Free Republic

Russia is still cutting deals with China, Iran, and North Korea to make sure they don’t run out of missiles and ammunition, but there’s one thing that they can’t import in any significant numbers. What they’re running short of are soldiers. Moscow doesn’t publish precise figures, but one recent estimate puts the Russian death toll in Ukraine at more than 70,000. Others suspect that the true figure is closer to 100,000. And then there are the tens of thousands who survived but were too grievously injured to return to combat. With the ranks thinning so badly, Vladimir Putin has launched...

Russia has struck a deal with Belarus to station tactical nuclear weapons on its territory but will not violate non-proliferation agreements, Vladimir Putin has said.The Belarusian president, Alexander Lukashenko, had long raised the issue of stationing tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, which borders Poland, Putin told state television.“There is nothing unusual here either: firstly, the United States has been doing this for decades,” he said. “They have long deployed their tactical nuclear weapons on the territory of their allied countries. A video grab from footage released by the Russian defence ministry last month apparently shows Russian forces in a drill...

Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev has suggested that the troops may have to march onto cities as far as Kyiv or Lviv in Ukraine amid reports that Moscow was facing significant setbacks in the battle in the east. Considered a strong ally of President Vladimir Putin, Medvedev's statement may have unwittingly given away the position Kremlin finds itself in currently. “Nothing can be ruled out here. If you need to get to Kyiv, then you need to go to Kyiv, if to Lviv, then you need to go to Lviv in order to destroy this infection,” Medvedev was quoted as...

"...The first thing to do is to tear Britain down, to wipe it off the face of the earth. And in fact, after that, everything will be over. It will be over, because it's Britain that's the main bastard. And the territory behind the puddle [the U.S.] itself as its masters," Gurulyov said..."...they'll start listening to what our president says. Right away, off the bat. They'll start to listen to what the president of the People's Republic of China is saying."

(Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday condemned British plans to send tank ammunition that contains depleted uranium to Ukraine, saying Moscow would be forced to respond accordingly.Speaking in London on Monday, Minister of State for Defence Annabel Goldie said some of the ammunition for the Challenger 2 battle tanks that Britain is sending to Ukraine includes armour piercing rounds which contain depleted uranium."If all this happens, Russian will have to respond accordingly, given that the West collectively is already beginning to use weapons with a nuclear component," Putin said in remarks after a summit with Chinese President Xi...

Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Maria Zakharova on Saturday indicated that lifting all anti-Russia sanctions and canceling all claims against Moscow in international judicial instances should be an intrinsic part of a peace settlement in Ukraine. -snip- "the cancellation of all illegal sanctions and lawsuits against Russia in international courts should become an integral part [of this settlement]," Zakharova said in a statement. It is noteworthy that on Friday, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin as well as Russia’s Children’s Rights Commissioner, Maria Lvova-Belova, on the grounds of alleged "unlawful deportation" of Ukrainian...

"Our president knows how to surprise," says regional governor SEVASTOPOL, March 18./TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin has arrived in Sevastopol on the ninth anniversary of Crimea's reunification with Russia at the wheel of a car, Sevastopol Governor Mikhail Razvozhayev said on his Telegram channel...

What’s known is that $250 billion in capital has left, equivalent to 14 percent of its GDP. One expert guesstimates that Russia’s economy has shrunk from the size of Italy’s to Chile’s in the past year — you wouldn’t know this based on bogus figures fed to the media by Moscow. Economist Janis Kluge of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) calculates that Western sanctions alone have also “basically shrunk Russia’s economy by 10 percent”, bigger than what happened in the 2009 financial crisis. What is also known is that immediately after the invasion of Ukraine, an...

The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant on Friday against Russian President Vladimir Putin, accusing him of being responsible for war crimes committed in Ukraine. Moscow has repeatedly denied accusations that its forces have committed atrocities during its one-year invasion of its neighbour. The ICC issued the warrant for Putin's arrest on suspicion of unlawful deportation of children and unlawful transfer of people from the territory of Ukraine to the Russian Federation.

UPDATES: Western military sources told AFP Tuesday there had been an "incident" involving a US-made Reaper drone flying over the Black Sea, an area of intense NATO military activity close to the Ukraine war frontlines

Americans’ already-negative opinions of Russia have soured further in the past year, dropping ... to 9%.

