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The UK foreign secretary, James Cleverly, has said all Nato allies are backing a plan to give Ukraine a fast track to Nato membership of the kind offered to Sweden and Finland earlier this year. Speaking on the margins of the two-day Ukraine Recovery conference in London, Cleverly said the UK was “very, very supportive” of Ukraine being able to join Nato without the usual need for it to meet the conditions set out in a Nato membership action plan (Map). The French foreign minister, Catherine Colonna, was more cautious but said circumstances had changed since 2008 when Ukraine was...

Ukrainian missiles struck the Chonhar road bridge connecting Crimea with Russian-held parts of the southern Kherson region overnight, forcing traffic to be diverted to a different route, Russian-appointed officials said on Thursday. The so-called "gate to Crimea", known by Russians with a different spelling as the Chongar Bridge, is one of a handful of links between Crimea - which Moscow annexed from Ukraine in 2014 - and mainland Ukraine. It is on a route used by the Russian military to move between Crimea and other parts of Ukraine under its control. Kyiv says it wants to retake Crimea and drive...

Russia is funneling "significant" resources into protecting its control of the annexed Crimean peninsula as Ukraine's counteroffensive makes further gains, according to the U.K. government. Russia is putting "significant effort" into building defensive lines in rear areas in southern Ukraine, the British Defense Ministry said on Wednesday. Moscow is focusing on areas on the way to the Crimean peninsula, the U.K. government added. Moscow's military command likely believes Kyiv's fighters are "capable of directly assaulting Crimea," the government department said in a daily intelligence update posted to social media.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s recent adamance about Ukrainian forces’ early success in the country’s highly anticipated counteroffensive is clashing with mounting evidence that Russia’s invading forces are taking new ground. “We have no lost positions,” Zelenskyy stressed in his nightly video address on Sunday. “In some areas, our warriors are moving forward. In some areas, they are defending their positions and resisting the occupiers' assaults and intensified attacks.” But, he concluded, “We have no lost positions. Only liberated ones. They have only losses.” Zelenskyy’s positive assessment aligns with the need of any embattled government to maintain national morale and to affirm...

The Pentagon said Tuesday that it overestimated the value of the weapons it has sent to Ukraine by $6.2 billion over the past two years — about double early estimates — resulting in a surplus that will be used for future security packages. Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said a detailed review of the accounting error found that the military services used replacement costs rather than the book value of equipment that was pulled from Pentagon stocks and sent to Ukraine. She said final calculations show there was an error of $3.6 billion in the current fiscal year and $2.6 billion...

Ukrainian soldiers reach limit on how much BS from Kiev they can tolerate...

Wyatt from Defense Politics - ASIA joins the boys at The Duran [Alex Christoforou in Nicosia and Alexander Mercouris in London] to discuss the summer-fall-winter-spring offensive in the Ukraine. 1:44:13 long video [1 hour and 44 minutes]

Tokyo looks for workaround to help Kyiv’s counteroffensive despite curbs on weapons exports ... Japan is in talks to provide artillery shells to the U.S. to bolster stocks for Ukraine’s counteroffensive against Russia—a pivot for a country that has long curbed exports of lethal weapons. A global hunt for artillery shells for Ukraine has intensified as Kyiv presses to regain territory in its southeast from Russian forces. The U.S. has sent more than two million 155mm artillery rounds to Ukraine since Russia’s invasion began in February 2022, and Washington has been pressing its allies to contribute supplies. On Tuesday, the...

VIDEO AT LINK..................... The White House on Tuesday repeatedly dismissed the 17 tapes allegedly showing Joe Biden and Hunter Biden speaking with a foreign national about a bribery scheme. A reporter from the New York Post asked the President about the existence of the tapes while walking through the White House. Biden appeared to laugh and shake his head before walking away in silence. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre dismissed a question about the tapes at Tuesday’s briefing, saying the allegations about the President and his family are “malarkey” — repeating what Biden said Thursday about the House Oversight...

The submerged skull and helmet of a Nazi soldier exposed after the collapse of the Kakhovka dam in Ukraine. When the Kakhovka dam was bombed by the Russians last week, it caused the draining of one of Europe’s biggest water reservoirs, revealing submerged bodies and military equipment, a reminder of the clash between the Nazis and their Ukrainian collaborators and the retreating Soviet Red Army. In 1941, as Nazi troops swept through Soviet Ukraine, Josef Stalin’s agents blew up the hydroelectric dam in the southern city of Zaporizhzhya, to slow the Nazi advance. The explosion flooded villages along the banks...

