Free Republic

The Soviet-Afghan War destroyed Afghanistan and eventually the Soviet Union, which dissolved in 1991 into 15 republics. Numerous satellite states in Europe were liberated at the same time. History may repeat as the Russia-Ukraine war weakens Moscow, financially and geopolitically. Russia’s 2022 invasion was about reoccupying a former colony, Ukraine, but there are other Russian republics that hope to become liberated... … in December 1991, Ukrainians voted for independence and Ukraine became the first of the Soviet republics to leave. The Baltic republics followed, as did Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and others. Now there is unrest across the Russian Federation…...

This list only includes destroyed vehicles and equipment of which photo or videographic evidence is available. Therefore, the amount of equipment destroyed is significantly higher than recorded here. Loitering munitions, drones used as unmanned bait, civilian vehicles and derelict equipment are not included in this list. All possible effort has gone into avoiding duplicate entries and discerning the status of equipment between captured or abandoned. Many of the entries listed as 'abandoned' will likely end up captured or destroyed. Similarly, some of the captured equipment might be destroyed if it can't be recovered. When a vehicle is captured and then...

Ukraine said Tuesday it had sunk a Russian patrol ship off the coast of occupied Crimea, claiming another victory over the Kremlin's forces in the hotly contested waters of the Black Sea. Moscow did not confirm the claim, which would represent the latest blow to its naval power as Kyiv strikes targets deep behind the war's front lines, even as its army suffers setbacks on the battlefield. Ukraine’s military intelligence agency said that it had used high-tech sea drones in an overnight attack on the large patrol ship Sergey Kotov near the Kerch Strait, which separates the annexed peninsula’s eastern...

Russian forces suffered an average of 983 casualties per day in Ukraine in February, the highest since the war began, the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) said in an intelligence update on Sunday. The UK department said the increase in casualties, which included both killed and wounded soldiers, was likely due to "Russia's commitment to mass and attritional warfare." In February, Russia finally captured the embattled Ukrainian town of Avdiivka, which sits just north of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine. War analysts have noted that Russia's tactics to take Avdiivka often involved "human wave" assaults, attempting to overwhelm Ukrainian positions with...

The Kremlin promised entertainment.Western analysts feared Vladimir Putin would declare another war.But the Russian president’s more than two-hour-long address on Thursday delivered on neither expectation, though Putin presented Russians with a vision of the future that alternated between nuclear saber-rattling and grand social promises. ###Putin, who cut a relaxed figure, also called for the safeguarding of “traditional family values.”“We see what is happening in some countries where moral norms and family institutions are deliberately being destroyed, pushing entire peoples to extinction and degeneration,” he said. “We choose life.”