Free Republic

Former CIA director says Obama is 'scared' to call ISIS terrorists 'Islamic' after FBI director wasn't invited to extremist summit – but Russia's secret police chief was! Former CIA director James Woolsey said Thursday that President Obama 'looks scared' to called members of Middle Eastern terrorist groups 'Islamic,' just hours after the conclusion of a White House 'Countering VIolent Extremism' summit that studiously avoided pinning terrorism on Islamists. Sitting FBI director James Comey was not invited to the event, but his counterpart from Russia – Aleksandr Bortnikov, the director of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) – attended. The FSB...

This guy isn't western. He's not modernized. He's not moderate. He doesn't care about the West. He's not compassionate. He is using GLASNOST And people in the West.. faced with such a weak leader as Obama.. are eating it up. Putin is a DICTATOR! He is NOT.. I repeat NOT our friend. He isn't a friend of the West. Every Soviet leader has used this "polishing" trick going back to Ivan the Terrible. PUTIN IS KGB.

Former American porn star Sasha Grey ditched her acting career and worked as a nurse for pro-Russian rebels fighting in eastern Ukraine until she was brutally murdered by Ukrainian government forces. That, at least, is according to an anti-Kyiv propaganda campaign featuring a photo of Grey that has appeared on Russian social media networks, including Odnoklassniki, a social media site popular among people over the age of 30.

R ussia has dismissed Ukraine's calls for UN-mandated peacekeepers to enforce a shaky cease-fire deal in the country's east. Foreign Ministry spokesman Aleksandr Lukashevich said on February 19 that the truce agreement signed in Minsk last week should remain the basis for the conflict's resolution. He also said Kyiv was responsible for making sure the accords were carried out. Ukraine called for peacekeepers to enforce the cease-fire after government troops withdrew from the strategic town of Debaltseve following intense fighting against Russian-backed separatists. President Petro Poroshenko's request was approved by Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council at an emergency meeting...

<p>ANKARA, Feb 19 (Reuters) - Turkey will go ahead with plans to order a $3.4-billion missile defence system from China, Defence Minister Ismet Yilmaz said, despite U.S. and NATO concerns over security and compatibility of weaponry.</p>

At about $50 a barrel, crude oil prices are down by more than half from their June 2014 peak of $107. They may fall more, perhaps even as low as $10 to $20. Here’s why.

Hopefully, the shaky truce between Vladimir Putin and Ukraine's Petro Poroshenko, brokered in Minsk by Angela Merkel, will hold. For nothing good, but much evil, could come of broadening and lengthening this war that has cost the lives of 5,400 Ukrainians. The longer it goes on, the greater the casualties, the more land Ukraine will lose, and the greater the likelihood Kiev will end up an amputated and bankrupt republic, a dependency the size of France on the doorstep of Europe. Had no truce been achieved, 8,000 Ukrainian troops trapped in the Debaltseve pocket could have been forced to surrender...

Moscow, Russia: Americans consider Russia as greatest enemy, says, Gallup International poll that was conducted between 8 to 11 February 2015. Moreover, nearly half of Americans see Russian military power as threat to U.S. According to latest Gallup International poll, North Korea is no more considered as greatest threat to United States rather it is now Russia—a greatest threat to US people.

After the ceasefire negotiated in Minsk, a peace settlement in eastern Ukraine remains distant. Most of the points in the agreement, including Ukraine’s constitutional reform and the resumption of Kiev’s control over the entire Ukrainian-Russian border, will probably never be implemented. The most one can hope for is that the conflict is frozen and people stop dying. Even that, however, cannot be taken for granted, as continued fighting ahead of the ceasefire’s formal entry into force suggests. The idea that a combination of western sanctions and the low oil price can bring a change in Kremlin policies, or a change...

Welcome to the Michael Hudson report on The Real News Network. I’m Sharmini Peries, coming to you from Baltimore. A ceasefire in Eastern Ukraine has been agreed to, following a marathon all-night, 17-hour negotiation between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko. They were flanked byother European leaders keeping vigil. Russia and Ukraine may have many differences, but what they have in common is a looming economic crisis, with oil prices taking a dive on the Russian side and a very expensive war they were not counting on on the Ukrainian side. Joining us now to talk about...

Pro-Russian rebels said on Monday they would open a safe corridor for Ukrainian troops out of the encircled town of Debaltseve in east Ukraine on condition they surrender the territory, an offer the Kiev military promptly rejected. Despite a ceasefire negotiated last week, Debaltseve, a government-held railway junction town, has been the site of heavy fighting between rebels and thousands of Ukrainian troops who are effectively trapped in the city.

