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The Prime Minister, in his “state of the nation” speech this week, accurately stated that the world is a very dangerous place, and we must ensure that our defence capabilities are up to the task. He is right on the threat but has yet to grasp that one way to meet it is by investing heavily in our physical and psychological military conventional deterrence. The signs coming out of Moscow are far from encouraging, with Putin sacking his combat generals to replace them with “bean counters”. Presumably to ensure the economy is on a total war footing and capable of...

The US is "rushing ammunition, armoured vehicles, missiles [and] air defences" to Ukraine's front line, Anthony Blinken has said.During a trip to Ukraine, the US secretary of state announced that $2bn would be spent to speed up delivery. His comments came as Russian advances forced Ukrainian to retreat from several villages in the Kharkiv region. Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky has cancelled all his foreign trips to concentrate on the new incursion. Speaking in Kyiv on Wednesday, Mr Blinken said weapons would be rushed to the front lines to "protect soldier, to protect citizens". He said that the air defence systems,...

Conservative-Populist Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico was shot today and wounded at a government meeting. According to reports Prime Minister Fico is alive and in a helicopter on his way to a hospital in Bratislava. There is video of Robert Fico being dragged to this car after he was shot. BREAKING: Slovak PM Robert Fico taken to his car after being shot several times. He was later picked up by an ambulance helicopter and flown to a hospital. His current condition is unknown pic.twitter.com/bKoJfwgqgz — Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) May 15, 2024 The Gateway Pundit heard from our close friend in...

Russia looks set to seize the pivotal Kharkiv towns of Lukyantsi and Vovchansk after an abrupt Ukrainian retreat. The Ukrainian military said that the decision was made to avoid a potential bloodbath on the streets. One spokesperson told the AFP that it withdrew soldiers from the towns "in response to enemy fire and assaults from ground troops, and to save the lives of our servicemen and avoid losses".The head of Vovchansk police Oleksii Kharkivskyi shared an update from the besieged village this morning, saying: "Russians are taking positions on the streets of the city, the situation is extremely difficult, but...

“Russia launches a division sized recon in force operation 20 kilometers North of Ukraine's second largest city, Kharkiv.…”

For a long time, the US Army assumed the US Air Force would protect it from enemy aircraft. Which is why, in the 1990s, the Army shuttered many of its short-range air-defence, or SHORAD, units. This process only accelerated during the counterinsurgency campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, where the Army was fighting an enemy with no aircraft. By the time Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014, the Army was down to just 300 or so aging Avenger air-defence vehicles, each firing infrared-guided Stinger missiles out to a distance of three miles. This to protect a million troops, if you count active...

The expected delivery of F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine may come too late to have a significant impact on Russia's ongoing offensive in Kharkiv, experts have told Newsweek. Ukrainian pilots, who for most of the more than two-year war have flown Soviet-era MiG aircraft, have recently been finishing up training on the U.S.-made jets in anticipation of receiving deliveries from Western allies including Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway and Belgium. Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said on Monday that Ukraine could expect to receive the first batch of F-16s from Denmark "within the next month," before revising her comment on Tuesday...

Estonia has been "seriously" discussing sending troops to Ukraine in roles positioned away from the front lines, per a national security official. Madis Roll, national security advisor to Estonia's president, told military news outlet Breaking Defense that his country's leaders were assessing the viability of sending Estonian soldiers to "rear" roles that wouldn't see direct combat in Ukraine. Such a move would help relieve Ukraine's manpower crunch and allow it to send more soldiers to the front lines. And while Estonia, a North Atlantic Treaty Organization country, prefers to act together with the alliance's major members, it's also not closed...

Excerpts:After months of intense congressional debate, Congress passed and the president signed into law a $61 billion aid package for Ukraine. The legislation gives the president nearly everything he wanted, which is surprising given the drama in the Republican House caucus. The new legislation brings the total U.S. commitment to $175 billion since the beginning of the invasion. It will produce an immediate surge in deliveries of military equipment, which had fallen to about 10 percent of what they had been last year. Because of the delay, another funding package will not be needed until January. That pushes it past...

