Free Republic

“Terrible” socialist Spain was the sole NATO member to refuse a major increase in defence spending this week, leaving President Donald Trump threatening tariffs in return. Spain will end up paying more, all told, for the dogged refusal of its government to accept a greater share of the common defence of the Euro-Atlantic area because it will simply pay higher tariffs on trade instead, President Trump said on Wednesday. Apparently enjoying playing the room and getting laughs, President Trump showed a glint of steel as he brushed off Spanish reporters trying to ask questions at his end-of-summit press conference in...

Several European leaders urged Israel and Iran to de-escalate after Jerusalem launched a “pre-emptive” strike on Iranian military leaders and facilities over night. Iran’s Ayatollah has vowed “harsh punishment” in revenge after Israel launched targeted strikes overnight and launched a flight of suicide bomb drones, but European leaders urged both sides to stay their hands and engage in diplomacy. The United Kingdom, which has given Israel the cold shoulder in many respects since the new left-wing government took power last year rushed to assert it was “not involved in what happened overnight” and said its goal is to “prevent escalation”....

Russian energy has continued to transit unimpeded through Ukrainian territory every day until now, with the taps being firmly closed on New Year’s Day. Zero Russian gas is flowing to European customers through Ukrainian pipelines for the first time in decades today, confirmation there was to be no last-minute deal to keep the route open, sending energy prices spiking on Tuesday. The route has seen billions of cubic feet of gas delivered since the end of the Cold War, and a five-year contract between Moscow and Kyiv governing the transit of gas continued to be observed, remarkably, right to the...

Robert Fico, the Slovak Prime Minister who was seriously injured in an attempted assassination shooting in May, has said the Trump attack was a “carbon copy” scenario and blamed hostile media and Trump’s political opponents for creating an atmosphere of hate. The populist prime minister of Slovakia, who only recently re-emerged into the public eye after he was shot multiple times in the abdomen by an activist and government critic, said the attempt on President Trump’s life was like a “carbon copy” in a statement on Sunday morning.

Polls have closed in the UK General Election, and the nationwide exit poll says the Labour Party has won around 410 seats nationwide, replacing the Conservatives after 14 wasted years. Sir Keir Starmer, a top lawyer who once served as the United Kingdom’s Director of Public Prosecutions and supposedly former hardline leftist radical, who claims to have changed his mind and reformed the Labour party he now leads into a mature and capable governing force, is going to be the next Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

An Iranian asylum seeker was shot dead by police as he charged at an officer while wielding an axe, the culmination of a four-hour hostage-taking aboard a Swiss regional train service. Nearly 100 members of the emergency services responded to a hostage-taking aboard a local train service stopped Essert-sous-Champvent train station after passengers managed to contact police to alert them of the situation. A “screaming” 32-year-old Iranian asylum seeker armed with an axe and a knife had tied up at least some of the 14 passengers and the driver of the Sainte-Croix to Yverdon train, leading to a four-hour hostage...

Britain’s former Prime Minister, now returned to frontline politics as the nation’s top diplomat, is again talking about recognising a Palestinian state despite Israel rejecting the idea, but this time adding the condition it would have to be without Hamas. The United Kingdom would recognise a Palestinian state, but only once Gaza is no longer controlled by Hamas, Britain’s Foreign Minister Lord David Cameron said in Lebanon on Thursday. Per a Guardian report on the remarks Britain legitimising a Palestinian state could come even before the end of futuretalks between Israel and “Palestinian leaders”. No moves could be made until...

NATO reaffirms its long-term support for Ukraine and says its members all agree the nation will join the alliance, but not while the war is ongoing, and not before it has reformed. The Secretary General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) Jens Stoltenberg again spoke of NATO membership for Ukraine as a definite matter — despite previous dissent from within the alliance — as he spoke of a forthcoming meeting of the NATO-Ukraine Council this week. “Allies agree that Ukraine will become a member of NATO”, Stoltenberg said as he said discussions this week would focus on “priority reforms”...

