Free Republic

Russia cannot defeat Ukraine or the West - and will likely lose - if the West mobilizes its resources to resist the Kremlin. The West’s existing and latent capability dwarfs that of Russia. The combined gross domestic product (GDP) of NATO countries, non-NATO European Union states, and our Asian allies is over $63 trillion.[1] The Russian GDP is on the close order of $1.9 trillion.[2] Iran and North Korea add little in terms of materiel support. China is enabling Russia, but it is not mobilized on behalf of Russia and is unlikely to do so.[3] If we lean in and...

Rights activists and immigration attorneys say the surge in the number of Russian asylum applications in the United States has been driven in part by the 2013 law concerning sexual minorities. Putin has been accused by critics of overseeing a mounting crackdown on dissent -- including against the political opposition and businesspeople not in step with the Kremlin – and fostering stigmatization of sexual minorities since he regained the presidency. 'I Had To Leave' Vlad, a gay Russian applicant in his 30s, told RFE/RL that he was simply looking to move somewhere where he could live "more freely," and that...

On a cold January evening, as plainclothes police officers hammered relentlessly on the door of their flat near Moscow, newlywed gay couple Pavel Stotsko and Yevgeny Voitsekhovsky began to consider fleeing Russia. “It was a siege situation. The police were in the entrance to the building, and all around it,” Stotsko said this week from the Netherlands, where the couple, who are both 28, were recently granted asylum. “We sat in the flat like in a prison cell, totally alone and in fear,” said Voitsekhovsky. The two men’s problems with the Russian authorities began at the start of the year...

Moscow, February 4, Interfax - President of the Cuban State Council and the Council of Ministers Raul Castro met with Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Kirill in the patriarchal chambers of the Christ the Savior Cathedral on Tuesday evening. Castro was the first foreign leader Patriarch Kirill has met with in his new capacity. Last October the Russian Orthodox Church has awarded Cuban leader Fidel Castro and his brother Raul for their contribution in building an Orthodox church in Havana and interreligious cooperation. The former Chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate Department for External Church Relations Metropolitan Kirill (the present...

The new head of the Russian Orthodox Church was elected last week, and in an example of democracy with a Russian twist, all three candidates were allegedly former KGB agents. The face off in Moscow saw Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad, 62, KGB codename Mikhailov, take on Metropolitan Filaret of Minsk and Slutsk, 73, codename Ostrovskii and Metropolitan Kliment of Kaluga and Borovsk, 59, codename Topaz. Documents from the KGB revealed the agents’ identities in the 1990s and showed that the upper echelons of the church were riddled with informers. More than 700 priests, monks and representatives of the...