'Russia for Russians' strikes electoral chord

Mystery of the Romanovs [Documental]

Top Documentary Films

Bones thought to be those of Grand Duchess Anastasia and Tsarevich Alexei are discovered by archaeologists in a Yekaterinburg forest in 2007, and scientists from all over the world work to provide the most conclusive DNA analysis in 21st Century History.

As over a century passes, mystery still plagues the final moments of Tsar Nicholas II and his family. Amid a mess of skeletons unearthed in a desolate Siberian forest and proven to be those of the Tsar, his wife and three of their children, two remain missing.

Could Anastasia and the Tsarevich Alexei have cheated death and escaped the night when Bolsheviks executed the last Imperial Family of Russia? Will the discovery of two more skeletons in 2007 only 60 meters away from skeletons found in 1991 seal the Romanov mystery?

Putin: "Change in Russian political system will be 'evolutionary'"

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin at a meeting with members of the Valdai discussion club
© RIA Novosti. Alexei Druginyn

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said the current political system in Russia remains effective and that any change will be "evolutionary."

"We do not believe that it has fully exhausted itself, but we are not going to stand in place," Putin said on Friday at a meeting with members of the Valdai discussion club.

The political system will be transformed to the extent the economy requires, he said.

"I hope that this will take place in an evolutionary, straightforward way under a consensus of the so-called ruling elite and the people," he said.

The methods that were used in previous decades are no longer effective given today's open information society, he said.

"I believe that this is becoming clear to everyone. One way or another, political systems are going to end up changing. Moreover, economics will require changes to these political systems," he said.

Putin expressed confidence that organizations such as the Customs Union "will enable these kinds of positive changes."

The Customs Union unifies its members along the lines of the WTO, enabling "the rest of the world to operate throughout the entire Customs Union space on WTO terms, which is a huge plus for the Customs Union member states - Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan - and their partners worldwide."

Russian Mars Probe Will Likely Come Crashing Back to Earth

wired.com/ By Adam Mann

Things are looking grim for the Russian space agency’s Phobos-Grunt mission to Mars, with experts in the space industry calling the probability of rescue nearly zero.

The spacecraft has been stranded in low-Earth orbit following an engine failure almost immediately after launch on Nov. 8. Efforts to contact the probe have proved futile and the Pentagon’s NORAD has reportedly projected that the vehicle will reenter the Earth’s atmosphere on Nov. 26, the day after NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory is scheduled to launch. (Wired was unable to confirm this date with NORAD due to the federal holiday.)

It was hoped that Phobos-Grunt would be the first fully successful Russian mission to the Red Planet after a 50-year-long string of failures. It was set to land on Mars’ moon Phobos and return a soil sample from its surface.

The spacecraft is currently in a decaying orbit around Earth that should allow it to remain in space for at least a few weeks. During this time, Russian engineers will continue trying to contact the probe, hoping for a miracle.

In the event that no contact is established, the probe will soon fall back to Earth. The probable fall zone is currently very large — between 51.4 degrees N latitude and 51.4 degrees S latitude, which includes most of the U.S., part of Europe, all of Africa and Australia and virtually all of South America and Asia — and could prove dangerous if the spacecraft were to come down over a populated area.

While most of the 15-ton vehicle is expected to burn up in the atmosphere, its size and mass suggests that some debris would reach the Earth’s surface.

Image: Roscosmos/IKI

A Spy In The House Of #Putin

By Aleksandr Manheim, Daisy Sindelar

The relationship between Russian Prime Minister and probable future President Vladimir Putin and his wife of 28 years, Lyudmila, has been alternately portrayed as a nightmare union and a love story for the ages.

While the truth probably lies somewhere in between, new revelations about Putin's KGB career in East Germany suggest marital harmony was not high on the future leader's agenda.

Erich Schmidt-Eenboom, a journalist and expert on German intelligence, says he has proof a female West German spy was able to infiltrate the Putin household during the family's five-year stay in Dresden, East Germany. Her discovery? That Putin was an enthusiastic womanizer and a violent bully who beat his wife.

Schmidt-Eenboom, who has written numerous books and papers on Germany's BND foreign intelligence agency, maintains that the agent, a young woman operating under the name Lenchen, or Lenochka, was tasked with digging up information about the KGB's military and economic activities in southern Germany.

"But she quickly became friends with Lyudmila Putina and became a kind of trusted confidante for her," he says. "Lyudmila told her that Vladimir frequently beat her, and often cheated on her, that he had had trysts with other women."

