Free Republic

When NBC's Lester Holt asked resident Joe Biden what might prompt him to send U.S. troops to rescue Americans fleeing Ukraine, Biden replied: "There's not. That's a world war when Americans and Russia start shooting at one another." It's not like we're dealing with a terrorist organization. We're dealing with one of the largest armies in the world. ... Things could go crazy quickly." Biden was saying Americans are not going to fight Russians in Ukraine, even to protect or extract imperiled U.S. troops, diplomats or citizens. Speaking last week on the Senate floor, Sen. Ted Cruz echoed Biden: "I...

Scarred by losing tens of millions of lives on their soil in two world wars, many European Union nations have been wary ever since about military spending. Now, as Russian pressure builds at the Ukrainian border, they face a painful reality: Europe remains heavily reliant on U.S. might to deter another potentially big conflict on its turf. Because of a half-hearted attitude to defense and security over decades, “the EU has almost nothing to bring to the table,” says Piotr Buras, senior policy fellow at the European Council of Foreign Relations think tank. “So, Russia can simply ignore it.”

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield warned on Sunday that Russia's menacing military buildup on the Ukraine border signals the Kremlin's "intentions to use them."Thomas-Greenfield's comment on Sunday in an interview with ABC's "This Week" anchor George Stephanopoulos came on the eve of an open U.N. Security Council meeting she requested to discuss Russia's aggression toward Ukraine and what to do about it."You don't amass 100,000 troops if you don't have intentions to use them," Thomas-Greenfield said.She said Monday's U.N. Security Council meeting "is one more opportunity to find a diplomatic way out for the Russians." She added...

The U.S. rejection of Russia’s main demands to resolve the crisis over Ukraine leaves little ground for optimism, the Kremlin spokesman said Thursday, while adding that dialogue was still possible. But as expected, the U.S. and the Western alliance firmly rejected any concessions on Moscow’s main points Wednesday, refusing to permanently ban Ukraine from joining NATO and saying allied deployments of troops and military equipment in Eastern Europe are nonnegotiable. The U.S. did outline areas in which some of Russia’s concerns might be addressed, possibly offering a path to de-escalation. “There is no change, there will be no change,” U.S....

For nearly fifty years, from the end of World War II until 1992 millions of people in Eastern Europe endured the oppression and brutality of Communism, courtesy of the former Soviet Union. For decades Soviet Russia maintained control over Poland, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Hungary, East Germany, Romania, the Baltic and Balkan countries, and all of the ‘Stans’ with an iron fist. Tolerating no dissent in those countries, and responding brutally if it occurred. Ask the Hungarians in 1956 and the Czechs in 1968. In 1956 the Soviet Union sent troops and tanks to crush the Hungarian popular uprising, killing and wounding...

Canadian special forces operators have been deployed to Ukraine amid rising tensions between the NATO military alliance and Russia, Global News has learned. The deployment of a small contingent from the Canadian Special Operations Regiment comes as diplomatic talks aimed at staving off an armed conflict in Ukraine have faltered, and an estimated 100,000 Russian troops remain camped on Ukraine’s border. Sources told Global News that the Canadian special operations presence is part of an attempt by NATO allies to deter Russian aggression in Ukraine, and to identify ways to assist the Ukrainian government. The unit has also been tasked...

As the predictably useless U.S.-Russia security talks in Europe are wrapping up this week, Putin is launching another huge live fire drill on the border of Ukraine. In addition to the 100,000 combat-ready troops that were pre-positioned in the area, Russia deployed additional 3,000 troops, 300 tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, ground attack fighter jets, transport and attack helicopters, and other weaponry. The Russian strongman’s answer to President Biden’s naïve pleas to “de-escalate” the crisis in Ukraine is to keep messing with the Americans’ heads (morochit golovu). On Sunday, after the high-level US-Russia meetings kicked off with a two-hour working dinner...

There is a real possibility that the European Union (EU) will endure major fuel shortages this winter. Record-high electricity prices are currently the norm with no end in sight. Russian president Vladimir Putin astutely understands that the EU heavily relies on Russian natural gas, which the Nord Stream 1 and now 2 (NS2) natural gas pipeline will provide. This $11 billion line to the German coast spanning 764 miles under the Baltic Sea will double the capacity of Russian natural gas and be used as a geopolitical leverage point against Ukraine, Poland, NATO, the EU, and most of all Germany,...

While all facts are true, not all facts are relevant. And what are the relevant facts in this crisis where 100,000 Russian troops are now stationed along the Ukrainian border? Fact one: There is not now and never has been a vital U.S. interest in Ukraine to justify risking a war with Russia. History tells us that. Even as Ukraine was suffering in the Stalin-induced Holodomor, the terror-famine of 1932-33, President Franklin Roosevelt granted diplomatic recognition to the Bolshevik regime. During four decades of Cold War, the U.S. never regarded Moscow's control of Ukraine as any threat to the USA....

Video of the destruction vehicle of the occupation forces of Russia from the Ukrainian missile complex Stugna-P was published. Militarnyi reported. Ukrainian volunteer Oleksandr Karpyuk demonstrated video of the moment of the hitting target. “Javelins are not the only ones. Meet Stugna-P. In the video, two objects are worth noting, Stugna-P and the Ural truck” – says Oleksandr Karpyuk to the video. According to the volunteer, the distance between the anti-tank complex and the URAL truck of the militants was 5600 meters. “When the Russian Federation still decides to roll out its iron on the horizon, its meeting will be...

