Free Republic

The fighting in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region is entering its fifth year. More than 10,000 people have been killed in this persistent conflict; 2,800 were civilians. Nearly two million people have been internally displaced or put at risk if they remain in their homes. Yes, at first it was a skirmish between Ukrainian security forces and local separatist militias, bolstered by Russian mercenaries. But by late 2014, the fighting involved large numbers of troops including Russian army regulars, outfitted with armor and artillery. Today, the Donbas war is among the worst humanitarian crises in the world, with frequent attacks occurring...

"We have proof that chemical weapons were used last week, at least chlorine, and that they were used by the regime of Bashar al-Assad," Macron said during an interview on France's TF1 television. Macron added that he was in daily contact with US President Donald Trump and that they would decide on their response "at a time of our choosing, when we judge it to be the most useful and the most effective." The French leader, who had made the use of chemical weapons in Syria a "red line", said one of his aims in Syria was to "remove the...

Despite the panic and hysteria in the media, the Russian and American military commands in Syria continue to cooperate to ensure that any attack by one side against Syrian targets will not lead to the loss of life by soldiers of the other country. American military personnel who constantly coordinate their actions with the Russians just as the Russians do with the Americans on the territory of Syria have taken all measures so that any American strike will not inflict casualties among Russians. Only if the Russian forces confirm that there are no Russian soldiers present at a place the...

The reality is that Israel – and Netanyahu in particular – has badly misread the trajectory of Russia’s re-engagement in the Middle East, which has created in the very kindest interpretation the context for Iran’s projection of its influence ever further west and ever closer to Israel’s borders.

Jolie and Gates topped the female and male lists for the third year in a row The survey, conducted by YouGov, features 20 men and 20 women, after polling 37,000 people in 35 countries Following Gates are former US President Barack Obama, actor Jackie Chan, President of China Xi Jingping and Chinese business magnate Jack Ma After Jolie are former US first lady Michelle Obama, TV host Oprah Winfrey, Queen Elizabeth II and former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton In the US, Barack and Michelle Obama topped the poll for most admired people President Trump came second in the...

A British organization has launched an ambitious project aimed at restoring old, abandoned synagogues across Europe and bringing them back to community life, and commemorating communities that were wiped out in the Holocaust. The Foundation of Jewish Heritage has identified 3,300 pre-Second World War buildings used for Jewish prayer, of which at least 19 could be brought back into use - out of an estimated total of 17,000 that were in use before the Second World War. The remaining buildings, of which just 718 are still being used as synagogues, have been carefully catalogued based on their artistic, urban, and...

Earlier this year the Russian ministry of culture banned the satirical film The Death of Stalin, because it contained “information whose dissemination is prohibited by law”. On Russian social media, the withdrawal of the film’s licence was met with widespread laughter and scorn: what sort of secrets could this movie possibly have disclosed? Could it be that Stalin is indeed dead? – so went the irony. Back in December, there had been an ominous precursor: Alexander Bortnikov, the head of Russia’s FSB intelligence services, told the Rossiyskaya Gazeta that Stalin-era repressions had been justified. He mentioned the need to counter...

The highest-ranking intelligence officer ever to defect from the Eastern Bloc says the Soviet Union orchestrated an anti-American and anti-Israeli propaganda campaign in the Middle East four decades ago -- and the effects of the effort still reverberate. The Middle East was a key battlefield in the Cold War, and Moscow spent considerable resources courting Arab states in the region and vocally backing the Palestinian cause. Humiliated by the defeat of the Soviet-backed Arab states in their 1967 war against Israel, Yuri Andropov devised the operation to discredit the Jewish state and present Zionism as "Nazi-style racism" while at the...

Russia's ruble experienced its biggest one-day fall for over two years on Monday and stocks in major Russian companies also slid, as investors reacted to a new round of U.S. sanctions targeting some of Russia's biggest tycoons. The impact of the new sanctions could threaten Russia's fragile economic recovery, which was only just beginning to take hold after the first major wave of sanctions against Russia, introduced in response to Moscow's annexation of Crimea in 2014. Shares of Russian Companies Tumble Following U.S. Sanctions Russia's currency plunged to its lowest level since November last year, trading at 60.24 to the...

Three Moscow analysts say that the Kremlin has no clear symmetrical answers to the imposition of new US sanctions that do not do as much harm to Russia as to the United States. A Chinese analyst argues that precisely because Vladimir Putin doesn’t have any symmetrical responses at hand, the Kremlin leader is likely to engage in aggressive actions somewhere in order to demonstrate that he has not been put into a corner by the West and deprived of his freedom of action. Makarkin says “Russia today does not have the economic levels for influencing other countries which the US...

By 1945, Pyongyang was known as the Jerusalem of East Asia, where 50,000 Catholics lived in peace and Catholic missionaries were overseeing a wave of conversions. The heartbreaking story of religious persecution in North Korea began during the Soviet occupation from 1945-1948 and continued with the new independent state in 1953. Today, there is only one state-controlled Catholic church in Pyongyang and there are no priests or members of a religious institute recognized by the Holy See. Francis Lee, a translator for the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Korea, estimates that there are about 800-3,000 ‘official’ Catholics left in North Korea....

