Free Republic

Their revolution could soon be coming to an end. January 3, 2026. Caracas. 2:47 AM. The helicopters had come in low over the Caribbean, running dark. The Delta Force operators on board were well-rehearsed. By 3:29 AM, it was over. Thirty-two Cuban bodyguards lay dead in the compound. Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores were in flex cuffs, hustled onto a transport aircraft bound for New York. At Mar-a-Lago, President Trump watched the operation unfold in real time with his national security team. It was January 3—exactly 36 years to the day since American forces had extracted military dictator Manuel...

Korean War hero Royce Williams is being awarded the Medal of Honor, and his actions are something not even Hollywood could have dreamed up. Congressman Darrell Issa announced on Wednesday that President Donald Trump officially informed Williams of his MoH. The Medal of Honor is the nation's highest military award. It is only awarded for actions so heroic that oftentimes, the person earning it is killed. Williams is still with us in 2026, and his once-secret actions are now out in the public. Buckle up for one of the most insane war stories you'll ever hear.

CHICAGO — About 300 anti-war activists crowded into the basement of the Teamsters Union’s headquarters on Saturday to hear organizers from all over the country describe their plans to disrupt the Democratic National Convention this August. Joe Biden’s backing of Israel since Hamas’s October 7 attack has turned these left-wing radicals against their own party.

“The ICE derangement syndrome is off the charts because we are amidst a pandemic of progressive leftist mental illness, which is an extremely disproportionately female problem.” —JD Haltigan on "X" James Howard Kunstler Jan 30, 2026 It has come into focus now and you no longer need to be perplexed, mystified, bewildered, or bamboozled by events unspooling in Minneapolis and other hotspots of Woke-Marxist-Jacobin delirium. You are seeing the infernal machine of a sponsored revolution. Its parts are visible. They can be named and clearly understood. I will tell you how this works. You realize, of course, that there has...

Ames, a 31-year CIA veteran, admitted being paid $2.5 million by Moscow for US secrets from 1985 until his arrest in 1994. WASHINGTON: CIA turncoat Aldrich Ames, who betrayed Western intelligence assets to the Soviet Union and Russia in one of the most damaging intelligence breaches in US history, has died in a Maryland prison. He was 84. A spokesperson for the Bureau of Prisons confirmed Ames died Monday. Ames, a 31-year CIA veteran, admitted being paid $2.5 million by Moscow for US secrets from 1985 until his arrest in 1994. His disclosures included the identities of 10 Russian officials...

Bout is alleged to have fueled multiple conflicts across the globe through arms dealing, sometimes to both sides ... A senior defense official is concerned that convicted Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, the "Merchant of Death" .. could go back to illegally trafficking weapons, thereby fueling deadly conflicts around the world. "I think there is a concern that he would return to doing the same kind of work that he's done in the past.. Bout was in the middle of serving a 25-year prison sentence in a U.S. prison for several offenses, including conspiring to kill Americans ... Bout, a...

I mourned the untimely passing of actor Philip Seymour Hoffman for the very personal reason that I hoped he would one day get to play Whittaker Chambers in a film version of Chambers’ 1952 masterwork, Witness. Short, heavy set, permanently rumpled, Hoffman would have made a near perfect Chambers to George Clooney’s Alger Hiss, the smooth, handsome, establishment golden boy. Chambers’ 800-page story of his life and their encounter remains the great political book of the twentieth century. Chambers was a deep thinker, a dazzling writer, and a reluctant participant in the most riveting political drama of the era. No...

The Italian Renaissance gave birth to ballet, but Russians dominated the art to such a degree no one questioned their supremacy. The Bolshoi, the world’s reigning company, pirouetted onto U.S. stages in 1959 and 1962. The State Department-sponsored American Ballet Theatre (ABT) went east in 1960 followed two years later by the New York City Ballet (NYCB), led by its Russian émigré choreographer George Balanchine. Adding a thermonuclear layer of stress, the Cuban Missile Crisis ignited in October 1962 when the Bolshoi and the NYCB were in each other’s countries. Upstart Americans left home unproven underdogs…The New York Times feared...

Russian dictator Vladimir Putin said he is ready to go to war with Europe, accusing EU leaders of sabotaging peace talks with the US. “We are not planning to go to war with Europe, but if Europe wants to and starts, we are ready right now,” Putin warned.

NATO is weighing a more "proactive" and "aggressive" posture in countering Russia's hybrid-warfare campaign — potentially including "preemptive" actions, said Italian Admiral Giuseppe Cavo Dragone. Dragone, NATO's most senior officer and chair of the alliance's Military Committee, made the remarks in response to myriad attacks at the hands of Russia, including sabotage, cyberattacks, and airspace violations. "We are studying everything. ... On cyber, we are kind of reactive," Dragone said. "Being more aggressive or being proactive instead of reactive is something that we are thinking about." Dragone added that a "preemptive" strike could be considered a "defensive action," adding that...

