Free Republic

The intelligence-sharing relationship between the U.S. and Ukraine has bounced back to previous highs, according to long-time Ukraine watchers — a welcome boost during a critical window of opportunity for the Ukrainian war effort. Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), the intelligence committee’s ranking member and a longtime proponent of more U.S. assistance to Ukraine, told POLITICO he sees evidence of an improved intel-sharing agreement — and believes it’s helped Kyiv gain an advantage in Moscow’s four-year-long war.

Russia has attacked Ukraine with ballistic missiles and drones, killing at least 21 people, as Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky said interceptors "could have saved lives". Kyiv and the surrounding region experienced the deadliest strikes it had seen this year overnight, with 17 people reported dead. Attacks in Kharkiv and Donetsk also killed one and three people respectively. Ukraine, who has consistently urged allies for more US-made Patriot missile interceptors to defend against Russian ballistics, has not reported intercepting any of the missiles in the overnight attack. Zelensky added delays in receiving anti-ballistic systems from partners leads to "horrific casualties and...

Fourteen people have been killed and 27 are injured after a wave of Russian strikes on the region surrounding Kyiv overnight, the capital's emergency services have said.

Seeing Ukrainian dictator Volodymyr Zelenskyy at Senator Lindsey Graham’s funeral seemed fitting: Z-Man’s money-laundering operation in Kyiv was the proximate cause of Graham’s death. Had the senator not been working so hard to add to the butcher’s bill in Europe, he would still be alive today. Surely there is a lesson here for some people to see. I know there are plenty of pro-Ukraine cheerleaders who just cannot stomach any criticism of an ongoing military conflict that has now lasted longer than WWII. However, I have never seen this as anything other than a civil war that British, European, and...

Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy are set to meet in Washington today before the funeral of Senator Lindsey Graham. The Republican senator was a staunch supporter of Ukraine, and his final act as a public official was to visit Kyiv and secure an agreement on a new Russian sanctions package. Trump will welcome Zelenskyy to the White House later before the funeral at Washington National Cathedral. It'll mark the second sit-down between the two leaders this month. The Ukrainian president will then move on to the Capitol for a meeting with senators, a source told the Reuters news agency. Posting...

U.S. President Donald Trump will meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Washington, DC, on Tuesday, a White House official confirmed, as diplomatic efforts to end the war with Russia pick up speed. “President Zelensky is slated to meet with President Trump at the White House on Tuesday,” the official told AFP on condition of anonymity on Friday as reported by Euronews. Zelensky said this week he had spoken with Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff and the U.S. president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, as part of efforts to revive stalled talks aimed at ending the four-year war, the report notes. U.S.-led efforts to...

TEHRAN, Juy 25--RIA Novosti. The Ukrainian Armed Forces attacked an Iranian merchant vessel in the Caspian Sea, the Islamic Republic's Foreign Ministry reported. "The Iranian Foreign Ministry strongly condemns Ukraine's attack on an Iranian merchant vessel in the Caspian Sea on the morning of Saturday July 25. The attack resulted in an explosion on the vessel, killing one sailor and injuring another. This attack is a violation of Article 2, paragraph 4, of the UN Charter and an act of aggression that could further fan the flames of war" the ministry said in a post on its Telegram channel. The...

Journalist and activist Laura Loomer decided to visit Ukraine for herself this week, after years of criticizing America's involvement in the conflict. Her trip culminated in a visit to the presidential palace and a nearly hour-long exclusive interview with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. 'I really wanted to see it up close and find out, wow, you know, is this a country full of Nazis? Are they laundering our taxpayer dollars to Democrats? You know, is Zelenskyy a cokehead?' she said in an exclusive interview with the Daily Mail while she was in Kiev.

The View” co-host Ana Navarro praised Hunter Biden as “riveting” and “the biggest troll” Thursday on the ABC show’s “Behind the Table” podcast while previewing their 90-minute interview and arguing that scrutiny of his Burisma income paled beside the Trump family’s earnings during President Donald Trump’s second term. “The monetization of the presidency, the fact that Hunter got dragged through the coals and brought into a congressional hearing by Republicans for the money that he was making in Burisma, which is not even chump change in comparison to the billions of dollars that the Trump family has made off the...

U.S. President Donald Trump is slated to speak on Thursday about newly declassified intelligence ​on foreign nations' plans to interfere in the U.S. election in 2020, an MS ‌Now reporter said on X, citing two unidentified White House officials. The Republican president repeatedly has claimed that he lost the 2020 vote to Democrat Joe Biden ​because of massive fraud. But numerous courts, ballot audits and his ​first-term Justice Department found no evidence no evidence of widespread ⁠fraud that could have affected the outcome. Propelled by the Trump's repeated ​claims that U.S. elections are “rigged,” the administration has for more than...