Schmidt-Eenboom, whose revelations were first published in the German newspaper "Berliner Zeitung," has dismissed suggestions that the information was given to him in order to discredit Putin as he prepares to resume his role as Russian president next year.

The reporter claims he first heard the story of Lenchen -- who also went by the nickname "Balcony" because of her buxom chest -- while talking to a former senior BND official earlier this year.

"Of course, as a journalist, I needed to find a second source," he says. "Several weeks ago, I managed to meet with a contact at the Verfassungsschutz, the German Office for the Protection of the Constitution, who also had this information at his disposal."

Lenchen, he says, was a Baltic German who spoke Russian and German with equal fluency -- a skill that made her ideally suited for her work in Dresden's small KGB bureau, where she officially worked as a translator for the Soviet Union's Western Forces based in East Germany.

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Putin’s father fought for Nazis [Vlasov's Army]: Suvorov

kyivscoop.blogspot.com/

In 2003, Polish media reported that KGB defector Victor Suvorov (Vladimir Rizun) found documents and pictures in London which show that the Russian president’s father served in the Nazi-collaborating army led by Russian general Vlasov.  Vladimir Spiridonovich Putin was apparently captured by British forces, but not before he helped crush the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943.  (In the photo above, Putin’s father is identified as the man on the far left.)  Russian media spun the story to say that Putin Sr. was really like beloved Soviet fictional television hero Otto von Stirlitz, a Russian agent who had infiltrated the Nazi security service.


Original articles see:
www.kp.ru/daily/23089/5494/
www.compromat.ru/main/putin/vlasovets.htm
art-of-arts.livejournal.com/125325.html

Posted by Steve Bandera at 4:51 AM

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kyivscoop.blogspot.com/
It seems to be a recurring observation that whenever the Kremlin finds negative things to say about Ukrainians, they prove to be true only of Russians, as has been noted when comparing Ukrainian national poet Taras Shevchenko to Russian national poet Alexander Pushkin.  In the instant example, we have the attempt to implicate Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko's father in Nazi collaboration, except that the attempt fails because the author of the book cannot be discovered, and the book's ISBN number turns out to be faked.  The accusation against Putin's father stands, against Yushchenko's father falls.  Putin's father is a one-time member of the NKVD who went on to assist in the suppression of the Warsaw uprising of August 1941 www.revolucia.ru/le030.htm.  The Kremlin disinformation against Yushkenko's father is primitive and easily refuted, as is its disinformation in its Hitler Doll Hoax.  The Kremlin is staffed by mediocrities who continue dismantling the Russian Empire with their competent theft of the nation's wealth, and their incompetent three-stooges antics on the information front.

#Putin Was A 'Philanderer And A Wifebeater' During His Time In The #KGB

Business Insider

During his time heading up KGB operations in East Germany, Vladimir Putin was described as a "philanderer and a wifebeater" in reports compiled by German spy agency BND, reports the Daily Mail. 

While stationed in Dresden, Putin, unbeknown to himself, was being paid special attention by a BND agent, code named "Balcony" because she had large breasts. German newspaper Berliner Kurier reports that she managed to uncover another side to Putin.

Masquerading as a translator, the agent became a confide of Putin's wife, Ludmilla, who proceeded to open up and reveal her husband's abuse and disloyalties.

London's Evening Standard reports that the revelations have been confirmed by German intelligence experts, one of whom said he was absolutely confident that Putin was a big "sexual player."

The German reports were uncovered recently by BND expert Erich Schmidt-Eenboom who has written numerous books on the spy agency.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/putin-was-a-sexual-player-and-a-wifebeater-during-his-kgb-days-2011-11?nr_email_referer=1&utm_source=Triggermail&utm_medium=email&utm_term=Business%20Insider%20Select&utm_campaign=BI%20Select%20Recurring%202011-11-02#ixzz1caG1jaE6

Sexy Russian Spy Anne Chapman Accused Of Plagiarism In Article On Russian Poet

Image: celebrity blog

Business Insider
Anna Chapman, the Russian spy expelled from the United States who has since become some kind of right wing ideologue back in her home state, has been accused of plagiarism in an article on Russian poet Alexander Pushkin.

Chapman wrote an article on Pushkin (the romantic-era Russian poet considered as important as Shakespeare in Russia, yet apparently 'untranslatable') for a column published Monday in paper Komsomolskaya Pravda — here's its Google translated headline: "If Pushkin had to write his mature works, then perhaps there would be no revolution and the murder of the king!".

