Free Republic

Buckets of blood dripped from Ebrahim Raisi, the 8th president of Iran, for his roles on the “Death Committee” and other atrocities under his direction. He wore a black turban to claim that he descended from the Prophet Muhammad. The Shiite president did not survive the helicopter crash of May 19, 2024. Who will mourn the death of an evil man who presided over the death and torture of so many? Dissidents were tortured, subjected to cruel inhuman treatment, and killed. A political purge against political dissidents lasted five months during 1988. Ordered by Ayatollah Khomeini, the “Death Committee” was...

Nancy Pelosi has called for and FBI investigation into pro-Palestine protestors and has claimed that they are financially backed by Russia. The former House Speaker joined Dana Bush on Sunday during Sunday's State of the Union on CNN, as Bush asked Pelosi what she thought about the countless protests that have taken place with the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas. 'Some are connected to Russia, and I say that having looked at this for a long time,' she said. Pelosi said she has encountered protestors herself and that 'we have to think about what we're doing.' 'And what we...

General or partial assessments of the number of victims in the war in Ukraine reveal the high human cost of an armed conflict unprecedented in Europe in the last eight decades. With estimates of nearly two million military casualties, it is reminiscent of the worst conflicts experienced in the 20th century on the Old Continent. The most conservative figures — around half a million deaths on the Ukrainian side — are five times higher than those of the Balkan War (1992-1995), which totaled 100,000, of whom 13,500 were civilians. The Ukrainian Commissioner for Missing Persons in Special Circumstances has just...

Democrats are furious that President Donald Trump took action against Iran with Operation Epic Fury. But one of the things that you wouldn't hear from them is how his action puts paid to one of their favorite fictions about Trump - the Russia collusion fiction, that Trump is somehow in the pocket of Russia. Well, he's pounding one of their principal allies, which he would not do if he were in Putin's pocket. So once again, the Democrat narrative gets blown up. Trump said he was in talks with an Iranian leader that were productive, and for that reason, he...

Beriev A-50U radar planes are Russia’s eyes in the sky. As Ukraine knocks out more of the A-50Us, Russian forces are slowly going blind. Russia went to war in February 2022 with potentially just seven Beriev A-50U radar planes The A-50Us use top-mounted radars to watch for Ukrainian warplanes and drones In a series of attacks going back three years, the Ukrainians may have knocked out more than half of the A-50Us A drone strike last week reportedly damaged a fourth A-50U on the ground in western Russia Sortieing drones deep inside Russia on 17 March, Ukrainian forces may have...

...testimony of Jeffrey Epstein personal attorney...raising suspicions... Crown Princess Mette-Marit portraying herself as a victim of Jeffrey Epstein... United Airlines cutting scheduled flights by five percent... 10 killed, 59 injured...fire...auto parts factory...South Korea... Lebanon late tonight new Israeli evacuation orders... Iranian missile attacks on Israel late tonight... President Donald Trump rejecting any truce...objectives are 'very close' to being met... US Marines that could seize Iranian territory moving towards... Israeli air attacks on Tehran late tonight... A jury finding Elon Musk liable for misleading investors... Heavy rains...flooding Hawaii...residents ordered to evacuate... US easing sanctions on Iranian oil... US federal prosecutors probing...

A pro-Kremlin figure who unexpectedly denounced Russian President Vladimir Putin and the war in Ukraine in a social media post this week that went viral has been placed in a psychiatric facility, the hospital said on Thursday. Ilya Remeslo made a career denouncing Putin’s critics until he became one himself, posting a manifesto late on Tuesday to his 90,000 followers on Telegram entitled: “Five reasons why I stopped supporting Vladimir Putin.” He said Putin had prosecuted a “failing war” in Ukraine that had killed millions and torpedoed Russia’s economy to the detriment of its citizens’ well-being. Vladimir Putin is not...

Today, the most important developments come from the Huliaipole direction. Here, north of the main stronghold, Ukrainian forces have broken through Russian positions and are expanding their advance. Russian defenses began to fall apart more quickly than anticipated, allowing even deeper penetration by Ukrainian forces. Recently, the Ukrainian command reported restoring control over more than 400 square kilometers through counterattacks, while daily combat intensity in the direction has reached roughly fifty engagements per day. As Ukrainian forces regain control over key terrain, they improve their ability to observe Russian movement, making it harder for Russian forces to reposition without being...

On Ukraina television last week, viewers caught images of Viktor Yushchenko, the opposition candidate in this country's contested presidential election, greeting voters and kissing babies, standard glad-handing by a pol on the stump. The broadcast of benevolent images of Yushchenko on a Russian language channel that stridently supports his opponent, Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, was short-lived. Just as suddenly, the sequence cut to historical footage of Adolf Hitler, also greeting supporters and caressing the foreheads of German children thrust toward him by their beaming parents. The message, one that has been hammered home for months now, was clear: Yushchenko is...

