Free Republic

Excellent interview (youtube video) with Toomas Hendrik Ilves, President of Estonia, who grew up in New Jersey and he doesn't even have a Jersey accent. :-) Do yourself a favor and watch it.

Seen several tweets of this over the last hour, and now this vid of the defection is posted on YouTube. The column had apparently been surrounded by several hundred pro-Russian civilians inside of Kramatorsk, with several older women linked arm-in-arm to prevent it's passing At about 8:50, you can see the commander arguing with someone on the phone..

MOSCOW, April 15 (RIA Novosti) – The Russian Defense Ministry has signed a $470 million contract with the MiG corporation for the delivery of 16 advanced MiG-29 SMT fighters, the ministry said Tuesday. The company had earlier confirmed the deal in an interview with RIA Novosti, but did not specify its value. "The value of the contract, including the ground support and test equipment, is more than 17 billion rubles. The contract is a strategic measure for maintaining the combat readiness of the lightweight fighter fleet," the Defense Ministry said in the statement. As of last year, the Russian Air...

Russia now spends more on its military, relative to Gross Domestic Product (GDP), than both the United States and Europe respectively. According to figures compiled by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Moscow spent 4.1 percent of its GDP on defence in 2013, an increase of 0.6 percent over the past 10 years. By contrast, the United States spent 3.8 percent of GDP on defence and Britain spent just 2.3 percent, with further defence cuts expected. The only neighbouring country that spends more is Azerbaijan, with 4.7 percent. Defence spending in Ukraine has also rocketed by 16 percent in the...

The government of Syrian President Bashar Assad has accused the United States, Turkey, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the rebels fighting to overthrow it, of being responsible for chemical weapons attacks in the country, Syria’s state news agency SANA reported on Tuesday. In letters to the UN Security Council as well as UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, the Assad regime cited “reports, studies and documented researches” that allegedly implicate the US and Turkish administrations, as well as several other countries, “whether directly or indirectly in these appalling carnage in Syria, including Khad al-Assal on March 15, 2013.” …

KRAMATORSK, Ukraine, April 15 (Reuters) - Ukrainian airborne troops landed in a town in the east of the country on Tuesday apparently at the start of a crackdown to root out pro-Russian separatists - but they pulled back into base after meeting a hostile reception from local civilians. The town of Kramatorsk is one of 10 localities in Ukraine's Russian-speaking east where separatist rebellions have broken out. The move suggested Ukraine's authorities were going ahead with a plan for a broad military crackdown to end the unrest which began 10 days ago. Separately, the state security service announced a similar...

6:30 p.m. – Interfax Ukraine reports that Interim President Oleksander Turchynov has announced that Ukrainian troops have successfully freed the Kramatorsk airfield. According to the AP, "The mayor of Kramatorsk said Ukrainian troops have now occupied the military airport and are blocking its entrance." The freeing of the airfield is part of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry's "anti-terrorist operation," which is being conducted throughout eastern Ukraine to quell Russian-backed separatist movements. Rossiya 24 reports that four Russian-sponsored terrorists were killed as a result of the operation. Further, according to Interfax Ukraine, Andriy Parubiy, the Secretary of the National Security and Defense...

The Obama administration reportedly is withholding even non-lethal military aid to Ukraine for fear it could further inflame tensions -- despite already intensifying clashes between the country's government and pro-Russia militiamen. A critical report detailing the requests was sent to Congress and the White House by retired Gen. Wesley Clark and former Defense Department official Phillip Karber, according to The Washington Free Beacon. After returning from a trip to Ukraine, Clark and Karber reportedly wrote that the U.S. government had turned down requests for everything from body armor to night-vision goggles to communications equipment. The Obama administration apparently was concerned...

BODIES of extinct Ice Age mammals, such as woolly mammoths, that have been frozen in permafrost for thousands of years may contain viable sperm that could be used to bring them back from the dead, scientists said yesterday. Research has indicated that mammalian sperm can survive being frozen for much longer than was previously thought, suggesting that it could potentially be recovered from species that have died out...

BODIES of extinct Ice Age mammals, such as woolly mammoths, that have been frozen in permafrost for thousands of years may contain viable sperm that could be used to bring them back from the dead, scientists said yesterday. Research has indicated that mammalian sperm can survive being frozen for much longer than was previously thought, suggesting that it could potentially be recovered from species that have died out. Several well-preserved mammoth carcasses have been found in the permafrost of Siberia, and scientists estimate that there could be millions more. Last year a Canadian team demonstrated that it was possible to...

Frozen baby mammoth to be sent to Japan for research (Kyodo) _ A frozen mammoth found recently in Russia in unprecedented good condition is set to be sent to a Japanese university for examination, several experts told Kyodo News on Friday. The mammoth, thought to be a six-month-old female, was found in the best state of preservation among all frozen mammoths ever recovered, said the experts. "The mammoth has no defects except that its tail was bit off," said Alexei Tikhonov, vice director of the Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences. "In terms of its state of preservation,...

