Free Republic

United States President Donald Trump voiced his displeasure with Russian President Vladimir Putin, saying that he is "very disappointed" with him. "I thought he was somebody who meant what he said, he'll talk so beautifully and then bomb people at night. We don't like that," Trump told reporters on his way back from the FIFA Club World Cup final. When asked by a reporter whether he would be announcing sanctions on Russia tomorrow, Trump gave no direct answer. He announced last week that he would be making a "major statement on Russia" on Monday, without elaborating.

While Donald Trump – and other western leaders – are taking their time to catch up with reality, it is obvious that Vladimir Putin has no apparent desire to halt the war in Ukraine. A realistic future military and diplomatic strategy for Kyiv has to accept that fact – and formulate a new approach. The past six months have been dominated by the erroneous assumption that it would be possible for Trump to negotiate a ceasefire, even an armistice. That would be followed by the arrival of an Anglo-French led stabilisation force to secure the future of Ukraine. But Putin...

Ukrainian authorities said Russia hit civilian targets in the towns of Slovyansk and Samar on July 13, but the strikes came amid a relative lull in reported attacks ahead of what US President Donald Trump said would be "major statement" on the conflict. The military administration in Slovyansk, in eastern Ukraine, said there were casualties including a 13-year-old boy as Russian shelling hit residential areas. They did not immediately provide further details. In Samar, 170 kilometers to the west, authorities said a school building and residences were hit. There was no immediate official confirmation of media reports of casualties. Meanwhile,...

Russia is more than a millennium old with a long diplomatic history. Some of Russia’s difficulty may come from the U.S. elites’ ignorance of Russian history and its sensitivities to real or perceived threats of foreign invasion. Many Americans remember the huge drama which arose during the Kennedy presidency when the Soviets put a few missiles in Cuba. Foreign policy wonks still talk about how close we came to World War III. Americans who do not know or acknowledge Russia’s history are unable to understand Russian thinking, thus compromising their ability to consummate agreements with Russia. After the collapse of...

The following is the transcript of an interview with Sens. Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, and Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, that aired on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" on July 13, 2025. -snip- Stay tuned about a plan to go after the seized assets more aggressively. Stay tuned for a plan where America will begin to sell to our European allies tremendous amounts of weapons that can benefit Ukraine. Putin has calculated that we would get tired, and Europe would get weary. He made a huge mistake. NATO is bigger and stronger, and we're more committed to...

Lindsey Graham says in the coming days, Trump will unleash weapons to Ukraine "at a record level," along with enacting unprecedented sanctions against Russia

Russia and China's foreign ministers on Sunday discussed their relations with the United States and the prospects for ending the war in Ukraine, Russia's foreign ministry said in a statement. President Vladimir Putin's foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, met Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, in Beijing on Sunday. Lavrov is due to attend a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization's (SCO) foreign ministers in China. "The parties also discussed relations with the United States and prospects for resolving the Ukrainian crisis," the foreign ministry said. "The importance of strengthening close coordination between the two countries in the international arena, including in...

President Trump is set to meet with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte this week on the heels of the U.S. leader announcing plans to sell NATO allies weapons that it can pass on to Ukraine. In a statement, NATO said Rutte will be in Washington on Monday and Tuesday and will also meet with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and members of Congress. CBS News reached out to the White House for additional comment. Sen. Lindsey Graham confirmed on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" that he and Democrat Sen. Richard Blumenthal will be meeting with...

For 40 cruel and bloody months, Ukraine has fought the Russian invader. Since February 2022, when Moscow’s full-scale, countrywide onslaught began, its people have faced relentless, devastating attacks. Tens of thousands have been killed or wounded, millions have lost their homes. Ukraine’s industries, shops, schools, hospitals and power stations burn, its fertile farmlands are laid waste. Its children are orphaned, traumatised or abducted. Despite repeated appeals, the world has failed to stop the carnage. And yet Ukraine, outnumbered and outgunned, has continued to fight back. Ukrainian heroism amid horror has become so familiar, it’s almost taken for granted. But as...

US President Donald Trump says he will send Patriot air defense missiles to Ukraine, saying they are necessary to defend the country because Russian President Vladimir Putin “talks nice but then he bombs everybody in the evening.” -snip- “We will send them Patriots, which they desperately need, because Putin really surprised a lot of people. He talks nice and then bombs everybody in the evening. But there’s a little bit of a problem there. I don’t like it,” Trump tells reporters at Joint Base Andrews outside of Washington. “We basically are going to send them various pieces of very sophisticated...

-SNIP- ... In his second term thus far, Trump has defied his critics with several major international wins, and he’s relished the results. His green light for the June 22 US strikes on Iranian nuclear-related targets was a stunning interpretation of what defines “America first.” At the NATO Summit in The Hague days later, he pivoted from years of lambasting European partners to securing a historic agreement to lift Alliance-wide defense and defense-related spending to 5 percent of gross domestic product by 2035, while reaffirming shared security guarantees. Both the Iran and NATO moves are legacy-defining, peace-through-strength actions. They could...

