Free Republic

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’...

Last November, a few days after the election, thousands of people gathered for a rally in New York to protest Donald Trump. The Guardian reported on the scale of the Nov. 12 rally at the time: More than 10,000 people indicated on Facebook that they would attend a noon march from Union Square to Trump Tower, the future president’s home and corporate headquarters.As marchers mustered at East 17th Street and Broadway, organisers estimated the turnout at 2,000. As the march began to move, however, the true figure seemed closer to the promised 10,000.Chanting “Not my president!”, the crowd set...

Days after Donald Trump won the presidential election in November 2016, thousands flocked to the streets of New York City to demonstrate against the president elect in a protest organized by a Kremlin-connected Facebook page called BlackMattersUS, The Hill reports. Between 5,000 and 10,000 people attended the protest organized by the Facebook page, which, according to an archived screen grab, had more than 99,000 likes.“Join us in the streets! Stop Trump and his bigoted agenda!” the Facebook event page reads for the protest, which was called “Trump is NOT my President. March against Trump.” “Divided is the reason we just fell,” it reads. “We must...

During his visit to Chechnya on Wednesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin stopped at the Prophet Isa mosque in Grozny and posed for photos while holding, and kissing, a gold-leaf copy of the Quran. Putin was flanked by his hand-picked Chechen leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, and top Chechen Muslim cleric Mufti Saah Mezhiev during his Quran smooch. The Grand Mufti ceremonially read a verse from the Quran, translated into Russian for Putin. The Prophet Isa mosque, constructed in 2020, is a huge and expensive structure that can accommodate 5,000 worshipers at once. “Prophet Isa” is Islam’s version of Jesus Christ, who ranks...

The US military has said it launched "self-defence" strikes on Iran overnight, and shot down ballistic missiles and drones fired at ships and Gulf countries. The strikes on Qeshm Island, in the Strait of Hormuz, were "in response to attempted attacks by Iran across the Middle East", US Central Command (Centcom) said. Centcom said Iran had fired two missiles at Kuwait and three at Bahrain, all of which broke apart or were intercepted. Iran said it had attacked US bases and helicopters in a "regional country" using missiles and drones in retaliation. One person was killed in Kuwait and a...

The Allen family are seen with Allen, second from right, together with brother Gabriel, his mother Kathy, father, Thomas, and sisters Stephanie and Avriana

In a conversation with the First Vice President, the special assistant to the Russian President stated that, by Putin's order, two advanced aircrafts with special helicopters and 50 professional mountain rescue personnel will be dispatched to Tabriz, Iranian media reported on Sunday overnight.

PRAGUE, August 4, 2006 (RFE/RL) -- Moscow's new diplomatic assertiveness was on display for the world to see during last month's G8 summit in St. Petersburg. And one controversial topic that dominated the run-up to the summit has remained in the spotlight -- Russia's repeatedly stated intention of following its own democratic path, dubbed "sovereign democracy." The concept was formulated by Vyacheslav Surkov, the deputy chief and prime ideologue of President Vladimir Putin's administration. Surkov began floating the new ideology during speeches to activists of the pro-presidential Unified Russia party in February and May. Sovereign Democracy As outlined by Surkov...

Small nuclear explosion, major radioactive poisoning event The only military use for DU is defeating tank armor. That begs a question, what was the point? I haven't read anything about tank battles in country 404 so far, Russians are basically using tanks for mobile medium range artillery. And there is still the possibility of parts of Poland and Germany being poisoned. And, whatever your opinion of hohos might be, the British should know better than to be participating in anything like this.

CHICAGO — About 300 anti-war activists crowded into the basement of the Teamsters Union’s headquarters on Saturday to hear organizers from all over the country describe their plans to disrupt the Democratic National Convention this August. Joe Biden’s backing of Israel since Hamas’s October 7 attack has turned these left-wing radicals against their own party.

Loaded P320, at least 1 loaded clip. There is only one logical reason he showed up on the scene with that mush ammo. He hoped to provoke ICE into shooting at him and/or so he could shoot at them. IMHO

President Joe Biden is ready to warn Vladimir Putin during a video call Tuesday that Russia will face economy-jarring sanctions if it invades neighboring Ukraine as the U.S. president seeks a diplomatic solution to deal with the tens of thousands of Russian troops massed near the Ukraine border. Biden aims to make clear that his administration stands ready to take actions against the Kremlin that would exact “a very real cost” on the Russian economy, according to White House officials. Putin, for his part, is expected to demand guarantees from Biden that the NATO military alliance will never expand to...

Sen. John McCain on Monday strongly disputed a U.S. diplomatic cable that said he pushed to help Muammar Qadhafi’s regime obtain military hardware two years ago, calling the notion “outrageous.” The 2009 cable, released by the open information group WikiLeaks and written by staff at the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli, said in particular that McCain, at a meeting with Qadhafi and one of his sons, promised to help Libya obtain C-130 Hercules military cargo aircraft. (snip) On Monday, McCain told Foreign Policy magazine that the diplomatic cable was incorrect, and that he had never pledged any help to Libya in...

Ukraine now about where Japan was in July 1945...

Russia has issued a call for the remaining Ukrainian soldiers that have been surrounded in Pakovsk and Kian to surrender, noting that they have no chance of survival. And it doesn't seem as though the NATO alliance or Kiev is too concerned about the situation on the front lines as they seem more concerned about Zalinsk's latest photo op. not realizing the importance of some of these final Ukrainian strongholds and just how quickly Kiev's defensive lines are crumbling. So, what does all of this mean for the ongoing conflict and how could the possibility of tomahawks being introduced by...

KYIV, Dec 12 (Reuters) - Ukrainian forces said they had retaken parts of the northeastern town of Kupiansk and had encircled Russian troops there as President Volodymyr Zelenskiy visited the area and praised the operation, saying it strengthened Ukraine diplomatically. With U.S.-backed peace efforts underway, Moscow has said it is advancing on all fronts and that it has seized Kupiansk and the strategic city of Pokrovsk in the east. Kyiv has denied this, saying that the fighting is continuing.

Iran-backed militants entered Syria yesterday to bolster dictator Bashar al-Assad’s regime against the Islamist rebels who seized Aleppo. Militias crossed into the war-torn country from neighbouring Iraq, following a lightning offensive against the Syrian army by rebel forces from the hardline Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and Turkish rebel groups. Their seizure of Aleppo, Syria’s second city, and swathes of territory in the north of the country has reignited the deadly civil war in Syria and shocked its allies in Russia and Iran. President Assad blamed the West for the ‘terrorist escalation’, and accused the US and its allies...

“The Venezuelan opposition leader was trying to get to Norway by Wednesday in time to receive the Nobel Peace Prize that she won for challenging Venezuela’s authoritarian leader, Nicolás Maduro. First she had to get from the Caracas suburb where she has been in hiding for a year to a coastal fishing village, where a skiff awaited her.”

The Russian military has more armored vehicles than it did on the eve of Russia's wider war on Ukraine in February 2022. And for one main reason. Despite losing as many as 16,100 vehicles in action in Ukraine, the Russians have more than compensated for these losses by pulling nearly 13,000 old vehicles out of long-term storage—and complementing these older vehicles with around 4,000 brand-new vehicles.

Unconfirmed reports of Polish fighter jets shooting down multiple Russian Shahed attack drones over Polish airspace