Free Republic

The Kremlin is suddenly concerned with saving face ahead of an imminent Ukrainian counteroffensive. After spending the last year reassuring Russians that victory is inevitable in the war against Ukraine, the Kremlin is now frantically working to lower expectations—and rolling out a contingency plan to lessen the impact of a humiliating defeat. A new manual prepared by Russia’s presidential administration and distributed to the Kremlin’s army of propagandists contains some surprising instructions: Do not “underestimate” Ukraine’s impending counter-offensive and do not spread the idea that Kyiv is somehow “not ready” for it. That’s according to the independent news outlet Meduza,...

Recently, I’ve come to terms with the likelihood that Donald Trump will (gulp!) be the Republican presidential nominee, again. That’s right, it may only be April, but I’ve entered the “Jesus Take The Wheel” stage for the 2024 campaign. Call it naive wishcasting, but until recently, I thought that Ron DeSantis might help us avoid this very situation. But the last month or so has not gone well. DeSantis’ rocky rollout (technically, he still hasn’t entered the race), coupled with Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s indictment, have elevated Trump to clear frontrunner status. Trump Wants to Turn His Most Toxic...

...Speaking to reporters hours after a 28-year-old former student shot and killed six people at a private Christian school, Burchett contended that there were no solutions to the ongoing—and uniquely American—plague of mass shootings. “Three precious little kids lost their lives, and I believe three adults, I believe, and the shooter of course, lost their life too,” he declared. “So, it’s a horrible, horrible situation. And, we’re not gonna fix it.” Burchett continued: “Criminals are gonna be criminals. And my daddy fought in the Second World War, fought in the Pacific, fought the Japanese, and he told me, he said,...

The social media site is a high school popularity contest that creates echo chambers and stifles diversity of thought in the news media. Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter has played out in the media for months now. It’s one of those stories that won’t go away. After riding into town on a high horse, talking about freedom of speech and eliminating bias, Musk has proceeded to wield power seemingly based only on his own whims, banning accounts that mock him and setting inscrutable rules for what is and is not permissible. These actions have been relentlessly covered by the news...

“The leader’s entourage has not ruled out that he will lose the war, be stripped of power, and have to urgently evacuate somewhere.” Putin’s inner circle first considered a plan to evacuate to China, Gallyamov said, but later thought better of it, fearing the chances of “cooperation” from the Chinese were slim, especially since they despise “losers.” Now, he said, the focus has shifted to either Argentina or Venezuela, with Putin ally Igor Sechin currently overseeing an evacuation plan for the latter country. The plan is so far along, Gallyamov said, that Sechin’s “right-hand man” at Rosneft “formally resigned” from...

Russia’s infamous Wagner Group has abandoned dozens of former Central African Republic (CAR) rebels in Ukraine’s Donbas region after recruiting them to fight Vladimir Putin’s war, two former CAR fighters told The Daily Beast. The CAR sources, who were recruited by Wagner after quitting the Union for Peace (UPC) rebel group last December, said that many of the 100 or so ex-UPC fighters currently in Ukraine have lost contact with Wagner after the group trained them and flew them to the Donbas region about eight months ago. “Some of our colleagues have called us [on the phone] to inform us...

The military draft announced by Russian President Vladimir Putin sent hordes of fearful fighting-age men fleeing for the border, but even they couldn’t have appreciated the true horror of what those unlucky enough to be mobilized and sent to the frontline in Ukraine are having to face. Reports of drafted Russians being sent to fight with wildly insufficient training and “barely usable” equipment have abounded for weeks, but a new report suggests that recruits are resorting to pretending to be dead in the heat of battle to save their own lives. Independent Russian outlet Novaya Gazeta Europe spoke to the...

Georgia Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker is denying allegations that surfaced in the left-wing Daily Beast Monday that he paid for a woman’s abortion in 2009. Walker told Fox News’s Sean Hannity Monday night when asked if he knew who the unnamed woman was, “I have no idea, but it is a flat-out lie.”

