Free Republic

Russian President Vladimir Putin congratulated President-elect Joe Biden on winning the US presidential election — after weeks of holding out until the vote was officially confirmed. “For my part, I am ready for interaction and contact with you,” Putin’s message for the former vice president said, according to a statement released by the Kremlin on Tuesday. The message came a day after the Electoral College affirmed Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election on Nov. 3. The Russian president previously said he would not recognize Biden as the president-elect until the results were “confirmed in a legitimate, legal way.” In...

China intends to “deepen” its partnership with Russia as a bulwark against the United States over the next year, according to a top diplomat in Beijing.

Thieves have targeted a Russian “doomsday” plane, the military aircraft that would be used by top officials, including Vladimir Putin, in case of a nuclear war. The robbery of the Ilyushin-80, a mobile command post specially designed to keep officials alive and in command of the military during a nuclear conflict, took place at an airfield in southern Russia, state media reported. The thieves managed to open the highly classified aircraft’s cargo hatch and make off with 39 pieces of radio equipment. They have not been caught. Interior ministry officials in the city of Taganrog confirmed that a plane at...

Hypersonic cruise missiles which travel five times the speed of sound, are one step closer to being part of Australia’s arsenal. Last week Australia and the United States signed a new agreement to collaborate on developing and testing hypersonic cruise missile prototypes. When completed, the missiles will be able to traverse the distance of Sydney to Melbourne in just seven minutes. The missiles are difficult to stop not only because of their speed, but for their ability to slip past radar systems by gliding along the edge of the atmosphere. Hypersonics can also alter their route mid-flight. The weapons are...

Lt General Thomas McInerney and Lt General Michael Flynn gave interviews to WVW Broadcasting Network today. It was Flynn’s first interview since his pardon.In stunning testimony, McInerney stated his sources have told him U.S. Army Special Forces, possibly the famed Delta Force, raided the CIA-run server farm in Frankfurt, Germany. 5 soldiers were killed in the ensuing firefight, as well as one CIA paramilitary. The CIA personnel were allegedly flown in from Afghanistan for security, according to reports. Subsequent review of the secured servers yielded proof that China, Iran, and Russia were involved in the attempted coup against President Donald...

Time is running out for delivery of 5,000 tons of containers and modules for the Vostok station to Antarctica. Sevmporput had an estimated arrival at Prydz Bay on the eastern shores of the continent on November 20. However, since mid-October the giant nuclear-powered container carrier has sailed zigzag outside the Angolan coast in the South-Atlantic with a broken propeller. Rosatomflot, the operator of Russia’s state-owned fleet of civilian nuclear-powered vessels, chose to keep silent about the trouble and has not answered any questions on the issue from The Barents Observer. Social media sites, however, had a lively debate about the...

President Trump on Wednesday pardoned his former national security adviser Michael Flynn, bringing to an end a tumultuous four-year criminal case that felled the three-star general before prosecutors admitted they had wrongly pursued his case...

This will be the most dangerous time for our republic for our enemies are cornered and will lash, attack, kill. Be aware.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-NY) lashed out following President Donald Trump’s full pardon of former national security adviser Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn (retired). “Donald Trump has repeatedly abused the pardon power to reward friends and protect those who covered up for him,” Schiff wrote on Twitter. “This time he pardons Michael Flynn, who lied to hide his dealings with the Russians. It’s no surprise that Trump would go out as he came in — Crooked to the end.”

Russia's Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine is 95 percent effective according to a second interim analysis of clinical trial data, its developers said on Tuesday. The calculations were based on preliminary data obtained 42 days after the first dose, Russia's health ministry, the state-run Gamaleya research centre and the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) said in a statement. They did not note the number of cases used to make the calculation, however. The two-shot Sputnik V vaccine will cost less than $20 per person on international markets and will be free of charge for Russian citizens, according to a statement on...

Until now, the United States certainly has had a concern over Iranian penetration in South America, and not just in Venezuela. One reason why Donald Trump adopted the “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran was to curtail its global ambitions against the West, especially in energy-rich areas. Most of the attention from the media fell on the immediate region around Iran, such as the “land bridge” strategy through Syria to the Mediterranean and the encirclement strategy against the Saudis with Hezbollah and the Houthis.However, Iran has long tried a similar diplomatic/economic/political encirclement strategy against the US in South America. They conducted...

