Free Republic

One doesn’t often see a climbdown from Moscow, especially not from strongman Vladimir Putin, and even more so this fast. Yesterday, Russia’s defense spokesman spoke ominously of “the right to take appropriate measures against hostile actions by Israel” after Syrian air defense forces shot down a Russian surveillance plane. Now however, Putin has danced away from the threat, calling the downing the result of “tragic chance events”: Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday described the downing of a Russian plane in Syria as the result of “tragic chance events,” appearing to dial back a rare flare-up in tensions with...

Electoral authorities in Russia's Far Eastern Primorye region annulled the result of a disputed gubernatorial runoff vote, after the country's top election official said it was marred by "serious violations." A total of 12 members of Primorye's election commission on September 20 voted in favor of the annulment of the result of the closely contested vote in the region, where the Communist Party cried foul after the Kremlin-backed incumbent surged ahead at the end of the ballot count. One election commission member voted against the proposal. It is the first time a runoff has been annulled in Russia since 1996,...

Putin’s dialing down of the rhetoric is an effort to mask his intentions. He — Russia — still has the same foreign policy interests in Syria as he did before the plane was shot down, and those aren’t going to change anytime soon. When journalists asked him about the much more hostile statement of his Defense Ministry, which also vowed a retaliatory response, Putin stated clearly that it was “fully coordinated” with him (of course it was). He defined what ‘retaliatory’ meant. “The retaliatory measures will be directed above all to boosting the security of military men and installations in...

Journalist Jeff Greenfield, writing in the September 17 Politico magazine, somehow can't figure out the real reason "Why Woodward's 'Fear' Flopped in Washington." Greenfield makes a light attempt to find out the reason for the flop but seems to be unable to see the all too obvious.  So let us join Greenfield as he stumbles around while ignoring the very large elephant in the room whose stink is something that liberals don't want to dwell on, which is that Woodward couldn't find evidence of Trump-Russia collusion:

Graham Stack, a freelance journalist hired by Fusion GPS, says the opposition research firm was “almost completely wrong” about former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort. Stack says Fusion GPS provided most of the research cited by the media that suggested Manafort was a Kremlin stooge. Stack says he “shares the blame” for pushing the research, which he now says is part of a false narrative. A former contractor for Fusion GPS claims the opposition research firm got its investigation of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort “almost completely wrong.” Graham Stack, who was hired by Fusion GPS in July 2016,...

The United States' commitment to global development does not look good compared with that of other wealthy countries — and it's likely to get worse. According to an annual index released Tuesday by the Center for Global Development that ranks 27 of the world's wealthiest countries, the U.S. scored dead last on foreign aid contributions and quality — despite being the largest donor in dollar amount. That's because in 2017, it allocated a mere 0.18 percent of its gross national income for development assistance. That is well short of the 0.7 percent that wealthy countries have committed to strive for...

"The Israeli pilots were using the Russian aircraft as a shield and pushed it into the line of fire of the Syrian defense," Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said in a statement...Russia said it would make an "appropriate response" to Israel...Russia said Israel did not warn it of its operation over Latakia province until one minute before the strikes, which did not give the Russian plane enough time to escape...Israeli and French fighters were attacking targets at the time, Moscow said, according to Reuters.

(CNN)A Russian maritime patrol aircraft with multiple personnel on board was inadvertently shot down by Syrian regime anti-aircraft artillery on Monday after the Syrians came under attack by Israeli missiles, according to a US official with knowledge of the incident The US official said the regime was actually trying to stop a barrage of Israeli missiles. A second official confirmed that Israel was responsible for the missile strikes on the Syrian regime. The Russian state news agency TASS reported that a Russian IL-20 military aircraft with 14 personnel on board disappeared over the Mediterranean on Monday. According to TASS, the...

In the Russian MoD statement, the government is accusing the Israelis of not giving Russia enough time to get its forces out of the area, and given the information available at the moment, that seems likely. Did the Israeli Defense Force miscalculate on this one? The Israelis, as noted in the above report, have routinely attacked targets in Syria deemed to be a threat to the Jewish state’s security. Most of the time those attacks have been aimed at Iranian installations but Syrian government bases have also been targeted in the past.

PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) — South Korean President Moon Jae-in arrived in North Korea on Tuesday for his third and possibly most challenging summit yet with leader Kim Jong Un in which he hopes to break an impasse in talks with the United States over the North's denuclearization and breathe energy into his own efforts to expand and improve relations between the Koreas. In what are by now familiar images of the two Korean leaders hugging and exchanging warm smiles, Kim greeted Moon at Pyongyang's airport. They walked together past cheering crowds and a military honor guard, and then drove...

