Kommersant reports on Putin’s possible plans to merge existing separate intelligence agencies responsible for domestic and foreign espionage as well as protection of the top leaders of Russia into one Ministry of State Security, something akin to the KGB of the Soviet era.
NATO Won’t Do More than Express Concern If Putin Attacks Another Former Soviet Republic, Illarionov Says 2016-09-17 17:21:55 Staunton, VA, September 15, 2016 – If Vladimir Putin sends his forces to seize any of the former Soviet republics — including the three Baltic states which are NATO members — the Western alliance won’t do anything more […]
Now that some Russians have put up statues in honor of past Russian dictators like Ivan the Terrible, something they had not done for 400 years, and Joseph Stalin, which they hadn’t done since Khrushchev’s expose, others are calling for naming a square in a closed city to honor one of the latter’s most horrific henchmen, Lavrenty Beria.
Russian opposition figures who took part in recent discussions in Tallinn and Vilnius said upcoming elections in Russia will be totally predictable, says Vadim Shtepa, but they themselves were also totally predictable in focusing “almost exclusively” on Moscow and how Muscovites will react.
As the number of Russians living in poverty increases, last week one mother of five children handcuffed herself to the entrance of Putin’s office to protest lack of support, and other women stood along a highway offering to strip for passersby in order to earn money.
No one in the Donbass believes the ceasefire declared there a week ago will last, and many say the situation now is “even more frightening” that before.
In Moscow’s latest Orwellian move, the Russian Supreme Court has ruled that the USSR did not invade Poland in September 1939, declaring that those who say otherwise are rewriting history and promoting extremism
Russia’s ambassador to the UN claims information about chemical weapons in Syria was fabricated; Russia also said cooperation with the US in Syria on air strikes will not include Aleppo.
The Defense Ministry has announced that “federal agencies of the executive government and enterprises of the defense sector” are to be involved and checked for their readiness to function in “war time.”
If Russia is going to invade Ukraine, it would have to be done in the next few weeks as the weather will change in October and new recruits come in that month, with other soldiers rotating out.
