Free Republic

Justin went to Ukraine to fight shortly after the war started. He served with the infamous Azov battalion. (3 hour video interview)

Having passed the summer baptism of fire near Bakhmut, in early September Alexey Pritula, together with his brothers, liberated Izyum and the villages that were on their way to him. A few weeks later, the 25th separate airborne sicheslav Brigade, in which he served, went in the direction of the estuary. A veterinarian by profession, he was eager to go to the front from the first days of the full-scale invasion of the Russian Federation, but did not get there immediately, so for some time, together with his wife and 7-year-old daughter, he volunteered. They worked in the volunteer kitchen,...

Kyiv (Ukraine) (AFP) – Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Tuesday asked the international community to cover an expected budget deficit of $38 billion next year for his war-torn country, with Moscow's invasion also badly hitting the economy. At an international reconstruction conference for Ukraine in Berlin, Zelensky urged European leaders to offer greater financial support for his country more than eight months after Vladimir Putin sent Russian troops into Ukraine. "At this very conference we need to make a decision on assistance to cover next year's budget deficit for Ukraine," Zelensky said via video-link. "It's a very significant amount of...

Officials in Kyiv and several Western countries rejected claims made without evidence by the Kremlin that Ukraine is planning to use a “dirty bomb” — an explosive weapon designed to scatter radioactive material — on its own territory, characterizing them as an attempt by Russia to create a pretext for escalating the conflict. “We all reject Russia’s transparently false allegations that Ukraine is preparing to use a dirty bomb on its own territory,” foreign ministers from the United States, France and the United Kingdom said in a Sunday joint statement, after Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu made the unfounded claim...

The foreign ministers of France, Great Britain, and the United States published a joint statement in which they once again confirmed their continued support for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine. This is reported by Censor.NET with reference to ZN.UA. "The defense ministers of each of our countries spoke with the Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoygu at his request. Our countries have made it clear that we all reject Russia's blatantly false claims that Ukraine is preparing to use a dirty bomb on its territory. The world will consider any attempt to use this accusation as a pretext for...

Denys Davydov https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjjJmu2gMVM&list=RDCMUCpr-NNORb2UQYDD3k-w-OFg&index=2 Follow on Instagram up to date uploads. https://www.instagram.com/denys_pilot/ Also, check military maps here: https://militaryland.net/ https://militaryland.net/news/invasion-day-242-summary/ https://deepstatemap.live/en#6/49.438/32.053

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. Small arms, ATGMs, MANPADS, loitering munitions, drones used as unmanned bait, civilian vehicles, trailers 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 the...

KYIV – Russia launched its first-ever attack on the Ukrainian capital using Iranian-made Shahed-136 drones early on Oct. 17, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko reported. Information on casualties is not yet available. A fire broke out in a non-residential building in the central Shevchenkivskyi district while several residential buildings were damaged, according to the mayor. According to the President's Office, three people were killed as a result of the attack on a residential building. “Enemies can attack our cities, but they won't break us,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a video address. The drone attack comes exactly a week after Russia’s...

Victoria Obidina, a nurse who was separated from her four-year-old daughter Alisa by Russians during evacuation from Azovstal, was released today as part of exchange. As reported, on May 7 this year, the evacuation of civilians - women, children and the elderly - who were in the shelters of the Azovstal plant in Mariupol was completed. During the last evacuation, the occupants, who carried out the so-called filtration measures in Mangush, separated a woman-medic and her 4-year-old daughter Alisa. The mother remained in the filtration camp on the territory of the "DNR", and the girl from Zaporizhzhia was later reunited...

Bombshell insights from Scott Ritter. Putin appoints General Sergey "General Armageddon," as new commander of SMO. US Silent on massive assault on Ukraine, but fretting about Saudi - Russia deal. Reports of Russian dead simply not possible. Regime change means, all the way to Kiev.

