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A notable outcome of Ukraine’s surprise invasion of the Russian province of Kursk — now stretching into its third week — is the Russian army’s reliance on thousands of unprepared, under-equipped, and poorly led conscripts in its attempt to repel the invasion. It’s often under-appreciated in the West just how unpopular and politically sensitive the draft is in Vladimir Putin’s Russia. The use of conscripts in Afghanistan and Chechnya (and their deaths in their thousands) was a huge part of the unpopularity of those wars inside Russia. In those years, the draft set off protests and a Russian “mothers’ movement”...

Vladimir Putin has sought to shift blame for Ukraine's surprise incursion into the Kursk region, as evidence emerged that his country's handling of the offensive was damaging the Russian leader's image. At a virtual meeting held by Putin Thursday on the situation in Russia's Belgorod, Bryansk and Kursk regions, which border Ukraine, the president told regional officials that the "security issues" in Kursk "are problems that are the responsibility of the security agencies." -snip- "I hope that, as was reported today, interaction between local and regional authorities, the government, and security agencies has been established, and this will also play...

Ukraine has seized more Russian territory in two weeks than Russia has seized in Ukraine all year. Reinforcements sent by Moscow failed to stop a Ukrainian surprise offensive in Russia’s Kursk region during its second week, creating a dilemma for the Kremlin – to further tap Russia’s invasion force in Ukraine by diverting more battalions to defend Russia, or to throw new conscripts into the war. Moscow has so far kept regular recruits into the armed forces on rotation at home, sending only contract soldiers to the bloody battlefields of Ukraine. But the Kursk offensive has changed that delicate political...

President Vladimir Putin has a message for the Russian region where Ukraine has seized more than 1,000 square kilometers of territory: Don’t blame me. Speaking via videoconference to a meeting of Russian politicians, including the governors of Kursk, Belgorod and Bryansk regions, Putin said the “security issues” that had arisen in Kursk were “problems that are the responsibility of the security forces.” He added that Moscow would work with “local and regional authorities” and “security agencies” to “play a positive role in achieving the goals that we have here.”

This is the moment Ukrainian troops destroyed a pontoon bridge in the Kursk region with a HIMARS strike, which could leave thousands of Russian troops stranded. The pontoon crossing in the border region was built by Putin's army after Ukrainian forces destroyed at least three permanent bridges over western Russia's Seim River in recent attacks. Video footage showed drones chasing down trucks and blowing them up. Drones can also be seen crashing into stationary military vehicles, while aerial footage showed the pontoon bridge being decimated. The footage came as Vladimir Putin accused Ukraine of trying to strike a nuclear power...

Vladimir Putin's slow response to the incursion of Ukrainian forces into the border region of Kursk could ultimately leave him facing the wrath of his long-time enablers. Russia was caught unprepared by the offensive and reportedly is drafting conscripts to repel some of Ukraine's most battle-hardened units. Putin has a history of responding slowly to various crises in his tenure, and he has so far played down the attack. In his 24 years in power, Putin has portrayed himself as the only person who can guarantee Russia's security and stability but that image has suffered since the war began.

Vladimir Putin is feeling the stress from Russia's invasion of Ukraine - as he is seen wringing his hands in a meeting with his top officials after Volodymyr Zelenskyy's troops bit back and made a counter-incursion into the country. The dictator, 71, was in a security council session on the crisis he faces due to Ukraine's dramatic invasion of the border areas of Kursk region. His very public hand-wringing and fidgeting came as he was told earlier this week about how Russia had lost territory to Kyiv troops and - at the time - more than two dozen settlements, a...

Secretive peace talks between Ukraine and Russia collapsed before they even started following Kyiv's incursion into the Kursk region last week. The two countries were set to hold indirect talks in Qatar on a deal to halt strikes on energy and power infrastructure, in a first step towards a partial-ceasefire. However, Russian officials were said to be furious at Ukraine’s surprise incursion, according to the Washington Post, which revealed the secret Doha talks. Moscow’s delegation described it as “an escalation" and immediately pulled out of the talks this week. A Qatari diplomat said that Russia “didn’t call off the talks,...

The head of a Russian private militia has called on the army to overthrow Vladimir Putin in what is potentially shaping up to be the biggest threat of revolt the Kremlin has faced since the Wagner mutiny last year. Georgy Zakrevsky is the founder of the Paladin PMC, one of many shadowy military groups like the former Wagner militia, that are loosely linked to the Kremlin. The private military company (PMC) has around 300 members and has fought in wars around the world, including in Syria and Africa. Zakrevsky launched a blistering attack on the Russian president during a video...

