Free Republic

British officials have made an unseemly leap to speculate on a terrorist plot in the Russian airliner crash over Sinai last weekend. And Russia has understandably reacted furiously to the speculation, saying that it is too early to make such an assessment when crash investigators have not even compiled, let alone evaluated, evidence. American officials, including President Barack Obama, are also now echoing the British claims of a bomb on the plane. The question is: why the haste? ........................... Cameron and Obama are evidently being fed intelligence assessments of a bomb being stowed in the airplane's hold by terrorists. But...

The long-awaited Dutch report into the shooting down of flight MH17 suggests attempts were made to cover up the causes of the disaster, including a bungled autopsy on the body of the captain in which metal fragments from a Buk missile were deliberately removed. *** The report by the Dutch safety board said that more than 120 objects, “mostly metal fragments”, were found in the body of the first officer, who had sustained “multiple fractures”.. When Dutch experts identified the captain’s body they found it had already “undergone an external and internal examination to remove foreign objects”. Despite apparent attempts...

Needless to add, the “DNR” and “LNR” militaries would not last twenty-four hours without constant command and logistical support from Putin’s military. They are an extension of Russian Ground Forces and should be treated as such by the West. It’s time to end, once and for all, any fiction about “rebels” — these are Russian-controlled forces, led by Russian officers, supplied with Russian guns and ammunition, that are waging war inside Ukraine.

The annexation of Crimea, the “Novorossiya” project, and the fight against the “Kyiv junta” are not supported in Russia alone. There are political forces around the world, both marginal and relatively respectable, which voice their support for the separatists in the Donbass. At times, activists themselves travel to the war zone as volunteers, but they mostly hold demonstrations in support of the separatist republics and pressure their governments to renounce their support for Ukraine and “stop the aggression against Russia.”

Ukraine's military says its forces have captured two Russian soldiers fighting with rebels in eastern Ukraine. The troops were seized in the town of Shchastya, near the line of separation. A video emerged apparently showing one of the soldiers - which it said were members of Russia's elite special forces - saying during questioning that he was a sergeant from the central Russian city of Togliatti.

TUCKED away behind the Carpathian mountains, Ukraine’s Transcarpathian region has its share of problems. Ethnic separatism is not among the major ones. Nonetheless, this remote region's Ruthenian and ethnic-Hungarian communities have become a target for Russian propaganda aimed at dividing Ukrainian society.

The Patriarch of Moscow laid the intellectual groundwork for Russia’s incursion into Ukraine. But now he is paying an exceedingly heavy price Russia has done shocking things in Ukraine – but, with a display of nerve that should surprise no one, it presents its designs on that country as the legitimate resurgence of an Orthodox Christian civilisation.

Russia’s central bank is trying to resist a brutal assault on the ruble, but any respite is bound to be short-lived. The Central Bank of Russia waded into currency markets Monday as the ruble plunged to levels not seen since the 1998 financial crisis that triggered a devaluation and government debt default. Like the Canadian dollar and the Norwegian krone, the Russian currency has been under extreme pressure amid the collapse in oil prices. The ruble plunged as much as 6.5 per cent Monday, hitting a record low against the U.S. dollar before retracing some its lost ground to close...

Two exit polls indicate that Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko's party will secure a narrow win in Sunday's parliamentary election, falling substantially short of an outright majority. The Rating Group Ukraine exit poll said the Poroshenko Bloc won 22.2 percent of the votes and that Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk's Popular Front party came second at 21.8 percent. ........ Although they lead rival parties, Poroshenko and Yatsenyuk share pro-Western postures and have campaigned on reform agendas aimed at pulling Ukraine back from the brink of economic ruin.

he war in Ukraine is no longer only about Ukraine. The conflict has transformed Russia. This increasingly is what European leaders and diplomats believe: that Vladimir Putin and his security establishment have used the fog of war in Ukraine to shroud the final establishment of his brittle imperialist dictatorship in Moscow. Among those who believe that this is happening, and that Europe will be facing down a more menacing Russia for a long time to come, is Radek Sikorski, who was Poland’s foreign minister from 2007 until September. “I think psychologically the regime has been transformed by the annexation of...

God is inside Vladimir Putin. A divine light transfixed Putin’s essence after his secret baptism as a child. We are not worthy of the Russian president. These were a few of the tenets advanced by radical Russian Orthodox activist Dmitry Tsorionov in a September 7 lecture that marked one of the more bizarre expressions of a many-faceted grassroots cult of personality surrounding Russia’s paramount ruler.

