Free Republic

Putin lets his people die to cover up the truth about Islam. Biden and the EU says that Vladimir Putin is nothing like them, but in at least one area, he’s very much like them. After the Islamic terror attack in Moscow by Muslim migrants, Putin, the Russian regime and its online ‘IRA’ influencers are choosing to blame everyone, from Ukraine to America and Israel, rather than Islam. Putin claimed that the Islamic terrorists were headed for Ukraine. Why go to Ukraine when there are plenty of Islamic enclaves in and around Russia? After having hosted a terror summit that...

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Monday that the terrorist attack at the Crocus City Hall concert venue near Moscow had been committed by radical Islamists. "We know that the crime was committed by the hands of radical Islamists, whose ideology the Islamic world itself has been fighting for centuries," Putin said. Even though Russia knows who carried out the terrorist attack in the Crocus concert hall, but the mastermind behind it is still in question, and we need to find out whether radical Islamists really decided to strike at the country, the Russian president said. "In...

Ground zero of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war of aggression against Ukraine shifted Friday to Moscow’s Crocus City Hall. ISIS claimed responsibility for the concert shooting that killed 133 and injured 140, but all is likely not as it seems — and the Kremlin is putting the blame on Kyiv. ISIS may or may not have been involved. If the latter, the Federal Security Service (FSB) was probably behind it. ISIS often claims responsibilities for attacks it did not commit to build its reputation and exaggerate its reach. Heavily guarded Moscow feels like a heavy lift for the Islamic terrorist...

Streamed yesterday, after observing the news as it broke.

Vice President Kamala Harris quickly rejected claims from Russian President Vladimir Putin that Ukraine could be involved with the terrorist attack that killed over 130 people at a Moscow concert hall on Saturday. The U.S. government and Western allies said ISIS was responsible for the attack, the largest by the group in years and the deadliest in Moscow in over a decade. “No, there is no, whatsoever, any evidence [of Ukraine involvement],” Harris said in an ABC interview with Rachel Scott on Sunday. “In fact, what we know to be the case is that ISIS-K is actually by all accounts...

ISIS had a huge Russian and Central Asian contingent in its heyday. About one out of every five Russian citizens is Muslim, but that population is not evenly distributed either geographically or socioeconomically. In cities, a lot of taxi drivers and hard-luck laborers have names like Magomedov and Ismailov, indicative of Muslim ancestry.... The center of geographic gravity of Islam in Russia is the Northern Caucasus, the site of domestic strife and bloodshed in a series of episodes going back centuries. Some groups around Dagestan and Chechnya have become proficient guerrilla warriors, and Putin perfected his own harsh methods on...

President Vladimir Putin extended his reign over Russia in a landslide election whose outcome was never in doubt, declaring Monday his determination to advance deeper into Ukraine and dangling new threats against the West. After the harshest crackdown on dissent since Soviet times, it was clear from the earliest returns that Putin’s nearly quarter-century rule would continue with a fifth term that grants him six more years. Still, Russians heeded a call to protest Putin’s repression and his war in Ukraine by showing up at polling stations at noon on Sunday. With all the precincts counted Monday, election officials said...

Russian President Vladimir Putin was spotted on Capitol Hill ahead of Wednesday’s House impeachment inquiry hearing — sort of. Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) donned a Putin mask ahead of the House Oversight Committee hearing on allegations about the first family’s business dealings overseas in a swipe at Republicans leading the inquiry. “I just came to thank [Oversight Committee Chairman] James Comer for taking all of our intelligence and using it in the committee,” Moskowitz, 43, told reporters as “Putin.” “Maybe he can come see the technology in the grocery stores,” the Democrat added in a reference to conservative pundit Tucker...

Russian President Vladimir Putin has been reelected in a landslide victory in an election with big turnout, so he comes fortified into a new phase of the war in Ukraine.While celebrating 10 years of the return of Crimea to Russian rule, Putin said that Moscow ‘will not relent’ in Ukraine, and plans to create a buffer zone to protect itself against long-range Ukrainian strikes and cross-border raids.Associated Press reported:“The Kremlin’s forces have made battlefield progress as Kyiv’s troops struggle with a severe shortage of artillery shells and exhausted front-line units after more than two years of war. The front line...

