Free Republic

The cable channels have granted Zelensky billions of dollars worth of free air time to sell the public on having Americans finance his war with Russia. So far, he's received commitments to $13.6 billion in U.S. aid, money he will gladly share with the children of congressmen. Anyone who questions this is labeled a Putin puppet.Well, I have been called worse.There is another side of the story, weak as it may be. In a speech Power Line called, "The Madness of Vlad the Inhaler," Putin made a Zelensky-style plea to his colleagues. Most of it was BS. There is no...

Russian President Vladimir Putin gave a long and important speech on February 21 as tensions with the US over Ukraine reached new heights. While the media focused on certain aspects of the speech, particularly Russia recognizing two separatist areas in Ukraine as sovereign independent states, there is much more there to unpack. Let’s begin at the end. “I consider it necessary to make a long-overdue decision to immediately recognize the independence and sovereignty of the Donetsk People's Republic [DPR] and the Luhansk People's Republic [LPR],” he said. These are two areas in eastern Ukraine that declared independence in April of...

Russian President Vladimir Putin skewered the leadership of Ukraine and the West in a speech Monday night, in which he gave his most aggressive remarks yet on the brewing conflict between Moscow and Kyiv. Putin delivered nearly an hour-long speech lobbing allegations of foreign meddling in Ukraine against the west and reiterating accusations of oppression of ethnic Russians by the government of Ukraine. He called Ukraine a puppet state of the United States and officially recognized two separatist groups in eastern Ukraine as independent states. The Russian president began the speech with a history lesson, in which he argued that...

War Is On The Horizon: Is It Too Late To Stop It? Paul Craig Roberts One lesson from military history is that once mobilization for war begins, it takes on a momentum of its own and is uncontrollable. This might be what is occuring unrecognized before our eyes. In his September 28 speech at the 70th Anniversity of the United Nations, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated that Russia can no longer tolerate the state of affairs in the world. Two days later at the invitation of the Syrian government Russia began war against ISIS. Russia was quickly successful in destroying...

Russian President Vladimir Putin delivered what was perhaps his most important speech, and definitely his most direct criticism of the West, at the Valdai Conference in Sochi on October 24. One independent analyst called it “the most important political speech since Churchill’s ‘Iron Curtain’ speech of March 5, 1946.” Another called it “epochal,” and a “marker of the end of the U.S.’s brief period as the one big, unchallenged bully on the block.” Another labeled the speech “a precursor to World War iii.” Yet the mainstream Western media largely ignored the speech, instead focusing that day on America’s midterm elections,...

Most people in the English-speaking parts of the world missed Putin's speech at the Valdai conference in Sochi a few days ago, and, chances are, those of you who have heard of the speech didn't get a chance to read it, and missed its importance. (For your convenience, I am pasting in the full transcript of his speech below.) Western media did their best to ignore it or to twist its meaning. Regardless of what you think or don't think of Putin (like the sun and the moon, he does not exist for you to cultivate an opinion) this is...

Against a backdrop of saber-rattling statements made by leaders of State Duma factions, President Vladimir Putin delivered a reconciliatory speech Thursday in the Crimean coastal town of Yalta, arguing against excessive confrontation with the West. "We must calmly and effectively build up our country with dignity, not fence it off from the outside world," Putin was cited by Reuters as saying. "We need to consolidate and mobilize: not for war or any kind of confrontation, [but] for hard work in the name of Russia." Putin stopped short from announcing any of the decisions that were widely expected by pundits and...

And in an opening speech devoted to Russian values, he castigated the West for losing touch with its Christian roots when it came to gender questions. Mr Putin said that "one-gender families" and exaggerated political correctness were leading countries into degradation and a deepening moral crisis. One Austrian professor challenged him on this and asked for a guarantee that minority values would be respected in Russia and not subject to harassment. Mr Putin denied there were any laws in Russia to punish sexual minorities for their orientation. The Russian law which had caused so much controversy was, he said, simply...

Valdai, Russia, September 20, Interfax - People will lose their human dignity without values enshrined in Christianity and other world religions, without moral standards that have taken millennia to take shape, President Vladimir Putin. "We believe that it is natural and appropriate to defend those values. Any minority deserves respect for its distinctive identity, but the rights of the majority must not be questioned," Putin said during a meeting of the Valdai discussion club. He believes, that Russia can't move forward without cultural and national self-determination. Otherwise the country won't be able to respond to external or internal challenges, can't...