IZYUM (Ukraine) (AFP) - Ukraine pushed tanks toward a flashpoint eastern city on Tuesday to quash a separatist surge backed by Moscow -- a high-risk operation that was sharply condemned by the Kremlin but won Washington's support. Related Stories Obama urges Putin to rein in Ukraine insurgents AFP Ukraine leader says Russia wants to set southeast 'on fire' AFP Little sign of progress as Obama, Putin speak Associated Press Putin denies interfering in Ukraine as insurgents gain ground AFP Ukraine launches 'gradual' operation, action limited Reuters The 20 tanks and armoured personnel carriers were the most forceful response yet by...

WASHINGTON -- This may shock you. During the eight years of the Reagan Presidency I was not his biggest fan. I looked not so much at what he accomplished but what he didn't accomplish. My expectations were that government would get smaller under President Reagan. It didn't. I was disappointed. I looked at the agencies left in place -- the National Endowment for the Arts, the Legal Services Corporation (which has done so much damage) and A.I.D. -- and I felt that the Reagan Administration did not make a real effort to curtail them. I was disappointed. Also there was...

The man they call Jesus of Siberia came to Britain looking for disciples to follow him up a mountainside. Candida Crewe was intrigued A 41-year-old man dressed in a coarse, red velvet robe with scratchy gold braid takes his seat on a fine purple banquette in the Groucho Club. He wears thick socks under his sandals and carefully combs his long flowing hair before sitting down. He smiles beatifically and speaks very slowly and quietly, in Russian. Even by the Groucho's standards, he looks unusual. Asked how he would like to be addressed, he insists, calmly, that he doesn't mind....

Russia challenging Saudi Arabia’s dominance in world energy market Oil will be high on the agenda at Russian President Vladimir Putin’s weekend summit meeting with George W. Bush at Camp David ­ Russian oil for US consumers, to reduce dependence on Saudi Arabia. Across the globe in Beijing, Putin’s prime minister, Mikhail Kasyanov, this week haggled with his Chinese counterpart, Wen Jaibao, on building a 2,400-kilometer, $2.5 billion oil pipeline from Siberia to China, which is crying out for energy to fuel its burgeoning economy. Saudi oil may be far cheaper to produce, but a steady supply from Russia is...

WARSAW, Poland (AP) - Survivors marked 65 years yesterday since Soviet occupiers began sending Poles to Siberian labour camps after signing a pact with Nazi Germany to divide up Poland. Under Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, at least 320,000 Poles from what is now Belarus, Ukraine and Lithuania were deported between February 1940 and June 1941. Historians estimate that some 20 to 30 per cent perished from forced labour in subfreezing temperatures, disease and starvation. A wreath-laying ceremony at a monument to the deportees marked the anniversary of the first transport of Poles on February 10, 1940, and survivors talked about...

It is not ruled out that newly-appointed FSB deputy director Alexander Borodai will seriously take up the apartment bombings in Moscow and Volgodonsk The Russian Federal Security Service (known by the initials FSB) is experiencing a reshuffling. Alexander Borodai was appointed FSB deputy director, responsible for the information policy and special projects; the newly-appointed deputy director will organize the FSB’s most delicate operations in the political sphere. [....] It is rather interesting, but, until recently, Alexander Borodai worked in the editorial office of a Russian patriotic newspaper Zavtra, whose editor-in-chief Alexander Prokhanov is famous for his rather complicated relations with...

The sharp escalation of the Ukraine crisis virtually puts the country on the brink of civil war, Russian President Vladimir Putin told German Chancellor Angela Merkel during a telephone call. Putin and Merkel discussed the upcoming Ukrainian crisis talks between Russia, Ukraine, the EU and the US, scheduled to be held on Thursday in Geneva. Merkel’s press office noted that, despite some differences of opinion, the upcoming talks were the main focus of the telephone conversation.

In another of the phone calls, the SBU video cited a Moscow phone number for one of the callers, identified only as "Alexander" in the video. Ukrainska Pravda reported that the number belonged to a pro-Kremlin publicist Alexander Borodai, and cited unidentified sources as saying that the man had been entrusted with the "Crimea question" and now is handling the "Donetsk question" in eastern Ukraine. In February, Borodai published a YouTube video, titled: "How to Divide Ukraine." The SBU said in a statement that Russia had begun "large-scale military aggression" in eastern Ukraine by deploying "subversive groups" of servicemen from...

A public petition asking to broaden the legislative limits of self-defense has been rejected by the Interior and Justice Ministries, but activists intend to continue the campaign and promise pickets near the government HQ and rallies across the country. The petition entitled “My home is my fortress” has collected over 100,000 signatures of Russian citizens on a dedicated web-site which officially gave it legislative legs. If the draft was passed any action of a citizen inside his or her home against an intruder would be qualified as necessary self-defense, which, in turn, could lead to the withdrawal of murder charges...