Free Republic

Call it the Trump Effect. Or the Maduro Effect, if you don’t like naming it after Orange Man Bad. The point is, if a report in Sunday’s Times of London is to be believed, it’s very real — and it could mean regime change is coming to Iran the same way it came to Venezuela. Just one day after the daring capture of Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro in an early-morning raid, the Times quoted intelligence sources which said that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the 86-year-old supreme leader of Iran’s theocratic regime, had formulated a back-up plan to get out of Dodge...

Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has a back-up plan to flee the country should his security forces fail to suppress protests or desert, according to an intelligence report shared with The Times. Khamenei, 86, plans to escape Tehran with a close circle of up to 20 aides and family, should he see that the army and security called on to quell the unrest are deserting, defecting or failing to follow orders. “The ‘plan B’ is for Khamenei and his very close circle of associates and family, including his son and nominated heir apparent, Mojtaba,” an intelligence source told The Times. Beni...

Russia is offering stark criticism of the U.S. military attack on Venezuela, which resulted in the capture of President Nicolas Maduro. In response, Russia called for a full meeting of the United Nations Security Council. “This morning, the United States carried out an act of armed aggression against Venezuela. This causes deep concern and condemnation,” Russia said in a statement from its Foreign Ministry. “The pretexts cited to justify such actions are unfounded. Ideologized hostility has prevailed over practical pragmatism and over a willingness to build relations based on trust and predictability,” Russian officials wrote, nearly five years into the...

Multiple high-dollar donors to the Clinton Foundation are associated with the New York Times, including the Times’ top shareholder, Carlos Slim. Slim, a Mexican telecom tycoon whose net worth of nearly $80 billion makes him the second richest man in the world, became the top shareholder of the New York Times earlier this year after he doubled his shares to take control of 16.8 percent of the company. Not only has Slim contributed between $1,000,001 and $5,000,000 to the Clinton Foundation, but his company Telmex has contributed an additional grant between $1,000,001 and $5,000,000 through its foundation. Slim has also...

Russian military personnel have entered an air base in Niger that is hosting U.S. troops, a senior U.S. defense official told Reuters, a move that follows a decision by Niger's junta to expel U.S. forces from the country. The military officers ruling the West African nation have told the U.S. to withdraw its nearly 1,000 military personnel from the country, which until a coup last year had been a key partner for Washington's fight against insurgents who have killed thousands of people and displaced millions more. A senior U.S. defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Russian forces were...

Russian military personnel have entered an airbase in Niger that is hosting American troops, after a decision by Niger’s junta to expel US forces from the country. The military officers ruling the west African country have told the US to withdraw its nearly 1,000 military personnel, which until a coup last year had been a key partner for Washington’s fight against insurgents who have killed thousands of people and displaced millions more. A senior US defence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters that Russian forces were not mingling with US troops but were using a separate hangar at...

Russian forces appear close to being pushed out of the northeastern Ukrainian city of Kupyansk, with only a small number of isolated troops remaining and even pro-Kremlin voices acknowledging the setback, according to a report.

As Russian tanks rumble through Georgia, and Western pundits talk of the "new Cold War," one trope keeps reappearing in their discourse. Russia's newly aggressive stance, we are told, is partly our fault: After the fall of Communism, the West went out of its way to humiliate and trample Russia instead of treating it as a partner--and now, an oil-powered Russia is striking back. "Russia's litany of indignities dates to the early 1990s when the Soviet empire collapsed," Samantha Power, a professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and former Barack Obama adviser, wrote in Time. "A bipolar universe gave...

Zelenskyy Compromises – He Is Ready to Hold Elections... But Under Certain Conditions🤝 MS2025.12.10

Brainchild of the KGB As Ion Mihai Pacepa, onetime director of the Romanian espionage service (DIE), later explained, the PLO was conceived at a time when the KGB was creating “liberation front” organizations throughout the Third world. Others included the National Liberation Army of Bolivia, created in 1964 with help from Ernesto “Che” Guevara, and the National Liberation Army of Colombia, created in 1965 with help from Fidel Castro. But the PLO was the KGB’s most enduring achievement. In 1964, the first PLO Council, consisting of 422 Palestinian representatives handpicked by the KGB, approved the Soviet blueprint for a Palestinian...

A Russian military victory in Ukraine would cost Europe twice as much as a Ukrainian victory, according to a new study by Corisk and the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs published on Nov. 25. Under the first scenario proposed by the researchers, Moscow's forces would continue their incremental advance and push westward toward the Dnipro River. As a result of their military victories, the Kremlin would force Ukraine to accept a negotiated settlement on terms beneficial to Moscow. According to the report, such an outcome would amount to a Russian partial victory, giving the Kremlin influence over Ukraine's political and...

