Free Republic

Two serious and literally life or death questions: Since when did trying to save the lives of hundreds of thousands of people — including countless children — become something to be criticized? Conversely, when did sending hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers into the teeth of the Russian war machine with absolutely no plausible plan to win become the untouchable go-to policy of certain neoconservatives, many on the left and a fair number of editorial writers?I thought of these questions while reading two recent columns. The first is by Rich Lowry from the New York Post, titled “Trump is getting...

This proposal is the most realistic means for keeping the peace after an armistice. Bloomberg cited unnamed “people with knowledge of Kremlin thinking” to report that Russia will only demand that Ukraine restore its constitutional neutrality, “drastically cut back military ties with the NATO alliance”, limit its army, and freeze the front lines, albeit with some territorial swaps. Also, “The Kremlin’s position is that while individual NATO members may continue to send arms to Ukraine under bilateral security agreements, any such weapons should not be used against Russia or to recapture territory.” To be sure, Bloomberg might have either invented...

Russia's oil price in roubles has fallen to a two-year low below the 4,000 rouble per barrel mark and some 40% lower than planned in the federal budget, data showed, piling pressure on the Kremlin, already saddled with a burgeoning budget deficit. -snip- According to Reuters calculations, the average price of Russia's mix of Urals and ESPO blends dipped on May 2 to $48.92 per barrel, or 3,987 roubles, which is more than 40% below the 6,726 roubles the government had originally planned for this year. That's the lowest since May 2023, according to Reuters data. It is also still...

Nearly nine months after losing chunks of the Kursk region to a surprise Ukrainian incursion, Russia announced that its troops have fully reclaimed the border territory. Ukraine denied it, saying the fighting was still ongoing. If confirmed, Moscow’s victory in Kursk would deprive Kyiv of key leverage in U.S.-brokered efforts to negotiate an end to the more than 3-year-old war by exchanging its gains for some of Russia-occupied land in Ukraine. Here are key moments of the battle for Kursk and its impact:A Ukrainian blitzUkrainian forces pushed into Kursk on Aug. 6, 2024, in a surprise attack, with battle-hardened mechanized...

The radicalized son of a CIA director was killed last year while allegedly fighting for Russia in Ukraine, according to a new investigation. Michael Alexander Gloss, the 21-year-old son of the CIA’s Deputy Director for Digital Innovation Julianne Gallina Gloss and a Navy veteran father, was killed on the front lines after enlisting in the Russian army, according to a lengthy investigation by independent Russian outlet Important Stories. Gloss’ obituary said his “fiercely beautiful life … was taken from us during his travels overseas” on April 4, 2024, without detailing exactly how “With his noble heart and warrior spirit Michael...

Russia reserves the right to use nuclear weapons in the event it faces aggression by Western countries, Moscow's top security official, Sergei Shoigu, was quoted as saying in an interview with the TASS state news agency on Thursday. -snip- Shoigu, who served for over a decade as Russia's defence minister until he moved to head its powerful security council in a government reshuffle last year, cited amendments to Moscow's nuclear doctrine approved by President Vladimir Putin last November. Under the new terms, Russia could consider a nuclear strike in response to a conventional attack on Russia or its ally Belarus...

On Friday’s broadcast of HBO’s “Real Time,” host Bill Maher said that while Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s declaration that it’s not realistic for Ukraine to return to its pre-2014 borders “is just surrender” but “the problem is that I don’t know how it doesn’t end this way.” Maher stated, “So, here’s what Pete Hegseth, our new Secretary of Defense said…he said, returning to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders is an unrealistic objective, which, to me, is just surrender. Then again, we can argue about whether that’s true or not. The United States does not believe, also, that NATO membership for Ukraine is...

Ukraine is demanding that 30,000 people be conscripted to fight in the war every single month. Ukraine’s commander-in-chief, Aleksandr Syrsky, has said Kiev must mobilize 30,000 soldiers every month to sustain resistance against the Russian army. In an interview published on Wednesday by the Ukrainian outlet lb.ua, Syrsky claimed that Russia can mobilize up to 5 million trained and experienced troops, with a total potential force of 20 million. He emphasized this gap to underscore the urgency of Ukraine’s continued mobilization amid mounting battlefield pressure.

A Russian intelligence-gathering vessel caught fire and temporarily lost control off the Syrian coast on Janaury 23, according to Associated Press (AP). The Kildin, a Russian spy ship equipped with surveillance technology, was seen emitting black smoke and flames as it drifted, prompting an urgent maritime radio warning to nearby vessels. The Associated Press obtained audio of the broadcast, as well as video and photographs of the incident. “Warship on your course,” the Russian Captain said. “I am drifting. I’m not under command.” The videos, taken by three NATO military officials, were collected by a nearby NATO vessel. These officials...

