Crimea is not a foreign territory to Russia, which has suddenly decided to join her. It is an essential element of its history, without which Russia today could not exist. The Oriental Review sheds light on the physical bond that unites them.

On March 18, 2014, Russian President Vladimir Putin made a historic speech about the reunification of Crimea and Russia. A referendum held in Crimea two days before in full compliance with standard democratic procedures and the rules of international law, shocked many by it's results: there was an 82% turnout rate, with almost 97% of those casting their ballots in favor of reunification with Russia. These numbers were so astonishing that there still seem to be many people in the West who cannot bring themselves to believe how much the Crimeans truly longed to return home. And indeed, without an awareness of this land's heroic history that has been so liberally washed in Russian blood, this public enthusiasm might seem irrational, or even artificial.

In the mazelike streets of Uskudar, the Istanbul district, where Recep Tayyip Erdogan voted in nationwide elections on Sunday, his fellow citizens left the polls proclaiming their support for the Turkish prime minister louder than ever.

But less than 10 minutes away by ferry, in the more secular neighbourhood of Besiktas, many voters passionately denounced Mr Erdogan.

The US and Russia have agreed to work with the Kiev government to seek a settlement to the Ukraine crisis. John Kerry, US secretary of state, said after meeting the Russian foreign minister on Sunday that no decisions on Ukraine would be taken without the Ukrainians.

After four hours of talks in Paris, Mr Kerry said: "We will not accept any path forward where the legitimate government is not at the table."

All is not quiet on the Western Front, but the drumbeat of war along the long Ukraine-Russian border is nowhere near as loud as it sounds in Moscow.

According to dire warnings from U.S. military and intelligence officials, Russian President Vladimir Putin, fresh from his daring annexation of Ukraine's strategic Crimean Peninsula, has concentrated tens of thousands of his forces on the border with Ukraine. Camouflaged and concealed to throw off U.S. spy satellites, the warnings say, the heavily armed combat troops and special operations forces are coiled and ready to spring across the border into restive regions of Eastern and Southern Ukraine such as Kharkov and Donetsk, where pro-Russian populations are eager to be annexed by Russia, just like Crimea.

Top Russian officials - including Putin himself - have denied any such troop concentrations near the Western border. One minor Ministry of Defense official, who didn't want to be named because he wasn't authorized to comment, told NBC News that there had been training exercises - war games - in the border region but, once ended, those troops and armour returned to their bases. "All of this international hype is completely unfounded," he told us earlier in the week.


Still, the stream of YouTube video clips and photos seemed to tell a different story: long convoys of Russian armored personnel carriers on a highway headed toward Ukraine; tanks and artillery pieces moving by rail on dozens of train cars; squads of MI-24 combat helicopters perched on a hill near Belgorod, only 20 miles from Ukraine. Are these preparations for a Chechnya-like invasion, or just more maneuvers meant to intimidate Ukrainians and the West?

We went to look for ourselves. Cameraman Dmitry Solovyov, sound engineer Alexei Gordienko and I packed our bags, devices and news-gathering gadgets into the back of our grey, nondescript bureau minivan and began a journey along the 1,200 mile border between Russia and Ukraine - many segments of which give no indication that it's an actual border between two countries.

28 paintings and 6 icons were reported missing from the recreational center 'Bear oak grove' after Right Sector members left its premises, said Ukraine's Interior Ministry adding that the damage is estimated at about US$ 1 million.

The head and owner of the recreational center 'Bear oak grove' (Medveja dubrova) in Transcarpathian region has filed a complaint with the police about the missing works of art, said the ministry.

"After the Right Sector guarded the recreational center Medveja dubrova the police are looking for 28 unique painting and six icons" said the Interior Ministry in a statement on Sunday adding that a criminal investigation has been launched.

The Right sector guarded the center from 23 to 26 March, said the head of Medveja dubrova. He added that the works of art were discovered missing after an inventory of the property and they are of high historic and artistic value.

The Right Sector movement first emerged at the end of November 2013 supporting the Euromaidan protests in Kiev and headed by Dmitry Yarosh. In March the ultra-nationalist movement decided to become a political party, nominating Yarosh for president.

Russia put Yarosh on an international wanted list and charged him with inciting terrorism after he urged Chechen terrorist leader Doku Umarov to launch attacks on Russia over the Ukrainian conflict. The far-right leader has also threatened to destroy Russian pipelines on Ukrainian territory

• Bare-Faced Messiah was first published in 1986 but the Church of Scientology has successfully kept it off the shelves for 27-years
• Written by British journalist Russell Miller about Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard
• Alleges that Hubbard lied about his education and childhood in official Scientology biographies
• Claims to refute Hubbard's assertion that he was one of the nation's first nuclear physicists and a doctor
• During his research Miller found unpalatable opinions on Chinese people written by the teenage Hubbard
• Alleges that Hubbard would observe and documents bizarre sex rituals with a prominent Caltech rocket scientist
• Outlines how Hubbard realized branding Scientology as a religion would be better for business concerns

A book Scientologists have kept off the shelves of American book stores for 27-years that alleges church founder L. Ron Hubbard was a fantasist with a predilection for bizarre sexual rituals is finally to be published.

Written by British journalist Russell Miller in 1986, "Bare-Faced Messiah" cuts a swath through the many myths the Scientologist chief built up around himself and exposes him as a charismatic charmer, who targeted celebrity devotees.

