Free Republic

As American officials fire off diplomatic salvos at Russia in response to that nation’s purported actual artillery salvos into Ukraine, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said recently that among other actions, the U.S. military is dusting off decades-old plans, just in case. “We’re looking inside our own readiness models to look at things that we haven’t had to look at for 20 years, frankly, about basing and lines of communication and sea lanes,” Gen. Martin Dempsey, America’s top military officer, said at the Aspen Security Forum Thursday evening. “What the military does when faced with these crises...

A young Ukrainian has prompted widespread outrage after posing in make-up apparently looted from the crash site of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17. Ekaterina Parkhomenko, who describes herself as a ‘separatist’ from the eastern region of the country, posted images of herself on Instagram along with the claim that she was wearing make-up ‘from the field’ – hinting the products were taken from the same area where the bodies of victims of the plane crash lay. ‘Mascara from Amsterdam, or rather from the field. Well, I think you know what I mean,’ she reportedly wrote on her social media page, before...

Vice President Joe Biden recently confided a sensational bit of news to the New Yorker magazine: In a 2011 meeting with Vladimir Putin, he had actually told Russia's then-prime minister that he had no "soul." Even more remarkable was Putin's response. "And he looked back at me, and he smiled, and he said, 'We understand one another.' " Many people -- in Ukraine, Europe, America and even Russia -- probably share Biden and Putin's estimation of the Russian president's spiritual condition. In saying Putin has no soul, it means he seems to lack both the capacity to feel emotions and...

A young Ukrainian has prompted widespread outrage after posing in make-up apparently looted from the crash site of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17. Ekaterina Parkhomenko, who describes herself as a ‘separatist’ from the eastern region of the country, posted images of herself on Instagram along with the claim that she was wearing make-up ‘from the field’ – hinting the products were taken from the same area where the bodies of victims of the plane crash lay. ‘Mascara from Amsterdam, or rather from the field. Well, I think you know what I mean,’ she reportedly wrote on her social media page, before...

Russia's Communist Party and European leftist parliamentary groups have denounced the ousting of the Ukrainian Communist party from the country's parliament as a breach of free speech. Leader of the Russian Communist Party, Gennady Zyuganov, called the ban, set to go into effect on Thursday, the latest attempt to "massacre" the party of his Ukrainian counterpart Petro Symonenko. "Attempts to muzzle them and do away with them are evidence of the cowardice and hideousness of those who are doing this," Zyuganov told state-run Rossiya 24 television channel on Wednesday. Ukrainian parliament voted to oust the party after Symonenko on Wednesday...

The Russian commander in charge of separatist militia forces in Ukraine has a warning for Russia President Vladimir Putin: Lose Ukraine and you'll lose your power. Col. Igor Strelkov, a former commander of Russian special forces during the Chechen war in 2011, has been commanding rebel units with the MH17 in Ukraine, reports The Daily Beast. His command is under direction from Moscow, but made up of unprofessional fighters, not normal Russian military, and his troops have been losing to advancing troops from the Donetsk Ukrainia Anti-Terror Operation Forces. And then last week, Strelkov was labeled a possible war criminal...

The chairman of the House Financial Services Committee Chairman is calling on President Obama to cut off all business pending between the Export-Import Bank and Russia because of the nation’s recent actions in Ukraine. “The situation in Ukraine grows worse every day,” wrote Texas U.S. Rep. Jeb Hensarling in a letter to Obama, Sec. of State John Kerry, Sec. of Treasury Jack Lew, and others. “Russia bears responsibility for this conflict, including the atrocity of the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, because Russia is supplying the separatists with advanced weapons and encouraging their attacks on aircraft and on the...

The United States is in touch with India over the alleged Russian aggression in Ukraine, a senior Obama Administration official has told lawmakers, who expressed concern over India's close relationship with Moscow. "We do make the point to our Indian colleagues, as we do to friends around the world, about our perspective, particularly with respect to Russian aggression in the Ukraine and the implications that that has," Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia Nisha Desai Biswal said during a Congressional hearing. "And we will continue to have those conversations with India and with other partners around the...

Russian president Vladimir “Teflon” Putin is on a roll—or so we’re led to believe by the media. The Russian president combines the slick machismo of James Bond, the cojones of George Patton and the craftiness of Cardinal Richelieu. Actually, in his dealings with Cuba, Putin looks more like Barney Fife. We’re not accustomed to seeing Mr Macho-Cool Vladimir Putin made an international jackass. But many Cuba-watchers snickered as the hapless Russian President met with the Castro brothers on July 11th and “wrote off” their $32 billion debt to the Soviet Union. “That old thing? I never liked it anyway,” Cuba-watchers...

