18 May 2013. RIA-Novosti Infographics. The 17th Century Church Schism: How Did It Divide Believers?

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During the reign of Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich, Patriarch Nikon Minin launched new studies of Russian sacred texts, comparing them with Greek models to identify discrepancies. The reform started with the convening of a Sobor in Moscow in 1654, which decided to bring the liturgical books in line with Greek manuscripts. The Great Moscow Sobor of 1666-67 approved new rites of worship and ranks. The authorities began a crackdown against the opponents of reform, which lasted for about two centuries. The Old Ritualists split at various times, the monarchy varied in its approach to them. At times, the government was lenient; at others, it was severe. Sometimes, the Belokrinitsky Old Ritualist hierarchy could serve legally at the Rogozhskoe Cemetery in Moscow, but at other periods, during the so-called “sealing of the altars”, the state forbade the Old Ritualists to serve the liturgy.

In 1800, some of the “priested” Old Ritualists sought rapprochement with the Holy Governing Synod, which established a special structure for the so-called Yedinoverie (“One-Faithers”, “Unionists”)… maintaining the pre-reform ritual, they submitted to the jurisdiction of the canonical Church, recognising that ritual differences don’t affect general dogmatic teaching. For example, in comparing the sign of the cross, although they used different constructions, both usages symbolise the unity of the three persons of the Holy Trinity and of Christ‘s dual divine-human nature. In 1905, Tsar St Nikolai Aleksandrovich issued a decree on religious tolerance, removing all civil restrictions on the rights of the Old Ritualists, and, in 1971, an MP Sobor adopted a resolution to lift the oaths and anathemas from the old rites.

12 February 2013

RIA-Novosti

http://ria.ru/history_infografika/20130212/922446392.html

Click here to read more on the Raskol

18 May 2013. Sergei Yolkin’s World. The Events of the Week in Cartoons… 13 to 17 May 2013

The Events of the Week in Cartoons… 13 to 17 May 2013

Sergei Yolkin

2013

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The original in Russian had the CIA guy saying “No-o-o-o” in English, with the other two saying “Het” (Nyet) in Russian… just thought that you’d like to know that…

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Sergei Yolkin summed up events that have been cooking for some time… the USA eliminated the Russian ice hockey team in the quarter-finals of World Cup, the FSB nicked a CIA agent in Moscow for espionage, and the maintenance man will turn off the hot water.

17 May 2013

Sergei Yolkin

RIA-Novosti

http://ria.ru/caricature/20130517/937915697.html

Rogozin Sez Russia to Keep Peacekeepers in Transnistria until Conflict Settlement

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Deputy Prime Minister Dmitri Rogozin said that Russia would maintain its peacekeeping contingent in the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic (Transnistria) until Chișinău and Tiraspol agree on the status of the disputed self-proclaimed republic. Russia maintains a motorised infantry battalion in the region as part of the Collective Peacekeeping Forces (CPF), in addition to troops guarding several Soviet-era munitions depots. On Friday, Rogozin said at a meeting with Lomonosov Moscow State University (MGU) students, “As long as Russia retains its peacekeeping status on both sides of the Dniester, peace will prevail in the region. True, it’s an unrecognised republic, but at the same time there’s peace and security there”. Rogozin is Russia’s special presidential envoy for Transnistria.

The Russian-speaking province of Transnistria has maintained de facto independence from Moldova since a brief war in 1992 following the breakup of the USSR. Transnistria seeks full independence, whilst Moldova says it’ll only allow autonomy. The talks on the future of Transnistria using the “five-plus-two” format, involving Russia, the Ukraine, the OSCE, Moldova, and Transnistria, with the USA and the EU as observers, have stalled since February 2006. A joint peacekeeping force of Russian, Moldovan, and Transnistrian contingents is deployed in the region. Last year, Rogozin said that Russia’s planning to upgrade the military equipment of its peacekeeping contingent in Transnistria.

18 May 2013

RIA-Novosti

http://en.rian.ru/russia/20130518/181216251/Russia-to-Ensure-Peace-in-Transdnestr-Until-Conflict-Settlement.html

Editor’s Note:

Rogozin is one of the most anti-American figures amongst the siloviki. He played a major role in the Battle of Stalingrad festivities earlier in the year, and he’s been making more public statements of late. In short, the recent arrest of Ryan Fogle was only another manifestation of Russia’s inexorable turn leftwards. Oligarchs beware… your time is running out (that’s why they’ve tried to squirrel funds abroad with the aid of Western corporate interests and intelligence operatives). In all countries, the leftists are the patriots; the rightwing business interests are anti-patriotic. Karl Marx WAS right… “Capital knows no homeland”.

