Free Republic

The Belarusian ruler’s price controls have backfired. Alexander Lukashenko’s stubborn grip on the Belarusian economy plunged the potato-happy country into a spud shortage this spring. Critics of the authoritarian ruler, who in January grabbed a seventh term in power, say he has warped the economy with strict price controls on staples like potatoes — while encouraging citizens to snitch on grocery stores that flout regime rules. The limits, launched by Lukashenko in October 2022 as he aimed to keep prices low and stave off inflation, instead made potatoes far less profitable for farmers to produce. Opponents say that decisions made...

Russian special forces troops moved many of Saddam Hussein's weapons and related goods out of Iraq and into Syria in the weeks before the March 2003 U.S. military operation, The Washington Times has learned. John A. Shaw, the deputy undersecretary of defense for international technology security, said in an interview that he believes the Russian troops, working with Iraqi intelligence, "almost certainly" removed the high-explosive material that went missing from the Al-Qaqaa facility, south of Baghdad. "The Russians brought in, just before the war got started, a whole series of military units," Mr. Shaw said. "Their main job was to...

Russia's former president said that the production of nuclear weapons in Iran will continue Russia's former president said that multiple countries are poised to provide Iran with nuclear warheads after the U.S. launched strikes against three Iranian nuclear facilities. The enrichment of nuclear material — and, now we can say it outright, the future production of nuclear weapons — will continue," Dmitry Medvedev, now the deputy chairman of the Security Council of Russia, said in a Sunday X post. "A number of countries are ready to directly supply Iran with their own nuclear warheads," Medvedev said. Medvedev did not list...

Belarus has freed Sergey Tikhanovsky, a key dissident figure and the husband of exiled opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, following a rare visit by a senior US official, Tikhanovskaya’s team announced on Saturday. Tikhanovsky, a popular blogger and activist who was jailed in 2020, arrived in Vilnius, Lithuania, alongside 13 other political prisoners, his wife’s team said. The release came just hours after Belarusian authorities announced that authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko met with US President Donald Trump’s envoy for Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, in Minsk. A video published on his wife’s official Telegram account showed Tikhanovsky disembarking a white minibus, with a...

WASHINGTON -- Just when the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) thought it had its hands around the Iranian nuclear program, NewsMax has learned from intelligence sources that Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps is completing a secret, underground uranium enrichment plant that should begin operating in October 2006. Work on the new plant, located 50 miles outside the northeastern Iranian city of Mashad, was begun with help from Russian engineers in 2003, Iranian intelligence sources said. The facility has been built 150 meters below ground in a rugged highlands valley some 38 kilometers southeast of the city of Nishabour. The nearest inhabited...

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko engaged in dialogue with U.S. special envoy Keith Kellogg, according to a report by the state news agency Belta on Saturday. The discussions between Lukashenko and Kellogg focused on the current global political landscape and the intricate bilateral relations shared by Belarus and the United States. This meeting underscores the continued diplomatic efforts aimed at addressing international issues and fostering cooperation between the two nations.

Russia - Masque Of The Red Death Vladimir Putin has been hailed perhaps as the pivotal post cold war Russian leader. He has executed a skillful dog and pony show, convincing both the Bush and Blair administrations that the former Soviet Union was not only no longer a military threat to the West but was indeed now becoming a close ally. Obviously Russia's cooperation with the French and German UN delegation's intransigence in dealing with Iraq has done much to throw cold water on this heretofore-budding union. It's important to note that such a relationship offered hope, though ultimately unfounded,...

Vladimir Putin is demanding urgent potato imports from Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus, while he delays supplying the ally with promised notorious Oreshnik horror missiles. Putin has made the shameful admission that he has run out of spuds - one of his country’s leading food staples - amid economic meltdown during his war with Ukraine. It now appears Belarus will not get the lethal missiles until after Lukashenko supplies Putin with new exports of potatoes which have spiralled in prices in Russia. The Minsk tyrant has even cancelled sanctions against imports from the EU to stock up to supply Russia. -snip-...

Belarusian strongman Alexander Lukashenko called on Wednesday for the country to produce more potatoes in the face of a large shortage of the key crop and rising demand from neighbouring Russia. "We have to grow enough so that it suffices for us and for Russia," Lukashenko said during a meeting with regional officials in Minsk, state news agency BelTA reported. The potato has in the past been seen as a symbol of Lukashenko's rule of the country, which is heavily dependant on agriculture. He was once head of a state-run collective farm, or sovkhoz. Food shortages have arisen recently in...

Russian president Vladimir Putin has acknowledged crop shortages as pressure on the country’s economy continues to mount. Pressure is mounting on Russia amid labour shortages, international sanctions, record interest rates, and inflation, but Putin’s admission of shortages of key crops marks a milestone in the nation’s woes. Speaking yesterday in a televised meeting, he said: “Yesterday, I met with representatives from various business sectors, including agriculture. It turns out that we don’t have enough potatoes. “I spoke with Alexander Grigoryevich Lukashenko. He said, ‘We’ve already sold everything to Russia’.” Potato shortages have become a serious problem in neighbouring Belarus, with...