A Russian military commander has appealed directly to Vladimir Putin to threaten an armed uprising with help from top military brass if the country isn’t told the “truth” about the war. In an Instagram video that quickly racked up millions of views Thursday, Alexander Lunin addressed the Russian president to warn of “very serious consequences” if his demands were ignored. The 39-year-old father of two went on to say he’d been asked to “deliver a message” to Putin by unnamed military officials and members of the security services. They told him to demand a meeting with Putin at the Kremlin...

Britain will provide 150,000 drones to ​Ukraine by the end ‌of 2026 as part of a £752 million ($996 million) ​funding package, defence ​minister Dan Jarvis said on ⁠Thursday at a ​meeting of the Ukraine ​Defense Contact Group in Brussels. The package, funded by Britain's £2.26 ​billion loan to ​Ukraine, includes 350 air defence missiles ‌and ⁠ground-based radar systems. The loan is backed by proceeds from immobilised ​Russian sovereign ​assets. Jarvis, ⁠who co-chaired the meeting with his ​German counterpart, met ​with ⁠U.S. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth and other ⁠defence ​ministers including ​France and Ukraine.

Moscow has come under the largest Ukrainian attack since the start of the full-scale war, with close to 200 drones hitting targets around the Russian capital and setting columns of thick smoke billowing high into the sky. Seventeen people were wounded in the Moscow region, according to local governor Andrei Vorobyov. Almost 1,000 drones and four Ukrainian cruise missiles were intercepted and destroyed across the country in 24 hours, Russia's defence ministry was quoted as saying. An oil depot was struck in the southern Rostov region, where one person was killed. Volodymyr Zelensky said Kyiv had once again hit the...

The Group of 7 summit in France was intended to focus fresh attention on the war in Ukraine, which has largely fallen off President Trump’s radar since the start of the war with Iran. On Tuesday, President Trump dashed those hopes, making it clear at the summit that the Ukraine conflict, which he once said he could end in 24 hours, was no longer high on his priority list. “Look, we have nothing to do with it,” Mr. Trump said of the war. “It has no impact on us, other than we sell weapons” to Ukraine, he added. “We’re thousands...

Gavin Newsom is set to drop a bombshell tell-all interview with former President Biden’s son Hunter Friday morning. The California governor released a teaser clip from the sit down on X on Thursday afternoon, where he jokingly introduced his guest as: “Presidential candidate Hunter Biden.” Biden, in a clip of the podcast appearance obtained by TMZ, joked back. “Here’s the deal. I’ll run, but only as your VP,” he told Newsom. Biden said his reasoning was that the vice president’s residence “is a lot cooler” than the White House, he joked. The “promise” to run as Newsom’s VP came after...

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....

Russia has a problem it cannot bomb its way out of. For months, Ukraine has been quietly dismantling the one road that keeps Russia's southern war machine alive — a highway so critical that without it, Crimea starves, and the front line goes cold. On May 27th, Kyiv stopped being quiet about it. Ukrainian Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov formalized what had been a covert campaign into a declared strategic program, announcing a $113 million initiative he calls a "logistics lockdown." The target is the R-280 highway — also known as the M-14, renamed by Russian occupation authorities the "Novorossiya" route....

WASHINGTON — Hunter Biden is marking his seventh year of sobriety with a social media blitz that’s taking the internet by storm. Hunter, 56, began posting on his X account last month after years of dormancy, a move so surprising some wondered if the messages were fake. The account proved both genuine and a hit, quickly amassing nearly half a million followers, most of whom have cheered Hunter’s purported honesty and dry sense of humor. After Hunter posted a message celebrating being seven years sober Monday, one user accused him of being the owner of a bag of cocaine left...

The Republican-led House on Thursday passed a sweeping security package providing new military aid to Ukraine and imposing sanctions on Russia, delivering a sharp rebuke to the Trump administration, who opposed the measure. Eighteen Republicans crossed party lines to support the Democrat-authored legislation in a vote of 226-195. California Rep. Kevin Kiley, an independent who caucuses with Republicans, also supported the legislation. Meanwhile, Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., was the lone Democratic lawmaker to vote against the bill. House GOP leadership and the vast majority of Republicans opposed the legislation aimed at bolstering Ukraine's defenses amid a surge in Russian missile...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Sunday said he is still hoping to land a major deal to buy advanced US military drones, saying it would be a potentially “huge’’ game-changer in the war. His comments came as he warned that Ukraine was set to be brutally pummeled by Russia by air again for the second week in a row. Zelensky argued that fusing the dramatic advancements Ukraine has made with its drone technology because of its battlefield experience against Moscow with America’s remarkable military capabilities would be “huge” and beneficial for both countries. “American technological companies, they have a lot...