China and India have stopped buying Russian oil due to increased freight costs for tankers not subject to US sanctions. A representative from India's Bharat Petroleum Corp Ltd stated that the company has not received new supply offers for March, as is usually the case, and expects the volume of cargoes offered for the first month of spring to decrease compared to January and December. Typically, India receives offers for Russian oil supplies in the middle of each month. Traders noted that the premium for Russian ESPO crude oil has increased by $3-5 per barrel compared to ICE Brent, while...

President Trump re-upped his claim that Russia stole the plan for hypersonic missiles during the Obama administration. “Russia stole the design, they got it from us,” Mr. Trump said in an interview with Fox News’s Sean Hannity. Part two of the interview, his first since taking the reins at the White House, was aired Thursday night. “Some bad person gave them the design,” he said, adding that the United States will have super hypersonic missiles “which is even a step better.”

On March 5, 2022, the wreck of the sailing ship Endurance was found in the depths of the Weddell Sea off the coast of Antarctica. This, of course, was the vessel lost in Ernest Shackelton’s third expedition to Antarctica, which became trapped in the ice and sank in 1915. The story of that expedition is an extraordinary tale of human fortitude - with the Endurance lost to the ice, Shackleton’s crew evacuated to a loose ice flow where they camped for nearly 500 days, drifting about the Antarctic seas, before making a desperate dash across the open ocean in an...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his generals have an artful knack for keeping the Russian military bear off-balance. On Sunday, they renewed their offensive in the Russian Kursk Oblast, once again catching the Russian high command, Kremlin, and many pundits by surprise. Reports of a demoralized Ukrainian army fighting to retain terrain captured during the August Kursk offensive — of which at least 40 percent has been lost — have circulated among western media and Russian milbloggers since November. So too reports that Ukraine’s 155th Mechanized Brigade — trained and equipped by France — was under-resourced in “first person view...

North Korean troops accidentally killed eight Russian paramilitary soldiers in a “friendly fire” attack as they tried to take back Kursk from Ukraine, Kyiv officials said. A Saturday skirmish along the frontlines in the Kursk Oblast saw a group of North Korean troops target and fire at the Chechen Akhmat unit, killing eight of their allies, according to Ukraine’s military intelligence agency (GUR). The friendly fire incident allegedly occurred due to the “language barrier” between Moscow and Pyongyang’s troops, as the more than 11,000 North Korean soldiers in Russia struggle to adapt to their new environment. “When using the DPRK...

I will never forget New Year's Eve 1999. I was working as a producer in the BBC's Moscow bureau. Suddenly there was breaking news: Russia's President Boris Yeltsin had stepped down. His decision to resign took everyone by surprise, including the British press corps in Moscow. When the news broke there was no correspondent in the office. That meant I had to step in to write and broadcast my first BBC dispatch. "Boris Yeltsin always said he would see out his full term in office," I wrote. "Today he told Russians he'd changed his mind." It was the start of...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned that North Korea could be planning to send more troops and weapons to aid Russia’s army after more than 3,000 soldiers from the hermit kingdom have been killed and wounded while fighting in Ukraine. “There are risks of North Korea sending additional troops and military equipment to the Russian army,” Zelensky said Monday after receiving a report from his top military commander. “We will have tangible responses to this.”

If I had the opportunity to go back in time, knowing what I know now, I would reconsider the decision regarding the "special operation" in Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin said during his annual press conference, APA's Moscow correspondent reports. that this was stated by Russian President Vladimir Putin during his annual press conference. He emphasized that preparation was needed before launching the "special operation": "But we began the operations without any special preparation.

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump said on Sunday that Russia's abandonment of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad led to his downfall, adding Moscow never should have protected him in the first place and then lost interest because of a war in Ukraine that never should have started. "Assad is gone. He has fled his country. His protector, Russia, Russia, Russia, led by (President) Vladimir Putin, was not interested in protecting him any longer," Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social. "There was no reason for Russia to be there in the first place," Trump wrote. "They lost all interest in...

So much outrage (including from Vice President and Democratic presidential contender Kamala Harris) about the claim in Bob Woodward’s upcoming book that Donald Trump during his presidency sent some test kits to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin at the height of the Covid pandemic when they were scarce in the United States. And about the famed journalist’s report that the former president called Putin seven times since the former left the Oval Office in January, 2021. (See, e.g., here.)And so little about by far the biggest outrage described in War (if true, of course – as with the above revelations): that...

Russia said Wednesday it was battling an unprecedented cross-border incursion from Ukrainian troops backed by armored vehicles and aerial support, with Moscow scrambling to reinforce the area after what President Vladimir Putin called a “major provocation.” The attack has not been acknowledged by Ukraine but would mark a dramatic shift in strategy as its forces struggle to hold onto key territory on the front lines in the country’s east.