Free Republic

On Friday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” White House National Security Communications Adviser John Kirby stated that Hamas doesn’t care about the Palestinian people and if they did, “they’d lay down their arms, they’d step aside, they’d release those hostages,” but they’ve refused hostage release offers. Kirby also stated that there have been too many civilians killed in Gaza and the number of civilian casualties “needs to be zero.”

Massachusetts AIr National Guardsman Jack Teixeira, accused of classified document leak. CREDIT: Simon Ateba, TwitterThe big story Thursday was the arrest of 21-year-old Jack Teixeira, a member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard who allegedly leaked more than 100 pages of classified documents that exposed extremely sensitive information from the Pentagon regarding Ukraine, Russia, China, Israel, and documents produced by the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency.That story changed markedly through the day, though, and the sparse information we have about Teixeira raised major questions about how he could have possibly had access to such a wide-ranging tranche...

The number of civilian casualties in Gaza has been at the center of international attention since the start of the war. The main source for the data has been the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry, which now claims more than 30,000 dead, the majority of which it says are children and women. Recently, the Biden administration lent legitimacy to Hamas’ figure. When asked at a House Armed Services Committee hearing last week how many Palestinian women and children have been killed since Oct. 7, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said the number was “over 25,000.” The Pentagon quickly clarified that the...

You may believe that Israel’s response to October 7 is disproportionate. You may even believe that, on some level, the IDF is guilty of war crimes. But to accuse Israel of committing genocide is as preposterous as it is scandalous. Yet the word “genocide” is virtually ubiquitous these days, the most common description of Israel’s allegedly abominable acts.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is urging women to have as many as eight children as the number of dead Russian soldiers continues to rise in his war with Ukraine, worsening the country's population crisis. Addressing the World Russian People's Council in Moscow on Tuesday, Putin said the country must return to a time when large families were the norm. "Many of our grandmothers and great-grandmothers had seven, eight, or even more children," Putin said. "Let us preserve and revive these excellent traditions. Large families must become the norm, a way of life for all of Russia's people. The family is...

In the ongoing brutality of the Israel-Palestine conflict and the Israeli Occupation of Palestine, the loss of civilian lives is an undeniable tragedy. Yet, when we dissect the numbers and delve into the narratives surrounding these casualties, a troubling pattern emerges. The concern for civilian lives appears to waver, leaning disproportionately towards one side. It's a disconcerting revelation that prompts us to question the consistency of our empathy when it comes to human suffering. According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), from 2008 to September 19, 2023, the conflict has claimed the lives of...

The Ukrainian Army lost up to 4,855 servicemen last week, TASS reports, as its counter-offensive inches forward in Southern Ukraine. Last week, the Ukrainian forces lost 1,490 fighters in the Donetsk area, 1,180 servicemen in the South Donetsk area, 820 in the Zaporozhye area, 665 in the Kupyansk area, 485 in the Krasny Liman area and 215 in the Kherson area, TASS reports, based on the figures of the Russian Defense Ministry. On Saturday, Aug. 26, the Ukrainian Army lost a total of 785 casualties, according to the Russian Defense Ministry, which claims to have repelled five attacks by the...

A joint investigation carried out by two media organizations and a professor at a German university has offered what may be the most accurate estimate yet of the number of Russians killed and injured in the first 15 months of the war in Ukraine.Analyzing existing reports about published obituaries, mortality data from the Federal State Statistics Service, and extensive records from the National Probate Registry, we estimate that between 40,000 and 55,000 Russian men under the age of 50 died fighting in Ukraine by May 27, 2023. When factoring in the number of men wounded so seriously that they did...

In a rare admission, Russian President Vladimir Putin acknowledged Friday that Russia is sustaining “significant losses” in the war on Ukraine. “In recent days, we have seen significant losses in Ukraine, they exceed the classical figure,” he said, according to the Kremlin. The Russian president also confessed that Russian forces were dealing with artillery problems, adding in his remarks that “Yes, we still do not have enough of these modern weapons, but the defense industry, the country's military-industrial complex is developing rapidly.” The dispirited comments about Moscow’s prospects in the war come just as Ukraine has launched a series of...

The Biden administration estimates that since December, Russia has suffered 100,000 casualties, including more than 20,000 killed. Among those killed, nearly half were believed to be soldiers from the private military company Wagner Group, which is heavily involved in the grinding fight for Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, White House national security council spokesman John Kirby said Monday.

