result, the production output will surpass that of the Soviet era when Russia built an average of five submarines annually, he said. Rogozin earlier said the production had been bogged down in the past by a lack of financing, outdated equipment and a...

Russia to Modernize 30 Tu-22M3 Bombers by 2020 Sergey Piatakov About 30 Tu-22M3 strategic bombers from Russia's Long Range Aviation fleet will be modernized by 2020, Russian Air Force spokesman Col. Vladimir Drik said on Tuesday. "We plan to upgrade about 30 strategic bombers to the M3M standard,” Drik said. Tu-22M3 (NATO reporting name Backfire-C) is a supersonic, swing-wing, long-range strategic bomber that Russia uses mainly to patrol the skies over its southern borders, Central Asia and the Black Sea region. The Tu-22M3 has a flight range of 6,800 km (4,300 miles) and can carry a 24,000 kg (52,910 lb)...

MOSCOW, January 31 (RIA Novosti) Tags: Saiga-12, AK-47, Izhmash, USA, Russia, Moscow Izhmash, the manufacturer of the legendary Kalashnikov AK-47, will supply Saiga-12 semi-automatic smoothbore shotguns to a number of police forces in the U.S., Izhmash reported on its web site on Tuesday. The contracts were signed at the Shot Show exhibition in Las Vegas on January 17-20. “The first Saiga-12 deliveries to U.S. law enforcement were already made in January 2012,” Izhmash General Director Maxim Kuzyuk said. At the exhibition, Izhmash also signed an agreement on exclusive imports to the U.S. market with Russian Weapon Company and an agreement...

Ruslan M. Medzhitov loves scientific puzzles. And this penchant has led him to tackle some of the big questions of modern biology. At Yale University, where he is a professor of immunology and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, Dr. Medzhitov, 45, helped make key discoveries in the workings of vertebrates’ immune systems. We spoke about them at his home in Guilford, Conn.; again in New York City; and finally by telephone. An edited and condensed version of the sessions follows. Let’s talk about the paper by the immunologist Charles A. Janeway Jr. that changed your life. When did you...

MOSCOW – The history of successive authoritarian regimes in Russia reveals a recurring pattern: they do not die from external blows or domestic insurgencies. Instead, they tend to collapse from a strange internal malady – a combination of the elites’ encroaching disgust with themselves and a realization that the regime is exhausted. The illness resembles a political version of Jean-Paul Sartre’s existential nausea, and led to both the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and the Soviet Union’s demise with Mikhail Gorbachev’s Perestroika. Today, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s regime is afflicted with the same terminal disease, despite – or because of –...

While U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her Pakistani counterpart, Hina Rabbani Khar, attempt to normalize relations between the countries after the recent American drone strikes in Pakistan, the question has arisen as to how India can become an integral member of the multi-party Afghan equation, where U.S. and NATO stakes are still very high. What does the question entail? he Pakistani transit routes for NATO convoys that supply military cargo to Afghanistan have been closed for two months (after an “erroneous” attack by a NATO aircraft on a Pakistani army checkpoint in the Pakistani-Afghan border region in November...

Russia pulls out of Korea fighter project Sweden mulls taking part in FX-III race with Gripen By Lee Tae-hoon Russia will not enter Korea’s advanced jet acquisition project as none of its aircraft manufacturers including Sukhoi expressed their intent to join the heated competition, officials here said. The Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA) listed Sukhoi’s T-50 PAK-FA in July last year as one of the four contenders to have expressed an interest in joining the open bidding worth 8.29 trillion won ($7.3 billion) along with Boeing, Lockheed Martin and the European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company (EADS). ``No Russian firm...

In Athens, the war of nerves over the debt haircut is nearing a finale. The negotiations between private creditors and the government, however, are taking some dangerous stumbles. Before Greece gets €130 billion in aid, it must show some success with its reforms. And that, with all the good will in the world, cannot be achieved. Every day we see the same images. Men and women in suits and with serious expressions step briskly up to a revolving door, wind their way into an unfamiliar building and disappear into the darkness. The scenes are playing out in Athens, and they...

Thousands of cars flying white ribbons or white balloons circled central Moscow on Sunday in a show of protest against Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. The cars jammed the inner lanes all along the 16-kilometre Garden Ring, which has as many as 16 lanes of traffic at its widest points. More protesters stood along the side of the road waving white ribbons and flags as the cars passed, their horns blaring.

The Syrian government has condemned a decision by the Arab League to pull its monitors from the raging civil war zone. The Arab League said Saturday it had decided to "immediately" suspend its mission to monitor the situation in Syria due to the growing violence, the BBC reported. The decision came less than a week after a vote to extend the mission another month. Fierce fighting near Damascus centered on several eastern suburbs that had been seized by opposition forces, and which government troops fought to recapture. At least 12 people were killed and 30 others were wounded in the...

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has signalled that Greece will have to give up autonomy over its budget if it is to receive the full backing of the international community for its second €130bn (£109bn) bail-out. With the country on the brink of a default, Christine Lagarde, the director general of the IMF, said that a new "fiscal compact" was set to be signed by European Union members at the vital leaders' summit on Monday that would centralise budgetary powers. Greece is under increasing pressure to give up control of its budget. A document released over the weekend revealed German...

Russia's largest firearms manufacturer, Izhmash, has unveiled a prototype of its new Kalasnikov assault rifle with improved ergonomics and tactical flexibility. The new assault rifle, dubbed AK-12, is being designed as a basic platform for the development of nearly 20 different modifications of the weapon. It could be adapted for cartridges varying from 5.45x39 mm to 7.62x51 NATO. The state tests of the rifle may begin at the end of 2012 despite the fact that the Russian Defense Ministry has not shown interest so far in the new weapon citing the financial difficulties of the Izhmash company and a huge...

...........During the darkest days of the Cold War, the Soviet Union decided to build a gigantic missile ship and troop transport to spearhead any future invasion of America or Western Europe. This Soviet sky monster was called an ekranoplan. The one you see in photos here is the Lun-class Ekranoplan. The most unique aspect of the “part plane, part boat, and part hovercraft” ekranoplan was its propulsion method, which is why it was also called a Ground Effect Vehicle (GEV) or “Sea Skimmer.” As Business Insider puts the GEV’s aerodynamic feat: “A GEV takes advantage of an aeronautical effect that...

In the thick of the Cold War, the Soviet Union built an immense vessel to carry their troops across the seas and into Western Europe. Equipped with nuclear warheads and able to blast across the sea at 340 mph, the Lun-class Ekranoplane; part plane, part boat, and part hovercraft — is a Ground Effect Vehicle (GEV). A GEV takes advantage of an aeronautical effect that allows it to lift off with an immense amount of weight, but limits its flight to 16 feet above the waves. Its altitude can never be greater than the length of the wings. Think of...

Russia's National Anti-Terrorism Committee said on Friday a prominent rebel leader responsible for a series of high-profile acts of "sabotage and terrorism" had been killed in a raid by security forces in the volatile North Caucasus republic of Ingushetia earlier in the day. Dzhamaleim Mutaliyev, 35, known as Adam, was a leader of Caucasus Emirate, a loose umbrella organization of militant groups operating in the North Caucasus, and a close associate of notorious North Caucasus warlord Shamil Basayev who was killed in July 2006, the committee said in a statement. Mutaliyev is believed to be a mastermind of a several...