Free Republic

If you've read RedState for any length of time, you know one of the things we are most known for is our hard-hitting commentary on press bias. Whether you come for the facts or the snark, we do our best to deliver insight into how the far-left twists narratives to push their political desires. That's what makes this next story so surprising. According to Politico, Donald Trump's campaign team wined and dined with top left-wing reporters on Tuesday night in preparation for the GOP primary debate (the former president will not be attending). SPOTTED IN MILWAUKEE — Team Trump wining...

(The opinions expressed by contributors are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of RedState.com.)The lopsided trade that sprung basketball player Brittney Griner didn’t include U.S. Marine Paul Whelan—because the Kremlin demanded convicted assassin Vadim Krasikov be freed from a German prison in exchange, according to the New York Times and multiple other outlets. The murderous Krasikov was once a colonel in the notorious Federal Security Service (FSB), the main successor to the KGB.After Germany refused to take part in a three-way deal to free Krasikov, the United States instead settled on swapping Griner for “Merchant of Death”...

On Tuesday, the Sunshine State overperformed–and for great reasons.Like many, I was casually surprised when the result started coming through Tuesday night, and we did not see the massive numbers of victories for the Republicans as promised. As Wednesday dawned, many were left perplexed about the very muted results, including me, for a very notable reason. Here in Florida, we had grand expectations about the election and experienced something unique, as it turns out – the Florida Republicans actually overperformed, and therein lies where lessons are derived.Coming into Tuesday, the major races looked to be sewn up, with the only...

Welcome to my newest update on Putin’s War in Ukraine. We are now 36 weeks — 254 days — since Russia launched an unprovoked attack on Ukraine. My last update can be found at Putin’s War, Week 35. The Lull Before the Next Storm. There has been some action, but the crappy weather has slowed things down. Also, both sides are somewhat tired after a punishing summer’s campaigning. I look at this period as the break when the fighters have returned to their corners. Two significant items have been covered outside this update. First, the Pentagon is beefing up the...

Russia has just finished a Potemkin referendum conducted in the illegally occupied Ukrainian oblasts (provinces) of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson (see Vladimir Putin to Address Russia; Annexation of Ukraine Provinces and Mobilization Seem to Be on the Table). The “voting” began on September 23, and the question is whether those provinces wish to be annexed to Russia.There are complicating factors. All four oblasts are on the front line of a war between Putin’s invading army and the armed forces of Ukraine. Many, if not most, of the residents, are refugees. The voting began within 48 hours after the announcement....

Here we are, 26.5 weeks into Vladimir Putin’s 3-day cakewalk to Kiev. I haven’t done this in a while (last update Putin’s War. Week 21. New Weapons Change the Battlefield in Ukraine’s Favor but Are They Stronger Than European Cowardice and Stupidity?) because not a lot has been happening if you aren’t in a trench in Donbas hoping to make it through an artillery barrage.The big news today is what might turn out to be a Ukrainian offensive developing in Kherson Oblast. We’ll get to that after the preliminaries.Politico-Strategic LevelA lot of action has taken place at this level, but...

Days after the unprecedented raid of Donald Trump’s Florida home, AG Merrick Garland finally decided to address the public on Thursday regarding the matter. Some naively hoped that he’d provide a legitimate justification for the raid, but as expected, that didn’t materialize, mostly because there was no justification.Instead, Garland danced about while revealing a few noteworthy things. One, we learned that he was the one that ordered the raid, which is not surprising given he’s a partisan who obviously holds a grudge against the former president. Two, the DOJ is asking the judge in the case to unseal the warrant,...

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has removed his objections to the applications for NATO membership submitted by Sweden and Finland, guaranteeing those two previously unaligned nations will join the West’s bulwark alliance against Russian aggression.In May, Sweden and Finland announced they would ask to become members of the NATO military alliance. This was an unprecedented step that even the threat of the USSR had not been able to accomplish (Finland Announces It Will Join NATO, Sweden to Follow, While Moscow Makes Its Usual Threats). Vladimir Putin’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine did accomplish what Joe Stalin couldn’t in no small...

One of the side effects of war is economic dislocation. No matter what Vladimir Putin chooses to call his war in Ukraine, it is a war, and it is dislocating markets worldwide. Most of the attention has been on the potential disruption of Russian oil and gas supplies to Europe, but a more significant problem than cold Euros is looming. Ukraine is one of the world’s leading exporters of wheat and sunflower oil. Because of Putin’s War, Ukrainian products can’t pass through the Black Sea to get to market.Fears of a global food crisis are swelling as Russian attacks on...

Just before Easter, the Russians announced that they had accomplished all of their pre-invasion objectives and were beginning a new phase. The new phase required the abandonment of Russia’s attempt to seize control of Kiev and focus the war on gaining control of Donbas and establishing a land bridge from Russia to Crimea (read Ukraine’s Future Depends on These Three Fights That Russia Must Win and 10 Days Into Putin’s ‘New Phase’ of Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine, There Are Minor Advances but the Clock Is Ticking). That goal eventually expanded to creating Russian-owned territory from Russia to Moldova and stripping...

