Free Republic

A Russian prosecutor has ordered the network of offices supporting jailed Putin critic Alexei Navalny to suspend all activities across Russia. The Moscow prosecutor also applied to a court to suspend the work of Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK). They are moving to label the groups as "extremist", which would allow the authorities to jail activists and freeze the groups' bank accounts.

Russia's Embassador to Lebanon warned on Saturday that the US policy in the region could spark a new conflict between Israel and Lebanon. Speaking with the Russian Sputnik news agency, Ambassador Alexander Zasypkin said that the United States' actions are aimed at sowing discord in the region. "As for a conflict between Israel and Lebanon, nothing can be predicted with certainty because the region is at a crossroads. Peoples are demanding the settlement of existing crises, the return to a peaceful life, the development of cooperation. A negative alternative to this is the incitement of new conflicts bt the Americans,...

Prince Turki al-Faisal told the BBC the action would have a negative impact, further entrenching Iran, Russia and the rule of President Bashar al-Assad. US President Donald Trump announced in December that it was time to bring US troops home from Syria. Prince Turki was speaking just before US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo began a visit to Riyadh.

<p>WASHINGTON — A historic Transylvanian castle that may have once imprisoned Vlad the Impaler — likely inspiration for Bram Stoker's Dracula — still stands today. But what lies beneath it?</p> <p>Because of centuries of rebuilding and additions, archaeologists weren't sure where the castle's original foundation lay.</p>

Cohen returns to a subject he has treated repeatedly since the 1990s, mainstream media malpractice in covering Russia, ... There have been three relevant major episodes of such malpractice. The first was when American newspapers, particularly The New York Times, misled readers into thinking the Communists could not possibly win the Russian Revolution ...(The second) ... virtually the entire mainstream America print and broadcast media covered the US-backed “reforms” of Russian President Boris Yeltsin, which plundered and immiserated the Russian people, as a benevolent “transition to democracy and capitalism” and to “the kind of Russia we want.” ... The third...

The US Central Intelligence Agency has concluded Saudi Arabia's powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was behind the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, US media reported Friday, citing people close to the matter. The US assessment directly contradicts the conclusions of a Saudi prosecutor one day prior, which exonerated the prince of involvement in the brutal murder. But The Washington Post, which broke the story, said the CIA found that 15 Saudi agents flew on government aircraft to Istanbul and assassinated Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate.

The Syrian civil war at last shows signs of coming to an end. That end will be a bitter humanitarian disaster, and it will result in the temporary consolidation of power by the government of Bashar Hafez Al-Assad. None of this is in doubt. What is in doubt is what role, if any, the United States might play in the final weeks. The source of that doubt lies in a major shift in U.S. foreign policy brought about by Donald Trump’s election as president and a growing realization that the Cold War practice of exchanging stability for justice has returned...

Russia says it will supply Syria with a version of the S-300 air and missile-defense system, despite objections from Washington and Tel Aviv. The Kremlin made the decision to supply Damascus with the potent air-defense system after a Syrian S-200 surface-to-air missile battery mistakenly shot down a Russian Ilyushin Il-20M Coot-A intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) aircraft during an Israeli raid on Assad regime forces on September 17.The Kremlin has decided to supply the Syrian regime with the potent S-300 because Moscow blames Israel for the downing of its Il-20M despite the fact that it was a Syrian-operated weapon that...

US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley warned Russia and Iran of "dire consequences" if they continue airstrikes against the last rebel-held area in Syria and said the US would respond to any use of chemical weapons. Russia's ambassador to the UN met Haley's threat with a denial that Syria has any chemical weapons, as the UN secretary-general warned of a potential "bloodbath" during Tuesday's UN Security Council meeting on the crisis in Idlib, Syria.(Snip) Haley said that pro-regime forces are also "conducting ruthless 'double tap strikes' on civilian volunteers like the White Helmets," in which they "strike an...

