Free Republic

Moscow once listed the Afghan hard-line movement as a terror group, but President Vladimir Putin now describes it as a “trusted ally.” The Russian Prosecutor General’s Office requested Monday that the Supreme Court ends a ban on the Taliban’s activities in the country. Moscow’s foreign and justice ministries submitted an appeal last week to President Vladimir Putin urging the Taliban’s removal from Russia’s list of terrorist organizations. The Taliban is a political and militant Islamist group that emerged in Afghanistan in the early 1990s, and has ruled in Kabul since the U.S. withdrew from the country in August 2021. The...

brand new Russian nuclear submarine during visit an Arctic naval base yesterday. Speaking to submariners, Putin smugly declared: 'Not long ago I said we'd grind [Ukraine] down — now it looks like we'll finish them off. He also mocked the state of the British economy and armed forces after Sir Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron revealed yesterday they would deploy an Anglo-French 'reassurance force' to Ukraine following a ceasefire deal. '[Britain] is jumping on us, behaving aggressively... but their economy is, I think, in the ninth or tenth place in the world,' the Russian President smirked. 'Hence the...

Russian forces have made a breakthrough south of the Ukrainian-held town of Sudzha, potentially threatening to cut off some of the Ukrainian positions in Russia's Kursk Oblast, Agentstvo and Ukrainska Pravda reported on March 7. An undisclosed military source deployed in Kursk Oblast told the Ukrainska Pravda outlet that Russian forces have broken through Ukrainian defenses south of Sudzha and that the defenders are trying to stabilize the situation. Ukrainian forces are trying to contain the Russian advance to prevent a partial or complete encirclement, the source claimed.

A Russian intelligence-gathering vessel caught fire and temporarily lost control off the Syrian coast on Janaury 23, according to Associated Press (AP). The Kildin, a Russian spy ship equipped with surveillance technology, was seen emitting black smoke and flames as it drifted, prompting an urgent maritime radio warning to nearby vessels. The Associated Press obtained audio of the broadcast, as well as video and photographs of the incident. “Warship on your course,” the Russian Captain said. “I am drifting. I’m not under command.” The videos, taken by three NATO military officials, were collected by a nearby NATO vessel. These officials...

China and India have stopped buying Russian oil due to increased freight costs for tankers not subject to US sanctions. A representative from India's Bharat Petroleum Corp Ltd stated that the company has not received new supply offers for March, as is usually the case, and expects the volume of cargoes offered for the first month of spring to decrease compared to January and December. Typically, India receives offers for Russian oil supplies in the middle of each month. Traders noted that the premium for Russian ESPO crude oil has increased by $3-5 per barrel compared to ICE Brent, while...

President Trump re-upped his claim that Russia stole the plan for hypersonic missiles during the Obama administration. “Russia stole the design, they got it from us,” Mr. Trump said in an interview with Fox News’s Sean Hannity. Part two of the interview, his first since taking the reins at the White House, was aired Thursday night. “Some bad person gave them the design,” he said, adding that the United States will have super hypersonic missiles “which is even a step better.”

On March 5, 2022, the wreck of the sailing ship Endurance was found in the depths of the Weddell Sea off the coast of Antarctica. This, of course, was the vessel lost in Ernest Shackelton’s third expedition to Antarctica, which became trapped in the ice and sank in 1915. The story of that expedition is an extraordinary tale of human fortitude - with the Endurance lost to the ice, Shackleton’s crew evacuated to a loose ice flow where they camped for nearly 500 days, drifting about the Antarctic seas, before making a desperate dash across the open ocean in an...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his generals have an artful knack for keeping the Russian military bear off-balance. On Sunday, they renewed their offensive in the Russian Kursk Oblast, once again catching the Russian high command, Kremlin, and many pundits by surprise. Reports of a demoralized Ukrainian army fighting to retain terrain captured during the August Kursk offensive — of which at least 40 percent has been lost — have circulated among western media and Russian milbloggers since November. So too reports that Ukraine’s 155th Mechanized Brigade — trained and equipped by France — was under-resourced in “first person view...

I will never forget New Year's Eve 1999. I was working as a producer in the BBC's Moscow bureau. Suddenly there was breaking news: Russia's President Boris Yeltsin had stepped down. His decision to resign took everyone by surprise, including the British press corps in Moscow. When the news broke there was no correspondent in the office. That meant I had to step in to write and broadcast my first BBC dispatch. "Boris Yeltsin always said he would see out his full term in office," I wrote. "Today he told Russians he'd changed his mind." It was the start of...

Terrorism -- i.e., the use of violence on civilians and civilian targets for a political purpose -- is an act of weakness, not strength. A couple of incidents -- the crash of an Azerbaijani airplane in Aktau, Kazakhstan, and the sinking of the Oboronlogistica, a Russian state-controlled company that operated the Ursa Major freighter, in the Mediterranean Sea between Spain and Algeria -- are characterized as terrorist attacks. Maybe.While Western media immediately blamed the plane crash on Russian air defense-missile, the video and the wreckage do not support that claim. Yes, the fuselage was peppered with shrapnel holes, but those...

