Free Republic

A BUST of Russia's muscle-flexing strongman Vladimir Putin is being created as a gift for ex-Hollywood bodybuilder and California's current governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. The bust is currently being made in Putin's home city of Saint Petersburg on an order of Russia's Bodybuilding and Fitness Federation and will be delivered to the movie star-turned-politician in March. "Putin is such a complex personality. He's left no one indifferent," Alexander Chernoshchyokov, a Saint Petersburg-based sculptor who has been working on the Putin bust since June... In 1991 the Russian artist made a sculpture of Schwarzenegger and Vladimir Dubinin, the president of the bodybuilding...

Vladimir Putin has buffed up his action-man image and raised the pin-up stakes among world leaders with another set of bare-chested holiday pictures. Photographs were published today showing the Russian Prime Minister stripped to the waist and riding a horse imperiously through rugged terrain during a brief holiday in the Siberian region of Tuva. Wearing only green fatigues, his eyes hidden behind reflective sunglasses, Mr Putin also showed his gentler side as he fed the horse from his hand after the ride. Mr Putin, who will be 57 in October, showed off a set of rippling arm muscles as he...

Russian agents came close to carrying out the perfect assassination on British soil when they killed Alexander Litvinenko... Security sources have disclosed that the former Russian spy would have died within hours had the poisoned tea he was given been served hot. Litvinenko, a former KGB agent who had become a critic of the government of Russia's then president, Vladimir Putin... Security sources say that during the meeting Litvinenko took just a few sips of the tea but left the remainder of the cup because it was cold. "If Litvinenko had drunk all the tea he would have been dead...

Of the many things most people do not know about Earth Day is that it is also the anniversary of the Alan Carubabirthday of Vladimir Lenin, the founder of the Soviet Union. Coincidence? I doubt it. These days most people know little of history. We are witnessing a new generation who know little or nothing about the Soviet Union and the Cold War it waged against America and the world for the supremacy of Communism in the latter half of the last century. These are kids who don't even known when we fought our Civil War and for whom...

Russians voted Sunday in a parliamentary election where the only question was whether President Vladimir Putin's party would win a strong majority of seats or a crushing share. The election follows months of increasingly acidic rhetoric aimed against the West and efforts, by law and by truncheon, to stifle opponents. A huge win for Putin's United Russia party could pave the way for him to stay at the country's helm once his presidential term expires in the spring. The party casts the election as essentially a referendum on Putin's nearly eight years in office. Many of its campaign banners that...

The Venezuelan president bonds with regimes that the rest of the world -- and his own compatriots -- shun. THE LATEST Global Attitudes survey by the Pew Foundation contains a lot of bad news for the United States, but there was one relative bright spot in Latin America: Venezuela. According to Pew, 56 percent of Venezuelans say they have a favorable view of the United States, a higher number than in Britain or Canada. Seventy-one percent say they like U.S. television and movies and a stratospheric 84 percent feel positively about Americans. Though only 23 percent say they have confidence...

ADAM SMITH never met Vladimir Putin, but, as with so many other things, he anticipated his appearance. Nobody can accuse the great Scot of protectionist proclivities, but he did warn that there are times when free trade takes second place to national defence. He proposed laying “some burden” on foreign commerce “when some particular sort of industry is necessary for the defence of the country ... (since) defence is of much more importance than opulence”. America, Britain and other free-trading countries have long welcomed foreign investment on the ground that it enriches the nation by bringing capital, jobs and foreign...

Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, an outspoken critic of President Vladimir Putin, was shot dead on Saturday at her apartment block in central Moscow, police said. "According to initial information she was killed by two shots when leaving the lift. Neighbors found her body," a police source told Reuters. Police found a pistol and four rounds in the lift. Politkovskaya, a 48-year-old mother of two, won international fame and numerous prizes for her dogged pursuit of rights abuses by Putin's government, particularly in the violent southern province of Chechnya. "The first thing that comes to mind is that Anna was killed...

Kremlin 'bullying' leaves western energy companies furious By Adrian Blomfield in Moscow (Filed: 23/09/2006) In the past few years, mention of Vladimir Putin at the dinner table of some western leaders could have brought on a case of indigestion. In the past week, though, the Russian president has been causing ulcers. Sakhalin Energy extracts oil and gas from one of the world's most inhospitable regions On Monday, Russia suspended an environmental permit for an oil and gas project led by Royal Dutch Shell on Sakhalin Island in the Pacific Ocean. The international community has watched with queasiness as democracy in...

MOSCOW (AP) - Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday congratulated Cuban leader Fidel Castro on his 80th birthday, praising him as one of the world's most outstanding politicians, the Kremlin said. The Russian president also wished Castro, who was forced to step aside as president two weeks ago because of illness, a speedy recovery. "You are well known in Russia as one of the most authoritative and outstanding political leaders today,'' Putin said in a telegram. He added that Russia and Communist Cuba would continue to be "active partners, with the aim of developing ties in various spheres in the...

