Free Republic

See website for President Putin’s speech, both in Russian and translated into English.

There’s a reason Finland and Sweden have enjoyed strong relationships with both Russia and most western nations simultaneously. Their longstanding position of neutrality has helped them maintain both security and economic prosperity for decades. Russia wanted to do business with them as neighbors and western nations wanted to stay friendly based on shared values. Things are changing as the machinations of the New World Order progress nicely on a global scale. Both nations have announced their intentions of joining NATO, and NATO has indicated their applications will be quickly approved. This has been a red line for Russia for decades....

Scott Ritter's warning to Finland (Fins thinking that the Russian rescue mission in Ukraine means that they need to join NATO...)

Everyone wishes to argue "Article 5" of the NATO treaty, which is the mutual-defense pact. You get attacked and we all get attacked.Ok.What does Article I say?The Parties undertake, as set forth in the Charter of the United Nations, to settle any international dispute in which they may be involved by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security and justice are not endangered, and to refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force in any manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations.Shipping arms into an area where armed conflict is...

@MaajidNawaz WATCH: “Allying with NAZIS in Ukraine to defeat Putin is as ABSURD as allying with ISIS in Syria to defeat Putin” My talk last night with @TuckerCarlson 2 Minute Clip ...

This was the most important one of yesterday's news items.. If the Pentagon, which includes the Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency, could not confirm what the government in Kiev claimed, who else could? Certainly not the European minions who reacted to these dubious claims by removing more Russian embassy personnel from their countries. The U.S. is again pushing the Europeans into suiciding their economies. The U.S. would of course be the only country that would gain from that. Its over. The Ukraine has lost the war. Its navy, air force and defense industry no longer exist. The...

Actually, as Winston well knew, it was only four years since Oceania had been at war with Eastasia and in alliance with Eurasia. But that was merely a piece of furtive knowledge which he happened to possess because his memory was not satisfactorily under control. Officially the change of partners had never happened. Oceania was at war with Eurasia: therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia. The enemy of the moment always represented absolute evil, and it followed that any past or future agreement with him was impossible. -George Orwell, 1984 The smoothness with which the corporate media...

All wars are full of lies. Winston Churchill famously said, “In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.”We accept that idea broadly. Secret invasion plans should be closely held. The identities of spies must be kept under wraps. New weapons and defensive tools should not be revealed because enemies will be alerted to their potential and begin offensive workarounds.Still, just because the government has legitimate reasons to deceive the public in wartime does not mean that citizens don’t have a duty to find the truth to the extent they can.The Russian-Ukraine...

No one—no one—wants war, with the resultant terrible destruction, loss of life, and mayhem it inevitably brings. But as I have written in previous essays, if you search for the profound cause for what has happened, it is not the invading Russians, it is not really the regime in Kiev, but rather it is the sponsoring apparatchiks in Foggy Bottom along the Potomac, in Brussels, and in the houses of Congress (the Lindsey Grahams and Roger Wickers who actually urge our potential use of nuclear weapons against Russia), and what Dr. Paul Craig Roberts calls the “pressitutes” in American media,...

The United States on Thursday imposed sanctions on a Chechen group and five individuals, including at least three Russians, for alleged human rights abuses under the Global Magnitsky Act, including extrajudicial killings and the torture of LGBTI individuals. The sanctions against the Terek Special Rapid Response Team in the Chechen Republic and the five individuals were announced by the U.S. Treasury on its website. The Treasury Department imposed the sanctions, which freeze the banks accounts of those targeted, under a 2012 law known as the Magnitsky Act.

At a rival protest in Kiev this weekend, impoverished workers from eastern Ukraine turned out to show their support for the government and stronger ties with Moscow even as the pro-EU crowd grew ever more jubilant. They were poor. Their clothes looked cheap and worn, their faces tired; their feelings were hurt. A group of workers and miners from Kirovsk, an industrial town in eastern Ukraine, were among thousands of protesters walking on Sunday morning towards the anti-Euro rally in Kiev’s Mariinsky park, to demonstrate their support for Ukraine’s president, Victor Yanukovych, and for friendship with Russia. Two parts of...