Free Republic

Ukrainian president Zelensky just admitted that American troops will be needed to keep Ukraine from total collapse. At the same time NATO announces Ukraine will become a member of the alliance before too long. This is a non-starter for Russian President Putin. Colonel Douglas MacGregor joins Redacted host Clayton Morris for the very latest developments. Video at link.

I wish every single person in the West would listen to Putin's speech. Obviously, that won't happen so let me summarise as a professional translator for 10+ years. He states, as he has done from the outset, what his intentions and complaints are in the plainest terms possible. Setting aside his brief comments on the recent "referendums", he spends most of his speech discussing the West. His primary complaint isn't NATO expansion, which gets only a cursory mention. The West is greedy and seeks to enslave and colonise other nations, like Russia. The West uses the power of finance and...

An apologist is a person who argues in defense of someone who is under attack and can't defend himself. Every defense lawyer in civil and criminal law is one, preserving the fundamental right to a fair trial that is otherwise impossible when only the prosecution is allowed to speak, such as in the case of Vladimir Putin. But I don't defend Putin only because he, like every other human being, deserves the fair hearing he has so far been denied. I do it because I am trained in Christian Apologetics to defend the far more important biblical mandate of truth-telling.Based...

This war will go down in history as a strategic Russian victory. Russia will have halted NATO expansion, destroyed a dangerous den of Nazi ideology in Ukraine, redefined European security by undermining NATO, and demonstrated Russian military prowess, an important deterrent.

A Russian prosecutor has ordered the network of offices supporting jailed Putin critic Alexei Navalny to suspend all activities across Russia. The Moscow prosecutor also applied to a court to suspend the work of Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK). They are moving to label the groups as "extremist", which would allow the authorities to jail activists and freeze the groups' bank accounts.

The results of the Knesset election are very important to Moscow, and it hopes politicians will be elected who will maintain close ties with Russia, Russian President Vladimir Putin said alongside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Sochi on Thursday. Netanyahu traveled to the Black Sea resort to meet the Russian leader – just five days before the election – in a move widely seen as an effort to woo elder Russian-speaking immigrants who form an important base of support for Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beytenu party.

Georgian capital of Tbilisi for the last week turned into the arena for the anti-Russian riots. The speech of Sergey Gavrilov, the deputy of the Russian State Duma and the head of the Inter-parliamentary Assembly of Orthodoxy (IPAO) from a tribune of the Georgian parliament was on June 20 the alleged cause. In reply representatives of the Georgian opposition stormed a tribune and banished Gavrilov together with colleagues from the Russian delegation. In the evening on June 20 near the building of parliament gathered from five to seven thousand protesters with the requirement to dismiss the head of the Parliament...

Two tankers have been targeted this morning while transiting waters near to Fujairah. Frontline’s fully laden LR 2Front Altair was hit by surface attacks, and an enormous fire ensued forcing the crew to abandon ship. The crew were safely picked up by nearby general cargoship, Hyundai Dubai. Bernhard Schulte’s chemical tanker Kokuka Courageous was also hit.

Attorney General Bill Barr, in an exclusive interview with Fox News, revealed that the recently announced review of the origins of the Russia probe will focus in part on a controversial briefing that intelligence officials gave President Trump shortly before he took office in 2017. Barr told Fox News’ Bill Hemmer in the interview aired Friday that one portion of the review -- which he has tapped U.S. Attorney John Durham to lead -- would cover the time period between Election Day and Inauguration Day, saying “some very strange developments” took place during that time.Barr specifically was referring to the...

President Donald Trump said that the FBI and other agencies spying on his 2016 presidential campaign was treason and said the people behind the attempt to frame him and the campaign warranted “long jail sentences.” “My Campaign for President was conclusively spied on. Nothing like this has ever happened in American Politics,” Trump wrote on Twitter on May 17. “A really bad situation. TREASON means long jail sentences, and this was TREASON!” he added.

When Attorney General William P. Barr described the early stages of the Russia investigation as “spying” on the Trump campaign, he prompted questions about whether he had used that word spontaneously — or whether he was deliberately fueling conspiracy theories. That question flared anew on Friday after Mr. Barr went even further in casting doubt on the legitimacy of the investigation in two interviews that, by design or coincidence, provided fresh ammunition for President Trump and allies to attack law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Mr. Barr told Fox News he had been asking whether “government officials abused their power and...

