Free Republic

Consider the Buryats, one of Siberia’s largest Indigenous groups. Closely related to Mongolians, they were subjugated, annexed, and subsequently colonized by Russia in the 1600s. Russian independent news outlets Mediazona and iStories found that by mid-May, Buryatia had the second-highest number of soldiers killed in Ukraine since the start of the invasion—just after Dagestan, another conquest of the Russian Empire. By May 18, Buryatia had lost 117 soldiers (the actual number is likely higher), whereas the city of Moscow, with a population around 15 times Buryatia’s, lost only three. Relative to the population, Buryatia’s rate of battle deaths was the...

The U.S. originally spearheaded NATO against the global hegemony sought by the Soviet Union, which, much like NATO, promoted "conflict and confrontation" with every government that did not share its ideology. The historical irony is that the U.S. emerged from the ashes of the Cold War as an ideological nation itself with the same zeal to remake the world.Reckless NATO expansionism led by Washington contributed to the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War—which then provided NATO expanders an excuse to invite Finland and Sweden into its ranks. Though the alliance's advocates say these countries are joining of their own volition to seek security...

Western leaders are beginning to recognize, if not openly acknowledge, that their unprecedented sanctions against Moscow are hurting their own countries’ economies without significantly crimping the Kremlin’s war machine. The fallout from the U.S.-led sanctions on Russia has ended the era of cheap oil and gas and contributed to surging inflation, supply-chain disruptions and a looming recession in the West. In poorer countries, by sending fuel and food prices higher, the sanctions are threatening livelihoods and political stability. As the West is now discovering, sanctions against a large, powerful state not only entail significant costs for the countries imposing them,...