Free Republic

Caius Julius Caesar Germanicus, known to history as Caligula, ruled as the Emperor of Rome from A.D. 37 to 41. For those who are unaware, Caligula, the great grandson of Rome’s first emperor, the brilliant Augustus Caesar, squandered the enormous wealth of the Roman State, declared himself to be a god, appointed his favorite racehorse to serve in the Roman Senate, and according to some sources, considered deifying the animal. After a little less than four years in office, Caligula was removed. Rome’s citizens, as well as its legions, were spared the indignity of having to worship a dead horse....

Is Russia worthy of being called a “great power,” let alone a superpower? Not to kick someone when they’re down, but it’s difficult to argue that Vladimir Putin represents anything other than a middling regional state, albeit the largest country in the world and one with nuclear weapons. In the first place, until the Russo-Ukraine War, consider how irrelevant and inconsequential Russia was. For the most part, regarding international relations, Russia scarcely mattered. Moscow has nary a footprint in the Middle East (mainly Syria) and is nonexistent in Asia and other parts of the world. Russia has lost influence in...

"As many as 100-200 Ukrainian soldiers have died every day since Russia shifted its military campaign in the spring to focus on eastern Ukraine. But overall, about 20,000 Russians have been killed. Injuries have taken about 60,000 more off the battlefield"

Danila Davydov said he left Russia within weeks of the Kremlin sending troops into Ukraine because he feared having to fight in a war he doesn't support. The 22-year-old left St. Petersburg and is now working in Kazakhstan."We feared President Putin would declare a mobilization and then everyone, young and old, would be called up to the army. I absolutely didn't want to go and fight." Davydov is among what some lawyers and rights advocates say is an increased number of young Russian men looking to avoid the country's mandatory military service since the conflict with Ukraine, which Russia calls...

July 8, 2022 The country is making enormous investments in defense and will soon become one of Europe’s pre-eminent land powers.As the war in Ukraine – now in its fifth month – becomes a grinding battle of attrition, a new geostrategic realignment along NATO’s Eastern Flank is in full view: a fault line has emerged, running north-south, from Scandinavia and the Baltics down through Poland and into Romania and Bulgaria.In this reconfigured Europe, Poland is the hub of NATO’s effort to assist Ukraine, serving as the principal transit route for equipment and ammunition shipments to Ukraine, and providing a...

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...

Vladimir Putin has vowed to defeat the West on the 'battlefield' and suggested he could escalate the war in Ukraine. The Russian leader announced at a televised meeting with MPs this afternoon: 'Today we hear that they want to defeat us on the battlefield. 'Well, what can I say - let them try.

Why the sudden total collapse of the Ukrainian forces in LissichanskTwo years after the Serbian war, an American general asked his Serbian counter-part what it was like to have fought against the greatest military power in history. The Serbian general replied, " I don't know, we've never fought Russia."

Five months into Russia's war on Ukraine, the Kremlin still hasn’t decreed a general mobilization to draft troops for its invasion, but there are growing reports that it is enticing and pressuring men of fighting age to join, as well as leaning on younger conscripts to sign contracts so they can deploy to the front. In Bashkortostan -- a Russian republic located some 1,300 kilometers east of Moscow -- many parents of conscripts have launched appeals to the local military prosecutor's office over complaints that their sons were illegally detained at the conscription office and were told that they would...