Free Republic

New edict affects all of Moscow's historic holdings across three continents, including former imperial colonies in the US. Russia has laid the groundwork for expanding its soft power across North America and Asia with a new decree Vladimir Putin signed last week. The new order provides funds to search, register and provide legal protection to Russian properties abroad – including land and buildings located in former Russian Empire and Soviet Union territories. Among the areas affected by the new decree is Alaska, which was sold to the United States in 1867 and still hosts communities with close links to Russia....

Ukraine's successful suppression of the Russian Black Sea fleet has resulted in Kyiv's grain exports rising to their highest levels since the invasion by Moscow began. -snip- Russia's Black Sea fleet flagship Moskva was destroyed by Ukraine in the early days of the war. The losses have continued since then, with British Defence Secretary Grant Shapp saying last month that Russia had lost 20 percent of its Black Sea fleet over the course of four months. Significant recent losses include the December destruction of large Russian landing ship Novocherkassk and last week's revelation that Ukrainian drones sank a Tarantul-class corvette...

Russia's parliament is considering new legislation which would give the state the power to seize the property of people convicted for defamation of the armed forces or for calling publicly for actions that undermine state security. -snip- The move has drawn comparisons with the witch hunts of the 1930s under Soviet dictator Josef Stalin with their 'enemy of the state' rhetoric, and could affect thousands of Russians who have spoken out against Moscow's invasion of Ukraine. The speaker of the State Duma lower house of parliament, Vyacheslav Volodin, a close ally of President Vladimir Putin, has dubbed the new bill...

Kazakhstan has agreed to help Russia alleviate its chronic shortage of chicken eggs only to spark grumbling from domestic consumers in border areas who now say there is not enough for them to buy. The pledge of assistance arrived at a meeting on trade issues between Kazakh Deputy Prime Minister Serik Zhumangarin and his Russian counterpart, Alexei Overchuk, in Astana on January 17. Eggs featured on the agenda. As the Russian state statistics service has reported, the price of the commodity soared by more than 61 percent last year, prompting the government in Moscow to adopt some radical fixes. One...

For a microcosm of how the war in Ukraine has warped Russia’s economy, look no further than a carton of eggs. The grocery staple has been in short supply in recent months and prices have skyrocketed, prompting Russians from Belgorod to Siberia to form lines reminiscent of Soviet times. President Vladimir Putin has publicly apologized, blaming the egg shock on the government. Last month, a poultry-farm boss known as “the Egg King” survived an assassination attempt shortly after authorities started investigating his farm due to high prices. Behind the soaring price tag—up around 60% in December from a year earlier,...

As the war in Ukraine rages on, Vladimir Putin has another battle on his hands: the one to rein in soaring egg prices. Moscow is scrambling to contain a flare-up in basic food costs that's driven up inflation and caused long queues outside supermarkets that hearken back to when the country was a part of the Soviet Union. Eggs have come to symbolize the economic disruption that Russia is facing, with prices jumping 42% in the 12 months prior to November 2023, per data from the country's statistics agency Rosstat. They've become so expensive that shops in some regions are...

Ukraine said on Monday that it downed two Russian military command aircraft over the Sea of Asov, saying it had carried out a 'successful' mission against Moscow's forces. Officials said the country's air force took out an A-50 radar-detection plane worth £260 million, as well as an IL-22 aerial command plane, as they flew over the Sea of Azov on Sunday. The Sea of Azov lies between Russia and Ukraine, but Moscow controls its entire coast after seizing large swathes of southeastern Ukraine during its invasion and annexation of Crimea in 2014. 'Minus an enemy long-range radar detection aircraft, A-50,...

Russian-state television pundit Aleksandr Sytin recently warned that life "keeps getting worse" in Russia amid its war with Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, claiming to seek the "denazification" of the Eastern European country's government and hoping for a quick victory. Nearly two years later, Ukraine's stronger-than-anticipated defense effort has blocked Russian advances, and both sides continue fighting for control of eastern Ukrainian territory. The Russian military has faced myriad challenges amid the conflict, including troubles recruiting and maintaining well-trained, disciplined troops. Military analysts have noted that Putin's troops lack motivation, and questions...

In Siberia's Novosibirsk, Russia's third-largest city, a major hot-water main burst, sending cascades of steaming water rushing through frozen streets and cutting off heating to scores of buildings -- and thousands of people -- amid Arctic temperatures. In the Pacific port of Vladivostok, some 3,000 people were left in the bitter cold after an above-ground heating pipeline ruptured, spewing similar volumes of steaming water. And nine hours to the west, in a string of Moscow suburbs, more than 150,000 people shivered -- and complained vociferously -- when another municipal heating pipe broke down, with engineers rushing to dig up the...

A giant warehouse near St Petersburg has gone up in smoke after the Russian workers there set the entire facility ablaze. The action was reportedly taken after Russian police raided the Wildberries warehouse to find people to conscript to fight the war in Ukraine. According to Russian media sources the incident is currently under investigation by the state prosecutor's office. According to APA's Russian bureau, there is currently no available information regarding the number of casualties or injuries caused by the fire. The fire took hold of the 50 thousand square metre site and required hundreds of firefighters to bring...

