Free Republic

The Zambian student was serving a jail sentence at a medium security prison on the outskirts of Moscow after being convicted of contravening Russian law, Kakubo said, without specifying the offense that occurred in April 2020. “The Zambian government has requested the Russian authorities to urgently provide information on the circumstances under which a Zambian citizen, serving a prison sentence in Moscow, could have been recruited to fight in Ukraine,” Kakubo said. It was not clear how the prisoner was recruited and by whom.... ussia’s defense ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the circumstances of...

Most of the world is focused on the war in Ukraine, which has created political unrest in most western countries. Although it feels as though Russia is under a microscope, there is a lot of Russian politics that the media has not discussed. One of these things is that there are rivals to Putin, one of whom is Mikhail Khodorkovsky. The Munich Security Conference took place two weeks ago. Although Russian officials are usually invited, this year that changed. Due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, organizers decided to invite Russian politicians pushing to replace Putin. Those guests included multiple Russian...

Inna Yaschyshyn, 33, insists she didn't raise cash for RUSSIAN GANGSTERS through the fake children's charity. Yaschyshyn said: 'I am the victim right now, that’s all I can tell you. 'I think there is some misunderstanding.' Grilled about the five fake IDs - including a US passport - with photo attached to the name Anna de Rothschild, she insisted: 'That’s all fake, and nothing happened.' Yaschyshyn was found to have Ukrainian and Russian passports as well. She was born in the Ukraine, and became a permanent US resident by marriage in 2011. Yaschyshyn was president of a children's charity was...

Car bombs used to be a fixture of gangland feuds in 1990s Russia but have since fallen out of fashion. This makes it all the more striking when, as happened last night, such a device rips through a car just outside Moscow, killing Darya Dugina, daughter of the controversial nationalist ideologue Alexander Dugin. She was a prominent figure in her own right, a journalist working for an outfit Washington says is owned by Russian businessman Evgeny Prigozhin – under sanctions in the West for being the godfather of both the Wagner mercenary group and the infamous social media ‘troll farms’...

The daughter of an ultranationalist Russian ideologue believed to have had a strong influence on Vladimir Putin has been killed in a car bomb on the outskirts of Moscow, according to multiple media reports. Darya Dugin, daughter of Russian political commentator Alexander Dugin – dubbed “Putin’s brain” – died when the Toyota Land Cruiser she was driving was ripped apart by a powerful explosion about 20km west of the capital at around 9.30pm local time. The blast occurred near the village of Bolshiye Vyazemy, according to Russian media sites Baza and 112, and state-owned Novaya Gazeta. Witnesses said debris was...

Former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson is planning to travel to Russia in the near future for talks aimed at finding a deal to free the detained WNBA star Brittney Griner, a source with knowledge of the proposed trip told ABC News.Richardson, who also served as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and energy secretary in the Clinton administration, played a role in achieving a prisoner exchange in April that saw Russia release former U.S. Marine Trevor Reed after nearly two and a half years in captivity.He is expected to go to Moscow in the next couple of weeks,...

ROME – In new comments to Italian media, the Vatican’s Secretary of State has said recent remarks by Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill will only make tensions in the Russia-Ukraine war worse, and said a second meeting with the pope is unlikely. Italian Cardinal Pietro Parolin also spoke of his recent phone call with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, saying the conversation proved to be unhelpful. Speaking to Italian media at the close of an event called Sui Tetti, or “On the Rooftops,” March 9, Parolin said “Kirill’s words do not favor and do not promote an understanding.” “On the contrary,...

On Wednesday, a Russian-born banker and entrepreneur posted on the social networking website LinkedIn offering a $1 million bounty to arrest Russian President Vladimir Putin for war crimes. In a post that’s no longer viewable on LinkedIn, Alexander Konanykhin said, “I promise to pay $1,000,000 to the officer(s) who, complying with their constitutional duty, arrest(s) Putin as a war criminal under Russian and international laws.” “Putin is not the Russian president as he came to power as the result of a special operation of blowing up apartment buildings in Russia, then violated the Constitution by eliminating free elections and murdering...

Robert Levinson, a former FBI special agent who disappeared while traveling on Iran’s Kush Island in 2007, has “died while in Iranian custody,” his family announced Wednesday. ---SNIP--- “Those who are responsible for what happened to Bob Levinson, including those in the U.S. government who for many years repeatedly left him behind, will ultimately receive justice for what they have done,” the announcement said. That’s a reference to President Barack Obama’s administration, which did not secure Levinson’s release despite years of negotiating with Tehran in the lead-up to the implementation of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

Judicial Watch today released 72 pages of documents from the U.S. Department of Justice containing Russia-related emails sent from Nellie Ohr to high-ranking DOJ official Lisa Holtyn at the time Ohr worked with anti-Trump dossier firm Fusion GPS. Holtyn at the time was a top aide to former Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr. In an email to Holtyn dated November 22, 2016, revealing her anti-Trump sentiments, Nellie poses a question in the subject line: “Who stands behind the Russian ‘friends of Trump;’” which she answers enthusiastically in the first line of the email: “Pornographer-turned-pro-Kremlin-media-impresario Konstantin Rykov!!!” The documents show...