W5 takes an in-depth look into who Russia's oligarchs are, and whether sanctioning them would stop President Vladimir Putin's invasion in Ukraine. ...... Follow along using the transcript.

Amid the West's continued support of Ukraine, the threat of nuclear escalation with Russia has been ever-present as the Kremlin tries to deter further NATO involvement. While there is no indication of an impending nuclear clash between Russia and NATO, the results would be catastrophic, according to the "Plan A" simulation published by Princeton's Science and Global Security program, which estimates there would be 91.5 million casualties within hours of a nuclear conflict and many more in the following months and years. A Russian nuclear attack on the U.S. would aim to cut essential command and control communications channels, destroy...

Thirteen years ago, Vladimir Putin went to watch a martial arts tournament and, as he congratulated the winner of one heavyweight bout, the unthinkable happened: a large section of the crowd began booing and jeering their shocked leader. It was the start of a rocky period for the Russian president as his blatantly rigged elections sparked the country's biggest protests since the collapse of the Soviet Union. 'We're not afraid any more,' a man told me at one huge demonstration in Moscow. I heard anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny warn Putin that 'if the crooks and thieves continue trying to deceive...

Pope Francis’s suggestion that Ukraine’s leaders should admit defeat, find “the courage to raise the white flag” and negotiate a halt to the war with Russia provoked justified fury in Kyiv and eastern Europe. He was wrong to say Ukraine is beaten, and gravely remiss in failing to condemn Moscow’s illegal aggression and war crimes. Yet Francis is not alone in wondering how this conflict ends. Two years on, there’s no sign of a winner. Maybe that’s just as well, in the sense that outright victory for either side could be disastrous for all. Does this unheroic consideration tacitly influence...

President Vladimir Putin won a record 88 percent in Russia’s presidential election on Sunday, exit polls and first results showed, cementing his grip on power, though thousands of opponents staged a symbolic noon protest at polling stations. The early result means Putin, who came to power in 1999, looks to have easily won a new six-year term that would enable him to overtake Josef Stalin and become Russia’s longest-serving leader for more than 200 years.

Putin Re-Elected in Historic VictoryPutin reportedly secured a monumental win with 87% of the vote, becoming Russia's longest-serving president post-Stalin.Remote electronic voting sees a world record 94% turnout, according to the territorial Election Commission.Source:… pic.twitter.com/LwfcBenHZZ— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) March 17, 2024

For the first time in two years many Russians are trying to make a difference but they are still minority.

Voting in the Russian presidential election began this morning and will end Sunday. At that point, Putin's victory will be announced and he will start his 5th term as president. The vote tally doesn't really matter. It will be whatever the Kremlin decides it should be. Having killed off his only two real opponents in the past year, Navalny and Prigozhin, he probably feels like he earned it. The presidential vote in Russia, which began Friday and lasts through Sunday, features the trappings of a horse race but is more of a predetermined, Soviet-style referendum. President Vladimir V. Putin, 71,...

Best quote of his explanation: "This is a situation in which the sanctions were imposed by one important sector of the world economy which then cut itself off from resources that it needs - and that's particularly true of Western Europe - in return for cutting Russia off from various things that Russia doesn't really need."

Russia has successfully imposed its passports on nearly the entire population of occupied Ukraine by making it impossible to survive without them, coercing hundreds of thousands of people into citizenship. A Russian passport is needed to prove property ownership and keep access to health care and retirement income. Refusal can result in losing custody of children, jail – or worse. A new Russian law stipulates that anyone in the occupied territories who does not have a Russian passport by July 1 is subject to imprisonment as a “foreign citizen.”..... AP spoke about the system to impose Russian citizenship in occupied...

Ukrainians living in regions illegally annexed by Russia are being coerced to vote in the presidential election of their wartime occupier, Vladimir Putin — an exercise denounced by Ukraine as an illegitimate effort by Moscow to tighten control over its neighbor. Polls don't open in Russia until Friday, but they are open in four annexed regions of Ukraine close to the front line, some of which are not fully in Putin’s control. *snip* In the Donetsk region, the Ukrainian mayor of Mariupol, Vadym Boychenko, said his city was a symbol of Russia’s “military nightmare” and of an “electoral process in...