A Syrian military official told the Syrian Arab News Agency that missiles were fired from the Mediterranean sea towards the port city, but were intercepted and downed by air defense. Syrian media reported several explosions were heard over the city of Latakia on Monday night, Israeli media reported. A Syrian military official told the Syrian Arab News Agency that missiles were fired from the Mediterranean sea towards the port city, but were intercepted and downed by air defense.

On September 14, the open-source intelligence group Bellingcat and the investigative news website The Insider released passport data belonging to Alexander Petrov, one of the men identified by British authorities as a suspect in the March 4 nerve-agent attack in Salisbury, showing that his passport files contain various “top-secret” markings that seem to contradict his claims that he’s a mere civilian. Hours later, the newspaper Novaya Gazeta reported that the leaked passport records include yet another piece of evidence linking Petrov to Russia’s intelligence services: below one marking, the phone number 195-79-66 appears. This number, the newspaper says, is linked...

BEIRUT (AP) — They dug trenches around towns, reinforced caves for cover and put up sand bags around their positions. They issued calls to arms, urging young men to join in the defense of Idlib, the Syrian province where opposition fighters expect to make their last stand against Russian- and Iranian-backed government troops they have fought for years. This time, it's "surrender or die." As the decisive stand for their last stronghold looms, this motley crew of tens of thousands of opposition fighters, including some of the world's most radical groups, is looking for ways to salvage whatever is possible...

A multi-million kroner money laundering case at Danske Bank’s Estonian branch could be investigated by US authorities. The Justice Department, Treasury Department and Securities and Exchange Commission are each examining Danske Bank over the allegations of money laundering flows, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal. The investigations are the result of a complaint made by a confidential whistleblower to US authorities more than two years ago, according to a person familiar with the matter and documents reviewed by the WSJ, the newspaper writes. In early August, the Danish state prosecutor’s office for serious economic and international crime...

LONDON, September 12, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – A homosexual student group at Goldsmiths, University of London, is under fire for a series of tweets defending the idea of sending dissenters to “gulags” for forced re-education. The exchange began during a Twitter debate over “trans-exclusionary radical feminists” (TERFs), feminists who refuse to recognize men who “identify” as female to be "women." The group LGBTQ+ Goldsmiths had called for targeting feminist academics they considered to be TERFs, the Daily Telegraph reports. “The ideas of TERFS and anti-trans bigots literally *kill* and must be eradicated through re-education,” LGBTQ+ Goldsmiths claimed, then threatened to “arrange...

More than nine months after the FBI opened its highly classified counterintelligence investigation into alleged coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia, FBI lawyer Lisa Page said investigators still could not say whether there was collusion, according to a transcript of Page’s recent closed-door deposition reviewed by Fox News.“I think this represents that even as far as May 2017, we still couldn’t answer the question,” Page said.Page was responding to Republican Rep. John Ratcliffe of Texas, who wanted more information about a May 2017 text where Page, and her then colleague and lover FBI agent Peter Strzok discussed the merits...

Are we on the brink of a new war?... They will go to war without waiting for the facts to be checked, and without recalling Parliament..... he was asked about plans-now being openly discussed at high levels in Washington-for a devastating attack on Damascus. This will be in response to a supposed atrocity that has yet to take place but about which the Americans openly say they already have evidence-probably an alleged poison gas attack, in which we will see heartbreaking but unverified film of dead or dying children, from propaganda sources, and claims of multiple deaths from untraceable 'eyewitnesses'........

Without question, Trump’s ‘in-your-face’ pressure — though uncomfortable for many in Western diplomatic circles — has had an impact in overall NATO readiness. The spending increases are only part of the equation; the alliance has been dragged kicking and screaming back into the reality that it faces its greatest security challenge in decades as Russia, a revisionist power seeking to challenge the U.S.-led order in Europe, rises and threatens.

The Trump administration has made clear that its top priority in the Middle East is to thwart Iran’s nuclear and regional ambitions. So why is it so reluctant to lift a finger against Tehran’s most audacious gambit in Syria? That gambit is the reconquest, by Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad and his Iranian and Russian allies, of Idlib Province, the last major rebel holdout in western Syria and home to about three million people. A humanitarian catastrophe is expected to follow, entailing mass casualties and another tidal wave of refugees.

It’s understandable that the Chinese would seek the S-400, given Beijing’s lengthy ties to the Russian defense industry. But Turkey’s decision to buy the S-400 is particularly worrisome given that Turkey is a NATO ally and buying a weapon system from a great power rival of the alliance can be viewed as Ankara moving closer to Moscow in general. Also, buying a rival country’s air defense system cuts down on interoperability, which NATO is working to improve as Russia continues to pose significant threats to European interests.