Free Republic

Russia said Sunday it scrambled fighter jets to intercept two U.S. military long-range bomber aircraft that approached the Russian border over the Barents Sea in the Arctic. “The crews of the Russian fighters identified the aerial target as a pair of U.S. Air Force B-52H strategic bombers,” Moscow’s defense ministry wrote on the social media platform Telegram, specifying that the planes scrambled were MiG-29 and MiG-31 fighters. “As the Russian fighters approached, the U.S. strategic bombers turned away from the State Border of the Russian Federation,” the ministry said.

At the 2024 NATO Summit in Washington, commemorating the alliance’s 75th anniversary, leaders offered Ukraine a fresh round of false hope in its war against Russia — which is worse than doing nothing. Whether by military commitment or intensified support, the pretension that NATO could currently deliver a Ukrainian victory, or secure one later, encourages the country’s leaders to postpone reckoning with their dire circumstances. Moreover, it threatens to further imperil NATO members without a security payoff. After the failure of Ukraine’s counteroffensive in 2023, recognition that its forces cannot regain more of its territory has begun to sink in....

LONDON (AP) – President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged Britain’s new government to help Ukrainian forces attack deeper inside Russia to stop deadly missile strikes on his country, as he gave a rare address by a foreign leader to a U.K. Cabinet meeting. Zelenskyy said “long-range capability” to destroy sites where Russian weapons are concentrated is key to Ukraine’s defense. “I ask you to show your leadership” in lifting restrictions on Ukraine’s use of Western weapons, Zelenskyy told Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Russia has deployed devastating firepower as it pursues a summer offensive in eastern Ukraine, reducing villages to rubble and pushing...

The outgoing head of the British Army General Sir Patrick Sanders has warned that NATO may only have five years to prepare for war. General Sir Patrick warned that the world was facing one of its most dangerous moments since 1945 when the world was last at war and that the alliance may have until the end of this decade to be ready. Sir Patrick also highlighted that despite performing well in some areas, the UK’s armed forces were also underfunded and overstretched. His warnings come at a time of rising global tensions over Russia’s war in Ukraine, China’s warnings...

SNIPTo prevent the attacks, Zelenskyy pushed for permission from the U.S. to use long-range weapons to target airfields hundreds of miles inside Russia.“We can protect our cities from Russian guided bombs if American leadership makes a step forward and allows us to destroy Russian military aircraft on their bases," he said.SNIPWhile praising American aid as a whole, he also framed American deliveries of 31 Abrams tanks, once the center of a major political push, as ultimately too few to make a difference. “I'm not sure that such a number of tanks can change the situation on the battlefield,” said Zelenskyy....

The American diplomat and historian George F. Kennan called the First World War the “seminal catastrophe” of the 20th century, and he wrote two lengthy books on the events that led to the outbreak of that war: The Decline of Bismarck’s European Order and The Fateful Alliance. He also included one of his lectures on the First World War in his book American Diplomacy. Reading these works of history gives one a better sense of the root causes of that war, which included policies, decisions, and events that occurred decades before June-August 1914. When the war began in the Balkans...

Three weeks before Trump and Biden sparred over their respective golf games at last Thursday’s presidential debate, “The Courses at Andrews” Air Force Base hosted a charity golf tournament for wounded Ukrainian veterans of the neo-Nazi Azov movement. Joint Base Andrews, located fifteen miles southeast of the White House in Prince George’s County, Maryland, is home to Air Force One and three 18-hole golf courses long favored by U.S. presidents and members of Congress. Brute fascists are starting a new tradition on the green. Retired four-star general David Petraeus addressed at least a half dozen Azov veterans at the June...

Involuntary Draft for Males and Females Ages 18-26 ational Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for the fiscal year 2025, authorized a Mandatory Military Selective Service Act for American women. The selective service program is a way to implement a military draft for women in the USA. There have been some lawmakers who oppose this measure. Some key highlights in the NDAA are included at this link. https://www.armed-services.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/fy25_ndaa_executive_summary.pdf In this confusing world we live in, it does not mean if you are a male and identify yourself as “woman” or use various gender pronoun you are exempt from the draft. There are...

Viktor Orbán, Europe’s most pro-Russian leader, met Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin on Friday on a rare trip to Russia that drew strong condemnation from other European leaders. Orbán’s visit to Moscow came days after he made a similar unannounced trip to Kyiv, as the Hungarian prime minister attempts to position himself as a peace broker between Russia and Ukraine. Shortly after landing in Russia for his first trip to the country since Putin launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Orbán published a photo with the caption: “The peace mission continues. Second stop: Moscow.” At the Kremlin, the two leaders...

