Free Republic

It was late March, and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was going poorly. The Kremlin had done its best to black out Western coverage of the war domestically, as well as its reports of failed Russian advances and widespread brutality. On the Kremlin’s flagship media channel, Russia-1, came a very different, ghoulish story: from Russian-occupied Ukraine, an “exclusive” report alleging Ukrainian militants brutally raped and murdered a Ukrainian woman and disfigured her corpse. In the footage, a correspondent follows a pro-Russian separatist soldier into a school basement in Mariupol to view the corpse of a dead woman. The...

Navy veteran Patrick Lancaster describes himself on Facebook as “an independent crowdfunded journalist,” but critics argue that he is a foot soldier in the Kremlin’s information war against Ukraine. The Army is inviting social media influencers to DC to learn how to reach the youths On Monday, Lancaster posted a video from the city of Mariupol in southeastern Ukraine, which has been besieged by the Russian military for weeks. The Russians have blasted their way through the city the same way they razed other cities, including Grozny in Chechnya and Aleppo in Syria. The city’s mayor has claimed that at...