Free Republic

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Denouncing Russia’s actions in Crimea as ‘‘nothing more than a land grab,’’ Vice President Joe Biden warned Russia on Tuesday that the U.S. and Europe will impose further sanctions as Moscow moved to annex part of Ukraine. With limited options, the United States was seeking ways to show it won’t stand idly by as Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a treaty for the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea to join Russia. So far, Putin has been undeterred by sanctions and visa bans levied by the U.S. and the European Union, and there’s no U.S. appetite for military...

WASHINGTON) — A senior State Department official says the Syrian government has been told it must immediately suspend its diplomatic and consular missions in the United States. The order Tuesday essentially shutters the Syrian embassy in Washington and its honorary consulates in Troy, Mich., and Houston, Texas, and forces all personnel who are not legal U.S. residents to leave the country.

Sen. Ted Cruz is calling for the Obama administration to place missile installations in Eastern Europe in the wake of Russia’s moves in Ukraine. The Washington Post reports the Texas Republican made the comments during an interview Monday. "Beyond sanctions and aid to Ukraine, the most important thing we could be doing right now, with respect to Russia, is installing anti-ballistic missiles in Eastern Europe," Cruz said. "Appeasement has not worked. After more than five years of being unwilling to stand up to [Russian President Vladimir] Putin and Russian aggression, it is time for the United States to honor our...

KIEV, Ukraine— Obama on Monday imposed sanctions on 11 Russian and Ukrainian officials blamed for Russia's military incursion into Crimea, including two top aides to Russian President Vladimir Putin. The sanctions were the most visible sign of U.S. anger at Russia's attempt to absorb the Crimea region of southern Ukraine, reflecting the deepest plunge in U.S.-Russian relations since the Cold War. The sanctions came in an executive order signed by Obama a day after a Crimea referendum on Sunday aimed at allowing Russia to annex the autonomous region, a vote that the United States says was illegal and would never...

George Soros, one of the world’s leading investors, has warned that the European Union is in danger of falling apart if it fails to confront Vladimir Putin’s naked aggression in Ukraine.

Hackers knocked out the Russian presidency's website several times on Friday and brought down the central bank website, the Kremlin press service said. "A powerful cyber attack is under way on the (Kremlin) site," a Kremlin spokeswoman said, adding that the attack was continuing and security experts were trying to prevent further disruptions.

Secretary of State John Kerry warned of serious repercussions for Russia on Monday if last-ditch talks over the weekend to resolve the crisis in Ukraine failed to persuade Moscow to soften its stance. Kerry will travel to London for a Friday meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov ahead of a Sunday referendum vote in the Crimea region to secede from Ukraine and join the Russian Federation. U.S. and European officials argue that Moscow is orchestrating the referendum and waging an intimidation campaign with thousands of Russian troops controlling the region. If Russian-backed lawmakers in Crimea go through with the...

Vladimir Putin didn't invade Ukraine because he could. He did it because he had to. In every country, all truly important foreign-policy choices are, at their core, ultimately about domestic politics. And it's not just about creating a "rally 'round the flag" effect, or distracting from pesky domestic issues, although these are definitely relevant considerations for decision-makers. The right foreign-policy move at the right time can boost a leader's ratings and the regime's popularity. This is doubly true for authoritarian regimes that lack democratic legitimacy, and it is true for Russia today. In Vladimir Putin's Russia, as one top pollster...

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Wednesday called Russian President Vladimir Putin a "tough guy with a thin skin" and said he is "squandering the potential" of Russia with his aggressive posture in Ukraine. "I know we are dealing with a tough guy with a thin skin," she said during a speech at UCLA, citing her experiences with Putin during her time at the State Department. "I know that his political vision is of a greater Russia," she added. "I said when I was still secretary that his goal is to re-Sovietize Russia’s periphery, but in the process he...

LONG BEACH >> Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Tuesday compared recent actions by Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Ukraine to those implemented by Adolf Hitler in the late 1930s. PutinÂ’s desire to protect minority Russians in Ukraine is reminiscent of HitlerÂ’s actions to protect ethnic Germans outside Germany, she said. Putin has been on a campaign to give Russian passports to anyone who has Russian connections, Clinton said. The Russian leader has recently done so in the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, which, Clinton said, is similar to what happened in Nazi Germany in the late 1930s. Hitler...

