Investors from Russia and Saudi Arabia have cut their combined holdings of US securities by more than $50 billion between mid 2014 and 2015, reports the Financial Times. Over the period, Saudi Arabia reduced its holdings by $26 billion, according to an annual US Treasury survey published earlier this week. [...]

The belief that Vladimir Putin single-handedly “manufactured” the current conflict with the West to win domestic support, spark a surge in Russian patriotism and hold on to power at any cost, has been a staple of mainstream Western analysis of Russia since the Ukraine crisis began. That same belief — that Putin manufactures crises or otherwise inserts Moscow into them to distract an antsy [...]

Almost uniformly, the western think tankers and media types who comment on Russia purport to be strongly concerned with freedom. After all, the central tenet of their anger with the country’s rulers is what they perceive as a lack of democracy. The usual charge goes something like this. Putin is a “dictator” who is suppressing the liberty loving Russian people and crippling their hopes and d [...]

Looks like Spain is in trouble. The country has been slammed for “betraying its NATO allies” allowing Russian Navy vessels to refuel in its North African territories – but in reality what the claim does is expose a massive web of hypocrisy. [...]

EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker plans to visit Russia on June 16, during the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, Reuters reports, citing his spokesperson. The Commission president would be the first leader of an EU institution to visit Russia since sanctions were imposed in March 2014 over the conflict in Ukraine. [...]

The large-scale US-NATO amassing of military forces on Russia’s Western borders, NATO’s so-called “Eastern Front,” is unprecedented and creates the impression of actual war preparations, according to Professor Stephen F. Cohen, however it might also be driven by the economics of the US military industrial complexes. [...]

So foreign ministers from the 28 NATO member-nations met in Brussels for a two-day summit, while mighty military power Montenegro was inducted as a new member. Global Robocop NATO predictably discussed Afghanistan (a war NATO ignominiously lost); Iraq (a war the Pentagon ignominiously lost); Libya (a nation NATO turned into a failed state devastated by militia hell); Syria (a nation NATO, via T [...]

On 8 April, 1783, Russian Empress Catherine II signed the decree “On Accession of the Crimean Peninsula, the Taman Island and the Kuban Region to the Russian Empire.” Everyone was due to maintain the document in secrecy until the integration became a fait accompli. On 28 June, 1783, the Manifesto was finally promulgated as the Crimean nobles swore allegiance to the Empress in the presence o [...]

The chairman of the Russian Constitutional Court has said that Barack Obama’s statements about American exceptionalism were very similar to propaganda used by Nazi Germany and equally dangerous to world peace. “The idea of specialness, exceptionality and unique rights of the American state and American people has been used in US internal political rhetoric for quite a while, [...]

Germany is pushing NATO to holding a meeting with Russia ahead of the upcoming summit of the alliance in Warsaw. It comes as NATO continues to ignore Russia’s concerns over its expansion and military build-up in Europe. “There was broad agreement yesterday that NATO should convene a new meeting of the NATO-Russia Council before our next summit in July," [...]

As the West is sucked deeper into the Syrian conflict and starts a new Cold War with Russia, the mainstream news media has collapsed as a vehicle for reliable information, creating a danger for the world, writes Robert Parry. Does any intelligent person look at a New York Times article about Russia or Vladimir Putin these days and expect to read an objective, balanced account? [...]

A Russian diplomatic call to outlaw the US-sponsored policy of “regime change” is timelier than ever following recent events in Latin America. The developments there are now routinely described as ‘institutional’ coups d’état, with popular presidents removed from power and replaced by neoliberal functionaries, enjoying almost unhidden support of the US government and American financi [...]

Despite all their differences, the West must respect Russia and look to compromise with it, Daniel Kawczynski, a Conservative British MP, told RT while on a visit to Moscow with a group of British parliamentarians. The British MPs arrived in the Russian capital to resume inter-parliamentary contacts that had been stalled for two years, [...]

Less than a week after Russia marked its annual Victory Day commemoration of the end of the Second World War, NATO troops began planned military exercises in Estonia all the way up to Russia’s border. It begs the question – are these people actually mad? [...]

Russia will restore a missile attack warning station near Crimea’s Sevastopol to counter increasing NATO activity in the Black Sea, Izvestia daily reported, quoting a source in the Russian defense industry. The source told reporters that the installation will be based on the Soviet-era Dnepr station (NATO code name Hen House), but that it would be thoroughly modernized. [...]

$20 million over the next two fiscal years will be made available in the form of grants to unspecified people in Europe who will presumable carry stories that are more in line with US policy, Jim Jatras, former US diplomat, told RT.   [...]

German companies are stepping up their efforts to bypass Western anti-Russian sanctions since Russian remains one of the most lucrative markets in Europe. In order to operate under sanctions, German companies open their own production in and invest in factories in Russia. [...]

Work on the fourth and final power line to deliver electricity from mainland Russia to the Crimean peninsula has been completed. President Putin oversaw the launch of the energy bridge by video link from the Black Sea resort of Sochi. [...]

Russia’s human rights ombudsman, Tatyana Moskalkova, has invited international observers to Crimea so that they can personally see the republic’s peaceful integration into the Russian Federation and the local population’s massive support for this. Moskalkova made the statement ahead of a conference on human rights observation during the process of Crimea and Sevastopol’s accession into [...]

The West’s propaganda war against Russia filters events there through a prism of cynicism and contempt, but that misses the human component of a country still remembering the deep personal scars of World War II, as Gilbert Doctorow reflects. I will open with full disclosure: I am generally not enthusiastic about crowds or going with the flow. [...]

Independent French political analyst Thierry Meyssan lays out what he believes is the real reason behind the destabilization of Syria and Ukraine, and how the horrific bleeding wounds can finally be stopped. In his analysis, published in the foreign affairs analysis website Voltaire Network, Meyssan laments that in spite of the assistance which Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah have provided to Syria [...]

As the project for a united Europe continues to experience arguably the most serious political crisis since its inception, policy elites in Brussels are urging Europeans not to despair, to stay together, and to prepare for confrontation with Russia instead. European Council President Donald Tusk is unsatisfied with the defeatist attitudes among Europeans. Speaking in Rome on Thursday on the 69t [...]