Free Republic

History, Identity and Holodomor Denial: Russia’s continued assault on Ukraine Holodomor Memorial in Washington D.C. as final touches are made in preparation for its official opening on November 7. (State Dept./D.A. Peterson) 2015/11/07 • Analysis & Opinion, History, News, Op-ed On Saturday November 7, a long-awaited memorial to a little-known modern genocide will be dedicated in Washington D.C. It will be accompanied by an exhibit at Union Station aimed at raising awareness among Americans of what Ukrainians call the Holodomor, literally “death by hunger,” an engineered famine which took the lives of anywhere from 4 to 10 million Ukrainians in...

Within weeks many of you will be looking across just hundreds of feet of water at some of the most modern technology ever invented in America. Unfortunately, it is on Soviet ships. - Secretary of the Navy John Lehman, May 25, 1983, to graduating class at Annapolis . ... Almost 70 percent of the present Soviet merchant fleet has been built outside the Soviet Union. This has released Soviet shipyards and materials for Soviet naval construction. All diesel engines in Soviet ships use a technology originating outside the Soviet Union. The Soviets provided 80 percent of the supplies for the...

How a Soviet mole in FDR's inner circle triggered Pearl Harbor – and its dire relevancy to our conflict today. ... On December 7, 1941, 353 Japanese aircraft delivered a shocking blow .. Nearly seven years later, Harry Dexter White, a senior official in the Roosevelt Administration, appeared to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities . Numerous witnesses, including Whittaker Chambers and Elizabeth Bentley, had implicated White in involvement with the Communist Party and the Soviet Union. ... Harry Dexter White, a Harvard PhD and Assistant Treasury Secretary, had played a major role in creating the World Bank...

Cuban military operatives reportedly have been spotted in Syria, where sources believe they are advising President Bashar al-Assad’s soldiers and may be preparing to man Russian-made tanks to aid Damascus in fighting rebel forces backed by the U.S. Cuban paramilitary and special forces units are on the ground in Syria, citing evidence from intelligence reports. Cuban troops may have been training in Russia and may have arrived in Syria on Russian planes.

As Europe seeks to diversify its sources of natural gas as an alternative to the politically sensitive Russian supply, a massive off-shore gas source in the Mediterranean is ready for exploration and drilling. There are game-changing stakes at play. Unfortunately, the Turkish leadership has threatened to use force to stop this from happening. Last October, Turkey sent the BARBAROS, its geophysics exploration ship, accompanied by naval vessels, into the Cypriot Exclusive Economic Zone waters. In November 2014, Turkish naval commander Admiral Bülent Bostanoğlu threatened the use of force against Greece, while speaking on board a Turkish naval corvette in Greek...

America's power is being tested to a greater extent, than in the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1961. Russia is attacking the Al-Qaeda linked terrorist organization, the Free Syrian Army, which is a so-called ally of America. China indicated that it will join the military strikes against the anti-Assad forces, because China considers Assad as an ally: http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/100915-774990-china-joining-russia-to-humiliate-us-weakened-by-obama.htm China is now ready to fight to defend its unilateral control of the Spratley Islands in the South China Sea. Does America have enough military power to defeat a combined force of Russia and China?

American Decline: Chinese forces head to Syria to join with Russia in filling Obama's power vacuum and purportedly fight the Islamic State. A false move involving NATO member Turkey could mean world war. Russian and Chinese military sources now confirm that Chinese warships are en route to the Middle East to get in on some of the action of humiliating the U.S. In just a week and a half, Moscow has upended the dynamics of power in the Mideast by taking on the role that President Obama relinquished: acting like a superpower in a regional conflict that has implications extending...

When we read the papers or turn on the television (for those of us who have television), hardly a day or two passes by without the mention of new (or ongoing) actions by the Chinese government in a military capacity. Within the past year alone, China has extended her reach steadily beyond her own territorial waters and nearby sea-lanes. She has participated in numerous exercises, some of them jointly with foreign nations. Anyone can clearly witness her aggressive, outwardly expanding policies regarding territory and flexing her muscle. The most recent maneuver comes on the heels of the Russian actions in...

BEIRUT/MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia bombed Syria for a third day on Friday, mainly hitting areas held by rival insurgent groups rather than the Islamic State fighters it said it was targeting and drawing an increasingly angry response from the West. The U.S.-led coalition that is waging its own air war against Islamic State called on the Russians to halt strikes on targets other than Islamic State. "We call on the Russian Federation to immediately cease its attacks on the Syrian opposition and civilians and to focus its efforts on fighting ISIL," said the coalition, which includes the United States, major...

