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Tens of thousands of drones have been employed across Ukraine to kill the enemy, spy on its formations and guide bombs to their targets. But this month the Ukrainian military began a program to use drones in a more unusual role: to guide Russian soldiers who want to surrender. The program had its genesis in late November, when the Ukrainian military released footage of a Russian soldier throwing his weapon to the ground, raising his hands and nervously following a path set out by a drone overhead, leading him to soldiers from the Ukrainian army’s 54th Mechanized Brigade. A few...

Out on the frontline, near the eastern Ukrainian city of Lyman, on 8 November at 15.10, a Russian serviceman called Andrey decided to ignore the orders of his superiors and call his mother with an unauthorised mobile phone. “No one feeds us anything, mum,” he complained. “Our supply is s**t, to be honest. We draw water from puddles, then we strain it and drink it.” Russian forces had been on the back foot in the Donetsk oblast for weeks. Lyman, taken by the Russians in May, was liberated by Ukrainian forces in October. Two days before Andrey made his afternoon...

ransomnote: This 40 minute video is an analysis of an interview in The Economist which featured General Zaluzhny, Colonel Syrskyi, and Zelenksy. I'll put some transcript hi-lights in Post #1. Basically Zaluzhny and Syrskyi say that the Ukraine will lose unless NATO provides vast amounts of military hardware and troops. They say Putin has been successful in raising troops and can field 1.5 million additonal troops at a time when Zelensky has approx 700,000 troops but only 200,000 have combat training.The video narrators note there is a weakening of support for Zelensky's continued requests for more money and arms, and...

Wind howled through leafless trees and through the windows of the blown-out apartment building as the surveillance team marched up flights of stairs covered with broken glass. The cold numbed their fingers as they set up their equipment: a laptop-size thermal imaging sight, its tripod and a Starlink satellite dish and battery. (snip) What unfolded over the next half-dozen hours was a routine but essential part of the daily rhythm of the war — part drudgery and part urgent calculation as the team ascertained the coordinates for enemy positions, relaying them to the Ukrainian artillery battery miles away. This type...

An alleged "torture chamber" that housed Ukrainian children has been uncovered in Kherson, according to a top Ukrainian human rights official Wednesday. Speaking during a presentation on human rights abuses committed against Ukrainian civilians, Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights Dmytro Lubinets said officials uncovered evidence of the chamber through their investigations. (snip) "In one of the torture chambers, we discovered a separate cell where children were kept," he continued. Lubinets said people who were held in the chamber described a room next to theirs where they knew children had been held and which Russian officials referred to as the...

Ukrainian forces have reportedly damaged a key bridge outside the southern occupied city of Melitopol, a key objective in the region. The crossing over the Molochna River is situated between Melitopol and the village of Kostyantynivka just to the east of the city on the M14 highway and was struck overnight. Video posted online showed two supports of the bridge had been damaged during the attack, with the span partly collapsed by the blast, making it reportedly unusable for heavy military traffic.

A Russian court has sentenced the opposition politician Ilya Yashin to eight and a half years in prison, in the most high-profile case to date of a Russian dissident being jailed for opposing the invasion of Ukraine. Yashin was tried on charges of spreading false information meant to discredit the Russian army, under a law introduced after Russia launched its invasion, due to a series of posts in May about the murder and torture of Ukrainian civilians by Russian troops in the town of Bucha. “Expressing hatred of the political system of the Russian Federation and realising that he is...

A third Russian airfield was ablaze on Tuesday from a drone strike, a day after Ukraine demonstrated an apparent new ability to penetrate hundreds of kilometers deep into Russian air space with attacks on two Russian air bases. Officials in the Russian city of Kursk, located close to Ukraine, released pictures of black smoke above an airfield in the early morning hours of Tuesday after the latest strike. The governor said an oil storage tank there had been set ablaze but there were no casualties. It came a day after Russia confirmed it had been hit hundreds of kilometers from...

Russian authorities have banned public discussions of a wide range of non-classified military subjects that activists say will effectively prevent the public from learning crucial information about the Armed Forces. The 60-point Federal Security Service (FSB) order, which enters into force Dec. 1, lists information that is not classified as a state secret, but which “can be used by foreign states, organizations and citizens against Russia’s security.” Among the subjects banned from discussion are the structure and size of the Russian Armed Forces. Other off-limits areas include weapons, troop deployments and training, as well as troop morale and crimes committed...

The Russian military clearly assesses that Ukrainian forces could cross the Dnipro River and conduct counter-offensive operations in eastern Kherson Oblast, possibly threatening all of the critical ground lines of communications (GLOCs) from Crimea to the mainland. Russian forces have been digging trench lines and concentration areas in eastern Kherson since early October 2022 in obvious preparation for the withdrawal from the west bank of the Dnipro River and Kherson City. Russian troops are preparing either to defend in depth or to conduct operational or strategic delay operations. Russian forces clearly do not expect to be able to prevent Ukrainian...