Vladimir Putin isn’t the Easter Bunny. On the other hand, he isn’t Joseph Stalin. It takes a truly fevered imagination to see Russian forces in the Crimea as a prelude to Russian tanks rolling across Europe toward Berlin and Paris. Putin is a power player who cares more about Russia’s national interests, and Russian minorities in his near abroad, than in that mythical force known as world opinion. Would that America had a president who cared more about our interests than in promoting globalism and the left’s social agenda. The Crimea’s population is 60% ethnic Russian. For most of the...

Sen. John McCain warned that the United States and Europe should avoid allowing Russia to set a precedent in Ukraine that could be later used for an incursion into Poland. “If Vladimir Putin gets away with saying he’s defending the rights of Russian speaking peoples, that is the same thing — excuse that Hitler used,” the Arizona Republican said, invoking arguments made by Nazi Germany about the ethnic German population of the Sudetenland.

Yesterday, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton compared the actions of Russia in Ukraine, particularly Russia’s decision to issue passports in the Crimean region, to the actions of Nazi Germany. Yet as those words escaped her mouth, I doubt that the irony of her own actions were on her mind. Just five years ago, Hillary Clinton stood in Geneva with a poorly-translated big red button. The button, which was supposed to read "reset," actually came out to read "overcharge" and is emblematic of the Obama Administration's dense, failing, and feckless foreign policy... Russia's aggression was stark in 2008, as was...

President Putin claimed on Tuesday that "well prepared" and organized protesters in Kiev who brought down the Yanukovych regime were "trained in Poland and Lithuania". In his first in-depth comments since the Russian parliament gave the green light for military action in Ukraine on Saturday, Vladimir Putin told a press conference in Moscow, "look how well they were prepared." "They underwent preparation in bases in Lithuanian and Polish border areas, and [of course] in Ukraine itself. Their instructors were ready for a lengthy time, you saw how they were prepared, like special forces, they were even divided up into squads,"...

Simferopol, Ukraine (CNN) -- U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry accused Russia of making up reasons for intervention in Ukraine, saying Tuesday that "not a single piece of credible evidence supports any one of these claims." "Russia has talked about Russian-speaking citizens being under siege. They're not," he said while on a visit to Kiev. He condemned what he called Russia's aggression in Crimea and urged the country to withdraw its troops. "We would like to see this de-escalated. We're not looking for some major confrontation," he said, while still promising sanctions on Russia if it refuses to step back....

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama says Russia is “on the wrong side of history” in Ukraine and its actions violate international law. Obama told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday that the United States is considering economic and diplomatic options that will isolate Russia. The president called on Congress to work on an aid package to Ukraine and make it the “first order of business.” Obama said continued military actions in Ukraine “will be a costly proposition for Russia.” Russia called for the adoption of a national unity deal in Ukraine even as it tightened its stranglehold over Crimea,...

Russian troop presence in Crimea compared to what Germans did in Sudetenland in 1938 Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird has compared Russia's troop presence in Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula to Hitler's invasion of Sudetenland, a part of the former Czechoslovakia, in 1938. Baird, speaking to host Evan Solomon on CBC News Network's Power & Politics, accused Russia of invading and occupying Crimea, a part of Ukraine. "If it's not war, it's akin to war," he said. At first, Baird said the situation was "right out of the Cold War." When Solomon pointed out Putin claims he is protecting Russian rights in...

President Barack Obama challenged Russian President Vladimir Putin’s defense of his involvement in Ukraine, arguing Tuesday that there is widespread consensus that Russia is violating international law and urging Putin to agree to talks to de-escalate the situation. “There is a strong belief that Russia’s action is violating international law,” Obama said at an elementary school in the District of Columbia after introducing his proposed 2015 budget. “President Putin seems to have a different set of lawyers making a different set of interpretations. I don’t think that’s fooling anybody.”

After dropping his push on immigration, Rubio is seeking to rehabilitate his image with much of the GOP base by falling back on his staunch conservative ideology while engaging in a calculated effort to broaden his domestic and foreign policy portfolio. He’s becoming a regular fundraising presence on the campaign trail and plans to play a big role in a handful of key midterm races this fall. A contingent on the right will never forgive him for backing a bill offering a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, and his critics say he jettisoned the plan strictly to preserve his...

Maybe the Obama administration is taking the Budapest Memorandum more seriously than we imagined — or at least want Russia to think we are. Secretary of State John Kerry told ABC’s This Week that “all options are on the table” for a response to Vladimir Putin’s Crimean invasion, including military options: Secretary of State John Kerry said that “all options are on the table” when it comes to steps the U.S. can take to hold Russia accountable for its military movements in Ukraine, including economic sanctions and potentially military action. In an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos today on “This...