Raciest Rubbish from the Voice of Russia

The following  shameful state sponsored article is released by the Voice of Russia which is obviously destined to be read by The Ignorant, The Thugs, The Uneducated, The Low Life member's of Russian Society. 

 

This article was written in 2014 and not in Stalin's Era.  

 

It brings shame on all RUSSIAN Society.

 

Perhaps we do need to return to the Cold War where we in the West are Free, Where we can make our own decisions, Where we choose our lifestyle and our sexuality without fear of the State Apparatus, where the little 5'5" man in the Kremlin, Czar Putin can rule his private realm though terror! 

 

WE IN THE WEST DO NOT NEED RUSSIA, WE NEVER DID, WE NEVER WILL

US, NATO, CIA supporting nazis in Ukraine project

The overthrow of the government of Ukraine was an armed coup d’état ordered, planned, organized, funded, carried out and executed by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Pentagon, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and their surrogates in the European Union (EU) using every instrument at their disposal including the National Security Agency (NSA) and all of their amassed media resources. It was carried out with the knowledge and approval of US President Barack Hussein Obama if not at his directive. 

 

The actions of the US in organizing the armed overthrow and installation of an illegitimate puppet government in Kiev was and continues to be illegal and revelations that continue to be exposed, including the latest regarding the hiring of snipers to kill demonstrators and police, are an outrage and a crime against all humanity that must not be allowed to stand.

 

Snipers brought in by oppostion

The latest revelations with regard to the coup d’état in Ukraine concern the snipers that were present in an around Maidan Square during the height of the recent violence. According to multiple reports from varied sources including video footage, witness statements, released telephone conversations between officials and even statements by doctors, the snipers were shooting indiscriminately and killing both protestors and members of the security services. Of the almost 400 police officers injured in the clashes and the approximately 82 dead (figures are from initial reports on newswires) almost all of them suffered bullet wounds to the head and neck. More than 20 protestors were also reportedly killed by snipers on February 20th.

 

Catherine Ashton Urmas Paet conversation leaked

According to multiple reports and sources the snipers on Maidan Square were hired by the Klitschko led opposition that has now assumed itself to be the new government in Kiev. The most damning evidence to date has come in the form of a telephone conversation between EU Foreign Policy Chief Catherine Ashton and the Estonian Minister of Foreign Affairs Urmas Paet which was intercepted and recorded and has been authenticated by the Estonian Foreign Ministry.

 

According to the Voice of Russia in comments regarding the conversation Paet said that it had taken place last week, on February 26th, immediately after he returned to Estonia from Ukraine. He also said that it was necessary to conduct an independent investigation into the events on Maidan Square in Kiev and called on those responsible to be prosecuted.

 

During the conversation Paet voiced his concern that the new “authorities” were not interested in investigating the murders and that it was actually the opposition that had carried them out.

 

Paet: "And still, people are seriously concerned about the fact that the new coalition is unwilling to investigate what really occurred there . The understanding of the fact that somebody from the new coalition, not Yanukovych, was behind those snipers is becoming more and more strengthened with every passing day."

 

Ashton: “I think we do want to investigate. I mean, I didn’t pick that up, that’s interesting. Gosh,”

Ashton’s response and her support of the neo-nazi opposition indicates that she knew all along who was behind the attacks and that she was on the inside of the Ukraine Project. Her telling the FM that she thinks we do not want an investigation is chilling. She merely thinks of it as “interesting” is also telling.

 

According to the transcript Paet was also concerned by the testimony of a doctor who said that both protesters and police were shot at by the same people.

 

Paet: “And second, what was quite disturbing, this same Olga Bogomolets told as well that all the evidence shows that the people who were killed by snipers from both sides, among policemen and then people from the streets, that they were the same snipers killing people from both sides.” He also added: “She also showed me some photos and said that as a medical doctor she can say that, the same type of bullets were used on both police and protestors.”

 

Ashton: “Well, yeah…that’s, that’s terrible.”

 

Ashton says it is terrible but the fact that there has been no outcry from the European Union and no calls from the European Commission for an investigation, which should have come right after she hung up the phone also point to Ashton’s collusion with Nuland and the US on the Ukraine Project.