NEW: Ukraine is making a new push to get Biden to lift his ban on using U.S.-made weapons to strike inside Russia, saying the policy kept them from attacking Russian positions as Moscow prepared for its major march toward Kharkiv

My comments below pertain to the war in the Ukraine and an article I just posted to Free Republic:What Is in the Ukraine Aid Package, and What Does it Mean for the Future of the War? csis.org ^ | May 1, 2024 | Mark F. Cancian and Chris H. Park Posted on 5/14/2024, 6:25:05 PM by ransomnoteMY COMMENTS on the csis.org article:In my opinion, the whole article is worth reading. I think that the flag waving cretins in Congress were putting on a show to imply they are helping the Ukraine far more than they actually are. Biden and his...

Head of the Mezha Anti-Corruption Center, Martyna Bohuslavets, has written a report in Pravda asking "Where are the fortifications?" She reports that millions of dollars that were intended for the construction of fortifications in Ukraine were instead "transferred to Kharkiv OVA to front companies of avatars." Bohuslavets said the Ukrainian Kharkiv Regional Military Administration (Kharkiv OVA) paid out funds to fictitious companies during the construction and fortification of the Kharkiv region. The report comes as Russian forces have broken into the northern region of Ukraine and the US continues funding the war. According to Ukranian Pravda reports, the Russian military...

There is a large Russian operation underway in Ukraine focused on the Kharkov area. At the same time, the Russians are also attacking elsewhere, primarily in Donbas but also in Zaphorize. The threat in the north has compelled Ukraine to pull troops deployed elsewhere, including Chasiv Yar, to try and hold the line in the Kharkov area. If Russia intended to force Ukraine’s army to move its troops northwards, then it looks like a success so far. These troop movements will offer the Russian army the chance to do more damage to Ukraine’s army.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in the Ukrainian capital on Tuesday morning by train, meeting President Volodymyr Zelensky and promising that “assistance is now on the way” after Congress passed the $95 billion foreign aid package in April. Blinken is in Kyiv to “highlight the United States’ enduring support for Ukraine”, the State Department said on Tuesday, after the Secretary of State arrived in the country by overnight train, a necessity for foreign diplomatic visits as flying directly to Ukraine remains impossible. The two-day trip is the first by an American government figure since Congress passed the foreign...

Hungary will not participate in NATO's long-term plan to aid Ukraine, its foreign minister said Wednesday, calling the plan a "crazy mission." NATO allies agreed in April to initiate planning on long-term military support for Ukraine against Russia's invasion, through setting up a fund worth 100 billion euros ($107 billion). Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto reiterated the government's earlier opposition to the plan.

Can Russia's main task is to achieve victory on the battlefield in Ukraine with the minimal loss of troops, incoming defence minister Andrei Belousov said on Tuesday. -snip- Belousov presented himself as a man of integrity, telling parliamentarians: "I have always been, and will be, guided by the reinforced concrete principle 'You can make mistakes (but) you can't lie'." That was a pointed comment, given that he is taking charge of a ministry embroiled in a major corruption investigation that damaged his predecessor Shoigu. The scandal widened on Tuesday with the arrest of another senior official suspected of bribery. -snip-...

Ukraine’s military is confronting a “critical” situation in the country’s northeast, facing troop shortages as it tries to repel a Russian offensive that has been advancing for several days, a top Ukrainian general said on Monday. Russian troops surged across the border last week to open a new line of attack near Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city after Kyiv, capturing at least nine settlements and villages and forcing thousands of civilians to flee. “The situation is on the edge,” Gen. Kyrylo Budanov, the head of Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, said in a video call from a bunker in Kharkiv. “Every hour...

Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday visited Ukraine, telling the country that soon-to-arrive U.S. military aid will make a “real difference” in its effort to fend off Russia's war. Blinken's trip comes amid a fierce new Russian offensive, according to the Associated Press. “We know this is a challenging time,” Blinken said in the Ukrainian capital on Kiev where he met with President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Wherin Ukies neglect to fortify the Kharkov region and then embark upon a maximal campaign of provocation in the region...

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has arrived in Ukraine as weapons from a new American aid package begin arriving at the front line. His visit comes as the country struggles to hold back a major Russian incursion near its second biggest city of Kharkiv. Ahead of Mr Blinken's arrival in Kyiv, a senior US official said the American-funded weapons now arriving at the front line included air defence interceptors, artillery and ATACMS long-range precision guided missiles. "We have already started to flow in artillery [and] long-range ATACMS that can range any part of Ukraine, and also other air defence...