Free Republic

More than four million Syrians have been forced to escape the never-ending civil war ravaging their country and the barbaric terror group carving a bloody trail across the Middle East. The vast majority live in overcrowded refugee camps in Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt and Iraq - all under threat from ISIS - and record numbers are making the perilously long journey to Europe. Yet, as debate rages between politicians in Europe over how many they should take, nearby super-wealthy Gulf nations of Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates (UAE), Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain have refused to offer sanctuary to a single...

Russian President Vladimir Putin has a new target in the revived cold war with Washington — the U.S. dollar. The website Russia Today* reported Tuesday that Mr. Putin has drafted a bill to block the use of both the American greenback and the euro in trade between the bloc of countries that used to be part of the Soviet Union, including Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan. The measure “would help expand the use of national currencies in foreign trade payments and financial services and thus create preconditions for greater liquidity of domestic currency markets,” the Kremlin said in a...

Syria: Bashar al-Assad ready to share power, says Vladimir Putin By Tom Porter September 4, 2015 14:05 BST Russian President Vladimir Putin said Syria's President Bashar Al-Assad is ready to share power and even could hold snap parliamentary elections. Russia has been Assad's main international ally during the four-year civil war that has caused millions to flee the country and cost more than 200,000 lives. Moscow has repeatedly resisted calls for Assad to step aside, and Putin said the West should work with Assad's regime to combat jihadist organisation Islamic State, which now controls more than half of Syria. "We...

Putin’s Russia. Do traces of KGB, FSB and GRU lead to Islamic State? Marius Laurinavičius, Rytų Europos studijų centras ir DELFI Friday, January 9, 2015 This time I decided to draw attention to a significant role (which was a surprise for many experts) of Chechen terrorists in a battle of Islamic state that has become a main threat to the West. Based on this role, it is not only possible, but vital to examine the potential links between the Islamic state and Russian secret services. One of the inspiration sources was the article published in ‘The Huffington Post’ called ‘You...

Wikileaks is a Front for Russian Intelligence August 31, 2015 The part played by Wikileaks in the Edward Snowden saga is an important one. The pivotal role of Julian Assange and other leading members of Wikileaks in getting Snowden from Hawaii to Moscow, from NSA employment to FSB protection, in the late spring of 2013 is a matter of record. For years there have been questions about just what Wikileaks actually is. I know because I’ve been among those asking. Over two years ago, little more than two weeks after Snowden landed in Moscow, I explained my concerns about Wikileaks...

Russian fighter pilots are expected to begin arriving in Syria in the coming days, and will fly their Russian air force fighter jets and attack helicopters against ISIS and rebel-aligned targets within the failing state. According to Western diplomats, a Russian expeditionary force has already arrived in Syria and set up camp in an Assad-controlled airbase. The base is said to be in area surrounding Damascus, and will serve, for all intents and purposes, as a Russian forward operating base. In the coming weeks thousands of Russian military personnel are set to touch down in Syria, including advisors, instructors, logistics...

Stealth Fighters09.01.159:24 PM ET Michael Weiss Russia Puts Boots on the Ground in Syria ....Several sources consulted for this story said the Pentagon is being unusually cagey about Russia’s reinvigorated role in Syria. A former U.S. military officer told The Daily Beast, “I’m being told things like, ‘We really can’t talk about this.’ That indicates to me that there’s some truth to these allegations.” Some of them are verifiable. On Aug. 22, the Bosphorus Naval News website showed the Alligator-class Russian ship Nikolai Filchenkov, part of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, two days earlier passing through Istanbul’s famed waterway en route...

No Russian jets were deployed to Syria in order to launch attacks against Islamic State militants (IS, formerly ISIS, ISIL) and Syrian rebels, a military source told RT, dismissing reports in Israeli media. "There has been no redeployment of Russian combat aircraft to the Syrian Arab Republic,” the source told RT on Tuesday. “The Russian Air Force is at its permanent bases and carrying out normal troop training and combat duty.” On Monday, the Israeli news site Ynet News cited Western diplomats as saying that a Russian “expeditionary force” has arrived in Syria to set up camp at a government...

This is one of the great scandals of the Obama administration–really, of the post-war era. But our Democratic Party media, fearful of what may be coming in next year’s presidential election, have consistently downplayed it. The Los Angeles Times reports: “Foreign spies use hacked data to identify U.S. intelligence agents.” Foreign spy services, especially in China and Russia, are aggressively aggregating and cross-indexing hacked U.S. computer databases — including security clearance applications, airline records and medical insurance forms — to identify U.S. intelligence officers and agents, U.S. officials said. At least one clandestine network of U.S. engineers and scientists who...

i24news Published August 31st 2015 10:08pm Russian jets take to Syrian skies to combat IS Russia begins military intervention against IS in Syria; IS closes in on Damascus Russian fighter pilots, jets and helicopters will begin arriving in Syria in the coming days to join in the offensive against the Islamic State (IS) and rebel-aligned targets within the failing state Israeli news site Ynet News reported Monday. According to Western diplomats, Russian expeditionary forces have already arrived in Syria to set up camp in an Assad-controlled airbase near Damascus, and will operate as a Russian forward operating base. Thousands of...