Tuesday, it became evident that the Russian Army was abandoning territory in Ukraine that it seized shortly after Putin’s War began on February 24 (Russian Troops Retreat From Ukraine to Russia: Planned Redeployment or the Beginning of Collapse?). That withdrawal opened the way for Ukrainian forces to recover previously occupied territory from north of Kharkiv to the border with Russia.What a difference a week makes. Russian positions a week ago on the left; from yesterday on the right. h/t @Militarylandnet pic.twitter.com/5gVye2hQra— streiff (@streiffredstate) May 10, 2022Unconfirmed but solid reports that Ukrainian troops have reached the Russian border to the North-East...

Over the last week, the Russian position north of Kharkiv has collapsed. There are two explanations, and both involve an endgame for Putin’s War.Most commentary on military operations over the last week has focused on what is assumed to be the center of gravity of the Russian campaign in Ukraine, Donbas, and the siege of Mariupol. However, in my opinion, the real activity to watch has been occurring on the Ukraine-Russia border. Kharkiv had been under daily artillery and rocket fire, destroying most of it.When I saw the city center of Kharkiv, destroyed by air bombs, I was shocked. Last...

It is now May 9, and the speculation about what Russian President Vladimir Putin will do on the occasion of the 2022 Victory Day Parade has been answered.Due to the war raging in Ukraine, a lot of SmartSet™ types had been speculating that Putin would use the Victory Day Parade as the catalyst to mobilize Russia for his war in Ukraine, if not declare war outright. Read my coverage of Putin’s possible courses of action at Tomorrow Is ‘Victory Day’ in Russia but Vladimir Putin Is Losing, So What Does He Offer Russia?.The preliminaries of the parade are in the...

The Russian ammunition dump in Tomorovka, Russia, was wracked by explosions on Sunday morning. Tomorovka is just west of Belgorod and barely 40 miles north of the Ukrainian strongpoint city of Kharkiv. This ammunition dump would be critical to sustaining the Russian offensive in Donbas. There is no claim of responsibility, so it might be another of those mysterious fires plaguing Russian strategic installations and those installations supporting the Donbas operation. Video of the explosion and aftermath are posted below.There have been a series of explosions and fires at military logistics and storage points inside #Russia that are used to...

Early Monday morning (local time), explosions rocked two oil tank farms in Bryansk, Russia. Bryansk is about 250 miles northeast of the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, and less than 70 miles from the Ukrainian border.The tweets below are presented solely for the purpose of illustration; the opinions and conclusions expressed are those of the writers.🔥2 huge fires in Bryansk. Tank base and possibly militaryTanks at the tank farm are blazing, the regional government said. pic.twitter.com/v6nWIyU7WX— Chebureki Vibes (@PelmeniPusha) April 25, 2022Unverified claims right now: Oil terminals (storage tanks). Makes total sense – lots of them in Bryansk and probably consistent with...

Very few parts of Russian society have drawn more interest than the so-called “oligarchs.” These are incredibly wealthy men with political connections to Putin’s inner circle because, in the totalitarian kleptocracy that is Russia under Vladimir Putin, if you don’t have political ties to Putin’s inner circle, wealth doesn’t bring you power; it brings you a one-way trip to a Siberian labor camp. The first generation of Russian oligarchs emerged from the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, whose state control over the economy began to loosen under Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika, or restructuring reforms. Gorbachev’s successor as president, Boris Yeltsin,...

Vladimir Putin is doing all he can to project an air of success with his disastrous decision to attack Ukraine.But it hasn’t gone well with all kinds of issues — from thousands of their troops killed and some very high-placed officers being taken out by the resistance to getting bogged down and not being able to take Kyiv yet. As I noted earlier, if the Defense Ministry has to make up a lie in order to post a propaganda “win,” you know it’s not going well.Indeed, on Saturday, it was announced that yet another Russian general had been killed in...

According to the Jerusalem Post, Belarus faces an organized sabotage campaign aimed at railroad lines carrying Russian troops and supplies into Ukraine.The General Prosecutor of Belarus opened a criminal case into what it called an act of terrorism carried out by an organized group against infrastructure of the Belarusian Railway, according to TASS.The general prosecutor added that signaling facilities and other transport equipment were rendered “unusable.”The BYPOL group, which consists of former security officers who support the opposition in Belarus, said on Tuesday that a series of sabotage actions had targeted the railway system in Belarus, disrupting the movement of...

On Wednesday, as Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was touting a ‘light at the end of the tunnel’ to the war in Ukraine (see Proposed ‘Fifteen Point Peace Plan’ in Russia-Ukraine War Is a Total Defeat for Putin, but Zelensky Is Biding His Time), President Vladimir Putin gave a speech that did not indicate that he had any intention of settling for less than total victory in Ukraine and signaled a crackdown on elements of his own society.<span data-mce-type="bookmark" style="display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;" class="mce_SELRES_start"></span><span data-mce-type="bookmark" style="display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;" class="mce_SELRES_start"></span>The first part...

Multiple sources report that Vladimir Putin has ordered the arrest and detention of General Roman Gavrilov, the deputy director of Rosgvardiya, or the National Guard of Russia. This National Guard is not to be confused with anything like our National Guard. The Rosgvardia is composed of internal security troops, from police to paratroops and special forces, that report directly to Vladimir Putin and whose responsibility is the stability of the state.In 2016, President Putin signed a decree that created the National Guard, known in common parlance by its Russian name Rosgvardiya. This did not entail whole new organizations or the...