Free Republic

North Korea has been found to be dispatching workers to a drone factory in Russia to produce military drones for the country. The Multilateral Sanctions Monitoring Team (MSMT), comprising 11 countries including South Korea, the United States, and Japan, released a report today (September 16) titled "DPRK Sanctions Evasion and Violations of UN Security Council Resolutions: Overseas Labor." The MSMT was launched to fill the gap in monitoring sanctions against North Korea following the dissolution of the UN Security Council Sanctions Committee on North Korea Panel of Experts in 2024, and this marks its third report. According to the report,...

Iran announced Monday it will establish a new “restricted zone” near the Strait of Hormuz within the coming days — as the flailing nation desperately tries to expand its control over the critical chokepoint. The exclusion zone will span from where the US blockade of Iran begins to other areas of the Gulf, Mohsen Rezaei, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, said on Sunday in an interview with state TV. Rezaei said that any ship that sails into the restricted zone will be placed on a sanctions list. “Any ship that enters this area with the intention of...

Iran is facing a potential economic disaster as the besieged Islamic Republic’s fuel reserves have dwindled to a paltry two-month supply, following months of punishing US bombing campaigns and a fresh wave of crippling economic sanctions. The US unleashed a barrage of secondary sanctions in recent weeks to choke off Iran’s supply of cash, restricting the rogue nation’s access to international financing networks and even blockading its oil exports. This is preventing Iran from doing everything from buying goods to securing foreign currency, and even forcing it to import gasoline because its refinery infrastructure has been decimated and there’s no...

Central Intelligence Agency Director John Ratcliffe paid an unannounced visit to Moscow yesterday, spending eight hours in the Russian capital before returning to the US. Though he visited the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov denied that they had met – though Ratcliffe certainly spoke to his counterpart Sergei Naryshkin, head of Russia’s SVR external intelligence service, and other top Russian security officials. The list of topics urgent enough to prompt the first personal visit of a US cabinet-level official to the Kremlin in six months is short. Ratcliffe could have been responding to reports of a planned Russian escalation...

China warned that it would “take all necessary measures” and retaliate against the US if any of its companies are included in the Trump administration’s new secondary sanctions targeting Iran.Companies based in Hong Kong and mainland China were among the entities targeted by the US after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced “Operation Economic Outcast” on Monday to further isolate Iran. The US, however, stopped short of listing large Chinese financial institutions, with Beijing — Iran’s largest oil buyer — warning that it will do whatever it takes to protect its economic interests. *** “China has made clear on many occasions...

The Obama administration's recent lifting of sanctions against Russia's state arms exporter could boost orders for Russian aircraft from a somewhat-unexpected customer: the U.S. military. As part of its effort to equip the militaries of Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan, the Pentagon has in recent years been snapping up helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft from the arsenals of its former Cold War rivals, including Russia. The goal is to help the three countries build air forces that are rugged, affordable and easy to operate. Washington sanctioned Rosoboronexport, Russia's state arms dealer, in 2006 for its dealings with Iran, and lifted those restrictions...

MOSCOW, May 27 (Xinhua) -- Russian arms export corporation Rosoboronexport signed a contract with the U.S. Army Forces Command on supplying 21 Mi-17V5 multipurpose helicopters to Afghanistan, a spokesman for the Russian Federal Service of Military-Technical Cooperation said on Friday. The United States and Russia have been in talks for more than a year on the deal to provide the much-needed vehicles for the NATO mission in Afghanistan, RIA Novosti reported. The cost of one helicopter has been agreed earlier at 17.5 million U.S. dollars. The first helicopters will be sent to Afghanistan in October 2011, said the spokesman. Besides,...

Following President Trump's executive order imposing sanctions on the ICC, the Treasury has added the court's prosecutor to its Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List.

President Donald Trump, during the first day of the NATO Summit in Ankara on Tuesday, said he will consider allowing Turkey to buy American F-35 fighter jets -- despite possessing Russian-made air defense systems, which his first administration sanctioned the country for six years ago. "It's a decision we're going to make," Trump said as he met Turkish President Recep Erdogan at Erdogan's presidential compound. "We have a better relationship with Turkey, and Turkey's been, in many ways, much more loyal than other countries that we think would be loyal," Trump said. "So, it's something, certainly, we would consider. It's...

Cuba's state power operator UNE announced on Monday that the national electrical system had suffered a "total disconnection," plunging the island into darkness amid its worst economic crisis in decades, severe fuel shortages, and daily blackouts averaging 20 hours. Cuba's national power operator announced on Monday that the island's electrical system had suffered a complete collapse, triggering a nationwide blackout as technicians worked to restore service. The state-run company UNE said in a post on X that the National Electric Power System had gone down completely without immediate explanation. "A total disconnection of the National Electric Power System is occurring....

