Free Republic

On Tuesday, Reuters reporters saw several hundred men registering with Ethiopian security guards outside the embassy. The guards recorded their names and asked for proof of military service...But many in Ethiopia have voiced solidarity with Russia, which has enjoyed close relations with the Horn of Africa nation since the Soviet era...A man who came out of the embassy and addressed the volunteers in Russian through an interpreter said Russia had enough forces for now, but that they would be contacted when they were needed.

The head of Russia's mercenary outfit Wagner said it could take months to capture the embattled Ukraine city of Bakhmut and slammed Moscow's "monstrous bureaucracy" for slowing military gains. Russia has been trying to encircle the battered industrial city and wrest it ahead of Feb. 24, the first anniversary of what it terms its "special military operation" in Ukraine. "I think it's (going to be in) March or in April," Wagner head Yevgeny Prigozhin said in one of several messages posted online overnight. "To take Bakhmut you have to cut all supply routes. It's a significant task," he said, adding:...

The Venezuelan Human Rights Education-Action Program reported that the regime of dictator Nicolás Maduro's kidnapped Freddy Superlano, leader of the Voluntad Popular party founded by Leopoldo López. "These detainments can lead to forced disappearances and cruel and inhumane treatment to force the victims to make statements, as has been denounced in the past by the UN Mission on Venezuela," Provea wrote on its account on the social network X. The organization published a video on social networks showing how several hooded men put Superlano in a van. According to the information, three other opposition leaders were also kidnapped. Meanwhile, Voluntad...

Footage of Prigozhin shows how the slain leader predicted Ukraine's shock offensive. THE slain chief of the notorious Wagner mercenary group predicted Russia would come under siege from Ukraine before Vlad had him killed. Warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin died when his plane was blown out of the sky in August 2023, allegedly on Putin's orders. He led the private Russian military unit that was called in to assist the Kremlin's quest to illegally conquer Ukraine and became increasingly frustrated with how war efforts were organised. Fed up with the Ministry of Defence, Prigozhin eventually threatened a coup against Moscow - a...

The office of Russia’s infamous troll factory believed to be at the vanguard of Russia’s information war has been set on fire in St. Petersburg overnight. An investigation revealed last year that the secretive troll factory had rebranded itself as a media conglomerate with 16 news websites generating more than 30 million pageviews every month. Its operational hub, a website called FAN (Federal News Agency), is based a stone’s throw from the troll farm’s original location in northern St. Petersburg. The Fontanka.ru news website cited police as saying that an unknown suspect broke the agency’s ground-floor window and threw a...

CARACAS, Venezuela — President Donald Trump said Tuesday that the United States had nothing to do with an alleged incursion into Venezuela that landed two U.S. citizens behind bars in the crisis-stricken South American nation. Trump said he had just learned of the detention of the pair, accused by Venezuela of being mercenaries. Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro said they were part of an operation to kill him that was backed by neighboring Colombia and the United States. “Whatever it is, we’ll let you know,” Trump told reporters in Washington before departing from the White House to Arizona. “But it has...

Russian soldiers are operating drones over Venezuela as part of a search operation for members of a paramilitary force that led a botched invasion this week, local media reported on Friday, citing deleted tweets from a state military command centre. At least eight Russian special forces members will be “operating drones to run search and patrol operations” near La Guaira, the coastal state just north of Caracas, Venezuela’s capital, according to a report from local news outlet El Nacional. It posted a screenshot of a tweet it said was later deleted on Thursday from the profile of the military command,...

There's a new Sheriff in town. Trump is not Biden and everybody knows it. see link

THE bodies of 12 beheaded expats have been found tied up under a mango tree in northern Mozambique after they tried to to flee an ISIS massacre. Dozens of innocent people, including children, were ruthlessly killed when terrorist militants went on the rampage in the key industrial town of Palma. Pedro da Silva, commander of the police station in the nearby village of Quitunda, said the bodies of the expats had since been buried in a mass grave, according to reports. "In total there were 12. They were all foreigners, I don’t know what nationality, but they were all white,"...

It is "highly likely" North Korea will send more troops to fight for Russia in Ukraine, said Seoul's defense minister, commenting on reports of North Korean soldiers dying near Donetsk last week. Kim Yong-hyun said: "The issue of deploying regular troops is highly likely, due to the mutual agreements that resemble a military alliance between Russia and North Korea." South Korea's defense minister added deaths could be expected, saying: "We assess that the occurrence of casualties among North Korean officers and soldiers in Ukraine is highly likely, considering various circumstances."

There has been no word from either the Russian president or the Wagner Group boss since the insurrection was abruptly called off after a deal was brokered by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. Russia's defence minister has been seen in public for the first time since Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin stood down his group of rebel mercenaries. In the first piece of footage released since the aborted Wagner group mutiny over the weekend, Sergei Shoigu was seen visiting Russian troops involved in Moscow's military operation in Ukraine. It remains unclear when and where the footage released by state news agency RIA...

