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The United States may begin training Ukrainian pilots to fly F-15 and F-16 fighter jets. "Ukrainian pilots are going to be taught to fly F-15 and F-16 fighters in the USA. This amendment to the bill on the U.S. defense budget for fiscal year 2023 was supported by the House of Representatives. It is planned to allocate $100 million for this," head of the Pesident’s Office of Ukraine Andriy Yermak wrote on the Telegram channel on Friday.

A petition in Ukraine calling for same-sex marriage to be legalised has gained enough signatures for the president to consider the proposal. The petition has more than 28,000 signatures, meaning President Volodymyr Zelensky now has 10 days to respond. Homosexuality is not illegal in Ukraine, but same-sex marriages and civil partnerships are not recognised. This has caused particular problems for LGBT people signing up for the military following Russia's invasion. For example, under Ukrainian law if someone in a same-sex relationship dies, their partner cannot collect their body or bury them. The online petition says: "At this time, every day...

Throughout his 20-plus year rule, Vladimir Putin has consolidated power through graft, intimidation, manipulation of the Russian legal system, and forcefully silencing critics. Putin’s ability to sustain subservience and loyalty to his authority is no small feat, especially in a political culture of ruthless power politics. His reputation as a master tactician abroad has also been carefully cultivated, if not exaggerated.

Temperatures would plunge in a bigger shift than the last Ice Age and crops would fail around the world after nuclear war erupted, a study has shown. The after-effects would be long-lasting with oceans taking hundreds of years to recover, and fishing devastated, the researchers warn. Professor Cheryl Harrison, of Louisiana State University, said: "It doesn't matter who is bombing whom. It can be India and Pakistan or NATO and Russia. Once the smoke is released into the upper atmosphere, it spreads globally and affects everyone." In all the simulated scenarios, nuclear firestorms would release soot and smoke into the...

Russia is being hit hard by Ukraine‘s Javelin anti-tank missiles. What makes this weapon so powerful? The U.S.-made FGM-148 Javelin is one of the premier portable anti-tank missile systems in the world. It’s also an expensive piece of kit, with each missile typically costing more than the targets it eliminates. However, corruption is the main problem that every country has to fight with and the Ukrainians are no different! The expensive javelins have allegedly found their way into the black market on the Internet. Telegram channels have repeatedly reported that military equipment is being sold by the Ukrainians. The sales...

The lower house of the Russian parliament will gather on July 15 for an extraordinary session, its council decided on Monday, just days after President Vladimir Putin warned that he had not even started to get serious in the war in Ukraine. Putin used a meeting with parliamentary leaders on Thursday to dare the United States and its allies to try to defeat Russia in Ukraine, which Russia invaded on Feb. 24. Parliamentary leaders all thanked Putin for his decisions.

It became known about the liquidation of the Russian colonel, commander of the 810th Marine Brigade of the Russian Army Sergey Kens. As Censor.NET informs, Colonel Anatoliy Shtirlitz announced this on Twitter. -In Kherson direction, Armed Forces of Ukraine destroyed two command posts of Russian army, - OC "South" -Armed Forces liquidated commander of Russian 49th Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade. PHOTO -Ukraine’s Armed Forces already eliminate 36,900 Russian invaders. INFOGRAPHICS. INFOGRAPHICS -Ukrainian soldiers liquidated Deputy Commander of 83rd Airborne Brigade of occupying Guards Lieutenant Colonel Slabtsov. PHOTO -Commander of 6th company of 57th motorized infantry brigade of Armed Forces of Russian...

Nova Kakhovka, Ukrainian troops destroyed the ammunition depot of the Russian Armed Forces The likely culprit is "HIMARS". Reports of AFU strikes on targets in Nova Kakhovka, Kherson region, using American-made HIMARS MLRS.

The unrecognized President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko may be preparing for a revolt by his military after they expressed disagreement with Russia's war against Ukraine. Local commandos called his decision on the possible dispatch of troops "suicide in its purest form." Senior officers of the fifth brigade of the Special Forces of the Armed Forces of the Republic of Belarus expressed this opinion in an open letter to the Belarusian leader, who is a close associate of Russian President Vladimir Putin. This is reported by Newsweek. "By entering the war against Ukraine, Belarus will be expelled from the community of...

The ongoing political and military standoff between Russia and the United States is the most recent indicator that Europe’s security and economic architecture must be transformed to harmonize European and Russian strategic interests. In other words, the path toward ending the war in Ukraine requires focusing on the security priorities of those who have the most to gain from a diplomatic solution — European nations, not the US. Peaceful co-existence is dependent upon successful negotiations among European capitals and Moscow. The war in Ukraine did not start on February 24, 2022, but has been ongoing since 2014. Between 2014 and...

