The Military
Army remains poorly trained, malnourished and demoralized. Alcoholism, suicide and corruption are rife. Weaponry is aging and newer models arrive at a trickle: India has bought more Russian tanks since 2001 than the Russian Army.
The Economy
What happens when–not if–oil and gas prices begin to retreat?
Human Capital
Russia’s human capital is being ravaged. The population is [...]

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The Red Square, St. Basil`s Cathedral, Tretyakov Gallery, the Bolshoi Theatre are amongst the “standard” must-see attractions in Moscow for a foreign traveller. However, there are a number of places in Moscow foreign tourists are rarely shown. One of them is restricted USSR military object – Secured Command Post «Taganskiy» (GO-42), located 65 meters underground.
Kotelnicheskii [...]

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This article is by the MoscowTimes.Com. The signals coming out of Washington are alarming to Russians.
From the article:
For the past eight years, Washington has tried to impose its will to other nations. It has been a failure, reducing, not enhancing, U.S. influence and alarming not only former foes but even close allies. In the process, [...]

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WHEN the other G8 leaders met their new Russian counterpart in Japan this week, they may all have had a similar question on their minds: are we talking to the right man? Is Dmitry Medvedev, described by George Bush as a “smart guy”, a real president? Or is he merely Vladimir Putin’s puppet and stand-in? [...]

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This is brought to you by JohnMauldin@InvestorsInsight.com. John provides a free daily newsletter that you can sign up for. George Friedman is making this forecast available so that you might sign up for his service.
Read original source with maps included.
Here’s the article:
By George Friedman at Stratfor.Com.
Introduction
For the first half of 2008, Stratfor focused [...]

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Only al-Qaeda and Iran pose bigger danger
The services are understood to fear that Russia’s three main intelligence agencies have flooded the country with agents, The Times understands.
There is reported to be deep irritation within the services that vital resources are having to be diverted to deal with industrial and military espionage by the Russians.
Read [...]

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The rapid increase in oil prices and the rise in metal and mineral demand worldwide have made the Russians overconfident. Their annual cash income in the last four years has grown fourfold. The economic crunch of the 1990s is behind them. Thus the Russians have become somewhat politically belligerent, visible in the opposition they have [...]

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Traute Grier was 16 years old when the Soviets cut off West Berlin from the rest of the world. Here, she recounts her desparate struggle for survival, her terror of the Russians and how friendships developed between the Americans and occupied Germans. more… [ Video ]

Photo Gallery: The Candy Bombers
Timeline: A Brief History of the [...]

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As full of fun facts as the Pew Report is, however, it has a fairly limited scope. Lots of numbers and percentages are bandied about but with very little historical context or explanation. Why, for example, do Russians prefer powerful leaders over straight-up democracies? Why do Tanzanians like President Bush so much? Oh, and why [...]

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PRISTINA, Kosovo | Days before the West begins one of the most ambitious nation-building experiments in modern history, profound questions remain about how the day-to-day governance of Kosovo will be handled.
Kosovo now has its own government. But the U.N. mission that effectively ruled the former province of Serbia since 1999 is still here.
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Video: Kosovo: [...]

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In what his campaign promoted as a major speech on nuclear security policy, Mr. McCain told a small crowd at the University of Denver that he would pursue a new arms control agreement with the Russians and that he supported a legally binding accord between the two nations to replace verification requirements in the Strategic [...]

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More and more Russian military men switch to Western military. We’re not just talking about French foreign legion, but also about Estonian army. It turns out that Tallinn touts Russian draftees by giving them freely Estonian citizenship.
More and more Russians try to get no in Russian, but into foreign army. Its’ not a secret that [...]

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The US Air Force Association, which includes past and present US air force generals, has just posted an assessment entitled Threats to Air Supremacy on its web site.
In short, the air force generals are explaining to US residents and the world that America is about to lose air superiority to the Russians and Chinese [...]

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Still, it is worth recalling a time when a little openness flew out of control.
As a correspondent and bureau chief for The New York Times in Moscow in the late 1980s, I had a ringside seat to observe the slow disintegration of the Soviet Union under Mr. Gorbachev. The collapse of the Soviet empire and [...]

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Former president Putin initiated Russia’s move to regain “great power” status by consolidating Soviet-style control over resources, infrastructure, the economy, and security. He used the Kremlin’s full powers to quash all serious political opposition by recreating a virtual one-party state. He tapped national nostalgia by restoring former communist symbols such as the Soviet anthem and [...]

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Both Russia and China have exceedingly different foreign policy aims than the United States, and domestic complexities inevitably have distanced Moscow and Beijing from Washington on a series of pressing international matters. The common aspiration to produce a multipolar world has driven Russia and China to effectively align against the United States incorporating a skilled [...]

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