Free Republic

OPINIONWhat we do know for certain:Russia has invaded Ukraine. O.K., that may sound (and it does) as a stupid statement. Now one has to ask, “why?” For the past couple of years, Vladimir Putin has said to Ukraine, “stay neutral, do not join NATO, and we will get along fine.” Yes, I am paraphrasing, but that was the gist of the warnings. Ukraine, for whatever reason, kept pressuring NATO for admittance. Putin kept saying, “don’t do it; we need a buffer between the Motherland and all of the NATO rockets and fighter jets.” President Trump knew the reasoning behind Putin’s...

President Joe Biden on Friday said the U.S. commitment to the NATO alliance was "unshakeable" and promised to observe the principle that an attack on one member was an attack on all.His statement was at odds with his predecessor, Donald Trump, who called the 30-member alliance outdated and at one point suggested Washington could withdraw."The United States is fully committed to our NATO alliance, and I welcome your growing investment in the military capabilities that enable our shared defenses," Biden told an online session of the Munich Security Conference.

With President Trump entering the "counter-punch" phase of the Russia investigation, allies are urging him to consider two avenues -- each with its own potential payoffs and pitfalls -- to investigate the origins of the probe and hold top Justice Department officials accountable for alleged wrongdoing. Special Counsel Robert Mueller announced the completion of his investigation last week, transmitting his more than 300-page report to the Justice Department for review. Attorney General Bill Barr released a four-page summary of Mueller’s report Sunday, stating the special counsel found no evidence of collusion between members of the Trump campaign and Russia during...

Former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director John Brennan told NBC News’ Chuck Todd on Sunday’s Meet the Press that he learned since retiring that Russians began hacking Hillary Clinton’s emails on the day Donald Trump joked about it in July 2016. The problem: that widely-cited claim is untrue — a piece of “fake news” evidence, drawn from one of the indictments by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, that has fueled unfounded theories that Trump colluded with the Russians during the presidential election. Last week, Brennan wrote an op-ed in the New York Times in which he confirmed Trump’s joke at a...

The Trump administration accused Russia on Thursday of engineering a series of cyberattacks that targeted American and European nuclear power plants and water and electric systems, and could have sabotaged or shut power plants off at will. United States officials and private security firms saw the attacks as a signal by Moscow that it could disrupt the West’s critical facilities in the event of a conflict. They said the strikes accelerated in late 2015, at the same time the Russian interference in the American election was underway. The attackers successfully had compromised some operators in North America and Europe by...