Free Republic

Thank you USA BTW, there's no shortage of pipeline capacity for taking gas from Russia to Western Europe, including Germany. Nordstream's only logic was for Putin to be able to blackmail or wage war on Eastern Europe with impunity. All Ukrainian and Baltic sea states have opposed Nordstream's construction for 20 years. Now $20 billion of scrap metal lies at the bottom of the sea, another cost to Russia of its criminal decision to invade Ukraine. Someone, @MFA_Russia, did a special maintenance operation.

Russia's parliament on Tuesday approved a bill to toughen punishments for a host of crimes such as desertion, damage to military property and insubordination if they are committed during military mobilisation or combat situations. The bill, passed in its second and third readings on Tuesday by the lower house of parliament, the Duma, comes amid debate inside Russia about a possible mobilisation

Humiliation for Putin's troops is continuing as they begin to abandon the major city of Melitopol in the face of Kyiv's lightning counter-offensive. The city's pre-occupation mayor said that Russian troops were pulling out of the area in Ukraine's southern Zaporizhzhia region. Mayor Ivan Fedorov wrote on Telegram that Russian troops were heading towards Moscow-annexed Crimea. He said columns of military equipment were reported at a checkpoint in Chonhar, a village marking the boundary between the Crimean peninsula and the Ukrainian mainland.

The strategy behind Ukraine’s rapid military gains in recent days began to take shape months ago during a series of intense conversations between Ukrainian and U.S. officials about the way forward in the war against Russia, according to American officials. The counteroffensive — revised this summer from its original form after urgent discussions between senior U.S. and Ukrainian officials — has succeeded beyond most predictions. Ukrainian forces have devastated Russian command and control, and appear poised to capitalize on their advances in the northeast of the country and in another campaign in the south.