Free Republic

Biden announced his intention to drop out of the race July 21 and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as the party's nominee.MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Former US President Barack Obama threatened Joe Biden with removal from office under the 25th Amendment to the US Constitution if he did not withdraw from the presidential race, US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh has claimed. Obama told Biden he had gotten the approval of US Vice President Kamala Harris to invoke the safeguard against presidential incapacity, Hersh said in a blog post on Substack. The journalist noted that, in accordance with the 25th Amendment to...

A prominent Ukrainian air unit responded with delight to the attempted assassination of former US President Donald Trump, who has criticized Western support for Kiev's proxy war against Russia.The social media channel of Ukraine’s 79th Air Assault Brigade celebrated the shooting of former US President Donald Trump Saturday, according to a Sputnik contributor, appearing to jokingly take credit for the assassination attempt. Security analyst Mark Sleboda made the revelation on Sputnik’s The Critical Hour program Monday. “As soon as [the shooting] happened, the first thing that popped into my mind was, hmm, Mirotvorets,”M said host Garland Nixon, referring to the...

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - President Joe Biden said during a press conference after the NATO summit that he would take a neurological exam if his doctors recommended it but so far he has not received such suggestions from his medical team. "If they think I should have a neurological exam again, I'll do it, [but] no one's suggesting that to me now," Biden said on Thursday. Earlier in the press conference, Biden referred to Vice President Kamala Harris as former US President, and his likely opponent, Donald Trump. "I wouldn't have picked Vice President Trump to be vice president [inaudible] if...

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said during his remarks on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Washington that it is unlikely that the 31 US-supplied Abrams tanks made much of a difference on the battlefield in Ukraine. "I'm not sure that such a number of tanks can change the situation in the battle," Zelensky said on Tuesday. In May, CNN reported, citing Ukrainian crews maintaining the M1 Abrams tanks supplied by the United States, that there were numerous issues with using the armored vehicles on the battlefield. The crews said that the $10 million vehicles did...

UNITED NATIONS (Sputnik) - An air defense missile that hit a children's hospital in Kiev was likely fired from a Norway-supplied NASAMS system, and Russia is waiting for a reaction from Oslo in this regard, Russian Permanent Representative to the UN Vassily Nebenzia said on Tuesday.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Ukrainian missiles would not have hit Russian cities, including Sevastopol, without direct US involvement in targeting, and Moscow will respond "in the foreseeable future," Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Sunday. "Without the direct involvement of the United States in the targeting and processing of satellite data, these missiles would not have gone anywhere ... As for our response, the [Russian] president said we will respond, and I'm sure you'll hear about it in the foreseeable future," Lavrov told Russian journalist Pavel Zarubin. The diplomat said NATO and the US continue to insist on their non-involvement...

We can see that Kiev is not ready to give up waging war until the end, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a statement to the press after holding talks with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban."The way we see the situation, including what the prime minister said today, Kiev is still not ready to give up waging the war until the ‘victorious’ end," the president told the press. Putin added that implementing Russia’s peace initiatives would allow the cessation of hostilities and the start of the negotiation process. "Our [Russia's] peace initiatives have been recently presented at my meeting with...

Private debt forgiveness is the only response to the country’s bleak economic situation, according to the broadsheet.With Kiev’s gloomy financial prospects showing no sign of improving, one British newspaper is insisting that Western bondholders must forgive a substantial portion of the country’s arrears. “Kiev was already in a complex debt situation going into the war, having restructured its private debt in 2015,” noted the Financial Times broadsheet in an editorial published Sunday. “The country must now balance borrowing to fund the war with managing old debt obligations.” “Doing so is a tricky juggling act,” the paper’s editorial board observed, claiming...

On Friday, Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs hosted a seminal meeting headed by the head of state, where the Russian president outlined the historical background for the country’s foreign policy vectors in a conversation with senior Russian diplomats. Read the full text below.Dear colleagues, good afternoon! I am pleased to welcome you all, and at the beginning of our meeting, I want to thank you for your dedicated work in the interest of Russia and our people. In this broad assembly, we last met in November 2021. Since then, many pivotal and, without exaggeration, fateful events have occurred both in...

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that the security agreement signed between Ukraine and the United States is insignificant. "In the first half of the year, Ukraine has signed a package of agreement with a number of European countries, now there is a similar document with the US… If there is a serious legal expertise of such an agreement, there will definitely arise a question: who and with which competences signed these documents. It will turn out that this all is a bluff: the treaty is insignificant, all the structure will crumble," Putin said at the...

