Free Republic

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), 82, intends to remain in the U.S. Senate to oppose conservatives who support a truce between Russia and Ukraine, he said Monday. McConnell announced in February he would step down as Senate minority leader at the end of the cycle following health issues and incidents of freezing up during press conferences. He is the longest-serving party leader in Senate history. In an interview on WHAS, Terry Meiner asked McConnell what his “mindset” is “when your feet hit the floor in the morning?" "I’m not leaving the Senate,” McConnell said. “I’m particularly involved in actually fighting back...

RUSSIAN INVESTIGATORS SAY ATTACKERS RECEIVED SIGNIFICANT AMOUNT OF CASH AND CRYPTOCURRENCY FROM UKRAINE

BREAKING: President Volodymyr Zelenskyy (@ZelenskyyUa) EXPLODES, blasts Putin and 'scums' in Russia and elsewhere trying to blame Ukraine for a strange terrorist attack that left nearly 150 people dead near Moscow on Friday.

Russia says it has fully captured the smashed eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, which would mark an end to the longest and bloodiest battle of the 15-month war, although the claim was denied by Ukraine earlier in the day. The assault on the largely levelled city was led by troops from the Wagner group of mercenaries, whose leader Yevgeny Prigozhin said on Saturday that his troops had finally pushed the Ukrainians out of the last built-up area inside the city. Taking Bakhmut – which Russia refers to by its Soviet-era name of Artyomovsk – would represent Moscow’s first big victory...

"In this episode, renowned veteran investigative journalist William Jasper discusses the possibility that Ukrainian neo-Nazis massacred their own people. He also dispels any notion of Vladimir Putin being a force for good by laying out the history of treachery by the former KGB agent-turned-Russian leader. He talks about how U.S. sanctions on Russia have hurt the U.S. more than Russia, and he explains how media propaganda of the Ukraine-Russia war is intended to draw the world into a larger global conflict in which the only winners will be the globalists."

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The U.N. Security Council scheduled a meeting Friday at Russia’s request to discuss what Moscow claims are “the military biological activities of the U.S. on the territory of Ukraine,” allegations vehemently denied by the Biden administration.

VIDEO at link..................... Russian troops have completed their training drills in Belarus, close to neighboring Ukraine, and will begin returning to their places of regular deployment, the Ministry of Defense in Moscow has announced amid fears in the West that the exercises could have been a precursor to an invasion. Major General Igor Konashenkov, the chief spokesperson for the ministry, delivered the news in a. “As the forces complete their military exercises, they will, as always, complete a multimodal march back to their permanent bases. The divisions of the South and West Military Districts have finished their tasks and have...

Russia pulls some troops back from Ukraine border, slams invasion reports Russia said Tuesday it is pulling back some of its troops from Ukraine’s borders as it slammed reports of an invasion as “ostentatious hysteria” by the West. “We’ve always said the troops will return to their bases after the exercises are over. This is the case this time as well,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said, according to Reuters. However, it was unclear how many units were being withdrawn after a build-up of an estimated 130,000 Russian troops to the north, east and south of Ukraine. Peskov also accused the...

Russian forces massing on the border with Ukraine have prompted the U.S. European Command to raise its watch level to its highest point of “potential imminent crisis”, according to a New York Times report Tuesday night. On Wednesday, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley spoke to senior Russian Gen. Valery Gerasimov about the buildup, according to Russia. Four Ukrainian soldiers were killed last week in an extended battle in the contested Donetsk Region against Russia-backed separatists. Russian forces that were thought to have gathered for training exercises near the border have stayed and grown in numbers,...

Ukraine says Russia has opened fire on its ships in the Black Sea and captured three vessels. Two sailors have been wounded after two boats were hit in the strikes, the Ukrainian navy said. The Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko has called an emergency session of his war cabinet in response to the incident. "Today's dangerous events in the Azov Sea testify that a new front of [Russian] aggression is open," Ukrainian foreign ministry spokeswoman Mariana Betsa said. "Ukraine [is] calling now for [an] emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council." It comes after a day of rising tensions off...

The Ukrainian navy has accused Russia of opening fire on some of its ships in the Black Sea, striking two vessels and wounding two crew members. The navy made the statement after a day of rising tensions during which Russia stopped three Ukrainian navy vessels from entering the Sea of Azov via the Kerch Strait by placing a huge cargo ship beneath a Russian-controlled bridge.