 

Whether the EU is merely a pawn in the Ukraine Project or a witting collaborator has yet to be seen but the telephone conversation points to far more knowledge than what has been admitted to and to the fact that everyone is merely operating according to a script that has already been agreed upon and from which no one is allowed to stray.

 

Russian Foreign Ministry statement

 

The Russian Foreign Ministry has studied the recordings and issued a statement expressing surprise that the EU had not commented on the recording as they had boisterously commented on the now infamous Nuland/Pyatt “F- the EU” conversation.

 

"We have paid close attention to this audio recording, and we are surprised to hear that the EU refuses to give its commentary on this score. As you know, some time ago the high-ranking representatives of the EU member countries actively commented on the audio record of Victoria Nuland," a Foreign Ministry official said .

 

The Russian Foreign Ministry also stated: "As it appears, the European Union is well aware of the fact that the Ukrainian opposition backed the snipers on the Maidan Square!"

 

The black operations side of the Ukraine project

 

In documented regime change operations, which Ukraine clearly was, the CIA has classically used snipers to heighten the panic and the terror and in the end to blame whichever side it is against for crimes against the people. In other violent regime change operations terrorist attacks and bombings are also common, usually blamed again on the government, or “the regime” that is targeted for destruction.

 

In the case of Ukraine the illegitimate “authorities” immediately “filed charges” against the acting President Yanukovich. These charges of course came in unison with choreographed statements by western officials (EU officials, the White House and others), massive choreographed media coverage, showing selected scenes and footage of “poor defenseless peaceful protestors” bloodied and apparently the victims of “the brutal police forces” who themselves were completely unarmed having to face snipers, guns, Molotov cocktails, steel cement filled pipes and highly trained armed protestors bent on killing them.

 

Western media footage is absent of Berkut troops and police being literally beaten to death, shot to death and taken hostage to be executed later. This does not play with the narrative.

 

The snipers played two functions; they provided cover for the murderous thugs who were attacking the police and they provided the West with its “victims of a brutal regime”. The western media did not need many victims, the ones they had were enough. The order was probably for 20 protestors and 100 police which would explain the onslaught on the law enforcement officers.

 

The methodical nature and the timing of the sniper killings point to a carefully planned operation and not to a mob gone mad or crowd control operations by security officers. The sniper killing did not coincide with clashes or the actions of law enforcement bodies and all happened within a few hours. It is not a coincidence that the killings happened in the same period that President Yanukovich was to meet with a delegation from the EU. Very similar to the killing of 426 children in Latakia Syria and the gas attacks in Damscus when Syrian President Bashar Al- Assad had welcomed UN chemical weapons inspectors.

 

Just as the killing of 426 children was to serve as the pretext for the invasion of Syria, the killing of “civilians” served as the pretext for toppling the government and to charge the president with mass murder.

 

Reports from witnesses, media and police say that there were foreign mercenaries on Maidan and video footage shows a sniper lair with various shooters including Muslim clad sniper teams, which is backed up by reports that mercenaries and terrorists were brought in from Syria.

 

Television footage in Russia of one of the “protestors” who was returning to Russia and stopped on the border undergoing questioning, shows him stating under no duress, that there were 50 Americans involved and that he had counted them. During the height of the violence there is also television footage of men running around shouting instructions in English.

 

The violence is not over in Ukraine. The US/CIA/NATO/EU are growing desperate and having problems getting the Ukrainian people to accept that the murderers and neo-nazis are now their new leaders. Almost no one accepts their legitimacy, except of course western lackeys and politicians who are in on the coup.

 

The Ukrainian people know there was no popular uprising. A delay in an EU agreement which in fact meant nothing was not something that brought the people out into the streets en-mass, however it was the ridiculous pre-planned pretext that the choreographers had planned.

 

The goal of turning Ukraine into NATO territory is first on the agenda and later today NATO is expected to push NATO membership documentation through the Verhovnaya Rada. This has to be done before their puppets are all arrested or the people rise up and take their parliament back.

