Free Republic

Synopsis: The diminutive Russian dictator is inaugurated for the fifth term of his permanent presidency. Russia 1 state television covers the event. State media has also anointed Putin as "Vladimir the Terrible", an imperial title.

The British government said on Tuesday it would commit its largest-ever tranche of military aid to Ukraine as part of a package worth £500 million ($622 million). The assistance will include further deliveries of Storm Shadow air-launched, precision-guided missiles, as well as vessels and vehicles. The Paveway IV—the latest in the Paveway series of bombs—converts unguided munitions, also known as "dumb bombs," into precision-guided weapons. They can use laser guidance or satellites to find their way to a target. "The Paveway IV will enable Ukraine to strike back" at Russian forces and target high-value assets such as command centers and...

Ukraine will be a “humiliating fiasco” for America like Vietnam if Washington continues its muddied involvement, a Russian official said Sunday. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova issued the scathing comment a day after US lawmakers in the House of Representatives green-lit a long-delayed $60 billion aid bill for Ukraine that will help the war-weary nation buy more advanced weapons and defense systems. “Washington’s deeper and deeper immersion in the hybrid war against Russia will turn into a loud and humiliating fiasco for the United States, such as Vietnam and Afghanistan,” Zakharova said, adding that it’s become clear the US...

The US risks losing its military presence in another African country as the government of Chad sent a letter threatening to end a critical security agreement, according to four US sources, a move that threatens to cede more US influence in the region to Russia. In a letter sent to the US defense attaché last week, Chadian officials threatened to cancel the Status of Forces Agreement, or SOFA, which determines the rules and conditions under which US military personnel can operate in the country. While the letter did not directly order the US military to leave Chad, the officials told...

A Chinese specialist on Russia has delivered a grim forecast for Vladimir Putin's war in Ukraine: that it is doomed to fail. Peking University professor Feng Yujun is also cooling on the future of Beijing-Moscow relations, writing in a recent op-ed in The Economist that the two nations have diverging visions of the future of global affairs.

.....De Croo said that Belgian agencies are working closely with the Czech authorities after a pro-Russian influence operation was uncovered there. He said that probe showed that members of the European Parliament were approached and offered money to promote Russian propaganda.

Ukraine's Main Directorate of Intelligence (HUR) has released video of its claimed sabotage operation against a Russian missile corvette on Sunday in the Baltic Sea exclave of Kaliningrad, which the intelligence service said had "disabled" the vessel. The footage purportedly showed a fire being set somewhere inside the Serpukhov Buyan-M class corvette, which is part of the Baltic Fleet and can be armed with either Kalibr or Oniks cruise missiles. The video also showed what were claimed to be blueprints of the vessel, presumably used by HUR operatives to plan the attack. The claimed HUR attack took place while the...

Russia has used a powerful thermobaric weapon, the ODAB-1500 bomb, for the first time in the conflict, hitting the village of Velyka Pysarivka in the Sumy region, reports the German tabloid Bild. The explosion of the ODAB-1500 bomb is reported to have created a smoke cloud reaching a height of one kilometer. This Soviet-era thermobaric device releases a flammable liquid in aerosol form approximately ten meters from the target before ignition, resulting in a devastating blast. In previous attacks within Ukraine, Russian forces had used smaller variants of the ODAB, ranging from 170 to 500 kilograms. The deployment of the...

Afire broke out on the Russian missile ship Serpukhov in the Kaliningrad region, causing significant damage, according to RBC-Ukraine source within special services. The source says the fire engulfed the Serpukhov on April 7. It is a small missile ship of Project 21631 Buyan-M (the fifth ship in the series). Since the full-scale war against Ukraine began, the Russians have already lost many ships, including those of the Black Sea Fleet. Recently, the Ukrainian military attacked large landing ships in Crimea, Yamal and Azov. The Ukrainian Navy also confirmed the damage to the Russian medium reconnaissance ship Ivan Khurs. On...

When President Biden proposed an additional $24 billion in supplemental funding for Ukraine in August, Moscow spin doctors working for the Kremlin were ready to try to undermine public support for the bill, internal Kremlin documents show. In an ongoing campaign that seeks to influence congressional and other political debates to stoke anti-Ukraine sentiment, Kremlin-linked political strategists and trolls have written thousands of fabricated news articles, social media posts and comments that promote American isolationism, stir fear over the United States’ border security and attempt to amplify U.S. economic and racial tensions, according to a trove of internal Kremlin documents...