Watch Rogozin… he hates America’s bogus money-grubbing non-culture and he hates the soulless oligarchs. He’s NOT alone in Russia…

BMD  

Russia “Outs” Alleged Moscow CIA Station Chief… “Unprecedented” CIA Moscow Chief Leak Puzzles Ex-Spies

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On Friday, the FSB publicly identified an individual it claims was the Moscow station chief of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) as of late 2011… a move widely-seen as a breach of protocol in the intelligence community. A man identified as an FSB official named the alleged CIA station chief in an interview with state-run television, in which he gave new details about the agency’s highly-publicised detention of alleged American spy Ryan Fogle earlier this week. In the interview, the FSB official reiterated earlier claims that his agency explicitly asked the CIA to stop trying to recruit Russian security and intelligence officers. In late 2011, he added, the FSB formally warned the CIA station chief in Moscow, whom he identified by name, “In the event that provocative efforts to recruit employees of the Russian special services continue, the FSB … would take reciprocal measures against American intelligence officers”. The officer, his face blacked out, and voice altered, said that Fogle’s brief detention this week… reportedly preceded in January by the unpublicised ouster of another American diplomat suspected of spying… was made public because the CIA continued to disregard the warning.

The Daily Telegraph reported, “A diplomat of the same name [given by the FSB official] is listed as a Counsellor in the US Embassy in Moscow in the Autumn-Winter 2012-13 edition of a directory of foreign diplomatic, media, and business offices in the city”. It wasn’t clear whether the man identified as the station chief is still in Moscow. US Embassy officials weren’t immediately available for comment. On Friday, US State Department spokesman Jen Psaki told a news conference in Washington DC that she hadn’t seen the report and referred further questions to the CIA. On Friday afternoon, the CIA didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

17 May 2013

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On Friday, former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officers and security experts told RIA-Novosti that Russia’s decision to identify a purported top American spy in the country is an “unprecedented” move in relations between Moscow and Washington with no clear indication of how the USA will react. Peter Earnest, who operated intelligence collection and covert operations in Europe and the Middle East during a 35-year career with the CIA, said, “Certainly, throughout the Cold War, and even after that, there was a practise of not naming the head of the [spy agencies] in the respective countries”. Earnest and other security experts said that the television interview in which a man identified as an FSB officer named an alleged CIA station chief in Moscow puzzled them.

In the interview with state-run television, the FSB officer explained that his agency detained purported US spy Ryan Fogle in Moscow earlier this week because a request in late 2011 to the purported station chief, whom he identified by name, to halt “provocative” CIA efforts to recruit Russian intelligence agents went unheeded. The Daily Telegraph reported, “A diplomat of the same name [given by the FSB official] is listed as a Counsellor in the US Embassy in Moscow in the Autumn-Winter 2012-13 edition of a directory of foreign diplomatic, media, and business offices in the city”. On Friday, neither the US State Department nor the CIA responded to requests for comment.

Melvin Goodman, who served as division chief and senior analyst at the CIA’s Office of Soviet Affairs in the 1970s and 1980s, said, “The leak of the purported spy’s name represents a serious breach in protocol. These things are usually done quietly”. He added that the release of the name was “unprecedented” in the history of American relations with Russia and the USSR. Goodman pointed up that the disclosure of a CIA operative’s name in such a fashion is typically a death knell for the agent’s career, saying, “He could stay operational clandestinely, but I don’t see how they could send him out under any cover”.

Mark Galeotti, an expert on Russian security services at New York University, called the naming of the alleged station chief a “definite escalation” in the wake of Fogle’s brief detention and subsequent eviction from Russia, where he served as a third secretary in the political section at the US embassy. Galeotti told RIA-Novosti, “It’s almost as if the Russians are inviting the Americans to respond, but as it is, they seem to have Washington off balance”.

Earnest and Goodman both said that without the full picture of the circumstances surrounding Fogle’s detention and the public naming of the purported station chief, it’s difficult to predict how Washington might respond. Goodman said that if Russia’s reaction was indeed precipitated by CIA operatives’ aggressive attempts to recruit Russian intelligence officers, Washington “may just decide to let it go, but without knowing what some of the operational details are, I’d hesitate to speculate on this”.

It wasn’t the first time that the name of an alleged CIA station chief was publicly disclosed in recent years. In 2010 and early 2011, American officials accused Pakistani authorities of leaking the name of two CIA station chiefs in Islamabad to the country’s news media within five months. However, Earnest, the founding executive director of the International Spy Museum in Washington DC, noted that Washington’s relationship with Pakistan is considerably different than its relationship with Russia is, adding that there’s no formal protocol dictating how countries should respond in these cases. “It’s very situational, and the fact that you and I and the public don’t know what occasioned the takedown of Fogle means we don’t know what the signal [from Russia] was. That makes it doubly-hard to know the signal of this latest development is. It sort of deepens the mystery”.

Goodman, who spent 24 years as a CIA analyst specialising in Soviet affairs, said the spy spat surprised him given public overtures from both countries in recent weeks indicating they were interested in cooperating on the investigation of last month’s Boston Marathon bombings and ending the civil war in Syria, saying, “This past week suggests that something else is going on”.

18 May 2013 (MSK)

Carl Schreck

RIA-Novosti

http://en.rian.ru/russia/20130517/181209758/Russia-Outs-Alleged-Moscow-CIA-Station-Chief.html

http://en.rian.ru/russia/20130518/181212155/Unprecedented-CIA-Moscow-Chief-Leak-Puzzles-Ex-Spies.html