Free Republic

Two senior Republican lawmakers, the chairs of the House Intelligence and Foreign Affairs committees, say their colleagues are echoing Russian state propaganda against Ukraine. Researchers who study disinformation say Reps. Mike Turner, R-Ohio, and Michael McCaul, R-Texas, are merely acknowledging what has been clear for some time: Russian propaganda aimed at undermining U.S. and European support for Ukraine has steadily seeped into America’s political conversation over the past decade, taking on a life of its own. McCaul, chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told Puck News he thinks “Russian propaganda has made its way into the United States, unfortunately,...

When President Biden proposed an additional $24 billion in supplemental funding for Ukraine in August, Moscow spin doctors working for the Kremlin were ready to try to undermine public support for the bill, internal Kremlin documents show. In an ongoing campaign that seeks to influence congressional and other political debates to stoke anti-Ukraine sentiment, Kremlin-linked political strategists and trolls have written thousands of fabricated news articles, social media posts and comments that promote American isolationism, stir fear over the United States’ border security and attempt to amplify U.S. economic and racial tensions, according to a trove of internal Kremlin documents...

Russian president Vladimir Putin over the weekend celebrated the 70th anniversary of the Soviet defeat of Nazi Germany with a military parade on Red Square and a series of smaller events. But while standing next to German chancellor Angela Merkel, he appeared to justify the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact which the Soviet Union signed with the Nazi regime in 1939. “This pact made sense in terms of guaranteeing the Soviet Union’s security,” he said on Sunday (10 May). Putin noted that Moscow, in the 1930s, had tried to stop Nazi Germany, but felt isolated after Germany, France, and the UK signed the...

The trial of Dzhokar Tsarnaev has gripped America, but in Russia the Boston bomber’s trial has received little media coverage, with even the arrival of five Tsarnaev family members from Russia to testify receiving no attention. The relatives are staying in Massachusetts over the weekend, after a sick juror meant their testimony for the defence could not be heard on Thursday. But Russian state-controlled media has shown little interest in their trip to the US, and a decision appears to have been taken that the Tsarnaevs’ links to Russia should be played down. On 8 April, the jury convicted Tsarnaev...

It was 2014, and in a building in St Petersburg, the Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA) was already hard at work building its arsenal to take on US politics. According to US prosecutors, the IRA had gathered stolen identities of real Americans, and a formidable encyclopaedia of what "works" on social media when it comes to riling up Americans talking about politics. Two members of the agency were said to have travelled to the US to gather more intelligence, a fact-finding tour taking in nine states, according to investigators. Back on Russian soil, the IRA began posing online as US...

A social-media account overseen by a former U.S. Navy noncommissioned officer—a prominent online voice supporting Russia’s war on Ukraine—played a key role in the spread of intelligence documents allegedly leaked by Airman First Class Jack Teixeira. A purported Russian blogger known as Donbass Devushka, which translates as Donbas Girl, reposted the files from obscure online chat rooms. The blog is the face of a network of pro-Kremlin social-media, podcasting, merchandise and fundraising accounts. But the person who hosted podcasts as Donbass Devushka and oversees these accounts is a Washington-state-based former U.S. enlisted aviation electronics technician whose real name is Sarah...

Documents leaked by whistleblower angry over Ukraine warPrivate Moscow consultancy bolstering Russian cyberwarfareTools support hacking operations and attacks on infrastructureDocuments linked to notorious Russian hacking group Sandworm...Inside the six-storey building, a new generation is helping Russian military operations... The software engineers behind these systems are employees of NTC Vulkan. On the surface, it looks like a run-of-the-mill cybersecurity consultancy. However, a leak of secret files from the company has exposed its work bolstering Vladimir Putin’s cyberwarfare capabilities.

Kidnapped Ukrainian children are being sent to Russian “re-education” camps — where they are kept in prison-like conditions, forced to watch Russian propaganda, beaten and subjected to sexual violence, according to parents and activists. Inessa Vertash, 43, hasn’t seen her 15-year-old son, Vitaliy, in five months — ever since he left on what was supposed to be a two-week trip to a camp at the urging of his school teacher. It was billed as a retreat to escape the fighting. “I told her I wanted to think about it but she said there’s nothing to think about, they were leaving...

Russian soldiers executed an unarmed Ukrainian military man - a prisoner of war - for the words “Glory to Ukraine.” The video of this crime has appeared on various social media. Ukrainska Pravda, a Ukrainian online newspaper, wrote on Monday, that it is unclear where and when the video was made. The video shows a military officer being taken into Russian captivity. As he utters the words “Glory to Ukraine,” a Russian military officer shoots him with a machine gun.

