Free Republic

In mid-2022, Gazprom restricted gas flows to Europe in what was seen as a move by Putin to get both leverage against Kyiv's allies ahead of the winter season and retaliate against Western sanctions and support of Ukraine. But the EU managed to find alternative long-term sources of gas imports and free itself from most Russian piped-gas imports ... Gazprom's revenue fell by 41 percent year-over-year in the first half of 2023, while sales profits dropped 71 percent and gas production by 25 percent... The report said the company's upstream gas-production base is now isolated because infrastructure connecting its main...

A Russian army general who was blamed for a costly HIMARS strike on troops in occupied Ukraine last year has been removed from his post, according to pro-war Russian Telegram channels. Lieutenant General Sukhrab Akhmedov was dismissed as commander of the Russian 20th Combined Arms Army (CAA), per reports from prominent Russian milbloggers. The formation is currently engaged in Russia's grinding offensive towards the eastern city of Lyman on the Donetsk front. -snip- Akhmedov has been involved in multiple battlefield setbacks since Russia's full-scale invasion began in February 2022, including the 20th CAA's recent inability to make significant progress on...

MAGA Donald Trump supporters have rallied behind the former president after he released FBI paperwork, connected to its search of his Mar-a-Lago residence, showing agents were permitted to use "deadly force." On Tuesday, Trump shared on his social media platform Truth Social the information revealed by an unsealed search warrant in his classified documents case which said that federal agents were prepared to use "deadly force" when executing the raid of his Florida resort. After the news broke, former Trump strategist Steve Bannon and Trump ally Mike Davis discussed what they called an "assassination" plot by the bureau. A post...

Conservative TV host Tucker Carlson has launched his own show on a Russian state television channel. The former Fox News anchor is presenting the program Tucker on the rolling news channel Russia 24, with the first episode now available online, Russian state newspaper Rossiskya Gazyeta reported. The paper said that the show is part of a joint project with Carlson TV, in which he will interview figures and politicians who have "alternative views to the mainstream." -snip- This is a breaking story. More to follow.

A senior Russian commander who criticized the Russian military and its war effort in Ukraine has been arrested, Russian state media reported on Tuesday. Major General Ivan Popov, who had headed up Russia's 58th Army, was "arrested on suspicion of fraud," Russian state news agency, Tass, reported, citing a law enforcement spokesperson. In July 2023, Popov was removed from his command of Russian troops in Ukraine's annexed southern Zaporizhzhia region after he criticized the Russian Defense Ministry for failing to provide sufficient support for the country's troops. Popov condemned what he called a "lack of counter-battery combat," too few resources...

The Russian government has instructed Gazprom, once Russia's biggest company by revenue, not to pay out dividends, following record losses and a plummeting share price. Earlier this month, Gazprom Group, which also includes oil and power businesses, announced a net loss of 629 billion rubles [$6.9 billion] for last year—the first since 1999. A decree on the government website, dated May 18, ordered Gazprom not "to provide for the payment of dividends on ordinary registered shares," for 2023.

A Russian military airfield in Crimea has caught fire for a second night in a row, according to new reports, after Moscow said Ukraine had launched consecutive long-range strikes on the Russian-controlled peninsula. The Belbek airfield, close to the port city of Sevastopol on Crimea's western edge where Russia bases its Black Sea naval fleet, is "on fire again," Russian independent news outlet Astra reported on Thursday.

If Donald Trump wins a second term in the White House in November, NATO may fall apart, a recent wargame found. As a presidential candidate, Trump has threatened to quit NATO unless European allies contribute more, and should he carry it out Europe may decide to go it alone on defense, the game suggests. "A US policy of frustrating NATO has the potential to cause the alliance to collapse, with the EU as a candidate for eventually replacing NATO's ultimate function — defending Europe from Russia," wrote Finley Grimble, the British defense expert who designed and ran the game. The...

A video posted Monday on social media shows the Ukrainian military destroying 10 Russian military vehicles in a single strike. The video was posted by the 63rd Separate Mechanized Brigade on Telegram. Reportedly, five Russian BMP-1s, an amphibious infantry fighting vehicle, along with five tanks, were burned in the strike. The 63rd Brigade said that at least one vehicle was a Russian T-90M battle tank. The Ukrainian defense effort reportedly occurred near Terni in the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine. The 63rd Brigade said it destroyed the vehicles "with the help of artillery and unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) drops."

A Russian commander was reportedly killed in Crimea following a Ukrainian missile strike in the region. On Monday, the Russian independent outlet Astra said on its Telegram channel that a Russian air defense base located near Mount Ai-Petri in Crimea was hit with "an early morning missile attack" by Ukrainian forces. "The commander of the military unit was killed," Astra reported. "On the mountain, there is a 'secret' military air defense base of the 3rd radio technical regiment of the Russian Armed Forces." The outlet identified the Russian military commander as Alexander Kulakov. Another Russian soldier was also killed in...