The country’s prime minister said the incident, the latest in a series of disruptions to undersea infrastructure, underscored the danger of a so-called Russian shadow fleet.The Finnish police on Thursday boarded an oil tanker that the authorities said they suspected was involved in damaging vital undersea cables. They suggested the tanker was part of a shadow fleet used by Russia to avoid Western sanctions.The Estlink 2 submarine cable, which carries electricity between Finland and Estonia, was cut on Wednesday, Finland’s police said in a statement, the latest in a slew of disruptions to undersea infrastructure that are being investigated as...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned that North Korea could be planning to send more troops and weapons to aid Russia’s army after more than 3,000 soldiers from the hermit kingdom have been killed and wounded while fighting in Ukraine. “There are risks of North Korea sending additional troops and military equipment to the Russian army,” Zelensky said Monday after receiving a report from his top military commander. “We will have tangible responses to this.”

This list only includes destroyed vehicles and equipment of which photo or videographic evidence is available. Therefore, the amount of equipment destroyed is significantly higher than recorded here. Loitering munitions, drones used as unmanned bait, civilian vehicles and derelict equipment are not included in this list. All possible effort has gone into avoiding duplicate entries and discerning the status of equipment between captured or abandoned. Many of the entries listed as 'abandoned' will likely end up captured or destroyed. Similarly, some of the captured equipment might be destroyed if it can't be recovered. When a vehicle is captured and then...

A Russian cargo ship that Ukraine claims was sent to Syria to collect weapons has sunk in the Mediterranean Sea, according to officials in Moscow. Two crew members are missing after an engine room explosion sank the Ursa Major between Spain and Algeria, the foreign ministry said. Fourteen other crew were rescued and taken to Spain. Ukraine's military intelligence claimed yesterday that the ship, previously called Sparta III, had been sent to Syria to remove weapons and military equipment after the fall of Bashar al Assad.

If I had the opportunity to go back in time, knowing what I know now, I would reconsider the decision regarding the "special operation" in Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin said during his annual press conference, APA's Moscow correspondent reports. that this was stated by Russian President Vladimir Putin during his annual press conference. He emphasized that preparation was needed before launching the "special operation": "But we began the operations without any special preparation.

The first significant Russian strategic defeat as a direct consequence of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine is the loss of its Mediterranean outpost. Vladimir Putin’s obsession with Ukraine has led Russia to channel virtually all its military forces and resources into the Ukrainian conflict. Russia has suffered massive losses, stretching its military thin and making it increasingly difficult to defend the country’s geopolitical interests elsewhere. Not only has the Kremlin pulled its military forces from vast stretches of Russia’s enormous territory and thrown them into the Ukrainian meat and metal grinder, but Moscow has also neglected other areas where the...

Ten months after Tucker Carlson's interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the American journalist returned to Moscow to talk with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. The conversation is devoted to the most pressing issues, including the possible dialogue between Russia and the West. Read the full text of the interview below.Tucker Carlson: Minister Lavrov, thank you for doing this. Do you believe the United States and Russia are at war with each other right now?Sergey Lavrov: I wouldn't say so. And in any case, this is not what we want. We would like to have normal relations with all our...

The West should cooperate with Russia “for the sake of the universe” because the Kremlin will use “any means” to defend itself, the Russian foreign minister has said.Sergey Lavrov made the warning in a 90-minute interview in Moscow with US talk show host Tucker Carlson that has been criticised as a gift for the Kremlin’s propaganda machine.“They must understand that we would be ready to use any means not to allow them to succeed in what they call a strategic defeat of Russia,” Mr Lavrov said.Mr Lavrov was talking two weeks after the Kremlin unveiled a new intermediate-range missile called...

The proposals by three key advisers, including Trump's incoming Russia-Ukraine envoy, retired Army Lieutenant-General Keith Kellogg, share some elements, including taking NATO membership for Ukraine off the table. Trump's advisers would try forcing Moscow and Kyiv into negotiations with carrots and sticks, including halting military aid to Kyiv unless it agrees to talk but boosting assistance if the Russian President refuses. When asked about his view of Donald Trump, who is set to return to the White House next month, Lavrov described him as 'a very strong person, a person who wants results, who doesn't like procrastination on anything.' But...

A fire at a synagogue in Melbourne, Australia early Friday morning... NASA pushing back plans to send astronauts to the Moon again... In New York authorities continue to probe the murder of United HealthCare CEO Brian Thompson... A strong magnitude 7 earthquake off the northern coast of California... Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov...interviewed by Tucker Carlson...calling President-Elect Donald Trump a "strong" and "friendly" man but not "Pro-Russian"... The anti-government protests continuing in Georgia's capital Tbilisi... France's political turmoil...tonight President Emmanuel Macron speaking...saying he will exercise his mandate as president until it ends in 2027...did not propose a new government...but the...