Free Republic

Putin got confused about the age of the child of a deputy mayor during a discussion at the Kremlin, sparking social media comments about the state of the Russian president's health. Unproven rumors have persisted about Putin's condition since the start of his full-scale invasion of Ukraine. These have included that the Russian president has cancer, Parkinson's disease, and even dementia. The Kremlin has insisted Putin is in good health. However, adding to the speculation was footage from Wednesday's meeting of the group "Russia—the Land of Opportunities," a non-profit set up in 2018 to help citizens develop business ideas. The...

Tens of thousands of mercenaries who fought with the Wagner Group in Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine have returned home, the private military company's (PMC) founder Yevgeny Prigozhin has said. Their return coincides with the murder rate in Russia rising for the first time in 20 years. With Wagner troops accused of war crimes and acts of brutality during the conflict, there have been concerns about what impact their return to their home towns in Russia might have. In April, The Guardian reported that convicts had gone back to terrorize their local towns. Russian authorities allowed Wagner to recruit prisoners...

Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov has mocked the battlefield achievements of the Wagner Group chief, Yevgeny Prigozhin, as a dispute between the two key figures in Russia's full-scale invasion continues to ramp up. -snip- The Chechen leader then said that despite the phone call, Prigozhin had again made "an ironic statement" that Chechen fighters could only liberate a few settlements and not the DPR as a whole. But Kadyrov said his troops had "liberated" 36 settlements, including Severodonetsk and Lysychansk, and the city center of Popasna in the self-proclaimed Luhansk People's Republic. He also said that Mariupol, the city Russia seized...

The Moscow-aligned information space is reporting Kremlin troop setbacks amid Russian sources suggesting Ukraine has begun its counter-offensive. Kyiv has not commented on Russian claims that its long-awaited push to retake captured territory has commenced, but milbloggers have reported on Telegram how Ukrainian troops have used tanks and other armored vehicles in the Zaporizhzhia oblast. On Thursday, milblogger War Gonzo said that a battle had been ongoing during the night in Orekhov-Tokmak, writing that the Ukrainian side had not made significant progress. However, the post described how on the Donetsk front where Russian troops had conducted assault operations in Maryinka...

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner Group, said he was prepared to send his mercenary troops to the Russian border region where raids from Ukrainian territory have taken place. In an audio post on Telegram, Prigozhin reiterated on Saturday his criticism of the Russian Defense Ministry's handling of the war in Ukraine, this time about how it was dealing with armed incursions into the Russian region of Belgorod, from where thousands have fled. Belgorod has been hit by numerous attacks with the regional governor, Vyacheslav Gladkov, saying on Friday, there were more than 500 projectile weapons fired, most of...

Russia has acknowledged that Ukraine has made territorial gains in the battle for Bakhmut, where Kyiv's forces are said to be advancing on the flanks of the Donetsk city. The Russian defense ministry said Wednesday that its airborne forces had made marginal advances but acknowledged that Ukraine was continuing its counterattacks near Bohdanivka, three miles to the northwest of the city, and Ivanivske, four miles west. Pro-Kremlin military analysis channel Rybar called for Russian forces to react to Ukrainian actions, implying that Moscow's forces are losing the initiative in the Bakhmut area. "Fierce battles are taking place on the flanks"...

The Wagner Group private military company (PMC) may be trying to force mobilized Russian personnel to sign contracts with the mercenaries fighting for Moscow to offset their troop losses in Ukraine. Spearheading Moscow's fierce fight for the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut that has raged for months, the group, headed by businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin, has seen a huge number of troops killed in action. "A group of around 170 mobilized men from these aircraft ... were forced to sign contracts with the Wagner PMC," Astra reported, citing the soldiers' relatives. Russian sources had previously reported that 100 mobilized personnel in Luhansk...

Governors of two Russian regions have cited security concerns in scrapping military parades next month, although one theory suggested the cancelation was due to a lack of military equipment caused by the war in Ukraine. Victory Day parades on May 9 are held throughout Russia and parts of the former Soviet Union to commemorate the defeat of the Nazis in World War II, which is widely known as the Great Patriotic War. The most prominent event takes place in Moscow's Red Square in which a march past of troops and military equipment provides a colorful display of Russian military might,...

Fur coats purportedly given to widows of soldiers fighting for Russia in Ukraine as compensation for their deaths were taken back after the women were filmed expressing their gratitude for them, it has been reported. A video clip widely viewed on Russian social media shows a group of women holding up the garments in the town of Makiivka, in the Russian-occupied Donetsk region of Ukraine. "Thank you so much from the bottom of our hearts…for taking care of us," said one woman before the group said "thank you" in unison. The man filming the women was reportedly Yevgeny Skripnik, an...

