Free Republic

Russia warned Monday that the risk of a “direct military clash” between Russia and nuclear powers in the West is rising. “Westerners are dangerously balancing on the brink of a direct military clash between nuclear powers, which is fraught with catastrophic consequences,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in a video message to the participants of the Moscow Nonproliferation Conference. The comments come after Russia reacted angrily to the U.S. House of Representatives passing a $61 billion foreign aid package for Kyiv at the weekend. House lawmakers approved the aid Saturday despite long-standing objections from hardline Republicans; the bill now...

Germany's domestic spy agency urged Berlin on Monday to give it more powers to monitor financial flows amid growing concerns over potential Russian financing of regional far-right parties ahead of European parliamentary elections. While Germany's interior ministry said in February it was working on adapting existing legislation to this effect, the issue has gained fresh urgency following a report that a lawmaker for the far-right Alternative for Germany party had received money from a pro-Russian news portal. "I would hope to have more authority" to monitor financial developments, the head of Germany's domestic intelligence agency Thomas Haldenwang told a news...

Representative Mike Turner (R-OH) said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” that Russian propaganda has “absolutely” infected the Republican base. Anchor Jake Tapper said, “Let’s turn to Ukraine, an issue that’s important to you and your fellow Republican Chairman, Michael McCaul, who runs the form refers committee. Congressman McCaul made a comment this week about what he says sounds like Russian propaganda from some conservative media. Why it’s so difficult to explain to Republican voters why supporting Ukraine is important. He said, “I think Russian propaganda has made its way into the United States, unfortunately, and it’s infected a...

Into the depleted field of journalism in America, a handful of websites have appeared in recent weeks with names suggesting a focus on news close to home: D.C. Weekly, the New York News Daily, the Chicago Chronicle and a newer sister publication, the Miami Chronicle. In fact, they are not local news organizations at all. They are Russian creations, researchers and government officials say, meant to mimic actual news organizations to push Kremlin propaganda by interspersing it among an at-times odd mix of stories about crime, politics and culture. While Russia has long sought ways to influence public discourse in...

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Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a decree to re-establish the Moscow and Leningrad Military Districts, according to the document posted on the government’s legal information web portal on Monday.

Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) warned Democrats are preparing to "blame Russian disinformation" again to prevent former President Donald Trump from returning to the White House. “So for all of us who just care about America, the American people, our hard earned American tax dollars, get ready to be called a 'Russian blah blah blah' because Democrats know that Trump is going to win and they are setting up to refuse to certify his election, preparing to impeach him again when he becomes POTUS again,” Taylor Greene wrote on the X social network. Democrats, she said, are already hyping...

Natan Sharansky, one of the great heroes of the twentieth century, corresponded with Alexei Navalny, one of the great heroes of the twenty-first. Navalny, through his lawyers, managed to get a Russian copy of Sharansky’s famous memoir Fear No Evil. He read it in the gulag where he was killed on February 16, 2024. We know this because he sent Sharansky two letters: one in March and one in April of 2023. Today we are honored to publish these historic letters in their original, handwritten Russian and in English. (We are grateful to Anna Lyubarskaja and Rebekah Koffler for their...

Note, however, that no mainstream fact-checking organization or misinformation watchdog group is springing into action to correct their claims. Liberal news outlets reported on the interview—The Huffington Post cheered Pelosi for putting Trump "on blast"—without calling it into question whatsoever. It's very telling what gets counted as misinformation and what doesn't. Pelosi was, until very recently, the third-most-powerful Democrat in Washington, D.C., yet her brand of conspiracy theorizing received little pushback. Psaki certainly didn't do her part.

Here we go again. The Democrats have dusted off their old Russia collusion hoax as we get deeper into election season. Democrat Rep. Dan Goldman absurdly claimed the Russians are interfering in the 2024 election in wake of the DOJ’s latest attack on the FBI informant who blew the whistle on the Biden-Burisma scandal. Biden’s DOJ is now alleging the FBI informant arrested last week “is actively peddling new lies that could impact U.S. elections after meeting with Russian intelligence officials in November.” The FBI’s confidential source, Alexander Smirnov, was indicted last week by Hunter Biden Special Counsel David Weiss...

