Free Republic

Tucker Carlson has been mocked over a fawning video praising Moscow's 'cheap and fresh' groceries - while overlooking the much lower wages in Russia. The former Fox News firebrand wheeled a grocery cart around a Russian superstore while marveling at the stock as he continued his Putin PR tour. -snip/ The video drew widespread ridicule from people online, as many pointed out the disparity between the average wage in Russia - which is the equivalent of $9072 - or 6.5 times less than the average US salary of $59,428. Many joked he was working for free as a one-man 'tourism...

Click on the link to hear Tucker Carlson explain on X "Why I'm Interviewing Vladimir Putin." The video is about 4-1/2 minutes.

Tucker Carlson has confirmed he is in Moscow to interview Vladimir Putin - and he's doing it because 'Americans are not informed' about the war in Ukraine. The former Fox News host announced on X on Tuesday that he would be publishing an interview with the Russian despot, following widespread speculation after he was pictured leaving the Kremlin in Moscow on Monday. Carlson, 54, said the interview would air 'unedited' on his website, without a paywall, and on X, making him the first American to interview Putin since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. 'Two years into a war that's reshaping...

With Ukraine’s military facing mounting deaths and a stalemate on the battlefield, army recruiters have become increasingly aggressive in their efforts to replenish the ranks, in some cases pulling men off the streets and whisking them to recruiting centers using intimidation and even physical force. Recruiters have confiscated passports, taken people from their jobs and, in at least one case, tried to send a mentally disabled person to military training, according to lawyers, activists and Ukrainian men who have been subject to coercive tactics. Videos of soldiers shoving people into cars and holding men against their will in recruiting centers...

TEL AVIV, Israel — Israeli officials obtained Hamas’ battle plan for the Oct. 7 terrorist attack more than a year before it happened, documents, emails and interviews show. But Israeli military and intelligence officials dismissed the plan as aspirational, considering it too difficult for Hamas to carry out. The approximately 40-page document, which Israeli authorities code-named “Jericho Wall,” outlined, point by point, exactly the kind of devastating invasion that led to the deaths of about 1,200 people. The translated document, which was reviewed by The New York Times, did not set a date for the attack, but described a methodical...

Moscow took sharp action on Friday to curb inflation, fearing the effects of ever higher spending on the war in Ukraine and of a weakening Russian ruble. Russia’s central bank took the unexpected step of raising its benchmark interest rate by a full percentage point, to 8.5 percent from 7.5 percent. It was the first large hike in more than a year, and the bank warned that further increases were likely. “It is a surprise and on its face reflects more concern at the central bank about inflation and how the economy is doing than we had appreciated,” said Robert...

Fumbling blindly through cratered farms, the troops from Russia’s 155th Naval Infantry Brigade had no maps, medical kits or working walkie-talkies, they said. Just a few weeks earlier, they had been factory workers and truck drivers, watching an endless showcase of supposed Russian military victories at home on state television before being drafted in September. One medic was a former barista who had never had any medical training. Now, they were piled onto the tops of overcrowded armored vehicles, lumbering through fallow autumn fields with Kalashnikov rifles from half a century ago and virtually nothing to eat, they said. Russia...

Following a string of Ukrainian military successes in the south, the Kremlin sought on Monday to tamp down speculation that Russian forces would withdraw from the Zaporizhzhia nuclear complex, with President Vladimir V. Putin’s spokesman saying that Moscow has no plans to end its military occupation of Europe’s largest nuclear power plant. “One should not look for signs where there are none and cannot be any,” said the spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov. Mr. Peskov’s comments came after some pro-Russian military bloggers wrote posts suggesting that Moscow’s forces would withdraw from the area, and after Ukrainian officials said there were indications...

On the screen of a thermal imaging camera, the Russian armored personnel carrier disappeared in a silent puff of smoke. “What a beautiful explosion,” said First Lt. Serhiy, a Ukrainian drone pilot who watched as his weapon buzzed into a Russian-controlled village and picked off the armored vehicle, a blast that was audible seconds later at his position about four miles away. “We used to cheer, we used to shout, ‘Hurray!’ but we’re used to it now,” he said. The war in Ukraine has been fought primarily through the air, with artillery, rockets, missiles and drones. And for months, Russia...

In a first mission of its kind, the European Union plans to train Ukrainian soldiers on E.U. soil, the bloc’s top diplomat said on Thursday, a significant move that highlights the bloc’s increased security cooperation since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The mission is set for final approval on Monday during a meeting of E.U. foreign ministers in Luxembourg, the diplomat, Josep Borrell Fontelles, said. “At the moment when Putin is increasing escalation, we have in turn to continue to support Ukraine as much as needed and for how long is needed,” he said during a meeting of NATO defense ministers...

