Free Republic

It's nationwide knowledge that in early May the Colonial Pipeline company suffered a severe cyberattack that shut down its pipeline connecting Texas to the East Coast. On June 1, JBS Foods suffered another crippling cyberattack. According to industry estimates, JBS controls 20 percent of the slaughtering capacity for American cattle and hogs. The JBS attack also generated headlines. The FBI and security officials believe two criminal organizations conducted the attacks. Their names sound a bit like those of the sinister super gangs found in James Bond novels. However, these gangs aren't fiction nor are their crimes. A crime group called...

Joe Biden inadvertently financed his son Hunter’s dalliances with a Russia-linked escort ring, according to a report Monday. President Biden wired his 52-year-old son $100,000 to help him pay bills from December 2018 through January 2019, the Washington Examiner reported, citing records from a laptop Hunter Biden left behind at a computer repair shop in Delaware. Hunter Biden, meanwhile, had spent more than $30,000 on sex workers between November 2018 and March 2019, records show — including many linked to Russia-based email addresses and connected to an “exclusive model agency” called UberGFE, the outlet reported. Joe Biden wired Hunter $5,000...

Russian forces appeared poised to tighten the noose around thousands of Ukrainian troops near two strategically important cities in the fiercely contested Donbas region of eastern Ukraine on Sunday, mounting an assault on Ukrainian front lines that forced Ukraine to rush reinforcements to the area. On a day of fighting that put even territory thought to be securely in Ukrainian hands in play, Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain and the NATO secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, warned that the war could grind on for years. They urged Ukraine’s Western allies to settle in for the long haul as Russia moved...

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) – Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said no one knows how long the war in his country will last but that Ukrainian forces are defying expectations by preventing Russian troops from overrunning eastern Ukraine, where the fighting has been fiercest for weeks. In his nightly video address, Zelensky said he was proud of the Ukrainian defenders managing to hold back the Russian advance in the Donbas region, which borders Russia and where Moscow-backed separatists have controlled much of the territory for eight years.

A family with many children should become the norm for Russian society and establish itself as a value reference point. This is something Vladimir Putin stressed at a meeting of the State Council Presidium on Social Issues. "The family with three, four, or more children already has a high status in itself, and should have this status in our public consciousness and get support from the State," the President said. According to Vladimir Putin, having many children is most welcome in the context of Russia's development, and should be a priority for the state authorities.

Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson has warned that Russian forces are now making “palpable progress” in eastern Ukraine, saying Ukrainian forces need long-range rocket launchers and other military hardware. Britain’s defence ministry said on Friday that Moscow’s troops have recently captured several villages as they attempt to surround Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk in the eastern Donbas region, but do not yet have full control of the region.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) – Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky accused Russia of trying to destroy the Donbas and all who live there. “The constant brutal bombardments, the constant Russian strikes on infrastructure and residential areas show that Russia wants to empty this territory of all people. Therefore, the defence of our land, the defence of our people, is literally a fight for life,” he said late Friday in his nightly video address to the nation.

Moscow, April 20, Interfax - Nearly two-thirds of Russians, or 63%, identify themselves as Orthodox, the share reaches 70% in the group older than 60 and 51% in the group aged from 18 to 30, the Russian Public Opinion Foundation said in a statement published on its website. According to the pollster, 8% of Russian residents are Muslim, including 10% in the group aged from 31 to 45. The total number of Catholics, Protestants and Uniates amounts to 2%, and the same percentage of respondents follows other religions, it said. Twenty-three percent of respondents identified themselves as atheists, including 34%...

LVIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Thursday night that work has begun to dig through the rubble in Borodianka, another city north-west of Kyiv that was occupied by the Russians. He also said “it is much scarier” there, with even more victims of the Russian troops.

This is not a war between Ukraine and Russia. It is a war between the USA and Russia, in which both sides are cynically using Ukraine as a battering ram. The people of Ukraine will gain nothing and lose much from being treated in this way. They fight and die or lose their homes and flee. We pour in more weapons and shout encouragement from a safe distance. Russia wrecks the joint. ... I am sorry to say that there are people in the USA who will not be sad if this war drags on. A ‘senior diplomat’ was quoted...

