Free Republic

Canada is a welsher state. (Hold your outrage, that adjective has nothing to do with the Welsh.) I am speaking specifically about this country’s financial contribution to NATO, the international alliance formed after World War II, constructed around the principle of collective defence. Article 5 of the establishing charter declares that “an attack on one is an attack on all.” Originally and for four decades the thrust of NATO’s raison d’être was deterring Soviet aggression. With the end of the Cold War, NATO shifted toward helping former Soviet-bloc countries embrace democracy and the market economy. But now it’s come full...

On 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...

(President Bush ascends the reviewing stand in Red Square on May 9 for ceremonies marking the 60th anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany.) Although communism was the moral nadir of modern Russian history it was also the period when Russia was at the height of its power...Vladimir Putin in a speech last year referred to the breakup of the Soviet Union as “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.” This type of nostalgia is not harmless. Not only does it ignore the fact that the Soviet Union was just as terroristic as Nazi Germany. It also reflects what Hannah...

Republican Sen. Jeff Flake, a frequent critic of President Donald Trump, said he is concerned about what Trump might promise Russian President Vladimir Putin when the two meet this month. "It does concern me," the Arizona senator told CNN's Dana Bash on "State of the Union" Sunday. "I'm glad that the President is talking to Vladimir Putin. I'm glad that he's talking to North Korea as well. But I am concerned, and I know there is concern across Europe, about what might be promised." The two leaders are due to meet on July 16 in Finland, and CNN previously reported...

When Russian President Vladimir Putin gave the green light to Russian aerial bombing of rebel-held positions in southwestern Syria two weeks ago, he knew he was asking for trouble. And he appears to be getting plenty of it. Putin knows that in approving the operation, he wasn’t simply enabling Syrian President Bashar Assad and his Syrian military forces to extend the regime’s control to an area that has been controlled by various rebel militia for seven years.The Syrian military is an empty shell. Russia effectively serves as the Syrian Air Force. Iran and Iranian-controlled groups control Syria’s ground forces.Israeli intelligence assesses...

President Trump is planning on meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin alone later this month, a source told CNN. More aides are expected to join the two world leaders later in the meeting, which is expected to cover election interference, Syria and nuclear weapons. CNN noted that without other aides present, that part of the meeting will be without an official record — making it difficult to conclude whether the men reached any agreements. The two leaders will meet in Helsinki, Finland, on July 16. The meeting will be the first formal summit between Trump and Putin. Trump and Putin...

It started as one of Spain’s typical grand passing rondos, it grew over 90 minutes and then 120 into one of the biggest mountains of possession amassed since World Cup records began, and by the end it felt like this great generation of players had run out of fresh ideas. This was the remnants of the great world champions of 2010 passing the ball 1,114 times in a match but unable to score more goals than a Russia team who refused to be passed to death in the way that so many opponents have in the past. By the end...

Just came across an intriguing theory about Sergei Skripal, the former Soviet/Russian military intelligence agent who spied for Britain, and, along with his daughter Yulia, was nearly killed this spring by a dose of the nerve agent Novichok in the town of Salisbury, England, where they live. In a March 21 interview on the John Batchelor Show, Gregory R. Copley, editor and publisher of Defense & Foreign Affairs, posited that Sergei Skripal is the unnamed Russian intelligence source in the Steele dossier. Copley further explained (or tried to explain) to Batchelor (who kept cutting him off): “The people who wished...

President Donald Trump will meet with Russian leader Vladimir Putin next month in Helsinki, the White House confirmed on Thursday. ​”​President Donald J. Trump and President Vladimir Putin of the Russian Federation will meet on July 16, 2018, in Helsinki, Finland​,” the statement said. “The two leaders will discuss relations between the United States and Russia and a range of national security issues.​”​

Scandal-plagued former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is still complaining about how life is unfair after she lost the election against President Trump. .....snip....... Clinton, an ardent proponent of late term abortion, accused Trump of harming infants by ripping illegal immigrant families apart, and warned that the Trump presidency is a consequence of the “authoritarian, white supremacist” Russian President, Vladmir Putin, “emboldening right wing nationalists, separatists, racists, and even Neo-Nazis.”

Is the United States embroiled in a new Cold War with Russia? Are we on the verge of WWIII? After a week in Moscow and conversations with several Russian foreign-policy analysts, I think the answer to both questions is negative. “We are in a hybrid war, a successor to the Cold War,” says Dmitri Trenin “But don’t call it Cold War 2.0; otherwise you will confuse things.” America and Russia are jousting on new battlefields – information space, cyberspace, economic battles. What then is one to make of Vladimir Putin’s military interventions in Ukraine or his venture in Syria? Or...

