Free Republic

A U.S. citizen known to have fought with pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine between 2014 and 2017 has been killed in Moscow-occupied Donetsk, Russian media reported Friday. Russia-installed authorities in eastern Ukraine had earlier this month reported the American — 64-year-old Russell Bentley — as missing. "Russell Bentley, known as 'Texas,' a real American, truly from Texas, was killed in Donetsk," the head of the pro-Kremlin RT network Margarita Simonyan said on social media. "He was fighting for our guys," she said. Simonyan gave no details on how he died. The Vostok battalion with which he fought confirmed his death, calling...

Alexander Khodakovsky, the commander of Russia's Donetsk militia, pointed to nuclear weapons as one way Russia could win the war during an appearance on state TV..."We don't have the ability—we're a country which is now fighting the entire Western world, and we don't have the resources to defeat the NATO bloc with conventional means," he said. "But we have nuclear weapons for that. We built them specially for such situations. That is why there is only one option."