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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky declared that he will not participate in any peace negotiations with Vladimir Putin until Russian forces have left the occupied Donbas region and the Crimean Peninsula. Casting doubt on the prospect of bringing the conflict in Ukraine to an end in the foreseeable future, President Zelensky stated that his country will not entertain a diplomatic solution until Ukraine’s 1991 borders are re-established, meaning that Russia would have to retreat from its heavily entrenched positions in the Donbas and Crimea.

Many leaders in the West now are pushing the propaganda theme of an inevitable stalemate in the Ukraine war. In other words, Ukraine will fight Russia to a stand still. Well, that’s the delusional hope. Don’t take my word for it. Peruse these recent headlines:America Must Plan for a Stalemate in Ukraine (New York Magazine)Ukraine trying to end battlefield stalemate in what may be … (AP News)Opinion | Ukraine must seize opportunity from Wagner … (The Washington Post)Truce or a bloody stalemate? It all rides on Ukraine’s spring … (The Guardian)What planet do these folks inhabit? A stalemate means that...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said he is concerned about the delay in the schedule for training Ukrainian pilots to fly Western F-16 fighter jets — urgently needed by Ukraine as it fights to eject Russian invaders from its territory.The Ukrainian leader was speaking during a joint press conference with visiting Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez in Kyiv on July 1, answering questions about the schedule of F-16 deliveries to Ukraine."I have the same questions as you do for our esteemed partners," Zelenskyy said.“Ukraine can get the F-16s. We have agreed, we have pressed, and we have a coalition of...

Though many Americans likely believe that US dollars allocated for Ukraine are spent directly on supplies for the war effort, the lead author of this report, Heather Kaiser, conducted a thorough review of Washington’s budget for the 2022 and 2023 fiscal year and discovered that is far from the case.

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...

The Biden administration on Tuesday announced that the U.S. would send a $325 million weapons package to Ukraine after the country earlier this month launched a counter-offensive in the war against Russia.Driving the news: The latest aid comes as Russian missile strikes hit the south and east of the country, Axios' Dave Lawler writes.Ukraine claims to have liberated at least seven villages since launching the counter-offensive.But those gains appear to have come at a heavy cost in terms of casualties and equipment.By the numbers: The aid package includes 15 Bradley infantry fighting vehicles and 10 Stryker armored personnel carriers, CBS...

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...

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...

Ukraine's much-anticipated counteroffensive has finally begun. The Ukrainians are armed with Western weapons, including tanks and armored vehicles, but they are facing tough Russian defenses. The initial phases of this operation may be the most dangerous and costly, war experts say.The Ukrainian counteroffensive has begun, kicking off a particularly dangerous time for Ukraine's armed forces, even with its newly acquired arsenal of Western-made tanks, armored vehicles, and other weaponry that has been pouring in over months."Amidst a highly complex operational picture, heavy fighting continues along multiple sectors of the front," the British defense ministry said in a Thursday update, noting...

Ukraine's Major General Andrey Kovalchuk, the former commander of November's Kherson Counteroffensive, tells The Post how he intended to blow up the dam. "Kovalchuk considered flooding the river," The Post writes. "The Ukrainians, he said, even conducted a test strike with a HIMARS launcher on one of the floodgates at the Nova Kakhovka dam, making three holes in the metal to see if the Dnieper's water could be raised enough to stymie Russian crossings but not flood nearby villages. The test was a success, Kovalchuk said, but the step remained a last resort.

Russian defence chiefs have been mocked for claiming to destroy a German-supplied lethal Leopard 2 tank - when in fact they had blown up tractors in Ukrainian fields. The ridiculing was led by head of Wagner private army Yevgeny Prigozhin, who sees it as yet more evidence of blundering incompetence by Putin's defence chiefs and army. The Russian defence ministry hailed 'footage of the destruction of foreign armoured vehicles, including Leopard tanks'. But in reality, military analysts say the footage showed Russia blasting farm vehicles with a missile fired from a Ka-52 Alligator attack helicopter. In the video, a Russian...

Ukraine says Russia is shelling flooded civilian areas around Kherson even as efforts to evacuate thousands from rising waters unleashed by the bombing of a major hydroelectric dam threatens lives. A spokesman for the Ukrainian government said they were being careful not to shell civilians in flooded areas south of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power dam on the Dnipro River towards Kherson, and that claims their forces were impeding evacuations are Russian falsehoods. Army southern command press officer Natalia Humeniuk said, per Kyiv, that “…[Russia’s] shelling continues.

Moscow said Wednesday that a Ukrainian "sabotage" group had blown up the Togliatti-Odesa pipeline that Russia used to export ammonia before the start of its 15-month offensive. "A Ukrainian sabotage and reconnaissance group blew up the Togliatti-Odesa ammonia pipeline" near the village of Masyutovka in the northeastern Kharkiv region on Monday evening, the Russian Defense Ministry said, adding that civilians had been injured. Footage posted on social media showed white smoke coming out of the Togliatti-Odesa pipeline, which is the world's longest ammonia pipeline and stretches roughly 2,500 kilometers.

It looks like the much-anticipated Ukrainian spring offensive may finally be getting underway. Yesterday, Russia repelled Ukrainian attacks in five places. It’s very early — these were likely probing attacks looking to detect weak points in Russian defensive positions — but these attacks were much heavier than previous probing attacks. We’ll have to see what happens. When the main offensive comes, it’s very possible that Ukrainian forces will break through in certain areas. They might capture some territory (with plenty of U.S./NATO-supplied reconnaissance and intelligence to assist them), but it’s unlikely that their gains will be sustainable. The offensive will...

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has aided a Ukrainian intelligence effort to censor social media users and obtain their personal information, leaked emails reveal. In March 2022, an FBI Special Agent sent Twitter a list of accounts on behalf of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), Ukraine’s main intelligence agency. The accounts, the FBI wrote, “are suspected by the SBU in spreading fear and disinformation.” In an attached memo, the SBU asked Twitter to remove the accounts and hand over their user data.