President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday acknowledged Russia’s mounting potato shortage, driven by underwhelming crop yields that have led to record-breaking price increases. “Yesterday [Monday], I met with representatives from various business sectors, including agriculture. It turns out that we don’t have enough potatoes,” Putin said during a televised meeting. “I spoke with [Belarusian President] Alexander Grigoryevich Lukashenko. He said, ‘We’ve already sold everything to Russia’.” The previous day, Lukashenko’s press office joked that Belarus had already planted additional potatoes. Belarusians have reportedly been complaining for months about the poor quality and limited supply of potatoes in stores. In April, authorities...

Military Summary Channel produces 2/day briefings and map updates on the war in Ukraine. I've noticed the western press continues to pump out gibberish that is simply disconnected from reality. By contrast there is a small industry of military analysts who post regular updates on the war in Ukraine that gives an immeasurably better sense of the actual situation. You can find pro-Western analysts like Deep State and pro-Russian mappers, but it doesn't make much difference because these guys have to stay anchored to reality in a way the news media does not. (The MSC is from Belarus and takes...

The price of potatoes in Russia has soared by 52% since the start of the year, according to new figures. Imports have failed to offset the poor harvest last year, which saw the total potato crop decline by 12%, according to Reuters. Heavy rain and a frosty spring this year has hit potato farmers, made worse by the fact the area of the country seeded for the crop was reduced after the bumper 2023 harvest which drove down prices. According to Kommersant daily data, potatoes have tripled in price in the supermarkets compared to 2024, reaching a record high of...

For more than a decade, the United States has nurtured a secret intelligence partnership with Ukraine that is now critical for both countries in countering Russia... Nestled in a dense forest, the Ukrainian military base appears abandoned and destroyed, its command center a burned-out husk, a casualty of a Russian missile barrage early in the war. But that is above ground. Not far away, a discreet passageway descends to a subterranean bunker where teams of Ukrainian soldiers track Russian spy satellites and eavesdrop on conversations between Russian commanders. On one screen, a red line followed the route of an explosive...

The head of Russia's mercenary outfit Wagner said it could take months to capture the embattled Ukraine city of Bakhmut and slammed Moscow's "monstrous bureaucracy" for slowing military gains. Russia has been trying to encircle the battered industrial city and wrest it ahead of Feb. 24, the first anniversary of what it terms its "special military operation" in Ukraine. "I think it's (going to be in) March or in April," Wagner head Yevgeny Prigozhin said in one of several messages posted online overnight. "To take Bakhmut you have to cut all supply routes. It's a significant task," he said, adding:...

Russia and China warned on Wednesday that Donald Trump’s proposed “Golden Iron Dome for America” missile defense system would destabilize global security and turn outer space into a new arena for armed confrontation. “The recently announced large-scale ‘Golden (Iron) Dome for America’ program is deeply destabilizing,” the two sides said in a joint statement during a visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping to Moscow. The U.S. plan “explicitly provides for a significant strengthening of the arsenal for conducting combat operations in space,” it added. -snip- Moscow and Beijing claimed nuclear states must “reject Cold War mentality” and avoid seeking military...

It may sound like the beginning of a Star Trek plot, but there’s a very real arms race going on in space. And Russia may have just made the first move. According to some startling reports, Russian military satellites have apparently launched unknown objects into Earth’s orbit. Space.com described the trio of Russian satellites as “secretive” objects “whose purpose is unknown.” “The three satellites, designated Kosmos 2581, 2582 and 2583, launched on a Soyuz-2.1V rocket from Plesetsk cosmodrome early on Feb. 2,” the outlet reports, adding that the satellites “have displayed interesting behavior.” That behavior includes getting oddly close to...

Four U.S. Army soldiers were missing Wednesday in Lithuania after disappearing during a training exercise, the U.S. embassy in Vilnius said in a statement posted on social media, thanking the Baltic nation's military and police for helping American forces search for them. The embassy said in a post on social media that the troops went missing from a training area near Pabrade, near Lithuania's far eastern border with Belarus, a nation closely allied with Russia. The embassy did not say when the soldiers went missing. "The soldiers, all from 1st Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division, were conducting scheduled tactical training at...

Throughout Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, repeated and escalating warnings of the potential for a wider war have only raised fears in the Baltic states that they could be next in the crosshairs of the Kremlin. Talk about a potential Russian invasion is "very common at parties, gatherings, lunch breaks, water cooler talk," Gabija Stasiukyne, a 32-year-old living in Vilnius, told the Kyiv Independent. "It’s everywhere. The conversation inevitably turns in the direction of — what are you going to do?" Lithuania's government is also taking the threat seriously — the country reinstated conscription in 2015, and Vilnius in January...

Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” that it was “remarkably naive” to not understand it is in the U.S. national interests to aid Ukraine in its war against Russia. Anchor Jake Tapper asked, “We learned yesterday, shifting topics to overseas, that Russia is planning to station tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus. It’s yet another escalation of tensions with the west and tensions with Ukraine. Russia says it’s just doing what the US already does with countries in Europe. What’s your response to the Russian move?”