I follow a lot of Russian language accounts on social media. I first realised something had happened on Friday when I saw a Russian listings magazine post a crying emoji with a picture of the face of Navalny, Russia’s leading opposition figure. This was odd. Their posts were usually apolitical – recently about Rothko in Paris, Timothée Chalamet in Wonka and Prince Charles’s health. News of Alexei Navalny’s death hit the Russian-speaking online world moments before it broke across international media. The very first reaction was cryptic and euphemistic. You could sense the thought behind the responses: Is he really...

Lyudmila Navalnaya, the mother of dead Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, demanded on Tuesday that President Vladimir Putin hand over her son's body so she could bury him. -snip- Speaking in a video filmed front of the prison as small snow flakes swirled in the air, his mother - dressed in black - complained she did not even know where her son's corpse was and demanded Putin give the order to release it.

A Russian CEO has won an autographed pair of Donald Trump’s new golden sneakers after making an eye-watering bid. Roman Sharf, the founder and CEO of luxury watch dealer, Luxury Bazaar, walked away with an autographed pair of Trump’s golden “Never Surrender high-tops” after placing a winning bid of $9,000 at Philadelphia’s Sneaker Con. … Sharf, who was born in the Soviet Union and lives in Philadelphia, describes himself as “one of the world’s biggest grey market watch dealers” – which trades luxury watches “without being authorised by the brand to do so on their behalf”…

From the very beginning, the Moscow Metro was designed as an instrument of propaganda as well as transportation. Its grandiose stations were not only a projection of the power of the regime but also designed as a promise of sorts, a glimpse for the Soviet people of the heaven on earth that communism would (one day) deliver. It was perhaps thus appropriate that some of its marble was said (probably accurately) to have come from the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, which had been blown up on Stalin’s orders just a year or two before work on the metro began...

White House Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Wednesday that Republicans who oppose a Biden administration-backed bill on foreign aid and border security are “siding with Trump, Vladimir Putin, and Tehran,” effectively accusing them of treason. Jean-Pierre repeated the accusation, for emphasis, throughout a press briefing at the White House on Wednesday. No one in the press corps thought to challenge her on the tactic of accusing domestic political opponents of siding with America’s enemies. The bill has passed the Senate but is considered dead on arrival in the House, where Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) will not bring it to the...

And so it begins. Nine months still to go before the next US presidential election and already the Republican party favourite and former President Donald Trump is sending eyebrows and blood pressure skywards in Nato capitals with his provocative statements. And yet they will delight many of his supporters. Suggesting at a rally in South Carolina that he would "encourage" aggressors (for example Russia) "to do whatever the hell they want" with Nato countries that fail to pay their dues has prompted an immediate condemnation from the White House. A spokesman called the comment "appalling and unhinged", saying it was...

Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD) suggests that Russian influence has manipulated opponents of a border compromise that could usher in 5,000 or more migrants per day.Parroting similar talking points about Russian influence to Hillary Clinton’s failed 2016 presidential campaign, Rounds seems to suggest that Russian disinformation about the border components or a broader deal, including aid to Ukraine, is to blame for the yet-unseen deal’s opposition.Rounds said Wednesday, “I suspect that a lot of the internet rumors are very well coming from overseas, where they would love to see this shut down because some people would rather not see funding for...

His critics call him Prime Minister Zoolander after the vacuous male model in the movie of the same name. But Canada’s Justin Trudeau is someone much more sinister. That’s been obvious ever since the PM turned the federal government’s power on the COVID-mandate-protesting truckers of Canada’s Freedom Convoy in 2022, jailing them, seizing their rigs and even shutting down their bank accounts (“debanking,” as it’s known) — though that last came to a swift end when enough Canadians withdrew their money to threaten a bank run. We were told the truckers were “right-wing extremists,” probably racist and possibly agents for...

There are currently two wars that Russia is fighting: the kinetic one in Ukraine that receives all the attention—or at least received all the attention before the Gaza Crisis—and a financial one that remains relatively unnoticed. This hidden economic crisis is actually more important and relevant, and how Putin decides to address it will determine the outcome of the war on the field.

CNN anchor Jake Tapper said Sunday on his show “State of the Union” that it was “stunning” former President Donald Trump was quoting Russian President Vladimir Putin on persecution of political rivals. Saturday, at a rally, Trump said, “Vladimir Putin, of Russia, said that Biden’s persecution of his political rival is very good for Russia because it shows the rottenness of the American political system, which can not pretend to teach others about democracy.”