Free Republic

A terror weapon becomes less terrifying when it doesn’t work. After warning U.S. officials of its intention to launch, Russia lobbed a mysterious new ballistic missile—initially mistaken for a nuclear-capable ICBM—at the city of Dnipro in eastern Ukraine on the morning of Nov. 21, damaging buildings and injuring dozens of people. The mystery weapon turned out to be a variant of Russia’s RS-26, a 40-ton, solid-fueled missile with six independent reentry vehicles. Its name, Russian Pres. Vladimir Putin announced shortly after the strike, is “Oreshnik.” That’s Russian for “hazelnut tree.” Three months later on Thursday morning, the Russians reportedly launched...

Ukraine's military reportedly launched a new offensive in Russia's Kursk region, according to multiple Russian military bloggers on Thursday. Kyiv officials have not yet confirmed a new major operation in the region as of press time.

President Trump is prepared to double down on US sanctions for Russia to bring about an end to its war on Ukraine, retired Gen. Keith Kellogg, his special envoy to the conflict, exclusively told The Post this week — but he knows both Kyiv and Moscow will have to make concessions to end the “industrial-sized” killing in Europe’s largest country. Sanctions enforcement on Russia are “only about a three” on a scale of one to 10 on how painful the economic pressure can be, Kellogg said. The US sanctions themselves — such as those targeting Russia’s lucrative energy sector —...

Ukraine, keen for continued U.S. support in its war with Russia, is looking forward to a visit this month by U.S. President Donald Trump's special envoy for the region, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's chief of staff said on Friday. Andriy Yermak said he had spoken to envoy Keith Kellogg about topics including the battlefield situation, the safety of Ukrainian civilians, and meetings at the annual Munich Security Conference later this month. "The Ukrainian side is looking forward to the visit of the U.S. Special Envoy for Ukraine and Russia, Keith Kellogg, in February to provide comprehensive information on Russian aggression against...

Russia has got so desperate it has had to go back to one of the most old-fashioned ways to carry bullets and guns during a war. The Soviet army had to start using donkeys and horses to carry ammunition in Ukraine – something that hasn’t been done for over a century. Military blogger Kirill Fedorov wrote on his Telegram channel that Putin and his soldiers have started to send the animals to the front line. He said that an official government transport list says these animals include horses, camels and deer. He wrote: ‘The fighters were given a donkey to...

President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he’s given his advisers instructions to obliterate Iran if it assassinates him. “If they did that they would be obliterated,” Trump said in an exchange with reporters while signing an executive order calling for the U.S. government to impose maximum pressure on Tehran. “I’ve left instructions if they do it, they get obliterated, there won’t be anything left.”

-snip- Ukraine is one of the largest rare earth mineral suppliers in the world, and has the largest titanium reserves in Europe. The country also boasts deposits of lithium, beryllium, manganese, gallium, uranium, zirconium, graphite, apatite, fluorite, and nickel, per the World Economic Forum. Russian forces have already taken parts of Eastern Ukraine that had historically provided the rest of the country with key minerals, notably much of the coal-supplying Donbas region. But other parts of Ukraine, including the Dnieper River basin that runs through the center of the country and the Carpathian Mountains in the West, have massive supply...

ONE of Mad Vlad's war criminal deputy governors has been blown up by a landmine. Sergey Efremov, 51, has become the highest ranking Russian official to be killed in the conflict. -snip- The 51-year-old reportedly died after his military vehicle was blown up after hitting a mine in the Kursk region of Western Russia. Efremov, and another pro-Putin politician, died after attempting to help wounded Russian soldiers.

President Donald Trump on Friday said his administration has already had “very serious” discussions with Russia about its war in Ukraine and that he and Russian President Vladimir Putin could soon take “significant” action toward ending the grinding conflict. “We will be speaking, and I think will perhaps do something that’ll be significant,” Trump said in exchange with reporters in the Oval Office. “We want to end that war. That war would have not started if I was president.” Trump did not say who from his administration has been in contact with the Russians but insisted the two sides were...

Russian propagandists expressed their outrage about President Donald Trump's recent statement regarding Moscow-U. S. relations. -snip- "Trump has threatened us twice in 24 hours. No illusions. A capitalist who doesn't give a damn about other countries. No matter, Russia is like a KAMAZ, the more you load, the better it goes. How tightly you can blockade 1/6 of the planet Earth's land mass." Sladkov added that he was "also outraged by Trump's lie: 'Russia helped us win the war (the Great Patriotic War)'" as "in 1944, we barely persuaded these Anglo-Saxons to take part in military operations in Europe. They,...

US President Donald Trump has threatened Russia with steep tariffs and sanctions if the war in Ukraine does not come to an end soon. Having barely settled back into the Oval Office since his second inauguration on Monday, the second term president has taken aim at a number of his pre-election promises. Now, Trump has posted a warning message to Russian president Vladimir Putin in which he called on him to end his brutal war in Ukraine. -snip- “We can do it the easy way, or the hard way - and the easy way is always better."

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping discussed on Tuesday how to build ties with Donald Trump, prospects for a peace deal to end the war in Ukraine and Moscow's firm support for Beijing's position on Taiwan. Xi and Putin, who spoke for an hour and 35 minutes by video call after Trump was sworn in as U.S. president on Monday -snip- Putin, 72, speaking from his Novo-Ogarevo residency outside Moscow and Xi, 71, speaking from the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, called each other "dear friends", and Xi told Putin about a call with Trump...

Donald Trump's incoming national security advisor Mike Waltz suggested during an interview on ABC's "This Week" that if Ukraine expects "the entire world to be all-in" on supporting them, they should lower their draft age from 26 to 18. MIKE WALTZ: I will say, the other thing that we're going to need to see is really stabilizing things on the battlefield. And one of the things that we'll be asking of the Ukrainians is they have real manpower issues. Their draft age right now is 26 years old, not 18. I don't think a lot of people realize that they...

Fatemeh Mohajerani, the spokesperson for the Iranian government, announced that a 20-year cooperation agreement between the Islamic Republic of Iran and Russia will be signed soon. She stated, “We hope to witness the signing of the comprehensive cooperation document between the two countries on January 18th of this year.” On Wednesday, January 8th, the Islamic Republic News Agency reported that Fatemeh Mohajerani confirmed detailed discussions about this cooperation document had taken place. While the details of the agreement have not been disclosed, it is believed that Iran has accepted the changes Russia requested in the agreement. Ismail Baghaei, the spokesperson...