We've fought in Afghanistan for 16 years now. Are we making progress? After 9/11, we invaded, overthrew the Taliban, killed Osama Bin Laden and -- stayed. Afghanistan is now America's longest war, ever. President Trump's solution? He'll send several thousand more soldiers. Erik Prince says he has a better idea -- fight terrorists with only 2,000 American Special Operations personnel, plus "a contractor force" of 6,000. Prince is the founder of Blackwater, the private military contractor. The military uses contractors to provide security, deliver mail, rescue soldiers and more. Private contractors often do jobs well, for much less than the...

As soon as 2023, the United States military could have a new spacecraft to transport troops to space and low Earth orbit locations anywhere in the world within three hours. Colorado-based aerospace company Sierra Space announced Sept. 8, 2022 that it signed a research and development contract with the U.S. Transportation Command to develop options to transport military crews and cargo around the world using the “Dream Chaser” space plane. The Dream Chaser space plane is a 7-passenger winged shuttle-like plane that launches to space on a rocket and flies back to Earth, landing on a runway. It’s designed to...

The Cuban government has exposed a Russian trafficking operation used to lure Cubans into the war against Ukraine, Cuban authorities announced Monday. “The Ministry of the Interior has detected and is working to neutralize and dismantle a human trafficking network operating from Russia to incorporate Cuban citizens living there, and even some from Cuba, into the military forces participating in war operations in Ukraine,” the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Monday. The authorities are taking legal actions against the traffickers, Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez said on X (formerly Twitter) on Tuesday.

U.S. officials told media outlets on Thursday that they believe the plane presumed to be carrying mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin was deliberately taken down, though there was some disagreement as to how exactly the plane was destroyed. Russian air authorities have said Prigozhin, his right-hand man Dmitry Utkin, and eight other people were on the private plane that crashed with no survivors north of Moscow on Wednesday. Two U.S. officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told Reuters that it was likely a surface-to-air missile originating from inside Russia shot down the plane. The officials stressed that the information was...

The Zambian student was serving a jail sentence at a medium security prison on the outskirts of Moscow after being convicted of contravening Russian law, Kakubo said, without specifying the offense that occurred in April 2020. “The Zambian government has requested the Russian authorities to urgently provide information on the circumstances under which a Zambian citizen, serving a prison sentence in Moscow, could have been recruited to fight in Ukraine,” Kakubo said. It was not clear how the prisoner was recruited and by whom.... ussia’s defense ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the circumstances of...

If this is the end of the coup attempt, talk about anti-climactic. Yevgeny Prigozhin, leader of Wagner Group, a Kremlin-backed mercenary army, seemed poised to create a political crisis when his troops began to march north toward Moscow from southern Russia. They had reportedly seized some cities in the Lipetsk province. Putin reportedly fled Moscow earlier this morning while security forces were on high alert. Most of Russia’s forces are bogged down in Ukraine, which made this situation more perilous for Putin and his allies. Prigozhin has close ties to the Russian president, nicknamed “Putin’s chef,” due to his catering...

Do not let these transparently corrupt political grifters like Republican strategist Steve Cortes raise your blood pressure; instead, mock them mercilessly wherever and whenever you see them.Former Trump ally Steve Cortes announced today he has taken a job with the Never Back Down PAC that supports Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. As a result, he is reversing all his prior points of advocacy to endorse Ron DeSantis for 2024.[Pictured left, Cortes with fellow grifting scumbags John Cardillo and Matthew Tyrmand (the architect of the Project Veritas attack on O’Keefe) as they attend a pro-Desantis effort earlier this year.]The shallow character of...

His private army is pushing hard to give Russia a battlefield win in Ukraine, but mounting evidence suggests the Kremlin has moved to curb what it sees as the excessive political clout of Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of Russia's Wagner mercenary group. Prigozhin, a 61-year-old ex-convict, has grabbed headlines in recent months over his bloody role in Ukraine and is sometimes portrayed in the West as a real-life James Bond villain. Shaven-headed and fond of coarse language, he has made a splash in Russian-language media too where he has revelled in being sanctioned by the West, publicly insulted Russia's top military...

The armed forces have destroyed a militant who previously killed people in Syria and Libya and wrote the book "#theyarenotthere". As Censor.NET reports about it with reference to the "Myrotvorets" center. According to the Center, the pro-Kremlin mercenary is the author of the autobiographical book "#theyrenotthere", which tells about his participation in hostilities in Ukraine, Syria, and Libya. "Orlov was so eager for fame that until the last day he posted photos and videos of his participation in the fighting in Ukraine, while merging the dispositions of orcs in the Donbas. Using even these data, the Ukraine Armed Forces...