North Korea's foreign minister, on a visit to Moscow, said on Tuesday that the situation on the Korean Peninsula and world events showed that his country and Russia needed to forge stronger ties. "The current situation on the Korean peninsula and around your country, and the overall international political situation require our two countries to further strengthen friendly cooperation, to increase our strategic communication and coordination of action between our countries," Ri told reporters. Ri said he hoped they would find concrete ways to create "a new milestone" this year in their relations. High ranking North Korean officials have been...

The dominant narrative of modern Middle East history emphasizes European colonization and accepts as a truism that the former colonial powers prioritized the protection of their material interests—in oil, above all—above the dignity and self-determination of the region’s inhabitants. --Thus did botched decolonization result in endless instability...Thus did the region become a breeding ground for radicalism, intensified by Cold War rivalry between the superpowers, who replaced the European colonizers as the region’s meddling overlords...Then came Mikhail Gorbachev—a Westernizing reformer. At last, the Cold War was over. A new world order was at hand. What if this conventional wisdom is nonsense?...

Russia’s 50 richest businessmen have reportedly lost close to $12 billion in the days after the United States imposed a new wave of sanctions... According to the Forbes magazine’s real-time ranking, metals tycoon Vladimir Potanin was the biggest total-value loser with $1.5 billion wiped out. Potanin, part-owner of Norilsk Nickel, was not targeted by the U.S. Treasury Department in its latest wave of sanctions. Fellow steel tycoon Oleg Deripaska, who has stakes in eight of the 15 entities hit with sanctions, followed with an estimated $1.3 billion erased from his $6.7 billion net worth. Deripaska led the list of Russians...

Russia's Foreign Ministry said on Monday that the Israeli army's use of force against Palestinians at protests inside the Gaza Strip was unacceptable. Palestinian demonstrations, which began on March 30, have been dubbed "The Great March of Return" of refugees and their descendants to ancestral homes now in Israel. In a statement, the Russian Foreign Ministry criticized what it described as Israel's "indiscriminate use of force against the civilian population." Earlier on Monday, Russia's Defense Ministry accused Israel of carrying out airstrikes against a Syrian air base on Sunday following an alleged chemical weapons attack against civilians.

President Donald Trump will reportedly host a private dinner for French President Emmanuel Macron at Mount Vernon, the colonial home of George Washington. The rare honor was reported Sunday by the French publication, Journal du Dimanche. "Donald Trump and his wife Melania will welcome Emmanuel and Brigitte Macron to Mount Vernon for a private dinner on the evening of their arrival in Washington on April 23," a translation of the report stated. "The American organizers of the French president's state visit to the United States wanted to be at the height of the reception at the Eiffel Tower where …...

When China abolished the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television last week, state media said a proposed new body overseeing radio and TV management would fall directly under the State Council, i.e., more firmly under the thumb of the Communist Party. A statement from China Film Group on Tuesday said film management will be assigned to the Propaganda Department of the CPC. Moving movie oversight to the CPC’s Propaganda (or publicity) division is a means to maximize film’s special role in propaganda, ideas, culture and entertainment and develop a prosperous movie industry, CFG said. But it also...

Pilar Bonet, the longtime Russian correspondent of Madrid’s El Pais newspaper, says that she has been shocked by how easy it has been for Soviet-style conformity to make a comeback under Vladimir Putin, a comeback that reflects more changes in the environment in which Russians live than in the Russians themselves. Bonet tells Svetlana Reyter of the Colta.ru news portal, that she “is struck by how people who were normal in the past have in breathtaking fashion made the transition back to Soviet practices including double standards, hypocrisy and the elevation of the state to the status of the most...

The Word of God grew and multiplied under much persecution. Many of the disciples were driven from Jerusalem and the city of Antioch in Syria was gaining importance in the early church. When this was reported at Jerusalem, Barnabas was sent to Antioch for a special mission. He sought Saul (later called Paul) in the city of Tarsus and Saul returned with Barnabas to Antioch. Many great things were happening at Antioch and in this city the disciples of Jesus were first called "Christians". Around 48 AD, in the springtime, Paul and his companions Barnabas and Mark were called on...

Alexander Dugin is the intellectual who has Vladimir Putin’s back in the emerging ideological conflict between Russia and the West. At home, Putin uses him to create a nationalist, anti-liberal voting bloc, while abroad Dugin is the lynchpin of numerous irregular networks of anti-liberal political resistance and sabotage. No individual better represents the tactics of the current Russian regime. Since the late 1990s, Dugin has organized his views into a geostrategic ideology and a complex political metaphysics known respectively as Neo-Eurasianism and Fourth Political Theory. The former posits an ongoing archetypal clash between land and maritime civilizations and holds that...