Free Republic

Former Congressman Ron Paul said the US knows ‘more than it is telling’ about the Malaysian aircraft that crashed in eastern Ukraine last month, killing 298 people on board and seriously damaging US-Russian relations in the process. In an effort to inject some balance of opinion, not to mention pure sanity, into the ongoing debate over what happened to Malaysian Flight MH17, Ron Paul is convinced the US government is withholding information on the catastrophe. "The US government has grown strangely quiet on the accusation that it was Russia or her allies that brought down the Malaysian airliner with a...

Artillery shells slammed into the outskirts of the Ukrainian city of Donetsk on Sunday as government forces tightened the noose around the rebel-held redoubt and called on pro-Russian separatists to surrender. To the east of Donetsk, government forces and the separatists were fighting for control of the town of Krasny Luch, a rail and road junction through which Kiev says the rebels are receiving supplies of Russian military equipment. Talk of a ceasefire, a possibility raised by a separatist leader on Saturday, evaporated as Kiev government forces kept up an offensive to crush the rebels. Ukrainian military spokesman Andriy Lysenko...

The flagging pro-Russia rebellion in eastern Ukraine has a new leader fighting to keep control of the militants' most important stronghold following the resignation of a Russian citizen who had directed the insurgency since it began more than four months ago. Alexander Borodai, a Moscow native who has claimed to be prime minister of the self-proclaimed People's Republic of Donetsk since May, resigned on Thursday and handed the reins of the unraveling independence drive to Donetsk native Alexander Zakharchenko, according to news agencies reporting from the embattled city. Separatists, who Kiev and its Western allies say are armed and encouraged...

Moscow’s calls for the evacuation of children from eastern Ukraine are not being answered, Russia's UN envoy Vitaly Churkin said. He stated that over 1,200 orphans have been abandoned in the region, which is under continuous shelling from Kiev troops. Ukrainian security forces are “methodically shelling residential neighborhoods” and infrastructure, Churkin said at the UN Security Council (UNSC) meeting in New York on Friday. The UN diplomats assembled to discuss a UN report on human rights in Ukraine. UN Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights Ivan Šimonović stated that according to Kiev, 300 children remain in several orphanages in areas not...

As Ukrainian government forces close in on pro-Russia separatists' final strongholds, Western security strategists have sounded the alarm that Russian President Vladimir Putin may be preparing to invade eastern Ukraine to rescue the embattled insurgents. U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel on Wednesday added his voice to the chorus of warnings that a massive Russian troop buildup on the border with Ukraine may be more than Kremlin saber-rattling. “It’s a reality, of course it is,” Hagel said during a visit to the U.S. European Command in Stuttgart, Germany. “When you see the buildup of these troops, the sophistication and training of...

The situation in eastern Ukraine was described as a catastrophic, full-blown war by Russia's UN envoy, Vitaly Churkin, during the latest UN Security Council meeting. Russia has also called for an international humanitarian mission to be launched. Fighting between Kiev’s army and self-defense forces [is that what they are, now?] intensified on Tuesday, with the Ukrainian military using heavy weaponry around Donetsk in eastern Ukraine. According to witnesses, the Ukrainian army resorted to multiple rocket launchers, including Uragan launchers and cruise missiles, RIA Novosti reported citing local militia. Cruise missiles were spotted flying over the city of Gorlovka on Tuesday,...

Ron Paul, the former United States congressman who campaigned for the presidency no fewer than three times, is yet again warning the White House not to increase America’s involvement in the escalating crisis in Ukraine. Paul, a 78-year-old retired doctor who spent nearly three decades in the US Congress representing the state of Texas, has spoken out incessantly this year about the ongoing skirmish in Ukraine — especially, as of late, with regards to how the administration of US President Barack Obama has so far responded to the stand-off between separatists in eastern Ukraine and the country’s legitimate government in...

Military Says It Took Back a Town Even as Some Troops Crossed Border With Russia KIEV—Ukrainian forces were seeing mixed results in their battle against pro-Russian separatists in the east of the country on Monday, reporting they had moved closer to cutting off the separatist stronghold of Donetsk even as several hundred Ukrainian troops surrendered overnight across the Russian border. Military spokesman Col. Andriy Lysenko told reporters in Kiev that Ukrainian forces had retaken Yasinuvata, a small city on the northern outskirts of Donetsk, closing off what he said was an important supply route for the separatists. A Twitter feed...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Manchester United thrilled a record crowd with a brilliant opening goal — and even Cristiano Ronaldo's unexpected entrance proved futile for Real Madrid. Ashley Young scored twice in the first half, and United beat Madrid 3-1 on Saturday in front of 109,318 fans at Michigan Stadium. It was the largest crowd to see a soccer game in the United States, breaking the mark of 101,799 set at the Rose Bowl for the 1984 Olympic final. Ronaldo has been recovering from the left leg injury that limited him in the World Cup, but the world player of...