CORRECTION: Ukraine has not yet received the National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems (NASAMS). A previous version of this story contained incorrect information on the delivery of the system due to errors in the CBS transcript of its interview with Zelensky. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is thanking the United States for the advanced air defense systems it has sent to his country to aid in its war with Russia, but he also is pressing for more, according to an interview aired Sunday. Zelensky on CBS’s “Face the Nation” thanked Washington for the shipments of High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems and other...

At the end of 1942, when the Wehrmacht could advance no further east, Hitler switched German ground forces from an “enemy force-oriented” strategy to a “ground-holding” strategy. Hitler demanded that his armies defend vast, largely empty and irrelevant stretches of Soviet territory. “Holding ground” not only robbed the German military of its ability to exercise operational discretion, and, above all, to outmaneuver the slow, methodical Soviet opponent; holding ground also pushed German logistics to the breaking point. When holding ground was combined with endless counterattacks to retake useless territory, the Wehrmacht was sentenced to slow, grinding destruction. Ukrainian President Volodymyr...

It’s Election Day in parts of Ukraine — but only because Russia imposed it. Vladimir Putin ordered referenda on annexation held in the parts of the Donbas that Russia still controls — and some areas it no longer does — in order to justify the seizure of those areas. That seizure will allow Putin to claim that any further Ukrainian advances in those areas are an invasion of Russia, which will unlock his ability to order full mobilization … and potentially other options.We’ll get to the full-mobilization issue in a moment, but let’s stick to the referenda first. Ukrainian authorities...

Summons delivered to eligible men at midnight. Schoolteachers pressed into handing out draft notices. Men given an hour to pack their things and appear at draft centres. Women sobbing as they sent their husbands and sons off to fight in Russia’s war in Ukraine. The first full day of Russia’s first mobilisation since the second world war produced emotional showdowns at draft centres and even signs of protest, while it appears Russia could be considering far more than the 300,000 new conscripts claimed by the defence minister, Sergei Shoigu. One woman in a small village in the Zakamensky region of...

Ukrainian officials, defending their country against Russian aggressors, began doing something in July that seemed odd, even counterintuitive: They started speaking loudly and regularly about their plans to liberate Kherson—a key southern city that Russia seized only a week after invading Ukraine on February 24. Indeed, the Ukrainians telegraphed their intentions in a way that the Russians could not mistake. This was like waving a red cape at an angry, incompetent bull. Almost immediately, rumors proliferated that the Russians were racing reinforcements to Kherson to prepare for the Ukrainian attack. Goading the Russians into doing so seems to have been...

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday that Russia had not lost anything as a result of its military campaign in Ukraine. Speaking at an economic forum in the far eastern Russian city of Vladivostok, he said all Russia's actions were designed to strengthen the country's sovereignty and were aimed at "helping people" living in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. "We have not lost anything and will not lose anything," Putin said. "In terms of what we have gained, I can say that the main gain has been the strengthening of our sovereignty." Putin conceded, however, that Moscow's decision...

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. Small arms, ATGMs, MANPADS, loitering munitions, drones used as unmanned bait, civilian vehicles, trailers 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 the...

By the end of the first week, it still wasn't clear how the battle was going — or even if this is the big counterpunch Ukraine has been telegraphing. Here's a look at what we know and what it could mean for the shape of the war:"We are very sensitive to not getting ahead of the Ukrainians," but "what I will say is that we are aware of Ukrainian military operations that have made some forward movement, and in some cases, in the Kherson region, we are aware, in some cases, of Russian units falling back," Pentagon spokesman Brig. Gen....

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. Small arms, ATGMs, MANPADS, loitering munitions, drones used as unmanned bait, civilian vehicles, trailers 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 the...

The pace of fighting is intensifying as the war in Ukraine stretches into its seventh month, with Ukraine seeking to exploit Russian weaknesses in the south and Moscow signaling that it might reinforce its troops in the east to renew its stalled campaign. Ukraine’s military has imposed sweeping restrictions on journalists as its forces mount a counteroffensive to retake territory seized by Russia in the south of the country. The Russians have leaped into the void, trying to characterize the counteroffensive — one week in — as a failure, without providing evidence to support the claims. “The Russian presentation of...