Free Republic

Soot-choked “black rain" has fallen across multiple districts of Moscow after Ukraine launched its largest-ever drone assault against the Russian capital, scoring a direct hit on a vital energy facility. Close to 200 long-range strike drones targeted the metropolis early on Thursday, overwhelming local air defences and setting the strategic Moscow Oil Refinery in Kapotnya ablaze. As thick columns of dark smoke billowed thousands of feet into the air, residents in the southeastern suburbs and surrounding towns, including Balashikha and Lyubertsy, reported a fine, oily drizzle that coated vehicles, streets, and clothing in a dark, toxic residue. The multi-directional aerial...

Ukraine is seeking an additional $20 billion in military funding from its allies, Defence ​Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said on Wednesday at a joint ‌press conference with his Dutch counterpart. A Ukrainian defence source told Reuters last week that Ukraine would make the request on Thursday at a meeting ​of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, an alliance of ​more than 50 countries also known as the Ramstein ⁠group that provides financial and military aid for Kyiv. Fedorov ​said that of the nearly $40 billion funding already announced, Ukraine saw $24 ​billion in the supply schedule. He added that Ukraine has been...

Strongman Vladimir Putin was forced to halt his annual Russia Day showcase in Moscow’s Red Square for the first time in 23 years Friday, after a Ukrainian attack battered key energy targets and sparked massive fires on Russian soil. Kyiv launched drone strikes overnight into Friday on critical Russian energy and transportation points, including the Armiansk Bridge, which connects occupied Crimea with the motherland. The bombing of the bridge “completely paralysed” a key logistical route and destroyed about 50 vehicles carrying fuel and ammunition, according to Ukraine’s 1st Separate Assault Regiment Da Vinci. Moscow’s centerpiece Russia Day concert was hastily...

The European Union announced it would resume membership talks with Ukraine and Moldova on Monday. “All member states agreed to open the first accession negotiations cluster with Ukraine and Moldova,” EU President Antonio Costa said in a social media post on Friday. The announcement came after the new government in Hungary agreed to drop its longstanding veto against Kyiv. The European Union formally opened entry negotiations with Ukraine back in June 2024, kickstarting a complicated undertaking that usually takes years and involves negotiations on anything from agriculture to the rule of law. Launched as a powerful statement days after Russia’s...

President Trump announced that he canceled planned strikes against Iran on Thursday and claimed Iran's leadership "approved" a draft agreement that would extend the ceasefire, reopen the Strait of Hormuz and launch 60 days of negotiations on Iran's nuclear program. (snip)The sources said the gaps were narrowed on three key issues: The mechanism for releasing Iran's frozen assets — the most important issue for the Iranians.Arrangements for reopening the Strait of Hormuz during the 60-day ceasefire period.How negotiations over Iran's nuclear program would be conducted during the 60-day ceasefire period.

The leaders of Ukraine and its close European allies - the UK, France and Germany - have set out out five conditions for reaching a "just and lasting" deal to end the war with Russia. In a joint statement after talks in London, Volodymyr Zelensky, UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said they would "stand firmly with Ukraine". The five conditions include a stop to the fighting, starting negotiations from the current position in the field as well as "robust" security guarantees for Ukraine. The leaders reiterated the need for the...

Vladimir Putin has rejected an offer from Volodymyr Zelenskyy to hold a face-to-face meeting, insisting instead that Russia will achieve its war goals in Ukraine, including seizing all of the eastern Donbas region. Speaking at the St Petersburg economic forum, the Russian president described the open letter from his Ukrainian counterpart containing the offer as rude. He refused to use Zelenskyy’s name, referring to him only as its author. Asked if they could meet to discuss an end to the conflict, Putin replied: “So far I see no point.” Zelenskyy’s letter, which was published on Thursday, proposed a meeting in...

Keir Starmer will host Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Emmanuel Macron and Friedrich Merz for talks in Downing Street on Sunday to discuss support for Ukraine. The Ukrainian leader will visit the UK with the French president and German chancellor after a week of heightened hostilities and Vladimir Putin’s rejection of his proposal of face-to-face talks on Moscow’s war. The three countries meeting the Ukrainian leader are some of Kyiv’s staunchest allies. The UK and France are leading the “coalition of the willing” initiative to provide security guarantees for Ukraine as part of a peace process. A large-scale Ukrainian drone attack targeted St...

Russian military vehicles are being painted with vivid stripes to baffle AI systems of Ukrainian-launched drones, experts say. Now the "cloaking" tactic has apparently launched a high-stakes game of hide and seek on the highways of Russian-held territory in Ukraine. Todd E. Humphreys, an aerospace and AI expert at the University of Texas at Austin, agrees the paint tactic may be more effective than many realize. "Dazzle paint pushes the vehicles 'out of distribution' -- they no longer look, to the AI classifier, like the images it was trained on," he told RFE/RL. But any specific paint job would have...

