Free Republic

Russian forces occupied Bucha, on the outskirts of Kyiv, for just under a month. Across those 29 days in early 2022, they committed acts of such barbarity that this Ukrainian town will forever be synonymous with war crimes; this conflict’s Srebrenica. Residents were killed and tortured in their hundreds; more than 100 were buried in a mass grave outside the Orthodox Christian church. Others were murdered as they fled. The basement of a children’s summer camp was converted into a torture chamber where women and children were systematically raped. Soldiers slashed throats, mutilated victims and killed parents in front of...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy praised his "productive meeting" with U.S. President Donald Trump on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, after which Trump appeared to jettison his long-held skepticism of Kyiv's battlefield ambitions. Shortly after the meeting, Trump wrote on social media, "After getting to know and fully understand the Ukraine/Russia Military and Economic situation and, after seeing the Economic trouble it is causing Russia, I think Ukraine, with the support of the European Union, is in a position to fight and WIN all of Ukraine back in its original form." (snip) But on Tuesday, the...

Donald Trump has signed an executive order to rename the Department of Defense as the Department of War.

Russian leader Vladimir Putin cannot not sign a peace deal with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky because Moscow views him as “illegitimate,” Moscow’s top diplomat said Sunday. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov made the declaration in an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press,” suggesting that Putin will not be able to make an agreement with him. Lavrov also threw up yet another roadblock to direct talks between Putin and Zelensky, saying that Russia has an “agenda” in mind that must to be agreed before the two sides can sit down together. “There is no meeting planned,” Lavrov told NBC’s “Meet the...

A massive Russian airstrike hit a US-owned electronics factory in Ukraine early Thursday while some 800 civilians were working there. The Flex Ltd. plant in Mukachevo, a city hundreds of miles from the front line, was engulfed in flames after being hit by two Russian Kalibr cruise missiles around 4:30 a.m., according to Ukrainian officials. The factory was not involved in the war and was just one casualty as “hundreds of drones, as well as hypersonic, ballistic, and cruise missiles, targeted civilian and energy infrastructure” in the latest Russian bombardment, Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andriy Sybiha, wrote on X. “One of...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said that Russia's refusal to agree to a ceasefire is complicating efforts to end the war. "We see that Russia rebuffs numerous calls for a ceasefire and has not yet determined when it will stop the killing. This complicates the situation," he said in a statement on 'X'. On Monday, the Ukrainian leader travel to Washington DC, where US President Donald Trump has said he will urge Zelensky to agree to a peace deal. Trump has said he wants to bypass a ceasefire in Ukraine to move directly to a permanent peace agreement after his...

Several hundred people gathered for a pro-Ukraine rally in Anchorage, Alaska, where U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin are set to meet Friday. The high-stakes summit — the first in-person meeting between an American president and Putin since the latter launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, is meant to lay the ground for a ceasefire. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was not invited to the summit, scheduled to kick off around 11 a.m. local time at the Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson. Protesters started to gather early on Friday morning ahead of Putin's arrival in Anchorage, chanting...

Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Thursday told U.S. President Donald Trump to remember that Moscow possessed Soviet-era nuclear strike capabilities of last resort after Trump told Medvedev to "watch his words". -snip- "If some words from the former president of Russia trigger such a nervous reaction from the high-and-mighty president of the United States, then Russia is doing everything right and will continue to proceed along its own path," Medvedev said in a post on Telegram. Trump should remember, he said, "how dangerous the fabled 'Dead Hand' can be," a reference to a secretive semi-automated Russian command system designed...

-snip- I go home, I tell the First Lady, "I spoke to Vladimir today. We had a wonderful conversation." She said, "Oh really? Another city was just hit." So it's like, look, he's— I don't want to say he's an assassin, but he's a tough guy. It's been proven over the years. He's fooled a lot of people. He fooled Bush. He fooled a lot of people. He fooled Clinton, Bush, Obama, Biden. He didn't fool me. But what I do say is that at a certain point, you know, ultimately talk—talk doesn't—it's got to be action. It's got to...