Free Republic

Few nations have as deep a sense of their own history as the Russians. On the basis of this tendentious tract about historic 'unity' of Russians and Ukrainians that President Putin justified his invasion of an independent neighboring state. But another word, also with great resonance in Russian history, now hangs over the Kremlin's flailing military campaign. And that word is: MUTINY. Remarkably, it was raised on Moscow's main TV channel by the woman described as Putin's propagandist-in-chief, Margarita Simonyan, on the state of the 'special military operation' to a Russian audience. She was raging about the incompetence which Putin's...

After Vladimir Putin sent the Russian army into Ukraine, there was a plethora of reports — some attributed to 'U.S. intelligence' — claiming that the occupant of the Kremlin had 'gone mad', or was 'ill'. Dismissing such speculation, I wrote here that Putin had not lost his marbles, and was the same gangster that he had always been: 'As for being ill: does he look frail, doddery, or even confused? I don't think so.' Unfortunately, these are legitimate questions to be asked of President Joe Biden, the leader of the free world, during the most dangerous tension between East and...

ABOARD THE PAPAL PLANE - Pope Francis said Tuesday that the latest round of financial scandal at the Vatican is actually a success story, because the situation was revealed thanks to an internal Vatican probe, which he said demonstrates that new controls are working. The pontiff also called both owning and deploying nuclear weapons “immoral,” saying that point should be added to the Catholic catechism, and suggested that it might be time to re-think the veto power wielded by a handful of countries in the United Nations Security Council. His comments came during an airborne news conference on the return...