ALEXANDRIA, Va. -- A former Army Green Beret pleaded guilty Wednesday to divulging military secrets to Russia about his Special Forces unit's activities in former Soviet republics. Peter Rafael Dzibinski Debbins, 45, of Gainesville, Virginia, pleaded guilty to a charge under the federal Espionage Act at a hearing in U.S. District Court in Alexandria. He faces up to life in prison when he is sentenced in February. Debbins, a Minnesota native, had a 15-year relationship with Russian intelligence, dating back to 1996 when he was an ROTC student at the University of Minnesota and on a visit to Russia for...

Russia plans to establish a military base on Sudan’s Red Sea coast to serve as a logistics center for the Russian navy, according to a draft agreement between Moscow and Khartoum signed by Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin and released publicly Nov. 11. The agreement states that Sudan will provide a land plot for the Russian base free of charge for a period of 25 years. It will automatically renew for subsequent 10-year periods. To terminate the deal, one of the parties must notify the other party of its intention at least one year before the expiration of the next...

Writing in the Washington Post on Monday, the French and German foreign ministers... pledge for new cooperation. From an American interest perspective, however, this op-ed reads as little more than a petulant "we can only be friends if you put European concerns and interests first." ...On China...comes the veiled warning that Europe does not want to upset Xi Jinping. ...On Iran...Maas and Le Drian "want to reengage the United States on a joint approach.. On Russia...The words "ready to engage" reflect Europe's rising interest in reducing sanctions imposed on Russia... On trade...They want a one-sided tax.

If Donald Trump doesn’t take the Oath of Office on January 20, 2021, one principal but little-noted reason for this may be that he crossed one of the most powerful and least accountable forces in the nation: the military-industrial complex. As Trump said last September, “the top people in the Pentagon…want to do nothing but fight wars so that all of those wonderful companies that make the bombs and make the planes and make everything else stay happy. But we’re getting out of the endless wars, you know how we’re doing.” Now, however, that Joe Biden has been anointed “President-elect”...

EU member states Hungary and Poland have followed through on their threat to block the continental power bloc’s seven-year budget, after Brussels attempted to push it through with conditions the populist nations said were akin to “political enslavement”. European Union rules mean that many significant decisions — including whether to approve the bloc’s seven-yearly funding programs — must be taken unanimously, with any single member state able to veto decisions. This safeguard was triggered on Monday by conservative-led Hungary and Poland, who blocked the progress of the €1.8 trillion (£1.6 trillion, $2.1 trillion) ‘Multi annual Financial Framework’ (MFF) as an...

November 16, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – Out of the many news headlines that have dominated the year 2020 so far, there is one somber event that is in danger of being forgotten: November 18, 2020 marks the 100th anniversary of the first-ever legalization of abortion. Researchers estimate that legal abortion has resulted in about one billion abortions worldwide in the past 100 years, making it what they call the “greatest genocide in history.” On this date 100 years ago, Soviet Russia announced the legalization of abortion in order, according to the state explanation, to combat the growing numbers of women who...

In the Washington beltway world of defense spending and expansion, there's always room to "spend more" no matter which administration or DoD leadership is at the helm. This trend is on display following last week's Trump firing of Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, and his replacement with Christopher C. Miller.An ambitious plan to greatly expand the number of ships in America's naval arsenal put in place by Esper will not be impacted by the latest dramatic turnover in top Pentagon leadership, as Military.com reports:Plans to build a 500-ship Navy are still intact as the Trump administration ushered in a host...

The decision by three Arab states to make peace with Israel can be credited both to efforts by the Trump administration and the recognition by these Sunni states that their security would improve against the ongoing threats they face from Turkey and Iran. Iran and its proxies interfere with Arab states while promoting their Shi’ite revolutionary ideology; likewise, Turkey pushes its Sunni revolutionary ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood throughout the region. Turkey and Iran look to overthrow the Sunni Arab states that do not align with them, such as Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states. The normalization deals between the...

The message was clearly aimed at Gulf states and others that are partnered with the US. Iran has sought to reach out to its Arab neighbors, with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif warning them that US President Donald Trump will be leaving in 70 days, but Iran’s regime will remain “forever.” He urged them to realize that “betting on outsiders to provide security is never a good gamble.” In Arabic and English, he called for dialogue and to work together. The message was clearly aimed at Gulf states and others that are partnered with the US. Iran was offering them...