Free Republic

Donald Trump's suggestion the US would not protect Nato allies failing to spend enough on defence "undermines all of our security", the Western military alliance's chief has said. Jens Stoltenberg also suggested it put US and European troops at greater risk. The Republican said he had told allies he would "encourage" Russia to attack any Nato member that failed to meet the alliance's target of 2% of their GDP. Members of Nato commit to defend any nation in the bloc that gets attacked. President Joe Biden called Mr Trump's comments "appalling and dangerous", suggesting his predecessor intended to give Russian...

Ukraine says it has destroyed a sophisticated Russian air defence system in occupied Crimea. Kyiv's security service (SBU) and navy carried out the attack on a Russian facility near Yevpatoriya using cruise missiles and drones, a Ukrainian intelligence source told the BBC. Video footage on social media showed a fire and smoke near the city, in the west of the Russian-occupied peninsula. Moscow has yet to directly comment on the claim. (snip) According to the BBC's intelligence source, the Ukrainian operation used drones to take out radar equipment, then cruise missiles to hit air defence missile launchers. "After disabling the...

In one stroke, no-nonsense Elon Musk exposed the Left-wing prejudices at the heart of Auntie’s reporting Every so often, there comes along a piece of car-crash TV so deliciously excruciating that it affords hours of harmless fun. Think of Prof Robert Kelly in the middle of a solemn live interview on North Korea when his gleeful toddler, pursued by her horrified mother, came crashing through the study door to say hi to Daddy. Even better for sheer comic embarrassment, I reckon, is the interview the BBC’s North America Technology reporter, James Clayton, did this week with the world’s second-richest man...

This war is one that Russia cannot win in any meaningful sense. Putin's foreign military successes around the world after 2008 were all achieved by using small units of elite forces, mercenaries and local militia groups alongside Russian air power. This gave Moscow considerable leverage at low cost during interventions in Georgia, Nagorno-Karabakh, Syria, Libya, Mali and twice in Ukraine during 2014, first in illegally annexing Crimea and then in creating self-declared Russian statelets in Luhansk and Donetsk. In every case, Russia moved swiftly and ruthlessly in ways the western world was unable to counter except through graduated sanctions regimes...