 

The nazis are having problems on other fronts as well. Recently their “Foreign Minister” made a ridiculous statement to the United Nations that charges from the Soviet Union against the Bandera nazis at the Nuremburg Trials were not legitimate and the Ukrainian Nazis were basically just normal Ukrainians who as the EU recently stated, expressed “real European values”.

 

The Ukraine scenario is almost identical to the Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya scenarios on the black operations side. The only difference is that air support has not been used, yet. 300 US mercenaries from the former Blackwater/XE/Greystone Limited a subsidiary of Vehicle Services Company LLC, are now in Ukraine to provide illegal “non-state” military support to the thousands of mercenaries already in the country.

 

Greystone Limited mercenaries are part of what is called “America’s Secret Army.” They are called in when there is no legal basis for an American military intervention and no basis for NATO or other surrogate armies to intervene or provide air-support to their initial illegal internal takeover force, this time the Bandera nazis who have been training for 10 years.

 

Nuland’s nazi project

 

In a video briefing to her controllers and press in Washington last December, after returning from her innocent looking but ridiculous doughnut trip, in front of logos from the Chevron and Exxon oil companies, Victoria Nuland, former US Ambassador to NATO, stated that they had spent $5 billion dollars on Ukraine.

 

Today Obama is set to hand $1 billion to the militants parading as officials and of course there are the billions that have been spent by CIA front USAID, George Soros and the like in the Ukraine Project. So no matter how obvious it is to the world that what occurred in Kiev is an illegal western backed coup, they must keep to their scripts and no amount of evidence against them is going to change their public statements.

 

Even if the Bandera Nazis start hanging people from street lamps and making nazi salutes at the United Nations, Obama and company are going to continue to call them legitimate and “peaceful demonstrators”. It will not even matter if the Ukrainian people, down to the last woman and child start waving Russian flags, and protesting the Bandera Nazis, the US and the subservient controlled corporate media will continue to follow their own narrative.

Why Nazis in Ukraine? It does not bother Obama or US/NATO/EU who they support in a targeted country. It does not matter to Nuland, who is in fact Jewish herself, if she is supporting the same Nazis that are calling for her brethren to be killed in the street, because they have their objectives. Divide and surround Russia. Remove Russia from Ukraine, establish NATO/US military bases and seize the resources.

 

Just like in Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Somalia and everywhere else the US has targeted it does not matter who they support and arm and fund as long as the target government is gotten rid of. In South America there are far-right groups. In Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Pakistan and other Middle East countries there is Al-Qaeda (created by the CIA). In Ireland there were Republican paramilitaries, in the Caucuses Chechen terrorists, in Ukraine? Well neo-nazis. They take what they can get as long as their objective is attained.

 

Why 300 US mercenaries? I would say the violence in Ukraine is just beginning. It takes a lot of death and mayhem to destroy a country. Especially when there is no NATO air-support or a fake UN resolution to allow for bombing. They will have to go house to house and kill anyone who resists, something which Nuland’s peaceful opposition is already doing.

 

Fake Russian invasion

 

RT reported about the “Russian invasion of Crimea” and the collusion of the western media as follows: Ukraine’s statement at the UN that 16,000 Russian soldiers have been deployed to Crimea has caused a frenzy among Western media which chooses to ignore that those troops have been there since the late 1990s in accordance with a Kiev-Moscow agreement. Western media describes the situation in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea as if a full-scale Russian invasion were under way, with headlines like: “Ukraine says Russia sent 16,000 troops to Crimea” and “Ukraine crisis deepens as Russia sends more troops into Crimea,” as well as “What can Obama do about Russia's invasion of Crimea?”It seems they have chosen to simply ignore the fact that those Russian troops have been stationed in Crimea for over a decade. Russia’s representative to the UN, Vitaly Churkin, reminded on Tuesday that the deal surrounding the Black Sea Fleet allows Russia to station a contingent of up to 25,000 troops in Ukraine. However, US and British media have mostly chosen to turn a deaf ear.”

