... shady business deals with some of these oligarchs and others, deals that generally seemed to have some ulterior motive in advancing Putin’s agenda in the background. In particular, the court documents also maintain that he befriended Ukrainian natural gas businessman and Putin ally Dmitry Firtash around the same time be began interacting with Yanukovych. Firtash, featured in the Panama Papers revelations and linked to the essential head of the Russian mafia, Semion Mogilevich (also a friend ...
... Russian fighter-bomber jet that Turkey alleges violated its airspace. The Russian jet had been bombing Turkmen positions/villages—part of a series of Russian bombings in recent days that have targeted Turkmen—on the border area of Turkey and Syria. Turkey is supporting these Turkmen rebels against Assad that Russia is bombing, and had previously asked Russia not to bomb them. Turkey also claims it warned the plane ten times before it fired, but Russia denies this. The alleged violation of ...
... Russia, America, and the state of their relationship is the lack of measured and reasoned commentary. Make no mistake, though, the problems between Russia and America are serious and affect a whole host of major issues around the world from wars in Syria and Ukraine to global energy distribution, access, and prices, to space exploration and militarization, just to name a few.
Perhaps this is understandable, given the nature of the history of the most serious, dangerous rivalry the world has ever ...