Free Republic

U.S. gave Ukrainian forces detailed intelligence about exactly when and where Russian missiles and bombs were intended to strike, prompting Ukraine to move air defenses and aircraft out of harm’s way, current and former U.S. officials told NBC News. That near real-time intelligence-sharing also paved the way for Ukraine to shoot down a Russian transport plane carrying hundreds of troops in the early days of the war, the officials say, helping repel a Russian assault on a key airport near Kyiv. It was part of what American officials call a massive and unprecedented intelligence-sharing operation with a non-NATO partner that...

On Sunday, Russia entered the third month of its invasion of Ukraine, with no sign of an end in sight. Despite severe pushback in the shape of the toughest economic sanctions ever imposed on a country, the ruble, the Russian currency, appears to be strengthening.What’s become evident is that, despite an enormously broad package of sanctions on Russia’s government and oligarchs, as well as an exodus of foreign enterprises, the moves are mostly ineffectual if foreign nationals continue to consume Russian oil and natural gas, which supports the ruble.On Feb. 24, the first day of the invasion, the ruble traded...

This one is really amazing, starts about 4:40 into the videohttps://youtu.be/dUask2cfFh4?t=283 This one should end any debate as to what is happening over there.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Russia’s military capabilities should be degraded after he and Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky and announced more U.S. military aid to the country. “We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine,” Mr. Austin said Monday after the highest-level visit of U.S. officials to Kyiv since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24. Mr. Blinken said: “Russia is failing, Ukraine is succeeding.” In what could be a significant escalation of the conflict on Monday,...

Russia has stumbled again. Its southern offensive, the second phase of the Ukraine war, has failed to be the "biggest tank war since World War II," as some analysts were predicting. Instead, Russia's ground forces have shown the same lackluster performance on the ground, unable to break through anywhere. The towns and villages of the south, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Friday, "are the places where the fate of this war and the future of our state is being decided, now." Experts point to May 9th—Victory Day in Russia commemorating the surrender of Nazi Germany in 1945—as the next decisive...

Former Army Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman said Saturday that former President Donald Trump "bears enormous burden of responsibility" for the Russia-Ukraine war. Vindman, who testified in the House during the first impeachment proceedings against Trump in 2019, appeared on MSNBC when he was asked about how the situation in Ukraine ties to the actions of the Trump administration. "What is happening on the other side of the world in Ukraine, a country from which you hail, is directly tied to the attacks on democracy that you witnessed in the White House while you were the director for European affairs at...

Fox News host Mark Levin explained what "America first" means to him, Sunday, by debunking the notion that our founders were "nationalists." The "Life, Liberty & Levin" host said how the word "nationalist" cannot be found in our founding documents because the founders and framers "believed in Americanism," guided by "natural law and rights," not nationalism" or "populism." "The Tenth Amendment rejects nationalism. It’s federalism. Talks about state sovereignty. Why do we have a Ninth Amendment? Have you read that one lately? It talks about individual liberty, it is in my view, a reflection of the Declaration. They put it...

Lt. Col. Allen West on Life, Liberty & Levin Sunday, April 24 at 8pm eastern on Fox News. 'It is very sickening' to witness the Russia Ukraine war.

After two months of fighting, Russia has now lost 873 tanks, 179 aircraft, 21,800 troops... and the pride of its navy is lying on the bottom of the Black Sea Ukraine's land forces released new figures today, suggesting more than 21,000 Russian troops have died A total of 873 tanks are said to have been destroyed, along with 2,238 armoured vehicles and 333 aircraft The flagship of Russia's Black Sea Fleet - the Moskva - sank last week after being hit by a Ukrainian missile Putin's troops pulled back from Kyiv in late March, suffering low morale amid stiff resistance...

The poster Simplicius76 has a large number of videos of the war, most from a Russian point-of-view.

Defeated generals are sent home in disgrace, but it is most unusual to dismiss victorious ones. Kosovo: NATO’s war against Serbia ended in victory. Gen. Wesley K. Clark, was very much the victorious general of that war. So why was Clark fired? Officially, he wasn’t fired, but merely asked to step aside early. Clark was caught. The entire structure of the U.S. armed forces is built on: classic war, fought by Army infantry, Marines storming ashore, armored forces, artillery, attack helicopters, fighter-bombers that dive low to attack the enemy, as well as strike aircraft and bombers that operate more safely...