Reuters said Novatek had stopped operations at its Arctic LNG 2 project, which processes gas from the Utrenneye field on West Siberia' Gydan Peninsula, in the latest blow to Russian fuel exports. It comes as Russian exports funding Putin's war have been hampered by repeated drone strikes on oil facilities, blamed on Ukraine. One energy industry expert told Newsweek that state oil giant Rosneft had reduced daily oil processing in March by a fifth. Sanctions have caused a lack of specialist tankers to transport the LNG from Russia through thick sea ice. Six Arc7 tankers were due to be built...

It is widely accepted that the Ukrainian crisis erupted into a military conflict on February 24, 2022, with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the seeds of the hostilities were planted about thirty years earlier by President Clinton and, later, by George W. Bush, both of whom recklessly pushed for NATO’s eastward expansion.

Strikes on Russian oil refineries have a significant impact on Russia’s ability to conduct warfare. Lieutenant General Ben Hodges, Commander of U.S. Forces Europe in 2014-17, stated this during the 16th annual Kyiv Security Forum. “Of course, attacks on oil refineries have a significant impact. Russia is less able to pay for this war, and it also deprives it of the necessary fuel to continue hostilities. I would recommend ignoring the calls for an end to such attacks.” The Lieutenant General emphasized that sanctions against Russia need to be strengthened. He also added that 2024 will be the year of...

The liquid assets in Russia's national wealth fund fell 44% from January 2022 to December 2023. Total holdings in the fund tumbled 12% over the same period amid the war in Ukraine, per Bloomberg. Liquid assets in the fund could last just another year or two if Russia's oil export price falls below $50 a barrel, per Bloomberg Economics.

Nato must be ready for Russia launching an “existential” war against the Baltic states “masked by a blizzard of disinformation”, ambassadors from the three countries have warned. Writing exclusively for The Sunday Telegraph, the top diplomats to the UK from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania said that Russia could “pivot quickly” from Ukraine to invade the Baltic. And they said that Vladimir Putin’s brutalisation of Ukraine is evoking the three countries’ “darkest memories” of occupation under Stalin. The Estonian ambassador Viljar Lubi, the Latvian ambassador Ivita Burmistre, and Lithuania’s charge d’affaire Lina Zigmantaite, wrote the joint article to mark Friday’s 20...

On March 29, 2024, Ukrainian forces relayed via their social media platforms a notable military achievement: the Signum strike drone unit of the 93rd Separate Mechanized Brigade detected and neutralized the very first next-generation Phlox 2S40 self-propelled mortar using a night-operating FPV drone. This self-propelled mortar, representing a major technological advancement for the Russian army, had been deployed on the Ukrainian front as early as October 2023. The action took place near Bakhmut, marking a significant success for the Ukrainian forces in defensive operations....

The mistakes of the Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan wars appear lost on many. Today, we hear stirring calls to arms against Russia from a totally corrupt and dangerous media supporting a rogue American regime. Unfortunately, several establishment Republicans stand in support. Senators Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham are at the forefront of the Republican establishment’s support for confronting Russia. I would include Senators John Cornyn and John Thune in the mix, along with House members like Dan Crenshaw and, certainly, former House member Liz Cheney.Even if the United States were to win such a war on the battlefield, we would...

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Monday that the terrorist attack at the Crocus City Hall concert venue near Moscow had been committed by radical Islamists. "We know that the crime was committed by the hands of radical Islamists, whose ideology the Islamic world itself has been fighting for centuries," Putin said. Even though Russia knows who carried out the terrorist attack in the Crocus concert hall, but the mastermind behind it is still in question, and we need to find out whether radical Islamists really decided to strike at the country, the Russian president said. "In...

ISIS had a huge Russian and Central Asian contingent in its heyday. About one out of every five Russian citizens is Muslim, but that population is not evenly distributed either geographically or socioeconomically. In cities, a lot of taxi drivers and hard-luck laborers have names like Magomedov and Ismailov, indicative of Muslim ancestry.... The center of geographic gravity of Islam in Russia is the Northern Caucasus, the site of domestic strife and bloodshed in a series of episodes going back centuries. Some groups around Dagestan and Chechnya have become proficient guerrilla warriors, and Putin perfected his own harsh methods on...

Defence Intelligence of Ukraine (DIU) has stated that the recent terrorist attack in Moscow Oblast is a deliberate provocation by Putin’s regime and had been anticipated by the international community. Source: Andrii Yusov, representative of DIU, in a comment to Ukrainska Pravda Quote: "This is the deliberate provocation by Putin’s special services that the international community warned us about. The Kremlin tyrant started his career like this, and he wants to end it the same way: committing crimes against his citizens."