Free Republic

The war in eastern Ukraine hasn't just been about territory — religion has deepened the divide. In Donetsk, Protestants are being forced to conduct their services in apartments, persecuted by pro-Russia separatists who believe there’s only room for one religion in the region: Russian Orthodoxy. VICE News correspondent Simon Ostrovsky traveled to Donetsk to attend secret Protestant churches, and spoke with members of the Donetsk People’s Republic as well as the Orthodox Church to find out whether the DPR’s vision for the rebel-controlled region includes the coexistence of religious beliefs.

Next month, Europe’s leading budget airline will begin regular flights from Ukraine to a host of EU destinations. This is the latest milestone in a Ukrainian aviation boom that is seeing additional routes announced on a weekly basis and record passenger numbers at airports across the country. Each new flight serves to broaden Ukrainian horizons and anchor the country more firmly within the wider international community. Meanwhile, there has not been a single direct flight between Ukraine and Russia since October 2015. The changes in Ukraine’s air travel industry are just one of the many ways in which the country...

An Associated Press correction last week and reactions to it show that the question of whether the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany were allies at the dawn of World War II remains a hot-button issue for many Russians and eastern Europeans. The correction was issued to an article about a Holocaust commemoration in the Ukrainian city of Lviv that originally called the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany “former allies.” The AP concluded that the pact reached on Aug. 23, 1939 by the German and Soviet foreign ministers Joachim von Ribbentrop and Vyacheslav Molotov didn’t constitute a formal alliance, thus the...

Ilya Zabezhinsky, an Orthodox commentator from the Northern capital [of St. Petersburg], says that the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate by its promotion of the Kremlin’s agenda of “a Russian world” has failed in its Christian mission to the peoples of the former USSR and been reduced to a small national church of the Russian Federation. Under Patriarch Kirill and President Vladimir Putin, the writer says, the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate has become “the ideological department of the powers that be of the Russian Federation and essentially ceased to be the Russian Orthodox Church. Instead,...

<p>3:05 p.m.</p> <p>The president of Poland is telling President Donald Trump that he'd like the U.S. to create a permanent American base in Poland that would be named Fort Trump.</p> <p>Trump says that he's considering the idea and that Poland has offered more than $2 billion to the U.S. to pay for such an effort.</p>

Be sustained in ME my children for truly as I AM alive in you, eternally My living fire of Virtue is always ready to rise up and meet your Declaration of being made whole,blessed and prosperous. "Take on My Graciousness" ( (( Just Believe ! )) ) Malachi 4:1-3 The Great Day of the LORD 1“For behold, the day is coming, burning like a furnace, when all the arrogant and every evildoer will be stubble; the day is coming when I will set them ablaze,” says the LORD of Hosts. “Not a root or branch will be left to them.”...

Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh has been accused of sexual assault. The alleged victim had contacted Democratic members of Congress months ago anonymously with Democrats revealing the matter after Kavanaugh's nomination hearings ended.... In Sochi, Russia today President Vladimir Putin is meeting the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to discuss Syria..... Over the weekend a Russian general said that militants have moved canisters of chlorine into a village in Idlib in preparation for a false flag chemical attack that would be used to justify an attack on Syria by the US and allied nations..... Israel's Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman...

FULL TITLE: BACKFIRE: Probe Of Manafort Leads To Possible Federal Charges For Lawyer With Ties To Obama And Clinton Greg Craig is a lawyer who served in the Obama and Clinton administrations. He is now likely to face federal charges for failing to register as a foreign agent. The irony is that this probably would never have come up without the investigation of Paul Manafort. FOX News reports: Lawyer with Obama, Clinton ties may face federal charges: report A lawyer with ties to the Obama and Clinton administrations may face federal charges for failing to register as a foreign agent,...

The non-admission of the Russian Orthodox Churches' complicity with the Soviet persecution of Greek-Catholics in Ukraine is undermining relations between the two Churches. The warning was voiced by the Archbishop of Kiev, Sviatoslav Shevchuk, head of the Greek-catholic Church. "The ability to apologize shows a lively Christian conscience, which is a precondition for the so-called healing of memories," said Archbishop Shevchuk in an interview with the Ukrainian newspaper Den (Day). "The Russian Orthodox Church was used by Stalin's regime for the compulsory settlement of our church - he added - the fact there has been no symbolic reconciliation between us...

Clinton-connected lobbyist Tony Podesta knew he was working with Paul Manafort on behalf of a Ukrainian politician, according to an indictment released Friday by the special counsel’s office. Podesta, Manafort and Mercury Public Affairs all failed to register as foreign agents of Ukraine for the work. Manafort entered a plea agreement with the special counsel Friday. Two lobbying firms, including one owned by Democratic superlobbyist Tony Podesta, knowingly worked with Paul Manafort at the direction of the Ukrainian government, according to an indictment released Friday by the special counsel’s office. The indictment, which was released ahead of an expected plea...