Avideo circulating on social media shows a group of women whose husbands died fighting for Vladimir Putin's forces in Ukraine expressing gratitude for receiving fur coats. This screen grab shows a group of women who reportedly received fur coats after their husbands died fighting for the Kremlin in the war in Ukraine. This screen grab shows a group of women who reportedly received fur coats after their husbands died fighting for the Kremlin in the war in Ukraine. © Via Telegram The clip was shared by the CHTD Telegram news channel which said the women were in Makiivka, in the...

Ramzan Kadyrov, the president of Chechnya whose troops are fighting for Moscow in Ukraine, has reportedly said that the war will end by the end of the year with Russian forces prevailing..."The West will kneel, and as usual, European states will have to cooperate in all areas with the Russian Federation," he said...The comments were made in an interview with Chechen minister Akhmed Dudayev, widely shared on Telegram and reported by news outlets such as Gazeta.ru...Kadyrov wrote that the "fight against Satanism should continue throughout Europe, first of all on the territory of Poland."

The Russian military blogger Igor Girkin has issued his latest broadside against how Russian President Vladimir Putin is conducting his invasion of Ukraine. Also known as Igor Strelkov, Girkin is a former Russian intelligence officer who played a major role in Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the conflict in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region. He has given perceptive but unflattering assessments of Russia's military failures in Ukraine and his views on the military shortcomings of Putin and his commanders. In a video posted on his Telegram social media channel on Monday, Girkin told an audience in St. Petersburg how...

During a monologue on his radio show Polny Kontakt (Full Contact), which gradually grew in volume as it went along, Solovyov raged...He said that he had previously warned that Adolf Hitler would be "rehabilitated"..."Berlin, Paris, Madrid, London, Washington should be on fire," he said..."Did we destroy a single base on NATO territory? No. Did we conduct strikes against the vile Polish dogs?...Then why the heck do we have a stockpile of tactical and strategic nuclear weapons? To be afraid to use it?"

Yevgeny Prigozhin, whose Wagner Group of mercenaries has dominated headlines in Ukraine, has reportedly been sidelined by Vladimir Putin after failing to make good on his promises of military gains. The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said Prigozhin's "star has begun to set" following his boasts that his forces could capture the Donetsk city of Bakhmut. The think tank said on Sunday that Putin wanted to see what Prigozhin and his previous commander in Ukraine, General Sergey Surovikin could do after the conventional Russian military had suffered disastrous setbacks. "Both efforts failed," the ISW said, as Prigozhin's attempts...

A former Russian commander and prominent military blogger has given another scathing assessment of Moscow's invasion of Ukraine in which he described how Vladimir Putin's troops had already been dealt a "strategic defeat" by Ukraine. Igor Girkin, also known as Igor Strelkov, is an army veteran and former intelligence officer who played a key role in Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the conflict in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region. He is among a number of milbloggers who give candid accounts of Russia's war effort that are far removed from the picture portrayed by Kremlin-backed television channels. On his Telegram...

"Opposition among the Russian population to the full-scale invasion of Ukraine is at its highest level, according to one survey. "The poll by the private survey agencies Russian Field and Chronicles has given a snapshot of public opinion about what the Kremlin dubs a "special military operation" which is at odds with official Russian government polls... "...The results found that Russian support for the war "continues to fall" and had reached "a historic minimum." It said that the declared support for the war was just over a half, or 51 percent, compared with 55 percent in July and a high...

Preliminary data from Russia's Finance Ministry showed that the country's fiscal surplus shrank to 55 billion rubles ($860 million) in the first nine months of the year, down from 137 billion roubles ($2.15 billion), Bloomberg reported. Olga Bychkova, an economist at Moody's Analytics, told Newsweek that the Russian government surplus is 30 times lower, when compared to the same period last year.... She predicted the government budget would post a modest surplus of 0.6 percent in 2022 on high energy prices but flip to a deep deficit of around nine percent in 2023 due to limited growth, imports, and the...

British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss is the bookmakers' favorite to become the next prime minister of the United Kingdom, but the Kremlin is unlikely to be betting on a different British approach to relations with Moscow, or the war in Ukraine, should she take over from incumbent Boris Johnson. Although enjoying less support among fellow Conservative Party MPs, Truss's greater popularity among grassroots Tories than Chancellor Rishi Sunak in the final run-off has seen Betfair put her odds-on 4/6 to win. If successful, she will be the face of the British response to the war in Ukraine during which she...

Footage has emerged appearing to show the aftermath of a Ukrainian strike against a key bridge that has further cut off Russian troops in Kherson. Social media users said that the video circulated on Saturday showed the remains of the Antonovsky railway bridge over the Dnipro River, which is near the scene of a Ukrainian counter-offensive by the southwestern city. On Tuesday, the Antonovsky road bridge was heavily damaged following Ukrainian rocket fire from the U.S.-supplied M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems or HIMARS. The inability for vehicles to use the bridge dealt a blow to Russian forces as it...

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,...