Free Republic

The measure was a final legacy item for the late Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a close ally and friend of the president who had just returned from Ukraine when he unexpectedly died in July.

For Americans who follow the Russian-Ukrainian war, the past few months must look very strange. In the first half of summer, the story from Kyiv – and the many western media outlets that repeated it – was that Ukraine was winning. Then, not long after the NATO summit in July, Kyiv announced it lacked the interceptors to prevent a winter disaster. The country needed 300 missiles to survive, we were told. Even if these 300 missiles arrive, they are unlikely to protect a country as large as Ukraine from the sheer volume of Russian ballistic attacks and glide-bomb strikes. Now...

These days one reads fewer stories proclaiming the turning of the tide in the Russia-Ukraine war. There are also fewer tweets from Donald Trump threatening Iran with imminent destruction. Now that the noise has receded, it is a good time to listen. I am not hearing of a successful Ukrainian counteroffensive. What I am hearing instead is the thud of Russian jackboots marching deeper into the parts of the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine that Vladimir Putin does not yet control. Meanwhile, in the southwest of the Arabian Peninsula, the Houthis have taken control of the strategic port city of...

CIA Director John Ratcliffe proposed a trilateral meeting between President Trump, Russian President Putin and Ukrainian President Zelensky during his covert trip to Moscow earlier this week in an effort to end the war, two sources briefed on the matter told Axios.

Central Intelligence Agency Director John Ratcliffe paid an unannounced visit to Moscow yesterday, spending eight hours in the Russian capital before returning to the US. Though he visited the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov denied that they had met – though Ratcliffe certainly spoke to his counterpart Sergei Naryshkin, head of Russia’s SVR external intelligence service, and other top Russian security officials. The list of topics urgent enough to prompt the first personal visit of a US cabinet-level official to the Kremlin in six months is short. Ratcliffe could have been responding to reports of a planned Russian escalation...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said that holding elections during wartime would pose a threat to the country, following a controversial call by his former defense minister to pave the way for an election. According to the latest opinion poll by the Kyiv Institute of Sociology carried out this summer, only 15 per cent of those surveyed want an election to be held at this time. Details by Eliza Herbert.

Russia is shipping parts for drones, missiles and explosives to Iran to replenish its weapons stockpiles decimated by US and Israeli airstrikes during the war, according to a new report. More than two dozen Russian ships, many of them under US and European sanctions, traveled across the Caspian Sea to deliver the arms to Iran’s port in Amirabad, NBC News reported, citing documents and a Western official. While the development demonstrates Moscow and Tehran’s deepening alliance, it also proves that the US-Israeli strikes against Iran’s production plants have been largely successful, Jim Lamson, a former CIA analyst, told the outlet....

Zaluzhny is considered the favorite in a post-war election.We have been reporting here on TGP that, since May 20, 2024, when his mandate expired, Volodymyr Zelensky has been ruling Ukraine by force of Martial law, becoming illegitimate in the eyes of many. And, for over two years, a figure has been raising its profile to become a challenger if and when presidential elections take place: former Ukrainian top general Valery Zaluzhny, currently ambassador to the UK.

Soot-choked “black rain" has fallen across multiple districts of Moscow after Ukraine launched its largest-ever drone assault against the Russian capital, scoring a direct hit on a vital energy facility. Close to 200 long-range strike drones targeted the metropolis early on Thursday, overwhelming local air defences and setting the strategic Moscow Oil Refinery in Kapotnya ablaze. As thick columns of dark smoke billowed thousands of feet into the air, residents in the southeastern suburbs and surrounding towns, including Balashikha and Lyubertsy, reported a fine, oily drizzle that coated vehicles, streets, and clothing in a dark, toxic residue. The multi-directional aerial...

French President Emmanuel Macron said on June 10 that it is "very important" for President Volodymyr Zelensky to attend the upcoming Group of Seven (G7) summit. Zelensky's participation "is very important for us because we need to rebuild consensus within the G7 in support of Ukraine on the various aspects of the war," Macron said at the Elysee Palace during a pre-summit discussion with civil society representatives. The leaders of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States will convene at the G7 Summit in the French resort town of Evian-les-Bains from June 15-17. Macron's invitation...

Volodymyr Zelensky has warned Vladimir Putin that Ukraine is "very close" to producing a ballistic missile that could be fired into Russia. The statement came ahead of talks with Sir Keir Starmer and the leaders of France and Germany over how to bring an end to the long-running war. "During several years of the war and massive attacks, we learned, we studied and we produced… we produced a lot of different drones and missiles, we still don't have ballistics, but we are now on the way, we are very close," the Ukrainian president told Sky News. Mr Zelensky is the...