1. PAUL J. MANAFORT, JR. (MANAFORT) served for years as a political consultant and lobbyist. Between at least 2006 and 2015, MANAFORT conspired with Richard W. Gates (Gates),Konstantin Kilimnik (Kilimnik), and others to act, and acted, as unregistered agents of a foreign government and political party. Specifically, MANAFORT conspired to act and acted as an agent of the Government of Ukraine, the Party of Regions (a Ukrainian political party whose leader Victor Yanukovych was President from 2010 to 2014), President Yanukovych, and the Opposition Bloc (a successor to the Party of Regions that formed in 2014 when Yanukovych fled to...

The Associated Press news agency on Wednesday acceded to a Russian request to delete the term "former ally" from an article mentioning the relationship between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany during World War II. The article, which was published at the beginning of the month in media outlets worldwide, including Haaretz, was about a Ukrainian city commemorating the 75th anniversary of the destruction of its Jewish community. It included the claim that "in June 1941 Germany attacked the Soviet Union, its former ally." On Wednesday, ten days after the article was published, AP amended the text. The news agency...

Russia’s Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov has openly called for the annexation of two eastern Ukrainian regions amid media reports of a possible escalation of hostilities. Ukraine has been at war for control of the Donbass region after an uprising of pro-Russian separatists there in 2014. Russia has been accused of stoking the conflict that has claimed thousands of lives and displaced more than 1.6 million people, a charge that the Kremlin denies. Separatist leaders quoted by Russian state media have claimed that Kiev is readying an offensive in the region following the assassination of Alexander Zakharchenko, the leader of...

Russian religious expert Sergei Chapnin explains why the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople has every reason to grant the status of autocephaly to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church In an op-ed published by Vedomosti, Chapnin noted that the issue of Ukrainian autocephaly dates back to the early 20th century, while those associated with the status of the Kyiv church goes back to the late 17th century. "But if the Patriarch of Constantinople preserves the continuity of his institutions for almost 1500 years, the Moscow Patriarchate, after the total destruction of all church institutions in 1917 and the re-emergence of some of them...

At a gathering of Orthodox leaders last week, Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople insisted that he, as Ecumenical Patriarch, has the authority to approve a bid for autocephaly (self-governance) by the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Patriarch Bartholomew, in his address to an August 31 summit meeting of Orthodox prelates, said that the bid for Ukrainian autonomy was not a new development. On the contrary, he said, the Orthodox Church in Kiev—which was established before the Orthodox Church in Moscow—has frequently requested such a move: Already from the early 14th century, when the See of the Kievan Metropolis was moved—without the canonical permission...

The Russian Orthodox Church threatened to break off relations with Orthodox Christianity's leading body - the Patriarchate of Constantinople - if it endorses the new self-governing, or autocephalous, Ukrainian Church. In an interview in Moscow on Saturday, Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, Chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate's Department for External Church Relations, said that the Russian Orthodox Church wil sever ties with Constantinople if a decision is made there to grant autocephaly to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Kyiv Patriarchate, according to TASS. "The Russian Orthodox Church will not accept this decision," the cleric said. As UNIAN reported earlier, the Ecumenical...

War continues to ravage eastern Ukraine, where conflict erupted in April 2014 following Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the violent actions of pro-Russian separatists. Along with forcing at least 1.6 million people from their homes, the ongoing conflict has also resulted in the persecution of Protestant pastors and churches throughout the territories that are occupied by pro-Russian separatist groups. One such group is the Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR). According to a new law passed on Feb. 2, 2018 (#211-II “About Freedom of Conscience and Religious Organizations”), the LNR is permitted to discriminate against any and all non-Orthodox religious communities. While...

Washington/Moscow, September 3, Interfax - Patriarch Bartholomew has insisted on the right by the Church of Constantinople to resolve the Ukrainian church problem without the Moscow Patriarchate. "Since Russia, as the one responsible for the current painful situation in Ukraine, is unable to solve the problem, the Ecumenical Patriarchate assumed the initiative of resolving the problem in accordance with the authority afforded to it by the Sacred Canons and the jurisdictional responsibility over the eparchy of Kiev, receiving a request to this end by the honorable Ukrainian Government, as well as recurring requests by 'Patriarch' Philaret of Kiev appealing for...

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...

According to the ImportGenius website that tracks the import/export activity at shipping docks, the U.S. Army Contracting Command received the 3D mobile air-defense radar system from Ukraine. The notice by the ImportGenius said that the U.S. Army Contracting Command center in Orlando has received 3D mobile air-defense radar system, called the 36D6M1-1, from Ukraine through SFTC “Progress”. The 36D6M1-1is a mobile 3D airspace surveillance radar system that was developed by the SE “Scientific and Production Complex “Iskra” and is designed to be used as a part of modern automated Air Defense systems, Anti-Aircraft Missile Complexes and to detect low flying...