Free Republic

Former oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, addressing thousands of people at the cradle of the uprising against Ukraine's Moscow-backed leader, accused Russia on Sunday of being complicit in police violence against protesters. To chants of "Russia, rise up", Khodorkovsky, who was jailed for a decade under President Vladimir Putin, told the crowd the Kremlin was lying to its own people by portraying the protesters as "neo-fascists" bent on violence. Wearing a simple dark anorak and jeans, he addressed the crowd from a stage in Kiev's Independence Square, occupied by protesters since November despite police trying to oust them with force which resulted...

Moscow’s occupying authorities in the southern Ukrainian city of Melitopol said Saturday they had brought back a statue of Lenin, seven years after it was taken down following Kyiv’s pro-EU revolution. The Moscow-installed head of the Zaporizhzhia region, Vladimir Rogov, posted a photograph of workers in the city reinstating the tribute to the Bolshevik leader. “After seven years the statue of Vladimir Lenin has returned to its place in Melitopol,” he said, adding that city authorities had taken it down in 2015. Ukraine dismantled Lenin statues across the country after its 2014 revolution overthrew a Moscow-backed regime as part of...

The Orthodox Christian Church, which is reclaiming its traditional role in post-Soviet Russia, has described its government’s fight against the Islamic State and other jihadi groups in Syria as a “holy war.”According to Vsevolod Chaplin, head of the Church’s Public Affairs Department, The fight with terrorism is a holy battle and today our country is perhaps the most active force in the world fighting it. The Russian Federation has made a responsible decision on the use of armed forces to defend the People of Syria from the sorrows caused by the arbitrariness of terrorists. Christians are suffering in the region...