Galina Timchenko recalls how proud she felt when the Russian news website she edited reached 3 million users per day. When she reported the figures to the website’s owner, he was horrified. “At that moment something snapped inside and I understood that this is the end, because there cannot be such an influential resource that is not controlled by the Kremlin,” Timchenko said. A month later, she was fired and a more Kremlin-friendly editor was brought in to run the website, Lenta.ru. The shakeup at Lenta.ru last year came as the government was pushing through a slew of new laws...

When Osama bin Laden was banished from Sudan in 1996, he left the country in a rented Soviet jet — an aged and antique Tupolev flown by a Russian pilot he did not trust. With him were a few bodyguards, his military commander, Saif al-Adel, and two sons named Sa’ad and Omar — both young men in their late teens. Although it was the corrupt Islamic government of Sudan that had robbed Osama bin Laden of much of his vast personal wealth, he blamed America for his misfortunes, according to Pulitzer Prize-winner Lawrence Wright. “He held America responsible for the...

Western naval sources reported Friday that a Chinese landing craft, the Jinggangshan, with a 1,000-strong marine battalion had reached the Red Sea en route for the Mediterranean off Syria. According to DEBKAfile, Beijing has already deployed a number of warships opposite Syria in secret. If the latest report is confirmed, this will be the largest Chinese deployment in the Middle East in its naval history.

'Tacit' deal between US, Russia to end Syria war: Assad adviser AFP 6 hours ago Damascus (AFP) - Russia and the United States have reached a "tacit agreement" on ending Syria's bloody crisis, a senior adviser to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has said.

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — In a new dispute exposing the complexity of Poland's relations with Russia, Moscow is threatening Warsaw with "most serious consequences" for dismantling a monument to a Soviet World War II general. The removal of the 1970s memorial to Gen. Ivan Chernyakhovsky began Thursday in the northern town of Pieniezno, where the general died of wounds in February 1945. He is buried in Russia.

GREEK FOREIGN MINISTRY CONFIRMS RECEIVED U.S. REQUEST TO DENY RUSSIA USE OF GREEK AIRSPACE FOR AID FLIGHTS TO SYRIA

The Soviet Union may have collapsed, but its decades’ long reign of terror shall not be forgotten. The 20th century was marked by intense tragedy due to the pernicious ideologies of National Socialism and global communism that killed over 100 million people. Millions suffered and died under the tyrannical rule of both Adolph Hitler in Nazi Germany and Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union, respectively. While the former usually receives resounding condemnation, the latter – particularly the Soviet variant – is wholly ignored by many today. That is why it is imperative to celebrate Black Ribbon Day on August 23rd,...

Putin was surprised at how easy Crimea went. Obama is nothing if not consistent when it comes to undermining allies and appeasing enemies. He kept on being flexible even as Russia was invading a potential NATO member. As Russian President Vladimir Putin's forces took over Ukraine's Crimean peninsula in early 2014, the interim Ukrainian government was debating whether or not to fight back against the "little green men" Russia had deployed. But the message from the Barack Obama administration was clear: avoid military confrontation with Moscow. That's easier to do when you aren't being invaded by Moscow. But nonetheless, McFaul...

Russia is nearing deployment of a new missile capable of targeting all of Europe with nuclear or conventional warheads, according to defense officials. Disclosure of the new SSN-30A missile threat comes as Defense Secretary Ash Carter on Thursday warned that Moscow under Vladmir Putin is reemerging as an existential security threat. Russia “is a very, very significant threat,” Carter told reporters at the Pentagon. “And I think a point that they’ve made, but I would certainly make: Russia poses an existential threat to the United States by virtue simply of the size of the nuclear arsenal that it has.” Regarding...

It does not bode well that an Obama administration that assures us that the nuclear deal with Iran will not be violated by the mullahs is clearly looking the other way as Iran’s ally Russia blatantly violates the 1987 Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty signed with the former Soviet Union. The Obama White House is sitting on a Pentagon risk assessment report completed last month that states “that the breach involved a new missile that violates the limits set by the treaty. The treaty bans holding, producing, or flight-testing ground-launched ballistic or cruise missiles with ranges of between 310 miles...

Iranian and Russian warships team up for war drills Iranian and Russian naval forces on Tuesday staged a series of war drills in the waters near northern Iran, in another joint show of force meant to display the two nations’ control of nearby waterways.An Iranian destroyer and team of Russian warships staged a series of war drills and engaged in joint training exercises, according to reports in Iran’s state-controlled press.Two Russian warships docked over the weekend in Iran’s northern Anzali port in anticipation of the wargames.The military exercises come just weeks after Iran and global powers signed a nuclear accord...