March 23, 2006 — Following are the ABC News Investigative Unit's summaries of five documents from Saddam Hussein's government, which the U.S. government has released. The documents discuss Osama bin Laden, weapons of mass destruction, al Qaeda and more. The full documents can be found on the U.S. Army Foreign Military Studies Office Web site: http://fmso.leavenworth.army.mil/products-docex.htm. Note: Document titles were added by ABC News. "U.S. War Plan Leaked to Iraqis by Russian Ambassador" Documents dated March 5-8, 2003 Two Iraqi documents dated in March 2003 — on the eve of the U.S.-led invasion — and addressed to the secretary of...

The government of Hugo Chavez will receive representatives of Hamas "with pleasure" should they visit Venezuela on a forthcoming tour of South America. Vladimir Putin has announced he will host a meeting with the Palestinian terrorist group/political party next month in Moscow. "We have never considered Hamas a terrorist organization," says the Russian president. The ostensible reason Russia and Venezuela give for meeting with Hamas is its victory in last month's legislative elections, which gave it a majority of seats in the Palestinian parliament. We agree that the results of those elections must be "respected," in the narrow sense that...

The Embassy of Venezuela in Mexico has been shown, by very different sectors in that country and in Mexico, to be an instrument of the ideological propaganda and political expansion of the personal interests of Hugo Chávez. Observations of interventionism include giving electoral support to the PRD [Democratic Revolutionary Party of Mexico], even "espionage," as well as a presumed importation of high caliber weapons and contacts with the FARC, ETA and Al Qaeda. Mexico City | Tuesday, 15 November 2005 | Vladimir Villegas is a person of Euro-African heritage showing a good sense of humor and charisma. Tall, robust, sporting...

All day yesterday, Russian officials and President of Uzbekistan Islam Karimov, who was in Moscow, talked about what actually happened in Andijan. Karimov was convinced that the events in Andijan were the West's revenge on Uzbekistan for its independent foreign policy. According to the Russian leadership, they were the machinations of international terrorism. At the end, the leaders of Russia and Uzbekistan agreed that, in any case, Karimov's actions merited strong approval and support. Islam Karimov decided to tell the press the whole truth about the Andijan shootings and hastened to what he called the “big, weighty points”. Since the...

Text of report by Russian news agency ITAR-TASS Moscow, 25 June: Russian President Vladimir Putin has sent a message of congratulations to Mahmud Ahmadinezhad, who has won the presidential election in the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Russian president's press service said today. "I am confident that now that you have been elected [president] as a result of the Iranian people expressing their will, continuity in the development of long-term multi-faceted partnership and cooperation between our states will be secured," the message says. "These relations have been developing vigorously of late. The volume of trade has for the first time...

MOSCOW, June 22 (RIA Novosti) - Mexican President Vicente Fox wants an early Christmas present from Russian President Vladimir Putin. He wants a pair of boots. "When I arrived in Moscow the day before yesterday, I was met by the guards of honor who represented three branches of the armed forces. My eye caught the wonderful boots they were wearing," Vicente Fox said at a news conference here Wednesday. He said he assumed the boots were typically worn by Russian Cossacks, the mobile Russian and Ukrainian military units famous for being the vanguards of exploration and conquest in all the...

While President Vladimir Putin steadily builds his vertical of power, his constituents seem to be experiencing a major shift in attitude away from a sense of stability and order toward feelings of anarchy and turmoil. According to an opinion poll conducted last month by the Levada Center, 43 percent of Russians think the country is headed toward anarchy. In 2004, only 2 percent shared similar feelings. This dramatic shift has occurred in the course of a single year. It appears to have very little to do with ordinary Russians' reactions to social and economic factors, and a lot to do...

Original title: A TRASH-LEVEL SOLUTION (Note: A play on words, 'trash' being Russian slang for police) Vladimir chief of police hauled the homeless to the dump. Local city council gave the chief a standing ovation.                    Before the approach of 'Russia Day', homeless people in the city of Vladimir are sounding the alarm. They hide from the police, and expect a mass deportation from the city. A new city initiative has destroyed the way of life for this undercounted category of citizens. On April 28th, on the threshold of the approaching holidays a month and a half ago, the...

PRESIDENTIAL NEWS OF THE DAY: Continuing his trip to eastern Europe and Russia to commemorate the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945, President Bush met today with Russian President Vladimir Putin. QUOTE OF THE DAY: Excerpts from the President's remarks at the American Cemetary, Margraten, The Netherlands, May 8, 2005. Today we join them at this hallowed ground. We come first to remember the young Americans who did not live to comb gray hair. Each man or woman buried here is more than a headstone and a serial number; each person here has a name that is precious to some...

I’d love to have a talk about the current situation in the Ukraine with my left-wing friends, but I don’t think they would be interested, and probably not even capable of an intelligent discussion. Not only is the Ukraine so far off and seemingly unimportant to them, the intricacies of its politics defy the usual “left” vs. “right” stereotypes. I truly believe that many long-time lefties pine for the days of the Soviet Union. It gave them a glimmer of hope for world-wide socialism in their otherwise very comfortable, cushy, American lives. Too much guilt about living in the midst...