Mothers and wives of slain Russian soldiers were left furious after controversial President Vladimir Putin allegedly staged a meeting with a group of ultra-loyalist women claiming to have lost loved ones in the war. Putin is believed to have specifically chosen a group who would not complain or ask him difficult questions, while many Russian women were left heartbroken and wanting answers about their fallen relatives. During the televised meeting, Putin insisted their country "will achieve" their goals "in the end," accusing Ukraine of attempts to "devalue, [and] compromise" Russia's war tactics. However, shortly after the conference, Russian media was...

The Ukrainian army has deployed some of its best brigades to eastern Ukraine, including the 92nd and 93rd Mechanized Brigades and the 1st Presidential Brigade. But these elite Ukrainian formations might not be the biggest killer of Russian troops in the east. Under-trained, under-supplied and ambivalently led, Russians in the region are freezing to death by the dozen. Shocking videos that have circulated online in recent weeks tell a tragic story. The videos, shot by the Ukrainian brigades’ hovering drones, depict Russians in the late stages of hypothermia, so cold and sick that they barely react when the drones drop...

Ukrainian women have played a crucial part in their country's resistance to Russia's full-scale invasion. Now, a new school is training women to play a vital new role. The Female Pilots of Ukraine is the country's first school dedicated to solely teaching women — both civilians as well as those serving in Ukraine's security forces — how to fly drones. Both the Ukrainian and Russian militaries have been using drones in the war in Ukraine, for reconnaissance and fighting. Ukraine has many women in the military but they rarely work as drone pilots, according to the school's administrators. The school,...

Russia’s infamous Wagner Group has abandoned dozens of former Central African Republic (CAR) rebels in Ukraine’s Donbas region after recruiting them to fight Vladimir Putin’s war, two former CAR fighters told The Daily Beast. The CAR sources, who were recruited by Wagner after quitting the Union for Peace (UPC) rebel group last December, said that many of the 100 or so ex-UPC fighters currently in Ukraine have lost contact with Wagner after the group trained them and flew them to the Donbas region about eight months ago. “Some of our colleagues have called us [on the phone] to inform us...

Vladimir Putin, the president of the Russian Federation, has pretended he has nothing to do with the deaths of Russian soldiers in the war he had waged, comparing losses on the front line to deaths from road accidents and alcohol. Source: video recording of Putin’s conversation with "soldiers’ mothers" Quote from Putin: "Of course, this is a huge tragedy [the death of a relative - ed.]. It is a void that cannot be filled with anything when a loved one is gone, especially a son. But you know what comes to my mind: in our country, about 30,000 people die...

This stockpile of cruise and ballistic missiles was likely used to deliver massive air strikes against Ukraine’s energy infrastructure in recent months. “They apparently have a withhold for a notional NATO attack, which we would regard as absurd, but they regard it as a real possibility,” Cancian said.“So they’re holding back some part of their inventory for that.”The report further suggests that Russia has built up a stockpile of microchips and other technological components for domestic missile production before invading Ukraine on Feb. 24. In October, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin announced a set of measures to ramp up output of...

Moscow's commanders have secretly moved almost 100 air defence missiles from Belarus to Russia sparking fears of a bigger escalation in Ukraine including whether Vladimir Putin would use a dirty nuke bomb. Air-freighting scores of S-300 and S-400s is either a precaution against a retaliation from Ukraine for Russia’s recent blitz - or a sign of a much bigger atrocity yet to come. One Russia expert told the Mirror: “Whatever Russia has in mind to inflict on Ukraine the Kremlin appears to be expecting retaliation on its own soil from Ukraine or the West. “Analysts believe with these missile moves...

Russia’s first mobilization since World War II may be complete, but the deployment of thousands of soldiers to the battlefields of Ukraine is generating dissent and protest on the front lines – and back home. With the Russian government touting that at least 50,000 of the recently drafted are now in Ukraine, a long list of complaints is emerging: Lack of leadership from mid-ranking officers, tactics that lead to heavy casualties, non-existent training, promised payments not received. There are also logistical difficulties, as reported by soldiers, their families and Russian military bloggers: Insufficient uniforms, poor food, a lack of medical...

The gates swing open, creaking ominously on their hinges. This is the first time Valery has been back to the prison where the Russians took him. As he walks through the gates he points out the cell on the second floor where he was locked up. And when he recounts what happened here it's clear that it is a painful experience. (snip) Each image is dated - it all happened in March shortly after the invasion when they captured Kherson city. On the walls of the prison graffiti reads "Zelenskyy we are coming". But surprisingly Valery considers himself lucky as,...

Anti-Russia activists and former Russian politicians have reportedly been meeting in Poland to discuss options for removing President Vladimir Putin from power — including by “physically eliminating” him. The group of Putin foes has mulled various regime change scenarios, among them unleashing a civil war in Russia, taking up arms and killing Putin, the European media network Euractiv reported. “The main goal is to physically eliminate Putin,” opposition activist Viacheslav Maltsev said. Maltsev, who fled Russia in 2017 after being labeled an extremist by the state, noted that a civil war in Russia would not be “as bloody as the...