Free Republic

In an interview with Germany's ARD television in 2008, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated that Moscow recognizes all of Ukraine's borders, and that there is no issue of ethnic conflict in Crimea. His comments, delivered shortly after Russia's military intervention in the Georgian breakaway region of South Ossetia, stand in stark contrast with Moscow's annexation of Crimea in 2014 and its support of armed separatists in eastern Ukraine. VIDEO https://www.rferl.org/a/putin-crimea-ukraine/26942862.html

Russia’s foreign minister has told the UN that Ukraine’s proposed peace plan and the latest proposals to revive the Black Sea grain initiative were “not realistic”. Sergei Lavrov spoke at a press conference on 23 September after a week of intense global diplomacy at the annual gathering of world leaders at UN headquarters in New York where Ukraine and its western allies sought to drum up support for Kyiv. “It is completely not feasible,” Lavrov said of a 10-point peace blueprint promoted by Kyiv. “It is not possible to implement this. It’s not realistic and everybody understands this but, at...

Vladimir Putin is more than a year into his third term as president of Russia, and he is likely to dominate the country's next decade as he dominated the last—just as Joseph Stalin and Leonid Brezhnev dominated their own times in the Kremlin. Like Putin or loathe him, he embodies an era. But centuries from now, the history books will barely remember the human rights abuses or oil pipelines in today's coverage of Russia. Mr. Putin will be remembered for one thing only: missing the chance to save his nation from a lingering decline. The United Nations predicts that, by...

LOS ANGELES -- Next month's opening of the Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools will be auspicious for a reason other than its both storied and infamous history as the former Ambassador Hotel, where the Democratic presidential contender was assassinated in 1968. With an eye-popping price tag of $578 million, it will mark the inauguration of the nation's most expensive public school ever. The K-12 complex to house 4,200 students has raised eyebrows across the country as the creme de la creme of "Taj Mahal" schools, $100 million-plus campuses boasting both architectural panache and deluxe amenities. .... At RFK, the features...

In recent times, that is, during June of 2009, President Barack Obama has recoiled at efforts at fighting the oppressors in Iran. He has allowed the political situation in Iran to escalate into the crisis it is today. At the time of this writing, protests in the streets have broken out over the rigged election. The red flags should have been flying in the Commander in Chief’s face already. Iran has been advancing their nuclear weapon program at a dangerously rapid rate, constantly waving the fact at the West. The rest has been very well documented. Political corruption has been...

This is the story of hundreds, if not thousands, of foreign language documents that the FBI neglected to translate before and after the Sept.11 attacks because of problems in its language department - documents that detailed what the FBI heard on wiretaps and learned during interrogations of suspected terrorists. Sibel Edmonds, a translator who worked at the FBI's language division, says the documents weren't translated because the divison was riddled with incompetence and corruption. Edmonds was fired last year after reporting her concerns to FBI officials. She told her story behind closed doors to investigators in Congress and to the...