Following President Joe Biden stating that he would withhold certain weapons from Israel amid the Israel-Hamas war, Republicans were confronted on Sunday over former President Ronald Reagan's similar stance to leverage military aid to Israel. On October 7, 2023, Hamas, a Palestinian militant group, launched an attack against Israel, killing some 1,200 people and taking about 250 hostage. In the months that followed, Israel's offensive has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians in Gaza, the Associated Press reported, citing local health officials. On Wednesday, Biden warned he would stop supplying Israel with offensive weapons like bombs and artillery shells if Israeli...

Gazprom, the energy giant at the heart of Russia's economy, has announced it is selling property in Moscow, one week after posting record losses linked to restricted supplies to Europe linked to Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine. The company said on Wednesday that the properties include office and non-residential buildings, a car parking lot in the capital, and the Imperial Park Hotel and spa sanatorium and resort complex in Rogozino village, just outside of Moscow. "Gazprom is engaged in a fire sale. They had their worst year in decades, and their production has fallen precipitously, down to what it was...

Legal analysts are accusing Judge Aileen Cannon of pro-Donald Trump bias after indefinitely suspending his classified documents case. Cannon, a Trump appointee, indefinitely postponed the trial on Tuesday, citing legal disputes around classified evidence. Cannon said there were eight outstanding substantive pending motions for her to rule on and predicted this will take until at least late July. It is unknown whether the case will begin before the November 2024 presidential election. If elected, Trump has a number of options to kill the trial, including pardoning himself or appointing a favorable attorney general to drop the charges. Cannon is overseeing...

Petitions calling for the removal of Judge Aileen Cannon from Donald Trump's classified documents case have now amassed more than 300,000 signatures. Cannon, a Trump-appointed U.S. district court judge, is facing calls to recuse herself from the former president's classified documents case over concerns regarding her impartiality. Trump is facing dozens of criminal charges related to claims that he kept classified material at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida after leaving the White House and then obstructed authorities' efforts to retrieve them. He has pleaded not guilty to all counts. Newsweek has found six petitions calling for Cannon's removal from the...

A senior Ukrainian intelligence official warned about the threat Moscow poses on other nations in Europe, saying "the Russians will take the Baltics in seven days" if allies don't stand up to Russia now. The comment was made by Major-General Vadym Skibitsky, the deputy head of Ukraine's military intelligence directorate (GUR), during an interview with The Economist published on Thursday. The alarm has been sounded before about the potential of Russian President Vladimir Putin looking to start conflicts in the Baltic states. Earlier this year, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) wrote that the Russian leader appeared to...

GOP Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene's attempt to shame the so-called "uniparty" of pro-Ukraine Republicans and Democrats has backfired. During a Wednesday press conference on her plan to remove Speaker of the House Mike Johnson from leadership over the passage of $61 billion in Ukraine aid, Greene displayed a blue and yellow "MUGA" ("Make Ukraine Great Again") hat, a reference to the MAGA slogan often associated with former President Donald Trump.

With seven months to go until November's presidential election and the majority of polls showing the presumptive presidential candidates Donald Trump and Joe Biden are basically neck-and-neck, the pair both need every vote they can to secure the keys to the White House. But Trump, the Republican former president, may be hampering his chances at success because of his standing with one key demographic in the adult voting population: women. Polls show that the proportion of women who plan to vote for Trump in November is less than the proportion who voted for him in the 2020 election. Meanwhile, experts...

The British government said on Tuesday it would commit its largest-ever tranche of military aid to Ukraine as part of a package worth £500 million ($622 million). The assistance will include further deliveries of Storm Shadow air-launched, precision-guided missiles, as well as vessels and vehicles. The Paveway IV—the latest in the Paveway series of bombs—converts unguided munitions, also known as "dumb bombs," into precision-guided weapons. They can use laser guidance or satellites to find their way to a target. "The Paveway IV will enable Ukraine to strike back" at Russian forces and target high-value assets such as command centers and...

Donald Trump suffered a blow in the Pennsylvania primary on Tuesday, as tens of thousands of Republicans refused to vote for him despite being the presumptive GOP nominee...Nikki Haley, who ended her campaign for the White House after Super Tuesday in March, still received 16.5 percent of the vote, equating to more than 155,000 ballots.

New videos appear to show a fire raging in northern Crimea, after reports of explosions around a military airfield overnight. Footage widely circulated on social media by Russian and Ukrainian sources early on Wednesday show bright flashes of light and explosions, with sirens wailing in the background. A local Telegram channel reported "several loud explosions," starting just before 4 a.m. local time, before a fire broke out. Roads around the air base are blocked, the channel later reported. Dzhankoy is a major military hub, home to one of Russia's largest airfields in Crimea. It is a key location for supplying...