Free Republic

Russia will transfer two to four S-300 air defense missile systems to Syria within the next two weeks, the Russian news website Kommersant reported Tuesday, citing a source familiar with the details. The amount of systems may increase in the future. The Assad regime will use the systems to defend Syria's coastline and its borders with Israel, Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq, the report said. According to the official, Russia may end up transferring up to eight systems to Syria, depending on the circumstances.Meanwhile, Russian outlet Izvestia reported that Moscow is boosting its electronic warfare systems in Syria, which were brought...

Several Russian media outlets, nearly simultaneously, began broadcasting “breaking news” warnings claiming that rebels occupying the last anti-government stronghold in Idlib Province, Syria, are preparing to stage chemical weapons attacks in order to blame them on the Syrian government. The Russian Ministry of Defense claimed that the anti-Assad rebels were preparing “fake footage of chemical attacks,” while the Russian Center for Syrian Reconciliation announced that the “fake footage of chemical attacks” was expected to be delivered to various TV channels and Western journalists before the end of the day Tuesday.

A report on Monday claimed that U.S. intelligence has determined that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has already made a decision to use chemical weapons against enemy positions in Idlib as his forces, combined with Russian airpower, attack the last rebel stronghold following seven years of civil war. The Wall Street Journal [source], citing unnamed intelligence sources, even noted the type of gas Assad has allegedly chosen: Chlorine gas, which was first used in World War I and has the effect of an asphyxiation compound. In addition, according to sources who spoke to the WSJ, President Donald Trump has also reportedly...

President Bashar al-Assad has approved a gas attack in the Idlib province, which is the country’s last rebel stronghold, a report on Sunday said. Reports of Assad's approval comes about a week after President Trump warned the strongman and his allies not to “recklessly attack” the province. Trump called any gas attack a potential “grave humanitarian mistake.” The Wall Street Journal, citing U.S. officials, was first to report on Assad.

In a chilly, high-ceilinged room in a Sussex preparatory school in the winter of 1959, I work intently on my model of the destroyer HMS Cossack. Such models come in lurid cardboard boxes illustrated with pictures of aircraft, tanks and warships, amid scenes of fiery melodrama, guns emitting orange streaks of flame, and the smoke of battle. With these and our imaginations, we seek to recreate the thrill of the war we have just missed, in which our fathers fought and our mothers endured privations. This is a war just over the horizon of time in which we wish we...

The Pentagon ordered a company-sized element of U.S. Marines to conduct an aerial assault drill near a small U.S. base in southeastern Syria called the At Tanf garrison amid new concerns of Russian operations nearby. Reports said that the Russian military has utilized a deconfliction hotline a number of times over the past week to warn the U.S. military of upcoming Russian and Syrian military operations aimed at destroying the last pocket of rebels from the Idlib region.

The United States "will respond to any verified chemical weapons use in Idlib or elsewhere in Syria ... in a swift and appropriate manner," State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert told reporters in Washington. Nauert said...Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov last week that Moscow — a military ally of Assad — would be held responsible.

Of course, both Russia and South Africa share a lot in common: they both have European roots, they are both Christian, agrarian and agricultural, and so, even though certainly the language difference can be a significant hurdle for the settlers, Russia does offer nevertheless a very accommodating cultureEditor's note:As we have written extensively, Russia is swiftly becoming a political and spiritual refuge for conservative, Christian communities. As the liberal West becomes increasingly aggressive against conservatives, Russia, with its wide expanses of land and reinvigorated religiousity becomes more attractive those who want to live traditional lifestyles.Russia is considering taking in up...

News Russia claims Syrian rebels planning Idlib chemical weapons attack The Kremlin has claimed that rebels are planning a chemical weapons attack with the intent of blaming it on Syria. Russia also says a British contractor is helping the militants... Russia's Defense Ministry said Saturday that Syrian rebels are planning a chemical weapons attack, with the aim of blaming it on the Syrian government to provoke a military response from the West. The ministry issued a statement quoting unnamed sources claiming that the jihadi group Levant Liberation Committee — also known as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham — is preparing an attack...