Moscow planned to celebrated the annexation of huge swathes of Eastern Ukraine Friday but Putin’s party was wrecked by a lightning counter-attack that may have trapped thousands of his men in a key city supposedly now part of Russia. Ukrainian sources claimed that the strategic city of Lyman, which has served as a Russian military hub in Donetsk, has been encircled and supply lines cut. “Lyman! The operation to encircle the Russian group is at the stage of completion,” said Ukrainian lawmaker Oleksiy Goncharenko on Friday. The claim could not be independently verified but, if confirmed, it would be one...

Vladimir Putin’s “special military operation” against Ukraine hit a turning point Wednesday—but not the kind the Kremlin wanted. Instead, the Russian leader may have inadvertently put the final nail in the coffin of his decades-long reign with his bombshell announcement that hundreds of thousands of citizens will be called up to face likely death in the war next door. Advertisement While Putin’s most loyal allies rallied around the leader with calls for unity and defense officials bent over backward to provide dubious assurances to the general public, ordinary Russians rushed for the exits and took to the streets. Airline tickets...

The latest subvariant of the novel coronavirus to become dominant in Europe, the United States, and other places is also, in many ways, the worst so far. The BA.5 subvariant of the basic Omicron variant appears to be more contagious than any previous form of the virus. It’s apparently better at dodging our antibodies, too - meaning it might be more likely to cause breakthrough and repeat infections. Vaccines and boosters are still the best defense. There are even Omicron-specific booster jabs in development that, in coming months, could make the best vaccines more effective against BA.5 and its genetic...

Subpoenas went out Wednesday to local election officials and a former Republican Party chair in a rural Georgia county, with attorneys seeking to find out how a covert team of 2020 election conspiracy theorists were able to improperly access and copy a voting system server last year. The eight subpoenas, issued by attorneys representing voting rights activists in an ongoing lawsuit, were greenlit by U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg. She expressed “great concern” last week about the unauthorized access of a voting system server following an investigation by The Daily Beast that revealed details about who was involved in this...

Two high-ranking Russian officers have been caught blasting Moscow’s failures in Ukraine and railing against military leadership, according to a new report. Two high-ranking Russian military officers have been caught shit-talking Kremlin leadership in unimaginably colorful language. The two colonels blast the defense minister and lash out at that Vladimir Putin for his poor strategy in Ukraine, according to a leaked recording of a phone conversation.While Western and Ukrainian intelligence agencies have routinely reported on plunging morale among rank-and-file Russian troops fighting in Ukraine, many of whom have been heard complaining of dysfunction in intercepted communications, the latest audio appears...

Hundreds of Ukrainian fighters trapped for more than two months in the vast Azovstal steel works have surrendered to their Russian besiegers after their commanders finally called time on the defense of Mariupol. A total of 264 soldiers, 53 of them badly wounded, were taken in a convoy of buses to two towns held by Russian-backed rebels in the Donetsk area, Ukrainian officials said Tuesday. It is unclear how many more are left in the steelworks, where as many as 1,000 fighters had been holed up in a network of underground tunnels and caverns in a medieval siege. (snip) Russia...

The coronavirus pandemic may feel like a past-tense phenomenon for many Americans, even though the dangers are real and ongoing. But a federal judge appointed by Donald Trump just did everything she could to send the nation back into chaos. On Monday, Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle in Florida threw out the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s mask mandate for air travel and other forms of mass transportation. Deaths from COVID-19—and the mask mandates intended to prevent them—may be on the wane nationwide, but whatever you think about such policies, this is the latest and most egregious example of a...

In September, a judge gave the Trump Organization an ultimatum: Comply with the New York Attorney General’s two-year-old subpoenas, or hire an outside digital forensics company to gather the evidence. The Trump Organization chose the second option. But with a deadline for the information fast approaching, it’s becoming clear that the Trump family only hired the company to do some of the job—and what is coming will still take plenty more time. It turns out, the digital forensics company that the Trump Organization chose, HaystackID, wasn’t hired to actually get everything investigators wanted. “Haystack has not been engaged to perform...

While America had been rocked by riots and assassinations when I was a kid, the first big political development in America that shocked me was the election of Ronald Reagan. He was a boob, a Hollywood actor, not even a very good one. At the time, just out of college, I did not really understand the darker forces that were behind his election—the racism and greed, the anti-government ideology that was really just a formula to enable the richest among us to make more and the most racist states to chart their own course.