Friday, July 15, 2016, he had a surprise waiting for him. Twice in the previous eight years, Kreindler had been in the room as then-President Barack Obama promised Kreindler’s clients he would declassify a batch of documents that had taken on near mythic importance to those seeking the full truth of who had helped plan and fund the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Now, Kreindler learned, “the 28 pages” as they were known, were open for inspection and it was up to his team to find something of value. It wasn’t long before they did—a single, vague line about a...

Poland’s foreign minister Jacek Czaputowicz on Monday headed to Georgia on a visit marking 10 years since Russia’s invasion of that country. “Ten years ago, as a result of the Russian Federation’s military aggression against Georgia, Abkhazia and the Tskhinvali Region/South Ossetia found themselves under a separatist rule established and supported by Moscow that is not recognised by the international community,” “We oppose all efforts that interfere with the sovereign right of the Tbilisi authorities to exercise dominion over the territory of Georgia within its internationally recognised boundaries. “We condemn actions aimed at actually integrating the separatists regions of Abkhazia...

Abu Dhabi: The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) is set to launch a major offensive against the last remaining Daesh stronghold on the eastern side of the Euphrates Valley in Syria, as the coalition seeks to finally drive the terrorists out of the area. Colonel Sean Ryan, spokesperson for the US Central Command’s operations against Daesh in Syria and Iraq, briefed reporters at the US embassy in Abu Dhabi on Sunday about the planned offensive to retake the town of Hajin from Daesh. This will be part of the third phase of ‘Operation Roundup’. Launched in May, the operation is...

China has long avoided entangling itself in direct military conflict abroad. But the Chinese ambassador to Syria last week suggested that China is considering doing just that — in Syria. On August 1, Ambassador Qi Qianjin told the Syrian pro-regime news outlet Al-Watan that China’s “military is willing to participate in some way alongside the Syrian army that's fighting the terrorists in Idlib and in any other part of Syria.” Qi praised the China-Syria military cooperation. The Chinese military attache in Syria, Wong Roy Chang, said that cooperation between the Syrian and Chinese militaries was “ongoing,” adding, “We – China...

The Trump administration accused Russia on Thursday of engineering a series of cyberattacks that targeted American and European nuclear power plants and water and electric systems, and could have sabotaged or shut power plants off at will. United States officials and private security firms saw the attacks as a signal by Moscow that it could disrupt the West’s critical facilities in the event of a conflict. They said the strikes accelerated in late 2015, at the same time the Russian interference in the American election was underway. The attackers successfully had compromised some operators in North America and Europe by...

For the last several years, Russian security services have driven Islamist radicals and others out of the North Caucasus and other regions of the Russian Federation under paid of jail or death to fight for ISIS in Syria, Israeli expert Avraam Shmulyevich says. Now that the last redoubts of the Islamic State in that country have fallen, these same services, exploiting Chechens in Syria, have begun to extract these same people back to Russia, an action that strongly suggests, the president of the Israeli Eastern Partnership Institute says, that Moscow plans to make use of them elsewhere – and may...

The U.S. military allowed thousands of Islamic State militant group (ISIS) fighters to flee from their de facto capital of Raqqa, Syria, in a secret deal that boosted the U.S. fight against the forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, according to a former Pentagon-backed commander, who has since switched his allegiance to Turkey and who spoke to Reuters. As the spokesperson for the Syrian Democratic Forces, a mostly Kurdish coalition of Arabs and ethnic minorities, Brigadier General Talal Silo acted as the face and the voice of the U.S.’s leading partner against ISIS in Syria. The U.S.-backed group successfully ousted...

Russia warned the United States Saturday against carrying out any attacks on Syrian government forces, saying it would have repercussions across the Middle East as government forces captured a hill on the edge of the northern city of Aleppo under the cover of airstrikes. Meanwhile, airstrikes on Aleppo struck a hospital in the eastern rebel-held neighborhood of Sakhour on Saturday, putting it out of service, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the Local Coordination Committees. They said at least one person was killed in the airstrike. Russian news agencies quoted Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova as...