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz suggested on Monday that Ukraine may have to accept that parts of its territory could remain outside Kyiv's control in ​a future peace deal with Russia, linking such concessions to ‌the country's prospects for joining the European Union. "At some point, Ukraine will sign a ceasefire agreement; at some point, hopefully, a peace treaty with Russia. Then it may ​be that part of Ukraine's territory is no longer Ukrainian," Merz ​told students at the Carolus-Magnus-Gymnasium in Marsberg, a town in ⁠North Rhine-Westphalia, on Monday. "If President (Volodymyr) Zelenskiy wants to communicate this to his ​own population...

Qatar and Ukraine have signed a defence agreement seeking joint expertise on countering threats from missiles and drones, according to Qatar’s Ministry of Defence, as Iran continues attacking its Gulf neighbours. The agreement was made on Saturday during Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s visit to Doha, following his stop in the UAE earlier in the day. Earlier on Saturday, Zelenskyy said Ukraine and the United Arab Emirates had also agreed to cooperate on defence, a day after signing a deal with Saudi Arabia during his visit to the kingdom on Thursday.

Four years into Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Trump administration is pressing Kyiv to agree to painful territorial concessions as the price for peace. In a draft peace agreement first reported by Axios in November, the administration proposed that the entire regions of Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk be recognized as de facto Russian territory and that Russia retain control of the parts of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia its forces now occupy. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is pushing back, refusing to do anything that would violate his country’s territorial integrity. Yet the realities of the battlefield are not on his side....

Hungarian opposition leader Péter Magyar launched his party’s election campaign in Budapest on Sunday, vowing to restore Hungary’s Western orientation just eight weeks before he faces Prime Minister Viktor Orbán in a pivotal vote. Magyar, a former insider in Orbán’s nationalist Fidesz party, burst onto Hungary’s political scene in 2024 after breaking with his political community and quickly forming the center-right Tisza party. After taking around 30% of the vote in European Parliament elections in June 2024, he has grown Tisza into the most formidable political force Orbán has faced during his 16 years at Hungary’s helm. Most independent polls...

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney on Thursday challenged President Trump to make a friendly wager on the outcome of the World Series between the Toronto Blue Jays and Los Angeles Dodgers. But Mr. Carney said Mr. Trump hasn’t returned his call yet on the potential bet. “I think he’s afraid, I think he’s afraid to make a bet,” Mr. Carney joked to The Associated Press while taking in batting practice at Toronto’s Rogers Centre a day before Game 1 of the World Series in Toronto. “He doesn’t like to lose. He hasn’t called. He hasn’t returned my call yet on...

Ukraine hit two Russian cities with drone attacks the day before President Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin were set to meet in Alaska.Ukraine hit the cities of Rostov-on-Don and Belgorod. Reuters reported:Thirteen people were wounded, two seriously, when a drone struck an apartment building in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, the acting regional governor said. Three civilians were wounded in the city of Belgorod near the border with Ukraine, according to the governor of that region, who posted video appearing to show a drone striking a car in the centre of the city.Meanwhile, Russian troops have been making significant...

I know there is a lot of interest in the Jeffrey Epstein story and the new revelations from Tulsi Gabbard about Barack Obama and his team’s efforts to fan the flames of Russiagate. I have been all over the Russiagate matter since 2017. Here is the link to a piece I published on December 18, 2018 with the nifty title, The Trump Coup Is a Threat to Our Republic. I am glad the information is finally coming out, but I knew this seven years ago. What took them so long? While Tulsi’s revelations are legit, I think she is releasing...

Nearly one million Russian troops have been killed or wounded in the country’s war against Ukraine, according to a new study, a staggering toll as Russia’s three-year assault on its neighbor grinds on. The study, published on Tuesday by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said that close to 400,000 Ukrainian troops have also been killed or wounded since the war began. That would put the overall casualty figure, for Russian and Ukrainian troops combined, at almost 1.4 million. Officials cautioned that casualty figures were difficult to estimate because Moscow is believed to routinely undercount its war...

President Trump in a new post on Truth Social on Sunday night accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of having gone “absolutely” crazy and said if he did not stop what he was doing, it would lead to the downfall of his country. The social media comments came after Trump had issued some of his toughest comments about Putin earlier in remarks to reporters in New Jersey. “I’ve always had a very good relationship with Vladimir Putin of Russia, but something has happened to him. He has gone absolutely CRAZY!,” Trump wrote. “He is needlessly killing a lot of people, and...

In a reversal, President Trump appears to have backed off joining a European push for new sanctions on Russia, seemingly eager to move on to doing business deals with it. For months, President Trump has been threatening to simply walk away from the frustrating negotiations for a cease-fire between Russia and Ukraine. After a phone call on Monday between Mr. Trump and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, that appears to be exactly what the American president is doing. The deeper question now is whether he is also abandoning America’s three-year-long project to support Ukraine, a nascent democracy that he...

Donald Trump had the last laugh on Saturday night as America defeated Canada in a brutal hockey match that saw fans in Montreal boo the US National Anthem again. Anarchy broke out on the ice as three fights in nine seconds saw the game descend into chaos with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau watching from the stands. It comes as tensions continue to flare between the two nations and close neighbors after President Trump recently threatened to impose tariffs on Canada. Trump also suggested the country could become America's '51st state' and called Trudeau 'governor', prompting backlash from the close...