Unfortunately, it appears that Chapman is in fact no Pushkin scholar.

Worse still, she didn't even plagiarize from a Pushkin scholar, instead choosing to lift entire passages from United Russia spin doctor Oleg Matveichev, a man who thinks that Pushkin was killed in a "European plot" and that United Russia's opposition should be gathered in a city square and run over with tanks.

The Moscow Times reports that Pushkin's death is often invoked for political reasons. "The history of such uses of Pushkin is a trashy novel in its own right," Princeton University professor Caryl Emerson told the paper.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/anna-chapman-plagiarism-pushkin-2011-11?nr_email_referer=1&utm_source=Triggermail&utm_medium=email&utm_term=Business%20Insider%20Select&utm_campaign=BI%20Select%20Recurring%202011-11-02#ixzz1caDZROvD

Suspected Russian Spy Was Sleeping With UK Politician And European Officials

Ekaterina Zatuliveter, a former Parliamentary assistant in the UK accused of being a Russian spy, had a four year affair with an MP and also slept with a number of unidentified European officials, according to reports from The Times.

Zatuliveter, also known as Katia, was arrested last year by the British secret service on suspicion of spying. Now, facing deportation at London's Special Immigration Appeals Commission, she is denying the accusations.

Regardless, her relationship with 64-year-old British MP Mike Hancock has come under scrutiny. The Telegraph reports that she first met with Hancock while she was a student at St Petersburg University. She was assigned as his chaperon for a conference and rebuffed his advances that night.

However, on a return visit to Moscow Hancock reconnected with her and she moved to the UK to conduct an affair with him while studying at the University of Bradford. She eventually began to work as his assistant (passing all security checks) in the UK Parliament, a sensitive role because of his work on the Defence Select Committee.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/mike-hancock-ekaterina-zatuliveter-russia-spy-2011-10?nr_email_referer=1&utm_source=Triggermail&utm_medium=email&utm_term=Business%20Insider%20Select&utm_campaign=BI%20Select%20Recurring%202011-10-18#ixzz1bAsAMG8U

#Conspiracy - KGB's style assassination: Alexander Litvinenko

Siberia home to yeti, bigfoot enthusiasts insist

• Miriam Elder guardian.co.uk

The Abominable Snowman, a 50s horror film, would probably be dismissed by modern yeti enthusiasts as bunkum. Photograph: Cine Text/Allstar/Sportsphoto Ltd
The vast Siberian tundra holds untold mysteries, from once-secret nuclear installations to alleged UFO crash sites. Now, a team of scientists say they are "95%" sure that Russia's wintry expanse is home to the mythical yeti, otherwise known as the abominable snowman. More than a dozen scientists and yeti enthusiasts flew in from Canada, Estonia, Sweden and the US to exchange findings with their Russian counterparts at a day-long conference in the town of Tashtagol, some 2,000 miles east of Moscow in the Kemerovo region. Locals there have reported an increase in sightings of a creature in recent years. A two-day expedition to the region's Azassky cave and Karatag peak over the weekend "collected irrefutable evidence" of the yeti's existence there, the Kemerovo government claimed in a statement. "In one of the detected tracks, Russian scientist Anatoly Fokin noted several hairs that might belong to the yeti," it added. Scientists also found footprints, a presumed bed and various other markers. "Conference participants came to the conclusion that the artefacts found give 95% evidence of the habitation of the 'snow man' on Kemerovo region territory," the statement said. "I know they exist – I see them every day," a conference participant, Robin Lynn, said by telephone from Kemerovo. She says she has a family of 10 yeti-like creatures living on her land in the US state of Michigan. Evidence of yeti life of the creature has allegedly been found in the Himalayas and North America, where it is know as sasquatch, or bigfoot. John Binderangel, a Canadian wildlife biologist who has been studying the yeti for 30 years, said the Siberian expedition offered further proof of the beast's existence. "We were shown some twisted willow branches that are referred to as markers – they were convincing evidence of this hominoid," he said. "There were also some tracks, but we're not quite sure what to make of them." Conference participants called for the launch of a campaign to "work out a more serious relationship [to the yeti] in society and mass media", the Kemerovo government said. They also proposed opening a university research centre. The Kemerovo government has hosted a number of stunts aimed at boosting the region's reputation as a yeti centre. Last month, it welcomed former heavyweight boxing champion Nikolai Valuev on a search for the yeti. The 7ft "beast from the east" reportedly failed in his quest.

