Free Republic

So our FRiend Mark Levin is in Israel as its being bombarded with drones and missiles by Iran. (Please Pray for Peace)Kudos to him for being there as some of us have in the past accused him of being a chickenhawk. I'm looking forward to his reports actually if he does any. Life goes on there. I just saw on the BBC bars etc. are open. But I was wondering what Freepers thought of the dual loyalty question ? Mark could become an Israeli citizen if he so wanted and younger Jewish people often volunteer and fight in their military...

Ukrainian forces in a priority section of the front line near Avdiivka appear to have defeated a large Russian mechanized assault involving tanks and fighting vehicles over the weekend. -snip- On March 30, Ukrainian troops outside occupied Avdiivka fought off a Russian battalion-sized mechanized assault, the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said. ISW cited a Ukrainian serviceman who, on March 31, said that elements of Russia's 6th Tank Regiment sent 36 tanks and 12 BMP infantry fighting vehicles into a battle on the front line near Tonenke, a village east of Avdiivka. The serviceman said...

In the summer of 2013, a Moscow restaurant owner was gunned down in the Russian capital. A hooded man jumped off a bike and shot his victim twice before fleeing. Six years later, an exiled Chechen commander, Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, was murdered in a busy Berlin park in eerily similar circumstances, shot by a man on a bike with a silenced Glock 26 in broad daylight. The assailant was arrested after dumping a pistol and wig in the River Spree close to the Reichstag, the building housing the German parliament. A passport bearing the name "Vadim Sokolov" was found on the...

Russia's Kuibyshev mid-sized oil refinery near the city of Samara on the Volga river has halted all production following damage from a Ukrainian drone attack last week, two industry sources told Reuters on Thursday. The disruption adds to the difficulties of the Russian oil refining sector as the need for emergency repairs following numerous drone attacks claimed by Ukraine has left them struggling to deliver supplies. According to Reuters calculations, around 14% of Russia's refining capacity has been shut down by drone attacks, including Kuibyshev, and the country has this month increased gasoline imports from neighbouring Belarus to address possible...

The Kremlin gave no indication that President Vladimir Putin plans to visit family members of those killed in last Friday's attack on a Moscow concert hall, which killed 143 people. The Russian leader was seen lighting a candle for the victims at a Moscow church last week but has not visited the scene of the massacre or publicly met with its victims. "If any contacts are necessary, we will inform you accordingly," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, when asked if President Putin planned to meet family members of the dead. He also said Mr Putin did not plan to visit...

Russia has increased gasoline imports from neighbouring Belarus in March to tackle the risk of shortages in its domestic market because of unscheduled repairs at Russian refineries after drone attacks, four industry and trade sources said on Wednesday. Usually Russia is a net exporter of fuel and a supplier to international markets, but the disruption of Russian refining has forced oil companies to import. Already Russia banned gasoline exports from March 1 to try to secure enough fuel for its domestic market after repeated Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian refineries since the start of the year. Russia normally imports very...

Belarus' strongman dictator Alexander Lukashenko has seemingly undermined Russia's claims that Ukraine was behind the deadly Moscow massacre, after revealing the four terrorists tried fleeing to Belarus, not Ukraine.

Putin later called the embassy’s alerts “provocative” and “outright blackmail,” intended to damage Russian society. “I would also like to recall the recent provocative statements by a number of official Western structures regarding potential terrorist attacks in Russia,” Putin said during a March 19 meeting of the Federal Security Board, per a Kremlin transcript. “All these actions resemble outright blackmail and the intention to intimidate and destabilize our society. You are well aware of them, so I will not go into details at this point.”

LONDON (AP) – Ireland is poised to get its youngest-ever premier after Simon Harris secured the leadership of the Fine Gael party on Sunday, replacing Leo Varadkar who announced his surprise resignation last week. The 37-year-old Harris, who is the government’s further and higher education minister, was the only candidate to put his name forward to succeed Varadkar, who had been Ireland’s previous youngest prime minister, or what Ireland calls its taoiseach.

A growing list of human rights violators and authoritarian regimes around the world published messages congratulating Russian strongman Vladimir Putin on his overwhelming “victory” in a three-day sham presidential election that concluded on Sunday. Leaders such as genocidal Chinese dictator Xi Jinping, North Korean tyrant Kim Jong-un, and the heads of Russia’s satellites in Latin America – Cuba’s figurehead “president” Miguel Díaz-Canel and his Venezuelan counterpart Nicolás Maduro – extended their support and confidence in Putin after securing another six years in power through a largely ceremonial “election” with no meaningful opposition voices on the ballot and widespread reports of...

