Free Republic

President Trump will only meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin if the dictator also meets with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, The Post can exclusively reveal. “Putin must meet with Zelensky for the meeting to occur,” a White House official told The Post. “No location has been set.” Moscow on Thursday claimed that Moscow and Washington agreed “in principle” to hold a one-of-one meeting of Putin and Trump — hours after the latter said he still wasn’t sure whether the Kremlin was “tapping [him] along.” “An agreement was agreed in principle to hold a bilateral summit meeting in the coming days,...

Israeli spies infiltrated the heart of Iran before Friday morning’s Operation Rising Lion airstrikes and damaged the country’s missile infrastructure and air defenses in a series of covert operations. Intelligence agents with Israel’s Mossad smuggled in weaponry that destroyed defense measures inside Iran, which threatened Israeli military capabilities. Agents deployed “significant measures” on large quantities of special weaponry and deployed them across Iran, targeting designated areas, an Israeli security source told The Post. “Significant intelligence was gathered and surveillance was conducted to incriminate senior members of the Iranian defense establishment and nuclear scientists who were eliminated,” the source said. “This...

President Trump again pushed for a 30-day cease-fire between Russia and Ukraine Thursday after speaking by phone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, promising to “stay committed to securing Peace” after earlier threatening to walk away from talks between the warring nations. “Talks with Russia/Ukraine continue,” Trump, 78, posted to Truth Social. “The U.S. calls for, ideally, a 30-day unconditional ceasefire. Hopefully, an acceptable ceasefire will be observed, and both Countries will be held accountable for respecting the sanctity of these direct negotiations.” “If the ceasefire is not respected, the U.S. and its partners will impose further sanctions,” he added. Zelensky,...

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and special presidential envoys Steve Witkoff and Gen. Keith Kellogg kicked off high-stakes talks in France Thursday with European and Ukrainian officials — marking the first time that both envoys were at the negotiation table to discuss an end to the war. The trio met with French President Emmanuel Macron as well as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s chief of staff Andrii Yermak, senior administration officials told The Post. The State Department had announced Wednesday that Rubio and Witkoff would make the trip to France, but gave a vague description of the visit in a...

The Trump administration raised the temperature with Denmark Thursday ahead of Vice President JD Vance’s trip to Greenland — accusing the Danes of “mistreating” Greenlandic people against the backdrop of President Trump openly talking about annexing the island. “The Vice President and Second Lady are embarking on a historic expedition with their visit to Greenland, where the Vice President will emphasize the importance of bolstering [Arctic] security in places like Pituffik Space Base,” a senior White House official said. “Unfortunately, Danish leaders have spent decades mistreating the Greenlandic people, treating them like second class citizens and allowing infrastructure on the...

Ukraine reportedly launched at least 337 drones into Russia on Tuesday in the largest-yet drone attack of the Moscow-Kyiv conflict, according to the Russian Ministry of Defense. It came just before US and Ukrainian delegations were scheduled to meet for negotiation discussions in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia on Tuesday. Russia set the previous drone-attack record a little over two weeks ago, when it launched 267 drones at Ukraine in a single night on Feb. 23. Ukrainian officials have yet to comment on the Russian report.

They’re small, but mighty — and deadly, too. The Ukrainian Armed Forces’ reliance on cheaper, more compact drones has altered the look of warfare for good, operators and experts tell The Post. Instead of the hulking craft used by nations like the US — which cost hundreds of millions of dollars — many of Ukraine’s aerial attacks against Russian forces are conducted with simple kamikaze drones worth between $300 and $1,000. If flown by an experienced pilot, a 6.5-pound drone found in any hobby shop can carry enough explosives to take out an armored vehicle, Andrii Federov, the co-founder and...

The US won’t repeat the mistakes of the Iraq War by failing to secure valuable resources from Ukraine in exchange for help ending Russia’s nearly three-year-old invasion, President Trump’s special envoy to the conflict exclusively told The Post. “When you look at the mineral deposits in that country, we’re not talking millions of dollars. We’re talking — virtually every region, we’re talking about billions, and then some regions are [worth] trillions,” retired Gen. Keith Kellogg said this week. “You can come up with a deal, and that’s what [Trump] has the Treasury looking at: ‘OK, how do you make a...

“I’m also going to ask Saudi Arabia and OPEC to bring down the cost of oil. You got to bring it down, which frankly, I’m surprised they didn’t do before the election,” Trump told the global elites gathered at the yearly meeting. “If the price came down, the Russia-Ukraine war would end immediately. Right now, the price is high enough that that war will continue. You’ve got to bring down the oil price. You’re going to end that war.” Kellogg explained that the price of oil is roughly $70 per barrel, meaning huge cash flows for Moscow to continue funding...

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Friday... Biden, 82, “wrestled” with the decision to pardon his son for any and all crimes he committed between 2014 and 2024 — but it was a visit by Clyburn, 84, that tipped the scales and led the president to go back on his repeated promises not to do so.

