Free Republic

“The invaders renamed Freedom Square in Mariupol as Lenin Square and displayed their tricolor over it,” Andriushchenko wrote in a post on the Telegram messenger on June 11. He suggested that the Russians would like to replace the Ukrainian inscription “Mariupol” on the square with the Russian version (as they did to the monument at the entrance to the city). “Stop destroying Mariupol. Just rename it Zhdanov again,” Andriushchenko wrote. Earlier, the invaders changed the Ukrainian name of the city on the marker at the entrance to Mariupol to Russian. However, it was done so clumsily that the name of...

Moscow — A court in the Russian capital has granted government prosecutors' their wish, formally designating the anti-corruption and political movement led by jailed Kremlin critic Alexey Navalny an extremist entity. It was likely the fatal blow for what has become the most resilient opposition force in Russian politics over the past decade.The court handed down its decision on Wednesday after a 12-hour closed-door hearing, essentially putting Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) and an associated network of regional offices in the same category as ISIS and the Taliban in the eyes of the Russian government....Many of Navalny's close allies, including the...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Experts said on Saturday they were worried by a leaked report that describes an outbreak of smallpox in the Soviet Union -- one they say may point to the testing of a smallpox biological weapon.Seven people became ill in the 1971 outbreak and three died of what appeared to be the more fatal, and more rare, hemorrhagic form of the infection, said Dr. Alan Zelicoff of the Monterey Institute of International Studies, one of the authors of the report."Someone has successfully disseminated smallpox as an aerosol," Zelicoff said in an interview."It has been talked about and it...