Free Republic

In the surreal dance Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Vladimir Putin have been engaged in for months, both want Donald Trump to see the other as the obstacle to peace. For now, the Ukrainian leader is winning. The latest evidence comes from the peace talks in Istanbul that Trump had promoted ― the first direct negotiation between the two sides since the start of the war. Zelenskyy had the courtesy to show up while his Russian counterpart was a no-show, sending instead a relatively low-level delegation, described by Zelenskyy as merely “decorative.” Could this be the moment Trump finally concedes that Putin...

Kyiv knows that it will have to recalibrate and take care not to get on Trump’s bad side, hence Zelenskyy’s emphasizing the importance of exploring diplomatic solutions. U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s nomination of Keith Kellogg, a former national security adviser and decorated retired U.S. general, to be his special envoy to Ukraine and Russia has reassured a nervous Kyiv up to a point. Ukrainian officials are familiar with Kellogg, a peace-through-strength advocate who’s argued publicly that any deal to end the nearly three-year-long war of attrition would have to include solid security guarantees for Ukraine to ensure there’s lasting peace...

… U.S. President Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw from the White House race may well turn 2024 into the Year of the Woman — namely, that of Vice President Kamala Harris who, armed with the outgoing president’s endorsement, can now be considered the front-runner to replace him atop the Democratic ticket. Truth is, if Harris is successful in getting the nod from the Democratic Party, much of the subsequent election campaign is likely to domestically focus on abortion and women’s rights. Trump already has a problem with women voters — polls have consistently shown that the proportion of women planning...

There are always reasons to doubt Russia is playing it straight. For years, Russian President Vladimir Putin has bundled U-turns and lies together, making it hard to distinguish between evasion and fiction, and weaponizing the toxic mix to blackmail, divide and bewilder his foes. In recent days, Russia has pulled out of the Black Sea grain deal, then gone back into it, and issued bloodcurdling threats of nuclear attack before reversing course to endorse the language of non-proliferation. This week, Putin ordered his forces to retreat from Kherson only weeks after declaring that the city would-be part of Russia “forever.”...

“Why are you taking our children? Who attacked who? Isn’t it Russia that attacked Ukraine?” The questions hurled at the police by a clamorous group of indignant women outside a theater in Dagestan’s capital That was last month the confrontation between infuriated mothers in Dagestan, a mountainous republic within the multi-national Russian Federation, took place shortly after Putin announced a partial mobilization. Elsewhere in the north Caucasian city, standoffs between protesters and baton-wielding police were fiercer with jostling and heavy-handed arrests, according to geo-located posted videos. Some other ethnic minority parts of the Russian Federation, including its 22 ethnic republics,...

Kobani has become the Kurds’ Alamo as they fight ISIS in Syria. Nobody’s coming to help them, and if and when they fall, the repercussions will be felt for years to come. ATMANEK, Turkey — At dusk on Friday evening the crackle of automatic gunfire, the whoosh of rockets and the sickening roar of tank shells echoed from the fighting in Kobani, Syria, less than a mile away. We stood on the rooftop of a derelict farmhouse meters away from a Turkish tank and a razor wire fence marking the end of Turkey. Nearby a family of Turkish Kurds busied...

As the British government urges the UN to crack down on ransoms to terrorist groups, jihadists in the Maghreb are upping their hostage prices. In the past three years, jihadists groups linked to al-Qaeda and other radicals have raked in at least $70 million in ransom money—and with each year, the average financial demand from abductors has jumped, according to the British Foreign Office.

The Kremlin was quick off the mark. Within hours of Washington acknowledging in late November that it had begun formal negotiations to take over several Polish military bases, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov warned during a trip to Warsaw that any reconfiguration of the U.S. military presence in Europe must consider his country's national-security interests. According to a Russian official, "The Kremlin is not concealing from the Americans or the Poles its negative attitude toward Polish-American discussions about relocating bases in Germany." But in the weeks to come the Russians won't be the only ones jittery about a long-touted...

Despite the insistence of the Pentagon that a menacing arsenal of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) eventually will be found in Iraq, the failure after more than a month of war and occupation to unearth even a single illegal warhead or a drum of prohibited chemicals is causing alarm in political circles here. Already British Prime Minister Tony Blair is coming under mounting pressure in the House of Commons to agree to setting up a formal British parliamentary inquiry into Saddam Hussein's WMD programs and the claims made about them before the war by the intelligence services. Prior to the...