The United States on Thursday imposed sanctions on a Chechen group and five individuals, including at least three Russians, for alleged human rights abuses under the Global Magnitsky Act, including extrajudicial killings and the torture of LGBTI individuals. The sanctions against the Terek Special Rapid Response Team in the Chechen Republic and the five individuals were announced by the U.S. Treasury on its website. The Treasury Department imposed the sanctions, which freeze the banks accounts of those targeted, under a 2012 law known as the Magnitsky Act.

As Donald Trump began his meteoric rise to the presidency, the Obama White House summoned Ukrainian authorities to Washington to coordinate ongoing anti-corruption efforts inside Russia’s most critical neighbor. The January 2016 gathering, confirmed by multiple participants and contemporaneous memos, brought some of Ukraine’s top corruption prosecutors and investigators face to face with members of President Obama’s National Security Council (NSC), the FBI, State Department and Department of Justice (DOJ). The agenda suggested the purpose was training and coordination. But Ukrainian participants said it didn’t take long — during the meetings and afterwards — to realize the Americans’ objectives included...

With President Trump entering the "counter-punch" phase of the Russia investigation, allies are urging him to consider two avenues -- each with its own potential payoffs and pitfalls -- to investigate the origins of the probe and hold top Justice Department officials accountable for alleged wrongdoing. Special Counsel Robert Mueller announced the completion of his investigation last week, transmitting his more than 300-page report to the Justice Department for review. Attorney General Bill Barr released a four-page summary of Mueller’s report Sunday, stating the special counsel found no evidence of collusion between members of the Trump campaign and Russia during...

Have you ever noticed what Paul Manafort’s major crime was? After two years of investigation, after the predawn raid in which his wife was held at gunpoint, after months of solitary confinement that have left him a shell of his former self, have you noticed what drew the militant attention of the Obama Justice Department, the FBI, and, ultimately, a special counsel who made him the centerpiece of Russia-gate? According to the indictment Robert Mueller filed against him, Manafort was an unregistered “agent of the Government of Ukraine.” He also functioned as an agent of Viktor Yanukovych, Ukraine’s president from...

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – A delegation of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) has arrived in Moscow to discuss a possible plan to stop a Turkish attack as well as the future of the east of the Euphrates, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said on Sunday. The SOHR cited sources which said the SDF delegation and Russian authorities were expected to meet in Moscow “in the coming hours” to discuss the future of east Euphrates. According to the monitor, the Russians offered to deploy border guards from the Syrian army in the border area from the east of Euphrates...

Russia is set to discuss this incident with the Turkish side, which is guarantor of the armed opposition's cessation of hostilities in the Idlib de-escalation zone. Russian military experts in chemical protection arrived in the city of Aleppo hours after militants launched a chlorine attack on residential districts of the city, the Russian Defense Ministry's spokesman, Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov, told reporters on Sunday. "Groups of specialists from units of nuclear, chemical and biological warfare protection deployed at observation posts in Syria urgently arrived to the area of the attack, carrying special equipment with them. They are working with the...

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) — The campers, some clad in combat fatigues, carefully aim their assault rifles. Their instructor offers advice: Don’t think of your target as a human being. So when these boys and girls shoot, they will shoot to kill. Most are in their teens, but some are as young as 8 years old. They are at a summer camp created by one of Ukraine’s radical nationalist groups, hidden in a forest in the west of the country, that was visited by The Associated Press. The camp has two purposes: to train children to defend their country from Russians...

Russian President Vladimir Putin opened the Kerch Strait Bridge connecting Crimea, Ukraine, with mainland Russia on Tuesday. Putin did so by in a typical show of bravado by leading a column of transport vehicles across the bridge. Ukraine should now destroy elements of the bridge. While that course of action would be an escalation against Putin and one that would almost certainly spark Russian retaliation, this bridge is an outrageous affront to Ukraine's very credibility as a nation. Of course, from Putin's perspective that's the whole point. The bridge cost Russia's near-bankrupt government billions of dollars, but it offers Putin...

Moscow will shoot down any U.S. missiles fired at Syria and retaliate against American launch sites, the Russian ambassador to Lebanon has warned. Ambassador Alexander Zasypkin made the comments on Tuesday while speaking on the Hezbollah-affiliated al-Manar TV channel, Reuters reported. President Donald Trump is currently considering military action against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad following Saturday’s suspected chemical attack on the rebel-held town of Douma near the capital city of Damascus. Medical relief groups say the attack killed dozens of civilians.