Free Republic

Vice President JD Vance on Monday said Trump administration officials are already in talks to put on a settlement to the years-long war Russia launched against Ukraine, and warned that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky needs to accept Donald Trump’s terms for a mineral rights deal and enter negotiations with Moscow.Vance’s demand that Zelensky accept the U.S.-backed mineral rights deal follows the Ukrainian leader’s ejection Friday from the White House after an Oval Office shouting match with Vance and Trump.It also comes just hours after the Trump administration announced it was halting some defense aid to Kyiv at a crucial time...

On Monday, the new government of Syria canceled Russia's 49-year operating lease at the port of Tartus, bringing a multi-decade Russian naval presence in the Eastern Mediterranean to a close. A military cargo ship that had been loitering just off the coast has now berthed at the Russian naval pier, where military vehicles are staged for a likely evacuation. "According to the Director of Tartous Customs, the agreement signed with the Russian company to invest in Tartous Port has been canceled and all its revenues are now for the benefit of the Syrian state," reported local news agency Levant24.

The Archer Daniels Midland wet mill on the outskirts of Decatur, Ill., rises like an industrial behemoth from the frozen, harvested cornfields of Central Illinois. Steam billowed in the 20-degree cold last week, as workers turned raw corn into sweet, ubiquitous high-fructose corn syrup. Three miles away, a Primient mill, which sprawls across 400 acres divided by North 22nd Street, was doing the same. To Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President-elect Donald J. Trump’s nominee for secretary of health and human services, this bedraggled city — set deep in Trump country — is the belly of the agribusiness beast, churning out...

The reverberations from the Oreshnik ballistic missile strike on Dnipro continue to echo two weeks after the event, mainly because President Putin keeps making public statements about what an effective weapon Oreshnik is. These are duly repeated by the media in Russia and abroad. The use of an intermediate range ballistic missile with conventional warheads was a world first. Containing no explosive, the thirty-six submunitions inflict damage by kinetic energy, “like a meteorite falling,” as Putin put it. The shower of artificial meteorites looked impressive, but the evidence suggests that it did little actual damage. The strike was more of...