Free Republic

Donald Trump Is Sticking it to Putin’s Russia and Making Obama Look Bad Donald Trump will deliver his second State of the Union tonight, dogged by Democrat and media allegations that he is Putin’s patsy and fanboy. The wily Russian gave Trump an assist into the White House and POTUS is paying his benefactor back with deferential behavior. Let’s get serious. Putin is not a bad player of global poker. If he bet big on Donald Trump, that would make him a chump getting his clock cleaned at the table. It was always a ludicrous notion that by buying a...

1/26/2018: *NEW* FBI Vault release - Mikhail Lesin PDF - "The United States Attorney's Office District of Columbia (UAO-DC) and the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) have requested assistance in the homicide investigation of Mikhail Lesin, former Russian political figure, media executive, and an adviser to Vladamir Putin, the President of Russia. On Thursday, November 5, 2015, at approximately 11:32a.m., Lesin, with DOB: 07/11/1958, was found dead inside his hotel room, the Dupont Circle Hotel located at 1500 New Hampshire Avenue, N.W. After an autopsy was performed, a Deputy Medical Examiner ruled that the cause of Lesin's death was blunt force...

In the run-up to presidential elections, the Kremlin arguably had more to gain from letting the comedy about Stalin appear in theaters than from imposing another ban - Which begs the question: What did they fear would happen if they released “The Death of Stalin”? In their appeal to Culture Minister Medinsky, cultural figures accused the film of “lampooning the history of our country” and “blackening the memory of our citizens who conquered fascism.” The action of the film, however, takes place in 1953 and makes no mention of the war — The only people who could actually take offense...

“I offer my deepest condolences to you and the entire Cuban nation over the death of your brother, the leader of the Cuban revolution Fidel Castro. The name of this remarkable statesman is rightfully viewed as a symbol of a whole era in modern history. Free and independent Cuba built by him and his fellow revolutionaries has become an influential member of the international community and serves as an inspiring example for many countries and peoples. Fidel Castro was a sincere and reliable friend of Russia. He made a tremendous personal contribution to the establishment and progress of Russian-Cuban...

Russian police wrestled opposition leader Alexei Navalny into a patrol wagon on Sunday, moments after he appeared at a rally to urge voters to boycott what he said would be a rigged presidential election in March. Video footage posted on social media showed Navalny appear on Moscow’s main thoroughfare, a few hundred meters (yards) from the Kremlin, to join several hundred supporters taking part in the protest, which the authorities had said was illegal. He had only walked a short distance when he was surrounded by helmet-clad police officers. They wrestled him to the ground on the pavement, and then...

The Russian government is bracing itself for mass protests in cities across the country. They have been called by anti corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny, who was barred from running in the upcoming presidential elections because of a dubious fraud conviction. Katya Gordon will be joining them. She told Sky News: "Once Putin said that he wants to be a president again, the election was finished and there is no chance, because the system is too powerful and it is made to work for the main idea that the powerful people should have their power and they don't care about the...

On Thursday, more than four months later, one of the questions surrounding Mr. Lesin’s death was answered: The office of the chief medical examiner in Washington announced that he had not died of a heart attack, but rather of blunt force injuries to his head.

President Vladimir Putin has promised government backing for Islamic religious education in Russia, in a bid to stave extremism and cater to Russia’s large Muslim community. Up to 20 million Muslims make up Russia’s second-largest religious minority. Thousands of young radicalized Russians have travelled to Iraq and Syria to join jihadist fighters in recent years, making the country the largest source of foreign fighters in the war-torn region. At a meeting with Islamic religious figures on Wednesday, Russia’s president pledged “undoubted support” for a "revival of Islamic education in Russia," the state-run TASS news agency reported. “Traditional Islam is an...

A Russian billionaire tycoon has been stripped of half his wealth after allegedly swapping Vladimir Putin's secretive daughter for a London-based socialite, it has been claimed. Kirill Shamalov has been linked with glamorous Zhanna Volkova after reportedly splitting with the Russian President's rock'n'roll dancing daughter Katerina Tikhonova. But there are claims the 35-year-old businessman has lost half his wealth as alleged punishment for the 'split'.

Russian businessmen are bracing for the release of a list of Kremlin-linked “oligarchs” by the U.S. Treasury Department next Monday, Jan. 29. “I think they want to put a lot of pressure on Russia with the help of sanctions so that Russia changes its government and its president to someone more suitable for them,” the state-run RIA Novosti news agency cited VTB chief Andrei Kostin as saying Wednesday. Despite Moscow’s official line that western sanctions have a limited impact on the Russian economy, Kostin described western sanctions as a “full-scale attack on Russia, on Russian society.” “This is a very...

