Free Republic

Andrey Kozyrev laid out reasons why Putin may have misjudged his invasion of Ukraine. He says Putin overestimated Russia's military, not realizing its budget had been embezzled. Russia's invasion of Ukraine has stalled amid tough Ukrainian resistance. A former Russian foreign minister claimed that widespread corruption is among the reasons for the Russian military's apparently poor performance in the invasion of Ukraine. Andrey Kozyrev, who served as foreign minister under President Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s, put forward what he said were misjudgments made by President Vladimir Putin in ordering the invasion. In the thread, he claims Putin overestimated the...

Konstantyn Batozsky believes he is on a list of so-called “neo-Nazis” to be rounded up “Gestapo-style” and “exterminated” by Russian forces seeking to enter Kyiv. Batozsky, a Jew from eastern Ukraine, said he was informed about the “bounty on his head” by Ukrainian intelligence sources. But as a longtime and avowed Ukrainian nationalist who has collaborated with a paramilitary group that has a reputation for including extremists, he knows that it’s people like him that Russian President Vladimir Putin was talking about when he cited a need for “denazification” as a pretext for invading his country. “I have been staying...