This week NATO Foreign Ministers agreed to build-up forces to contain what they see as a more aggressive and unpredictable Russia. This will be the biggest build-up of NATO forces since the end of the Cold War, its purpose, to contain Russia with a defensive posture. "Deter and Dialogue" The NATO strategy is to move more troops into eastern European countries to reassure allies they will not be abandoned if Russia should decide to repeat operations that created the Ukraine crisis. In a press conference, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg told reporters: "We will discuss how NATO can do more to...

Obama and Europe chose not to stand up to Vladimir Putin — now we're seeing the terrible toll. There are many questions still to be answered about what happened to Malaysian Air flight MH17 over Eastern Ukraine. I will limit myself to what is known to a reasonable doubt based on the evidence and statements that have been provided by numerous officials in the 36 hours since the tragedy. Nearly 300 innocent lives were lost when flight MH17 was shot out of the sky with a surface-to-air missile. The missile was launched from an area in Eastern Ukraine controlled by...

Have you heard about the nefarious Polish general who made Napoleon invade Russia? No? You must not have been watching Rossia-1 television on March 31. According to a documentary aired on Russia’s main state-run channel, General Michal Sokolnicki’s goal was the dismembering of the Russian Empire and the establishment of a Greater Poland extending from the Baltic to the Black Sea, buffered from a rump Russia by a series of garrison states.

Russia has "days, not weeks" to abide by an international accord aimed at stemming the crisis in Ukraine, the top U.S. diplomat in Kiev warned Monday as Vice President Joe Biden launched a high-profile show of support for the pro-Western Ukrainian government. Russia in turn accused authorities in Kiev of flagrantly violating the pact and declared their actions would not stand. Biden, the highest-ranking American official to visit Ukraine during its conflict with Russia, planned to meet with government officials in the capital of Kiev on Tuesday. The vice president also planned to announce new technical support to help the...

A top Russian lawmaker has revealed he is working on a bill that would freeze the assets of European and American companies operating in Russia in reply to Western economic sanctions. The chairman of the upper house committee for constitutional law, Andrey Klishas, is sure that Russia must have an enough leverage to deal with the threat of sanctions coming from foreign countries.A team of lawyers are currently preparing a separate federal bill that would allow the Russian president and government to confiscate foreign owned property in Russia, including assets belonging to private companies, the senator told the RIA Novosti...

Vladimir Putin ordered tens of thousands of Russian troops participating in military exercises near Ukraine's border to return to their bases as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry was on his way to Kyiv. Tensions remained high in the strategic Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea with troops loyal to Moscow fired warning shots at protesting Ukrainian soldiers. It was not clear if Putin's move was an attempt to heed the West's call to de-escalate the crisis that has put Ukraine's future on the line. It came as Kerry was on his way to Kyiv to meet with the new Ukrainian leadership...

Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said Tuesday that the situation regarding payments by Ukraine for Russian gas was “critical,” during a meeting at his suburban residence concerning payment for gas deliveries. Ukraine owes Gazprom $882 million for August gas supplies, said Alexei Miller, the head of Russia’s gas giant, earlier Tuesday. “Ukraine has already reacted. They said there were problems with payment for gas, but they were not critical. But I think that … they are critical,” Medvedev said, Interfax reported. “We are very worried about Ukraine’s payments for gas,” Miller said, Itar-Tass reported Ukraine's state oil and gas firm, Naftogaz,...

"...Ukraine has blocked all our efforts for transit of gas to Europe ... In these circumstances, we physically can't carry out transit of gas through Ukraine's territory," Gazprom deputy chief executive Alexander Medvedev said, quoted by ITAR-TASS..."

An "orange coalition" is still the most likely outcome of a Ukrainian election won by the revolution's opponent, says Taras Kuzio. ANALYSIS & COMMENTARY: By Taras Kuzio Open Democracy, London, UK, Tuesday, March 28, 2006 Ukraine held its fourth parliamentary elections on 26 March in an atmosphere totally different to earlier elections. President Viktor Yushchenko can be credited with ensuring that it has been Ukraine's first free and fair poll since the country became an independent state in January 1992. The democratic breakthrough initiated by the orange revolution of November 2004-January 2005 has been consolidated. This is in stark contrast...