Coming soon a stepping stone,where no man will rule but God alone,where wisdom speaks and virtue rules,The Spirit of The Lord revealing fools.

A Russia-led initiative involving China and Pakistan that seeks a political settlement to Afghanistan’s civil war has the makings of a diplomatic alliance that could supplant the United States as the leading power in Central Asia. The grouping was unveiled after a third meeting in Moscow late last month and may be expanded to include regional powers Iran and Turkey, which formed a separate tripartite grouping on Syria with Russia in talks preceding the parleys on Afghanistan. The Afghan government reacted angrily to the Moscow meeting, to which it had not been invited, because the meeting proposed the relaxation of...

The Palestinian cause will stay alive among Arabs until the establishment of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, the Syrian president’s office said... “The future of Jerusalem is not determined by a state or a president but is determined by its history and by the will and determination in the Palestinian cause,” President Bashar al-Assad’s office said on an official social media feed.

Russia's Putin and Turkey's Erdogan agree on creation of Palestinian state In a phonecall, the two leaders "discussed the situation of Middle East peace talks in the context of the resolution adopted by the UN General Assembly on the status of Jerusalem," the Kremlin said in a statement. They "confirmed the mutual disposition to continue to assist in resolving the Palestine-Israeli conflict on the basis of international norms and realisation of the right of the Palestinian people to create an independent state," it said. US President Donald Trump decided on December 6 to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital. Trump's move...

A Russian Orthodox bishop has advised the faithful not to vote for Vladimir Putin when he stands for re-election in March, a nearly unheard of occurrence in the loyal church. The angry statement marked the first time an acting bishop has spoken against supporting the current president. Bishop Yevtikhy Kurochkin of the epiphany cathedral in the Siberian city of Ishim wrote on his page on VK, Russia's most popular social network, that he could no longer follow his “desire to vote for Putin” following “blasphemous” remarks by the president. “'If the light that is in you is darkness, how great...

It is now well over a year since Vladimir Putin's Russia passed 'anti-missionary' laws and more than 180 cases have since been brought. Activities ranging from prayer meetings in homes, posting worship times on a religious website and praying in the presence of other citizens have been interpreted as 'missionary activity' with Christians making up the vast majority of the law's victims. One case is that of Donald Ossewaarde, an American Baptist preacher living in Oryol, who was expelled for hosting a church meeting in his house. Having lost appeals throughout the Russian judiciary system, Ossewaarde's case is now with...

“The prospect of regime change is a serious concern. The Kremlin understands that (U.S. President Donald) Trump is unpredictable. They felt more secure with Barack Obama that he would not take any action that would explode the situation, but with Trump they don’t know.” Kortunov, the think-tank chief close to the Russian Foreign Ministry, said he did not think the Kremlin’s defense of Kim Jong Un was based on any personal affection or support for North Korea’s leadership, likening Moscow’s pragmatic backing to that it has given Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad. Moscow’s position was motivated by a belief the status...

Born in 1912, Kim Il Sung went to the Soviet Far East in the 1930s to train with Stalin's military during the war against Japan, which had occupied the Korean peninsula since 1910. The North makes much of Kim, the heroic soldier. But whether he actually fought against the Japanese is a matter of debate. What's clear is that Stalin believed Kim was trustworthy, and after the Soviet invasion of the peninsula in 1945, installed him as the Communist leader in the North. A virtual unknown in his country, he seized power with considerable help from the Soviet Union and...

Looking at Turkey and Erdogan invading Syria put Gog and Magog back on the map for me. Erdogan is my # 1 as Putin must now defend his port. Pope Francis once again proved in Chile he no longer even cares about Conservative Vatican Principles. Time and time again this Marxist has proven that the Vatican is as corrupt as he is. Pope Francis # 2 We are just scratching the surface on this controversial Marxist. His name is Obama. I still believe that once the layers are pulled back over the next couple of years, he could very well...

Radical left-wing icon former California Democratic Rep. Ron Dellums was a hired lobbyist for Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer who met with Donald Trump Jr. June 9, 2016, the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group has learned. Dellums, who represented liberal San Francisco and Oakland, Calif., is a long-time darling of left-wing political activists. He served 13 terms in Congress as an African-American firebrand and proudly called himself a socialist. He retired in 1996. The former congressman is one of several high-profile Democratic partisans who was on Veselnitskaya’s payroll, working to defeat a law that is the hated object of...