Free Republic

Russia would not deploy ground troops to Syria, where it has been conducting air strikes against what it says are ISIS targets, President Vladimir Putin said Sunday. “We are not planning on doing this (conducting a ground operation), and our Syrian friends know about this,” Putin said in an interview broadcast on state-run Rossiya-1 television channel. He also said Russia does not want to get involved in an inter-religious war in Syria. He also explained that Russia does not see a difference between Sunni and Shiite groups.

Syrian forces backed by Hezbollah militants from Lebanon are said to have made significant advances against rebels after heavy Russian air strikes. Government gains are being reported in Idlib, Hama and Latakia provinces. Russia says its aircraft carried out more than 60 missions over Syria in the past 24 hours, and that the Islamic State group was its main target. But the Russian strikes appear to have impacted heavily on rebels fighting both the government and IS. The main battlefront is currently close to the key highway that links the capital Damascus with other major cities, including Aleppo, and President...

As relations between the West and Russia steadily deteriorate, Royal Air Force (RAF) pilots have been given the go-ahead to shoot down Russian military jets when flying missions over Syria and Iraq, if they are endangered by them. The development comes with warnings that the UK and Russia are now "one step closer" to being at war. RAF Tornada pilots have been instructed to avoid contact with Russian aircraft while engaged in missions for Operation Shader - the codename for the RAF's anti-Isis work in Iraq and Syria. But their aircraft have been armed with air-to-air missiles and the pilots...

France on Sunday called escalating violence in Israel and Palestinian-controlled territories "extremely worrying and dangerous." The office of President Francois Hollande said "everything must be done to calm the situation and end this cycle (of violence) which has already caused too many victims." In response to rocket fire on Israel Saturday night, the Israeli Air Force launched airstrikes against two Hamas weapons manufacturing sites in Gaza. A pregnant woman and two-year-old daughter were killed in the strike. Early on Sunday morning, an Arab woman from Jaffa attempted a suicide bombing near Ma'ale Adumim east of Jerusalem, lightly injuring one policeman...

MK Yinon Magal (Jewish Home) blasted on Sunday Israeli security forces' slow response to a terrorist in Afula, blaming it on the "[left-wing] ideology" the media "has represented for decades." "We've lost our basic instinct," a distraught Magal announced on Channel 10's Orly and Guy morning show after watching the clip of police officers arguing with and eventually shooting a knife-wielding terrorist in Afula's Central Bus Station. "Some ten officers are standing there, moving backward and forward, dropping cartridges, one with a popsicle...What is this joke?" Magal charged. "A person threatening with a knife should be shot in the head....

A Saudi Arabian official has reportedly disclosed that the Sunni kingdom sent Syrian rebels a new batch of one of the most effective weapons for battling against the Assad regime this week. BBC correspondent Frank Gardner tweeted that a Saudi official confirmed the delivery of 500 TOW antitank missiles to the Free Syrian Army (FSA). The FSA is currently being squeezed from all directions by the Syrian military, Russian airstrikes, and competition from jihadist fighters, including ISIS. The delivery of the TOW missiles — which have also been provided by the CIA — will increase the capabilities of the FSA...

A Russian air force jet has been shot down by Turkish forces after it strayed into the country's airspace, according to unconfirmed reports. Eyewitnesses reported a large explosion in Huraytan, northern Syria, as three fighter jets were sighted flying overhead, the Express said. A Turkish-based journalist tweeted that three Turkish planes were responding after radar locked on to some "mysterious" MiG-29 jets, which are a similiar model to those used by Russian forces. The news comes after Turkey scrambled F-16 fighter jets last weekend after a Russian MiG-29 crossed into Turkish territory near the town of Yayladagi, in Hatay province,...

NEW DELHI: In what could be a game-changing arms acquisition, India is planning to acquire the new-generation Russian S-400 Triumf air defence missile systems that can destroy incoming hostile aircraft, stealth fighters, missiles and drones at ranges of up to 400-km. Sources say the defence acquisitions council (DAC), chaired by Manohar Parrikar, will "soon" take up the proposal moved by the IAF to purchase around a dozen S-400 long-range systems from Russia. "The project is at an initial stage at present. But it will be a government-to-government contract when it is finalized, with the S-400 systems being inducted over several...

U.S. President Barack Obama tried to convince the King of Saudi Arabia to coordinate actions in the oil market to reduce world oil prices, the main source of Russia's export revenues, and "punish its behavior" in Crimea. Experts estimate that if the prices are reduced by as little as 12 dollars per barrel, the Russian Federation will lose $40 billion in revenue. There has been a precedent, because this is precisely how the USSR collapsed. Before Obama's visit to Saudi Arabia, the U.S. media was discussing options of "punishment" for Russia with sanctions for its "behavior in Crimea." The first...

The death of a top Iranian military commander in Syria this week has dealt a "psychological blow" to elements backing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, according to a U.S. intelligence official. The killing of a commander in the Revolutionary Guards Corps at the hands of ISIS also highlights the extent of Iranian involvement in Syria and the dire straits in which Assad finds himself, Washington-based analysts say. Brig. Gen. Hossein Hamedani was killed outside Aleppo, Syria, where he was advising the Syrian army in its fight against extremists, Iranian state media reported Friday. Iranian media carried messages of condolence from Iranian...

