Free Republic

So perhaps the best thing we can do here is to give you some context on how big a deal the imposition of tariffs here would be. The key thing to remember is that North America has been, in effect, a free trade zone for decades. Goods move back and forth across the borders so frequently that the number of crossings is almost incalculable. Consider an example highlighted by the Wall Street Journal recently. It pointed out that a piston - a component of a car component, might cross the border, back and forth between Canada and the US and...

For Ukraine’s Independence Day celebration, Volodymyr Zelensky brought some real fireworks right to the heart of Russia’s occupation. Officials in Kyiv announced this morning that they have landed forces on the western shores of Crimea, raised the Ukranian flag, and have engaged and destroyed Russian forces near two settlements.No word yet from Russia, but this would be bad news indeed for Vladimir Putin if this beachhead succeeds. If it is a beachhead, that is:Special forces landed on the western shore of Crimea, near the settlements of Olenivka and Mayak, in a joint operation with the country’s Navy, according to Ukrainian...

Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) issued a scathing rebuke Monday of President Joe Biden’s administration after it approved a scaled-down version of an oil drilling project in a petroleum-rich region of northern Alaska. Markey, a climate hawk and cosponsor of the failed Green New Deal, called the administration’s approval of ConocoPhillips’ Willow Project, a multibillion-dollar oil drilling endeavor in the federal North Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, a “disastrous decision.”

The Kremlin denies it, but right now, it only looks like a matter of time. Russia wants to keep the nuclear power facility in Zaporizhzhia for its own energy needs as well as nuclear hostage in its failing war in Ukraine. The question is whether they can hold it, and for how long. As the New York Times points out, the fallback from Kherson hasn’t bolstered their forces in Zaporizhzhia enough to sustain its seizure in the long run: Following a string of Ukrainian military successes in the south, the Kremlin sought on Monday to tamp down speculation that Russian...

How well have the people of the four annexed territories in Ukraine embraced their new overlords in Moscow? Vladimir Putin offered some insight into that question today by declaring martial law in all four areas, starting tomorrow. The Duma followed up his declaration with legislation that will silence any dissent and criminalize any travel and public gatherings not expressly approved by military commanders. It’s “liberation, Kremlin style,” comrade!(snip) The glorious war progresses smoothly, tovarisch. Don’t forget that Putin’s argument for annexation was that these areas rightly belonged to Russia in the first place. If that’s the case, why do these...

Even the solutions turn into problems for Vladimir Putin in Ukraine — big problems. Less than a month after announcing a “partial” mobilization, Russian conscripts have entered into combat in Luhansk. And it appears that they are exiting almost as quickly, provoking even more backlash from nationalist milbloggers who are increasingly balking at Putin’s propaganda. The Ukrainians reported their arrival in combat areas yesterday. Serhii Haidai, the top military official in Luhansk Oblast, claimed that the first conscript wave consisted mainly of ex-convicts: (snip) The Russian milbloggers didn’t take long to confirm the arrival of conscripts — and to complain...

A sense of unreality continues to permeate Russia and their claims to annexation of southern Ukraine, and that may be almost literally. Newsweek reports today that the Kremlin added “fake cheers” to Vladimir Putin’s speech on Friday announcing the annexation to sell this glorious nonsense to a Russian audience that has clearly grown tired of the war. And speaking of the audience … Unedited footage from Russian President Vladimir Putin’s annexation speech in Moscow on Friday appears to show fake cheers were edited onto clips broadcast on state TV, while reports say that people were bussed in to attend the...

And can Vladimir Putin survive without them? The Kremlin has relied on manipulated narratives of Russian success in Ukraine — as well as outrageous propaganda against Ukrainians and the West — sourced mainly through milbloggers and nationalist front-line reporters. Those have fed Putin’s state-run media since the start of the war, especially after Putin outlawed any true independent reporting in February. Now that Russian troops are running from Kharkiv and getting overrun in key strategic locations like Lyman and Kherson, the milbloggers have turned on their masters. ISW reports today that “dramatic changes in the Russian information space” took place...

It’s Election Day in parts of Ukraine — but only because Russia imposed it. Vladimir Putin ordered referenda on annexation held in the parts of the Donbas that Russia still controls — and some areas it no longer does — in order to justify the seizure of those areas. That seizure will allow Putin to claim that any further Ukrainian advances in those areas are an invasion of Russia, which will unlock his ability to order full mobilization … and potentially other options.We’ll get to the full-mobilization issue in a moment, but let’s stick to the referenda first. Ukrainian authorities...

The Russians find themselves out of options in their collapsing effort to overrun Ukraine. Not only did they fail to keep territory they seized in the invasion over the late winter and spring, Russia has begun to lose ground it held before the war. They’re running out of resources, and more importantly, running out of troops as Ukraine’s counteroffensive threatens to collapse their lines. What better time than now to hold a plebiscite, eh? Unfortunately, Russia may see that as their only recruitment option in Luhansk and Donetsk:(snip) Er … keep dreaming. Vladimir Putin has no concerns over even the...

Nothing was more predictable about this most predictable of wars than the certain failure of Putin’s Coup de Main invasion to seize Kyiv and conquer Ukraine in one fell swoop. And yet its success was confidently predicted by Russia’s FSB domestic security service, which, instead of the SVR foreign intelligence, was given the task of sustaining the fiction that Ukraine is Russian. Perhaps it is not strange that Putin, himself a former FSB officer, did not question this reckless optimism. He knew that the CIA fully agreed with the FSB estimate, as did the German Bundesnachrichtendienst (BDN) and the French...