Free Republic

Germany has promised to transfer to Ukraine 100 Soviet-made tanks, which will be delivered from Greece and Slovakia in a “circular scheme”. This was stated by German Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht, reports CNN. Head of the German Defense Ministry During a visit to the German military stationed in Lithuania, the German military announced additional deliveries of weapons to Ukraine, including the IRIS-T air defense system and 100 tanks from Greece and Slovakia. The website of the German government reports that queues for delivery to Ukraine: 4 IRIS-T anti-aircraft missile systems 2 MARS II multiple launch rocket systems with ammunition; 4...

This list only includes destroyed vehicles and equipment of which photo or videographic evidence is available. Therefore, the amount of equipment destroyed is significantly higher than recorded here. Small arms, ATGMs, MANPADS, loitering munitions, drones used as unmanned bait, civilian vehicles, trailers and derelict equipment are not included in this list. All possible effort has gone into avoiding duplicate entries and discerning the status of equipment between captured or abandoned. Many of the entries listed as 'abandoned' will likely end up captured or destroyed. Similarly, some of the captured equipment might be destroyed if it can't be recovered. When the...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will appeal to Western nations at an emergency G7 meeting on Tuesday. Ukraine and Germany called the meeting following a wave of devastating missile attacks on Kyiv, Liviv and more than a dozen other major cities. Russian President Vladimir Putin said the attacks are revenge for the bombing of the Kerch Bridge connecting Russia and Crimea this weekend. "They are trying to destroy us and wipe us off the face of the earth. Completely. Destroy our people who are sleeping at home in Zaporizhzhia. Kill people on their way to work in Dnipro and Kyiv," Zelenskyy...

Yesterday’s response revealed more than hypocrisy or even projection from Vladimir Putin — it revealed desperation. After the humiliation of the attack on the Kerch bridge, which Putin personally opened as a symbol of Russian permanence in Ukraine, Putin unleashed cruise missile attacks on cities across Ukraine overnight. Missiles struck as far from the front as Lviv, making it clear that this had no military value but instead was a terror attack on Ukrainians:(snip) Ahem. The Kerch bridge was and still is a legitimate military target, as it is a major line of communication for the Russian military. In fact,...

Russia's “partial mobilization” and its sham referendums to justify the annexation of four provinces in Eastern Ukraine create new sources of uncertainty about the future course of the war. Yet Russia's actions should also produce a rare moment of strategic clarity for Ukraine's partners: No viable path to negotiated peace remains, and any result short of Ukrainian victory will be, in the long run, a worse outcome for the rules-based international order. The third, and more politically significant, alternative falls somewhere between the first two. This camp decries Russia's barbarity and lauds Ukrainians' bravery while, at same time, worrying about...

Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a decree installing a new operator for a massive international oil-and-gas project in Russia's Far East, affecting billions of investment dollars from major U.S., Japanese, and Indian companies. The maneuver and decree on October 7 appear to repeat a strategy that the Kremlin has used recently to seize other foreign-owned energy assets. Putin ordered that authority be given to the Russian government to decide whether foreign stakeholders in the massive Sakhalin-1 oil and gas project may retain their holdings in the joint venture. The move toward nationalization further complicates U.S. Exxon Mobil's efforts to...

Russian governors threaten missile attacks on Ukraine's 'big cities' in a 'desire to seek revenge' for the Crimea bridge explosion as top Putin propagandist calls for total war and return to brutal Stalinist-era operations Top Putin propagandist Vladimir Solovyov called for total war against Ukraine following Crimea bridge blast He also demanded a return to Stalinist-era counterintelligence operations to root out internal opposition Crimea's governor spoke of a 'healthy desire for revenge' while another official warned of rocket attacks The deputy governor of Stavropol told Ukrainians 'leave your cities' as he threatened Sarmat missile strikes Russia's deputy PM meanwhile deployed...

“Early retirement” is a strange way to describe a 44-year-old’s acceptance of a new government role, but for Mikk Marran, Estonia’s spymaster, it feels a lot like that. As of next month he will no longer helm Välisluureamet, the Baltic state’s foreign intelligence service, which, long before Vladimir Putin’s faltering invasion of Ukraine, was at the forefront of assessing the threats and capabilities of a resurgent and revanchist Russia.(snip) According to one former high-ranking U.S. intelligence officer, “Estonia punches far above its weight on Russian affairs. The respect for Marran and his service in the U.S. intelligence community is quite...

Key figures including Wagner Group’s Yevgeny Prigozhin are using military defeats to undermine defence chief Sergei Shoigu. Friends, rivals and enemies took their seats in the Grand Kremlin Palace as Vladimir Putin gathered the country’s elite to formalise Russia’s illegal annexation of four occupied regions in Ukraine. The ceremony was meant to portray strength and unity, but within 24 hours had been overshadowed by Russia’s failures on the battlefield. These losses, which continued into this week on the southern and eastern fronts in Ukraine, have led to a major, unprecedented rupture within the ruling class as the Kremlin seeks scapegoats...