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine arrived on Sunday afternoon in London for talks with the leaders of Britain, Germany and France as Europe considers taking a more active role in peace talks with Russia after more than a year of unsuccessful U.S. mediation. Ukraine and its European allies see a new opening to revive talks that have stalled as Moscow made uncompromising territorial demands and Washington shifted its focus to the war with Iran. They note that Russia’s recent battlefield setbacks and mounting economic strains could make a peace settlement more appealing to the Kremlin, a scenario that is also...

The hall at St. Vladimir's Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Calgary is packed. Three gigantic, artistically painted wooden Easter eggs dominate the stage. Heavily accented voices rise and fall amid the chatter as attendees nibble on poppyseed cake and other Ukrainian delicacies. No one wears the bright blue-and-yellow of the war's early days, but embroidered vyshyvanky peek from under sweaters and jackets. These are the faithful still committed to Ukraine's cause. They came to hear Michael Bociurkiw — a Canadian journalist of Ukrainian heritage now based in Odesa — deliver a sobering assessment of a war grinding into its fifth year....

Keir Starmer will host Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Emmanuel Macron and Friedrich Merz for talks in Downing Street on Sunday to discuss support for Ukraine. The Ukrainian leader will visit the UK with the French president and German chancellor after a week of heightened hostilities and Vladimir Putin’s rejection of his proposal of face-to-face talks on Moscow’s war. The three countries meeting the Ukrainian leader are some of Kyiv’s staunchest allies. The UK and France are leading the “coalition of the willing” initiative to provide security guarantees for Ukraine as part of a peace process. A large-scale Ukrainian drone attack targeted St...

Russian military vehicles are being painted with vivid stripes to baffle AI systems of Ukrainian-launched drones, experts say. Now the "cloaking" tactic has apparently launched a high-stakes game of hide and seek on the highways of Russian-held territory in Ukraine. Todd E. Humphreys, an aerospace and AI expert at the University of Texas at Austin, agrees the paint tactic may be more effective than many realize. "Dazzle paint pushes the vehicles 'out of distribution' -- they no longer look, to the AI classifier, like the images it was trained on," he told RFE/RL. But any specific paint job would have...

Ukrainian drones on Wednesday attacked St. Petersburg, Russia’s second-largest city, on the opening day of an annual economic conference that President Vladimir V. Putin has tried to cultivate into a showcase of a modern and prosperous country. It was the second time in a month that Ukraine had struck a major Russian city before an event important to Mr. Putin, as Kyiv expands a campaign of long-range strikes aimed at inflicting economic damage on Russia and demonstrating its vulnerability to attacks. In early May, Ukrainian forces hit sites in Moscow, including a high-rise apartment building near the city center, days...

MOSCOW, May 14 (Reuters) - Russia is establishing a "full-fledged partnership" with Afghanistan's ruling Taliban and is encouraging ‌other countries in the region to expand cooperation ‌with Kabul, a senior Russian security official was quoted on Thursday ​as saying. Russia last year became the first country to formally recognise the Islamist Taliban government that seized power in August 2021 as U.S.-led forces staged a chaotic withdrawal ‌from Afghanistan after ⁠20 years of war. Interfax news agency quoted Russian official Sergei Shoigu as saying cooperation ⁠with Kabul was important for the security and development of the region. Shoigu, who is secretary...

Russia pummeled Ukraine’s capital with hundreds of drones and missiles early Thursday, the latest in a string of deadly Russian strikes this week. The attacks suggested that President Vladimir V. Putin had little intention of de-escalating his war, after he declared recently that he believed it was “coming to a close.” Explosions shook Kyiv, the capital, over several hours Thursday morning as Ukrainian forces tried to intercept and shoot down the drones and missiles, some of which evaded overwhelmed air-defense systems. The attack included cruise and ballistic missiles that Moscow often stockpiles for mass bombardments. As the sun rose, rescue...

About 352,000 Russian soldiers had died in the war against Ukraine through the end of 2025, according to a new estimate, underscoring the high cost that President Vladimir V. Putin is willing to bear to pursue his battlefield aims. The figure was released on Saturday — the day of Russia’s annual May 9 parade celebrating victory over Germany in World War II — by the exiled Russian media outlets Meduza and Mediazona. The number raises the prospect that about half a million soldiers in total have died on the Russian and Ukrainian sides. In the more than four years since...

If symbolism matters, and in Russia it always has, then today’s Victory Day parade on Red Square spoke volumes. The absence of tanks grinding across the sacred cobblestones was not merely an omission; it was an admission. A regime that once flaunted military might before the world could muster neither armour, missiles, nor meaningful battlefield hardware for its most important national spectacle. For a country that has built so much of its modern identity around martial power, this was less a celebration of victory than a carefully stage-managed display of strategic exhaustion. When Vladimir Putin resurrected and expanded the Victory...