 

No international or other outcry

 

Has the world been terrorized into silence or does the NSA now control the flow of information so well that no one is getting the truth of what is occurring in Ukraine? Why is no one calling for sanctions or legal measures against the US/NATO/EU for overthrowing a democratically elected European government? How much blood will US/NATO be allowed to spill before the world stands up? Why does it seem that the world is cowering in terror? Even what I thought were die-hard anti-NATO activists have jumped boat and refuse to stand up and protest.

 

Dear readers and citizens of the world

 

How many more countries are we going to sit by and watch be destroyed by the US/NATO war machine and their secret armies? When they decide your country is no longer following orders they will come for you too, make no doubt.They rape and pillage they send in illegal armies

 

These are the ancestors of the same people who committed genocide on the indigenous peoples of North America for their resources. They do not know anything else but violence, force and stealing whatever they need. Are we powerless to stop them?

 

I would like to leave you with parts of two speeches which I think are completely relevant and topical, although they had different reasons for writing both of these speeches they these words apply exactly to what the US/NATO are doing today, in 2014, a year when all war, hunger and poverty on earth could have been long eradicated:

 

“There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part! You can't even passively take part! And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels…upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop! And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!” - Mario Savio

 

“It requires a change in outlook, a change in tactics, a change in missions, by the government, by the people, by every businessman or labor leader, and by every newspaper. For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day. It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations.” – John F Kennedy

 

Iranian universities constructing eight submarines

Isfahan University of Technology in cooperation with three other universities has designed eight military and civil submarines.

The construction operations of the submarines are underway, Mehr news agency reported. They have a variety of uses, including tourism, exploration, defense, and laying cables.

Iran's Deputy Defense Minister Mohammad Eslami announced earlier this month that the country plans to unveil the first indigenous submarine within the next few months.

A Bit Of Iran Shows Up In North Korea

North Korea has recently improved its ballistic missile launch facility at Musudan-ri (on the northeast coast) and several of the new features are identical to those first seen at the Iranian Semnan launch complex. This is yet another bit of evidence that Iran and North Korea have been sharing ballistic missile technology. 

 

Musudan-ri was completed four years ago and featured an underground fueling system. This made it much easier to prepare one of their multistage ballistic missiles for launch. Prep time could be reduced from 4-5 days to 1-2 days. Previously, the missile would be surrounded by fuel trucks, special equipment and technical personnel before launch. But now most of that is hidden from view. Thus, with so much of the launch preparation underground, space satellites see less obvious signs of an impending launch. But many aspects of the base are in plain sight and visible to photo satellites.

STATE TERRORISM CFK's Junta - Argentine government begins process to dismember Clarin media group

Argentina's government Monday began the process of auctioning off media licenses and related assets held by the media conglomerate Grupo Clarin SA. The move, which government officials say should take about 100 business days to complete, comes after a lower court judge ruled Friday that a three-year-old media law requiring Clarin to be dismantled is constitutional.

Early morning Cristina Fernandez administration official visited Clarin to inform them the process of auctioning licences had started

“We notified Clarin that the auction process has begun. The law is constitutional, and it is in full effect,” said Martin Sabbatella, who was appointed by Argentine President Cristina Fernandez to enforce the law.

Earlier Monday, Clarin appealed the ruling to a federal appeals court. In a statement, Clarin accused the government of violating other court decisions by starting the auction process.

Clarin noted the same federal appeals court recently said the company would have one year to comply with the law even it were found constitutional. Clarin also said that because it appealed the ruling, the decision automatically would be suspended until it has been confirmed or rejected by a higher court.

Marcela Basterra, a constitutional law professor at the University of Buenos Aires, said the government's action Monday was primarily political.

“The government is doing this for political reasons because, legally speaking, it has to wait for a decision on this matter from the appeals court before it can act,” Mrs. Basterra said. “In reality, this case is going to end up in the Supreme Court, and only then will it be resolved.”

Mrs. Basterra said the lower court's ruling isn't binding because it has been appealed. She said the Supreme Court eventually will have to decide whether the law is constitutional and how much time Clarin has to comply with it.

“The majority of constitutional scholars think the one-year period will come into effect only if the law has been definitively declared constitutional by the Supreme Court,” she said.