India’s oil imports from Russia are on track to hit a new record in June, as refiners continue to rely heavily on discounted Russian crude after supply disruptions in West Asia caused by the regional conflict. According to preliminary vessel-tracking data from commodity analytics firm Kpler, India imported an average of 2.6 million barrels of Russian oil per day in June so far. That accounts for 53.5% of the country’s total crude imports during the period. For the full month, Russian imports are expected to exceed 2.35 million barrels per day, which would be the highest monthly level ever recorded....

Revolver has spent years exposing lawfare, unjust political prosecutions, like what the Biden regime did to Douglass Mackey, selective justice, and the weaponization of the courts against Americans who find themselves on the “wrong side” of politics. We don’t suddenly stop caring about due process because the defendants are on the left. If prosecutors twist the law, hide evidence, punish free speech, or use the justice system to settle political wars, we’ll happily call it out. But that’s not some free pass to take a violent, armed attack, take out every inconvenient fact, call an ambush a “protest,” and demand...

Well, to be clear, it appears that many of the sanctions have already been lifted, as Iranian oil shipments are flowing out of the Strait of Hormuz. The blockade, it appears, is already over, even before the official signing we expect on Friday. The lifting of sanctions on oil-related exports appears to be point #10 in the leaked but unconfirmed Memorandum of Understanding. 🚨 The Iranian television is broadcasting from the Strait of Hormuz. and claims: At least 3 oil tankers carrying 5 million barrels of crude oil have passed through the Strait of Hormuz in recent hours. pic.twitter.com/13txRGNFEv— Raylan...

A sanctioned Russian LNG tanker from the Portovaya project idled near Singapore in May 2026 with no buyer. At the same time, Ukrainian drones had already knocked roughly 700,000 barrels per day of Russian refining capacity offline across 16 major facilities. Europe had locked in a binding legal phase-out of Russian gas. And just four months earlier, U.S. forces had captured Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela.

France taking a leading role in applying Ukraine War pressure on Russia with another seizure of an oil tanker. The tanker "Tagor" taken in the Atlantic Ocean last Sunday more than 700 kilometers (435 miles) off the coast of Brittany. France and other European countries have seized 'shadow fleet' merchant vessels... In what could be called 'economic warfare' French authorities fining Chinese low-cost clothing maker Shein 22 million euros (25.342 million dollars). The fine linked to difficulty for buyers to return clothing and questions over materials used by Shein to make clothing... France's national counterterrorism prosecutor's office (PNAT) probing Israeli...

Washington: The United States has sanctioned the Persian Gulf Strait Authority, the ⁠body Iran has set up to manage ⁠the Strait of Hormuz, ‌the Treasury Department said ​on Wednesday.

The United States has prosposed temporarily waiving off sanctions on Iranian oil, as per reports by Tehran's Tasnim news agency on Monday. To ramp up its pressure on Iran from the economic front, Washington had introduced restrictions on trade of Iranian oil. While primary sanctions included barring American companies from trading in Iranian oil secondary sanction threaten to penalise non-American entities, banks, and foreign governments that purchase Iranian petroleum.

The ​U.S. Treasury ‌Department is ​sanctioning ​multiple wallets ⁠tied ​to ​Iran, thereby freezing $344 ​million ​in cryptocurrency, Treasury ‌Secretary ⁠Scott Bessent ​said ​in ⁠a statement ​on ​X.....

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky has condemned a US decision to extend the period during which Russia is allowed to sell oil despite Western sanctions. The move means countries can purchase Russian oil and petroleum products already loaded on vessels at sea until 16 May. The US argues that the waiver is meant to ease the energy supply crunch sparked by the US-Israel war with Iran. But in his remarks on Sunday, Zelensky said "every dollar paid for Russian oil is money for the war" in Ukraine. Widespread sanctions have been in place against Russia since President Vladimir Putin launched his...

Was this illegal part of a Venezuelan or Cuban military intelligence operation? Why, again, was he let in? Joe Biden's open borders may be about more than just replacing the electorate. The New York Post found that one of the most malevolent of the border surgers, a Venezuelan illegal named Leonel Moreno, who famously urged other illegals to squat in Americans' homes and waved hundred-dollar bills around to boast of his public benefits on TikTok, is being investigated by the feds for his military intelligence work for the Marxist dictatorship back home. According to the Post: Joe Biden's open borders...