'Putin has STOLEN our Ukrainian children': Distraught parents tell how THOUSANDS of youngsters never returned from 'summer camps' they went to after being rounded up by Russian troops in 'campaign' likened to ISIS abduction of Yazidi girls Ukraine says it has confirmed that more than 16,000 children have been taken Parents have being tricked into allowing their children to attend 'summer camps' Ukrainian parents have shared their heartbreak at not knowing where their children are or if they will ever see them again after Russian forces kidnapped thousands of youngsters and transported them to 're-education camps' in Russia - in...

The Twitter Files reveal that one of the most common news sources of the Trump era was a scam, making ordinary American political conversations look like Russian spywork ... Ambitious media frauds Stephen Glass and Jayson Blair crippled the reputations of the New Republic and New York Times, respectively, by slipping years of invented news stories into their pages. Thanks to the Twitter Files, we can welcome a new member to their infamous club: Hamilton 68. If one goes by volume alone, this oft-cited neoliberal think-tank that spawned hundreds of fraudulent headlines and TV news segments may go down as...

Russia’s “nuclear war” rhetoric appears every few months, on a kind of cycle. Whenever the West and Ukraine appear to be winning and Ukraine is being strengthened, then Russia will roll out this talk. It will also mobilize other voices to make it seem that Ukraine isn’t interested in “peace” and that Ukraine is “escalating.” This terminology is misplaced because it is Russia that escalated and invaded Ukraine. However, Moscow wants to shift focus to what the West is doing...

Ukraine is facing technical problems with western artillery amid war with Russia. According to New York Times, one-third of the howitzers sent to Ukraine have developed snags. A U.S. official said that a third of the 350 howitzers sent by the west to Ukraine are out of action. The New York Times reported that the United States Department of Defense is concerned over the development. The U.S. reportedly set up a repair facility in Poland to fix "faulty" weapons, the NYT reported. ...

The Justice Department on Monday will unveil “significant national security cases” regarding “malign influence schemes and alleged criminal activity by a nation-state actor” in the United States, according to a statement by the department. Attorney General Merrick Garland was scheduled to hold a press conference announcing more details at 1:30 p.m. “Nation-state actors” typically refer to highly skilled cyber hackers working on behalf of a foreign adversary and aim for high-profile targets such as the military, government infrastructure, or large-scale disinformation or propaganda campaigns. It was not immediately clear to which nation-state the Justice Department announcement was referring. However, the...

Summons delivered to eligible men at midnight. Schoolteachers pressed into handing out draft notices. Men given an hour to pack their things and appear at draft centres. Women sobbing as they sent their husbands and sons off to fight in Russia’s war in Ukraine. The first full day of Russia’s first mobilisation since the second world war produced emotional showdowns at draft centres and even signs of protest, while it appears Russia could be considering far more than the 300,000 new conscripts claimed by the defence minister, Sergei Shoigu. One woman in a small village in the Zakamensky region of...

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All have fallen for the believe that the Ukrainian rapid advance has caused a Russian defeat. That however is not the case. The main Russian forces had already left the area. What was left were sentry guards of the Luhansk People’s Republic and a few companies of the Russian National Guard which is more or less a police force. That is why the ‘western’ official talking with Reuters is quite cautious with his assessment: “There’s an ongoing debate about the nature of the Russian drawdown, however it’s likely that in strict military terms, this was a withdrawal, ordered and sanctioned...

After years of Russiagate conspiracy theories about how the Russians had somehow rigged the 2016 presidential election using Facebook ads, the Senate Intelligence report awkwardly revealed that the Russian operation had focused most of its attention on black nationalists. The Senate report revealed that "most of the videos" put out by the Russian IRA troll factory on YouTube "pertained to police brutality and the activist efforts of the Black Lives Matter organization" and found that "no single group of Americans was targeted... more than African-Americans" around "race and related issues". But that was an understatement. The Russians had created their...

But shortly after the Ionov indictment was announced, the FBI in Tampa confirmed to local media it had raided headquarters of the Uhuru Movement in St. Petersburg, Florida, in connection with the alleged conspiracy. "The Uhuru Movement is a worldwide organization, under the leadership of African People’s Socialist Party, uniting African people as one people for liberation, social justice, self-reliance and economic development," the group said on its website...Four of the “unindicted co-conspirators” listed but not named in the indictment are U.S. citizens living in St. Petersburg, while the others live in Atlanta and California.

MOSCOW, 25 July. /TASS/. The FSB of Russia disrupted the operation of the Ukrainian military intelligence to hijack the planes of the Russian Aerospace Forces, which was supervised by the NATO special services. This was reported to TASS on Monday at the Center for Public Relations (CSP) of the FSB of Russia. "The Federal Security Service uncovered and stopped the operation of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine to hijack combat aircraft of the Russian Aerospace Forces, supervised by NATO special services," the CSO noted. The FSB reported that "Ukrainian military intelligence officers, acting on...