Free Republic

- Russian President Vladimir Putin quipped on Friday (June 20) that in his view the whole of Ukraine was "ours" and cautioned that advancing Russian forces could take the Ukrainian city of Sumy as part of a bid to carve out a buffer zone along the border. Putin, who ordered troops into Ukraine in 2022 after eight years of fighting in eastern Ukraine, also said he was not seeking the capitulation of Ukraine or denying Ukraine's sovereignty, but that Ukraine had to be neutral. Russia currently controls about a fifth of Ukraine, including Crimea, more than 99 per cent of...

Iran’s mission to the U.N. on Wednesday dismissed recent comments by U.S. President Donald Trump, stating that Tehran will not engage in negotiations or accept peace imposed through pressure. "No Iranian official has ever asked to grovel at the gates of the White House," the mission said in a post on X, responding to Trump's recent claim that Iranians "even suggest that they come to the White House." "The only thing more despicable than his lies is his cowardly threat to 'take out' Iran's Supreme Leader," it added. Reaffirming its defiance against pressure, the mission said: "Iran does NOT negotiate...

President Trump revealed to reporters outside the White House that he spoke with Vladimir Putin yesterday, saying the Russian leader offered to mediate the Iran-Israel conflict. Even Trump, who has been a staunch defender of Putin, admitted he couldn't play peacemaker while the Ukraine-Russia war rages. -snip- “Would have never happened if I was president,” he said before making a four-word comment to Putin directly. “Putin would have never done it and I spoke to him yesterday and I said you know, he actually offered to help mediate. I said ‘do me a favor, mediate your own. Let’s mediate Russia...

Russia has strongly defended Iran’s right to maintain peaceful nuclear installations. Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said Iran had the right to such facilities in the past, holds it now, and will continue to do so in the future. She made these remarks while speaking to Sputnik Radio, stressing that peaceful nuclear sites are now under direct attack. Zakharova warned that the threat of nuclear conflict in the Middle East is no longer a theory but a real and growing danger. She said these attacks are not only increasing tensions but also posing a serious threat to both the...

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea will send thousands of military construction workers and deminers to support reconstruction work in Russia’s Kursk region, a top Russian official said Tuesday, the latest sign of expanding cooperation between the nations. North Korea has already supplied thousands of combat troops and a vast amount of conventional weapons to back Russia’s war against Ukraine. In April, Pyongyang and Moscow said that their soldiers fought together to repel a Ukrainian incursion into Russia’s Kursk border region, though Ukraine has insisted it still has troops present there. Wrapping up a one-day visit to Pyongyang, Russian Security...

Half of the thousands of North Korean troops sent to help Russia's attempted invasion of Ukraine have died in action, according to British Defence Intelligence. Roughly 11,000 troops have been dispatched by Kim Jong Un to aid Vladimir Putin's war effort in Eastern Europe since 2022 as the ties between their two countries has become closer. Now it has been revealed that more than 6,000 soldiers from North Korea have lost their lives after being stationed to the frontline in the Kurk region

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Monday that he was removing the entire membership of the influential vaccine advisory panel that makes immunization recommendations to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal, Kennedy said he was making the unprecedented move to retire the 17 independent vaccine experts from the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices because the panel has been “plagued with persistent conflicts of interest” and has become a “rubber stamp” for vaccines. Kennedy has long criticized the panel, which makes vaccine recommendations to the CDC director....

Legal experts questioned the president’s response to unrest in Los Angeles, saying the military personnel involved will face strict limitations under the law.President Donald Trump’s order to deploy 2,000 California National Guard troops to Los Angeles is unprecedented, relying on an unorthodox use of a law aimed at quelling serious domestic unrest or an attack on the United States by a foreign power, some legal experts said Sunday.Trump invoked a section of the Armed Forces Act that allows the president to bypass a governor’s authority over the National Guard and call those troops into federal service when he considers it...

CNN — Russia claimed Sunday that its forces are for the first time pushing into the central Ukrainian region of Dnipropetrovsk, an area it has been trying to reach for months, in a move that could create new problems for Kyiv’s much-stretched forces. Subunits from the Russian military’s 90th tank division reached the border of Dnipropetrovsk with the Donetsk region, large parts of which are already under Russian occupation, according to the Russian Ministry of Defense. After this, they continued into Dnipropetrovsk, the defense ministry claimed.

