Free Republic

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stormed off and headed home early after being snubbed by other diplomats at the G20 summit — who refused to take a group photo with him over his nation’s invasion of Ukraine. Foreign ministers who gathered in Bali, Indonesia, this week, did not pose for a traditional “family”-style group photo, after several of them reportedly refused to be pictured with Vladimir Putin’s chief envoy. The Japanese news agency Kyodo reported that US Secretary of State Antony Blinken led the photo-op boycott.

The European Parliament voted 324-155, with 38 abstentions, to condemn the U.S. Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade and demand that abortion rights be enshrined in the EU’s fundamental rights charter. Why it matters: The Supreme Court's decision last month to end federal protections for abortion was widely denounced by world leaders and human rights organizations. -In the wake of the ruling, lawmakers in Israel and France have taken steps to shore up their domestic protections for abortion. The big picture: In the resolution, European MEPs expressed their solidarity with American women and girls and called for the U.S....

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...

As Americans, we must continue to stand with Ukraine in their war against Russia. As time goes by this will become more difficult as the cost of that support literally goes up for us all. Regardless, practically and philosophically, it remains in our nation’s best interests to pay that price.As I conceded above, I am under no illusions that supporting Ukraine over the long haul will be easy. Doing so will come at a significant economic cost to the world, America included, as energy and food prices continue to go up in response to their protracted warThe costs of standing...