On the surface, it’s hard not to see visions of World War III in Russia’s recent threats and provocations against the West. -snip- But far from being on the brink of global armageddon, experts tell The Post these moves amount to the same old irresponsible nuclear saber-rattling Putin has long been known for. More to the point, they show that the Russian dictator is becoming increasingly desperate in the lead-up to President-elect Donald Trump’s second term. “It’s certainly signaling to the west. I think the Russians are obviously concerned that we’ve allowed Ukraine this permission to strike in Russia with...

The truth is out there. Or is it? More than 20 reports of unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) — “UFOs,” in layman’s terms — made over the past year have stumped the Defense Department and “merit further analysis,” according to the UAP program’s annual report released Thursday. Between May 1, 2023, and June 1, the Pentagon’s “all-domain anomaly resolution office” (AARO) received 757 reports of sightings — 485 of which referenced new sightings over that period while the remainder occurred between 2021 and 2022. Among those are 21 reports that AARO director Jon Kosloski said warrant additional investigation — and some...

SNIP The state’s famed “Pennsylvania Dutch” registered to vote in “unprecedented numbers” in response to a January federal raid on a local raw milk farm in Bird in Hand, Pa., a source familiar with the situation told The Post. The Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture raided Amos Miller’s farm Jan. 4 after reports of illnesses in children linked to raw dairy products purchased there, according to the local media outlet Lancaster Farming. “That was the impetus for them to say, ‘We need to participate,’ ” the source said of local Amish voters. “This is about neighbors helping neighbors.”

Alleged would-be Trump assassin Ryan Wesley Routh rolled up in Ukraine last year looking to fight the Russians and make an impact — but was quickly rejected and pushed aside after being dubbed a “wack job” and “off” by the more serious foreign fighters in the country, several sources involved in the volunteer effort said. While some had interacted with him personally, others told The Post they knew his “type” and were “not at all surprised by it.” “A crazy idiot, but no one’s really surprised. There are people like that that show up and are desperate to help and...

WASHINGTON — President Biden was so hellbent on getting out of Afghanistan that he rebuked any advice to the contrary, ignored the pleas of the Afghan government and disregarded objections from US allies. That was the one of the main takeaways from the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s more than two-year investigation into America’s chaotic, deadly Afghanistan withdrawal, according to a blistering report released Sunday. “During his decades-long tenure as a Delaware US senator, eight years as vice president of the United States and nearly four years as president, Mr. Biden has demonstrated distrust of America’s military experts and advisors and...

WASHINGTON – The Biden administration was slammed Monday for offering its sympathies to the Iranian people over the deaths of the oppressive theocracy’s president and foreign minister in a weekend helicopter crash. “The United States expresses its official condolences for the death of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, Foreign Minister Amir-Abdollahian, and other members of their delegation in a helicopter crash in northwest Iran,” the State Department said in an emailed statement on Monday.\ ...

WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced Friday that the US is sending Ukraine its largest aid package to date — worth $6 billion — that will include munitions for Patriot missile defense systems that Kyiv has said could change the course of the war, but not the systems themselves. The massive package comes just two days after a separate $1 billion tranche for Ukraine was announced upon President Biden signing a $95 billion foreign aid supplemental funding bill into law. “The announcements this week underscore America’s enduring commitment to Ukraine’s defense,” Austin said after a meeting of the Ukraine...

WASHINGTON — Dozens of former national security officials have gone to work for Facebook and Twitter after leaving government service, raising concerns about the influence of their onetime agencies over the social media giants. At Twitter alone, at least eight former FBI agents work at the company’s so-called “trust” and “security” divisions — including its product policy manager Greg Anderson, who previously worked on “psychological operations” at the National Security Council, The Post has learned. Another is Matthew Williams, the company’s co-lead of its Trust and Safety department who spent more that 15 years in intelligence with the agency. The...

Former President Donald Trump again rejected the result of Arizona’s gubernatorial election Monday, calling for Republican Kari Lake to be declared the winner due to a supposed “criminal voting operation.” “Massive numbers of ‘BROKEN’ voting machines in Republican Districts on Election Day. Mechanics sent in to ‘FIX’ them made them worse,” Trump, 76, said in a Truth Social post without offering evidence. “Kari had to be taken to a Democrat area, which was working perfectly, to vote. Her opponent ran the Election.” Trump added it was “SO OBVIOUS” that Lake, 53, should not have lost to Democrat Katie Hobbs, Arizona’s...

President Biden thanked first responders with an awkward phone call into the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade Thursday that provided some cringeworthy TV for viewers of the annual parade. From the Massachusetts island home of private-equity billionaire David Rubenstein, the president and first lady Jill Biden engaged in a call that started with a lengthy and uncomfortable silence as NBC’s Dylan Dryer, on scene at the parade, seemed unable to hear the pair for about 30 seconds. “I’m not one to take a phone call during TV, but I think I should answer this one,” Dreyer said.