Free Republic

Connections between the Kremlin and international terrorism extend back for decades. The KGB helped develop modern terrorism. It provided weapons to terrorist groups, including Hezbollah, helped devise aircraft hijackings during the 1960s, and promoted the concept of suicide bombings against both military and civilian targets. According to KGB defectors, the FSB successor has continued to sponsor terrorists such as Ayman al-Zawahiri, who trained in Russia in the 1990s before joining Osama bin Laden. During its proxy attack on Ukraine, Moscow supplied the missile system to separatists who shot down a Malaysian Airlines jet, killing nearly 300 civilians. The West has...

Putin’s dialing down of the rhetoric is an effort to mask his intentions. He — Russia — still has the same foreign policy interests in Syria as he did before the plane was shot down, and those aren’t going to change anytime soon. When journalists asked him about the much more hostile statement of his Defense Ministry, which also vowed a retaliatory response, Putin stated clearly that it was “fully coordinated” with him (of course it was). He defined what ‘retaliatory’ meant. “The retaliatory measures will be directed above all to boosting the security of military men and installations in...

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday showed off his marksmanship by testing out a new Kalashnikov sniper rifle and hitting the target more than half the time. Russian state television showed Putin in goggles and earphones crouching as he fired the silver rifle at the Kalashnikov company's shooting range outside Moscow.

Electoral authorities in Russia's Far Eastern Primorye region annulled the result of a disputed gubernatorial runoff vote, after the country's top election official said it was marred by "serious violations." A total of 12 members of Primorye's election commission on September 20 voted in favor of the annulment of the result of the closely contested vote in the region, where the Communist Party cried foul after the Kremlin-backed incumbent surged ahead at the end of the ballot count. One election commission member voted against the proposal. It is the first time a runoff has been annulled in Russia since 1996,...

Recent intelligence information revealing dramatic progress in Iraq's nuclear-weapons program has given a new urgency to U.S. and British efforts to build international support for war with Iraq, according to Iraqi opposition leaders interviewed by Insight in London. The information, from recent defectors and other sources working with the broad-based Iraqi National Congress (INC), indicates that Baghdad has made "a recent breakthrough" in production of the fissile material needed to produce the bomb. It was buttressed on Sept. 24 when the British government released an "unprecedented" white paper based in part on classified intelligence information on Iraq's weapons of mass...

In March, State Department veteran and former adviser to Barack Obama, Frederic Hof, bid farewell to public life with a stunning admission. Amid a confession regarding his failure to prevent the expansion of the Syrian civil war into a regional crisis, Hof laid the blame for that all-consuming conflict (as well as a notable uptick in Russian aggression) at the feet of Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran. The administration sacrificed Syrian civilians and American credibility for the mistaken notion that Iran required appeasement in Syria as the price for a nuclear agreement,” Hof wrote. Today, with 500,000 dead, millions...

A senior adviser to U.S. President Barack Obama says that Russia has some reasonable concerns about U.S. missile defense plans. Russia has strongly opposed U.S. missile defense plans in Europe. Moscow says the system could undermine the deterrent of its vast nuclear arsenal. ... However, Obama's coordinator for weapons of mass destruction policy, Gary Samore on Friday said that Russia's objections are legitimate as Washington and Moscow pursue nuclear reductions.

Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner claimed during the U.N. General Assembly on Monday that a former Obama administration official attempted to convince Argentina to “provide the Islamic Republic of Iran with nuclear fuel.” The claim was seemingly overshadowed by President Barack Obama’s high-stakes dealings with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Kirchner claimed Gary Samore, former White House Coordinator for Arms Control and Weapons of Mass Destruction, visited Argentina and suggested the nation provide Iran with nuclear fuel in 2010, two years into Obama’s presidency.

It is impossible to evaluate events in Russia today without understanding the mysterious series of bombings in 1999 that killed 300 civilians and created the conditions for Vladimir Putin to become Russia’s dictator for life. The bombings changed the course of Russia’s post-Soviet history. They were blamed on the Chechens. In the wake of initial success, Russia launched a new invasion of Chechnya. Putin, who had just been appointed prime minister, was put in charge of the invasion and his popularity soared. Six months later, he was elected president. On July 14, 2016, I filed a request for documents on...

Russia has blamed Israel for the downing of one of its military planes in Syria and threatened "retaliation." An Ilyushin IL-20 aircraft was shot down by Syrian air defense missiles in what has been called a "friendly fire" incident. The Russian defense ministry has claimed that Israeli jets were attacking nearby targets and purposely "used the Russian plane as a cover, exposing it to fire from Syrian air defenses."

