Mastermind of foiled Moscow bombing who 'fought in Afghanistan' arrested in Russia

Russia’s FSB secret service has captured the suspected mastermind behind a foiled terror attack in Moscow. His group, which fought in Afghanistan against the ISAF forces, was uncovered and neutralized last month by police.

A man identified as Yulay Davletbayev headed the terror cell, which was plotting an attack in Moscow. Two of his accomplices were killed in a May 20 police operation, while a third was captured alive. The items seized by law enforcers at the time included half-completed suicide vests, detonators and metal shrapnel.

The FSB captured Davletbayev, who is in his early 40s, in a suburb of Moscow after weeks of searching, the committee said. “This job took considerable effort and cooperation from troops, national bodies and local authorities. Several regions of the Russian Federation conducted search and screening operations. This allowed identifying the location where the criminal was hiding.”

All of the militants were Russian citizens, Russia’s National Antiterrorism Committee said Thursday. The group trained in combat and demolition along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, a region controlled by the Taliban.

They are also known to have fought against the US-led ISAF coalition deployed in Afghanistan, the committee reported.

The cell was sent to Moscow by the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, also known as the Turkistan Islamic Party, a terrorist organization that seeks to establish an Islamic state inside the Chinese border.

The group’s goal was to organize a series of attack in the Russian capital during Victory Day celebrations on May 9. Davletbayev got a job as taxi driver to familiarize himself with the city and pick high-value targets for future attacks, the committee said.

“While navigating around the city in his taxi, he was selecting places most vulnerable for a terrorist attack, which would suffer most damage and cause greatest loss of life,” the committee said.

They failed to meet their timetable, and were ultimately exposed by the Russian security services. The arrest of the cell’s leader came after the arrested member, Robert Amerkhanov, decided to cooperate with investigators.

The group is suspected of committing several crimes in Russia’s southern regions before 2010, when they moved to Afghanistan.

The FSB also has information on Davletbayev’s links to another militant leader, who was responsible for bombing a natural gas pipeline and at least two attacks on Russian police officers; the leader was killed in 2010 by anti-terrorism forces.

The Russian capital has seen a number of deadly terror attacks in recent years. The most recent was in January 2011, when a suicide bomber set off an explosive device in the arrival zone of Domodedovo Airport, killing 36 people and injuring 180 others. In March 2010, bombings in the Moscow Metro killed 41 people and injured around 100.

Courtesy: Russia Today

Russia and Cuba: Remembering the Cold War

Cuba's President, Raul Castro and Russia's Prime Minister, Dmitry Medvedev

Russia to lease eight jets worth $650 million to its Cold War- era ally Cuba and will partially write off the country's multi-billion-dollar debt owed during the Soviet-era under agreements signed during Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev's visit to Havana.

Moscow will write off part of the $30 billion debt and will offer a 10-year refinancing plan for the remaining amount, according to the preliminary agreement, Russia's industry and trade minister Denis Manturov told reporters on the sidelines of the talks.

"There was an accumulated debt on loans allocated by the Soviet Union and we have now prepared an agreement that should undergo all the necessary procedures," he said.

Manturov said the final decision on debt settlement will be signed by the end of the year.

Russia will also lease three Ilyushin-96-400 long-haul jets, three AN-158 regional planes and two TU-204SM mid-range aircraft to Cuba under the agreements inked in the presence of Medvedev and Cuban leader Raul Castro.

Moscow will provide sovereign guarantees to a syndicate of Russian banks financing the deal, Manturov said.

Medvedev and Castro were seen chatting informally and broadly smiling during the ceremony. The Cuban leader greeted reporters in Russian.

Russia and Cuba enjoyed close relations during the Cold War which was between the Soviet Union and Washington over world hegemony and supremacy.

The volume of trade between the two countries last year was roughly $200 million. Oil companies from Russia, the world's largest energy exporter, are drilling into Cuba's offshore oil deposits which has also being of interest to the United States.

Moscow to hold beauty pegeant for Snakes

The Moscow Zoo plans to hold a "beauty pageant" for snakes from March to May to mark the year of the snake.

The zoo has already allocated about 2 million rubles ($66,000) for the event's organization, according to information on the official state procurement website.

A condition of the event is that it must be held in a pavilion with a total area of nearly 300 square meters.

In the statement, the maximum price of the contract was calculated based on the planned attendance of the zoo from March to mid-May, and that at least 36 different kinds of non-venomous snakes will be on display at the event.

Only the brightest, most beautiful and unique kinds of snakes will be showcased: Leptocercal ladder snakes, false smooth snakes, slim, ancestral, European, American and burrow snakes, sand snakes, South American bush snakes, king snakes, red king snakes and Madagascar snakes, as well as Australian and reticulated pythons, ordinary snakes and tree boas.