Amusing propaganda video about Russian looters

Former CIA Director David Petraeus on Sunday weighed in on the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine. Petraeus told John Catsimatidis, host of New York WABC 770 AM radio’s “The Cats Roundtable,” that “everybody involved” was “losing” as a result of the war. He pointed to Russia, which he said was heading toward a recession because the United States was “strangling their economy.”

Former U.S. Army Special Forces member Jim Hanson said that the criticism President Trump is facing for meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin is hypocritical to what the Obama administration faced in 2012. Hanson, during an appearance on “Fox & Friends,” specifically called out former President Barack Obama's hot mic incident with then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and the lax media reaction to it. Obama told Medvedev that after the 2012 election, he'd “have more flexibility.”

Shortly after the Russian invasion began, unconfirmed rumors spread widely across the internet of a mysterious Ukrainian fighter pilot in a MiG-29 gunning down six enemy aircraft within the first hours of the war. The unknown military hero, dubbed "The Ghost of Kyiv" on social media, had been taking to the skies since the invasion started and allegedly reached 21 confirmed Russian aircraft kills as of Wednesday, making the pilot the first supposed flying ace of the 21st century. "The Ghost of Kyiv," however, is almost certainly a myth, albeit an incredibly useful one as Ukraine tries to rally its...

Several demoralized Russian troops captured in Ukraine were allowed to call home over the weekend to tell their families they were safe and profess confusion about why they were sent to war. "Mama and Papa, I didn't want to come here. They forced me to," a Russian soldier said in videos purporting to show the phone calls that were taken by Ukraine's Interior Ministry and posted on YouTube. Videos and stills of captured or surrendered Russian troops also were posted on the Ukrainian Security Service's Facebook page.

House lawmakers want the Trump administration to investigate reports that a wealthy foundation used an offshore shell company to give millions of dollars to environmental activists opposed to U.S. energy development. “If you connect the dots, it is clear that Russia is funding U.S. environmental groups in an effort to suppress our domestic oil and gas industry, specifically hydraulic fracking,” Texas Republican Rep. Lamar Smith said Friday. Smith and Texas Republican Rep. Randy Weber asked Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin to investigate whether or not environmentalists were funneling money to U.S. environmental groups through a Bermuda-based shell company. Republicans are pitching...

Some 74% of Americans – including solid majorities of Republicans and Democrats – said the United States and its allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization should impose a no-fly zone in Ukraine, the poll found. An equally bipartisan 80% of Americans said the United States should stop buying Russian oil. The White House on Friday said it was weighing cuts to U.S. imports of Russian oil, though it is proceeding cautiously, concerned about a spike in gasoline prices that would add to high inflation. Moreover, 81% of Americans think Washington should impose additional sanctions on Russia, up from 77%...

According to a Norwegian International Affairs researcher, the images people in Russia are being shown by the official media are far from the brutal reality of the Ukraine war. Russian president Vladimir Putin is reportedly painting a completely different picture of his ongoing invasion of neighbouring Ukraine. For people only consuming Russian media, it comes across as there being an ongoing "special military operation" in Ukraine, which has the aim of protecting the people of East Ukraine against the so-called nationalistic government in Kyiv. Russian state television aired a short statement by Putin last week, where he described Ukrainian president...

This is how Trump handled Russians. Mike Pompeo, the head of the CIA and President Donald Trump's nominee for secretary of state, confirmed on Thursday that the US military killed hundreds of Russians in an intense fight in Syria. The US had previously only confirmed killing 100 or so pro-Syrian regime forces, but multiple outlets reported the number was as high as 300 and that the soldiers were Russian military contractors.

Russia-Ukraine updates: Captured Russian troops weep as they admit to killing innocent Ukrainians Russian troops slaughtered a Ukrainian policeman’s family, including his newborn baby and 6-year-old daughter — all while his brother heard it in a phone call, according to reports. Policeman Oleg Fedko, 30, was working in the Kherson region when his parents and partner picked up his kids to keep them safe last Thursday, the day Russia launched its war, according to The Sun, citing local reports.