Free Republic

Trump administration officials fired more than 300 staffers Thursday night at the National Nuclear Security Administration — the agency tasked with managing the nation’s nuclear stockpile — as part of broader Energy Department layoffs, according to four people with knowledge of the matter. Sources told CNN the officials did not seem to know this agency oversees America’s nuclear weapons. An Energy Department spokesperson disputed the number of personnel affected, telling CNN that “less than 50 people” were “dismissed” from NNSA, and that the dismissed staffers “held primarily administrative and clerical roles.” The agency began rescinding the terminations Friday morning. Some...

Chernobyl nuclear power plant was hit by a Russian attack overnight, striking a protective shield over its destroyed fourth reactor, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said. The structure, known as the New Safe Confinement, was built through international cooperation to contain the remnants of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. It was designed to prevent radiation leaks and safeguard the site and the broader area from environmental hazards. According to Ukraine’s president, the strike by a Russian attack drone carrying a high-explosive warhead damaged the dome, but the fire was extinguished, and radiation levels remained stable. The situation is being monitored to assess...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy pored over a once-classified map of vast deposits of rare earths and other critical minerals during an interview with Reuters on Friday, part of a push to appeal to Donald Trump's penchant for a deal. The U.S. president, whose administration is pressing for a rapid end to Ukraine's war with Russia, said on Monday he wanted Ukraine to supply the U.S. with rare earths and other minerals in return for financially supporting its war effort. "If we are talking about a deal, then let's do a deal, we are only for it," Zelenskiy said, emphasising Ukraine's...

Eighty years ago, on February 4, 1945, the Yalta Conference opened, at which the leaders of the victorious countries of World War II – the USSR, the US and UK – defined the contours of the post-war world. Despite ideological differences, they agreed to finally eradicate German Nazism and Japanese militarism. The agreements reached in Crimea were confirmed and developed during the Potsdam Peace Conference in July 1945. One of the results of the negotiations was the creation of the UN and approval of the UN Charter, which remains the main source of international law to this day. The goals...

Donald Trump directly blamed Vladimir Putin for the fact the war in Ukraine is still raging — a day after threatening massive tariffs and sanctions on Russian products if he fails to make a deal to end the conflict. Speaking in a video address to the World Economic Forum in Davos, the United States president said he would bring down the cost of oil, because "if the price came down, the Russia-Ukraine war would end immediately," adding: "It's time to end it." Asked whether he believed the war in Ukraine would end by the time the WEF returned to Davos...

President Vladimir Putin has grown increasingly concerned about distortions in Russia's wartime economy, just as Donald Trump pushes for an end to the Ukraine conflict, five sources with knowledge of the situation told Reuters. Russia's economy, driven by exports of oil, gas and minerals, grew robustly over the past two years despite multiple rounds of Western sanctions imposed after its invasion of Ukraine in 2022. But domestic activity has become strained in recent months by labour shortages and high interest rates introduced to tackle inflation, which has accelerated under record military spending. That has contributed to the view within a...

NATO’s Secretary-General Mark Rutte hailed newly inaugurated U.S. President Donald Trump’s warning on Wednesday that Russia could expect more tariffs and sanctions if it did not end the war in Ukraine. “I was very, very happy with the position of Trump to put more sanctions on Russia. We know that the Russian economy is doing terribly bad[ly], and the sanctions will help,” he told CNBC on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.” He expressed hopes that Europe will now also “step up” with sanctions in a bid to “choke off the Russian economy” and lessen Moscow’s...

Donald Trump has warned he will impose high tariffs and further sanctions on Russia if Vladimir Putin fails to end the war in Ukraine. Writing on his social media platform Truth Social, he said that by pushing to settle the war he was doing Russia and its president a "very big favour". Trump had previously said he would negotiate a settlement to Russia's full-scale invasion launched in February 2022, in a single day. Russia has not yet responded to the remarks, but senior officials have said in recent days that there is a small window of opportunity for Moscow to...

US President Donald Trump on Monday called for Russian President Vladimir Putin to strike a deal to end the nearly three-year war in Ukraine, specifying that Russia will be in "big trouble" if the conflict continues. "He should make a deal. I think he's destroying Russia by not making a deal," Trump said upon his return to the Oval Office. "I think Russia's going to be in big trouble." Trump expressed his willingness to meet with Putin, mentioning their prior summit during his first term. "I got along with him great. I would hope he wants to make a deal,"...