Secret new Russian missile fails in testing

A new intercontinental Russian missile whose development has been kept as a state secret failed in its first test-firing and crashed back into the launch zone, reports said Wednesday.
Reports published on Russian news agencies about the failed test firing from the Plesetsk cosmodrome in northern Russia appeared to be the first indication that the ground-based missile even existed.
"After launch, the missile fell back down onto the territory of the cosmodrome. There were no casualties or damage," a military source told the state RIA Novosti news agency.

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Russia 2012 Ticket

Putin y Medvedev intercambian nuevamente sus puestos

El Pais

Ya se conoce el nombre del próximo presidente de Rusia: Vladímir Putin. En el congreso del partido gubernamental Rusia Unida, el actual jefe de Estado, Dmitri Medvédev, propuso la candidatura de hombre fuerte del país para las elecciones presidenciales de 2012. Minutos antes, Putin había propuesto a Medvédev que encabezara la lista de Rusia Unida en las parlamentarias de diciembre próximo. La noticia -que fue una sorpresa pues los analistas esperaban que la decisión de quién sería el candidato presidencial se tomaría a último minuto., es un balde de agua fría sobre las cabezas de quienes tenían esperanzas en un programa reformas democráticas. 

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Tres días que precipitaron la caída del Imperio Soviético

PILAR BONET

El intento de golpe de Estado que mantuvo en vilo al mundo durante tres días de agosto de 1991 se desdibuja y mitifica en la memoria de los participantes y testigos de aquellos sucesos que condenaron a muerte a la URSS (Unión de Repúblicas Socialistas Soviéticas), un Estado de 22.400 kilómetros cuadrados desde el Báltico hasta el Pacífico pasando por las montañas del Pamir. Pero aquellos acontecimientos que acabaron con el sistema comunista soviético no son aún historia, porque sus consecuencias se sienten hasta el día de hoy.

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Russia and the World meltdown

Uploaded by RussiaToday on Jul 30, 2011

With the Eurozone and the US struggling to stem debt meltdown, how secure is Russia? Lessons have been learned from the 2008 crisis and reserves are in good shape, but Russia still needs to diversify its economy to withstand global instability.

Obama Takes Putin’s Side in Magnitsky Case

Friends and relatives take part in the funeral ceremony of Sergei Magnitsky at a cemetery in Moscow this week. Photograph: Mikhail Voskresensky/Reuters

by Kim Zigfeld
The lawyer for a major foreign investor in Russia is arrested on bogus charges while attempting to expose corruption by the Kremlin. Once in jail, he’s brutally tortured to death. A bipartisan pair of U.S. senators introduces legislation to block the high-level Kremlin officials who were directly involved in the murder from setting foot on U.S. soil.
What response do you expect from the president of the United States?
For some time now, I have been expressing outrage at the fact that Barack Obama did not actively support the Cardin-McCain Magnitsky Act, named for Sergei Magnitsky, the attorney in question. But I never dared dream that Obama would take the Kremlin’s side and aggressively seek to derail the legislation for his own personal political gain.
Yet that is exactly what the Washington Post reports he has “quietly” done.
The Financial Times immediately noted that the United States was “toning down” its action regarding Magnitsky. That’s a mighty understatement. Acting as if it were a lobbyist for the Kremlin, the Obama administration first issued an ominous warning to the Senate:

Senior Russian government officials have warned us that they will respond asymmetrically if this legislation passes. Their argument is that we cannot expect them to be our partner in supporting sanctions against countries like Iran, North Korea, and Libya, and sanction them at the same time. Russian officials have said that other areas of bilateral cooperation, including on transit to Afghanistan, could be jeopardized if this legislation passes.

Vladimir Putin couldn’t have put it better himself!
Then Hillary Clinton went to work “quietly” behind the scenes to strike a deal in which the State Department would “quietly” ban a certain number of Russian officials administratively if key senators would withdraw their support for Cardin-McCain.
One could almost see Putin grinning from ear to ear, like the Grinch who stole Christmas.
According to Freedom House, the level of democracy and liberty in Russia has declined each and every year since Putin has held power. Young Russians are fleeing the country at breakneck speed to avoid persecution. Opposition figures who are not murdered outright (like Magnitsky, journalist Anna Politkovskaya, and legislator Galina Starovoitova) are subjected to relentless harassment: First the Kremlin tried to revoke former first deputy prime minister Boris Nemtsov’s passport to keep him in the country, then it considered revoking his citizenship to keep him out.

