Free Republic

WASHINGTON, March 10 (Reuters) - A drone struck a major U.S. diplomatic facility in Iraq on Tuesday in suspected retaliation by pro-Tehran militias over the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, ​the Washington Post reported, citing an unidentified security official and an ‌internal U.S. State Department alert. The strike hit the diplomatic support center, a logistical hub for U.S. diplomats near Baghdad airport and Iraqi military bases, the Post reported.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday told reporters he had a "very good call" with ​Russian President Vladimir Putin about Ukraine ​and the conflict in the Middle East. "There's ⁠tremendous hatred between President Putin and (Ukraine's) ​President Zelenskiy. They can't seem to ​get it together, but I think it was a positive call on that subject," Trump said. Trump ​added that Putin "wants to be helpful" ​with the Iran conflict. "I said, 'You could be more helpful ‌by ⁠getting the Ukraine-Russia war over with. That will be more helpful,'" Trump told reporters in a press conference at ​his Florida ​golf...

Ukraine has received only about 600 advanced interceptor missiles for the MIM-104 Patriot air defense system during the entire course of Russia’s full-scale invasion, Ukrainian officials told The New York Times. Dmytro Lytvyn, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, said Kyiv had received roughly that number of interceptor missiles over four years of war. Ukraine has repeatedly urged Western partners to provide additional Patriot systems and interceptor missiles as Russia continues to launch large-scale missile strikes targeting cities and critical infrastructure. The Patriot system remains among the few air defense platforms capable of reliably intercepting advanced ballistic missiles, including...

Russia has been sharing intelligence with Iran on the location of US forces in the Middle East in an attempt to help Tehran fight back, according to a new report. The Kremlin has passed on the locations of American warships, aircrafts and other military assets ever since “Operation Epic Fury” kicked off a week ago, three sources told the Washington Post Friday. “It does seem like it’s a pretty comprehensive effort,” one official familiar with the intel told the outlet.

Russia is one of the biggest winners in the early days of the largest U.S. military confrontation in decades, as Iranian missiles deplete stocks of Patriot interceptors that Ukraine needs for its defense. Even before the Iran campaign, production bottlenecks in the U.S.-made Patriot system had drained Ukraine’s reserves and left European allies on yearslong waiting lists. Those shortfalls have allowed Russia to punch through gaps in Ukraine’s air defenses, devastating its power infrastructure and casting Ukrainian cities into blackouts.

CAIRO (AP) — A Russian-flagged tanker carrying liquefied natural gas exploded and erupted in flames before sinking in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Libya, authorities in the North African country said Wednesday. No casualties were reported.The tanker was under Western sanctions, suspected to be part of Russia’s shadow fleet of energy tankers trying to bypass sanctions imposed on Moscow over its war in Ukraine. The cause of the explosion was not immediately clear. According to the Libyan Maritime Authority, there was a “sudden explosions, followed by a massive fire” on the Arctic Metagaz on Tuesday while the LNG...

Ukraine's government says Russia indicated during recent talks in Geneva that it could accept U.S.-backed security guarantees as part of a potential post-war settlement, though major differences remain unresolved. On Saturday, Kyrylo Budanov, chief of staff to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said in a televised interview that Russian representatives signaled openness to security guarantees proposed by the United States, reported Reuters. "At the last talks, the Russian side said for example that they would accept the security guarantees offered to Ukraine by the United States," Budanov said.

As events in the Middle East and the Gulf region unfold “extremely rapidly,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukraine knows “all too well” what such escalation means, pointing to Iran’s role in supporting Russia’s war against Ukraine. “Although Ukrainians never threatened Iran, the Iranian regime chose to become Putin’s accomplice,” Zelensky said in a statement on Saturday. He said Iran supplied Russia not only with Shahed drones but also with technologies to produce them, as well as other weapons. According to Zelensky, Russia has used more than 57,000 Shahed-type attack drones during the full-scale war, targeting Ukrainian civilians, cities and...

Russian forces unleashed a devastating overnight assault on Ukraine, hitting military-industrial sites, energy infrastructure, and UAV launch areas with precision strikes. Over 1,100 Ukrainian troops were killed in just 24 hours, alongside dozens of armoured vehicles, artillery pieces, and electronic warfare systems. From Sumy to Kharkiv, Donetsk, and Zaporizhzhia, Russian battlegroups advanced relentlessly, crumbling defensive lines and crippling logistics. Air defences were overwhelmed, morale is under siege, and Kyiv’s ability to resist is being systematically dismantled as Russia claims victory after victory.

KYIV, Ukraine, and MOSCOW — When the Kremlin launched its all-out invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the assumption in Moscow, and much of the West, was that Russian forces would take the country in a matter of days. Instead, what the Kremlin calls a "special military operation" has become the biggest land war in Europe since World War II and has lasted longer than the Soviet army's fight against Nazi Germany. Russia's war on Ukraine is a grinding war of attrition. Ukraine has managed to hold a much larger army to minimal gains while adjusting to a life under constant...