Russia's metropolitan elites have avoided the impact of heavy battlefield casualties that the country's forces are sustaining in Ukraine, according to a new defense intelligence assessment. Russia's elite, particularly in the major cities of Moscow and St. Petersburg, have so far emerged "relatively unscathed" from the "extremely heavy casualties" being racked up in the ongoing Ukraine war, the British defense ministry said on Sunday. In the eastern regions of Russia, the death toll for Russian troops is likely more than 30 times higher than in Moscow, as a percentage of population, the ministry wrote in its daily update on Twitter....

Shortly after September 11, 2001, I became known as a “neoconservative.” The term was a bit puzzling, because I wasn’t new to conservatism; I had been on the right ever since I could remember. But the “neocon” label came to be used after 9/11 to denote a particular strain of conservatism that placed human rights and democracy promotion at the forefront of U.S. foreign policy. This was a very different mindset from the realpolitik approach of such Republicans as President Dwight Eisouenhower, President Richard Nixon, and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, and it had a natural appeal to someone like...

Russia has lost an estimated five men for every Ukrainian soldier its forces have killed in the battle for Bakhmut, according to a Nato official. Speaking to CNN on condition of anonymity, the official said that Nato intelligence showed that Russia’s losses in the assault on the eastern salt-mining town far outweighed Ukraine’s. The official also said, however, that Ukraine’s losses defending the city were significant. Russia’s use of costly wave attacks have prompted comparisons to the First World War and the commander of the mercenary forces leading the assault has described the battle as a “meat grinder” for Russian...

The total number of Russian deaths in Ukraine is likely to have exceeded all fatalities in 16 of the nation's military actions since the Second World War, it has been claimed. The rate of soldiers being killed per month in the first year of the war was 25 times higher than in Chechnya and 35 times higher than in the Soviet Union's ten-year war in Afghanistan, a US think-tank said. It is thought Russian troops are dying at five times the rate of Ukrainians, at a total of around 70,000. The Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) said Russia...

The impact on America's military readiness is concerning, but the cost of doing nothing is even higher. Today, the benefit of hindsight allows us to see what Prime Minister Chamberlain didn't in 1938: this conflict is the beginning, not the end. Power-hungry dictators will not be satiated by small territorial gains. In fact, an ounce of success will fuel their appetites. And in this case, it's not just Russian President Vladimir Putin who's ready to dine—it's also Chinese President Xi Jinping. President Xi has made no secret of his desire to invade Taiwan. The Chinese Communist Party falsely asserts that...

Russia is welding ageing naval turrets onto old armoured vehicles to make crude tanks as Vladimir Putin’s forces face worsening arms shortages. The crudely engineered vehicles are being deployed in a likely attempt to shoot down Ukrainian drones as the armed forces grapple with crippling shortages of fighting machines and ammunition. (snip) New footage from an undisclosed location appears to show a 25mm 2M-3 twin-barrelled naval anti-aircraft turret fitted to a Soviet-era MT-LB amphibious fighting vehicle to form a new hybrid weapon. The amalgamation, which was constructed with parts manufactured as early as 1945, could be seen being transported by...

A Hurricane of Missiles

Between 20,000 and 30,000 Russian troops have been killed and wounded in the battle for the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut since it began last summer, Western officials say. The epic nature of the battle is out of all proportion to Bakhmut's strategic significance, they add. But after more than six months of grinding, horrific fighting, the future of Bakhmut still hangs in the balance. Since the fighting began, some 90% of its pre-invasion population has fled.

Every hour, more towns and cities across the country were being captured by advancing Russian armies. CNN was showing Russian paratroopers, their elbows marked with white stripes, at the Antonov Airport just outside Kyiv. Russian dictator Vladimir Putin declared the end of Ukraine as it was.... “One year later, Kyiv stands. And Ukraine stands. Democracy stands,” Biden said in Kyiv. How did something that was supposed to be Putin’s several-day-long “special military operation” turn into a staggering defeat and a subsequent grinding war that the Kremlin’s propaganda now calls Russia’s “fight for survival”? ... The first was its failure to...