The FBI released 34 pages of notes, known as “302s,” of its 2016 and 2017 interviews with Bruce Ohr, the DOJ official who met with the British dossier author Christopher Steele and opposition research firm Fusion GPS’s Glen Simpson. Ohr’s wife, Nellie Ohr, worked for Fusion GPS throughout the 2016 presidential campaign, when they were hired by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Convention. The FBI was sued by the watchdog group Judicial Watch to comply with their requests for access to the notes via Freedom of Information Act. Read the documents below:

Sources have told this newspaper that Britain's intelligence services – MI6, MI5 and GCHQ – are liaising closely to establish whether Gareth Williams was targeted by a foreign power. The 31-year-old was seconded from GCHQ to work on top-secret systems to defend British banks and transport infrastructure from cyber attack and to eavesdrop on terrorist communications.

When distress reports reached U.S. Intelligence in Langley and the Pentagon that the American ambassador to Benghazi and dozens of his diplomatic personnel were under terrorist attack in Libya on Sept. 11 2012, CIA and Defense Department officials scrambled an immediate response. Officials moved quickly to assemble a counter-terrorism team of professionals to dispatch to Benghazi. That little-known but elite squad, known as the Foreign Emergency Support Team (FEST), is in fact the government’s sole inter-agency, on call and short notice team trained to respond to any terror-related incident in the world. But not this time. Not in Benghazi. FEST...

Dear Judge Sullivan: I am submitting my letter directly since Mike Flynn’s attorney has refused to submit it as well as letters submitted by other individuals.

...Litvinenko "was giving Scaramella lots of information about Russian and criminal infiltrations in Italy, but most of it was very difficult to verify and crosscheck. It was a little bit out on a limb." In the old days, Litvinenko had been familiar with criminal clans in Russia, now he was making risky approaches to the Italian mafia. Scaramella believed if they could get inside this network, they would be able to leverage much more damaging intelligence about Italian politicians. They spread their net wider. The Litvinenko dossier lists a dizzying roll call of names investigated by the pair, among them...

February 2, 2011, 3:33 pm Investment Banking | Legal/Regulatory Police Search Deutsche Bank Office in Russia By ANDREW E. KRAMER 6:10 p.m. | Updated MOSCOW — Masked policemen raided Deutsche Bank’s main Moscow office on Wednesday, questioning bankers and unnerving employees. Police said they were searching for documents in a real estate deal linked to a member of the Russian Parliament, now living in exile in the United States. The parliamentarian, Ashot Yegiazaryan, had business dealings with companies tied to the former mayor of Moscow, Yuri M. Luzhkov, who fell from favor and resigned last fall. Deutsche Bank said in...

Secretary of State John Kerry, speaking exclusively to ABC’s Martha Raddatz for “This Week,” insisted that the United States had not abandoned former FBI agent Robert Levinson—the 65-year-old American who went missing in Iran seven years ago—and said he was personally involved in the effort to locate him. This week, Levinson’s family said he was working for a rogue CIA operation when he disappeared and accused the government of betraying him. Kerry rejected this narrative in his interview with Raddatz. …

WASHINGTON - Jewish-American Robert Levinson was not included in a prisoner exchange with Iran that came as the UN nuclear watchdog confirmed Iran’s compliance with the nuclear deal and the West rolled back sanctions. Iran on Saturday released five Americans it was holding in its prisons or in detention, four of them as part of a prison swap which included the release of Jason Rezaian, a Washington Post journalist detained on espionage charges since 2014. The exchange comes on "implementation day" of the sanctions relief for nuclear restrictions deal Iran concluded last year with the United States and five other...

Long after he vanished in Iran, retired FBI agent Robert Levinson reappeared in a video and a series of photographs sent to his family over the past year, transforming a mysterious disappearance into a hostage standoff with an unknown kidnapper, The Associated Press has learned.

Former FBI agent missing in Iran still alive: Clinton WASHINGTON, March 3 (Xinhua) -- U.S. has received indications recently that a former FBI agent who disappeared when visiting Iran four years ago is still alive, said U.S. State Secretary Hillary Clinton on Thursday. Clinton said in a statement that the U.S. citizen, named Bob Levinson, is now being held "somewhere in southeast Asia." "We respectfully request the Iranian government to undertake humanitarian efforts to safely return and reunite Bob with his family," she said, adding that the U.S. would appreciate the Iranian government's efforts in this regard. Bob Levinson, an...