Free Republic

“As the war has dragged on, it has become harder to find meaningful ways to penalize Russia,” said Richard Gowan, U.N. director at the independent International Crisis Group.In some cases, Western countries are shying away from some specific moves, fearing tepid support, as rising vote abstentions have signaled a growing unwillingness to publicly oppose Moscow, diplomats and observers said.The European Union mulled a plan in June to appoint a U.N. expert to investigate human rights violations in Russia, according to diplomats, but it shelved the idea over fears nearly half the 47-member U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva might oppose...

"Intel Slava Z In the Kherson region, members of the organization "Civil Corps" Azov ", created under the battalion of the same name, were detained. The detainees prepared sabotage and terrorist attacks in Kherson, collected and transmitted data about the Russian military, and planned to assassinate representatives of regional authorities. Remarkably, Vadim Kravchenko, the detained head of the local cell, personally informed about this. The unfinished partisan said that he, along with several other militants who already had combat experience, were in touch with the Security Service and the Main Intelligence Directorate of Ukraine, to whom they transmitted information about...

Western leaders undervalued the size and global reach of the Russian economy Headlines concerning the collapse of the Russian economy under sanctions have been many and varied, although more recently observations have been made that sanctions imposed by the West aren’t working to the extent intended. Writing this from Moscow, I can observe that supermarkets are full, there are no shortages, and gasoline is US$3.1 a gallon. That compares with Washington at US$4.99, London at US$8.16, Berlin at US$6.73 and Rome at US$7.31. Why has the effect of sanctions upon Russia been so widely misunderstood? It’s a complicated question yet...

This should have been a Monty Python sketch, along the lines of the “Dead Parrot” classic. Germany’s leading center-right newspaper Die Welt posted a banner headline at the top of its page last Friday evening just before Shabbat came in here in New York: “[Ukrainian Ambassador to Germany Andrej] Melnyk’s statement trivializes the Holocaust.” In a radio interview last week, Melnyk compared Ukrainian Nazi leader Stephan Bandera to Robin Hood and vehemently denied—in the face of massive historical documentation—that Bandera had helped to murder 800,000 Ukrainian Jews during World War II.” The Banderites also helped to murder between 40,000 and...

Russia is “a gas station masquerading as a country,” the noted warmonger John McCain once said. This astoundingly disrespectful statement by a major US political figure says much about the condescending and diplomatically destructive attitudes of US elites towards Russia since 1991.But Russia’s size, vast stores of critical resources, military might (especially nukes), and tenacious cultural conservatism mean that it will be a significant force in the world for some time. The West could have benefited greatly from a peaceful integration of this enormous country into Europe, but it chose another route. More honestly, the United States chose another route.After...

Forty second clip belowCol. Douglas Macgregor discusses question with Judge Nap

MOSCOW, 25 July. /TASS/. The FSB of Russia disrupted the operation of the Ukrainian military intelligence to hijack the planes of the Russian Aerospace Forces, which was supervised by the NATO special services. This was reported to TASS on Monday at the Center for Public Relations (CSP) of the FSB of Russia. "The Federal Security Service uncovered and stopped the operation of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine to hijack combat aircraft of the Russian Aerospace Forces, supervised by NATO special services," the CSO noted. The FSB reported that "Ukrainian military intelligence officers, acting on...

Beginning in 2014, when the Maidan uprising brought a new government to Ukraine, the country has been erecting monuments to Nazi collaborators and Holocaust perpetrators at an astounding pace — there’s been a new plaque or street renaming nearly every week. Because of this, the Ukraine section represents an extremely partial listing of the several hundred monuments, statues, and streets named after Nazi collaborators in Ukraine. L’viv and Ivano-Frankivsk — 1.5 million Jews, a quarter of all Jews murdered in the Holocaust, came from Ukraine. Over the past six years, the country has been institutionalizing worship of the paramilitary Organization...

KYIV (Reuters) -Russia said on Saturday its forces would step up military operations in Ukraine in "all operational areas" as Moscow's rockets and missiles pounded cities in strikes that Kyiv says have killed dozens in recent days.Rockets hit the northeastern town of Chuhuiv in Kharkiv region overnight, killing three people including a 70-year-old woman and wounding three others, regional governor Oleh Synehubov said."Three people lost their lives, why? What for? Because Putin went mad?" said Raisa Shapoval, 83, a distraught resident sitting in the ruins of her home.To the south, more than 50 Russian Grad rockets pounded the city of...

The war in Ukraine risks turning into a protracted conflict that Russia will eventually win, a leading think-tank has said.The report by the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) warned that current Russian advantages and Ukrainian weaknesses are leading to a style of conflict that favours Moscow.The capture of the city means that Russia has essentially gained control of the entire Luhansk region, marking Russia's biggest victory since it captured the southern port of Mariupol in late May.Ukraine's military intelligence chief Kyrlo Budnov said his defence forces had withdrawn "to advantageous positions in order to gain tactical superiority" after the Russians...

