Free Republic

President Joe Biden celebrated the end of the 'brutal ordeal' for Americans 'imprisoned unjustly' inside Russia as he announced a complex prisoner swap and then led a rendition of 'happy birthday' to the teen daughter of a freed prisoner. Biden made a surprise appearance inside the State Dining Room at the White House hours after the historic deal that freed American ex-Marine Paul Whelan and Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich. All were held inside Russia, Whelan since 2018, for 'no legitimate reason whatsoever - none,' Biden said. 'And now they're brutal ordeal is over and they're free.

The Harris-Biden administration is a boon to Putin. A Trump presidency will destroy all that. Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and former US Marine Paul Whelen, both of whom have been languishing in the Soviet, I mean, Russian prisons for years on trumped-up espionage charges, have been released. It appears that their release is part of a larger, multi-nation prisoner swap that includes the exchange of prisoners from Germany, Great Britain, the US, and Slovenia on the one side and Russia and Belarus on the other. The basis for the suspicion about the multi-national, multi-prisoner release is the sudden...

[Subtitle: “I hope that my story will help you understand the methods of Russian operatives in Washington and how they use U.S. enablers to achieve major foreign policy goals without disclosing those interests,” Browder writes.]The financier Bill Browder has emerged as an unlikely central player in the ongoing investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 elections. Sergei Magnitsky, an attorney Browder hired to investigate official corruption, died in Russian custody in 2009. Congress subsequently imposed sanctions on the officials it held responsible for his death, passing the Magnitsky Act in 2012. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government retaliated, among other ways,...

Vladimir Kara-Murza is a leading opposition figure in Russia. On Tuesday, May 26, 2015, he collapsed suddenly and lost consciousness in his office at Open Russia in Moscow. He was rushed to Pervaya Gradskaya (First City Clinical) hospital where he remains on life support, unconscious with an undiagnosed illness of undetermined origins. Given the sudden, mysterious, and incapacitating nature of the illness, and the Putin regime’s appalling record with respect to the murders and mistreatment of prominent dissidents, there is widespread concern that Vladimir has been poisoned. His doctors have not ruled it out though one can imagine the pressure...

A Russian opposition leader is in intensive care in a Moscow hospital, and a lack of clarity about the cause of his sudden illness has raised fears of foul play. The First City Hospital said 33-year-old Vladimir Kara-Murza remained in grave condition Thursday, two days after he was admitted. The Interfax news agency, citing the hospital’s chief doctor, said he appeared to be suffering from pancreatitis and double pneumonia. …