In the battle for Ukraine, the front line is increasingly at a standstill. The reason: rapid innovations in drone technology. From just a few commercial and homemade drones, which the Ukrainians used at the start of the war to locate invading Russian columns, unmanned vehicles now dominate the battlefield. Each side has hundreds of them constantly in the air across the 750-mile front line. Drones can lay mines, deliver everything from ammunition to medication and even evacuate wounded or dead soldiers. Crucially, drones spot any movement along the front line and are dispatched to strike enemy troops and vehicles. ‘Wedding...

Newsdump Commentary: Iran Is Still On The Chopping Block For Regime Change Israel And The US Oppose Resolution Decrying Treatment Of Women And Girls In Afghanistan... All of this Jeffrey Epstein Drama and the need to kick the matter down the road coinciding with the four-day visit of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Washington DC. Personality clashes or blaming personalities gets us to nowhere. President Harry Truman had that sign on his desk... Beyond Jeffrey Epstein This is the show that reminds you the Iranian men and the Israeli men go to... "The researchers estimate that this amounts to...

A major explosion struck a gas pipeline in the Russian city of Langepas, located in the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous District of western Siberia, on the evening of July 10, according to Ukrainian intelligence sources cited by Militarnyi. The damaged pipeline reportedly supplied gas to defense industry facilities in the Chelyabinsk, Orenburg, and Sverdlovsk regions—key hubs for Russia’s military-industrial complex.

At 1am on Thursday, Dartsia Liuba went to the basement of her Kyiv apartment building with her two children and husband, Roma. The air-raid siren had gone off. A Russian attack was coming. Liuba scooped up her seven-month-old baby daughter, Halyna, and woke her bleary-eyed nine-year-old, Orysia, and they staggered down three floors to wait in sticky darkness. Soon explosions began. There was an ugly whine in the sky immediately above their district of Podil. It came from a Shahed kamikaze drone. The streets echoed with booms and rat-tat-tat machine-gun fire as Ukrainian air defence units tried to bring it...

President Trump is considering authorizing fresh funding for Ukraine for the first time since he took office in January, multiple diplomatic sources told CBS News.The sources indicated the new funding could be intended to send a message to Russia, which has pounded Ukraine with drone and missile attacks in recent days. Russia this week launched what Ukraine described as the largest drone attack since its full-scale invasion began in February 2022 — the latest in a wave of aerial assaults that have pummeled Kyiv and other cities.Mr. Trump hinted earlier this week that he planned to send Ukraine more defensive...

US President Donald Trump has said he will have "a major statement" on Russia on Monday, without going into detail. Trump made the remark in a phone interview with NBC News on Thursday, referring to the situation in Ukraine. The president said, "I'm disappointed in Russia, but we'll see what happens over the next couple of weeks." Trump has recently been stepping up his criticism of Russia. He has suggested he would consider additional sanctions against Moscow. Russia's presidential spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said on Friday that Moscow is waiting for the statement to understand what exactly President Trump means.

Vladimir Putin has said the United States is “serious” about taking Greenland and warned Russia is ready and willing to militarily “protect its interests in the arctic.” It comes as Ukraine’s allies, including the United Kingdom, met in France to discuss peacekeeping plans in the event of a ceasefire. Britain and France confirmed on Thursday they are drawing up plans to send a "reassurance force" to Ukraine and will soon send military chiefs to the country to determine the scheme’s viability. Speaking after the announcement, Russia’s Vladimir Putin issued a stark warning to NATO countries as he declared Russia is...

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov met North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in the coastal city of Wonsan on Saturday, where he described the two nations' relations as "an invincible fighting brotherhood", Russia's foreign ministry said. The ministry quoted Lavrov as saying that the visit represented the continuation of "strategic dialogue" between the two sides inaugurated by Russian President Vladimir Putin's visit to North Korea last year. In a message passed on by Lavrov, Putin said that he hoped for more direct contacts in future, TASS news agency reported. Lavrov, the ministry said, also thanked North Korea for the troops...

VLADIMIR Putin's brutal war machine was dealt another blow today as Moscow confirmed the death of another top Russian military chief. Russian authorities have confirmed the death of Colonel Sergei Ilyin, commander of Russia's notorious 155th Marine Brigade. Telegram news channel Astra reported the Colonel's death on Friday, citing a now-deleted post from officials, the Moscow Times has reported. Ilyin had died "during the special military operation" according to a post attributed to the Urmarsky district administration. "Special military operation" is the euphemism used by Kremlin authorities when referring to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It follows speculation that the...