Iran has sent short-range ballistic missiles to Russia, according to U.S. and European officials, despite sharp warnings from Washington and its allies not to provide those armaments to Moscow to use against targets in Ukraine. The new missiles are expected to help Russia further its efforts to destroy Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure, which President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said this week now involved 4,000 bombs a month across the country. The U.S. and European officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, confirmed that after months of warnings about sanctions, Iran has shipped several hundred short-range ballistic...

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....

Russia accused Ukraine on Tuesday of trying to obtain a nuclear weapon with help from Britain and France, an allegation Kyiv called an absurd lie. A French foreign ministry spokesperson said the allegation was "blatant disinformation". A spokesperson for British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said: "There's no truth to this." Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has previously criticised Kyiv's decision to give up its former Soviet nuclear arsenal in the 1990s without obtaining proper, binding security guarantees. But Kyiv has said it does not seek to re-acquire nuclear weapons, and respects all international treaties. NUCLEAR THREATSIn a statement published on the...

"This is the proportional response that Russia has the right to," the Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman stressedMOSCOW, February 24. /TASS/. A nuclear strike on targets in Ukraine, as well as in France and the United Kingdom, would be considered lawful and justified in the event that London and Paris provide Kiev with nuclear capabilities, Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev said on Max, commenting on Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service’s (SVR) reports about such plans by the two European countries. According to Medvedev, this information "radically changes the situation." "This is a direct transfer of nuclear weapons to a...

KYIV, Ukraine, and MOSCOW — When the Kremlin launched its all-out invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the assumption in Moscow, and much of the West, was that Russian forces would take the country in a matter of days. Instead, what the Kremlin calls a "special military operation" has become the biggest land war in Europe since World War II and has lasted longer than the Soviet army's fight against Nazi Germany. Russia's war on Ukraine is a grinding war of attrition. Ukraine has managed to hold a much larger army to minimal gains while adjusting to a life under constant...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky made a plea to Donald Trump on Monday, telling CNN he wants the US president “to stay on our side.” Speaking at the Presidential Palace in Kyiv on the eve of the fourth anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Zelensky said the United States is far too big and too important to walk away from the conflict. And he hopes that Trump, during his State of the Union address Tuesday, will back Ukraine as it fights back against the Russia of President Vladimir Putin. “They have to stay with … a democratic country which is...

When Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine surpassed 1,418 days last month, it officially exceeded a historic milestone — the same span of time it took Moscow to defeat Nazi Germany in World War II. And unlike the Red Army that pushed all the way to Berlin eight decades ago in what it called the Great Patriotic War, Russia’s 4-year-old, all-out invasion of its neighbor is still struggling to fully capture Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland. After Moscow failed to seize the capital of Kyiv and install a puppet government in February 2022, the conflict turned into trench warfare with tremendous cost....

Poland will use antipersonnel as well as anti-tank land mines to defend its eastern border against the growing threat from Russia, Poland’s deputy defense minister told The Associated Press on Friday as the country officially left an international convention banning the use of the controversial weapons. The 1997 Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Treaty, also known as the Ottawa Convention, prohibits signatories from keeping or using antipersonnel mines, which can last for years and are known for having caused large-scale suffering among civilians in former conflict zones in countries including Cambodia, Angola and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Poland, which ratified the document in...

Kenyans were lured to Russia by job promises, then forcibly conscripted into its army for Ukraine under death threats, made to sign military contracts. In Ukraine, these recruits faced apocalyptic combat, drone attacks, severe injuries, and death, labelled 'cannon fodder' due to Russia's high casualties. A Kenyan recruitment agency employee faces human trafficking charges; hundreds of Kenyans sent to fight highlight Russia's exploitation of African economic desperation.

Around 55,000 Ukrainian troops have been killed since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022, President Volodymyr Zelensky said Wednesday. The first day of US-brokered Ukraine-Russia talks in Abu Dhabi were "substantive and productive", top Ukrainian negotiator ⁠Rustem Umerov said Wednesday, without providing details. Follow our liveblog for the latest updates.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is set to meet President Donald Trump in Davos as U.S. envoys prepare for talks in Moscow aimed at ending Russia's war with Ukraine. Zelenskyy plans to travel to Switzerland on Thursday to meet Trump on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum while White House envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner head to Moscow for discussions with Russian President Vladimir Putin, as reported by Axios. Trump confirmed the meeting with Zelenskyy after delivering remarks Wednesday in Davos, saying negotiations are nearing a critical point. "I think Russia wants to make a deal, I think Ukraine...