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MYKOLAIV REGION, Ukraine - On the front line in southeast Ukraine, there is little sign that a major counteroffensive is brewing. For weeks, Western intelligence and military analysts have predicted that a Ukrainian campaign to retake the strategic port city of Kherson and surrounding territory is imminent. But in trenches less than a mile from Russia's positions in the area, Ukrainian soldiers hunker down from an escalating onslaught of artillery, with little ability to advance. (clip) But time is slipping if Ukraine is to meet President Volodymyr Zelensky's stated goal of winning the war by the end of the year,...

The Ukrainian military said on Saturday it had killed scores of Russian soldiers and destroyed two ammunition dumps in fighting in the Kherson region, the focus of Kyiv's counter-offensive in the south and a key link in Moscow's supply lines. Rail traffic to Kherson over the Dnipro River had been cut, the military's southern command said, potentially further isolating Russian forces west of the river from supplies in occupied Crimea and the east. Defence and intelligence officials from Britain, which has been one of Ukraine's staunchest allies in the West since Moscow's Feb. 24 invasion, portrayed Russian forces as struggling...

Russian troops defending the city of Kherson are 'highly vulnerable' to attack after Ukraine destroyed or damaged bridges linking it with the rest of its occupied territory, British military intelligence says. Putin's men are now relying on pontoon bridges and ferries to move troops, vehicles and supplies across the Dnipro River after Ukraine blew up Antonovsky Bridge, which is Russia's main road route into and out of the city. Two other bridges - the Antonovsky Rail Bridge and Nova Khakokva hydroelectric dam bridge - have also been damaged in recent days, and are not fully operational. The next-closest bridge spanning...

Ukrainian forces have struck a strategically important bridge in the southern part of the country, using what a Russia-appointed official said were rocket systems supplied by the United States. The Antonivskyi Bridge crossing the Dnieper River was closed Wednesday following the Ukrainian strike. Kirill Stremousov, deputy head of the Russia-appointed administration for the Kherson region, said the bridge was still standing after the late Tuesday strike, but that the road deck was full of holes. Stremousov said Ukrainian forces used the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) to carry out the strike. The bridge is a key link allowing Russia...

At the start of the year, Russia dispatched more than 2,000 troops to its longtime ally Kazakhstan to help put down violent antigovernment unrest. Six weeks later, when Russian troops stormed into Ukraine, Kazakhstan had an opportunity to repay the favor by supporting the invasion. It didn’t.

Ukrainian military officials have claimed a “turning point” in the battle to retake the southern region of Kherson, saying they will use western weapons to liberate by September the first major city captured by Russian forces. Sergiy Khlan, an aide to the administrative head of the Kherson region, said in an interview with Ukrainian television on Sunday: “We can say that a turning point has occurred on the battlefield. We are switching from defensive to counteroffensive actions.” “We can say that the Kherson region will definitely be liberated by September, and all the occupiers’ plans will fail,” he added. Helped...

Ivan Fedorov, the Mayor of Melitopol, in an Quote from Fedorov: "It is worth noting one thing that I have heard from more than one person. The occupiers say that if they leave Melitopol, and the fact that they are already implying this is good, they say: ‘If we leave the city, everything is mined, everything will be destroyed.’ And this is definitely not about ensuring the security of our infrastructure." According to Fedorov, the Russians have now captured the entire infrastructure of the city. "Today they can be in one school, tomorrow they will be in another, and they...

Russian President Vladimir Putin will hold a cabinet meeting on Monday with senior officials, amid concerns about Ukraine's High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) from the United States that Western officials claim hamper Moscow's war efforts. The rocket systems first arrived in Ukraine in June from the U.S and have been seen as crucial to helping Kyiv's forces repel the Russian military. The Russian state-backed TASS news agency reported on Monday that Putin will hold the cabinet meeting via videoconference on Monday, with the main topics being the development of air transport and aircraft manufacturing. Deputy Prime Minister and Trade...

VLADIMIR PUTIN is potentially facing a new civil war in the Caucasus after Chechen rebels said they were preparing for further hostilities in the region. Russia was involved in two bitter wars in Chechnya during the 1990s and early 2000s after Chechen separatists pursued independence from Moscow after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The First Chechen War took place between 1994-1996 under President Boris Yeltsin and resulted in a humiliating defeat for Russia. Then in 1999, Putin once again sent in the troops to crush Chechen rebels in a brutal campaign which saw Chechnya's capital Grozny raised to the...

Even though the Battle of Donbas is far from over, Ukraine is expected to open the next chapter of the war sometime in the near future — a highly anticipated, major counter-offensive operation in the south, particularly to liberate the Russian-occupied city of Kherson. Kyiv has declared its intentions to liberate the only regional capital captured by Russia following the Feb. 24 full-scale invasion. Experts across the world agree that retaking Kherson is the most feasible way for Ukraine to score a major victory over Russia and turn the tide of the war. As part of a counter-offensive operation, Ukraine...

