Free Republic

The chairwoman of the Defence Committee in the German parliament, Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, has called for the recruitment of 900,000 German reservists in light of Russia's belligerent stance under President Vladimir Putin. "Putin is training his people for war and positioning them against the West. We must therefore become capable of defence as quickly as possible," Strack-Zimmermann of the liberal Free Democrats (FDP), a junior partner in Germany's governing coalition, told the Funke media group in remarks published on Saturday. Russian industry is focused on manufacturing weapons, the defence expert said. "School books are printed that portray Germany as an aggressor...

For the past several years, the Russia of Vladimir Putin has been sending very clear signals that it is no longer the weakened, troubled and Western-dependent state that it was following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Russia is once again a proud and assertive nation, increasingly recognizable by its actions to historians of its czarist and Communist predecessors. Many will say that its recovery is based on shallow foundations, in fact that it rests almost totally upon the high price of oil and gas - and Russia's fortunate possession of vast supplies of those vital commodities. That is true....