Free Republic

This morning explosions have occurred near the Machulishchy air base in Belarus. As a result, Russia’s A-50 airborne early warning and control aircraft might have been hit.

A group of nearly 100 Polish police officers has returned from an operation – kept secret until now – to demine areas in Ukraine won back from Russian occupation. The team was welcomed home by President Andrzej Duda at the presidential palace, where he awarded them medals for bravery. Working in the Kyiv region, the Polish group cleared more than 342,000 square metres of land and over 17.5 kilometres of roads. The Polish officers safely removed around 2,000 dangerous objects, including mines, grenades and grenade launchers.

Poland has confirmed delivering the first Leopard tanks to Ukraine on Friday as Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki visited Kyiv to mark the one-year anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. At a meeting of the National Security Council in Warsaw, President Andrzej Duda said: "The prime minister couldn't be here, he went to Kyiv to bring Leopard tanks which are the first batch delivered to Ukraine." Shortly after Berlin approved the export of the German-made battle tanks, Ukrainian crews started training on the Leopard 2 tanks in Poland.

“Nothing critical [was diagnosed], the president’s condition closer to nighttime was stable, he can get around on his own, with pain in the coccyx area while sitting being the only thing that bothers him,” it added.

The Russian president, 70, was supposedly helped to a sofa by bodyguards as his personal doctors rushed to assist him.

Hello, As several months ago many Freepers seemed convinced that the main reason behind the war in Ukraine were the US Nazi bio weapon labs... I think there were a dozen of them over there according to info posted here... I wonder if there are any updates related to those labs ? Has President Putin managed to shut them down ? Or are they still operational ?

May 1 (Reuters) - One person was injured in a fire on a Russian defence ministry facility in the southern Belgorod region bordering Ukraine, Belgorod region governor said on Sunday. Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said a local resident suffered minor injuries and his life was not in danger. He also said that seven homes had been damaged as a result of the incident. There were no comments from the defence ministry and it was not immediately clear what caused the fire. Reuters was unable to independently verify the statements. Images posted to social media showed a large funnel of smoke rising...

VLADIMIR Putin's top military commander has been wounded in Ukraine and was sent back to Russia just days after he arrived to take charge of the war. The Chief of the Russian General Staff Valery Gerasimov had been sent by Putin to take personal control of his push to grab territory in Donbas and eastern Ukraine.

This was confirmed by the Ukrainian presidential adviser Aleksey Arestovich and, as he explained, there were dozens of Russian soldiers on the site. Two generals were reportedly killed in the operation

An op-ed published by Russian state media on Sunday claimed that "Ukronazism" is a greater threat to the world than Hitler's Nazi Party and called for a complete Russian takeover of Ukrainian territory and culture, as Ukrainian forces continued to push back Russian invaders on Monday. Timofey Sergeytsev claimed in the op-ed published on RIA Novosti that the "Nazism" in Ukraine is "disguised as a desire for 'independence' and a 'European' (Western, pro-American) path of 'development' (in reality - to degradation)." He also wrote that the "majority" of Ukrainians are "passive Nazis, accomplices of Nazism," saying that they "are also...

A Russian army commander has been killed by a group of demoralised soldiers fed up with the scale of losses during the invasion of Ukraine, Western officials have said. The commander of the 37th rifle brigade, named by officials as Colonel Medvechek, is understood to have been run over by one of his own soldiers who had grown frustrated by his unit's heavy losses.

LONDON, March 21 (Reuters) - Local officials in Russia's Belgorod region bordering Ukraine have set up collection points where citizens can drop off donations of socks, medicine and tinned food for Russian troops fighting in Ukraine, according to messages from the officials seen by Reuters.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has hailed the country's "special operation" in Ukraine at a rally marking the anniversary of the 2014 annexation of Crimea. Moscow's Luzhniki stadium, which hosted the World Cup final in 2018, was packed for the rally, with patriot songs, and crowds waving Russian flags and shouting: "Russia! Russia! Russia!" Images and video from the stadium showed a sea of red, blue and white flags and banners, with one reading: "For Putin!" Mr Putin gave a speech from a stage at the venue - after discussing Moscow's military operation in Ukraine with his security council on Friday,...

Russian troops have launched an attack on a theatre in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol where as many as 1,200 civilians including women, children and the elderly, were taking refuge.

Video at the link.

Mariupol, Ukraine: More than 2,100 residents of Ukraine's besieged port city of Mariupol have been killed since hostilities began, the local authorities said Sunday. "As of today, 2,187 Mariupol residents have died from attacks by Russia," the city council posted on Telegram.

Since February 24, when Russia invaded Ukraine, 1.68 million people have crossed the Polish-Ukrainian border into Poland, the Border Guard (SG) tweeted on Sunday morning. The SG wrote on Twitter that, on Saturday, Border Guard officers carried out 79,800 border checks on people entering Poland from Ukraine. The Border Guard also said that the number of arrivals by 7:00 a.m., on Sunday, reached 16,800 people.

DRAMATIC footage shows the moment a column of Russian tanks is destroyed by a Ukrainian ambush near Kyiv. The attack reportedly claimed the life of yet another senior Russian commander as Vladimir Putin’s forces press in on the capital city.

British intelligence services helped to monitor the Russian invasion of Ukraine by tracking the soldiers' use of social networking sites – including the gay dating app Grindr.

A squad of Chechen special forces 'hunters' has been unleashed in Ukraine to detain or kill a set of specific Ukrainian officials. Each soldier was reportedly given a special 'deck of cards' with Ukrainian officials' photos and descriptions on them, a Moscow Telegram channel with links to the security establishment reported. The list is of officials and security officers suspected of 'crimes' by the Russian Investigative Committee, the report added.