Free Republic

China in July purchased 80.1 tons of gold valued at $4.6 billion China and Russia may be working toward a new gold-backed currency in a move that would aim to dethrone the dollar as the primary reserve currency of the world, but any such currency would unlikely achieve that goal. "The USD remains the safest, most convenient and most widely used currency in Asia and in the world today," Min-Hua Chiang, a research fellow and economist at the Heritage Foundation’s Asian Studies Center, told FOX Business. "No other currency (backed by gold or otherwise) is comparable, and that is unlikely...

Lawmakers for both parties are looking to seize the opportunity for Ukrainian military aid before newly elected members are sworn in.This week House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy, who is likely to take over as speaker if the GOP wins a majority in the House in the midterms, warned Republicans are "not going to write a blank check to Ukraine."Last month, Congress approved $12 billion in military and economic aid to Ukraine. Congress already has allocated a total of $65 billion in aid since Russia's attack in February. Sources believe the next package will be dramatically larger. A Republican senator told...

Can Brussels raid the tens of billions of euros in Russian assets frozen by the European Union to pay for Ukraine’s recovery? This thorny legal question is currently under examination by the EU Commission as the cash-strapped bloc looks for potentially €18 billion ($18 billion) next year to keep Ukraine afloat as it fends off Moscow’s invasion. Ursula von der Leyen, the EU Commission's president, told reporters on Tuesday in Berlin that she had set up a task force to both map what assets exist as well as the preconditions that must be met to seize them. “The will is...

KYIV, Ukraine—Winter is approaching on the Ukrainian steppe. As temperatures fall, waves of chilling rain follow, dissolving roads and fields, turning them to mud that mires men and equipment. Then comes the deep freeze and snow, hardening the ground but making it tougher to fight. Armies on both sides of the war in Ukraine are girding for the unforgiving weather and shorter days of winter, which will affect the health and morale of troops, diminish the effectiveness of weapons and intelligence-gathering sensors and multiply the logistical difficulties of keeping soldiers in the field. “Land warfare is generally very difficult. Winter...

Key figures including Wagner Group’s Yevgeny Prigozhin are using military defeats to undermine defence chief Sergei Shoigu. Friends, rivals and enemies took their seats in the Grand Kremlin Palace as Vladimir Putin gathered the country’s elite to formalise Russia’s illegal annexation of four occupied regions in Ukraine. The ceremony was meant to portray strength and unity, but within 24 hours had been overshadowed by Russia’s failures on the battlefield. These losses, which continued into this week on the southern and eastern fronts in Ukraine, have led to a major, unprecedented rupture within the ruling class as the Kremlin seeks scapegoats...

that threatens to cut off annexed peninsula from Putin's reinforcements A huge explosion has hit the only bridge between Crimea and Russia, a crucial supply line for Putin's forces Footage shows the blast following the rail bridge engulfed in flames and the road bridge next to it collapsed The cause of the explosion is not known but Ukraine has been targeting Russian logistics in recent weeks Footage appears to show a truck exploding on the road section of the bridge as sabotage is suspected A crucial bridge linking Russia and Ukraine has caught fire in a spectacular explosion in a...

According to Yanushevich, Ukrainian strikes have completely decommissioned almost all the major bridges in the region - Antonivskyi (road and railway), as well as the Nova Kakhovka Dam Bridge. “As a result of these actions, the Russian army was cut off from the supply of weapons and personnel from the territory of Crimea and the left-bank part of Kherson Oblast,” Yanushevich explained. He also confirmed that the Armed Forces of Ukraine have launched an offensive in all directions in southern Ukraine, but added that the authorities can only provide official information from the military. “We must remain calm and not...

Breaking: The Kerch Bridge, which connects occupied Crimea to Russia, is on fire.

The Kerch bridge from Russia to Crimea, a hated symbol of the Kremlin’s occupation of the southern Ukrainian peninsular, has been hit by a massive explosion on the span that carries railway traffic. Images from the bridge showed a fiercely burning fire engulfing at least two railway carriages from a train on the bridge, accompanied by a vast column of black smoke. The explosion, which witnesses said could be heard kilometres away, took place around 6am on Saturday while a train was crossing the bridge, although it was not immediately clear what caused it. Some images appeared to show a...

This is a short video on the Crimean Bridge on which there as the tanker fire. There appears to have been a span of the bridge which collapsed. To just have to go to the first few seconds at the linked video to see a picture of the dropped span. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npIRfEQM2kw

Footage has emerged of a Russian propagandist being brutally arrested for speaking out against high-ranking Russian officials. Affiliates and members of the Russian mercenary Wagner Group have repeatedly criticised the Russian Armed Forces and its leaders on Telegram. Alexey Slobodenyuk, the head of media for a Russian mercenary group fighting in Ukraine, was pulled from his car by a special branch of the National Guard of Russia known for their unwavering loyalty to Vladimir Putin. Slobodenyuk has been accused of attacking defence minister Sergei Shoigu online, claiming that Russia’s current failings in Ukraine were in part due to organisational failures....

