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The Ukrainian Defense Ministry's Main Directorate of Intelligence said on Monday that at least 30 North Korean soldiers were killed and wounded in weekend battles in Russia's western Kursk region, prompting commanders to send reinforcements to frontline units. "North Korean army units are being re-equipped after losses in assaults" around the villages of Plekhovo, Vorozhba and Martynovka in the Kursk region, the GUR wrote in a post to its official Telegram channel. On Dec. 14 and 15, the GUR said, "units of the DPRK army suffered significant losses -- at least 30 soldiers were killed and wounded," using the acronym...

The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant on Friday against Russian President Vladimir Putin, accusing him of being responsible for war crimes committed in Ukraine. Moscow has repeatedly denied accusations that its forces have committed atrocities during its one-year invasion of its neighbour. The ICC issued the warrant for Putin's arrest on suspicion of unlawful deportation of children and unlawful transfer of people from the territory of Ukraine to the Russian Federation.

Russia is welding ageing naval turrets onto old armoured vehicles to make crude tanks as Vladimir Putin’s forces face worsening arms shortages. The crudely engineered vehicles are being deployed in a likely attempt to shoot down Ukrainian drones as the armed forces grapple with crippling shortages of fighting machines and ammunition. (snip) New footage from an undisclosed location appears to show a 25mm 2M-3 twin-barrelled naval anti-aircraft turret fitted to a Soviet-era MT-LB amphibious fighting vehicle to form a new hybrid weapon. The amalgamation, which was constructed with parts manufactured as early as 1945, could be seen being transported by...

KYIV, Ukraine — Russia’s Wagner mercenary group has been forced to use more of its professional recruits in Bakhmut to replace its depleted supply of enlisted prisoners, who are perishing by the thousands in the longest battle of the war, a Ukrainian official said on Tuesday. The claim suggested that Ukraine sees an opportunity, despite the heavy casualties it has suffered in the eastern city, to exhaust Wagner’s nearly suicidal prisoner assaults, which Ukraine’s commanders regard as one of Russia’s most effective tactics. “This is their last stand,” Col. Serhiy Cherevaty, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s eastern group of forces, told...

A Hurricane of Missiles

Between 20,000 and 30,000 Russian troops have been killed and wounded in the battle for the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut since it began last summer, Western officials say. The epic nature of the battle is out of all proportion to Bakhmut's strategic significance, they add. But after more than six months of grinding, horrific fighting, the future of Bakhmut still hangs in the balance. Since the fighting began, some 90% of its pre-invasion population has fled.

The US military is training two Ukrainian pilots on American soil to gauge how much time they would need in order to learn how to fly fighter jets such as the F-16. The pair are being taught using flight simulators at a base in Tucson, Arizona, a senior US official told NBC News. The official said that neither pilot will fly actual aircraft during their time in the US. As many as ten more pilots will arrive this month for similar training referred to as a 'familiarization event.'

Former Russian commander Igor Girkin floated a "civil war" as a potential solution to Moscow's struggling invasion of Ukraine in a new Telegram post slamming Kremlin military leadership. Girkin's latest remarks come more than a year after Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. Although Putin initially hoped for a quick victory over Kyiv, which has a smaller military than Russia, Ukraine responded with a stronger-than-anticipated defense effort that has been bolstered by Western military aid, blunting Putin's forces. After months of combat, and a lack of clear progress on Russia's side, some Russian...

President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday that Russia was suspending its participation in the New START treaty with the United States that limits the two sides' strategic nuclear arsenals.

The Kremlin will not invite reporters from countries that Russia has deemed “unfriendly” to President Vladimir Putin’s address to the Federal Assembly next week. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on February 15 that only media representing "friendly" countries will be accredited to the February 21 event. -snip- More than 60 countries, including the United States, EU member states, Britain, Canada, and Japan, have been declared "unfriendly" by Russia for imposing or supporting sanctions in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

'At the operational-tactical level, we did not think that within a year we would not be able to liberate the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. 'We did not think that there would be such heavy losses, although I then said there would be tens of thousands of dead on both sides. 'But everything turned out to be much worse.' Some estimates say the losses on both sides are now over 200,000, and rising fast. Russia alone is estimated to have lost as many as 140,000 since February last year. 'It was not expected that there would be such destruction: in fact,...

The illegal invasion of Ukraine has shown we cannot take risks with our defence capabilities especially when Russia is involved. Putin invaded Ukraine because he thought the West is militarily and politically weak, and he was right. All talk in Westminster and Whitehall has been about cutting soldiers and tank numbers for the past few years – cyber and space technologies are the answer apparently. But mass armour and soldiers have a quality all of their own, as the Ukraine war is showing. You still need boots on the ground to take and hold ground – no amount of cyber...

DNIPRO, Ukraine—Russia is regrouping its forces in eastern Ukraine and launching offensives along five lines of attack, Ukraine’s armed forces said on Saturday as officials in Kyiv and Western capitals continue to warn of a major Russian push to gain territory. The main focus of Russia’s offensive remains the besieged city of Bakhmut in the Donetsk region, which it is seeking to surround and capture. The Ukrainian military said it had repelled multiple attacks, inflicting significant losses for the Russians.