ROZSYPNE, Ukraine – As fighting continued to rage in eastern Ukraine, an international team of investigators on Thursday managed to reach the crash site of the Malaysia Airline Flight 17 for the first time since it was brought down by a missile two weeks ago. Clashes along routes to the wreckage site between government troops and pro-Russian separatist rebels had kept the delegation from reaching the area to retrieve bodies that have been lying in open fields. But the investigators were allowed through a checkpoint leading to the crash site at the village of Rozsypne early Thursday afternoon by a...

A poll released by the independent Russian pollster Levada on Wednesday has found that a large number of Russians believe that Ukraine shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, with 46 percent saying they think it was brought down by a Ukrainian army antiaircraft missile and 36 percent saying a Ukrainian military plane shot it down (multiple answers were allowed, meaning the percentages do not add up to a hundred and people may have chosen more than one answer).The results appear to show the gap between Western and Russian perceptions of the Malaysia Airlines crash, which the United States and other nations believe...

The shooting down of MH17 in Ukraine’s civil war is a terrible event. However, the American media and government grossly misrepresent the USA’s role in creating the current situation, and coverage of Ukraine does credit to ‘Alice in Wonderland’. Reporting is dominated by the usual suspects from the Brookings Institution, etc. spouting jingoistic nonsense. Yes, there is significant history there, including a murky, amateurish, attempt to poison former President Victor Yushchenko with TCDD (a dioxin) in 2004 by unidentified parties. This sort of thing is a sign of the overall situation. Let’s start with how all US media refer to...

Russia on Saturday accused the United States of contributing to the Ukraine crisis and suggested that Obama administration “lies” about Moscow’s involvement in the downed Malaysian jetliner led European nations to impose new sanctions. The country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the U.S. is conducting "an unrelenting campaign of slander against Russia, ever more relying on open lies." The administration has said since the passenger jet carrying 298 people was downed over Ukraine July 17 that it has evidence suggesting Moscow supplied the rocketry and training to the pro-Russian military forces, or separatists, opposed to the Ukraine government and believed...

A $137 million three-mile train is coming to a nearly deserted avenue in a bankrupt city. Growing up in the 1940s, Robert Fogelson remembers banging on the typewriter and peering out the window at his father’s office in a Manhattan skyscraper. Then "[my dad] would take us for lunch to a nearby Schraft’s, a chain of restaurants that was popular with housewives like my mother, who regularly went downtown to shop…to socialize ...or to meet my father for a play or a movie." Fogelson hadn’t decided yet what he would do with his life, "[b]ut I took it for granted,"...

VLADIMIR PUTIN has responded to the international outrage over the destruction of a Malaysian airliner by his proxies in eastern Ukraine by escalating his aggression. According to U.S. officials, tanks, artillery and other heavy weapons have continued to cross from Russia to Ukraine since the passenger jet was shot down. On Wednesday, two more Ukrainian military jets were hit by anti-aircraft missiles, which Ukrainian officials said had been fired from Russia. The State Department also said Thursday that Russian artillery was firing at Ukrainian positions from across the border. The Russian president is clearly not impressed by Western responses to...

Here’s the spin war verdict: the current Malaysian Airlines tragedy – the second in four months – is “terrorism” perpetrated by “pro-Russian separatists” armed by Russia and Putin is the main culprit. End of story. Anyone who believes otherwise, shut up. Why? Because the CIA said so. Because Hillary ‘We came, we saw, he died’ Clinton said so. Because crazy Samantha ‘R2P’ Power said so – thundering at the UN, everything duly printed by the neo-con infested Washington Post. Because Anglo-American corporate media – from CNN to Fox (who tried to buy Time Warner, which owns CNN) – said so....

Washington Seeks to Counter Russian Claims About MH17 Crash U.S. intelligence officials presented reporters with their most detailed case yet Tuesday that Russian-backed Ukrainian separatists shot down a Malaysia Airlines jetliner last week, in a bid to counter what American officials see as Russian efforts to muddy the waters with claims of Ukrainian culpability. The officials relied on photographs, social media, and voiceprint analysis of Ukrainian communications intercepts to make their public case that a likely SA-11 antiaircraft weapon fired from separatist-controlled territory shot down the commercial airliner, killing 298 people on board. The evidence cited, however, didn't raise the...

usatoday.com cannot be posted due to copyright complaint http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/07/22/ukraine-mh17-bodies-russia/12981325/

KIEV, Ukraine — After days of obstruction, Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine reached an agreement with Malaysia on Monday, surrendering the flight recorder boxes of the Malaysia Airlines jetliner downed by a surface-to-air missile last week, and allowing the bodies of the victims to be evacuated by train. The agreement, announced by the Malaysian prime minister, Najib Razak, in a live television broadcast, appeared to represent a significant movement to end the standoff after the crash of Flight 17 from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, which killed 298 people. The bodies lay for days in a wheat field in eastern...

<p>In televised comments this morning, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that responsibility for the tragic downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 on Thursday lay with “the government of the territory on which it happened.” He stopped short of directly blaming the Ukrainian military for launching the missile – but Russia’s many state-controlled media outlets have been only too happy to do that for him. On Friday morning, as the world tried to make sense of the crash in separatist-controlled Ukraine, the Russian spin machine was already doing damage control. Gruesome images of the wreckage were splashed across this morning’s papers under headlines blaming Kiev for the attack.</p>