Russia has said it was planning to invite France, Germany and Turkey to an upcoming summit on the war in Syria as the war-torn country's military launched an operation to retake the final rebel-held province. Russia Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov visited his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu Monday to discuss what the Russian Foreign Ministry described as "preparations for a four-lateral summit of the Russian, Turkish, German and French leaders on the Syrian settlement that is planned to be held soon," according to the state-run Tass Russian News Agency. The two men would discuss solving the crisis in Syria "through maintaining...

... On the right, hatred of Russia also runs deep, and little or no distinction is made in most quarters between things Russian and Soviet. As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, a Russian patriot and the anti-communist par excellence, told an interviewer in 2006, that is very disappointing, indeed. Why such blindness and rigidity across the political and media class in the Western world, and in the United States in particular?

<p>To all TGP readers and all American patriots we are informing you to prepare yourselves. This country is at a precipice. America is either going to be overrun by a power hungry Deep State or it will survive one of the greatest attacks to its existence since the Civil War.</p>

The head of the Russian Lower House Committee for Eurasian Integration says the recent proposal to split Russia into several parts, voiced by a Latvian MP, is proof of NATO’s hostile plans. MP Leonid Kalashnikov (Communist Party) told RIA Novosti on Monday that the statement by the Latvian MP Aleksandrs Kirsteins clearly demonstrated that Russian concern over NATO bases in Baltic countries was justified. The comments came shortly after Kirsteins wrote on his Twitter feed that the end of military conflicts and the guarantee of a peaceful life in Europe was possible only if Russia is divided into several small...

A NEW Syria is emerging from the rubble of war. In Homs, which Syrians once dubbed the “capital of the revolution” against President Bashar al-Assad, the Muslim quarter and commercial district still lie in ruins, but the Christian quarter is reviving. Churches have been lavishly restored; a large crucifix hangs over the main street. “Groom of Heaven”, proclaims a billboard featuring a photo of a Christian soldier killed in the seven-year conflict. In their sermons, Orthodox patriarchs praise Mr Assad for saving one of the world’s oldest Christian communities.

A trillion bucks and 4k troops later what have we gained? We didn't have fracking back then and the enviro-nuts wouldn't let us drill. We learned nothing from the Russian Afghanistan experience and we're still there. Is it too late to get out? I say take out Assad, establish a Kurdistan, build a safe zone Trump promised and get the hell out. Maybe give the Ayatollas a punch in the nose-we owe them. We got our own oil. Let them kill each other. The lefties had it right with the no blood for oil.

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley slammed Russia over a deadly chemical attack on Syrian civilians, saying the country's hands are "covered in blood." "The Russian regime, whose hands are all covered in the blood of Syrian children, cannot be ashamed by pictures of its victims," Haley said during a U.N. Security Council meeting on Monday. "We must not overlook Russia and Iran's roles in enabling the Assad regime's murderous destruction," she continued.

"The US state department said it is monitoring the "very disturbing" reports, and that Russia - which is fighting alongside the Syrian government - should be held responsible if deadly chemicals had been used."

"Anyone who grew up with the Eastern Orthodox Church (in my case, the Greek Orthodox Church in New York) will get a good laugh at Vladimir Putin pretending to be a Christian during his first Easter as Russian ruler..." "The Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) has been, since its reconstitution during WWII, an instrument of the state. The best illustration of this is probably the 1949 “Greetings from the clergy and laity of the Russian Orthodox Church to the leader of the nations of the USSR, the Generalissimus Joseph Stalin on his 70th birthday.” It states, in part: "Witnessing at every...

A Split From Trump Indicates That Flynn Is Moving to Cooperate With Mueller

US President Donald Trump and Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin have agreed to defeat the so-called Islamic State (IS) in Syria, the Kremlin says. It said a statement was prepared by experts after they met briefly on the sidelines of an Asia-Pacific summit in Vietnam on Saturday. In total the two leaders had three encounters within 24 hours at the summit in port city of Da Nang. There has been no official confirmation from the US about the statement so far. A meeting between President Trump and Vladimir Putin was widely expected at the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC) summit, but few...