Free Republic

Soon they will begin to surrender en masse, "as it was one time near Stalingrad," said Alexander Semanov, veteran of the Vostok battalion and a public figure of the DPR...

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — In a dramatic escalation of East-West tensions over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin ordered Russian nuclear deterrent forces put on high alert Sunday in response to what he called “aggressive statements” by leading NATO powers. The order means Putin has ordered Russia’s nuclear weapons prepared for increased readiness to launch, raising the threat that the tensions could boil over into a nuclear war. In giving it, the Russian leader also cited hard-hitting financial sanctions imposed by the West against Russia, including Putin himself.

Russian soldier speaks as Ukrainian soldier tends to his injuries...

Russian President Vladimir Putin has called the breakup of the Soviet Union “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe” of the 20th century. “Tens of millions of our fellow citizens and countrymen found themselves beyond the fringes of Russian territory,” Putin said in a 2005 speech. While not all Russians necessarily agree with Putin’s characterization, most do view the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991 as “a bad thing,” according to a Pew Research Center survey of Russia and 17 other countries in Central and Eastern Europe conducted between 2015 and 2016. And this view is not limited to Russia. For example,...

Viewed from Paris, London and Washington, the events unfolding in Ukraine may seem like a new Cold War taking shape in Europe. From the Baltic countries, it looks much worse. To Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians — particularly those old enough to have lived under Soviet control — Russia’s belligerence toward Ukraine has some worried that they could be the next target. The escalating tensions which preceded an attack Thursday brought back memories of mass deportations and oppression. “My grandparents were sent away to Siberia. My father was persecuted by the KGB. Now I live in a free democratic country, but...

Seceded state about to be reacquired by the Union. Which side should we root for?

@ChadPergram 1) Fox is told there are more conversations this week among Washington security officials if there were to be a trucker convoy descend on Washington, DC and specifically the US Capitol, ala the protests in Ottawa 2) That said, Fox is told there is some disagreement about how to approach a potential trucker convoy in Washington, DC. Fox is told the Secret Service would like Capitol officials to again put up the fence which encircled the Capitol grounds after the riot last year 3) Such a plan could include closing off the immediate environs of the Capitol complex and...

A Russian teenager was sent to prison on Thursday for supposedly "training" for terrorist activities and other charges that included blowing up a virtual government intelligence building on the video game Minecraft. A military court in Siberia sentenced the boy, 16-year-old Nikita Uvarov, to five years for the charges -- which stemmed from anti-government leaflets he'd handed out and videos on cellphones belonging to Uvarov and at least two others. Authorities also said they'd uncovered a plot by the teens to blow up a virtual building belonging to the Russian Federal Security Service, or FSB, that they'd built in the...

It is over. Putin has won. Victoria Nuland, the neoconservative war monger appointed Undersecretary of State by the White House fool, announced Washington’s surrender when she called on China to use its influence with Russia to save Ukraine from invasion. She thus acknowledges what everyone had already concluded: the US and NATO lack the capability. Washington’s surrender followed the request of the Ukrainian president that Washington stop the “Russian invasion” propaganda as there were no signs of an invasion being prepared and Washington’s rhetoric was too provocative. Germany refused flyover permission to the UK for arms deliveries to Ukraine. Two...

Capitol Police examines backgrounds, social media feeds of some who meet with lawmakers The little-known new practice by the department’s intelligence analysts, instituted since the Jan. 6 attack, is highly controversial given the civil liberties concerns it raises. After the Jan. 6 insurrection, the Capitol Police’s intelligence unit quietly started scrutinizing the backgrounds of people who meet with lawmakers, according to three people familiar with the matter.... ..... Major changes in the Capitol Police intelligence unit started in fall of 2020, when the department brought on former Department of Homeland Security official Julie Farnam to help run its intelligence unit......

President Biden lashed out Thursday at a reporter for what he called a “stupid question” about Russia potentially invading Ukraine — as the White House scrambled to clean up Biden’s Wednesday gaffe that Russia may face less blowback for a “minor incursion.” As reporters were escorted out of a science-focused meeting next door to the White House, Fox News correspondent Jacqui Heinrich shouted, “Why are you waiting on [Russian President Vladimir] Putin to make the first move, sir?” Biden’s answer was not captured on the official video livestream, but press audio engineers recorded him saying, “What a stupid question,” according...

