Free Republic

Regarding mobilisation, Putin can declare it, indeed. But it will be a risky decision. The USSR maintained a massive infrastructure for the total mobilisation which has been mostly dismantled in post-Soviet Russia. Mobilisation is more likely to trigger political chaos short🧵 Imagine, the government declared a total mobilisation and millions of young males are drafted into the army. What next? Now you need to: 1) test & allocate them (who goes where) 2) train & arm them 3) quarter & feed them 4) place them under the capable officers and NCOs In order to execute 1-4 in case of the...

Russian Orthodox Church opposes adoption of children from Russia by citizens of countries that support LGBT. Metropolitan Leonid of Klin, the Patriarchal Exarch of Africa, believes more work should be done on a bill banning adoptions of children from Russia by citizens of unfriendly countries. "This morning I looked through the list of friendly countries again. And if the political attitude of some of them suits us, their attitude toward marriage (which is a union of a man and a woman), their governments’ approval of gay parades and support for aggressive LGBT communities, etc., make it absolutely impossible to raise...

@ChadPergram 1) GOP TX Rep Crenshaw on Fox on $40 billion Ukraine aid bill: If Republicans were in charge, we would have said..let's use unspent COVID money.zLet's do $10 billion now. Let's reassess in a month. Let's do another $10 billion. 2) Crenshaw: Ukrainians, are going to have basically an unlimited amount of resources to continue fighting this war. This is an investment in the severe degradation of our second biggest adversary, the Russian military. They will not be able to invade other countries 3) Crenshaw: That allows us to do something that allows us to focus on our actual...

Former Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves (file photo) Serving as president of Estonia between 2006 and 2016, and foreign minister before that, Toomas Hendrik Ilves has always been an outspoken critic of Vladimir Putin's Russia. Speaking by Zoom from Estonia, Ilves pours water on the idea of negotiating with Russia and says that Georgia's position on the war in Ukraine is "absolutely despicable." RFE/RL: There are many people who think that the roots of what is going on now in Ukraine, and what happened in Georgia in 2008, go back to the 2008 NATO summit in Bucharest and the refusal...

He was a good student. In Ukraine’s first years as an independent nation he earned a place studying law at Kryvyi Rih Economic Institute, the local campus of Kyiv National Economic University. But it was his talent as a performer that was clear to fellow high school student Irina Shport, who starred alongside Vova in a production of Marriage by Nikolai Gogol – a play about a botched matchmaking. Among a high-calibre cohort, “he was always No. 1”, she says. One of the few creative outlets in Soviet times was the live television comedy KVN (Klub vesyólykh i nakhódchivykh or...

Appearing Sunday on NBC News’ Meet the Press, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged the West to “double down” on its pressure against Russia as its military invasion of Ukraine drags on.

I see three plausible scenarios for the Russian future:1. North Korea2. Imperial Reboot3. JubileeSince Ukraine is resolved to fight, the choice of a Russian historical track ultimately depends upon the resolve of the West. Today I'll outline the North Korea scenario 🧵If the West deescalates and Putin stays in power, he will become much stronger and Russia will become more like North Korea. You shouldn't delude yourself, there's no way back to February 23. As a result of "deescalation", Russia won't return to the status quoIf the West deescalates, it means Putin was absolutely, 100% right to rush Z and...

President Joe Biden said Thursday that record gas prices were caused by the pandemic and Vladimir Putin's war in Ukraine as he unveiled a two-pronged plan to increase supply and reduce demand. He announced he would release a million barrels of oil per day from the nation's strategic reserve for the next six months and accelerate the switch to electric vehicle. But his analysis of the cause of the crisis will attract criticism for opponents who accuse him of shifting the blame for his administration's economic woes. 'The problem we're facing with gas prices has two roots,' Biden told reporters...

Russian state television has broadcast an extraordinary rant about the state of the war in Ukraine, warning Vladimir Putin’s regime faces “final and complete defeat”. Yakov Kedmi, an Israeli-Russian pundit and former diplomat, is usually a reliably pro-Kremlin voice. But in an appearance on the prime time show Tonight with Vladimir Soloviyev, he was remarkably negative about the situation in Ukraine. Mr Kedmi said Russia could not afford to compromise on the initial goal of its invasion, which was to take major Ukrainian cities, including the capital Kyiv, and overthrow the government. In his view, anything less than that –...

Discussion on the potential deescalation of the war in Ukraine with all security implications it has illustrates the difference between the goal- oriented and the system-oriented thinkingFor example if you want to deescalate the war in Ukraine, what would your best strategy be? Goal-oriented people understand that the only person who could stop the war immediately is Putin himself. Thus they suggest focusing on negotiations with him and persuading him to back offSounds reasonable. And yet, this approach ignores the factor of human will. And goal-oriented people lowkey admit it. For example, when justifying Putin's actions they often point out...

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said on Sunday suggested that Russian President Vladimir Putin should not be allowed back into the "world order" and that the Kremlin's invasion of Ukraine should be a moment in which the globe rethinks its dependence on Russian energy.

Filling in for regular Fox & Friends host Ainsley Earhardt, Campos-Duffy repeatedly claimed that Russia’s “red line” was the possibility of Ukraine becoming a member of NATO, suggesting that the U.S. had brought this upon Ukraine by considering expanding the alliance. “If you look at that map and the areas that have say could end up in a peace agreement, that’s true,” she declared. “That’s why we should have never provoked them. They made very clear there was a red line. The red line was a neutrality for Ukraine. That they could not enter NATO.” Moments later, she once again...

Monday on FNC’s “Fox & Friends,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) called on President Joe Biden to “go after anybody and everybody who tries to prop up the war criminal” that is Russian President Vladimir Putin. To prevent China from partnering with Russia in its invasion of Ukraine, Graham suggested sanctioning China. He also warned Russia taking over Ukraine would be a “death sentence for Taiwan.”

UNITED NATIONS — Russia’s “illegal, unprovoked” and “cruel” war against Ukraine is underscoring the many different ways in which peace, security and a stable climate are linked, U.S. climate envoy John Kerry said Wednesday. The United States is responding by banning the import of Russian oil, liquefied natural gas and coal, “and many other nations are now rethinking their reliance on Russian energy sources,” Kerry said. The “instability, conflict, death destruction” in Ukraine is happening in the context of “a global existential crisis” of global warming that scientists have warned about for decades, he said. “We are actually living through...