The Kremlin has in recent years advanced a narrative that Russia must not be ashamed of its Soviet past. President Vladimir Putin has used his nearly two decades in power to talk up achievements during World War II as a rallying cry to unite the nation. In recent years, there have been efforts in Russia to transform Stalin’s image from that of a bloody dictator to a ‘great personality.’ A poll by the independent Levada Center found only 9 percent of Russians blamed Stalin’s leadership for the war casualties, according to a survey published Wednesday. That is a a rapidly...

In a telegram earlier Monday, Putin had "stressed that the results of the vote fully speak of Recep Tayyip Erdogan's great political authority..." © Provided by AFP In a telegram earlier Monday, Putin had "stressed that the results of the vote fully speak of Recep Tayyip Erdogan's great political authority..." Russian strongman Vladimir Putin on Monday congratulated Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on his re-election triumph in a phone call, after saying the result showed the Turkish leader's "great political authority" and mass support. On the call Putin and Erdogan confirmed their interest in "deepening partnership ties between the two...

As globalization blurs boundaries (both national and sexual), and as social media and American-style consumerism flatten cultural differences, the thinking goes, Russia and her church stand for sovereignty, authenticity and Christian vigor. No thanks. Even if you, like me, concur in the underlying diagnosis—that the West has becomeunmoored from its Judeo-Christian foundations, that liberalism has gone too far in eroding traditional authority and moral precepts—the Putin Option is no cure. And it entails hazards that could prove ruinous to the cause of reversing the West’s spiritual fortunes. Despair over the cultural left’s stridency and triumphalism in recent years should not...

Share Tweet Just days after a historic meeting in Singapore with North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un, President Donald Trump is setting his sights on Russia. Friday morning, President Trump took a stroll on the front lawn of the White House, stopping for an impromptu interview with Steve Doocy from Fox & Friends-marking the first time any American president has held an unannounced and unexpected meeting with the press on the grounds of the White House. During the half-hour long interview with Doocy, President Trump discussed the possibility of meeting with Putin, “ We may, and it started because...

God, guns and Russia. Those were among the topics Gov Greg Abbott touched on Friday, when speaking to thousands of Republicans gathered for their every-other-year state convention, this time at the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center. "If Texas was its own country," Abbott said, when he was interrupted by large cheers. "Let me rephrase that. If Texas was its own country again, we'd have the 10th largest economy in the entire world. "The Texas economy alone is larger than Russia's," he said with a grin. "And that makes me more powerful than Putin."

OSLO (Reuters) - Russia vowed on Thursday to retaliate for a plan by Norway to more than double the number of U.S. Marines stationed there. Oslo announced on Tuesday that it would ask the United States, its NATO ally, to send 700 Marines to train in Norway from 2019, against 330 at present, and said the additional troops would be based closer to the Russian border. "This makes Norway less predictable and could cause growing tensions, triggering an arms race and destabilizing the situation in northern Europe," the Russian Embassy said in a statement on its Facebook page. "We see...

“Now, I’m not for Russia. I’m for the United States," Trump continued. "But, as an example, if Vladimir Putin were sitting next to me at a table instead of one of the others… I could say, 'would you do me a favor and get out of Syria? Would you do me a favor, would you get out of Ukraine?'" “If he were at that meeting, I could ask him to do things that are good for the world, that are good for our country that are good for him,” he added. In Wednesday's interview, which was recorded shortly after Trump's...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Special counsel Robert Mueller's team is worried that Russian intelligence services will use a criminal case in Washington to gather information about its investigation and U.S. intelligence-gathering methods. In court papers filed Tuesday, prosecutors are asking a federal judge to impose limits on the information that can be shared by attorneys in the first criminal case directly related to Russian attempts to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. So far, only one defendant, Concord Management and Consulting LLC, has appeared in the case, and prosecutors say they're worried information they provide to the company's attorneys could...

Retired Lt. Col. Ralph Peters, a former FOX News contributor, told Anderson Cooper on Wednesday that he is "convinced" Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin has some type of "grip" on President Trump. "I am convinced that Vladimir Putin has some a grip on President Trump," Peters said on CNN's Anderson Cooper 360. "And, Anderson, when I first learned of the Steele dossier, it just rang true to me, because that’s how the Russians do things. And before he became a candidate or president, Donald Trump was the perfect target for Russian intelligence." "Here is someone who has no self-control, a...