Focus on Russia

This is confirmed by Sibel Edmonds and her work on Operation Gladio B

'Russia fights back in US shadow war against it'

Promises of millions, a new face and detailed instructions on a double-agent conspiracy in Moscow. Bearing the hallmarks of a Cold War spy thriller, Russia's counterintelligence agency says it caught a CIA officer trying to flip a Russian operative. Brian Becker from the ANSWER coalition thinks the US is waging an undercover war against Moscow

To give a different persective here is a radio interview with a Russian-American author, Masha Gessen.

Although much of what she says about Putin and how he came to power is no doubt true, there is definitely an agenda here, indicated by the fact she accompanied Garri Kasparov on his election campaign – he is definitely on a neo-liberal, pro-western agenda.

My personal response is that while America claims to be the world's "greatest democracy" Putin and Russia make no such bold claims.

Masha Gessen: Putin's Russia

Russian-American journalist whose new book is The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin, and is a guest at the 2013 Auckland Writers & Readers Festival.

Here is, perhaps a more balanced view from Prof. Stephen Cohen

Stephen Cohen on Russian Protests and "The Soviet Union's Afterlife" in The Nation Magazine

Allegations of widespread fraud in the recent elections that gave Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's United Russia party a parliamentary majority have galvanized massive street protests in opposition to the Russian political establishment. This comes on the 20th year anniversary of the breakup of the Soviet Union. "The reason that the people that control the financial oligarchy of Russia don't want free elections, is they know that ... the people would vote for candidates pledging to confiscate their property," which was privatized in the 1990s, says Stephen Cohen, professor of Russian studies at New York University. He notes "these elections were not free and fair, but they were the freest and fairest and 15 years," and that members of the country's middle class make up the bulk of the protesters. Cohen also argues the American media has failed to report on the resurgence of the Communist Party, supported mainly by working class voters in Russia's vast provinces, which could challenge Putin in the 2012 presidential race and force a run-off election. His most recent book is titled, "Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War." His latest article, "The Soviet Union's Afterlife," appears in the new issue of The Nation magazine