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday declared victory in the eastern Ukrainian region of Luhansk, one day after Ukrainian forces withdrew from their last remaining bulwark of resistance in the province. Russia’s Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu reported to Putin in a televised meeting Monday that Russian forces had taken control of Luhansk, which together with the neighboring Donetsk province makes up Ukraine’s industrial heartland of Donbas. Shoigu told Putin that “the operation” was completed on Sunday after Russian troops overran the city of Lysychansk, the last stronghold of Ukrainian forces in Luhansk.

Ukraine is losing and will lose its war with Russia. For Moscow not to lose the peace, it is unfortunately the case that a rump Ukraine may no longer provide in Russian eyes the security from the NATO/Ukraine threat it understandably (to some) seeks. Time is running out to avert a larger, truly Ukraine-wide war carried successfully by Moscow into the country’s more anti-Russian western regions and Kiev, putting an end to the Ukrainian state in lieu of NATO military intervention. However, a Russian-occupied Ukraine will simmer with partisan warfare and neofascist terrorism for some time, leaving the risk of...

The US is watching “very, very closely” for signs of an attack by China on Taiwan, the chief of the US military has said. “There’s no indications or warnings of anything imminent at this time,” General Mark Milley, the chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, told BBC News. “But again, we watch it very, very closely.” He said that a decision to attack by Beijing would be a “political” and policy choice, and based on China’s view of the “cost risk-benefit at the time”, as he acknowledged the repeated threats made by president Xi Jinping to reclaim the...

Ukraine's military has confirmed that the eastern city of Lysychansk has fallen to Russian forces. "After heavy fighting for Lysychansk, the defence forces of Ukraine were forced to withdraw from their occupied positions and lines," the army general staff said. Earlier Russia's Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said his forces had captured Lysychansk and taken full control of Luhansk region. Its general staff said that "in order to preserve the lives of Ukrainian defenders, a decision was made to withdraw".

Russia’s capture of the strategic city of Lysychansk means the front line in Ukraine’s east will shift as Russian forces regroup before pushing further south and west, military analysts and Ukrainian officers said Sunday, ensuring that the next phase of the battle will be just as bloody as the last. To take Lysychansk and its neighboring city of Sievierodonetsk, Russian forces moved in from the north, east and west and created a pocket of territory that became indefensible toward the end of June. Now those Russian forces are in a position to attempt a similar maneuver on other Ukrainian-held cities...

Russian Ministry of Defense Release on US Biological Activity in Ukraine 06/16/22 Clandestine Jun 16 🚨NEW BIO BRIEF FROM RUSSIA🚨Russian Ministry of Defense releases new official briefing, slides and documentation pertaining to US biological malfeasance! Direct accusations of violation of the Nuremberg Code and more direct evidence against Hunter Biden!I will break this into parts to explain each slide.1) Experiments on mentally ill people:

The Russian Ministry of Defense (MOD) on Thursday accused CNN of conspiring with the Ukrainian military’s neo-Nazi Azov fighters to film a staged attack on civilians.In a press release on their Telegram, the MOD specifically claimed Ukraine’s 72nd Centre for information and Psychological Operations of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) in Kharkov are preparing a false flag.The statement, titled, “Statement of the Joint Coordination Headquarters of the Russian Federation for Humanitarian Response,” said “professionals of the 72nd Centre for Information and Psychological Operations of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) in Kharkov are preparing another cynical provocation with deaths...

Russia said on Wednesday that restrictions imposed by Norway were blocking the transport of goods to Russian-populated settlements on the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and called on Oslo to resolve the issue as soon as possible or face consequences. The ministry said that it summoned Norway's Chargé d'Affaires to protest the restrictions, which it said were blocking the transport of food and medical equipment. Svalbard is part of Norway, although Russia has the right to exploit the archipelago's natural resources under a treaty signed in 1920 and maintains a diplomatic presence in the largely Russian- and Ukrainian-populated settlement of Barentsburg.

Ukronazis burned the bodies of foreign mercenaries at Azovstal (evidence) while hohol bodies wewre kept in a morgue...

Let’s debunk the biggest fake widely used by kremlin to justify the russian invasion in Ukraine. You hear it from russian media, you read it in the commentaries left by russian bots, but what do the official numbers say? Let’s check out the report of the OHCHR that russians themselves are often referring to. ----- InformNapalm’s database of russian regular units identified in Donbas between 2014-2021: https://informnapalm.org/db/russian-aggression/#lang=en&page=m_unit ----- StopFake’s investigation on the staged russian shelling in Donietsk:https://www.stopfake.org/en/fake-ukrainian-military-shelled-bus-station-in-donetsk/ ----- Bellingcat’s research on russian artillery shelling Ukrainian forces across the border in 2014:https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2015/02/17/origin-of-artillery-attacks/The research on russian propagandists forging videos:https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2015/02/17/origin-of-artillery-attacks/Debunking dubious footage forged...