Free Republic

Yevgeny Prigozhin's paramilitary outfit the Wagner Group leaked the location of Adam Delimkhanov, a lawmaker and ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who was reportedly wounded in Ukraine, according to a Russian Army lieutenant colonel. Lieutenant Colonel Roman Venevitin, who was recently captured and held briefly by members of Wagner Group before being released to "Russian law enforcement," made the claim in a post on the Venevitin_72 Telegram channel. The "Prigozhinites" handed over to Kyiv the coordinates of Delimkhanov—the right-hand man to Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, he said. The accusations come as tensions between the Wagner boss and Russia's military...

A Russian soldier desperate to survive after Ukrainian drones took out his entire unit used hand signals to surrender — before he was guided across enemy lines by the same drones that used explosives to kill his comrades. Russian draftee Ruslan Anitin, 30, was one of the sole survivors of his platoon near the eastern city of Bakhmut on May 9 when drone and mortar attacks persisted for hours — and eventually led him to surrender. Drone footage published by the Wall Street Journal shows Anitin standing up without his rifle and drawing his finger across his neck while shaking...

KURAKHOVE, Ukraine—The Ukrainian 68th Jaeger Brigade spent the past year defending trenches in the country’s east against Russian onslaughts. Last week, they went on the attack. On Saturday, three platoons from the 68th took the village of Blahodatne from a larger Russian infantry force after a methodical firefight. Men from the Jaeger, used to fighting in fields and hills, said they had trained themselves in house-to-house combat and described using their American-made armored vehicles to blast open a Russian strongpoint. The last Russian defenders ran away through their own minefield. Few made it. Four of the Jaegers were killed taking...

MOSCOW (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday alternated threats of a new Russian offensive to grab more Ukrainian land with statements about the Kremlin's readiness for peace talks.Speaking during a far-ranging meeting with Russian military correspondents and war bloggers, he made some of the most extensive comments about the conflict and his goals since sending the troops into Ukraine more than 15 months ago.Here is a quick look at some of Putin's key statements:UKRAINIAN COUNTEROFFENSIVEPutin asserted that Ukraine has suffered “catastrophic” losses in its counteroffensive.He said Ukrainian troops amassed reserves to launch the “large-scale” operation on June 4,...

Russia's Defence Ministry released video footage on Tuesday of what it said were German-made Leopard tanks and U.S.-made Bradley Fighting Vehicles captured by Russian forces in a fierce battle with Ukrainian troops. The Defence Ministry said the armoured vehicles and tanks were captured on the Zaporizhzhia front in southern Ukraine, one of the areas where Ukrainian forces have been trying to counter-attack. Two Leopard tanks were shown in the footage, which was released on the ministry's official channel on the Telegram messaging application, along with two damaged Bradley Fighting Vehicles. The ministry in a short statement accompanying the footage called...

House Oversight Chairman James Comer has confirmed that there are more FBI documents detailing Biden bribery schemes. GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene revealed Some details from the FBI form 1023 related to Biden’s bribery scheme last week. A trusted and highly credible informant first presented the evidence on the Ukraine-Biden-bribery scheme in 2017. According to Greene, the allegations appear to involve the Ukrainian oligarch Mykola Zlochevsky, who hired Hunter Biden to serve on the board of Burisma Holdings. “He [Burisma owner] paid $5 million to one Biden, and he paid $5 million to another Biden, and it was all a...

Vladimir Putin has not openly criticised his long-suffering defence minister amid the war in Ukraine, but the Russian president appeared to make his feelings towards Sergei Shoigu very clear on a visit to a hospital for wounded soldiers. Putin and Shoigu yesterday visited the Vishnevsky Central Military Clinical Hospital in Moscow to greet several servicemen who sustained all manner of gruesome injuries amid the Kremlin chief's war in Ukraine. Upon their arrival at the medical facility, Putin quickly walked around the group, awkwardly shaking the hands - and in some cases bandaged stumps - of the medically discharged veterans, asking...

Ukrainian troops are probing Russian defenses as spring gives way to a second summer of fighting, and Kyiv's forces are facing an enemy that has made mistakes and suffered setbacks in the 15-month-old war. But analysts say Moscow also has learned from those blunders and improved its weapons and skills.Russia has built heavily fortified defenses along the 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) front line, honed its electronic weapons to reduce Ukraine's edge in combat drones, and turned heavy bombs from its massive Cold-War-era arsenal into precision-guided gliding munitions capable of striking targets without putting its warplanes at risk.The changing Russian tactics along with...

KYIV (Reuters) -Ukraine said on Monday its troops had recaptured seven villages from Russian forces along an approximately 100-km (60-mile) front in the southeast since launching its long-anticipated counteroffensive last week.The task of ending Moscow's occupation of southern and eastern Ukraine is daunting, given Russia's numerical superiority in men, ammunition and air power, and the many months it has had to build deep defensive fortifications.On Monday, soldiers were seen in video holding the Ukrainian flag in the village of Storozheve, along the Mokri Yaly river which flows northward out of Russian-held territory. Reuters confirmed the location.A day earlier Kyiv said...