Russia acknowledged on Monday that scores of its troops were killed in one of the Ukraine war's deadliest strikes, drawing demands from nationalist bloggers for commanders to be punished for housing soldiers alongside an ammunition dump. Russia's defence ministry said 63 soldiers had died in the fiery blast which destroyed a temporary barracks in a former vocational college in Makiivka, twin city of the Russian-occupied regional capital of Donetsk. It said the accommodation had been hit by four rockets fired from U.S.-made HIMARS launchers, claiming two rockets had been shot down. Kyiv said the Russian death toll was in the...

Ukraine’s First Lady’s message to Britons facing crippling energy bill hikes and a cost of living crisis is that while they might be “counting pennies”, her county is counting casualties. “There is no comparison to the suffering of people here, but at home in the United Kingdom, as you acknowledge, people are facing very painful choices because of the soaring cost of energy that’s going to make things very tough for people,” said BBC presenter Laura Kuenssberg in an interview with President Volodymyr Zelensky’s wife, First Lady Olena Zelenska.

In a now deleted VK post, the pro-Kremlin media outlet Readovka claims that Russia’s Defense Ministry stated at a “closed briefing” that it’s lost 13,414 soldiers in Ukraine *plus* another 7,000 who are missing. 116 sailors killed aboard the Moskva, with 100+ still missing.

Russia suffered major losses during the special military operation in Ukraine, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov admitted, speaking live on Sky News on Thursday. "We have significant losses of troops. And it's a huge tragedy for us," he said.

The Russian tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda reports that, according to the Russian MoD's figures, the Russian Armed Forces have sustained 9,861 killed in action and 16,153 wounded in action in Ukraine. A shocking figure.

Vladimir Putin has declared that all military deaths will be classified as state secrets not just in times of war but also in peace – a move that activists worry might further discourage the reporting of Russian soldiers’ deaths in Ukraine.The Russian president has amended a decree to extend the list of state secrets to include information on casualties during special operations when war has not been declared, among other changes...Rights advocate Valentina Melnikova, secretary of the Union of Soldiers’ Mothers Committees, said the decree simply legalised the common practice of withholding information on all military losses, which had been...

Editor’s Note: Lawfare’s Board of Directors has published a post regarding this article and our editorial standards here. In the United States, the latest Iranian protests have sparked a kind of debate in which we argue fervently about whether the U.S. should tweet its support or just shut up. At the risk of making the Trump administration look moderate, I think we can choose between more than waving our hands and sitting on them. Remember, when the Iranian regime decided it didn’t like U.S. activities in Iraq, it found considerably more direct ways to express its disapproval. It just started...

Two explosions, one just outside the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul and another at the nearby Baron Hotel, caused several casualties Thursday. The attacks came less than a day after the U.S. Embassy warned U.S. citizens to get out of the area. Here’s what we know so far: The explosion outside the Kabul airport is “definitely believed” to have been carried out by the Islamic State group, a U.S. official told The Associated Press. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the Thursday attacks were carried out by two suicide bombers and gunmen. Pentagon spokesman John...

Wuhan Corona Virus (COVID19) is a legitimate health concern, but it is no cause for panic or irrational hysteria. Yes, follow commonsense practices for hygiene, take care of yourself. Seek medical help if necessary. Do NOT surrender to fear. Fear is our biggest enemy. At the moment in the U.S., we have 32,356 Coronavirus cases, 414 deaths and 178 recovered. In Italy the country that is the country that is hit the hardest so far we have 59,138 Coronavirus cases, 5,476 deaths and 7,024 recovered. By contrast, China has almost twice as many cases, 81,250, but 3,253 fatalities. From the...

Kurdish fighters of the YPG in Afrin, northwest Syria. Photo: ARA News Syrian Kurdish fighters of the People’s Protection Units (YPG) on Thursday shelled a Turkish army base near Afrin district northwest of Aleppo, military sources reported.“In response to the Turkish aggression against our people in Afrin, the YPG targeted headquarters of Turkey’s military with heavy artillery,” a YPG spokesman told ARA News. At least one Turkish soldier was killed and several others wounded in the bombardment.“The clashes continued between the YPG and Turkish troops over the past few days after the latter entered Afrin countryside in a bid to...