Nazarbayev acknowledges Tokayev’s triumph.On January 18, Kazakhstan’s first president Nursultan Nazarbayev interrupted his prolonged silence and recorded an address to the nation in which he assessed the recent upheaval in Kazakhstan and, more importantly, attempted to refute rumors that it was caused by a split and disagreements in the country’s political elite. He reiterated that President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has full authority, is the head of the Security Council and will soon be elected chairman of the Nur Otan ruling party. "So, there’s no conflict or standoff among the elite. The rumors on this subject are absolutely groundless," Kazakhstan’s first president...

Whether or not Vladimir Putin moves his troops into Ukraine, he has once again confronted Europe with a most painful reality: while being too weak to defend itself, it can no longer rely on the United States to come to its rescue. We are facing a reality in which Russia, despite its economy only having the size of Italy's, can bully and intimidate a continent thanks to its energy reserves and its readiness to project vast military power. Sure, any Russian invasion of Ukraine would cost Russia a fortune and likely degrade into a grinding war of attrition. Invasion is...

Paul Craig RobertsThe Russians called a security conference with Washington and NATO. The Russians explained that security is a joint undertaking and that security only exists if every country feels secure. The CIA responded with accusations against Russia handed to the CIA-puppet Biden regime and the CIA-puppet US media. The national security advisor read the script to us peons: Russia intends a false flag attack on its own troops so that it will have an excuse to invade Ukraine. The national security advisor is so stupid that it does not occur to him that if Russia wants to invade Ukraine...

Russia on Thursday sharply raised the stakes in its dispute with the West over Ukraine, with a top diplomat refusing to rule out a Russian military deployment to Cuba and Venezuela if tensions with the United States mount. Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, who led the Russian delegation in Monday’s talks with the U.S. in Geneva, said he could “neither confirm nor exclude” the possibility of Russia sending military assets to Cuba and Venezuela if the talks fail and U.S. pressure on Russia mounts. The Russia-U.S. negotiations in Geneva and a subsequent NATO-Russia meeting failed to narrow the gap on...

Russians secretly mocked Obama for so easily giving them American uranium, nuclear fuel contracts and technology, FBI informant reveals in excerpts from the new book "Fallout: Nuclear Bribes, Russian Spies and the Washington Lies that Enriched the Clinton and Biden Dynasties." The failed Russian reset .. repeatedly gave Russia's nuclear monopoly, Rosatom, assets like uranium under U.S. soil and billions of dollars in nuclear fuel contracts that made American electricity customers reliant on Moscow for years to come. And then Vladimir Putin pulled the rug out from under the Obama administration in 2014, invading the Crimea region of U.S. ally...

PART 2 OF 3. The Hunter Biden Files Hunter Biden and his business partners were involved in discussions about possible deals in dozens of foreign countries, often corrupt backwaters, at times invoking official channels like ambassadors, emails reviewed by The Daily Wire show. While most attention has focused on Ukraine, where a gas company paid the now-president’s son tens of thousands of dollars a month while he was in deep crack addiction, and China, Hunter and his partners at a consultancy called Rosemont Seneca were eager to do business in a vast array of other places. The map below highlights...

Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has dismissed two more top security officials following the worst unrest in three decades in the central Asian country. Authorities said the situation has stabilized with forces from the Moscow-led Collective Security Treaty Organization fully deployed. Russia's state news agency Tass said nearly 6,000 people, including foreigners, were arrested in last week's violent protests. Reports said at least 164 people were killed during the unrest, which mostly took place in the country's biggest city, Almaty.

Kazakhstan's president fired two more top security officials on Sunday after the worst unrest in three decades of post-Soviet independence and authorities said the situation was stabilising, with Russian-led troops guarding key facilities. The sacked officials were deputies to former intelligence chief Karim Massimov, who was arrested on suspicion of treason after violent protests swept the oil- and uranium-producing Central Asian republic that borders Russia and China. Thousands of people have been detained and public buildings torched during mass anti-government protests in the past week. President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev issued shoot-to-kill orders to end unrest he has blamed on bandits and...

MOSCOW—The sixth day of violent unrest devolved into a massacre on the streets of Kazakhstan’s capital city of Almaty, with dozens of protesters and at least 13 law enforcement officials killed, as well as hundreds more wounded. President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev—who just a week ago was considered a weak shadow of Kazakhstan’s now-ousted Security Council Chairman Narsultan Nazarbayev—admitted he was the one who had given local security forces the order “to shoot to kill” protestors without warning on Thursday. Never before has any post-Soviet leader confessed to such a terrifying order. A day prior to Thursday’s bloodshed, Tokayev had claimed he...