Aformer Russian commander said that the reason Moscow has seen a series of military failures in Ukraine is because Russian President Vladimir Putin has been misled by lies that have impaired his decision-making on the battlefield. "I don't think our Supreme [would] have made [inappropriate] decisions if he was retrieving accurate information about the real circumstances. The system of total lies brought us to this situation," Andrey Gurulyov, former deputy commander of Russia's southern military district, told television presenter and propagandist Vladimir Solovyov on Russian state media. The latest setbacks Putin has suffered due to a successful counteroffensive from Ukrainian...

Two Russians who said they fled the country to avoid compulsory military service have requested asylum in the U.S. after landing on a remote Alaskan island in the Bering Sea, Alaska U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s office said Thursday. Karina Borger, a spokesperson for Murkowski, said by email that the office has been in communication with the U.S. Coast Guard and Customs and Border Protection and that “the Russian nationals reported that they fled one of the coastal communities on the east coast of Russia to avoid compulsory military service.” Spokespersons with the Coast Guard and Customs and Border Protection each...

A Russian-installed official in Ukraine on Thursday suggested President Vladimir Putin's defence minister should consider killing himself due to the shame of the defeats in the Ukraine war, an astonishing public insult to Russia's top brass. -snip- Kirill Stremousov, the Russian-installed deputy head of the annexed Kherson region, followed suit, publicly lambasting the "generals and ministers" in Moscow for failing to understand the problems on the front. "Indeed, many say: if they were a defence minister who had allowed such a state of affairs, they could, as officers, have shot themselves," Stremousov, 45, said. "But you know the word 'officer'...

The pencils of Russian commanders 😅 #RussianArmyPhoto 1Photo 2Photo 3You'll figure it out.

KYIV, Ukraine—Outside the Giraffe shopping mall on the western edge of Ukraine’s capital, a group of locals prepared to meet the Russian armored column thundering their way. It was late February, and the Russians, from an elite airborne unit, were riding atop their vehicles, as if expecting a warm greeting. One wore a Cossack woolen hat instead of a helmet. Another hadn’t loaded his rifle. The few dozen Ukrainians from the towns of Irpin and Bucha had other intentions, which they had written on the cement mixer and bulldozer that blocked the road: “Welcome to hell.” After Russia launched an...

"The truth is on our side and truth is strength!" Vladimir Putin boomed into a microphone on Red Square last week, after a grand ceremony at which he proclaimed four large chunks of Ukrainian territory to be part of Russia. "Victory will be ours!" But in the real world, things look very different. Even as Russia's president signed his illegal annexation treaties in the Kremlin, Ukrainian forces were advancing inside the areas he had just seized. Hundreds of thousands of men have been fleeing Russia rather than be drafted to fight in an expanding war. And things are going so...

A growing list of failings and defeats in Ukraine have spawned angry outbursts from Russia's elite, who still support the "military operation" but have gone as far as to suggest army chiefs should face the firing squad. Before September saw a series of battlefield reversals, public criticism of the army was rare. The offensive had been presented as a sacred, patriotic mission and speaking ill of the armed forces could lead to a long stay in prison. Today, nobody among the elite is calling into question the merits of Moscow's viewpoint or the operation against a neighbouring nation. But the...

Racing down a road with his men in pursuit of retreating Russian soldiers, a battalion commander came across an abandoned Russian armored vehicle, its engine still running. Inside there was a sniper rifle, rocket propelled grenades, helmets and belongings. The men were gone. “They dropped everything: personal care, helmets,” said the commander, who uses the code name Swat. “I think it was a special unit, but they were panicking. It was raining very hard, the road was bad and they drop everything and move.” After months of static fighting and holding the line under withering Russian artillery barrages, Ukrainian soldiers...

A video has emerged on social media showing what appears to be three Russian soldiers surrendering to Ukrainian forces as their armored personnel carrier (APC) flies a makeshift white flag. Vitaly Kim, head of the Nikolayev region’s military administration, shared the video on his official Telegram channel Wednesday, claiming that the Russian soldiers sold the armored vehicle to the Ukrainian military as part of the surrender process.“We bought an BMP-2 (APC),” Kim wrote in the caption, the pro-Ukraine news outlet zn.ua reported. The recording, which was also uploaded to the pro-Ukrainian Telegram channel “Nikolayevskiy Vanyok,” shows the armored vehicle with...