Free Republic

A U.S. citizen known to have fought with pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine between 2014 and 2017 has been killed in Moscow-occupied Donetsk, Russian media reported Friday. Russia-installed authorities in eastern Ukraine had earlier this month reported the American — 64-year-old Russell Bentley — as missing. "Russell Bentley, known as 'Texas,' a real American, truly from Texas, was killed in Donetsk," the head of the pro-Kremlin RT network Margarita Simonyan said on social media. "He was fighting for our guys," she said. Simonyan gave no details on how he died. The Vostok battalion with which he fought confirmed his death, calling...

Speaking in Crimea on August 14, Vladimir Putin recalled that the peninsula had been the last refuge of the anti-Bolshevik White Russian army in 1920 before it fled Russia, bringing the Russian Civil War to an end. Formerly a site of fratricidal conflict, the Crimea should become a site of “reconciliation between Reds and Whites,” said Putin, a call which paralleled his appeal for an end to the conflict in Ukraine. The Soviet Union collapsed only 22 years ago, so there are still some old Reds floating about, but there certainly aren’t any of the original Whites, the last of...