Free Republic

LONDON, May 21 (Reuters) - U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said there was a possibility Group of Seven nations would support Ukraine by as much as $50 billion using loans linked to seized Russian assets, Sky News reported on Tuesday. "I believe it's important for the G7 to work together to show a united front and to show that we can generate meaningful resources to support Ukraine over the next several years," she told Sky News.

Western allies are taking too long to make key decisions on military support for Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told Reuters in an exclusive interview in Kyiv on Monday. He also said he was pushing partners to get more directly involved in the war by helping to intercept Russian missiles over Ukraine and allowing Kyiv to use Western weapons against enemy military equipment amassing near the border. The call to accelerate aid and push so-called "red lines" of engagement in the conflict reflect the growing pressure Zelenskyy's forces are under along more than 1,000 km of front lines in the northeast,...

Germany’s Parliament, known as the Bundestag, received enough votes last week to remove a section of the country’s Criminal Code to reduce the minimum penalties for “dissemination, acquisition and possession of child pornographic content.”According to the Bundestag, the bill specifies that “possession and acquisition should be punishable with a minimum penalty of three months’ imprisonment, and distribution with a minimum penalty of six months’ imprisonment, and distribution with a minimum penalty of six months’ imprisonment. The offenses regulated in Section 184b of the Criminal Code are therefore classified as misdemeanors and not as crimes.”In 2021, the possession of child sexual...

Russian central bank assets. Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavsky said the move will hand Ukraine up to €3 billion (about $3.3 billion) this year. "We have approved in the EU using revenues from Russia's central bank's frozen assets to help Ukraine," wrote Lipavsky on X, formerly Twitter. "Up to €3B only this year, 90% goes for Ukraine's military. Russia must pay for its war damages." The financial assets were frozen shortly after Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Reuters reported this month that the EU has estimated that by 2027, windfall profits from Russia's central bank...

WASHINGTON — Indicted first son Hunter Biden suggested in a new interview that he didn’t introduce his father to an executive from a Ukrainian gas company that was paying Hunter a million-dollar salary — despite testifying to Congress that then-Vice President Joe Biden dined with the very same Burisma Holdings executive. The 54-year-old brazenly backpedaled days after a fresh report that “sugar brother” Kevin Morris, who has bankrolled Hunter since meeting him at a presidential campaign fundraiser in late 2019, is “completely tapped out” after giving or loaning the scandal-plagued Biden at least $4.9 million. President Biden’s son told The...

All along the 600-mile frontline, the Kremlin’s invasion forces are exploiting Ukrainian exhaustion and a six-month delay in American military aid. A shock offensive in the Kharkiv region has seen Putin’s troops cross the border for the first time since the 2022 invasion. Villages in the Zaporizhzhya region have been wiped off the map as Russia tries to reverse the gains of Ukraine’s 2023 counter-offensive. But the central Russian effort is focused on Donetsk region, where they are now on the outskirts of the hill-top town of Chasiv Yar. If they capture it, they will be in striking distance of...

“He’s doomed to not be loved!” Never was there a more clear-cut case of “commentator’s curse” than when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was inaugurated on a sunny Kyiv day exactly five years ago. The TV narrator’s inference was that, after a landslide election victory with 73% of the vote, it could only go downhill for him. While his approval ratings have inevitably waned, Volodymyr Zelensky has been able to use his enduring appeal, along with a desire for stability, to extend his term in office. In peacetime it would have expired, and an election would have been called. But the...

Many Ukrainians see Volodymyr Zelensky as a dictator who has betrayed his own country for a handful of silver. From tomorrow, May 20th, Zelensky’s presidential term is formally at an end—but no new elections will be held as long as Ukraine is under martial law because he would be overwhelmingly voted out. He preaches that Ukraine is fighting for freedom and then denies them the right to vote on his policies – so much for freedom and democracy. Zelensky has no incentive for peace at this point in time. Zelensjy won the election, which some say was rigged, promising PEACE...

"It all started with the tragic events in the United States, in the schools of the United States," Vladimir Putin told the Valdai discussion forum in Sochi in southern Russia. As Russians struggle to come to terms with a horrific US-style school shooting in Crimea, which has left at least 20 people dead and dozens injured, Kremlin-controlled media are blaming the "corrupting influence" of the West for inspiring the attack. This person was under the strong influence of Western subculture," said Sergey Mikheyev, a political analyst speaking on a nightly current-affairs show on Russian state television. "Western subculture builds its...