Mr. Sabbatella disagrees and has said repeatedly that the one-year divestment period has expired already, meaning the government is right to enforce the law immediately.

Monday's developments are the latest in an intense and public battle between Clarin and President Cristina Fernandez, who accuses the company of being a coup-mongering monopoly that tries to topple her government.

Syrian refugee camp under air attack, eight dead – activist reports

Screenshot QudsNetwork's video claims to show Al-Yarmouk neighborhood of Damascus, Syria, after an alleged air bombardment by Syria's government forces (December 16, 2012 / Image from youtube.com)

Syrian warplanes have attacked a Palestinian refugee camp close to Syria’s capital city, Damascus, killing eight, activists report. The camp not only hosts Palestinians, but also Syrians displaced by the country’s ongoing conflict.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that at least eight people died when at least one rocket struck a mosque that houses refugees who had fled from the fighting in Damascus.

“Warplanes staged an air strike on an area near Al-Bassel hospital… in al-Yarmuk camp, hurting several people,” said the Observatory. They added that "the toll may rise, because several of the injured are in a critical condition."

A video allegedly filmed by a witness shows several dead bodies sprawled in what appears to be a mosque yard in al-Yarmouk. The surrounding streets were covered with shattered glass and blood stains. The video was uploaded to youtube by QudsNetwork, a Palestinian news outlet, but cannot be independently verified.

Al-Watan daily reports the area erupted in violence Sunday as government troops clashed with opposition forces. The edition says Palestinian self-defense forces support pro-Assad fighters. Other sources insist Palestinians are divided over the conflict and can be found fighting on both sides.

Al-Yarmouk is the largest Palestinian refugee camp in Syria and is located in a strategic region to the south of Damascus, where government forces have been attempting to push back rebel fighters for the past couple of weeks. In August, there were reports that a mortat attack killed at least 20 people in a shopping area there.

In the wake of the reports, Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas appealed on Sunday for an “immediate” halt to firing on Palestinian refugee camps in Syria.

"We call on the warring sides in Syria to spare the Palestinian people and their camps in Syria," he said as quoted by the official Palestinian news agency WAFA.

Over 500,000 Palestinians live in Syria which has been going through a harsh civil conflict since March 2011. Over 32,000 people have died in clashes between opposition and government troops, with a further 420,000 becoming refugees in what is widely viewed as an uprising against Syrian President Bashar Assad. Syrian state media, however, maintain that Damascus continues to “cleanse” what they have branded as “terrorists" from the region.

In other developments, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah declared Sunday that the struggle within Syria is not Assad’s government cracking down on its own people, but that the opposition, which is funded from abroad, is committed to a military confrontation and rejects any dialogue.

“The battle is not at all between the regime and its people. There is a division. A segment of the population supports the regime and another supports the opposition which has taken up arms and is being aided by regional forces and there is an armed confrontation,” Nasrallah said as cited by Lebanon’s Naharnet.

“The battle is far from over in Syria because the armed opposition is rejecting any dialogue with the regime, which will bring further violence and bloodshed,” he added.

Hezbollah has been accused by the Syrian opposition of sending fighters to Syria to help Assad, but the group denies these allegations.

Israel gives Hamas 36-hours ultimatum before starting

Israel has warned Hamas it will step up its offensive in the Gaza Strip in 36 hours if they do not cease rocket fire. Israel's Finance Minister told IDF radio the time left before Israel escalates its attacks can be measured in “hours, not days.”

­"We are at a junction," said Minister Yuval Steinitz. "Either we go toward a calm or toward a meaningful widening of the operation… including a possible move to achieve complete military decision."

Israel has demanded that Hamas cease firing rockets into Israel for a period of “several years”

and that they stop the smuggling of weapons into Gaza. The conditions are part of a six-part proposal put forward by the Israeli government at negotiations with Hamas in Cairo.

In addition, the proposal asked that Israel be allowed to hunt down terrorists in the event of an attack or if it obtains information on an imminent attack.

Hamas’ official Moussa Abu Marzuk said Hamas would not accept the creation of an Israeli "security belt" in eastern Gaza.