Huge numbers of young Ukrainian men fled the country to avoid being drafted in the army to fight Russia, a report states, with many swimming border rivers or walking cross-country to avoid detection.Under Ukraine’s martial law, for the vast majority of Ukrainian males, it has been illegal to leave the country since the Russian invasion, a step taken by Kyiv to maintain its access to conscripts for the fight against Moscow’s occupation. Yet figures reveal tens of thousands have attempted to flee and avoid fighting.Data from the border services of Hungary, Moldova, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia acquired for an investigation...

An explicit recruitment advert targeting women for the Ukrainian Army is Russian propaganda and not an official video, Kyiv have said in a statement. A short video linking to the recruitment website for the Armed Forces of Ukraine showing by turns a woman in lingerie, a woman caring for a small child, and a woman preparing for battle has been flagged by an official statement from the Ukrainian government as a fake. Kyiv’s government news outlet Ukrinform picks apart the video, noting it is stitched together from generic stock clips found elsewhere on the internet, and that the video has...

Ukraine has apparently now come to terms with there being no foreign donations of fighter jets during the count offensive, or even this year at all, one of the nation’s top spokesmen has said. Spokesman for the Ukrainian Air Force Yuriy Ihnat, a figure frequently heard on the world stage pleading for more military equipment, said it had now become “obvious” there would be no foreign fighter jets coming this year on Ukrainian television. Per a translation offered by Ukraine’s state media service Ukrinform, Ihnat said on Thursday: “It is already obvious that we will not be able to protect...

The long-discussed Ukrainian spring counteroffensive is underway, Volodymyr Zelensky has confirmed, with the country reporting 25 battles fought in the past 24 hours and a handful of villages reclaimed. Ukraine’s own reporting of its progress in the counteroffensive against Russia’s occupation of the southeast of their country claims a clutch of villages and positions taken encircling Donetsk on Monday morning. The gains would be the first settlements reported taken in the counteroffensive so far, which was officially declared by Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday but appears to have been underway to varying degrees since early last week.

Ukraine has again endured a night of heavy bombardment, with what was reportedly over 30 missiles and drones targeting cities across the country in an air raid of “unprecedented” intensity. “A series of air attacks on Kyiv, unprecedented in their power, intensity and variety” took place overnight into Thursday morning a spokesman for the city of Kyivv said, with the Ukrainian government saying it had successfully shot down 29 Kalibir missiles, two suicide attack drones, and two reconnaissance drones.

Western countries agreed to supply tanks for use against the Russian invasion this week, prompting the Ukrainian government to push the envelope further, with discussions about more major military equipment advancing. Talk of NATO nations supplying long-range missiles, warships, submarines, and fighter jets is evident, with Ukrainian government figures seemingly tasked with acquiring new equipment wasting absolutely no time to push new ideas immediately after the dam burst on tank supply.

Poland has made its fleet of MIG-29 jets available “immediately and free of charge”, despite calling the move “fake news” just two days ago.

Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky quoted William Shakespeare and Winston Churchill in an emotional address to both houses of the United Kingdom Parliament which ultimately appealed to British “greatness” to make sure “Ukrainian skies are safe” and to categorise Russia as a “terrorist state”. The Houses of Commons and Lords received an extraordinary address by the Ukrainian President on Tuesday afternoon, a short speech that expressed the Ukrainian experience of the renewed Russian invasion day-by-day for the past fortnight, and which also appealed to the United Kingdom to take further action.

WARSAW, Poland: Populist leader Viktor Orbán arrived in Poland Monday, his first foreign trip since being re-elected as Hungarian Prime Minister, where he spoke with his Polish counterpart on the migrant crisis and European Union funding. Speaking after the talks with Orbán, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki hit out at the EU over its plans to force migrant quotas on all member nations, remarking the move “hit the very foundations of national sovereignty… Here, in Poland, it’s we who decide who will come to Poland and who will not.”