Free Republic

Appalling as the Benghazi, AP, and IRS scandals are, this dwarfs them all. This puts US national survival, and hundreds of millions of lives at stake. The head of Russia’s National Security Council has arrived in the US on a two-day visit for top-level talks on key stumbling blocks in bilateral relations. He will also deliver President Putin’s response to a letter President Obama sent in April. Putin aide Yury Ushakov confirmed on Tuesday that Patrushev is carrying the presidential letter and is scheduled to meet Obama. Among the US officials Nikolay Patrushev will meet during his trip is National...

“Biden Gets China,” headlined the January 2, 2012 report in The Atlantic. As author Steve Clemons explained, “Vice President Joe Biden will take the lead on the administrations next phase China policy.” This marked a shift to a “strategy of engagement with Biden at the top,” that allows the US to deal with China’s likely next president from a Vice President to a Vice President/Next President status -- and to continue both the Departments of State’s and Treasury’s ongoing engagement with other designated key Chinese leaders.” As Clemons explained, the move to put Biden at the top was “orchestrated” by...

President Vladimir Putin warned Thursday of a "real" risk of nuclear war if the West escalates the conflict in Ukraine, offering a defiant and emboldened stance in his annual speech to Russians. Speaking in Moscow, Putin said his soldiers were advancing in Ukraine and warned the West of "tragic consequences" for any country that dared to send troops to Kyiv. "They have announced the possibility of sending Western military contingents to Ukraine... The consequences for possible interventionists will be much more tragic," he said in his address to the nation. "They should eventually realise that we also have weapons that...

For more than a decade, the United States has nurtured a secret intelligence partnership with Ukraine that is now critical for both countries in countering Russia... Nestled in a dense forest, the Ukrainian military base appears abandoned and destroyed, its command center a burned-out husk, a casualty of a Russian missile barrage early in the war. But that is above ground. Not far away, a discreet passageway descends to a subterranean bunker where teams of Ukrainian soldiers track Russian spy satellites and eavesdrop on conversations between Russian commanders. On one screen, a red line followed the route of an explosive...

The vast majority of Ukrainians – 78 percent – say President Volodymyr Zelensky is directly responsible for corruption in the government and military, a poll published on Monday found. The survey, conducted in July by the Ilko Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives Foundation and the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, also found that Ukrainians ranked corruption within their own government as a bigger threat to “Ukrainian entrepreneurship” than the ongoing Russian invasion, according to the Kyiv Independent. The poll was taken after months of investigations, which followed months of firings at the highest levels of governments. Zelensky announced measures to fight bribery...

Ukie situation similar to that of Japan after the Marianas fell...

The Nordic country will become NATO’s 31st member on Tuesday, expanding the alliance in a strategic setback for President Vladimir Putin of Russia. (snip) Finland’s flag is being raised on Tuesday afternoon at NATO headquarters, a deeply symbolic moment marking the Nordic nation’s official welcome into the alliance and the shifting power calculations as the West strengthens its allegiances in response to the war in Ukraine. The president of Finland, Sauli Niinisto, is expected to attend the ceremony, on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s 74th anniversary, in what amounts to a strategic defeat for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia,...

Here are a couple of big picture maps showing the current position of Russian and Ukrainian forces in Bakhmut and the surrounding area. As you can see the Russians (i.e., the Wagner Group) are making rapid advances after months of slow progress and appear to be on the verge of a tactical encirclement of the Ukrainian units. It is important to understand the terrain of the Bakhmut area. The photos below show a landscape that reminds me of the state I grew up in — Missouri. Rolling hills, farmland and light forest that surround small cities. The first photo is...

I am fascinated by guys like Wes O’Donnell, who publish delusional nonsense without offering one piece of credible evidence. O’Donnell, who claims to have served in the U.S. Army and the U.S. Air Force, put up a piece at Medium last week with the catchy title, Putin’s Death Cult Prepares for Huge Casualties in the Coming Days. Here are some salient points from his article: The Russian army just suffered the deadliest 24 hours since the start of the war. According to Ukraine, 1,030 Russians were killed yesterday as Moscow continues to throw thousands of freshly mobilized soldiers into the...

The great nightmare of the Cold War was that giant Russian tank armies would not only crush their immediate neighbours but also sweep across the north German plains, hug western cities like Hamburg and hold them hostage, confounding all our calculations about a cautious escalation ladder. Now we have promised to supply Ukraine with a Nato tank army, there is a new version of this bad dream: is the war set to run out of control? It is difficult to see the relatively small number of pledged tanks matching their billing of becoming a game changer. At the Battle of...

Russia has said it is suspending its participation in the agreement to ensure the continuation of Ukrainian grain exports — vital for food supplies to poor countries — linking the decision to a drone attack on Russian ships in occupied Crimea on Saturday morning. The defence ministry announced the move, and it was also reported by the state news agency TASS. "Taking into account the terrorist act carried out by the Kyiv regime with the participation of British experts against ships of the Black Sea fleet and civilian vessels involved in the security of grain corridors, Russia suspends its participation...

This war will go down in history as a strategic Russian victory. Russia will have halted NATO expansion, destroyed a dangerous den of Nazi ideology in Ukraine, redefined European security by undermining NATO, and demonstrated Russian military prowess, an important deterrent.

Vladimir Putin has warned that "a new stage in world history" is coming in a speech in which he condemned "the model of total domination" by the West. During the address on Wednesday in Moscow, the Russian leader took a swipe at the populations of Western countries, which he described as the "golden billion", and asked why their leaders should "impose their own rules of conduct based on the illusion of exclusivity" which he believed was "inherently racist and neo-colonial." "One gets the impression that the West simply cannot offer the world its own model of the future," Putin said,...

Washington D.C., December 12, 2017 – U.S. Secretary of State James Baker’s famous “not one inch eastward” assurance about NATO expansion in his meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on February 9, 1990, was part of a cascade of assurances about Soviet security given by Western leaders to Gorbachev and other Soviet officials throughout the process of German unification in 1990 and on into 1991, according to declassified U.S., Soviet, German, British and French documents posted today by the National Security Archive at George Washington University (http://nsarchive.gwu.edu).The documents show that multiple national leaders were considering and rejecting Central and Eastern...

Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov today denied reports that Vladimir Putin has fallen ill. Unconfirmed reports persist that Putin, who is turning 70 this year, suffers from deteriorating health issues and may have been diagnosed with cancer and Parkinson's. In an interview with French TV, Lavrov said no one 'sane' could see any signs of illness in Putin, who reportedly has his food tested before eating it and bans his staff from standing too close to him. -snip- 'You can watch him on screens, read and listen to his speeches,' Lavrov said in comments released by the Russian...

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Monday that Russia's unprovoked war with Ukraine is "meant to put an end" to US-led global domination and the expansion of NATO, according to a report. "Our special military operation is meant to put an end to the unabashed expansion [of NATO] and the unabashed drive towards full domination by the US and its Western subjects on the world stage," Lavrov told the state-owned television news channel Rossiya 24, according to a translation from Russian state-run media outlet RT.