The artillery duel in Ukraine’s east shows no signs of slowing as troops gobble through thousands of 155mm rounds every single day. A senior defense official told reporters in a background briefing on Friday that Ukrainian forces are firing some 3,000 155mm shells per day at Russian forces. The revelation came amid questioning on the latest tranche of weapons and ammunition being sent to Ukraine, including, for the first time 1,000 guided 155mm 'smart' shells. The official said despite the high usage rate, Ukrainian forces still have “substantial stores” of 155mm rounds and are far from running out with more...

Ukraine plans a "million-strong army" equipped with Nato weapons to retake the south of the country from occupying Russians, the defence minister says. Retaking the areas around the Black Sea coast was vital to the country's economy, Oleksii Reznikov said. However, the comments are more of a rallying cry than a concrete plan, says the BBC's Joe Inwood in Kyiv.

After some early hesitation over concerns the systems could be used by Ukrainian forces against Russian territory, reluctantly drawing the U.S. into the fight, Washington said it would initially send four Himars to Ukraine, and train Ukrainian forces to use them. These advanced systems are mobile launchers capable of striking targets from a maximum distance ranging from about 60 kilometers to nearly 500 kilometers depending on the type of ammunition used. “We needed to persuade them, to show them proof,” said Mr. Reznikov. “In the Izyum case, we were precise [in targeting] a Russian command center for aerial operations. It...

After more than four months of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, open-source data confirms that the Russian Armed Forces lost, at a minimum, over 830 tanks and 1,650 different types of armored vehicles (destroyed, damaged, abandoned or captured) as well as dozens of combat aircraft and helicopters and many other pieces of military equipment (Oryxspioenkop.com, accessed July 6). This data also does not count damaged but survived weapons systems that Russian troops were able to haul back to their bases; those systems will need a full overhaul before returning to the battlefield. Another issue Russia faces in Ukraine is a looming...

Russian forces are reportedly relying on Soviet-era munitions for certain tasks as the invasion of Ukraine labors on. The Russian government has, in recent weeks, increasingly ordered its forces in Ukraine to repurpose outdated anti-aircraft and anti-ship missiles for use on land-based targets, according to a Tuesday report from iNews. In Mykolaiv, a city in Southern Ukraine, six strikes over the last weekend have been attributed to Russian S-300 missiles, anti-aircraft munitions introduced roughly 40 years ago with a range of 75 miles. Two Kh-32 missiles, originally designed to sink aircraft carriers, were also credited with the strike on a...

Republican James E. Risch (Idaho) was in Ukraine, touring the country. He was escorted by Ukrainian forces because the State Department refused to provide him security once he crossed the Ukrainian border. He met with Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv, and came away with the conclusion that the current U.S. strategy has not properly adjusted to the latest phase of the fighting.Russian forces are pummeling Ukrainian civilian and military targets in the Donbas with their superior artillery. Ukrainian forces are still not receiving enough of the weapons that might give them the advantage — including long-range air defenses, longer-range artillery, heavy...

A court in Moscow has sentenced an opposition councillor to seven years in jail for criticising Russia’s military actions in Ukraine, the first prison sentence handed out under the new laws that restrict criticism of the war. Alexei Gorinov, a deputy at Moscow’s Krasnoselsky district council and trained lawyer, was arrested in April on charges of spreading “knowingly false information” about the Russian army. According to the authorities, Gorinov committed the offence when he and a fellow opposition deputy, Elena Kotenochkina, spoke out against the council’s proposal to hold a children’s drawing contest and a dancing festival despite the war...

Western policy elites that claim not to have seen this war coming -- after the Biden administration treated Ukraine as a de facto member of NATO during all of 2021, and after Russia had been saying for nearly a decade that it would not tolerate Ukraine as a US military bulwark on its border -- are just plain fools. If they really were this blind, they were unqualified for their jobs.Before the war started, as late as December of 2021, the Russians very probably would have settled the Ukraine problem by a declaration of permanent Ukrainian neutrality (i.e., no NATO...

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stormed off and headed home early after being snubbed by other diplomats at the G20 summit — who refused to take a group photo with him over his nation’s invasion of Ukraine. Foreign ministers who gathered in Bali, Indonesia, this week, did not pose for a traditional “family”-style group photo, after several of them reportedly refused to be pictured with Vladimir Putin’s chief envoy. The Japanese news agency Kyodo reported that US Secretary of State Antony Blinken led the photo-op boycott.

Cafes and restaurants are open and largely busy. It was in one of the latter that I met a senior Ukrainian government official who had contacted me, expressing approval for something I had said in the international media"You know, don't you, that this time next year, a Russian soldier could be sitting right where you are," he said after a brusque introduction. "We are losing this war." He is right. There were the great victories at Kyiv, Chernihiv and Kharkhiv. But with setbacks in Donetsk and Luhansk, the appalling realization is sinking in that this is likely to be a...