Free Republic

Svetlana Tikhanovskaya was in the running to become President of Belarus. She was forced to flee the country after Alexander Lukashenko declared a landslide victory, though many believe she won the election instead. In her first interview from exile, the opposition leader told the BBC she does not see herself as a President but as a symbol of freedom and change. She urges protesters to carry on, warning that if they step back now they would become “slaves” to the regime. She spoke to the BBC’s Europe Correspondent Jean Mackenzie, a month after they first met in the run up...

The Russian capital has been the site of the biggest anti-government protests in years after authorities last month barred more than a dozen opposition politicians from taking part in a Moscow city election. Police have briefly detained over 2,000 people, sometimes violently, at rallies that the authorities said were illegal. “The main task at the job is to protect public order and ensure public safety at mass gatherings in Moscow,” reads the National Guard’s ad posted on Russia’s HeadHunter job site on Monday. The recruits will be required to “suppress ... uprisings, public-order crimes committed by groups and mass pogroms.”...

The first glimpse of the upcoming limited series shows us Mirren as the legendary monarch, who was Empress of Russia from 1762 until 1796, making her the country's longest-ruling female leader. The series will show us Catherine toward the end of her rule in the 18th century, when she begins a steamy relationship with Grigory Potemkin (Jason Clarke), a military leader. "When I was young I dreamed of freedom, I dreamed of breaking chains," Catherine can be heard saying in the trailer. "But as you get older, your choices narrow. So instead I gave us an empire, but I knew...

Ukraine's Constitutional Court has upheld a law that equates communism to Nazism and bans the dissemination of its symbols, a law that has prompted angry protests from Moscow. In the July 16 ruling published on its website, the court said the "communist and Nazi regimes" used similar methods of "implementing repressive state policies." The legislation was passed by Ukrainian lawmakers in May 2015. That law paved the way for the removal of all communist monuments not related to World War II and renaming public places and landmarks bearing Soviet names. Since then, dozens of statues, plaques, and other monuments --...

Paris - It was a warm afternoon in March. David Breidenstein says he looked on as some of the more radical yellow vest protesters set fire to Le Fouquet's, not just a restaurant but a symbol of wealth and power in France. As the flames spread licking at the famous red awning, Breidenstein quickly turned on his feet hoping to distance himself from the blaze, fearful of getting caught up in the violence he says he wasn't fueling. A few seconds later he stopped, lit a cigarette, and as he looked back towards the riot police he felt the full...

Boeing has bested Airbus as the world's largest aircraft maker for most of this decade. That's about to change in dramatic fashion. Airbus' commanding lead is especially significant because the race between the two companies has historically been tight. Last year, for example, Boeing delivered 806 aircraft last year to Airbus' 800. 2015 was the only year this decade in which one of the two airplane manufacturers delivered 100 more planes than the other. The gap between them is almost certainly going to get wider. Boeing has not been able to deliver any of its bestselling 737 Max planes since...

Great expectations characterised 1989...The Gorbachev era brought about a frenzy of change, and people witnessed incredible events on a weekly basis: they snatched up newspapers, hung on every word broadcast on TV, and with every passing day they felt more alive and free. By the mid-1990s, nostalgia for the Soviet period started to creep in. The greyness of the Brezhnev era, with its endless queues and empty shops, started to be recalled as a peaceful, prosperous time. And gradually something that had seemed impossible during perestroika, became real: Stalin’s shadow loomed large again. Vladimir Putin’s rise to power came accompanied...

Russia has done nothing to deserve its appalling treatment by Western powers and their totally controlled and subservient media - the only thing Russia did was to move into the Crimea, an area smaller than the island of Taiwan, which suited the people there as most are Russian speaking, and the reason they did that was to protect their naval base at Sevastopol after the Western inspired coup in the Ukraine. Apart from that they have done nothing and reports that they are planning to take back parts of Eastern Europe are pure fantasy. Russia has been subjected to an...

Russia is to expel 23 British diplomats amid tensions over the nerve agent attack on a former spy and his daughter in the UK. The Russian foreign ministry said staff from the UK's Moscow embassy would be expelled within a week. It also said it would close the British Council in Russia, which promotes cultural ties between the nations, and the British Consulate in St. Petersburg. The move comes in response to Britain's decision to expel 23 Russian diplomats.........

The murder of Litvinenko, the author of "The FSB Blows Up Russia" says, was like the bombings of the apartment houses in 1999: everything pointed in one direction, but it was circumstantial rather than definitive; and thus his death became as it were “part of the psychological war of Russia and the West and its own compatriots. But the special operation carried out against Skripal “has different goals.” It is not excluded, that Moscow wanted to test the personality of the British prime minister who had to be forced to pursue the Litvinenko case but now is prepared to be...

The Irish and German governments became entangled in a spat on Thursday after details of the Irish budget were given to the German Bundestag, before being presented to the Irish parliament, the Dáil. The sensitive plans, including a two-percent increase in the top value added tax (VAT) and a €100 household tax, were sent by the German finance ministry—along with a letter of intent from the Irish Finance Minister—to the Bundestag budgetary committee. This provoked outrage in Ireland, and denials from Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny that he had given the information to the Germans. Irish opposition parties said if...