Russian forces on Saturday resumed attacks on a steel plant sheltering an estimated 1,000 citizens and the last remaining Ukrainian fighters in Mariupol, Ukrainian officials said. The move marks an apparent departure from Russian President Vladimir Putin’s order earlier in the week not to attack the Ukrainian holdout in the strategic port city, but to instead block off the facility from supplies to force the Ukrainians to surrender. Oleksiy Arestovich, an advisor to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said in a briefing that Russian forces had targeted the Azovstal steel plant in air strikes and were attempting to storm it. On...

As many as 9,000 Ukraine civilians could have been executed by Russian forces and buried in mass graves outside Mariupol, according to local leaders. Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boychenko revealed the grim development Thursday and called the site of the atrocities in the nearby village of Manhush “the new Babi Yar,” a reference to the Ukrainian Holocaust site where tens of thousands of Jews were killed in World War II. “Then Hitler killed Jews, Roma and Slavs. And now Putin is destroying Ukrainians. He has already killed tens of thousands of civilians in Mariupol,” ....Meanwhile, Russia continued to shell humanitarian corridors...

Not publicized, but instead carefully hidden, is the systematic terrorizing, tracking down, and killing, of political opponents, which includes not only opposed politicians, but also investigative journalists who are digging too deeply — deeply enough to maybe jeopardize Ukrainian President Volodmyr Zelensky’s staying in office. All of this was solidly documented by Dan Cohen of Mint Press News, in their stunning April 14th article, “Testimony Reveals Zelensky’s Secret Police Plot to ‘Liquidate’ Opposition Figure Anatoly Shariy: Accounts from the Ukrainian SBU’s torture prison reveal Zelensky’s plot to assassinate exiled opposition figure and leading journalist Anatoly Shariy.” That article (which on...

One of Poland’s most prominent journalists, Konstanty Gebert, said he is quitting what many regard as the country’s newspaper of record after it demanded that he describe Ukraine’s controversial Azov Battalion as “far-right” instead of “neo Nazi.” ...

RealPepeEscobar Twitter "MARIUPOL 1/3 THIS is going to be THE explosive story of the whole 404 saga, not the Bucha false flag. Yes, there's an array of NATO honchos still holed up with the Azov neo-Nazis in the bowels of Azovstal. Yet the key is what was going on in this underground 8 floors down." "MARIUPOL 2/3 Civilian prisoners of the "Biblioteka" at Mariupol airport said they were constantly threatened to be sent to a pit - from which they would never return. The "pit" may have been a NATO-run underground bio-lab at Azovstal. Avostal owner Akhmetov is freaking out."...

Who remembers when CNN, Fox News, and the rest of their cronies in corporate media opposed Neo-Nazis? In fact, calling a Trump supporter (or even President Trump himself) a Nazi was a common practice for regular guests of the most progressive news outlets, including CNN. But with Neo-Nazis making up large chunks of the Ukrainian military, everyone’s suddenly supposed to be okay with it. Here’s Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky acknowledging that the Neo-Nazi Azov Battalion has “fully integrated” with the Ukrainian military: Political commentators and newly anointed foreign policy experts on social media have pulled out every cliché, platitude, and...

Two Ukrainian Mi-8 helicopters were shot down in Mariupol. APA's Moscow correspondent reports that the statement came from Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov. According to him, in the morning of March 31, official Kyiv tried to evacuate the commanders of the Azov Regiment from Mariupol with two Mi-8 helicopters. The general said that "DNR forces" shot down a Ukrainian Mi-8 helicopter with the Stinger complex they seized. One of the helicopters crashed near the village of Rybatskoye. The second helicopter was damaged by a rocket, but flew into the sea, but crashed 20 kilometers off the coast....

"The battalion still operates as a relatively autonomous entity. It has been prominent in defending Mariupol in recent weeks, and its resistance has been widely praised by members of the government."

Ukrainian troops in Mariupol are taking ammunition off of Russian troops and smuggling in weapons to resupply and hold out against the Russian assault. Western officials in a briefing to reporters Tuesday said there is evidence of Ukrainian troops in Mariupol smuggling weapons into encircled areas for reinforcement as additional Russian troops close in. "Ukrainian forces, though remarkably adept at smuggling weapons into areas which are encircled, they are also largely being able to resupply their fighters by taking weapons, ammunition, off Russian soldiers in the city itself," Western officials told reporters in a briefing.