The Biden administration has greenlit the use of American long-range strike systems by Ukraine to launch attacks deep into Russia. This puts the entire planet in a “shockingly” dangerous situation, says former DoD analyst and US Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski. President Biden has knowingly or unwittingly brought the risk of a world-ending nuclear conflict much, much closer after listening to “neoconservative advisors who really don’t have a lot of perspective on the nuclear dangers that they’re walking into” instead of military specialists and okaying Ukraine’s use of NATO weapons to strike the Russian hinterland, Kwiatkowski told Sputnik. “The...

Russia wants to understand whom it can trust before engaging with partners on the Ukrainian conflict, President Vladimir Putin said during a trip to China on Friday. "We must understand with whom and how we can engage and whom and to what degree we can trust. We are of course analyzing everything that is going on," Putin told a press conference in Harbin. The president pointed to China as a stakeholder that was sincerely trying to put an end to the conflict in Ukraine. "We believe that China is sincere about its efforts to solve this problem. It has suggested...

The missing American who’d traveled to Ukraine years ago to aid Russian separatists in Donbas was found dead in the country’s war-torn eastern region. The body of Russell Bentley, a 64-year-old U.S. Army vet, was recovered in the Russian-controlled region of Donetsk Oblast, Reuters reported. -snip- The former pothead, who used “Texas” as his military call-sign, left behind a yoga instructor girlfriend to travel to Ukraine. He utilized crowdfunding sites to finance his trip, and had since become a Russian citizen. He also got married after moving to Ukraine, where he began working as a reporter for the state-owned Sputnik...

MOSCOW, (Sputnik) - At least nine Iranian missiles have hit two of Israel's airbases during the recent attack, damaging infrastructure, ABC News reported on Sunday, citing an unnamed senior US official. Five ballistic missiles struck Israel's Nevatim airbase, damaging a C-130 military transport aircraft, a runway and storage facilities, while four more missiles hit an Israeli airbase in the Negev desert but without any significant damage reported. On Saturday night, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps launched over 300 drones and missiles at Israel in its first-ever direct attack on Israeli territory, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said. The attack came...

Russian President Vladimir Putin said that there is every reason to believe that the main goal of the perpetrators of the terrorist attack in Crocus City Hall was to cause harm to Russia's unity. "In this regard, of course, judging by the ongoing investigation, we have every reason to believe that the main goal of the perpetrators of this bloody, terrible terrorist act in Moscow was precisely to cause harm to our unity. No other goals are visible, they simply do not exist," Putin said at the XII Congress of the Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Russia. The shooting...

Covert allies? What is the relationship between ISIS-K* and the US? Recent data reveals that the perpetrators of the heinous massacre on Crocus City Hall were allegedly recruited via a Telegram channel administered by members of 'Wilayat Khorasan'*, also recognized as ISIS-K*, per a Sputnik source. As we delve deeper into the motive behind this branch of ISIS*, Sputnik has put together essential facts and clues linking the US to these notorious jihadists.

TORZHOK, Russia (Sputnik) - Statements about alleged plans of Russia to attack Europe after Ukraine are nonsense, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said. During a working visit to the Russian town of Torzhok in the Tver Region on Wednesday, Putin met with military pilots. "What is being said that we are going to attack Europe after Ukraine - it is utter nonsense and intimidation of own population just to beat the money out of them, out of their people. Especially against the backdrop of the fact that the economy is shrinking and living standards are falling. It is obvious, and...

Exactly ten years ago, former President Viktor Yanukovych signed an agreement with the Euromaidan opposition to resolve the political crisis in Ukraine. The very next day, the opposition tore up the agreement and seized power by force. Months of Euromaidan riots ended with Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych agreeing to reform the constitution, form a "government of national unity," and hold early elections in December 2014. The then-Ukrainian president also agreed to pardon rioters and launch investigations into violent acts by law enforcement officials. How West & Ukrainian Opposition Derailed Peace AccordsThe February 21 agreements to end the political crisis in...

De-dollarization is the process of reducing the US dollar's hegemony in global trade and financial operations by shifting to alternative exchange methods such as national currencies and domestic payment systems, as well as transferring currency reserves. A third of UN member states have already opted for de-dollarization and decided to rely on national currencies to conduct payments, Sputnik's analysis has found. The analysis, which looked into statements made by officials from 193 UN countries in international and Russian media, showed that representatives of at least 68 UN nations openly supported the process of de-dollarization or stated that they were taking...

The White House gave the Kiev regime a set of conditions for receiving aid from the West. Ukraine is required to conduct a series of sweeping reforms concerning its courts, security service, Defense ministry, and economy. Earlier this week, Deputy White House National Security Adviser for International Economics Mike Pyle sent a draft list of reforms to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal, as per Ukrainian media. The document was also forwarded to the multi-agency Donor Coordination Platform, a group of organizations including the EU, G7 governments, and the main international financial organizations, including the International Monetary...