President Donald Trump publicly rebuked German Chancellor Angela Merkel on July 11 for Germany’s decision to buy a massive amount of gas from Russia. “I think it’s very sad,” he said. "Germany is totally controlled by Russia,” he later said, “I think it’s a very bad thing for nato and I don’t think it should have happened.” Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2 are key components of Putin’s plan to tighten his grip on nations in Eastern Europe that used to be part of the Soviet Empire. Since these pipelines travel directly from Russia to Germany, they enable Putin to...

A global uranium cartel is forming to monopolize uranium sales There is, today, collusion among known, and unknown, principals of a cartel cooperating to monopolize the global uranium market, in a way not-unlike how DeBeers cartel controls the diamond market. This emerging uranium cartel is forming as a confederacy with no allegiance to any State or Rule of Law. It is evolving from globalists for the benefit of globalists.

In wooded northern Russia, near the Finnish border, archaeological digs by a patriotic historical group are unearthing controversy. The Russian Military History Society, which was created by the Kremlin, says it is seeking the remains of Soviet soldiers who died when the region was occupied by Nazi-aligned Finns during World War II. But human rights activists allege the organisation is trying to cover up Stalin-era repressions in the Sandarmokh forest, in Karelia. “The search for the remains of soldiers from the Second World War on the site of mass executions by the NKVD...looks like an attempt to manipulate memory," Memorial...

The trilateral summit in Tehran between the presidents of Turkey, Iran and Russia was one of the most unusual parades of international diplomacy yet. It was televised live. Let’s remember the scenes: All who watched it saw how Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan blundered and how Russian President Vladimir Putin ridiculed him. Then it was a rare — if not unique — case of international diplomacy where a trilateral partnership considered detrimental to the interests of the West displayed signs of failure on a burning international issue.What has had the West — the transatlantic security system — worried for some time is NATO-member Turkey’s partnership...

"I've never trusted the Americans. I've trusted them neither before nor now and I'm not going to trust them in future. But concerning the possible strike on Syria, I think that this strike will likely be delivered because it's profitable both for the Democrats and Republicans."

A new national survey by the independent Levada Center indicates that social tensions across the country are rising at levels not seen since the eve of Russia’s 1998 financial collapse. Seventy-two percent of Russians say they worry about rising prices, 52 percent cited growing impoverishment, and 48 percent say one of the nation’s biggest problems is unemployment. In the past year, Russians have become roughly 33 percent more likely to talk about economic crisis, environmental deterioration, and rising crime, the Levada Center director Lev Gudkov told the newspaper Kommersant. Sociologists say it’s still hard to know if rising panic will...

Ukraine can’t reclaim territory annexed by Russia or held by its proxies – but it’s increasingly likely to deprive its larger neighbor of something arguably as valuable: Its power over Ukraine’s Orthodox Christian believers, and with it Moscow’s claim to a central role in eastern Christianity. Moscow Patriarch Kirill went to Istanbul late last month to meet with Bartholomew (of Constantinople). A bishop who was present said that while no final decision was made on Ukrainian autocephaly, the process has now gone too far to reverse it. Russian clerics have warned that granting independence to the Ukrainian church could cause...

n June 14, 2016, the Washington Post reported that Russian hackers had broken into the Democratic National Committee’s files and gained access to its research on Donald Trump. A political world already numbed by Trump’s astonishing rise barely took notice. News reports quoted experts who suggested the Russians merely wanted more information about Trump to inform their foreign-policy dealings. By that point, Russia was already broadcasting its strong preference for Trump through the media. Yet when news of the hacking broke, nobody raised the faintest suspicions that Russia wished to alter the outcome of the election, let alone that Trump...

A former campaign aide accused of lying to the FBI said that then-candidate Donald Trump “nodded with approval” at his suggestion of setting up a meeting between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. George Papadopoulos’ lawyers argued in new probation filings that President Trump was open to his suggestions about meeting with the foreign leader in March of 2016, The Associated Press reported Saturday. Papadopoulos allegedly volunteered to set up a meeting between Trump and Putin during a gathering with Trump’s foreign policy advisers, including Attorney General Jeff Sessions — who was a GOP senator at the time. “While some...

If Russia "hacked" the election and Trump colluded with Russia, why did Hillary Clinton win the popular vote by 3 million votes? They found a way for Trump to win the electoral college, but let Hillary win Los Angeles, Chicago, NYC, Washington DC, San Francisco and other major cities by a landslide? Makes no sense.