The movement of Vladimir Putin's vessels to the port city of Novorossiysk in southern Russia comes after Ukrainian stocks of longer-range missile systems were boosted by Western allies. Ukrainian media reports Serhiy Bratchuk, adviser to the head of Odesa's Regional Military Administration, reporting news of the ships' eastward movement via Telegram. Media outlet Ukrinform reports the official as saying: "According to the information of our Navy, the enemy has redeployed a significant number of warships from Sevastopol to Novorossiysk. "Russian ships were earlier deployed in missile-proof areas in the zone covered by coastal air defence systems, as close as possible...

A $36 million Russian Su-34 bomber was reportedly shot down by Russia's own forces over Ukraine's eastern Luhansk region, Ukrainian media outlets claimed on Monday. The jet was reportedly downed near Alchevsk, a city in the Luhansk region—one of the areas where the war is currently focused. Alchevsk is currently under the occupation of Moscow-backed separatist forces. Videos and images shared by the Strategic Command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine on the Telegram messaging app on Monday appear to show the charred remains of a Russian Su-34 fighter-bomber. -snip- "Russian invaders from the air defense shot down their own...

The EU's top diplomat has issued a statement expressing sympathy ahead of the day nearly eight years ago that local separatists working with a missile system deployed by Russian intelligence officials are accused of having shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine. -snip- Russian suspect Oleg Pulatov, a former officer of the Russian Army, in 2014 headed a unit of the Main Intelligence Directorate in a region of eastern Ukraine controlled by Russia-backed separatists. Pulatov was involved in the transport and protection of a Buk antiaircraft missile system that investigators say fired the missile that brought down the...

Lt.Gen. Ben Hodges, the former commanding general of the US Army in Europe, told Insider that Russia lacks the resources and capabilities to make significant advancements in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region — where the 20-week-long war has turned into a grinding campaign. ... Russia's arsenal of artillery and rockets is the "only advantage" that President Vladimir Putin's forces have right now and said this is reflected in attacks on Ukrainian defense positions and civilian areas, which cause lots of casualties. A key to Ukrainian success will be to neutralize these weapons, he said. Without them, Russian victories will be hard...

For years, Russian officials have used trolling to sow division and confusion abroad. Give them a taste of their own medicine. ...It can and will make you feel better. And yes, you can do it in English. These people monitor their replies, on Twitter especially. It’s how their bureaucracy works, they are interested in engagement... 1. Use superstitions like: “Hellfire is getting closer” [Ад близок] “You are cursed. And you know it.” [Ребята, вы давно прокляты. И вы это отлично знаете]... Make sure to impart a sense of doom. They feel it already. It’s why many are hysterical online. 2....

The lower house of the Russian parliament will gather on July 15 for an extraordinary session, its council decided on Monday, just days after President Vladimir Putin warned that he had not even started to get serious in the war in Ukraine. Putin used a meeting with parliamentary leaders on Thursday to dare the United States and its allies to try to defeat Russia in Ukraine, which Russia invaded on Feb. 24. Parliamentary leaders all thanked Putin for his decisions.

Russian forces are reportedly relying on Soviet-era munitions for certain tasks as the invasion of Ukraine labors on. The Russian government has, in recent weeks, increasingly ordered its forces in Ukraine to repurpose outdated anti-aircraft and anti-ship missiles for use on land-based targets, according to a Tuesday report from iNews. In Mykolaiv, a city in Southern Ukraine, six strikes over the last weekend have been attributed to Russian S-300 missiles, anti-aircraft munitions introduced roughly 40 years ago with a range of 75 miles. Two Kh-32 missiles, originally designed to sink aircraft carriers, were also credited with the strike on a...

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko might be bracing for a revolt from his own military officers after they recently expressed their opposition to the Russian war in Ukraine. Senior officers from the fifth brigade of the Special Forces warned in an open letter to Lukashenko, who is a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, against sending troops to fight in Ukraine, describing that such decision is "pure suicide," the Express reported Saturday. "By entering the war against Ukraine, Belarus will be evicted from the community of civilized states and will be an international outcast for many years to come," the...

Our '67-year old general Pavel' turns out to be the 58-year old Ivan Ivanovich Turchin, veteran of both the Russian military and the Border Guard. He retired in 2011, after 20 years of service at the border in Uzbekistan. So this 'exclusive' story - first published by the Daily Star, and picked up by The Sun, The Daily Mail, the New York Post etc. - turns out to be entirely fictional. We have reached out to the Daily Star for comment but have not received a reply, as of today

Remember this "exclusive" story in the Daily Star about "general Pavel", who was supposedly "dragged out of retirement" by Putin and sent to Ukraine? So yeah, turns out that's total bullshit.@Lotte_Lambrecht and I found out who's _actually_ in this photo. Follow along!1/ The Daily Star quoted an anonymous "senior intelligence source" for the article. It was picked up by virtually every other tabloid in the UK and by a lot of international newspapers. In Belgium @HLN_BE also ran the story: archive.ph/166h92/ Reverse Image Search didn't reveal much, apart from the fact that the earliest online version of the photo...