Full story...

Russian-backed Propaganda Networks Claim Obama is a CIA Agent

Certain elements associated with Russian propaganda channel Russia Today have been spreading the idea that Barack Obama has long been a tool of the C.I.A.

The real evidence points far more in the direction of the Communist Party USA and their K.G.B. masters.
Why would Russia be trying to steer attention away from their networks and on to the C.I.A.?
By Cliff Kincaid July 18, 2011
Wayne Madsen, a regular contributor to the Russia Today propaganda channel, has been making the rounds for a year claiming that Barack Obama or his family members have had CIA connections. Now, the American Thinker, a premier conservative news site, has taken the bait.
In a July 15 post, “The network that produced Barack Hussein Obama, Jr.,” Thomas Lifson cites an article on the site of the Claremont Institute that “raises the intriguing network of connections among President Obama’s family and programs sponsored by the CIA and a variety of fronts and associated groups” Lifson claims a “history” by the CIA of co-opting “progressive American internationalists” and suggests this may be the case with Obama.
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'I'll be a good prime minister': Russian 3rd richest man launches new venture

Uploaded by RussiaToday on Jun 25, 2011

Russia's third richest man has set his sights on politics after conquering the world of business. Mikhail Prokhorov has been elected leader of 'The Right Cause' party, which plans to run in December's parliamentary elections. RT's Egor Piskunov has spoken exclusively to him in Moscow.

Canadian Security Inteligent Services: WHAT FUTURE FOR RUSSIA?

Executive summary

There exist many Russias, images of which are shaped as much by perceptions as by misperceptions and what seem at times to be flagrant contradictions. Descriptions of the country vary widely: seen by some as a polity suffering the pains of political transition, it is also viewed as a petro-state, a neo-imperial power whose former glory has made nostalgic, and as "Russia Inc.", where all can be bought and sold. The multiple definitions of Russia are all in their own way rooted in current political, economic and social realities, as well as in its geography and its self-image in the international system. All these factors together determine whether Russia's ambitions will become realities, or if the gap between them may simply be too wide to bridge.

President Dmitry Medvedev has repeatedly indicated that his country needs modernisation. But one wonders whether he has the necessary power to make a lasting difference in this sense. Modernisation is improbable in the current system, in which class interests are too rigid and corruption reigns. Genuine modernisation will require a seismic shift in Russian politics, an unlikely development since the influential classes prefer the status quo. Mr Medvedev might well be viewed as the younger, future face of Russia, but he is in many respects a virtual president, unable to implement modernisation programs because his prime minister is more powerful than him.

Observers at times assume that Russian democracy will come to resemble western-style democracy. While the West can assist Russia's transition, the very ideas of democracy, liberty, justice and political participation often carry differing meanings for both sides and hinder mutual understanding. It also remains to be seen whether a genuinely democratic Russia would be more open to collaboration with North America and Europe.

Diversifying the national economy has been advertised as a long-term objective. However, oil and gas will provide Russia's most meaningful comparative advantage far into the future; it is not realistic to imagine the country's hydrocarbon sector becoming only one amongst many. Moscow hopes to play the "Chinese energy card" when dealing with the EU: if Europeans do not meet Russia's conditions, it might turn eastwards, where a growing market lies and is open for business. This is mere rhetoric because there is no pipeline infrastructure to ship the required oil to China and natural gas is not prominent in China's supply mix. Russia and the EU therefore rely as much on each other for energy security.

Moscow's vision of its future as a great, aspiring power with "rights and consequence over its subordinate neighbours" is not shared by the surrounding political actors. Improvements have occurred in its relations with the US thanks to the "reset" policy and its cornerstone initiative, the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START). But the treaty's future is uncertain because it has not been ratified by the US senate and may run into verification challenges. Relations with Beijing are often seen as a way to sustain Russia's status as a global power. In reality the relationship between the two countries is limited to a few common interests. In the end, Moscow remains overwhelmingly oriented towards western culture, politics and world-views.

When Mr Putin assumed the Russian presidency in the late 1990s, he promised significant improvements to the state of the Russian armed forces. Little accomplishments have been made despite words meant to create the illusion of a military renaissance. Russia maintains a nuclear strategic deterrence capability, and a quantitatively impressive conventional arsenal. However, despite reform efforts, Russia lacks modern military capabilities and the quality of its forces leaves room to be desired.

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