Russia's top general said Friday that a strong nuclear arsenal will ensure military superiority over the West as Moscow forges ahead with a multi-billion dollar plan to modernize its forces by 2020. Russia, facing a likely recession because of a fall in oil prices and sanctions over Ukraine, must deal with new forms of Western aggression, including economic confrontation, said General Valery Gerasimov. But despite the deep economic woes, he said the Russian military would receive more than 50 new intercontinental nuclear missiles this year. "Support for our strategic nuclear forces to ensure their high military capability combined with ......

KYIV, February 16 /Ukrinform/.Ukrainian troops are fiercely fighting in the vicinity of Mariupol for the village of Shyrokyne defending it from the Russian-terrorist forces who have been trying to capture it for the last five days despite the declared ceasefire. A National Guard soldier stationed in the area of Mariupol, the port city 95 kilometers south of Donetsk, told an Ukrinform correspondent. "Fierce battles are raging in the village of Shyrokine now," he said.

KYIV, February 16 /Ukrinform/. Russia will try to "push" through the UN Security Council its own version of the resolution on Donbas, which does not coincide with the Minsk Agreements, Press AV journalist Andrei Vasilyev has told Ukrainian television's channel Hromadske.tv. According to him, Russia is trying to place all responsibility for the peace process on Ukraine only. The Russian version of the resolution also requires that Ukraine should be the first side to withdraw its troops 50 kilometers back from the front line after the ceasefire. In addition, Moscow also wants to completely absolve itself of promises made in...

Russia continues to supply huge numbers of military equipment to the terrorists in the Donbas. This was announced today at a briefing of the ATO spokesman Andrii Lysenko, Censor.NET reports. "Despite statements by high-ranking officials of the Russian Federation on the absence of Russian military equipment and troops in the territory of Ukraine, on the night of Feb. 12 there was another redeployment of 50 tanks, 40 MLRS (Grad, Uragan, and Smerch) and the same number of armored vehicles through the Russian-Ukrainian border near Izvaryne," he said. Earlier, the National Security Council stated that the hottest spot in the East...

KYIV, February 16 /Ukrinform/. Ukrainian military had to use artillery to stop the tank attacks of the Russian-terrorist forces on position held by Kryvbas battalion around the town of Debaltseve, 25 kilometers northeast of Donetsk, in the Donbas conflict zone.

The leader of the self-proclaimed "DNR" Alexander Zakharchenko if Ukraine "will not adhere to the terms of the Minsk agreements" that will begin large-scale offensive separatists According to the Crimea. Realities with reference to the media, said Zakharchenko February 15 as follows: "First of all, we just destroy" Debaltsevsky pot "with the Ukrainian military, where at the moment is from 6 to 8,000. Then we reflect in Mariupol enemy, and when that is done, then we will throw all their efforts to ensure that take Kharkov,"- he said. The Zakharchenko stated that Kharkov will take "in any case": "people are...

'I believe the Russians are mobilizing right now for a war that they think is going to happen in five or six years —not that they're going to start a war in five or six years, but I think they are anticipating that things are going to happen, and that they will be in a war of some sort, of some scale, with somebody within the next five or six years." So says Lt. Gen. Frederick "Ben" Hodges, commander of U.S. Army Europe.... "Strong Europe!" reads a sign on one of the walls. Next to it is the U.S. Army...

When we say Novorossiya we are not referring to that territory Russia annexed over two centuries ago from the Ottoman Empire; nor do we mean the less than one year old confederation proclaimed in East Ukraine by the Donetsk People's Republic and Lugansk People's Republic. What we have in mind is a new Russia: an emerging, much stronger nation, or federation, callused by the pain inflicted from the United States and its EU-NATO toy-dog through economic sanctions; a wiser Russia... a deflowered maiden which resulted from Gorbachev's well-meaning, but naïve, détente-glasnost days of promise by America's deceiving Novus-Imperium. And the...

(Reuters) - The package of measures underpinning a ceasefire in eastern Ukraine must be "unconditionally observed", Russian President Vladimir Putin's spokesman said on Sunday. Dmitry Peskov was commenting on a remark by a senior pro-Russian separatist commander that, despite the truce deal that took effect at midnight, rebels have the right to fire on the town of Debaltseve in east Ukraine as it is "our territory."