Free Republic

Should Russia succeed in its war on Ukraine, the United States will likely have to intervene with more than just money - but also with troops, said U.S. Democratic House leader Hakeem Jeffries. "We cannot allow Ukraine to fall, because if it does, there is a significant possibility that America will have to intervene in the conflict — not just with our money, but with our troops," he told CBS News.

The global security system will be destroyed if Russia is allowed to prevail in Ukraine, leading to “many” new conflicts and a Third World War, that country warns while calling the U.S. to pass a major aid package. Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal visited Washington D.C. to drum up support for the forthcoming votes on the “$100 billion foreign aid package” , and brought a message of looming disaster if it isn’t passed. Speaking to British state broadcaster the BBC in Washington, Shmyhal cautioned that allowing Russia to win would signal the multilateral international rules based order had collapsed which...

Russia’s highest investigative body announced on Tuesday that it has launched an official criminal probe into senior officials in the United States and other NATO countries who are suspected of financing terrorism acts. According to The Moscow Times, Russia’s Investigative Committee, which is the primary federal investigating authority of Russia, has accused U.S. Senior officials, NATO members, and the Hunter Biden-linked Bursima Holdings of financing terror attacks that have occurred both inside and outside of Russia. The statement was made in a video released by the Committee but did not refer to a specific terror attack. The Investigative Committee’s probe...

As US lawmakers return from their Easter break, they need to take Volodymyr Zelensky’s warning Sunday seriously: Without US military aid, Ukraine “will lose the war.” And if that happens, “other countries will be attacked.” Yes, it’s that simple. Ukraine’s military has been short of ammo and struggling to hold back Russia for weeks. Moscow is reportedly probing for weaknesses and planning new offensives to capture more Ukrainian territory. If US help fails to arrive, it’s just a matter of time before Zelensky & Co. are annihilated or forced to surrender. And anyone who thinks that outcome won’t endanger the...

Russia and NATO are now in "direct confrontation", the Kremlin said as the U.S.-led alliance marked its 75th anniversary on Thursday. NATO's successive waves of eastern enlargement are a fixation of President Vladimir Putin, who went to war in Ukraine two years ago with the stated aim of preventing the alliance from coming closer to Russia's borders. Instead, the war has galvanised NATO, which has expanded again with the entry of Finland and Sweden. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters: "In fact, relations have now slipped to the level of direct confrontation." NATO was "already involved in the conflict surrounding...

NATO is going to “build a bridge” towards Ukraine becoming a member state of the defensive alliance, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on the organisation’s 75th birthday. North Atlantic Treaty Organisation member states met in Brussels at the alliance’s headquarters on Thursday to toast the 75th anniversary of its founding, among them U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken who like others used the occasion to discuss renewed Russian aggression and the potential place of Ukraine among its members. He emphasised the view, already articulated multiple times by NATO leaders in recent years, that “Ukraine will become a member...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon will rush about $300 million in weapons to Ukraine after finding some cost savings in its contracts, even though the military remains deeply overdrawn and needs at least $10 billion to replenish all the weapons it has pulled from its stocks to help Kyiv in its desperate fight against Russia, the White House announced Tuesday. It's the Pentagon's first announced security package for Ukraine since December, when it acknowledged it was out of replenishment funds. It wasn't until recent days that officials publicly acknowledged they weren't just out of replenishment funds, but $10 billion overdrawn....

Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) blamed former President Trump and conservative media host Tucker Carlson for the rise in anti-Ukrainian sentiment in the House, dubbing the pair the leaders of a “pro-Putin faction” of the Republican Party. Ukraine aid has languished in the House for months as Republicans refuse to pass foreign spending without major border security reforms. Jeffries called on Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) to bring a Senate bill to the floor once again on Sunday.

The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) has arrested a cleric in the Cherkasy Diocese for allegedly making pro-Russian social media posts and defaming the members of “Azov” as Nazis, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) confirmed on Wednesday. Ukrainian authorities did not name the suspect, but the SBU had posted on its Telegram channel on Tuesday that it searched the residence of Archpriest Boris Brodovsky, suspecting him of “anti-Ukrainian and pro-Russian statements.” “We tried to contact him, but we can’t get through to him,” Archpriest Georgy Pogranichny of the Cherkasy Diocese told the media. “The SBU officers probably confiscated the phone...

ussian spies have developed an artificial intelligence tool that Moscow is using to meddle in elections in Britain and the United States on a scale “exponentially greater” than ever before, Ukraine’s national security adviser has warned. In an interview with The Times, Oleksiy Danilov said that AI had enabled Russia to substantially ramp up its disinformation campaigns, designed to sow division and influence public opinion, and that Moscow now had specific units dedicated to every country holding an election in Europe. He said: “Artificial intelligence is a huge step forward for Russia and it makes the impact [of their meddling]...