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has thrust himself more directly into strategic planning for the war in Ukraine in recent weeks, American officials said, including rejecting requests from his commanders on the ground that they be allowed to retreat from the vital southern city of Kherson. A withdrawal from Kherson would allow the Russian military to pull back across the Dnipro River in an orderly way, preserving its equipment and saving the lives of soldiers. But such a retreat would be another humiliating public acknowledgment of Mr. Putin’s failure in the war, and would hand a second major victory...

Underlining Russia’s widening isolation on the world stage, Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India told President Vladimir V. Putin on Friday that it is no time for war — even as the Russian president threatened to escalate the brutality of his campaign in Ukraine. The televised critique by Mr. Modi at a regional summit in Uzbekistan came just a day after Mr. Putin acknowledged that Xi Jinping, China’s leader, had “questions and concerns” about the war. Taken together, the distancing from Mr. Putin by the heads of the world’s two most populous countries — both of which have been pivotal...

The strategy behind Ukraine’s rapid military gains in recent days began to take shape months ago during a series of intense conversations between Ukrainian and U.S. officials about the way forward in the war against Russia, according to American officials. The counteroffensive — revised this summer from its original form after urgent discussions between senior U.S. and Ukrainian officials — has succeeded beyond most predictions. Ukrainian forces have devastated Russian command and control, and appear poised to capitalize on their advances in the northeast of the country and in another campaign in the south.

The strategy behind Ukraine’s rapid military gains in recent days began to take shape months ago during a series of intense conversations between Ukrainian and U.S. officials about the way forward in the war against Russia, according to American officials. The counteroffensive — revised this summer from its original form after urgent discussions between senior U.S. and Ukrainian officials — has succeeded beyond most predictions. Ukrainian forces have devastated Russian command and control, and appear poised to capitalize on their advances in the northeast of the country and in another campaign in the south. The work began soon after President...

When a new book came out, the great C. S. Lewis would first seek out an old one on the same subject. That’s good advice for embattled Americans. In fact, two old books address what is happening today with rare perception. Regent College Publishing has reissued The Green Stick and The Infernal Grove, the two volumes of Chronicles of Wasted Time by Malcolm Muggeridge. Paul Johnson called it one of the great autobiographies of our time, which might be an understatement. Wisdom and wit leap off the pages, and there’s even a news hook: Russia has invaded Ukraine and that...

"After more than six months of study and deliberation, the Pulitzer Prize Board has decided it will not revoke the foreign reporting prize awarded in 1932 to Walter Duranty of The New York Times."

When a new motion was filed by John Durham on Friday night that included information about Hillary's Clinton's campaign and its activities toward Donald Trump's campaign, the mainstream media largely said "meh" and ignored the development (though Townhall did not, and Vespa's story is here). Well now The New York Times is trying to defend its decision...by insulting its readership. In what was apparently another example of the mainstream media's selection bias clouding its judgement and causing it not to cover stories that are negative about their pals in the Democrat party, the usual suspects were oddly silent on the...

"The coverage was no more than a politically motivated farce which attempted to spin a false narrative that my campaign supposedly colluded with Russia despite a complete lack of evidence," Trump said. In 2018, the Pulitzer Prize committee awarded the Washington Post and New York Times awards in journalism for their reporting on the now-proven false claim that there was a link between the Trump campaign and Putin's Kremlin. Trump called for the revocation of that award during his time in office, saying then via Twitter that it was "So funny that The New York Times & The Washington Post...

Two individuals can be regarded as contrasting illustrations of the good and the bad of human beings. At the top is the exotic Black Venus, Josephine Baker, the American-born French entertainer who won the hearts of Paris and then became a French resistance fighter. At the bottom is Walter Duranty, one of Stalin’s useful idiots, who was the greatest journalist liar of his generation, the model of journalistic mendacity. On Baker’s birthday, June 3, a petition was signed by thousands of French citizens for her to be buried in the Pantheon in Paris, an honor reserved for the most distinguished...

You’ve probably never heard of Gareth Jones. You’ve certainly heard of the writer he inspired, and the classic dystopian novel that writer created. You were forced to read it, or at least the Cliff’s Notes, in high school. But shorn of its context, that novel lacks the full punch it could deliver. Mr. Jones (2019), starring Peter Sarsgaard and James Norton, directed by Oscar nominee Agnieszka Holland and written by Andrea Chalupa, provides that context in a must-see film. Mr. Jones is powerfully relevant today, even more than when it premiered in 2019. You have undoubtedly heard of “cancel culture,”...