Russia's egg shortage is being exacerbated by bird flu-riddled imports from Turkey, one of the country's biggest trading partners and a NATO member, according to a recent report citing a Russian government official. More than one-fifth of the eggs imported from Turkey were found to be infected with the highly contagious H5N1 avian influenza, as well as other dangerous ailments including salmonella and botulism, Russian authorities warned. -snip- Russia's attempt to pivot to Turkey for emergency egg supplies in January now appears to have backfired, as the delivery of the first batch of Turkish eggs was promptly followed by reports...

A senior ally of President Vladimir Putin warned on Thursday that any Ukrainian attacks on missile launch sites inside Russia with arms supplied by the United States and its allies would risk a nuclear response from Moscow. Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, now deputy chairman of Russia's Security Council, said that some Ukrainian military commanders were considering hitting missile launch sites inside Russia with Western-supplied long-range missiles. He did not name the commanders or disclose more details of the alleged plan and there was no immediate reaction from Ukraine to his threat.

Vladimir Putin has complained that his old friends often no longer recognise him amid rumours he regularly uses body doubles. The Russian dictator, 71, told an audience in the country's remote Chukotka region that school and university classmates do not believe it's really him. 'When I [very occasionally] meet my classmates or fellow university students, they often look at me and say - "I don't believe it, is it actually you, or not you?",' he said. -snip- Solovey - who once taught future Russian spies and diplomats - was challenged by a top Ukrainian TV interviewer Dmitry Gordon over his...

Former American intelligence officer Scott Ritter has visited the Russian republic of Chechnya, offering its leader Ramzan Kadyrov and his fighters "friendship" with the United States. Ritter, a former United Nations Special Commission weapons inspector, U.S. Marine Corps intelligence officer, and a convicted sex offender, made the remarks in an address during his visit to Chechnya's capital, Grozny.

Russian investigators said on Tuesday they had arrested three people over heating outages south of Moscow that have sent regional officials scrambling to restore services and drawn scrutiny from the Kremlin. Authorities blamed the breakdown on failures at a boiler plant owned by a private ammunition factory. The heads of the heating plant and the factory were arrested on suspicion of providing unsafe services, investigators said in a statement. The deputy head of the local administration was also detained on suspicion of certifying the heating plant as adequate for winter despite allegedly knowing about defects that needed to be fixed....

Former Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson has welcomed former CNN anchor Don Lemon to “a new world” of journalism on X, the platform once known as Twitter. Carlson’s welcome to Lemon comes after the ex-CNN anchor announced Tuesday that he is launching The Don Lemon Show through his own media company and that it will be available on X. Lemon’s announcement comes after Carlson launched his own show on X, of which he has released over 60 episodes since mid-2023. “Congratulations,” Carlson wrote in sharing Lemon’s post. “It’s a new world. Welcome.” The welcoming statement from Carlson comes after both...

Russian President Vladimir Putin's threats to let Europe "freeze" over winter have come back to bite his country as power outages spread nationwide. Tens of thousands of Russians are reported to have no heating in their homes in the Moscow region alone after a heating main burst at the Klimovsk Specialized Ammunition Plant in the town of Podolsk, which is around 30 miles south of central Moscow, on January 4. Residents in multiple regions including Rostov, St. Petersburg, Volgograd, and Voronezh have also been affected by lengthy power outages, and some have resorted to filming video appeals as they grapple...

Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered the nationalization of an ammunition plant in Moscow after a mechanical failure caused tens of thousands of Muscovites to lose heat and water amid freezing temperatures beginning last week. On January 4, a heating main burst at the Klimovsk Specialized Ammunition Plant in the town of Podolsk, which is around 30 miles south of central Moscow. Since then, tens of thousands of Russians are reported to have no heating in their homes in the Moscow region amid subzero temperatures. Affected areas include the cities of Khimki, Balashikha, Lobnya, Lyubertsy, Podolsk, Chekhov, Naro-Fominsk, and Podolsk,...

Zoya Konovalova, the head of one of Russian President Vladimir Putin's state TV channels, has been found dead after a suspected poisoning incident, officials said. Konovalova, 48, editor-in-chief of the State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company Kuban, was found alongside the body of her ex-husband, 52, at a home in the Krasnodar region on January 5. It is the latest in a series of mysterious deaths involving prominent Russian figures since Putin's forces invaded Ukraine in February 2022.

Vladimir Putin's police state has become so repressive that a popular joke from Soviet times has resurfaced and been repurposed for those Russians today who dare to acknowledge the truth about the autocratic regime they are living under. It tells the story of two FSB (successor of the KGB) agents who are having a beer after work. The first one, Ivan, says to his colleague, 'Tell me, Dmitry. What do you really think about Putin?' and Dmitry replies, 'The same as you do.' Ivan thinks for a moment and says: 'In that case, it is my duty to arrest you.'