Free Republic

Russia and NATO are now in "direct confrontation", the Kremlin said as the U.S.-led alliance marked its 75th anniversary on Thursday. NATO's successive waves of eastern enlargement are a fixation of President Vladimir Putin, who went to war in Ukraine two years ago with the stated aim of preventing the alliance from coming closer to Russia's borders. Instead, the war has galvanised NATO, which has expanded again with the entry of Finland and Sweden. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters: "In fact, relations have now slipped to the level of direct confrontation." NATO was "already involved in the conflict surrounding...

A reader sent in this picture that they saw on President Zelensky’s Twitter account before it was deleted. Zelensky posted a proud Ukrainian soldier but mistakenly forgot to photoshop out the massive Nazi symbol on his chest. The skull image symbolizes the 3rd SS Panzer Division, “Totenkopf” (English translation: death’s head), which was an elite group of Nazis who fought for Germany during World War II. The group has a notoriously gruesome past and is responsible for atrocious war crimes such as the Le Paradis massacre where the division murdered 97 British troops after they surrendered. Totenkopf also invaded the...