Free Republic

VIDEO Today, the biggest news is coming from the Kherson direction. Here, Ukrainian marines just launched a daring operation into the besieged town of Oleshky, on the Russian-controlled side of the Dnipro River. Ukrainian civilians in the town have been under tight Russian control since the full-scale invasion, and recently the situation became critical enough to warrant a massive rescue mission. Heavy bomber drones flew into the Russian-controlled town, delivering dozens of heavy crates full of food, water, medicine, and hygiene supplies to the Ukrainian residents. Smaller Ukrainian FPV drones were also deployed, hoping to carry as much humanitarian aid...

China, Russia, Iran and North Korea, known collectively as CRINK, are seeking to undermine U.S. leadership by weakening the rules-based international order. Human rights violations and trafficking at the Alabuga complex in the Russian town of Yelabuga illustrate the increasingly complex ties among the CRINK regimes. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 created a demand for drones that Moscow could not initially meet. Its answer was an arrangement to manufacture the Iranian-designed Shahed on Russian soil. This report contends that the burgeoning labor force that powers the Alabuga drone factory has become a site of gross human rights...

Last Friday, hidden in the aftermath of the U.S. government’s decision to waive sanctions on Russia, was language proposing a joint U.S.-Russia project on data centers. As part of wider negotiations with the United States, Special Envoy to the Russian President Kirill Dmitriev suggested that a joint initiative between the two countries could focus on building data center infrastructure. Moreover, his statement suggested that several Russian companies were “actively participating” in the preliminary stages of these discussions. Data centers are a delicate issue. Domestically, the rise in AI use is driving massive economic investment in data center development across the...