Russians were operating a BUK missile launcher seen in the area where the Malaysia Airlines passenger jet MH17 was shot down, eyewitnesses have told Panorama. Distinctive shrapnel damage to the plane points to a fragmentation weapon - such as a BUK - downing the plane. The Kremlin had previously suggested that the missile was from a Ukrainian fighter jet. Pro-Russian rebels have denied any possession of a BUK. However, photographs and videos cast doubt on the claim by the Kremlin and pro-Russian rebels - that they did not have a BUK missile launcher on their territory. Three eyewitnesses, all civilians,...

Russia is demanding that Bulgaria try harder to prevent vandalism of Soviet monuments, after yet another monument to Soviet troops in Sofia was spray-painted, ITAR-Tass reported. The Russian Embassy in Bulgaria has issued a note demanding that its former Soviet-era ally clean up the monument in Sofia's Lozenets district, identify and punish those responsible, and take "exhaustive measures" to prevent similar attacks in the future, the news agency reported Monday.

A special presidential flight landed in Kyiv late on July 29 carrying 17 exhausted people, who then met with President Petro Poroshenko. The group, which included 15 Ukrainian servicemen, one Swedish and one Georgian citizen, spent months as hostages in Horlivka, one of the last remaining strongholds of the Kremlin-backed separatists led by defiant rebel commander Igor Bezler who goes by the nickname of “Demon.” These people were set free in an exchange for Olga Kulygina, believed to be a Russian Security Service agent.

News services throughout the world carried dramatic video of a mortally wounded Channel One Russian journalist lying on the floor of a minibus as those around him sought in vain to save his life. Among the bus’s occupants were women, said to be mothers of the Ukrainian soldiers in the garrison outside of Donetsk, who had opened fire on the minibus. For video, see http://rt.com/news/169304-russian-cameraman-last-video/. Thanks to the eyewitness account of a Forbes.ru journalist, we learn that the Russian separatists deliberately sent reporters and mothers of soldiers into the line of fire, hoping to gain a propaganda coup from their...

Russia’s aggressive propaganda machine keeps churning out falsehoods, provocations and outright lies about the situation in Ukraine. In spite of being repeatedly exposed, it shows no signs of slowing down. Disinformation is being laid on thick and poured out in a variety of forums: streaming down from the Kremlin, to Russia’s mainstream media, on to bloggers, down to useful idiots and hordes of paid trolls, who plague comment sections of articles about Ukraine and spread vitriol, hatred and blatant lies all over the social media.

There is a growing consensus that Vladimir Putin has abandoned his campaign to take control of east Ukraine. The fog of war, such as the killing of nearly 20 Ukrainian soldiers yesterday, is obscuring the distinct turn in the tide. Putin’s goal has changed from dismantling Ukraine as a united state to destabilizing Sunday’s presidential election in the east. Ukraine has a chance for a third lease on life.

The website of the “President of Russia’s Council on Civil Society and Human Rights” posted a blog that was quickly taken down as if it were toxic radioactive waste. According to the Council’s report about the March referendum to annex Crimea, the turnout was a maximum 30%. And of these, only half voted for annexation – meaning only 15 percent of Crimean citizens voted for annexation. The fate of Crimea, therefore, was decided by the 15 percent of Crimeans, who voted in favor of unification with Russia (under the watchful eye of Kalashnikov-toting soldiers).

Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) accused former Prime Minister Sergiy Arbuzov and former Deputy Prime Minister Oleksandr Klymenko of financing the thugs who provoked riots in Odessa of May 2, which led to at least 46 deaths. Arbuzov and Klymenko served in the administration of disgraced former President Viktor Yanukovych, who was overthrown in the EuroMaidan Revolution on Feb. 22. ........ “Subversion in the Ukrainian city of Odessa that was financed by former top officials was targeted at disruption of stability on the south of Ukraine,” said Kateryna Kosareva, SBU press spokeswoman. “Its organizers were planning that it would be the...

Thirteeen persons, including journalists, have been kidnapped over the past week in the eastern Ukrainian cities of Sloviansk and Horlivka, according to Kyiv Post reporting and that of Donetsk-based news website Novosti Donbassa. Some have been released while two have been found dead.