For their part, the Palestinians have demanded the immediate lifting of the Israeli blockade on Gaza and the cessation of IDF targeted killings.

Fears of an Israeli ground offensive in Gaza have heightened following Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s announcement on Sunday that the IDF was “prepared for a significant expansion of the operation.” 

Additionally, the Israeli cabinet has doubled the troop reserve quota for the Gaza offensive and called up a total of 16,000 reservists.

The IDF provoked international ire and accusations of a massacre following the accidental bombing of a civilian household during air strikes on Sunday night. Eleven civilians, four of them children, perished in the military blunder. Israel says it is investigating the incident and that the misfire was due to a technical hitch in their targeting equipment.

Meanwhile the conflict shows no signs of letting up, with both sides using bellicose rhetoric. The death toll at present stands at over 80 Palestinians, while three Israelis were killed in rocket fire on Thursday, a day after the IDF assassinated the head of the Hamas military wing, Ahmed Jabari.

Putin slams dictation to Russia on arms trade

Russia's President Vladimir Putin yesterday defended its arms trade against criticisms over its dealings with Syria, insisting only the United Nations could dictate restrictions on arms sales.

Putin defended Russia's right to trade weapons with whomever it wanted, without mentioning Syria but in an apparent reaction to recent attacks from the West over supplies to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime.

"We operate on the premise that the only basis for limiting weapons supplies to any country is UN Security Council sanctions," Putin said as he opened a government meeting on military-technical cooperation.

"In all other cases, no one can on any pretext dictate to Russia or any other state with whom and how it should trade," he said, according to a transcript on the Kremlin website.

This week Turkey accused Russia of delivering "war equipment" to the Syrian government on board a Syrian plane, after the Turkish authorities forced the plane to land last week and seized the suspect cargo.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the cargo contained radar equipment and was being delivered legally, demanding that it be returned to its rightful owners.

However the incident led the US State Department to label Russia's Syria policy as "morally bankrupt".

Putin stood by Russia's current military-technical cooperation with Syria, which falls outside of UN sanctions.

"One-sided or collective bans and restrictions outside the framework of the UN Security Council, especially ones that are politically motivated, are not norms of international law," he said.

"We intend to continue to develop such cooperation and carry out absolutely all the obligations we take on." Russia has infuriated Turkey and its Western allies by refusing to halt military cooperation with Syria, an ally dating back to Soviet times, despite the raging conflict in which activists say more than 32,000 people have died since March 2011.

Moscow has defiantly refused to take sides against Assad, and has slammed the West and Turkey for making clear their support for the rebels battling his regime.

Rebuilding The Russian Secret Police

With Vladimir Putin once more president of Russia (after a four year hiatus as prime minister because the Russian constitution does not allow anyone to serve more than two consecutive terms as president), Russia continues its progress in turning into a police state again. New laws reinstate many of the arbitrary powers the Soviet Union police and intelligence officials had. While the post-Soviet Russia is still a democracy, the elected officials are reinstating the surveillance and control capabilities their Soviet counterparts long relied on. The main vehicle for implementing this new police state is the FSB (the successor to the Cold War era Russian KGB). This organization is being given more and more of its Soviet era powers and personnel back.

Before the Soviet Union disappeared in 1991, the KGB was the most powerful organization in the country. It was a law unto itself, as long as it stuck to its main task: keeping the Communist Party in charge. When the Soviet Union collapsed the KGB lost most of its power but did not disappear. It was split into many separate organizations, with the main ones being the FSB (a counterintelligence organization with police powers) and the SVR (which conducted overseas espionage). But since the late 1990s, the FSB has been regaining a lot of its Cold War era authority and personnel. It again controls the border police and several specialist technical organizations. While this pleases the law and order crowd, it disturbs Russians who remember when the KGB was the principal organization keeping the communist dictatorship in control. The new powers give the FSB more authority to do whatever they want, just like in their good old days (when the communists ran things). The FSB is now believed to directly control over 100,000 personnel and have authority over many more in other government departments (like the national police force). The Communist Party has been replaced by an oligarchy of wealthy men who go rich via business acumen, corruption, and outright theft. In effect a more efficient version of the Communist Party bureaucrats who ruled and murdered Russians for 70 years. The new crew is less lethal than the communists, no less intolerant of criticism.