Washington reporters have been given the green light to go after Joe Biden. Joe Biden on Tuesday afternoon walked by a group of reporters after delivering remarks at the Chiefs of Mission reception in the East Room. A reporter ambushed Joe Biden and asked him about the Ukraine bribery scheme alleging he received a $5 million bribe from Mykola Zlochevsky, the Ukrainian oligarch who runs Burisma Holdings. ..... Snip..... New York Post reporter Steven Nelson surprised Joe Biden when he asked about the Ukraine-bribery scheme and audio recordings of him and his son Hunter. “Are there tapes that you accepted...

Good Morning Freedom Lovers! The offensive would "never happened" but yet "failed completely" continues.

Vladimir Putin is facing fresh woes after one of his generals was killed in a missile attack. Major-general Sergey Goryachev, 52, died during fighting in the Zaporizhzhia region, which has recently seen major action in Ukraine’s counter-offensive. Goryachev was chief of staff of the Russian 35th Combined Arms Army and is one of 11 generals to be officially classed as casualties in the war – the first this year. Pro-Moscow war correspondent Yuri Kotenok wrote yesterday: ‘War takes the best. The army lost one of the brightest and most effective military leaders, who combined the highest professionalism with personal courage....

A senior commander of Russia’s Chechen forces fighting in Ukraine has been wounded, Russia’s Defense Ministry television channel Zvezda reported on Wednesday, citing the press service of the State Duma lower house of parliament. Adam Delimkhanov, who is a member of the Duma as well as commander of the Chechen division of the Russian national guard, is widely seen as the Caucasian region’s second most senior official, behind Ramzan Kadyrov. In a message posted on Telegram, Kadyrov wrote that he could not contact Delimkhanov, and asked for help finding his “dear brother.” -snip- Ukrainian media had, earlier on Wednesday, reported...

To me this is a totally insane idea, it seems this is how insane ideas in Washington get started, some "expert" at a think tank writes a column advocating a position, that column gets picked up and spreads around Washington, other "experts" start to agree with the premise, the Biden Administration initially says this will never happen only to agree to implement the idea at some point in the future. Nearly every advanced weapons system we've provided Ukraine was initially denied by the Biden Administration only to later agree to provide it, HIMARS, Abrams Tanks, F-16 fighter jets, Patriot Air...

Ukraine's long-awaited attempt to take back the territories in the east and south of the country, occupied by Russia for the past 18 months, is now in full swing. A key figure in planning and executing this operation is Gen Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine's 49-year-old commander-in-chief. Little known until recently, his popularity now rivals that of President Volodymyr Zelensky. Gen Zaluzhny, or "our Valera" as friends and old classmates like to call him, was appointed commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian military in July 2021. (snip) Within seven months he was leading Ukraine's defence against full-scale invasion. (snip) The commander-in-chief became a national...

The speaker of Russia's parliament said a senior Chechen commander was alive and well on Wednesday, following reports he had been killed or wounded in Ukraine. The commander, Adam Delimkhanov, is a member of parliament as well as heading the Chechen division of the Russian national guard. He is widely seen as the Caucasian region's second most senior official after its leader Ramzan Kadyrov. "I've just spoken to him. He's alive and well. Not only that, but he wishes you all good health," Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of the Duma, told lawmakers.

House Democrats this week dismissed allegations President Biden improperly accepted money from a Ukrainian company during the Obama administration, but defended his administration for charging his likely 2024 rival, former President Donald Trump, with crimes. "I've seen a lot of allegations against President Biden by MAGA Republicans, but the truth is they've amounted to nothing. … I don't think they have a lot of credibility. But, look, they can knock themselves out," Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., said when asked about whether there should be an investigation into the Biden allegations. "All I want them to do is pay America's bills,...

The Myth Of A Russian 'Resistance' Against The Kremlin June 13, 2023 | By Dr. Vladislav L. Inozemtsev*Russia | MEMRI Daily Brief No. 489Recently, the Russia-Ukraine war was marked by continuous attacks on Russian territory, most remarkably in the Belgorod[1] and Bryansk regions.[2] Since the Ukrainian leadership supposedly promised its Western allies that it would not trespass the Russian border and would limit its actions to the occupied territories only,[3] several transborder incursions were attributed to the Russian battalions, which were first established with the Ukrainian army as early as in 2015.Although there are quite a lot of ethnic Russians...

Almost 15 percent of the Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicles (IFVs) sent to Ukraine by Joe Biden’s government have been destroyed, according to open-source intelligence analysts. Oryx, a Netherlands-based operation which has been tracking materiel losses on both sides of the conflict through visual confirmation, puts the number of destroyed Bradleys at 16, per CNN. The news comes as Zelensky has officially confirmed his forces have commenced major counter-offensive operations. Friendly news outlets are so far reporting only “small” gains, however, with four villages in the Donetsk region believed to have been captured as of the time of writing. In addition...