Another Ukrainian attack got bogged down in a minefield.Losses:3 Finnish Leopard 2R with mine clearing equipment 1 German Bergepanzer III recovery tank (based on the Leopard 2 chassis) with mine clearing equipment 2 German Leopard 2M6 2 U.S. M2 Bradley infantry fighting vehicles 1 U.S. MaxxPro armored transport vehicle 1 U.S. HMMWV armored transport vehicle 1 unidentified vehicle This follows other significant recent losses.The total replacement cost of the above vehicles at present value is about $60-70 million.During the spring and summer of 2022 the Russian forces destroyed the regular Ukrainian pre-war army. It was replaced with Soviet era material...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy more or less confirmed over the weekend that Ukraine has begun its long-anticipated counteroffensive, though he added he will "not disclose in detail" the stage of Ukraine's effort to pry back heavily fortified land from Russian occupiers."Ukrainian forces made visually verified advances in western Donetsk Oblast and western Zaporizhia Oblast, which Russian sources confirmed but sought to downplay," the Institute for the Study of War research group assessed Sunday night. "Ukrainian forces liberated several towns, but claims of a Ukrainian 'breakthrough' are premature at this time."Ukraine said Sunday and early Monday that it had recaptured several...

The long-discussed Ukrainian spring counteroffensive is underway, Volodymyr Zelensky has confirmed, with the country reporting 25 battles fought in the past 24 hours and a handful of villages reclaimed. Ukraine’s own reporting of its progress in the counteroffensive against Russia’s occupation of the southeast of their country claims a clutch of villages and positions taken encircling Donetsk on Monday morning. The gains would be the first settlements reported taken in the counteroffensive so far, which was officially declared by Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday but appears to have been underway to varying degrees since early last week.

Air-defense system is finally doing what it was designed for, 40 years later The missiles were coursing toward Kyiv, some as fast as six times the speed of sound and many heading directly for the crew’s missile battery. The Ukrainians didn’t panic, their commander said in an interview. They didn’t have time. Early that morning, May 16, the Patriot’s radar detected the missiles, including six Kinzhals, at a distance of about 125 miles. The system’s computer tracked the missiles and launched interceptors, destroying all of them, the last at a distance of about 9 miles—seconds before impact. “No one was...

Officials say Oleksii Reznikov has been trying to arrange call with Yoav Gallant since current government assumed office; Defense Ministry says no official request made.. A likely reason for Gallant to avoid a potential conversation is the fact that Israel has resisted providing weapons to Ukraine following Russia’s invasion in February 2022, and has no desire to be pressed on the issue.... The US and European countries have been pushing Israel to increase its support, apparently including supplying weapons to Kyiv, according to reports. Western countries have poured weapons into Ukraine as its military it holds up the Russian advance...

Todays report comes in early. More good news! Additional high ground and villages liberated, Russian blow another damn in desperation. All due to the counteroffensive that was said here would never happen! Huzzaah!

Update from Ukraine | Ukraine Moves in taking the new ground on the South | The big battle is coming https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uV8zV12tf7s The summary of the situation of Russian re-invasion to Ukraine covering the last 48 hours, as of 10th June 2023 – 22:00 (Kyiv time) https://militaryland.net/news/invasion-day-472-summary/ *** Great interactive map with viewer controlled Map magnification tool to use for each Front! https://militaryland.net/maps/

The engineer battalions of the 33rd Mechanized and 47th Assault Brigades, the lead formations in Ukraine’s 2023 counteroffensive, suffered heavy equipment losses in their assault just south of Mala Tokmachka last week. The losses include at least five of the battalions’ specialized engineering vehicles. Fitted with mineplows and minerollers, these vehicles lead tanks and infantry fighting vehicles through minefields, plowing and rolling a path so the tanks and IFVs can break through enemy defenses. ...

Hunter refers to “my guys upcoming travels” in his email to business partner Devon Archer dated April 13, 2014, one week before Joe visited Ukraine as vice president. It was an uncharacteristically sophisticated email, listing 22 points about Ukraine’s political situation, with detailed analysis of the upcoming election and anticipating an escalation of Russia’s “destabilization campaign.” Unlike anything else written by Hunter in thousands of documents during the nine years covered in the laptop, the email has the distinct flavor of an official briefing, or perhaps even a classified one. An artificial-intelligence analysis of the email shows a stark difference...

It comes after Moscow said it had destroyed several Leopards while repelling attempts by Kiev's forces to advance Ukraine needs significantly more German armor amid intense fighting with Russia, controversial former ambassador to Berlin Andrey Melnik said in an interview published on Sunday. The request comes after Moscow claimed it had destroyed several German-made Leopard tanks while repelling repeated attempts by Kiev to breach Russian lines. Speaking to Tagesspiegel, Melnik, who now serves as Ukraine's deputy foreign minister, said his country requires much stronger support from the West than it is receiving now.

The 16 US Bradley infantry fighting vehicles either destroyed or damaged and abandoned in recent days represent almost 15% of the 109 that Washington has given Kyiv, according to Jakub Janovsky of the Dutch open-source intelligence website Oryx, which has been collecting visual evidence of military equipment losses in Ukraine since Russia’s invasion began on February 24, 2022.