Free Republic

Lots of footage of flash floods as spring thaws early in northern hills, bringing torrential floods along the Ural river. Commentary from Konstantin accompanies footage.

A major flu outbreak has hit Kremlin and could force Russian President Vladimir Putin into isolation in a bunker, a report in Metro said. The development comes a day after officials announced that Mr Putin will not hold his annual end-of-year press conference this year. Since Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov gave no reason or the break with tradition, several outlets are claiming that it has been done due to health issues Mr Putin is facing. After Russia launched its offensive against Ukraine in February this year, there has been a renewed focus on Mr Putin's health. "Yes, this year, flu...

A senior citizen has been detained in Russia for attempting to install a plaque commemorating Richard Nixon’s visit to a small mining town dating back 70 years. Vice President Richard Nixon traveled to Degtyarsk in 1959 as part of his visit to the Soviet Union, which culminated in his so-called “Kitchen Debate” with Nikita Khrushchev. Local lore claims that Nixon had spent his teens in the small town, where his parents had allegedly worked, in the mid-to-late 1920s. Pyotr Kikilyk, 75, wanted to commemorate Nixon’s 1959 visit to Degtyarsk with a granite plaque over the weekend at the building of...

An Oopart (out of place artifact) is a term applied to dozens of prehistoric objects found in various places around the world that, given their level of technology, are completely at odds with their determined age based on physical, chemical, and/or geological evidence. Ooparts often are frustrating to conventional scientists and a delight to adventurous investigators and individuals interested in alternative scientific theories. In 1991, the appearance of extremely tiny, coil-shaped artifacts found near the banks of Russia’s Kozhim, Narada, and Balbanyu rivers brought about a debate that has continued to this day. These mysterious and minuscule structures suggest that...

Russia may showcase its new main battle tank (MBT), the T-95 at the arms show in the Urals Region in summer 2010, a media report said. Russia will become the first country in the world to have the 5th-generartion MBT if its military confirms the commission of vehicle in the army. "The work on the project has been conducted for many years. If the government gives us a 'green light' we will exhibit the tank at the [Russian Expo Arms 2010] arms show in Nizhny Tagil this summer," RIA Novosti quoted General Director of the Uralvagonzavod plant Oleg Siyenko as...

Nine experienced cross-country skiers hurriedly left their tent on a Urals slope in the middle of the night, casting aside skis, food and their warm coats. Clad in their sleepwear, the young people dashed headlong down a snowy slope toward a thick forest, where they stood no chance of surviving bitter temperatures of around minus 30 degrees Celsius. Baffled investigators said the group died as a result of “a compelling unknown force” — and then abruptly closed the case and filed it as top secret. The deaths, which occurred 49 years ago on Saturday, remain one of the deepest mysteries...

Flattering to consider that someone writing tongue-in-cheek to www.myway.com thinks that Porter Goss, the director of the CIA got his ideas where Osama bin Laden may be hiding from canadapress.com. Goss stated in an interview with Time for the magazine’s June 27 issue, that he has an "excellent idea" where Osama bin Laden is hiding, but that the United States’ respect for sovereign nations makes it more difficult to capture the al-Qaida chief.

MOSCOW, FEBRUARY 25 (RIA Novosti) - A portable antiaircraft missile system has been seized from a local criminal group in Yekaterinburg in the Urals region in the east of European Russia, the Russian Interior Ministry said on Wednesday. According to acting minister Rashid Nurgaliev, this happened in January, when a "large network of organized crime" was exposed in the city. A disassembled Igla system was found in a hideout in a private house. Before that, the police used to find this kind of weapons only with militants in Chechnya, Nurgaliev said. The hideout was found to contain an entire arsenal...