Free Republic

An audacious Ukrainian drone attack against multiple airbases across Russia is a humiliating security breach for Vladimir Putin that will doubtless trigger a furious response. Pro-Kremlin bloggers have described the drone assault - which Ukrainian security sources said hit more than 40 Russian warplanes - as "Russia's Pearl Harbor" in reference to the Japanese attack against the US in 1941 that prompted Washington to enter the Second World War. The Ukrainian operation - which used small drones smuggled into Russia, hidden in mobile sheds and launched off the back of trucks - also demonstrated how technology and imagination have transformed...

North Korean troops appear to have temporarily pulled back from the frontline in Russia after suffering heavy losses, a Ukrainian special forces commander has told Sky News. The commander, who goes by the codename "Puls", said Kim Jong Un's men were likely either learning lessons from mistakes made during their first, bloody clashes with Ukrainian soldiers, tending to their wounded or waiting for reinforcements. "I think they'll be back soon," he said, speaking at a secret base in northeastern Ukraine. Interviews with several Ukrainian troops reveal remarkable details about how the North Koreans have been fighting since they arrived on...

Russia's ability to outmatch Ukraine with artillery barrages on the battlefield has significantly reduced to just 1.5 Russian rounds for every Ukrainian shell fired back, Western officials have said. This compares with Russian forces launching at least five times as many artillery rounds as Ukraine could in the war previously - with the ratio at times much higher even than that. The Western officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, put the levelling out down to a "wide variety of factors". These factors include limitations in Russia's defence production lines, difficulties with transporting more rounds to the frontline by rail,...