Russia’s Supreme Court ordered the country’s best-known human rights group on Tuesday to be liquidated for breaking a law requiring groups to register as foreign agents, capping a year of crackdowns on Kremlin critics unseen since the Soviet days. The shuttering of the group Memorial closes a year in which the top Kremlin critic was jailed, his political movement banned and many of his allies forced to flee. Moscow says it is simply enforcing laws to thwart extremism and shield the country from foreign influence. “This is a bad signal showing that our society and our country are moving in...

Thousands of Russian troops who participated in drills near the Ukraine border are marching home. More than 10,000 soldiers are returning to their permanent bases after a month of drills that ramped up international tensions over the region, Reuters reported Saturday, citing the Russian Interfax independent news agency. It’s not clear if their movements represent a reversal of the troop buildup that began in the spring and has seen up to 175,000 troops deployed on the border of the two former Soviet states. The moves came a day after Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky held a video call with 20 US...

For weeks Kiev officials and many corners of Western media and the Washington national security establishment have hyped the Russian troop build-up in regions of Russia that are within 400km of Ukraine's border, accusing the Kremlin of planning an invasion of Donbass sometime in January. This month started, for example, with The Washington Post citing US intelligence to claim this would involve a whopping 175,000 Russian troops mustered near the border. But like with prior similar instances (such as failed predictions last spring that never materialized), it's looking like the opposite is set to happen, with on Saturday Reuters reporting...

U.S. Rep. Madison Cawthorn, R-N.C., said Americans should be more focused on pressing issues in the United States like the southern border crisis before worrying about the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. "Instead of being the police force of the world, some people who want to say, 'Oh my goodness, well you know what, there's this terrible border crisis going on in Ukraine and Russia, Vladimir Putin, blah blah,'" Cawthorn said during his speech at Turning Point USA's AmericaFest in Phoenix. "I don't care. I really don't." Cawthorn also noted the struggles of homeless veterans, many of whom do not...

Russian President Vladimir Putin has blamed the West for increasing tensions in Eastern Europe and suggested a “military-technical” response if his request for security guarantees is not met — while a media mouthpiece for the Kremlin warned that Russia will hold a gun to “America’s head” if Ukraine is allowed to join NATO. In a speech Tuesday to Russian defense ministry officials, Putin said Moscow needs “long-term, legally binding guarantees” from the West that the US and NATO will not deploy missile systems in Ukraine, rather than “verbal assurances.” Russia has massed as many as 175,000 troops as well as...

Ukraine is again looking warily over its eastern border as Russia threatens its territorial integrity. In recent weeks, a buildup of Russian troops along the Ukrainian border has rattled Western leaders fearful of an incursion similar to, or perhaps even more wide-ranging than, Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. Then, on Dec. 17, 2021, Vladimir Putin demanded that no former Soviet states, such as Ukraine, be added to NATO – the Western alliance that Ukraine has long expressed a desire to join – and that NATO cease all military cooperation in Eastern Europe. Such rhetoric harks back to the Cold...

THIS is the dramatic moment Russia's £300m stealth warship that was designed to carry hypersonic missiles went up in flames in a humiliating blow for Vladimir Putin. New footage shows devastating fire damage to the new £307 million warship intended to carry Putin’s lethal Mach-9 hypersonic missiles.... ...The scale of the blaze, which started on Friday in St Petersburg, has been viewed as a massive set back to the Kremlin’s naval modernisation programme. Huge flames and thick smoke were seen rising from the corvette Provornyy at Severnaya Verf shipyard where it was being built. The battleship was almost completely destroyed...

Russia upped the ante Monday in its dangerous standoff with Ukraine, openly warning of military action if President Biden and America’s NATO allies ignore a list of demands Moscow announced late last week — a far-reaching list that some key U.S. lawmakers have dubbed a “pretext to war.” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said his country is fully prepared to respond through “military-technical means” if Western powers fail to address those demands. He said NATO must not expand to include Ukraine or Georgia and the U.S. must not base additional military assets in former Soviet republics in Central Asia....

MOSCOW (AP) — Russia sent a pair of nuclear-capable long-range bombers to patrol the skies over Belarus on Saturday, a mission intended to underline close defense ties between the two allies amid tensions with the West. The Russian Defense Ministry said the two Tu-22M3 strategic strike bombers practiced “performing joint tasks with the Belarusian air force and air defense.” Su-30 fighter jets that Russia has supplied to Belarus escorted the bombers. Saturday’s four-hour patrol marked Russia’s third such mission in Belarus since last month... ...The Belarusian leader wouldn’t elaborate on what kind of Russian weapons Belarus would be willing to...

For seven years, a war has been going on in eastern Ukraine and now Russia is accused by the West of threatening an invasion. Since war in the east broke out in April 2014, more than 14,000 people have died. There are fundamental differences in the Russian and Ukrainian positions. But the major dispute centres on a political settlement for the Donbas. The two countries have "irreconcilable" views on the future of the war-torn areas in eastern Ukraine, says Duncan Allan, an associate fellow at Chatham House. Ukraine wants to restore its sovereignty and territorial integrity while Russia, he believes,...