A leading Ukrainian presidential aide claimed this morning that the explosion which damaged a key bridge in Crimea may have been ordered by one of Vladimir Putin's warring commanders. The 12 mile crossing over the Kerch strait links Crimea to the Russian mainland and is a major artery for Putin's forces that control most of southern Ukraine's Kherson region and for the Russian naval port of Sevastopol. It was damaged in an explosion early Saturday morning which saw chunks of the bridge fall into the sea and a large fire break out. The incident prompted gleeful messages from Ukrainian officials...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Friday that Russia has begun to prepare its people for the possibility of the use of nuclear weapons against Ukraine. “They begin to prepare their society. That’s very dangerous,” Zelensky said.

The impact of the use of a nuclear device in Ukraine will depend on the details. Like any large-scale industrial army, the Ukrainian Armed Forces have obvious pressure points that would be vulnerable to nuclear attack. These include logistical centers, command and communications nodes, and concentrations of front-line forces. During the Cold War the Soviet Union expected to use tactical nuclear weapons against NATO (and expected that NATO would use them in return) and it is therefore likely that the Russian armed forces have workable theories as to how they might best use tactical nukes to inflict damage on Ukraine’s...

As for the economic aspect of Putin's mobilization, most commentators focus on the disastrous consequences for the skilled labor market and the loss of jobs by companies. This is all true: for example, back in July Putin admitted at a meeting with his ministers that a shortage of a million skilled workers is expected in the IT industry alone over the next two years, and now it is clear that this shortage will only get worse. According to a Rosstat survey of entrepreneurs, the lack of qualified workers is one of the top 5 factors limiting industrial production growth, and...

This list only includes destroyed vehicles and equipment of which photo or videographic evidence is available. Therefore, the amount of equipment destroyed is significantly higher than recorded here. Small arms, ATGMs, MANPADS, loitering munitions, drones used as unmanned bait, civilian vehicles, trailers and derelict equipment are not included in this list. All possible effort has gone into avoiding duplicate entries and discerning the status of equipment between captured or abandoned. Many of the entries listed as 'abandoned' will likely end up captured or destroyed. Similarly, some of the captured equipment might be destroyed if it can't be recovered. When the...

Boy, looks like I missed the hysteria. Instead of thumbing my way around the internet to catch the latest news on the complete devastation of Russia’s Kerch bridge that unites Crimea with Mother Russia, I was at a gun range being trained by a retired Delta Force operator. He is a hell of a teacher.Needless to say, my time was better spent (and cheaper) compared to what Ukraine spent on its spectacular failure to destroy the Kerch bridge. Failure? Yes. The initial images of a veritable Dante’s furnace, complete with rolling clouds of black smoke and frantic tongues of flames...

Recently mobilized Russian soldiers are decrying "inhumane" conditions, weapons shortages and mistreatment by officers, according to video published by the independent news website The Insider on Wednesday. Footage of new recruits sleeping on the floor, being armed with outdated rifles and ordered to source their own supplies appeared almost immediately after President Vladimir Putin announced a “partial” mobilization last month. Around 500 troops gathered in western Russia’s Belgorod region near the Ukrainian border with no training and no knowledge of where they were being deployed, the latest video’s authors said. “Nobody needs us,” a voice behind the camera, flanked by...

At Russian checkpoint in Vasylivka, 6 thousand people are queuing to leave, people have been waiting for more than 10 days. As informs Censor.NЕТ, it was reported in Telegram by Mayor of temporarily occupied Melitopol Ivan Fedorov. "There are 6 thousand people at the enemy checkpoint in Vasylivka. They have been queuing to leave the temporarily occupied territories for more than 10 days," he wrote. Fedorov also noted that after the explosion of the bridge in Crimea, panic began among the occupiers and collaborators. People are going from Crimea to Berdyansk. According to him, the railway connection in the temporarily...

Our speaker, Professor Jeffrey Sachs, addresses the war in Ukraine’s impact on climate change and global food security and will outline the pathway to a negotiated peace in Ukraine. He is a world-renowned economics professor, bestselling author, innovative educator, and global leader in sustainable development. He is widely recognized for bold and effective strategies to address complex challenges including the escape from extreme poverty, the global battle against human-induced climate change, international debt and financial crises, national economic reforms, and the control of pandemic and epidemic diseases.

In order to demonstrate support for Ukraine, Western corporations made the decision to pull out of Russia when the war in Ukraine started. At that time, concerns were raised that these corporations’ withdrawal of investments, store closures, and sales pauses in Russia could stunt the country’s economic growth. However, Russia was quite innovative; the businesses continued under entirely new names. However, Western businesses are now voicing their displeasure as they bear the brunt of the recession that has slammed the West; and why not, a cumulative loss of $300 billion could even make billionaires cry. According to RBC Daily, foreign...

Two of Putin's top army lieutenants have 'openly declared war' on Defence Minister and staunch Putin loyalist Sergei Shoigu after a series of embarrassing defeats for the Kremlin in Ukraine. Chechen boss Ramzan Kadyrov and founder of the Wagner 'private army' or militia Yevgeny Prigozhin have turned on the minister amid heavy defeats and losses over the last two weeks, The Guardian reports. It comes after Russia illegally annexed four Ukrainian regions including Donetsk and Luhansk in an announcement to which he gathered all of the country's top leaders and told the world the regions would 'remain with Russia forever.'...