Miller alleges that Hubbard lied about his service in World War II and that instead of the millions of members the church claims to have - in fact only counts around 25,000 people as followers.

Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, has given a green light to sell the country's newest S-400 air defense guided missile system to China, which Russian media claim will give Beijing an edge in the airspace of the Taiwan Strait and over islands in the East China Sea at the center of a dispute with Japan, reports the military news website of Huanqiu.com, the Chinese-language website of China's Global Times.

Beijing has been interested in acquiring the guided missile system since 2011. Two years ago, Russia talked with several countries interested in buying the system but was forced to suspend negotiations in order to ensure its supply to the Russian military, the general manager of a Russian national defense export company told Russian newspaper Kommersant in January this year. Export sales of the system may not begin until 2016.

Talk of a potential deal with China drew concerns from Russian security officials who worried that it may not only affect the supply of the system to Russia's own military but also that China could back-engineer the technology to produce its own systems. The system's manufacturer Almaz-Antei has eased the former concerns by delivering the first batch of the system. Moscow also announced a plan in January to build three new plants for the contractor in order to build more air defense and anti-guided missile systems. An intellectual property rights agreement that China and Russia signed with regard to the arms trade has also come into effect.

Though in what volume China wishes to acquire the S-400 system is unclear, Kommersant's source said China wants enough systems to equip two to four battalions. The People's Liberation Army has already obtained an air defense guided missile system and another command system from Russian and deployed them in the defense of Beijing and Shanghai, according to the paper, which estimated that the country would be able to control the airspace over Taiwan and the disputed Diaoyutai islands (Diaoyu to China, Senkaku to Japan).

As my plane left Dubai for Kiev, I began browsing through an endless pile of newspapers and magazines: from the New York Times to the Economist, from the Times to several Gulf-based and Turkish periodicals, as well as Spanish and German ones.

The consensus on Putin being a villain was absolute. There were no dissident voices, but also, not surprisingly, no Russian intellectual voices. There were absolutely no editorials written by Russians attacking the Western destabilization of Ukraine and the destruction of its democratically elected government.

It was also shocking how the Arabic and Turkish press was translating and reprinting all that appeared in the West.

There were no clear, simple and logical explanations of what actually happened in Ukraine recently.

That is, that the West, particularly the greedy and desperate EU, wanted to get its hands on the tremendous natural resources of the Ukraine, on its heavy industry and cheap but highly-educated work force. They offered a deal. A very bad deal, under which, European companies would be allowed to plunder the country, but Ukrainian people would not be even allowed to enter the EU, let alone seek employment there.

Are Western diplomats and media outlets being serious when they accuse the Russian government of launching a new Cold War? Do they really believe their own rhetoric when they say Putin has expansionary ambitions and wants to rebuild the Soviet Empire? Did Hillary Clinton, the former US secretary of state, mean it when she said Russia's actions in Crimea are similar to 'what Hitler did back in the 1930s'? Other anti-Russian observers have also claimed that Russia's incorporation of Crimea is analogous to the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany in the 1930s. Do all these people sincerely believe this interpretation of current geopolitical events?

It is always difficult, if not dangerous, to speculate about the thought processes that drive powerful diplomats and political leaders to say and do certain things. It is especially difficult to make sense of the dynamics that turned the crisis in Ukraine into a perilous international dispute. In a recent interview, a Russian journalist asked me why Western media outlets have become so careless about fact-checking in relation to Ukraine and Russia more broadly. I wasn't sure if I could answer the question, so I was forced to say that I would have to reflect on it further.

Israel is voicing displeasure about its citizens not being able to enter the US as freely as they would like. While the latter stands firm on Israel's failure to meet the necessary requirements, the question of Palestinian settlements also looms.

Israel is pushing for an entry into the US Visa Waiver Program - a membership enjoyed by 38 countries, many of which Israel sees as not being nearly as dedicated to a political friendship with America as it is.

The US has given a list of reasons for why this isn't happening, like Israel's treatment of Arab-American visitors at the airport - something Israel denies flat out, the AP reports.

But Israel is now also seeing a dramatic spike in visa rejections for its citizens that has taken place in the course of only one year. Its younger travelers (including many who have served in the armed forces, and wish to perform a now-traditional trip to the US after being discharged) are being turned away by the dozen, it seems. Statistically, rejection has risen from 5.4 percent to 9.7 in 2013, which is an 80 percent increase. Even though the US State Department's Jen Psaki claimed at a briefing last week that 90 percent of Israeli applicants get through - its only 80 percent for the early-twenties category, the Israeli government sees the new figures to be discriminatory and a result of a concrete agenda.

The US, meanwhile, maintains that it's still largely possible for Israelis to get the 90-day 'B' visa for business or travel purposes.

In the meantime, Israel still has among the highest-ranking visa approval ratings when visiting the US. And it's fair to say that other countries' US visa rejections have also gone up overall. And by contrast, their approval rate isn't half as good as Israel's: Belarus got almost 21 percent of rejections in 2013, while Bulgaria's was nearly 20, and Ireland's close to 17.

A New York Democrat Senator Charle Schumer is urging the State Department to "end its widespread, arbitrary practice of denying young Israelis tourist visas." Some members of Congress even sought legislation that would free Israel from adhering to any conditions whatsoever presented by the Visa Waiver Program.