Free Republic

Russian President Vladimir Putin waited three days before commenting on Hamas's massacre of Israelis, which happened to take place on his 71st birthday. When he did, he blamed the United States, not Hamas. "I think that many will agree with me that this is a clear example of the failed policy in the Middle East of the United States, which tried to monopolize the settlement process," Putin told Iraq's prime minister. It was a further six days before Putin spoke to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to offer his condolences for the slaughter of around 1,200 Israelis. Ten days after...

Waters wrote an open letter to Ukrainian first lady Olena Zelenska early this month in which he blamed “extreme nationalists” in Ukraine for having “set your country on the path to this disastrous war.” He also criticized the West for supplying Ukraine with weapons, blaming Washington in particular. Waters has also criticized NATO, accusing it of provoking Russia.

Israel's relations with Russia sank to a low yesterday after Jerusalem condemned a group of nationalist Russian MPs who signed a declaration that has been condemned by Jewish groups as anti-Semitic and a throwback to the Third Reich. The declaration, signed by some 20 members of the Russian parliament from the Motherland and Communist parties, demanded that Jewish organisations be banned throughout Russia on the grounds that they are extremist in nature, hostile to the Russian populace and implicated in ritual child murder. It lamented the fact that "the whole democratic world is today under the financial and political control...