Free Republic

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 extras were recruited on social media platforms and offered money and free merchandise to pack out a patriotic stadium rally helmed by President Vladimir Putin in Moscow Wednesday, according to reports. Putin, 70, praised troops who he said were defending the fatherland during the celebration at the Luzhniki Stadium, which was festooned with oversized Russian flags. Friday marks the one-year anniversary of the defiant leader’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, which he has continued to call a “special military operation” and repeatedly tried to blame the West for. The festivities were attended by a crowd estimated to be around 200,000...

A high-ranking Russian defense official in the war against Ukraine was found dead Wednesday after falling from a 16th-floor window in an apartment building. Marina Yankina, 58, was discovered by a passerby at the entrance of a high-rise on Zamshina Street in St. Petersburg, Russian news Telegram channel Mash reported. She is believed to have fallen 160 feet to her death. Her personal belongings and documents were found on a 16th-floor balcony in the building. According to a preliminary investigation, it is believed Yankina committed suicide. Mash reported that a few minutes before allegedly taking her own life, Yankina called...

Graphic drone footage appears to show dozens of Russian armored vehicles getting ambushed and destroyed during a single botched attack near the coal-mining town of Vuhledar in eastern Ukraine, which Moscow’s forces have been trying to capture for months. Vuhledar, a Ukrainian stronghold at the strategic intersection between the eastern and southern front lines, has seen some of the bloodiest fighting of the war as the Kremlin is gearing up for a decisive offensive on the eastern front. Based on the newly released video evidence, a column of dozens of tanks and armored vehicles was lost or damaged last week,...

President Volodymyr Zelensky vowed Friday that Ukrainians will fight “for as long as we can” to hold the key eastern city of Bakhmut, as Moscow ramps up pressure in the eastern region of Ukraine. “Nobody will give away Bakhmut,” Zelensky said during a meeting with European Union leaders. “We will fight for as long as we can. We consider Bakhmut our fortress.” “If weapon (supplies) are accelerated, specifically long-range weapons, not only will we not abandon Bakhmut but we will also begin to remove the occupiers from the Donbas, which was occupied since 2014,” he president added. Moscow says its...

Singer Azealia Banks offered Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis her ringing endorsement in a new interview, proclaiming that she feels “way safer” living in the Sunshine State under the Republican’s leadership than she ever did in liberal California. The “212” rapper, who relocated to Miami in 2021, weighed in on the potential 2024 GOP frontrunner as she recalled spending the pandemic in Los Angeles “isolated and scared,” surrounded by virtue-signaling wealthy liberals displaying “Black Lives Matter” signs at their homes and businesses. “Every which way I turn there’s a Black Lives Matter sign, and then we’re watching swathes of Latino people...

Ukrainian forces battled Friday to repel waves of Russian soldiers trying to break through their defense lines in the east, as they pleaded for more weapons before the first Western battle tanks arrive. Ukrainian officials confirmed that brutal battles were underway, a day after at least 11 people were killed and as many people were injured in missile and armed-drone strikes across the country, including in the capital of Kyiv, which were widely viewed as retaliatory after the US and European countries pledged to send modern tanks. “Fierce fighting continues along the front lines,” said Oleh Synehubov, governor of the...

Rep. Nancy Pelosi choked back tears while discussing her husband’s prolonged recovery from a brutal hammer attack last fall, saying it could take months before he is “back to normal.” The former House speaker, 82, opened up about Paul Pelosi’s condition during an appearance on “Who’s Talking To Chris Wallace?” “He’s doing OK,” Pelosi (D-Calif.) told Wallace after the veteran newsman asked how her husband was doing. “It’s going to take a little while for him to be back to normal.” Paul Pelosi, also 82, was alone at the family’s San Francisco home early Oct. 28 when conspiracy theorist David...

Ukraine claimed that Russia has lost close to 117,000 troops since the beginning of the full-scale invasion last February — which is more servicemen than the US lost during World War I. There have been 116,950 enemy troops “eliminated” since Feb. 24, according to the latest tallies released by Ukraine’s Armed Forces Tuesday, which The Post could not independently verify. Kyiv reported that in the last 24 hours alone, 870 Russians had been killed in Ukraine. For comparison, the US lost 116,516 soldiers during World War I, of whom more than 63,000 suffered non-combat deaths mostly related to illnesses.

Ukrainian forces are on the brink of recapturing the strategically important city of Kreminna in the east, according to a local official. Serhiy Haidai, regional governor of the contested Luhansk region, which was annexed by Vladimir Putin after a sham referendum, tweeted Monday that the military command of the Russian forces “has left #kreminna, which the Ukrainian military is approaching…” Haidi added that the fighting was already raging not far from the city. In a Telegram post Tuesday, the official wrote: “the Russians understand that if they lose Kreminna, their entire line of defense will ‘fall.'” In a Christmas Eve...