The bomb was constructed on the basis of the Kh-38ME modular aircraft guided missile, according to the manufacturer. ZHUKOVSKY (Sputnik) — A unique Grom-2, possessing the destructive utility of both a missile and a bomb, has been developed in Russia, general director of the Tactical Missile Systems Corporation said Wednesday. “Grom-2 is in fact a glide bomb, as there is another warhead weighing 130 kilograms [286 pounds] instead of an engine with a total weight of 250 kilograms," Boris Obnosov told journalists. According to Obnosov, the Grom-2 was constructed on the basis of the Kh-38ME modular aircraft guided missile. Russia's...

A widely-circulated report, which many saw as an accidental admission that Russian troops are fighting in Ukraine, has been exposed as a hoax. The report, which outlets including The Daily Caller News Foundation reported at face value, claimed to expose a secret memo. It purportedly described Russian government compensation to the families of 2,000 soldiers who had died in Ukraine’s civil war. The story, which Forbes first broke in English, understandably attracted significant Western media attention and was promoted online by several prominent figures, including former Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt and ex-U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul. If the...

Russia formally staked its claim Tuesday to a large portion of the Arctic Ocean that includes the North Pole, even planting a flag on the floor of the ocean below the area to exercise its control. If the United Nations committee that arbitrates sea boundaries accepts Russia’s claim, the waters will be subject to Moscow’s oversight on economic matters, including fishing and oil and gas drilling, though Russia will not have full sovereignty. Under a 1982 United Nations convention, the Law of the Sea, a nation may claim an exclusive economic zone over the continental shelf abutting its shores. If...

Over the weekend, the undecideds in Congress got another confidence-builder from Iran on the nuclear deal that Barack Obama and John Kerry insist they support. If Congress approves the deal, it carries legal weight in the US, at least for the next 16 months or so until the next President takes office. The Iranian parliament must be rushing to provide the same level of legal commitment, right? Right? Er … no, not really: President Hassan Rouhani said Saturday he opposes a parliamentary vote on the landmark nuclear deal reached with world powers because terms of the agreement would turn...

Russia has begun its military intervention in Syria, deploying an aerial contingent to a permanent Syrian base, in order to launch attacks against ISIS and Islamist rebels; US stays silent. Russian fighter pilots are expected to begin arriving in Syria in the coming days, and will fly their Russian air force fighter jets and attack helicopters against ISIS and rebel-aligned targets within the failing state. According to Western diplomats, a Russian expeditionary force has already arrived in Syria and set up camp in an Assad-controlled airbase. The base is said to be in area surrounding Damascus, and will serve, for...

When he hasn’t been diving to the depths of the Black Sea in another demonstration of his he-man virility, Russian President Vladimir Putin has been busy overseeing an unusual import-substitution program. The plan – like his numerous manly man stunts – is intended to demonstrate no one can push around a proud Mother Russia. In a steady stream of declarations, Moscow has been closing its borders to goods imported from afar. It’s unusual because it appears to hurt Russians far more than it does the intended targets, and comes at a time Russia’s economy is in dire shape from the...

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi on Wednesday called for a coalition to combat terrorism in the Middle East. Opening a meeting with Putin in Moscow, el-Sissi said "the Egyptian people" are hoping for broader ties with Russia in all areas, particularly in fighting terrorism in the Middle East. El-Sissi's Russian visit, his second in the past three months, highlights Moscow's attempts to expand its influence in Egypt at a time when Egyptian-U.S. relations have soured in the aftermath of the ouster of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi.

On the day in May when Islamic State militants raised their black flag above the ancient city of Palmyra, the Damascus Opera House featured a singer in a rumpled black suit belting out traditional Arabic ballads. Members of the audience were herded together so the half-empty auditorium appeared full on state television, and the crowd whistled, clapped and danced in the aisles for the benefit of the cameras. This week, as the extremist militants blew up a 2,000-year-old temple in Palmyra, the opera house in the capital 150 miles to the west prepared to open an art exhibit. “It is...

Russian president Vladimir Putin has decreed that all Russian casualties “in peacetime” be a state secret. In addition to criminal charges arising from divulging state secrets, families risk losing pensions and lump-sum payments if they reveal that their sons were killed in Ukraine. Mothers of soldiers’ associations have been branded “foreign agents” for collecting data on Russian casualties. Dissident Boris Nemtsov was murdered shortly before completing his study of Russian casualties in Ukraine. Russian civil rights organizations, working against the fog of official resistance, could confirm only several hundred battlefield deaths. Business Life (Delovaya Zhizn) reports on markets, finance, entrepreneurship,...

The kidnapping of a group of U.S.-trained moderate Syrians moments after they entered Syria last month to confront the Islamic State was orchestrated by Turkish intelligence, multiple rebel sources have told McClatchy. The rebels say that the tipoff to al Qaida’s Nusra Front enabled Nusra to snatch many of the 54 graduates of the $500 million program on July 29 as soon as they entered Syria, dealing a humiliating blow to the Obama administration’s plans for confronting the Islamic State.