Abraham lincoln won a presidential election in civil-war-torn America in 1864, and fdr secured his fourth term in 1944 while American troops were in action across the globe. Winston Churchill, by contrast, avoided the electorate until the war in Europe was over in 1945, at which point he was turfed out. Holding an election when enemies are occupying your territory or raining bombs on it, and when huge numbers of your citizens are away fighting, is tricky. Not holding one is tricky in a different way, opening those in power to the charge of illegitimacy. That is the bind that...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says Russia could increase its attacks in Ukraine's north east following its recent gains near the city of Kharkiv. Mr Zelensky admitted that there were issues with military staffing and morale, saying a number of existing brigades were empty. He also told the AFP news agency the country's air fleet was lacking and renewed calls for allies to send more air defence and fighter jets. "Today we have about 25% of what we need to defend Ukraine," Mr Zelensky said of Ukraine's air capabilities.

As you’ve probably heard, the populist Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico was shot five times by a crazed pro-Ukrainian, radical left-wing activist in a foiled assassination attempt. ... In today’s era of violent, pro-war leftists, advocating for peace has become dangerous—and potentially deadly. Fico was vehemently against supporting Ukraine in the dustup with Russia. The Slovakia anti-Ukraine history runs long and deep, as this 2023 article explains. Politico: Slovakia’s new leader Robert Fico made waves during the country’s recent election campaign by warning that he would not send “another bullet” to help Ukraine fend off the Russian invasion. His dramatic...

They say one week is a long time in politics. Those same people have never been to war.Six days ago, Ukrainian forces were just about hanging on across the near-1,000 kilometre front. Recent territorial losses to Russia – most notably the town of Avdiivka – in addition to recent delays in both US and EU military aid packages, had caused mounting concern for Ukraine’s fate in 2024.Despite these recent battlefield set-backs, and delays in aid, it still felt as though Ukraine was buying time to rearm, reorganise, and redeploy an offensive counter-attack this summer.That was six days ago, before up...

In an unexpected moment, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov referred to his leader, Vladimir Putin, as Chinese President Xi Jinping's "donkey" and admitted that nothing now depends on Moscow. He made the eyebrow-raising comment in response to a question from a Russian propagandist about an informal meeting planned after the official talks during Putin’s visit to Beijing. “You know, as they say in the East, the guest is the master's donkey. Therefore, of course, all programs depend on the kind offers that the Chinese president and his team have made to our president,” Lavrov explained, offering a glimpse into the...

Kyiv says it has had some success pushing back against a renewed Russian offensive, but Ukraine's defences are in dire need of resupply. A massive Ukrainian drone attack on Crimea early Friday caused power cutoffs in the city of Sevastopol and set a refinery ablaze in southern Russia, Russian authorities said. The drone raids marked an attempt to strike back during Moscow's renewed offensive in northeastern Ukraine, which has added to the pressure on outnumbered and outgunned Ukrainian forces as they await delayed deliveries of crucial Western weapons and ammunition. Ukraine has not commented on the attack nor claimed responsibility...

NATO allies are inching closer to sending troops into Ukraine to train Ukrainian forces, a move that would be another blurring of a previous red line and could draw the United States and Europe more directly into the war. (snip) So far the United States has said no, but Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Thursday that a NATO deployment of trainers appeared inevitable. “We’ll get there eventually, over time,” he said. (snip) As a part of NATO, the United States would be obligated under the alliance’s treaty to aid in...

Russia’s new offensive across Ukraine’s northeastern border had been expected for months — yet it still surprised the Ukrainian soldiers stationed there to defend against it. Ukraine’s 125th Territorial Defense Brigade — stretched thin along a roughly 27-mile stretch of the Kharkiv region’s border with Russia — used reconnaissance drones to monitor, daily, how Moscow was steadily building up forces for a possible attack. But the morning it happened, May 10, the brigade lost all its video feeds due to Russian electronic jamming. Its Starlink devices — satellite internet the Ukrainian military relies on for basic communication — failed, the...

Russia: State Duma Committee on Defence recommends the nullification of the previously passed law which exempted from mobilization fathers of at least three children.

The situation in Ukraine is so serious that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had to cancel a planned trip to Spain and come straight to Kharkiv -- the country’s second largest city, which is again in real danger from the Russian advance. With exclusive access, ABC News joined Zelenskyy on a tour of a hospital in the city, with Zelenskyy, where he met soldiers injured in the northern defense, and presented them with medals of valor. “It’s really important for me to be here,” he told us, as we walked the corridors. In each ward, he stopped as an officer read out...

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) – Ukrainian units locked in street battles with the Kremlin´s forces in a key northeastern Ukraine town have halted the Russian advance, military officials in Kyiv claimed Thursday, though a senior Moscow official said the frontline push had enough resources to keep going. Russian attempts to establish a foothold in the town of Vovchansk, which is among the largest towns in Ukraine´s northeastern Kharkiv region with a prewar population of 17,000, “have been foiled,” Ukraine´s general staff said in a midday report. It was not possible to independently verify the claim.