Free Republic

..The post boldly begins with, "Poisoning, sudden disease, accident—Russian elite considers the possibility of removing Putin." "In the environment of the Russian business and political elite, a group of influential persons opposing [Vladimir Putin] is formed," the post reads. "Their goal is to remove Putin from power as soon as possible and restore economic ties with the West, destroyed due to the war in Ukraine." The alleged group is not only planning to potentially assassinate Putin, the post claims, it has also decided on a potential successor: Alexander Bortnikov, who currently serves as Russia's Federal Security Service director, and headed...

A leading Ukrainian presidential aide claimed this morning that the explosion which damaged a key bridge in Crimea may have been ordered by one of Vladimir Putin's warring commanders. The 12 mile crossing over the Kerch strait links Crimea to the Russian mainland and is a major artery for Putin's forces that control most of southern Ukraine's Kherson region and for the Russian naval port of Sevastopol. It was damaged in an explosion early Saturday morning which saw chunks of the bridge fall into the sea and a large fire break out. The incident prompted gleeful messages from Ukrainian officials...

Russian president Vladimir Putin was expected to give a speech at 6pm London time from Moscow potentially announcing the official declaration of war in Ukraine to defend Russian-occupied territories, but kept the world waiting on Tuesday night. Russian news channel that announced the speech deleted their posts around two hours after the Russian leader was set to begin what would have been his first international announcement since the country’s invasion of Ukraine on February 25. It appeared as though the Russian leader had cancelled his speech, pushing it back to Wednesday, according to a Telegram account run by political analyst...

The most outrageous thing about President Barack Obama’s “extremism” summit Wednesday was not that it failed to identify Islamic terror as the primary threat. Nor was it that there were several Muslim representatives with extremist views present. Nor was it that the president still refuses to acknowledge ISIS (or ISIL) as “Islamic”—even while referring to it by an acronym whose first letter stands for “Islamic” (rather than the transliterated Arabic acronym, “Daesh”). Rather, the most offensive thing about Obama’s “extremism” summit was that the “dog and pony show” (as it was called by no less a liberal than MSNBC’s Andrea...

Russian President Vladimir Putin has an end date in mind for his war in Ukraine and it is quickly approaching. The Armed Forces of Ukraine general staff said that Russian propaganda “imposes the idea that the war must be completed before the 9th of May 2022.” “Despite the significant losses and demoralized personal composition of the Russian Federation military-political leadership does not refuse to continue the war against Ukraine. The enemy continues to destroy the infrastructure of peaceful cities and villages of Ukraine, rudely violating the rules of war and ignoring the requirements of International Humanitarian Law,” it said on...

A group of Russian elites are allegedly conspiring to overthrow Russian President Vladimir Putin and “restore economic ties” with the West, according to Ukrainian intelligence. “Poisoning, sudden illness, accident – Russia’s elite is considering removing Putin,” declared a Sunday Facebook post from the Chief Directorate of Intelligence for the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine. The ministry claimed that a group of “influential people” has been forming in Russia who want to “remove Putin from power as soon as possible and restore economic ties with the West, which were destroyed by the war in Ukraine.” The intel alleges that the group...

Valery Gerasimov: Russian General of the Army, the current Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, and first Deputy Defence Minister. Sergei Shoigu: General of the Army who has served as Minister of Defence of the Russian Federation since 2012. Shoigu has also served as Chairman of the Council of Ministers of Defense of the Commonwealth of Independent States since 2012. Nikolai Patrushev: Security officer and intelligence officer. He served as Director of the Russian Federal Security Service, which is the main successor organization to the Soviet KGB, from 1999 to 2008, and he...

When Alexander Bortnikov, the head of Russia’s internal security service, told me during an early August 2016 phone call that Russia wasn’t interfering in our presidential election, I knew he was lying. Over the previous several years I had grown weary of Mr. Bortnikov’s denials of Russia’s perfidy — about its mistreatment of American diplomats and citizens in Moscow, its repeated failure to adhere to cease-fire agreements in Syria and its paramilitary intervention in eastern Ukraine, to name just a few issues. When I warned Mr. Bortnikov that Russian interference in our election was intolerable and would roil United States-Russia...

arly last August, an envelope with extraordinary handling restrictions arrived at the White House. Sent by courier from the CIA, it carried “eyes only” instructions that its contents be shown to just four people: President Barack Obama and three senior aides. Inside was an intelligence bombshell, a report drawn from sourcing deep inside the Russian government that detailed Russian President Vladi­mir Putin’s direct involvement in a cyber campaign to disrupt and discredit the U.S. presidential race.

The White House did not invite the most senior American official charged with preventing terrorist attacks — the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey — to the three-day conference this week on countering violent extremism in the United States and abroad because the administration did not want the event too focused on law enforcement issues, according to senior American officials. But Mr. Comey’s Russian counterpart — Aleksandr V. Bortnikov, the director of the Russian Federal Security Service, the post-Soviet K.G.B. — was at the meeting, even though international human rights groups have repeatedly accused the Russian security service of unjustly detaining...