Elon Musk has said he will “go to war” with Maga Republicans over visas for skilled migrants. The Tesla billionaire, chosen by Donald Trump to be co-head of his new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has infuriated anti-immigration elements of the Republican Party by defending the H-1B visa, which permits highly educated foreigners to work in the US for up to six years. Mr Musk responded to the backlash from the Make America Great Again (Maga) faction by vowing to kick out “hateful, unrepentant racists” from the Republican Party. At least 14 conservative holders of accounts on Mr Musk’s social...

The Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) and the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC) will celebrate Christmas on Dec. 25, instead of Jan. 7 for the second year after transitioning to the Revised Julian Calendar. Since Sept. 1, 2023, Christians of the Eastern Rite in Ukraine have been using the Revised Julian Calendar. This calendar shifts certain fixed-date religious celebrations 13 days earlier compared to the "old style." While the OCU allowed parishes to choose their preferred Christmas date during a transitional period, the majority of believers embraced the new calendar.

Officials in Russia say drones launched by Kyiv have hit Kazan, a city more than 600 miles from Ukraine which hosted an international economic summit two months earlier. Video on social media shared Saturday showed the drones striking apartment blocks in the capital of the Russian republic of Tatarstan where a meeting of the Moscow-led BRICS bloc took place in October. (snip)Tatarstan is a multiethnic Russian republic which is home to a significant Muslim minority. Between October 22 and October 24, its capital, Kazan hosted the summit of BRICS countries which include Brazil, India, China and South Africa, and is...

Leaked voice recordings have revealed the chilling scale of North Korean losses in Vladimir Putin's war on Ukraine, with "several hundreds" of troops reportedly killed or wounded on the frontline in Kursk. The audio messages, allegedly intercepted by Ukraine's Security Service, are between a nurse in a Russian hospital and her husband, who is fighting in Kharkiv. During the call, the woman makes reference to hundreds of injured or killed soldiers filling Moscow's hospitals. The woman says: "Yesterday there was a train with about 100 people. Today, 120 others, making 200. How many more are there? God only knows." She...

Russian deserters from the Ukraine war were burned alive in Vladimir Putin's infamous "torture jail". Five so-called 'refuseniks' were killed as a fire ripped through the army jail where they were being held in Yakutsk, the world’s coldest city. Reports suggest seven more were injured. The fire broke out at around 2am with seven people admitted to hospital, officials said, although the Russian defence ministry has not said what caused the fire. The notorious facility has been the target of numerous allegations of torture after footage from the grim prison was leaked in May. At the time of the blaze...

Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev has not ruled out the emergence of new regions in Russia. "Actually, this experience (of Donbass and Novorossiya’s integration - TASS) may be useful in the future as well, if new but very close-by regions appear in our country soon. This is quite possible," he said at the 22nd United Russia party congress.

The Ukrainian Defense Ministry's Main Directorate of Intelligence said on Monday that at least 30 North Korean soldiers were killed and wounded in weekend battles in Russia's western Kursk region, prompting commanders to send reinforcements to frontline units. "North Korean army units are being re-equipped after losses in assaults" around the villages of Plekhovo, Vorozhba and Martynovka in the Kursk region, the GUR wrote in a post to its official Telegram channel. On Dec. 14 and 15, the GUR said, "units of the DPRK army suffered significant losses -- at least 30 soldiers were killed and wounded," using the acronym...

Russia out, U.S. inVIDEO

Wars are often chaotic, but the introduction of foreign troops can add another layer of confusion. In the Kursk region of Russia, that confusion appears to have turned deadly. According to Ukraine’s defense intelligence (GUR) and Hotnews, North Korean soldiers accidentally killed eight Chechen fighters from the Akhmat battalion. The incident, GUR claims, was caused by a language barrier between the North Korean troops and their Russian allies. The Chechens, loyal to Ramzan Kadyrov, were reportedly mistaken for enemy forces. The North Koreans fired on their vehicles, leading to the deaths. This is part of a larger development. Ukraine says...

The Kremlin said Friday that its "prerequisites" for holding peace talks with Ukraine had not yet been met, as speculation over a possible ceasefire mounts ahead of US President-elect Donald Trump coming to power in January. "We don't want a ceasefire, we want peace, after our conditions are met and all our goals are achieved," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters, adding that the "prerequisites" needed to open negotiations were not in place.

Lines of Russian troops in desert khaki greeted President Vladimir V. Putin in Syria in 2017. Declaring that Moscow had accomplished its mission in Syria’s civil war, Mr. Putin pledged that Russia was there to stay. “If the terrorists raise their heads again,” he said on the tarmac of a Russian air base, “we will deal unprecedented strikes unlike anything they have seen.” But over the last two weeks, as the rebels that Russia called terrorists swept across Syria aiming to topple one of Russia’s closest allies, President Bashar al-Assad, those “unprecedented” strikes were nowhere to be seen. Instead, with...