"This is the proportional response that Russia has the right to," the Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman stressedMOSCOW, February 24. /TASS/. A nuclear strike on targets in Ukraine, as well as in France and the United Kingdom, would be considered lawful and justified in the event that London and Paris provide Kiev with nuclear capabilities, Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev said on Max, commenting on Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service’s (SVR) reports about such plans by the two European countries. According to Medvedev, this information "radically changes the situation." "This is a direct transfer of nuclear weapons to a...

When Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine surpassed 1,418 days last month, it officially exceeded a historic milestone — the same span of time it took Moscow to defeat Nazi Germany in World War II. And unlike the Red Army that pushed all the way to Berlin eight decades ago in what it called the Great Patriotic War, Russia’s 4-year-old, all-out invasion of its neighbor is still struggling to fully capture Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland. After Moscow failed to seize the capital of Kyiv and install a puppet government in February 2022, the conflict turned into trench warfare with tremendous cost....

Milos Vucevic resigns following mass anti-corruption demonstrations triggered by station roof collapse in which 15 died. “The resignation of the prime minister is too little, too late. This is now a major political crisis. It is growing every day. The tragedy at the train station was the trigger. “It is illustrative of all the problems that Serbia faces – institutions not doing their jobs, the government lying to people. There are issues about state capture and freedom of the media – it’s about all these things.”

Satellite imagery shows clear indications that Russia’s increasingly anticipated withdrawal of forces from its Tartus naval base in Syria has finally started. Complete loss of access to the facility, where Russian vehicles and materiel have been massing there for weeks already, would be a major blow to the Kremlin. The Russian military has already been steadily drawing down its posture at Khmeimim Air Base in Syria amid persistent questions about the future of its presence in the country as a whole since the sudden fall of dictator Bashar Al Assad last year. Satellite imagery taken on January 25 that TWZ...

Mr. President, I believe that the CIA is providing you inaccurate, false intelligence about Russia’s casualties and the condition of its economy. If you hope to realize your goal of opening negotiations with President Vladimir Putin to bring an end to the war in Ukraine, you must be equipped with the best information available.You have been briefed that Russia has suffered devastating losses — as many as 800,000 casualties — and that Russia’s economy is weak and fragile. Data from open sources paint a diametrically opposite picture.One of the best open sources for information about Russian casualties is Mediazona:Mediazona (Russian:...

Le Cercle is a shadowy network of global elites that makes the CIA look like the DMV. Bilderberg recently announced plans to be more open and friendly to the press — but what about Le Cercle? If Bilderberg is the shadowy conference everyone whispers about, Le Cercle is the one that doesn’t even make it into the conversation. For many readers, this may be the first time you’ve encountered the name. Founded in 1952, this corrupt cabal operates with a level of secrecy that makes the Bilderberg Group seem almost transparent by comparison. Smaller, spookier, and infinitely more secretive, Le...

The walls are closing in on Ukraine’s President Zelensky. In a meeting with allies in Germany this week, the embattled leader requested NATO troops on the ground in Ukraine. “Our goal is to find as many instruments as possible to force Russia into peace. I believe that such deployment of partners’ contingents is one of the best instruments. Let’s be more practical in making it possible.” Nothing about this proposal is “practical”. Even if Zelensky is speaking about peacekeeping troops as part of a settlement, which isn’t clear, it’s still a fundamentally crazy idea. Simply put, it would bring us...

On March 5, 2022, the wreck of the sailing ship Endurance was found in the depths of the Weddell Sea off the coast of Antarctica. This, of course, was the vessel lost in Ernest Shackelton’s third expedition to Antarctica, which became trapped in the ice and sank in 1915. The story of that expedition is an extraordinary tale of human fortitude - with the Endurance lost to the ice, Shackleton’s crew evacuated to a loose ice flow where they camped for nearly 500 days, drifting about the Antarctic seas, before making a desperate dash across the open ocean in an...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his generals have an artful knack for keeping the Russian military bear off-balance. On Sunday, they renewed their offensive in the Russian Kursk Oblast, once again catching the Russian high command, Kremlin, and many pundits by surprise. Reports of a demoralized Ukrainian army fighting to retain terrain captured during the August Kursk offensive — of which at least 40 percent has been lost — have circulated among western media and Russian milbloggers since November. So too reports that Ukraine’s 155th Mechanized Brigade — trained and equipped by France — was under-resourced in “first person view...

A top Iranian general has accused Russia of lying to Tehran by saying its jets were attacking Syrian rebels while they were instead bombing the open desert. In a rare break from Iran's diplomatic line on Syria, Brig. Gen. Behrouz Esbati partially blamed Moscow for the fall of Bashar Assad's government during a speech at a mosque in Tehran. An audio recording of the speech was published on Tuesday by Abdullah Abdi, a journalist in Geneva who reports on Iran. "We were defeated, and defeated very badly. We took a very big blow, and it's been very difficult," Esbati said...