American President Donald Trump has once again threatened Russia. He claims that if Russia crosses the line, the United States will respond, Trump made this statement during a meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz at the White House. Furthermore, Trump recently said that in two weeks, he would know whether Putin is trying to deceive him about ending the war. According to Trump, if the Russian President lies about peace, the US will change its approach. "If i see somebody's out of line. If I see Russia's out of line — you will be amazed. Remember this: they like to...

The comments, in an Oval Office meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, were Trump’s clearest indication to date that he was unsure he would be able to quell Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine.Ukraine and Russia may need to keep fighting, President Donald Trump said Thursday, comparing the warring nations to squabbling children in what appeared to be a signal that the U.S. leader was losing interest in brokering peace in a conflict he once promised to end in a day. The comments, in an Oval Office meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, were Trump’s clearest indication to date that...

video of explosions in Russia's Bryansk tonight. Ammunition detonation can be seen and heard before a powerful blast takes place.

The recent drone attack on Russian nuclear bombers doesn’t mean much strategically, in military terms. Bomber aircraft are an early 20th century technology used to deliver and drop bombs on targets, only because the bombs couldn’t get there themselves. Today, Russia has hypersonic missiles that are entirely self-directed; and they are up to ten times faster than any aircraft that could deliver them. Fighters and bombers are antiquated last-generation relics. They create some symbolic prestige and that’s about all.Moreover, even if all of Russia’s bombers were disabled, how would that stop them from launching weapons from submarines, ships, or silos?...

President Trump thought Ukraine's surprise drone attack over the weekend was "strong" and "badass," sources who discussed it with him tell Axios, but he's also concerned it will make his ceasefire mission even harder. -snip- He has been surprisingly mum in public when it comes to his personal feelings about Ukraine's attack. In private, though, he marveled at the operation. Behind the scenes: "Pretty strong," Trump told one confidant, who relayed his remarks to Axios. "He thought it was badass," a second source said of Trump's reaction. One Trump adviser said: "From an international perspective, you've got a chihuahua inflicting...

FOUR Russian airfields housing Putin's nuke bombers have reportedly been blitzed in an extraordinary drone strike - wiping out at least 40 aircraft. Ukrainian drones - reportedly launched from lorries inside Russia - targeted airbases in Belaya, Diaghilevo, Olenya and Ivanovo as part of a daring operation codenamed "Spiderweb".

A bipartisan pair of US senators met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv on Friday and urged stronger sanctions against Russia, while uncertainty swirls over whether the next round of peace talks will move ahead in the coming days. Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut met with Zelensky and other top Ukrainian officials in the capital. Their visit came just days after Russia launched its biggest aerial assault against Ukraine since the start of the war, and as the US ramps up pressure on Moscow to end the three-year conflict. Among...

A claim by the Russian Defence Ministry that Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin was "in the epicentre of a drone attack" has turned out to be a staged performance by the Kremlin. Russian state media claimed earlier this week that when Putin visited Kursk Oblast for the first time since the hostilities began in the area, his helicopter came "under fire from Ukrainian drones". In reality, this was not a combat incident but a meticulously staged event. Four sources within the government and the Kremlin told The Moscow Times that security officials promoted this shocking and "risky" episode in the media...

Belarusian strongman Alexander Lukashenko called on Wednesday for the country to produce more potatoes in the face of a large shortage of the key crop and rising demand from neighbouring Russia. "We have to grow enough so that it suffices for us and for Russia," Lukashenko said during a meeting with regional officials in Minsk, state news agency BelTA reported. The potato has in the past been seen as a symbol of Lukashenko's rule of the country, which is heavily dependant on agriculture. He was once head of a state-run collective farm, or sovkhoz. Food shortages have arisen recently in...

Journalists have uncovered the leak of two million documents concerning Russia’s secret nuclear bases. This discovery could have serious implications for the country's security, potentially necessitating significant infrastructure changes. Journalists from the investigative portal Danwatch and the newspaper "Der Spiegel" have obtained two million Russian documents pertaining to the country's secret nuclear bases. Among them are detailed plans for the construction and modernisation of the base in Yasny, where the Avangard hypersonic glide missile has been positioned since 2019. The documents also reveal information about security systems, the placement of cameras and sensors, and infrastructure details such as underground tunnels...

Ukraine used drones in an attempt to down a helicopter carrying Russian President Vladimir Putin over Russia’s Kursk region on May 20. Russian Air Force Major-General Yuri Dashkin said Putin’s helicopter was “virtually at the epicenter of repelling a large-scale attack by the enemy’s drones,” and that 46 drones were shot down during the attack, according to a report from the Associated Press.