The zoo requires whoever wins the contract to ensure veterinarian services for the animals and any treatment they require, as well as to prepare admission tickets for the show and forms for voting. The tender winner will also have to provide all equipment and heating for the snakes' cages, as well as security for the event.

Russia and the United States: No Common Ground

                                                    'The fear of Putin.......'

It seems that US-Russian relations are in a state of pure noises and mere words full of repetitions and sounds and the only option left for the leaders of both countries is to behave like provincial actors repeating a meaningless jumble of words.

The security conference in Munich over the weekend provided a convincing demonstration of this. Both US Vice President Joseph Biden and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov tried to put a positive face on things by emphasizing the New START, cooperation on Afghanistan and Russia's accession to the World Trade Organization, but their words left no doubt that the two countries are at loggerheads and that attempts to break the impasse will be the main focus of US-Russian relations for a long time to come.

No matter how many vague and evasive statements officials might make, it is obvious that US-Russian relations have hit what is probably their lowest point in the past 20 years. Congress passed the Magnitsky Act, which the Kremlin considers an infringement on Russian sovereignty. For its part, in the span of just a few months Moscow evicted USAID, announced its withdrawal from the Nunn-Lugar program, prohibited individuals with US citizenship from holding leadership positions in Russian nongovernmental organizations and banned US citizens from adopting Russian orphans.

On the surface, it would seem that Washington is so frightened by the erratic behavior of President Vladimir Putin that it is ready to accept the rules of his new game and play the whipping boy, thereby lending credence to Putin's claim that he is a tough guy who has forced the US to put up with his abuse. After all, Washington is willing to maintain the appearance of decent relations with Moscow because it desperately needs a northern transit route out of Afghanistan.

Many believe that the Obama administration will end up making concessions to Moscow in the next four years. After all, newly appointed Secretary of State John Kerry and likely new Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel have consistently opposed the very type of global interventionism that infuriates the Kremlin. In this situation, it would be logical to assume that Kerry, Hagel and National Security Advisor Thomas Donilon will push Obama to "appease" the Kremlin.

Concessions could take the form of an agreement not to deploy ships equipped with missile-defense interceptors in the Baltic and North seas, thereby relinquishing even the theoretical US ability to intercept Russian nuclear missiles. What's more, the U.S. could announce that it will postpone for an indefinite period the implementation of the fourth stage of deployment of its missile defense system, a stage that will give the US the ability to destroy long-range strategic nuclear missiles.

But even these bold efforts would be in vain because in reality, US missile defense deployments in Europe are just a pretext. The real reason for Putin's discontent with Washington is based in his sincere belief that the Moscow protests against his regime were US-­sponsored. He is convinced that the US State Department is out to stage a color revolution in Russia and deprive him of power.

This creates an obvious impasse. Washington cannot give the one guarantee that is most important for the Kremlin — that there will not be any more mass protests — for the simple reason that the State Department and CIA have no control over Russia's street demonstrations.

The Obama administration has recognized the futility of trying to appease Putin. For example, the US announced that it was withdrawing from the Civil Society Working Group of the US-Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission. Deputy Secretary of State Thomas Melia did not mince words, saying the US was withdrawing because "recent steps taken by the Russian government to impose restrictions on civil society … called into serious question whether maintaining that mechanism was either useful or appropriate." In the end, Washington refused to take part in what had become a hypocritical farce.

If the decision to walk away from the civil society working group was linked to the new team in the State Department, then it is a clear sign of a major change in Washington's policy toward Russia. Biden's comments in Munich seem to confirm this. Yes, Russia remains a key player in solving global security issues that are important for Obama, but Biden made it clear that the US has no intention of pretending for the Kremlin's sake that Russia is a democracy. "It's no secret that we have serious differences on issues like Syria, missile defense, NATO enlargement, democracy, human rights. These differences are real," Biden said in Munich.

Washington does not want to pursue its old policy of engagement, which was based on the assumption that by working with Moscow on issues important to both sides, the US would gradually instill democratic values in Russia. This approach has never worked with the Putin regime. In Obama's second term, it seems that the US will treat Russia as it does any other authoritarian government and will express its disapproval when the regime violates the rights of its citizens.

If the first result of that new approach is the withdrawal from the Civil Society Working Group, then eventually the question of Russia's membership in the Group of Eight will be called into question. Last year, Putin ignored the G8 summit in the US, and the day may not be far off when the presidents of the seven leading democratic countries decide they have nothing to discuss with their Russian counterpart.