"They will make great citizens over time"...Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina regarding Afghans... The US Immigration and Naturalization Service deciding to suspend all asylum decisions... US President Donald Trump with a message aimed at Honduras where voters select a new president... leaked news is that US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth ordered a second strike...kill two crew members who survived... President Trump on social media this afternoon saying... An oil tanker heading towards southern Russia in the Black Sea exploded... Three Israel soliders detained for questioning...deaths of two Palestinian terror suspects... A recall of 6,000 European Airbus A320 airliners......

Volodymyr Zelensky, in the next phase of talks to end the war in Ukraine, intends to draw a red line at the most contentious issue on the table: the Russian demand for Ukraine’s sovereign territory. As long as he remains the nation’s president, Zelensky will not agree to give up land in exchange for peace, Ukraine’s chief negotiator, Andriy Yermak, told me today in an exclusive interview. “Not a single sane person today would sign a document to give up territory,” said Yermak, who has served as Zelensky’s chief of staff, lead negotiator, and closest aide throughout the full-scale war...

Donald Tusk emphasized that the European Union would not be able to impose anything on Warsaw on this issueMOSCOW, November 26. /TASS/. The European Union cannot impose its court decision on recognizing same-sex marriage on Poland, Prime Minister Donald Tusk told a cabinet meeting. "I would like to reassure everyone - the European Union will not be able to impose anything on us on this issue (an EU Court decision on recognition of same-sex marriages in other countries of the union - TASS)," Tusk said as broadcast on the social media of the office of the head of government. He...

2008: "Crimea is not disputed territory of Ukraine, and the issues of Russian speakers are internal issues of Ukraine." 2013: "Russia certainly doesn't plan to send troops into Ukraine." 2014: "After the annexation of Crimea, Russia doesn't plan to further divide Ukraine." 2019: "It's nonsense that Russia plans to attack anyone in future." 2022: "Russia's Special Military Operation does not involve the occupation of Ukrainian territories," and "Russia has acquired new territories during the Special Military Operation." 2023: "The conflict in Ukraine is not a territorial conflict—we have plenty of own territories." 2024: "Anyone who wants Russia to give up...

When Obama administration officials manufactured U.S. intelligence tying Donald Trump to Moscow following his stunning 2016 victory, they had no idea Trump’s own political appointees would help them undermine Trump’s presidency – and his chances of reelection in 2020. RCI’s review of recently declassified documents and exclusive interviews with former Trump officials reveals for the first time how key members of Trump’s cabinet and other appointees during his first term shrouded the previous administration’s machinations and either deliberately or inadvertently misled the public into thinking the fake Russiagate intelligence was real. Former Special Counsel John Durham, former National Security Adviser...

No further Nato expansion. Occupied Ukrainian territory recognised as Russian, including by the US. No prosecution for Russia for war crimes. These are some of the clauses – part of a ‘surrender document’, brokered by Donald Trump – that Ukraine is facing after almost four years of war. Buried in the middle of the 28-point ‘peace blueprint’ being hammered out between the US and Russia, clause 14 stands out like a flashing sign. It offers up $100 billion in frozen Russian assets – repackaged as a fund for reconstruction, with the US pocketing half the profits. Meanwhile, Russia would be...

In May 2025, the authorities in Moscow unveiled a life-size bas‑relief sculpture of Josef Stalin in the Taganskaya metro station. The next month, a statue of Lenin was pulled down in Osh, Kyrgyzstan. Between these two symbolic acts lies Kazakhstan, caught in a tug-of-war over the memory of Soviet-era repression. Tensions have sharpened since the war in Ukraine. In the background, Putin has accelerated the rehabilitation of Stalin, architect of the gulag archipelago. His busts are reappearing across Russia. Volgograd’s airport has been renamed “Stalingrad.” In occupied Melitopol, a new statue of the dictator was erected. “We’re witnessing a broad...

Kirill Dmitriev — Vladmir Putin’s special envoy and head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund — is suddenly ubiquitous. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has been largely quiet since his maximalist negotiating approach with Team Trump failed. Moscow, presumably largely guided by Lavrov, after winning a concession on Tomahawk missiles, opted to continue Putin’s hardline demands for ending the war in Ukraine ahead of the proposed Trump-Putin summit in Budapest. NATO would have to admit that it was the root cause of the war. Kyiv would have to cede all of the Donbas, and the Armed Forces of Ukraine would...

Sergei Lavrov has been sidelined by Vladimir Putin after his failure to organise a summit with Donald Trump in Budapest, according to reports. The Russian daily Kommersant, a privately owned pro-Kremlin outlet, said that Russia’s long-time foreign minister was “deliberately absent” from a key security council meeting earlier this week. The 76-year-old will also no longer represent Moscow at the upcoming G20 summit, which is scheduled for November 22 and 23 in Johannesburg. Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesman, did not give any explanation for Mr Lavrov’s absence from the key summit, which will be attended instead by Maxim Oreshkin, Putin’s deputy...