Free Republic

Aug 14, 2025

After three years of war, with the commentariat on both sides eagerly predicting the looming collapse of the enemy, it behooves one to develop a prudent aversion to histrionic predictions. However, it seems fairly obvious that the war in Ukraine is at a critical juncture, and August 2025 will receive considerable play in retrospective accounts of the conflict, as perhaps the last opportunity for Ukraine to cut a deal and slither out of its strategic grave. On Friday, August 15, Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin are slated to meet in Alaska to discuss steps to end the war. Whether those...

President Trump agreed with European leaders including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to red lines for the coming talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska and said he hoped to follow up quickly with a trilateral summit with the two warring leaders. -snip- “President Trump was very clear that the American desire was to obtain a cease-fire at this meeting in Alaska,” Macron told reporters after the meeting. -snip- While Trump’s decision last week to meet Putin on American soil worried Europeans, trans-Atlantic relations have since warmed. In a flurry of calls and meetings, senior U.S. officials—including Trump, Vance and...

Ukraine says it has struck a critical oil-pumping station in Russia’s Bryansk region, igniting a large fire at a hub feeding the Druzhba pipeline to Europe. The Unecha facility also links to the Baltic Pipeline System-2, which carries Russian crude to Ust-Luga, the country’s second-largest Baltic oil port.

President Donald Trump threatened "very severe consequences" for Russia if President Vladimir Putin doesn’t agree to end the war in Ukraine after their meeting in Alaska on Friday. -snip- Trump later appeared to cast doubt on whether he could convince Putin to stop bombing Ukrainian civilians. "I'll tell you what. I've had that conversation with him. I've had a lot of good conversations with him then I go home and I see that a rocket hit a nursing home or a rocket hit an apartment building, and people are laying dead in the streets," Trump said. "So, I guess the...

United States President Donald Trump stressed on Wednesday that if Russian President Vladimir Putin refuses to stop the war in Ukraine during their meeting in Alaska, his country will face "severe consequences." Speaking to reporters, the US head of state did not specify what types of consequences Moscow would suffer. However, he insisted that he would be putting pressure on the country. The comments come after Trump's phone conversations with the European leaders. According to media reports, the US president told his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky that territorial swaps might be necessary.

President Volodymyr Zelensky has said Ukraine would reject any Russian proposal to give up the Donbas region in exchange for a ceasefire, warning it could be used as a springboard for future attacks. Zelensky was speaking ahead of a meeting between US President Donald Trump and Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday. Trump has said any peace deal would involve "some swapping of territories" and it is believed one of Putin's demands is that Kyiv surrenders the parts of the Donbas it still controls. Meanwhile Russia's troops have continued their summer offensive, making a sudden thrust near the...

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova slammed the new United States President Donald Trump's trade policy, describing it as an attempt to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries. "This US policy constitutes a direct violation of the national sovereignty of states, an attempt to interfere in their internal affairs, not to mention the fact that it generally leads to a slowdown in economic growth, damage to supply chains, and fragmentation of the global economy," the spokeswoman said in a statement. However, Zakharova noted that neither sanctions nor tariffs "can do anything with the natural course of history," stressing...

This is the problem. Whitaker’s arrogance thinks that the US is so powerful that it can crush Russia without ever firing a shot and calling Putin “sick and twisted” when we started this war, and there were TWO peace deals which the WEST broke – not Russia. I have NEVER in my entire life witnessed such INCOMPETENT diplomacy. The Neocons have been instructing Trump to be strong and yield nothing to Putin, and he will fold. Peace is easy. Just HONOR the Minsk Agreement. But this is a war to destroy Russia, and Trump is a fool who is being...

Russian lawmaker Viktor Vodolatsky responded to President Donald Trump's decision to move two U.S. nuclear submarines to "appropriate regions" near Russia by saying that Moscow can count on far more submarines than Washington. "There are significantly more of our [nuclear] submarines in the world's oceans, [and they] have the strongest, most powerful weapons," Vodolatsky, who is also first deputy chairman of the State Duma Committee on Commonwealth of Independent States Affairs, Eurasian Integration and Relations with Compatriots, told Russia's government-controlled news agency TASS. "This is why, let [Trump's] two boats float, they have been at gunpoint for a long time,"...

India will keep purchasing oil from Russia despite U.S. President Donald Trump's threats of penalties, two Indian government sources told Reuters on Saturday, not wishing to be identified due to the sensitivity of the matter. On top of a new 25% tariff on India's exports to the U.S., Trump indicated in a Truth Social post last month that India would face additional penalties for purchases of Russian arms and oil. On Friday, Trump told reporters he had heard that India would no longer be buying oil from Russia. But the sources said there would be no immediate changes. "These are...

Ukraine counterintelligence investigates presence of sicarios on front line. [Spanish word for a hitman or a hired killer, especially in Latin American and Mexican drug cartels.] Ukraine's domestic intelligence suspects Spanish-speaking volunteers of infiltrating the International Legion to train in flying FPV drones. [First-Person View drones.] Some are reportedly linked to cartels and have been recruited through private military companies.

Russia said on Thursday it had captured the town of Chasiv Yar in eastern Ukraine after nearly 16 months of fighting, opening the way for potential further advances. Russia's Defence Ministry said in a brief statement its forces had "liberated" the town.

US President Donald Trump again displayed anger with Russia following its latest deadly attack on Kyiv -- a strike that killed 16 people and injured dozens -- calling the action “disgusting” and vowing to slap new sanctions on Moscow. “Russia, I think it’s disgusting what they’re doing,” Trump told reporters at the White House on July 31. “I think what Russia’s doing is very sad. A lot of Russians are dying.”

Who was it representing Uranium One in the deal with Russia? Oh right… The Podesta Group.