So how is this going to fair with the idea that Russia is “Magog’ and is to invade Israel (Ezekiel 38) when reality is that Israel is going to be assisting and helping Russia in its crushing of ISIS in Syria? What is coming out of Israel is disproving all these hordes who think that Russia is using Syria as a pretext to eventually invade Israel. According to the Israeli media itself: Israel will provide Russia with intelligence information about opposition sites in Syria to facilitate Moscow’s military operations, Channel 2TV has reported. The Israeli network said that a senior...

WASHINGTON — A mysterious Russian military satellite parked itself between two Intelsat satellites in geosynchronous orbit for five months this year, alarming company executives and leading to classified meetings among U.S. government officials. The Russian satellite, alternatively known as Luch or Olymp, launched in September 2014 and seven months later moved to a position directly between the Intelsat 7 and Intelsat 901 satellites, which are located within half a degree of one another 36,000 kilometers above the equator. At times, the Russian satellite maneuvered to about 10 kilometers of the Intelsat space vehicles, sources said, a distance so close that...

Al Qaeda in Yemen claimed on today to have killed four men suspected of practicing witchcraft and sorcery in an area controlled by the jihadists. Residents of Mayfaa town in the southeastern province of Hadramawt said Al Qaeda militants had distributed a pamphlet naming the four men. It did not say when the killings were carried out, but a neighbor of one of the victims told AFP that he had been missing for days. "We have implemented Allah's ruling against them, which is the death sentence," said the flier that was also posted on walls in the area.

Chechnya’s macho leader Ramzan Kadyrov is the most loyal of Vladimir Putin’s regional heads, at least in theory. The central street of the captial, Grozny, is called Putin Avenue, and the lampposts lining it are adorned with the Russian tricolour. Putin’s portrait looks down from dozens of buildings across the city, and Kadyrov’s Instagram account, his main method of communication with the outside world, is full of protestations that he is a “foot soldier”, supremely loyal to Russia’s great leader. But recent events, especially the murder of Boris Nemtsov in Moscow, have led to renewed debate over whether the Kremlin’s...

President Barack Obama got “feisty” during an interview about Russian President Vladimir Putin, as one CBS News anchor put it. In the interview, set to air Sunday on “60 Minutes,” Obama immediately pushed back from reporter Steve Kroft’s line of questioning about America’s leadership around the world, particularly in the Middle East. “A year ago, when we did this interview, there was some saber-rattling between the United States and Russia on the Ukrainian border,” Kroft said. “Now it’s also going on in Syria. You said a year ago that the United States, America leads, that we are the indispensable nation....

Over four decades after the 1973 war that saw Egyptian forces seize of the Sinai Peninsula from occupying Israeli forces in a shock offensive, the legacy of the brief conflict lives on. One of the tales of the war known by some Egyptians is the existence of a “secret code” used by the Egyptian army that Israeli intelligence was unable to crack. The cypher was simple yet unorthodox: using an unwritten language from one of Egypt’s ethnic minorities, the Nubians. With the system, words and commands that would have been undecipherable to even a veteran Israeli intelligence officer could be...

US Secretary of State gives same message of condemning violence and need for calm to both Israelis and Palestinians. US Secretary of State John Kerry shared his "deep concern" Saturday over the recent wave of terror in Israel, though he made efforts to treat the two sides as equally culpable, AFP reports. Kerry called Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and PA President Abbas separately "to express his deep concern over the recent wave of violence and offer his support for efforts to restore calm as soon as possible," a State Department statement said.

Jewish groups and Holocaust scholars say Ben Carson’s claims that Nazi gun control laws contributed to the Holocaust are offensive and inaccurate, but Carson is not backing down. . The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which was founded to combat anti-Semitism and other forms of prejudice, derided Carson’s theory – which he first raised in his new book “A Perfect Union” – as “historically inaccurate.” . But the ADL wasn’t the only major organization to weigh in: The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum also took issue with Carson’s decision to inject his claims into America’s gun debate.

Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson defended his controversial remarks this morning in which he suggested that 6 million Jews would not have been slaughtered if they had easy access to guns. “I think the likelihood of Hitler being able to accomplish his goals would have been greatly diminished if the people had been armed,” Carson said on CNN Thursday. “I’m telling you there is a reason these dictatorial people take guns first." The Anti-Defamation League condemned the comments, saying in a statement: “Ben Carson has a right to his views on gun control, but the notion that Hitler’s gun-control policy...

In the coming days, construction will commence on a new church in Egypt dedicated to the martyred Coptic Christians beheaded by the Islamic State in Libya in February.The new church, bearing the name “Church of the Libyan Martyrs,” will be built in the Minya Governorate, south of the capital, Cairo. The church will cost $1.3 million, half of which has already been raised.Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi granted permission for the construction of the church last February after Islamic State militants murdered 21 Coptic Christians on a Libyan beach.According to Father Rafic Greiche, spokesman for the Catholic Church in Egypt,...