russia

Once home to Aberdeen's illustrious Baker family, the buildings fell on hard times and stood dilapidated for years.

U.S. Sen. Ben Cardin met with members of the punk protest group Pussy Riot on Tuesday to bring attention to human rights abuses in Russia as well as his efforts to expand economic sanctions against top officials in the country.

Approximately 12 percent of the Crimean population — over 250,000 people — are ethnically "Tatar," a largely pro-Ukrainian, Sunni Muslim group. They have an embattled history with Russia.

U.S. response to Russia's action in Ukraine has been enough already

President Putin doesn't realize how much leverage the West has over Russia's economy; it's up to the U.S. and its allies to convince him he doesn't want to find out the hard way

Russian-organized protests in the eastern part of the country could provide a pretext for invasion

The conventional view in Washington is that Mr. Putin is a belligerent authoritarian intent upon expanding Russia's borders and confronting the West. What the White House refuses to acknowledge, however, is that the Russian leader is simply acting in what he believes to be his country's best interest.

Friends School students take a trip to Russia in the midst of geopolitical turmoil and find the Russian people to be kind of blase about Crime and the Ukraine, compared to the hyperbole in Western media. The most nerve-wracking part of the trip came at the end, when a pilot strike delayed their departure for a day and a half, and they had to switch from Lufthansa to the Emirates airline.

Right now, as the drama unfolds in Crimea, millions of Marylanders are facing the possible imposition of new and disruptive gas pipelines and compressor stations across much of their state. The gas would come from controversial "hydraulic fracturing" — or fracking — wells spread across the Appalachian region. It would be piped through Maryland to a massive $3.8 billion "liquefaction" plant for natural gas at a place called Cove Point right on the Chesapeake Bay.

At the end of January, a team of chemists and engineers left Aberdeen Proving Ground for the Mediterranean Sea to lead the historic destruction of Syria's chemical weapons. More than two months later, they're still waiting for the mission to start.

Crimean Tatars and Ukrainians are justifiably concerned about the Russian invasion. But their fight, in its narrowest terms, is not our fight.

U.S. foreign policy is a shambles and Crimea is only the latest example

Maxim Kozlov will conduct a cello exploration program on Saturday, March 29, for kids ages 5 to 8 at 11 a.m. and ages 9 to 12 at 12:30 p.m. at Ellicott City's Miller Branch Library, at 9421 Frederick Road.

U.S. and its European allies badly underestimate Putin's ambitions

President Barack Obama must take stronger steps to confront Vladimir Putin.

President Obama's tough talk on Ukraine only makes the United States look weak.

Ukraine's future worries Peace Corps volunteer and Clarksville resident Peggy Walton.

Russia's land grab in the Crimea has created the most serious European security crisis since the end of the Cold War.

Hillary Clinton touched the 'third rail' of foreign policy by making a Hitler reference in relation to the crisis in Ukraine.

Amid the storm created by Russian President Vladimir Putin's extralegal incursion into the Crimean peninsula, the U.S. and Europe risk allowing an event equally important to Ukraine's future to fall out of focus: the May 25 election in which the divided country is set to select a new president. The credibility, inclusivity and peacefulness of this event are vital to U.S. and European interests.