Vladimir Putin on Tuesday angrily gave marching orders to Russia’s security forces to redouble their efforts to root out traitors and spies working to undermine his regime. -snip- “Maximum composure, concentration of forces is now required from counterintelligence agencies, including military intelligence,” Putin said. “It is necessary to harshly crack down on the actions of foreign special services, promptly identify traitors, spies and saboteurs.” In an uncharacteristic break from the official line that the so-called “special military operation” is going according to plan, Putin admitted the situation was “difficult” in the four regions of Ukraine that were illegally annexed by...

Anti-Semitic hate crimes in New York City more than doubled in November compared to the same month last year, according to the latest numbers released by the NYPD. There were 45 hate crimes inspired by anti-Semitism across the five boroughs last month, compared to 20 in November 2021 — representing a 125% spike. The dramatic increase coincided with scandals involving Kanye West, now known as Ye, and Brooklyn Nets star Kyrie Irving spewing anti-Semitic rhetoric on Twitter and in interviews. “We have normalized hate and I continue to say the biggest spreader of this hate is social media,” Mayor Eric...

Former President Donald Trump was back peddling election fraud claims ahead of his expected announcement that he will be launching a 2024 presidential bid Tuesday night. Taking to Truth Social after ally Kari Lake lost in the race for Arizona governor, Trump, 76, falsely claimed that the election was stolen from her. “Wow! They just took the election away from Kari Lake. It’s really bad out there!” Trump wrote Monday night. Lake, Trump’s staunch supporter who maintained without any evidence that the 2020 election was rigged, lost to Democrat Katie Hobbs on Monday after being projected to lose in the...

Anti-Russia activists and former Russian politicians have reportedly been meeting in Poland to discuss options for removing President Vladimir Putin from power — including by “physically eliminating” him. The group of Putin foes has mulled various regime change scenarios, among them unleashing a civil war in Russia, taking up arms and killing Putin, the European media network Euractiv reported. “The main goal is to physically eliminate Putin,” opposition activist Viacheslav Maltsev said. Maltsev, who fled Russia in 2017 after being labeled an extremist by the state, noted that a civil war in Russia would not be “as bloody as the...

Russia is considering shooting down commercial Western satellites as payback for aiding Ukraine in the war, which could put the US and Kyiv’s other allies on a collision course with Moscow. Konstantin Vorontsov, deputy head of Russia’s delegation at a UN arms control panel, said the use of Western satellites to help Ukrainian forces on the battlefield was “an extremely dangerous trend.” “Quasi-civilian infrastructure may be a legitimate target for a retaliatory strike,” he told the UN First Committee, adding that the West’s use of such satellites to support Ukraine was “provocative.” “We are talking about the involvement of components...

Russian President Vladimir Putin has been seen in a recent video with what appear to be IV track marks on the back of his hand, reigniting rumors that he is battling cancer. Eagle-eyed viewers watching a propaganda video that was released by Russia’s Ministry of Defense last week spotted a suspicious mark on Putin’s right hand as he was grasping a soldier’s arm while visiting a boot camp in the Ryazan region.

A video has emerged on social media showing what appears to be three Russian soldiers surrendering to Ukrainian forces as their armored personnel carrier (APC) flies a makeshift white flag. Vitaly Kim, head of the Nikolayev region’s military administration, shared the video on his official Telegram channel Wednesday, claiming that the Russian soldiers sold the armored vehicle to the Ukrainian military as part of the surrender process.“We bought an BMP-2 (APC),” Kim wrote in the caption, the pro-Ukraine news outlet zn.ua reported. The recording, which was also uploaded to the pro-Ukrainian Telegram channel “Nikolayevskiy Vanyok,” shows the armored vehicle with...

A newly launched Ukrainian hotline offering Russian soldiers a chance to surrender — and stay alive — has been fielding thousands of calls from desperate draftees, according to Ukrainian officials. Andriy Yusov, a representative of Ukraine’s Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense, said in a recent interview with Voice of America that thousands of enemy troops have reached out to the “I Want to Live” program via phone or online chat to give up their arms. Yusov said the hotline has been receiving offers of surrender at a rate of hundreds a day from soldiers already fighting in...

Soldiers in Russia’s newly formed 3rd Army Corps fighting in Ukraine are often drunk, plagued by low morale and forced to use obsolete weapons on the battlefield, according to the Ukrainian military. The Kremlin cobbled together the formation in June to replace the tens of thousands of troops killed or injured since the start of the invasion in February. It is composed of several brigades totaling some 15,000 mostly volunteer soldiers equipped with hundreds of tanks, Newsweek reported. But according to an update from the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine on Monday, Russia’s five-month-old unit is facing...

Lefty Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner claimed violent crime was worse in “Trump states” — as he denied his soft-on-crime policies were to blame for his city’s soaring crime rate. Krasner’s bold statements came during a fiery interview with Fox29’s “Good Morning Philadelphia” Wednesday, when he was grilled by anchor Mike Jerrick a day after five teens were shot at a high school.