Kyiv has been told that, before it can join Nato, it must fix its problems with corruption. These are very real: the latest Corruption Perceptions Index ranks Ukraine below Belarus and Kazakhstan. But that is not the true reason why there will be no good news on accession for Zelensky at Nato’s 75th anniversary summit in Washington next week.The simple reality is that very few in Nato wants to let Ukraine in, despite endless platitudes including a declaration by the North Atlantic Council at Vilnius last year that “Ukraine’s future is in Nato”. There has been discussion about taking that...

<p>As long as the West continues to allow the Neocons to control this war, then there will be no stopping World War III. These people have spent their entire lives hating Russians for particularly personal reasons. These Neocons have waged endless wars since Vietnam.</p>

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Tuesday that the U.S. will soon announce an additional $2.3 billion in security assistance for Ukraine, to include anti-tank weapons, interceptors and munitions for Patriot and other air defense systems. Austin’s remarks came as Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov met with him at the Pentagon. And they mark a strong response to pleas from Kyiv for help in battling Russian forces in the Donetsk region. Austin said the aid will come through presidential drawdown authority, which allows the Pentagon to take the weapons from its stocks and send them more quickly to Ukraine.

When German-born Kim Dotcom talks about "the US", he sounds like me talking about "the Globalists". Speaking on the The Alex Jones Show, Kim says that the US is leading the world into a nuclear war, to avoid facing up to its crimes. He says the an asset-based BRICS currency would be preferred for trade by virtually every country over the US dollar, where you risk being impetuously sanctioned over some BS that isn't even true. Kim says, "My big worry is that, you know, once the realization sinks in that this is not reversible, that Russia and China are...

Kim Dotcom @KimDotcom The US Air Force directed the ATACMS missile strike against Russian civilians today. This is an act of war by the US Govt against Russia. Did Joe Biden seek permission from Congress to start a direct war with Russia?

As a child of the ’70s and ’80s, I, along with my age mates, remember Cold War nuclear annihilation fears well. Oh, I was born after “duck and cover” days, but we did, for example, have the post-apocalyptic 1983 film The Day After, which portrayed a nuclear war’s consequences. Watched by 100 million-plus Americans — more than half our adult population at the time — it’s credited for creating impetus for policies that reduced the atomic threat. Even then-President Ronald Reagan was “greatly depressed” by the movie, as he wrote in his diary, and it stiffened his resolve to, as...

Imagine, for a moment, that the Iranian government ann­ounces it has developed a nuc­lear bomb and threatens to use it on Israel. The United States reacts with the threat of military intervention, as it did in 1991 and 2003 in Iraq. Iran signals that it will not tolerate a third Gulf war and looks for allies. American forces mass to enter Iran, which orders national mobilisation. Russia, China and North Korea express their support for Iran, and Washington expands its intervention force, bringing in a British contingent. Russia enters the game, raising the stakes in the expectation that the West...

‘History is watching. The failure to support Ukraine at this critical moment will not be forgotten,” President Biden said on the two-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “Now is the time to prove that the United States stands up for freedom and bows down to no one.” Strong words. Too bad they are nothing more. Time and again, Biden has bowed down to Vladimir Putin, allowing the tyrant to dictate the terms of this unlawful, immoral invasion. Nowhere is this more true than the disgraceful limitations on Ukraine’s strategy.

Nigel Farage has said the West "provoked" Russia's invasion of Ukraine by expanding the European Union and Nato military alliance eastwards. But he added that the expansion of the EU and Nato gave him a "reason" to tell the Russian people "they're coming for us again". In an interview with the BBC's Nick Robinson, Mr Farage was challenged over his judgement and past statements, including when he named Russian President Vladimir Putin as the world leader he most admired in 2014."I said I disliked him as a person, but admired him as a political operator because he's managed to take...

Russia did not want peace, only the capitulation of Ukraine. Jakub Kumoch, former Secretary of State of President Andrzej Duda, who accompanied the Ukrainian delegation to negotiations with Russia in Belarus and Turkey in the spring of 2022, told the newspaper The Polish Times. The Introduction - That negotiations were a dead end. Moscow did not want a lasting peace - this is how Jakub Kumoch says about the backstage negotiations between Ukraine and Russia in the spring of 2022. Today he is the ambassador of the Republic of Poland to China, in 2022 he is the Secretary of State...

Historic news as 400 Russian soldiers have surrendered in central Vovchansk, the largest mass surrender of the entire war on the Russian side. These Russian forces were encircled at the chemical plant and for only 2 days held out until the surrender from today. Russian forces in the city are now seriously crippled with the loss of half a BTG. Meanwhile Ukrainian drone attacks continue to drive home damage into the Russian federation, as Russia takes high losses with very little gains.