Free Republic

Every August, the anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Georgia is accompanied by familiar reflections about missed warning signs, intelligence failures, and a supposedly unexpected turning point in European security. The language has become so standardized that it obscures a far more uncomfortable reality. Georgia did not reveal a new Russia. It exposed a Russia that had been behaving consistently for nearly two decades while much of the West continued searching for evidence that Moscow had fundamentally changed after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Describing the failure to recognize this trajectory as a collection of mistakes understates what actually occurred....

State-owned VEB.RF (Vnesheconombank) has stated that Russia cannot win the economic confrontation with the West as long as Western countries continue to support Ukraine. According to him, the Russian economy is facing rising costs, falling investment, and technological lag, reports The Moscow Times. The bank's chief economist, Andrei Klepach, said during a session of the Nikitsky Club that sanctions and the Western blockade are increasing the costs of the Russian economy, and that Ukrainian strikes on ports, infrastructure, chemical plants, and oil refineries are causing ever-greater damage to Russia. Klepach stated that Russia is losing the technological and economic competition...

Former Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, the official Joe Biden publicly threatened and forced out of office in 2016, claims in his book Biden’s Corruption and War: The True Story of the 1 Billion Dollar Prosecutor that hundreds of billions of American taxpayer dollars connected to Ukraine were recycled through political interests and “globalist networks.” According to a Blaze Media column citing Shokin’s first-person account, massive sums of U.S. aid intended for Ukraine were recycled through political and globalist networks. He alleges $350 billion in American taxpayer money was diverted into these opaque channels amid the chaos of war. Arms...

A glamorous Russian escort has been charged with the assassination of a high-ranking Ukrainian defector who was blown up by a bomb in a trash can, according to reports. Margarita Reut, 32, was arrested in Sevastopol in Russian-occupied Crimea after Thursday’s blast killed Robert Shageev — an officer in the Kremlin’s Black Sea Fleet who was wanted for high treason, according to the Telegraph. The blast, allegedly carried out on Kyiv’s orders, killed the 49-year-old commander on the spot. Reut was quickly arrested and confessed, according to reports. She was remanded on a charge of terrorism leading to death, according...

Starting at this point in the video a young ukie living abroad shows threat letter from Kiev regime demanding that he return and enter the meat grinder

They might be finding surrender manuals in some of those French tanks and armored vehicles... Interesting story. Nobody really wants to die for truly wretched causes...

Russians will take Kharkov and Odessa

Russains winning...

NATO now seems to understand FUBAR situation not gonna get better...

When the money from the US stops, everything stops...

Mercouris says nothing left but the gangsterism... This is arguably the worst military debacle since the HMFIC of Tangut called Genghis Khan a plastic man.

Next step after this will have to be rounding up all the dogs and cats and throwing them into the meat grinder...

Guys buying their way out of the meat grinder and the scheme by which the kleptonazi regime avoids paying death benefits to survivors of soldiers killed in the meat grinder.

The US MIC is about making money for fatcats; Russia's MIC is about winning wars (if they cannot be avoided)...

The (relatively admirable) status of democracy in Russia...

Kazakhstan's president might be inviting Putin to shove him off an open window

The FBI and U.S. spy agencies received derogatory evidence about Joe Biden from 14 different informants but embarked on a secret operation to tamp down a Ukrainian corruption scandal engulfing his family during the 2020 election by formally designating Attorney General Bill Barr, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, key members of Congress and journalists as Russian disinformation “conduits,” according to explosive intelligence community documents declassified by the White House. A spreadsheet that was recovered from U.S. intelligence agency files and made public Wednesday by the White House Government Transparency Task Force shows that spy agencies and the FBI created a...

Conservative podcaster Tucker Carlson claimed Monday that Israeli figures falsely told him Hunter Biden’s laptop contained graphic images of children. Carlson, who once used the laptop story to criticize the Biden family while serving as a Fox News anchor, put to rest conspiracy theories about the laptop’s contents in a wide-ranging interview with the former president’s son – specifically the false allegations that the laptop contained abusive images of children. “Can I just say one thing though, this is what I experienced during that time – the allegation that there was abusive minors proven on the laptop – that came...

In a newly unearthed video, disgraced former Lt. Colonel Alexander Vindman said both President Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin are “enemies” of America. Now running for U.S. Senate in Florida, Vindman has built his campaign around his obsessive hatred of President Trump and anyone who supports him. Appearing on a podcast called “Rick Wilson’s The Enemies List,” Vindman says: “Which enemy are we talking about here? Are we talking about Russia and Putin? Are we talking about Trump and Trumpism?… Striking similarities actually.” The comments are just the latest vitriol from the Vindman family, which includes his brother, Virginia Democrat...

Terrifying footage shows a Russian drone hunting a street vendor in Ukraine – as Moscow intensifies its drone and missile attacks against the country. The nerve-wracking video, which has sparked allegations of war crimes from Ukrainian officials, shows a vegetable vendor being chased around his van stand by the low-flying craft before it explodes just as he dives behind his vehicle. The vendor, a man in his 50s, survived the blast but suffered shock and shrapnel injuries, officials said. An explosion occurring between two vehicles, with the Ukrainian National Police emblem visible in the corner.A Russian drone taunted and hunted...