The world’s despots have rushed to congratulate Vladimir Putin for his all-but-assured Russian election win. -snip- North Korean media says Kim Jong-un sent his congratulations via his embassy in Russia this morning – unsurprising as North Korea has provided Putin with supplies and munitions for his war in Ukraine. Putin has also received well-wishes and congratulations from the authoritarian ruler of Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega, and Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla. ‌The presidents of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, and Bolivia, Luis Arce, joined the small repressive group hailing Putin’s overwhelming victory

Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi is among the first to congratulate Vladimir Putin on his “decisive” win in Russia’s presidential election, state media reports. “The President of the Islamic Republic of Iran in a message sincerely congratulated Vladimir Putin on his decisive victory and re-election as the President of the Russian Federation,” state news agency IRNA reports. Chinese President Xi Jinping also sends a congratulatory message to Putin, saying his re-election “fully reflects the support of the Russian people,” Beijing’s state media reports.

President Vladimir Putin won a record 88 percent in Russia’s presidential election on Sunday, exit polls and first results showed, cementing his grip on power, though thousands of opponents staged a symbolic noon protest at polling stations. The early result means Putin, who came to power in 1999, looks to have easily won a new six-year term that would enable him to overtake Josef Stalin and become Russia’s longest-serving leader for more than 200 years.

Online voter turnout in Russia’s presidential election on the federal platform has reached 90%, according to the portal on online vote monitoring, APA reports citing TASS. As of 9:27 p.m. Moscow time (6:27 p.m. GMT), as many as 4,268,291 ballots were issued to voters in 28 Russian regions, who had applied for voting online. Thus, voter turnout on the federal platform of electronic voting was 90%. Residents of Moscow can vote on Moscow’s own platform and were not required to apply for remote voting beforehand.

The incumbent Russian leader, Vladimir Putin, who is vying for the country’s top office as an independent candidate, has cast his electronic vote in the presidential election, APA reports quoting TASS. The published video footage shows Putin walking to a computer in his office, casting his vote and then smiling and waving at the camera. The computer monitor displayed a standard notification for a successfully cast vote.

Vladimir Putin could raise taxes after the presidential election this month to keep the money flowing to pay for the country's war in Ukraine. Bloomberg reported on Monday that the Kremlin is considering dipping into the pockets of high-earning Russians and corporations, as the government plans to hike taxes by as much as 4 trillion rubles ($44 billion). Sources said that the hikes could be finalized this summer. Under the plan, the government would raise personal income tax from 15% to 20% for those earning over 5 million rubles (roughly $55k USD) and from 13% to 15% for those making...

Tucker Carlson bashed Russian President Vladimir Putin's justification for invading Ukraine, claiming that the "denazification" of the country was "one of the dumbest things I'd ever heard." -snip- Carlson also described his first impression of Putin as someone who "seemed nervous," telling Fridman that the Russian president "went into [the interview] like an over-prepared student." Fridman specifically asked Carlson for his opinion on Putin's justification for continuing the war in Ukraine, which in part is to achieve the "denazification" of the country. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who is Jewish, has repeatedly dismissed the Kremlin's claims that Kyiv's government is openly...

A representative of the company told Russian news outlet RBC that the decision was made after Roscosmos lost almost 80 percent of its export income after losing orders and key partners due to the war in Ukraine. This year, it intends to sell its "non-core" assets ... Borisov said in December that the company had lost contracts worth 180 billion rubles ($1.9 billion) out of 230 billion ($2.5 billion) as a result of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine and subsequent sanctions imposed on Russia by Kyiv's allies... In October last year, Roscosmos appeared to admit that Russia's Luna-25 mission failed...

ussian spies have developed an artificial intelligence tool that Moscow is using to meddle in elections in Britain and the United States on a scale “exponentially greater” than ever before, Ukraine’s national security adviser has warned. In an interview with The Times, Oleksiy Danilov said that AI had enabled Russia to substantially ramp up its disinformation campaigns, designed to sow division and influence public opinion, and that Moscow now had specific units dedicated to every country holding an election in Europe. He said: “Artificial intelligence is a huge step forward for Russia and it makes the impact [of their meddling]...

Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a decree to re-establish the Moscow and Leningrad Military Districts, according to the document posted on the government’s legal information web portal on Monday.