In 1933, the Holodomor was playing out in Ukraine. After the "kulaks," the independent farmers, had been liquidated in the forced collectivization of Soviet agriculture, a genocidal famine was imposed on Ukraine through seizure of her food production. Estimates of the dead range from two to nine million souls. Walter Duranty of the New York Times, who called reports of the famine "malignant propaganda," won a Pulitzer for his mendacity. In November 1933, during the Holodomor, the greatest liberal of them all, FDR, invited Foreign Minister Maxim Litvinov to receive official U.S. recognition of his master Stalin's murderous regime....

As legend has it, Groucho Marx sent the Friars Club a telegram that read, "Please accept my resignation. I don't care to belong to any club that will have me as a member." At least the Friars Club had standards. What to make of the United Nations? It has a single criterion for membership: existence. Admittedly, this is an unattainable standard for such fictional realms as Westeros, Erewhon, Kreplakistan and numerous locales from the TV series "MacGyver" (Gnubia, Kabulstan et al.). But if you're a nation-state that actually exists, you're a shoe-in, like Kate Upton trying to get into a...

Before there is any further discussion of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, it’s important that one point be made absolutely clear: This plane crash is a result of the Russian invasion of eastern Ukraine, an operation deliberately designed to create legal, political and military chaos. Without this chaos, a surface-to-air missile would not have been fired at a passenger plane. From the beginning, the Russian government did not send regular soldiers to Ukraine. Instead, it sent Russian mercenaries and security service operatives such as Igor Strelkov — the commander in chief in Donetsk and a Russian secret police colonel who fought...

The wife of a Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 victim was stunned when she saw that her husband's credit cards were being used after the  plane crashed in Ukraine last week, the Daily Mail reported. Cameron Dalziel's wife Reine has since cancelled her husband's credit cards upon noticing activity in his account, her brother told CNN

VLADIMIR PUTIN has responded to the international outrage over the destruction of a Malaysian airliner by his proxies in eastern Ukraine by escalating his aggression. According to U.S. officials, tanks, artillery and other heavy weapons have continued to cross from Russia to Ukraine since the passenger jet was shot down. On Wednesday, two more Ukrainian military jets were hit by anti-aircraft missiles, which Ukrainian officials said had been fired from Russia. The State Department also said Thursday that Russian artillery was firing at Ukrainian positions from across the border. The Russian president is clearly not impressed by Western responses to...

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey said Thursday that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s new use of Russian military force inside Ukraine harkens back to 1939 when Joseph Stalin led a Russian invasion of Poland, and Dempsey predicted Putin was far from finished. Dempsey was speaking to the Aspen Security Forum and responding to the news that the U.S. government is accusing the Russian military of firing artillery from Russian territory into eastern Ukraine in support of separatists there. The latest development represents a dangerous escalation of the crisis on the part of Putin, and the Russia-Ukraine crisis...

(Reuters) - An Italian-Russian project to build a new generation small submarine has been suspended because of the "political situation" following Western sanctions on Russia over the Ukraine crisis, Itar-Tass news agency said on Friday. The decade-old deal between Russian company Rubin and Italian shipmaker Fincantieri to build a 1,000-ton diesel submarine, the S-1000, is part of President Vladimir Putin's plans to revamp Russia's fighting force. "To our regret, due to the well-known political situation this project has been suspended," Itar-Tass quoted Igor Vilnit, the head of Rubin's Central Design Bureau for Marine Engineering, as saying. Rubin declined immediate comment...

The protracted hostilities have used up the financial resources set aside for the conduct of the anti-terrorist operation (ATO), thus undermining salary payouts to the Ukrainian military as early as from August 1, Ukrainian Finance Minister Oleksandr Shlapak said on July 24.

Vladimir Putin’s daughter has fled her Dutch home as fury grows over Flight mH17. Maria Putin lived just 20 miles from the airport where the doomed jet dpoarted from. News that the Russian president's daughter was living among a nation of people still fuming over Russia’s role in the downing of Flight MH17 was only going to spark more outrage. And once it became known the 29-year-old had a £2million apartment not far from the Dutch airport where the doomed jet left on its final, tragic journey, the angry protests quickly started. There were demands for Maria to be deported...

The International Committee of the Red Cross said Wednesday that it considered Ukraine to be in a state of civil war, urging both sides to respect the laws of conflict as civilians bear the brunt. The formal classification means participants in the fighting between government forces and pro-Russian separatists in the east could eventually be prosecuted for war crimes in international courts. "Fighting in eastern Ukraine continues to take its toll on civilians, and we urge all sides to comply with international humanitarian law, otherwise known as the law of armed conflict," ICRC director of operations Dominik Stillhart said in...

... “They are people who have already made money and are now scared to lose it,” Paley said.... “I don’t share the opinion of 90 percent of the country: I feel like a foreigner here now so why not leave?” said Tatiana Konkova, a Russian literature teacher and singer, giving her last concert in Moscow this month.... The number of Russians emigrating in the last two years was some five times higher than in the two before Putin began a new six-year term in May 2012, official figures show.... Echoing the post-Soviet brain drain, sociologists say Russia is bleeding exactly...