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) made a plea for House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) to pass aid to Ukraine, during a Friday interview. “We need Speaker Johnson to make sure that we get that aid,” Schumer said in an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. “If he put the bill on the floor, it would pass. There are a good number of Republicans in the House who know how important it is, and he has to see that history is on his back.” “He cannot have obeisance to Donald Trump,” Schumer continued. “He has to do the right thing here.”...

American soldiers could be next in line to combat the Russian military if the House does not approve a supplemental package that includes aid to Ukraine, Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) said Friday. “In the next front against Russia, it will be Americans on the front lines,” Coons told CNBC’s Silvia Amaro on Friday in an interview from the Munich Security Conference. “We are best off investing in the Ukrainians who are fighting bravely for their own freedom than allowing Putin the opportunity to spread further chaos and violence across Europe,” Coons said. The Senate approved a $95 billion foreign aid...

As part of the impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden, House committees have revealed in a letter sent Wednesday that the Biden White House has refused to hand over all drafts of Biden’s December 2015 speech in Ukraine during which he called for the firing of Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin. He made the speech before the Ukrainian Rada and later bragged about having demanded that then Ukrainian President Poroshenko fire prosecutor Viktor Shokin who was apparently digging into corruption at Burisma where Hunter Biden sat on the board with an income of $80,000 per month. "For more than five months the...

Pro-migration Republican Senators are signaling a quick collapse for the Democratic-backed migration plan now being negotiated by Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) and Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), according to Politico. (snip) Another pro-migration GOP Senator, Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), blamed Russia for the rising GOP opposition, telling Politico “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 Ukraine.”

A U.S. Senate committee approved legislation on Wednesday that would help set the stage for the United States to confiscate Russian assets and hand them over to Ukraine for rebuilding after the destruction of the nearly two-year-long war. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted 20 to 1 in favor of the unprecedented "Rebuilding Economic Prosperity and Opportunity (REPO) for Ukrainians Act." If it were to pass the full Senate and House of Representatives and be signed into law by President Joe Biden, as expected, the act would pave the way for Washington's first-ever seizure of central bank assets from a...

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden’s top aides bluntly told lawmakers in a private meeting on Wednesday that if Congress fails to authorize additional military aid for Ukraine in the coming days, Russia could win the war in a matter of weeks — months at best, according to two people familiar with the meeting.National security adviser Jake Sullivan and the Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told the lawmakers that Ukraine will run out of certain air defense and artillery capabilities in the coming weeks, according to the people familiar with the meeting.The grim assessment, which one White House official described...

After Wednesday’s meeting at the White House with President Biden and 20 congressional leaders, McConnell declared that he was done trying to placate Ukraine skeptics in Johnson’s conference. There’s roughly $110 billion on the table that would bolster Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky’s defense against Russia, along with helping Israel and Taiwan, and provide billions of dollars to shore up the U.S. border along Mexico.

Joe Biden on Saturday stopped to talk to reporters posted up on the South Lawn as he departed to Camp David, the presidential retreat in Catoctin Mountain Park in Maryland for another weekend vacation. Reporters asked Joe Biden about escalations with Iran, the border crisis and Ukraine. Biden denied there is a crisis at the southern border even though an estimated 11 million illegal aliens – mainly military-age males from Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East – invaded on his watch. “Would you call the situation on the southern border a ‘crisis’?” a reporter asked Biden. He blamed Republicans....

European intelligence suggests that Russia may launch an attack on Europe during the winter of 2024-2025 if the United States finds itself "without a leader" following the 2024 U.S. presidential election, the German tabloid Bild reported on Dec. 23, citing an anonymous European intelligence source.The intelligence service source contends that a potential Russian strike on Europe could occur within the presidential transitionary period, contingent on President Joe Biden not securing re-election in the 2024 U.S. presidential election. This transition period spans three months, from the November 2024 U.S. presidential election to the subsequent inauguration in January 2025.According to the intelligence...

President Joe Biden echoed the warnings of his defense secretary in an address to the public this week, saying if Congress does not pass $64 billion in aid to Ukraine, U.S. troops will end up fighting Russia in Europe. “This cannot wait. Congress needs to pass supplemental funding for Ukraine before they break for the holiday recess. It’s as simple as that,” Biden began. He then accused skeptical Republicans in Congress of being “willing to give Putin the greatest gift he could hope for and abandon our global leadership not just to Ukraine, but beyond that.”