The KGB acquired most of its power just before World War II, after dictator Joseph Stalin had killed most of the army leadership, to prevent what he believed was the possibility of a military takeover. The KGB was to be a powerful state secret police, a sort of FBI, CIA, and more rolled into one organization. The KGB was everywhere, as it sought to keep its communist masters in power. For example, the KGB had a network of informants in the military.

When Stalin died (of natural causes) in 1953, and Nikita Khrushchev (and some close Communist Party associates) took over, one of the first things they did was execute the head of the KGB, an old Stalin crony, named Beria, who had been responsible for large scale massacres within the KGB during Stalin's reign. Less bloody-minded KGB officers were promoted to head the organization. Until the very end of the Soviet Union in 1991, the KGB remained at the top of the social, political, economic, and legal pecking order. In the late 1980s, reformers like Gorbachev rose to power via the assistance of senior KGB officials who saw a need for reform. The KGB was aware that their tsarist predecessors survived the 1917 Revolution. The KGB men were a relatively small group compared to the military and the Communist party and they were ready to survive the next "revolution." This the KGB did, and now they are being rewarded for their loyalty and effectiveness (in dealing with terrorism, corruption, and criminal gangs) by having many of their old powers restored.

While the FSB has regained control of the border police, this force is but a shadow of its former Soviet self. Back then the Soviet Union maintained 200,000 KGB border troops. This "army" had armored units, naval ships, and combat aircraft. These forces served the same function as the United States Coast Guard and Border Patrol. But in America these forces amount to fewer than half as many personnel. The KGB border forces had much more power than their American counterparts. The 25,000 sailors in the "Maritime Border Guards" (MBG) answered to no one but the head of the KGB. To put it more clearly, a lieutenant commanding an MBG patrol boat could order any Russian warship to halt and then arrest its captain. In fact, this was one of the principal functions of the MBG, to prevent mutiny or defection by ships and sailors of the Soviet Navy and merchant fleet. Smuggling was a minor problem, as Russian currency was useless outside the country and there were few items Russia produced that were good and small enough to be profitably smuggled. Moreover, much of Russia's coastline is in arctic waters and most of the remainder was adjacent to other communist nations. What kept the MBG busy was insuring that Russian citizens didn't flee the country. Such flight was a criminal offense and several prisons were full of Russians who attempted it and got caught by the MBG.

The personnel for the MBG are selected carefully. Although two-thirds were conscripts, these were chosen from among the most reliable Slavic candidates and were given special benefits and privileges to compensate for doing three years of service instead of two. These benefits extend into life after military service, as they have demonstrated that they are strong supporters of the government and thus worthy of choice job assignments and other privileges. Because of the three year term for KGB conscripts, only a quarter of the personnel were replaced each year, allowing for a higher degree of training and effectiveness. Less than a third of the 25,000 MBG sailors are on ships' crews. The majority serve in support jobs on land as well as supplying security detachments for guarding MBG bases and keeping an eye on suspicious foreign merchant ships or any Russian personnel suspected of disloyalty. The Russian Coast Guard still looks after a lot more than the coast. Russia no longer makes it so difficult to leave the country, but the border guards are kept busy keeping economic migrants (and a few Islamic terrorists) from trying to get in from less affluent neighbors.

The FSB still relies on conscripts for many low level security jobs. But, as in the Soviet period, getting drafted into the FSB is an attractive proposition for many young Russian men. Doing well in this job (guarding nuclear weapons or other important national assets) marks you as someone worthy of other jobs within the security services.

What bothers many Russians is the ultimate purpose of the FSB. The KGB was known as the main protector of the Communist Party. The FSB is seen as the supporter of wealthy criminals who used their KGB connections and powers after the Soviet Union collapsed to grab ownership of many state owned assets. The current Russian government is acting more and more like the autocratic rulers Russia has suffered under for centuries. The FSB seems to act like the palace guard, not public servants.