Kaja Kallas said that Belgium has legitimate concerns about the risks, but the other member-states have said that they are willing to share those risksBRUSSELS, December 1. /TASS/. The European Commission intends to make the decision on the expropriation of Russian assets at the European Council’s meeting on December 18-19, High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Kaja Kallas told reporters. "We are not going to leave the Council in December without the result for the financing of Ukraine," Kallas said. "Belgium has legitimate concerns about the risks, but the other member-states have said that they...

Volodymyr Zelensky, in the next phase of talks to end the war in Ukraine, intends to draw a red line at the most contentious issue on the table: the Russian demand for Ukraine’s sovereign territory. As long as he remains the nation’s president, Zelensky will not agree to give up land in exchange for peace, Ukraine’s chief negotiator, Andriy Yermak, told me today in an exclusive interview. “Not a single sane person today would sign a document to give up territory,” said Yermak, who has served as Zelensky’s chief of staff, lead negotiator, and closest aide throughout the full-scale war...

Oh, where do I even begin with Sisu: Road to Revenge? This is not merely a movie; it is a transcendent thunderclap of pure cinematic audacity. From the first frame, the film detonates onto the screen with the subtlety of a meteor strike, announcing itself as a masterpiece of gleeful excess. This is the movie that every other action film will envy for the rest of their lives. The landscapes are so gorgeously shot they look like nature itself hired its own personal glam squad. The score doesn’t merely accompany the action; it leaps off the speakers and demands that...

Donald Tusk emphasized that the European Union would not be able to impose anything on Warsaw on this issueMOSCOW, November 26. /TASS/. The European Union cannot impose its court decision on recognizing same-sex marriage on Poland, Prime Minister Donald Tusk told a cabinet meeting. "I would like to reassure everyone - the European Union will not be able to impose anything on us on this issue (an EU Court decision on recognition of same-sex marriages in other countries of the union - TASS)," Tusk said as broadcast on the social media of the office of the head of government. He...

“Down with autocracy” and “Down with war” read the banners of the March 8 (Feb. 17 in the Julian calendar) Women’s Day march in St. Petersberg, Russia that began the 1917 Revolution… Leon Trotsky would later reflect, “The February revolution was begun from below… the initiative being taken by the women textile workers of their own accord, demanding bread for the children.” Besides the desperation of the times, Russia had strong currents of feminism, going back to Catherine the Great who ruled the empire from 1762 to 1796… The Russian Revolution was the first in history to seek women’s emancipation...

President Donald Trump’s plan to end the war between Ukraine and Russia would give the Russians parts of eastern Ukraine they don’t occupy, Axios reported, citing a U.S. official. As part of the deal, Ukraine will receive a security guarantee from the U.S. and Europe against future Russian aggression, the official said. While Ukraine would view the deal as a major surrender to Russia, the White House believes Ukraine would likely lose the territory anyway and the country could receive assurances Russia wouldn’t just resume the war, Axios reported. The deal would call for Russia to control the Donbas region,...

Intelligence officer, allegedly speaking with PA chief’s ousted rival Dahlan, laments state of Palestinian leadership, says Abbas ‘has nothing to offer’ A top Egyptian intelligence official is heard mocking Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in a newly leaked phone call with a chief rival of the PA leader, characterizing him as old and stupid and saying the Fatah party is “screwed” under his leadership. According to the Middle East Eye, the comments were made by Major General Wael el-Safty, an officer in Egypt’s General Intelligence Directorate in charge of Palestinian affairs, during a conversation with Fatah’s Mohammad Dahlan. In excerpts...

In May 2025, the authorities in Moscow unveiled a life-size bas‑relief sculpture of Josef Stalin in the Taganskaya metro station. The next month, a statue of Lenin was pulled down in Osh, Kyrgyzstan. Between these two symbolic acts lies Kazakhstan, caught in a tug-of-war over the memory of Soviet-era repression. Tensions have sharpened since the war in Ukraine. In the background, Putin has accelerated the rehabilitation of Stalin, architect of the gulag archipelago. His busts are reappearing across Russia. Volgograd’s airport has been renamed “Stalingrad.” In occupied Melitopol, a new statue of the dictator was erected. “We’re witnessing a broad...

This important historical commentary takes a deep dive into the atrocities committed by the Soviet Union and the Russian people. From the invasion of Poland and the Katyn Forest Massacre to the millions of Eastern Europeans who never returned from the inhuman conditions of the Gulag system the narrator discusses in detail the unspeakable atrocities committed against the Eastern Europeans.

The Russian leader noted that the reaction of Western elites on a new interpretation of events was primitive and straightforwardMOSCOW, October 17. /TASS/. Western elites spent years teaching Russia about the importance of freedom of speech and competition, and now they are trying to ban and block all of that, President Vladimir Putin said in a speech marking the 20th anniversary of RT. "For years, they [Western elites] taught us how to live, how the media should work, how to understand democracy and what democracy is. What true freedom of speech is. They convinced us of the importance of competition,...