Contents tagged with Soviet Union

  • Putin lays claim to offshore assets of former Soviet states

    The former republics of the Soviet Union breached their agreements to give Russia their assets abroad, said Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday while meeting with the work group for drafting amendments to the constitution.

    According to Putin, when the Soviet Union collapsed, Moscow undertook to repay the debts of all the former Soviet republics, in exchange for which they agreed to give Moscow their foreign property.

    “The whole world was very happy” when Russia undertook to pay …

  • Bulgaria questions Soviet Union’s role in liberating Eastern Europe from Nazi

    The Bulgarian Foreign Ministry has advised the Russian embassy to stop distributing the “questionable assertion” that the Soviet Union liberated Eastern Europe by defeating Nazi Germany.

    “Without denying the USSR’s contribution to the defeat of Nazism in Europe, we must not close our eyes to the fact that the Soviet Army brought half a century of repression to the peoples of Central and Eastern Europe,” the department remarked.

    The Foreign Ministry released the statement the day before the …

  • Ukraine's Special Operations Forces to stop using Soviet weapons

    The Commander of the Special Security Office (SSO) of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Lieutenant-General Ihor Lunev at the briefing said that the Special Operations Forces are going to be integrated into NATO's collective security system in 3-4 years.

    "In the short and medium-term, it is planned to continue work on re-equipment of the SSO units for new models of weapons, military equipment, communications equipment, diving equipment, to carry out activities for certification of units for their …

  • Norway detects radiation leak from sunken Soviet submarine Komsomolets

    Norwegian Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority published a photo of the sunken Soviet nuclear submarine K-278 Komsomolets, reports the Norwegian TV channel TV2.

    "That's how the Soviet nuclear submarine looks today – 30 years after it sank in the Norwegian Sea. In the evening on July 7, researchers could make the photos of the sunken submarine for the first time," reads the caption to the picture.

    The photo was taken from a remote-controlled deep-sea vehicle. The goal of the expedition was …

  • Russian S-300 missile systems spotted at US testing range

    A military enthusiast who goes by the name of Ivan O’Gilvi on Twitter recently published a satellite photo which supposedly shows a Russian S-300 aerial defense system at an American testing ground.

    On the photograph, O’Gilvi identified two 5P85PT launchers mounted on semitrailers and a 30N6 fire control system consisting of a mobile command point and trailer with a radar antenna.

    According to Defence Blog, the US Air Force frequently uses Russian-made aerial defense systems in its drills. …

  • Former Ukrainian President Kravchuk: Ukraine was forced to take Crimea in Soviet times because Russia could not sustain it

    The first president of Ukraine Leonid Kravchuk, in an interview with the Ukrainian news outlet Apostrof, said that  the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), Nikita Khrushchev forced the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic to integrate the Crimea, since Russia "could not sustain it (the Crimea)."

    “[Nikita Khrushchev] comes to Kyiv, comes to the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of …

  • Latvia: Soviet Union’s deportation of Crimean Tatars in 1944 was genocide

    The foreign affairs commission of Latvia’s parliament, the Saeima, has given its support to a report by the Foreign Ministry which considers the Soviet Union’s deportation of Crimean Tatars in 1944 a genocide, TV-net reports.

    In addition, the commission has ratified a draft statement by Janis Dombrava, a member of the right-wing National Alliance, that “the USSR in the 20th century deliberately carried out a genocide against all the peoples and ethnic groups residing in the occupied …

  • US moves U-2 strategic reconnaissance planes to Europe

    Two U-2S ultra-high altitude reconnaissance aircraft belonging to the US Air Force crossed the Atlantic from mainland US and landed at the Fairford airfield in England on Tuesday, Interfax-Ukraine reports.

    The planes transferred from the Beale Air Force Base in California are named DRAGON86 and DRAGON88 and have the registration numbers 80-1071 and 80-1094 respectively.

    No official reason for the transfer of these two aircraft to Europe has been disclosed.

    Until recently, the Fairford …

  • Lithuanian ambassador recalled from Russia for consultations

    On Thursday, March 11, the Baltic News Service (BNS) reported Lithuania’s decision to recall its ambassador to Russia, Remigijus Motuzas, for consultations. One of the reasons was the threats directed at Motuzas, after Vilnius District Court found former Soviet Union Minister of Defense, Dmitry Yazov, and a number of other Russians citizens guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity for their role in the case of January 13, 1991 events. Then, during the clashes following the Soviet army …

  • Ukraine gives Poland evidence of Soviet repressions against Polish people

    Ukraine gave about sixty thousand pages of documents proving Soviet repressions against the Polish people in 1930 to the Polish Institute of National Remembrance or INR, Polish Radio reports.   According to INR head Marzena Kruk, the materials are now being studied and access to them will be open early next year.

    "For the first time we have access to such materials that are no longer separate orders or reports on carrying out Polish operations. We are getting to the so-called kernel, to …