-snip- After my first trip to Ukraine, a few readers wrote in or left comments urging me to check out the assessments of retired colonel Douglas Macgregor, contending he had the real scoop. I wasn’t familiar with Macgregor, but a bit of digging illuminated the retired colonel’s very consistent assessment of how the war is going: March 4, 2022: “The first five days Russian forces I think frankly were too gentle. They’ve now corrected that. So, I would say, another ten days, this should be completely over.” March 15, 2022: “The Ukrainians are being crushed. Even the Washington Post and...

While Belarus’s Lukashenko has commented on the cross-border attacks, Central Asian nations stay mum. Almost two years ago, a dozen Uzbek youngsters pleaded with their president to save them from the horrors of the Russian-Ukrainian war. Uzbek nationals enrolled in western Russia’s Kursk Medical University recorded a video address to Shavkat Mirziyoyev in October 2022 saying their studies had been affected by Kyiv’s shelling of nearby towns and the hostilities in the neighbouring Ukrainian region of Sumy. “Please transfer us to medical schools in Uzbekistan,” one of the students said. Uzbek diplomats pledged to assess the situation. There have been...

Terrified dictator Alexander Lukashenko has urged Russia and Ukraine to agree a peace deal to avoid the war spilling over into Belarus. President Lukashenko, a key ally of Vladimir Putin, said he fears Kyiv's troops are now planning an incursion into his nation after they launched a cross-border offensive in Russia. Thousands of Ukrainian soldiers smashed through Russia's western border on August 6 in a major embarrassment for Putin's top military brass. Now in an interview with Russia state television, Lukashenko has said that only 'high-ranking people of American origin' wanted the Ukraine-Russia war to continue. The West, he said,...

Ukraine has offered to help Russians evacuating from the country's embattled border regions, which have been embroiled in armed hostilities since Kyiv's surprise incursion onto Russian soil began last week. In a Telegram post on Wednesday evening, Ukraine's Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said: "Due to the possible deterioration of the humanitarian situation in the adjacent territories of the Kursk region of the Russian Federation, Ukraine must be ready to receive Russian refugees." Vereshchuk, who also serves as minister of reintegration for the areas under Russian occupation, announced that her ministry had opened a "24-hour hotline" for residents of Kursk...

Ukraine's top commander said on Thursday Kyiv had set up a military commandant's office in the occupied part of Russia's Kursk region where he said his forces were still advancing, even as Moscow's troops stepped up its offensives in Ukraine's east. The remarks by Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi were the strongest sign yet that Kyiv's forces plan to dig in after launching a lightning cross-border assault on Russia last week that has opened a new front in the 2-1/2 year-old all-out war. "We are moving forward in Kursk region. A military commandant's office has been created which must ensure order...

Ukraine’s surprise invasion of the Russian Kursk region has not left the latter’s rail untouched. The attack led to rail congestion in the area, and now Kursk and surrounding areas are no longer accepting freight trains coming in from Belarus. The Ukrainian incursion into the Kursk region has prompted Russia to move soldiers from all over the country to contain the Ukrainian advance, says the Belarusian Railway Workers Association (BelZhD). The inflow of soldiers to the new front by train has overcrowded stations in the region. For that reason, Russian Railways (RZD) says it can no longer accept freight trains...

Footage of Prigozhin shows how the slain leader predicted Ukraine's shock offensive. THE slain chief of the notorious Wagner mercenary group predicted Russia would come under siege from Ukraine before Vlad had him killed. Warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin died when his plane was blown out of the sky in August 2023, allegedly on Putin's orders. He led the private Russian military unit that was called in to assist the Kremlin's quest to illegally conquer Ukraine and became increasingly frustrated with how war efforts were organised. Fed up with the Ministry of Defence, Prigozhin eventually threatened a coup against Moscow - a...

Mercouris ntoes the most interesting point in the last 24 hrs: The Russians seem to be on the point of an attack on Pokrovsk in Donbas. Ukrainian resistance to defend this town is crumbling.Ukrainian offensive in Kursk:The Russian authorities are saying that the objective of the Ukrainians was the capture of the Kursk nuclear power plant. The western media is avoiding the topic and the Ukrainians have not said so, but have hinted.The only purpose of committing 6 Ukrainian brigades to Kursk would be to capture the nuclear plant.The Chechen commander Apti Aladeenov (Akmut Special Forces) has published a long...

Putin has appointed his ex-bodyguard, who is considered a likely successor for the Russian leader, as an 'angel of vengeance' tasked with trying to reclaim the territory seized by Ukraine. Former bodyguard Alexei Dyumin, who once single-handedly scared off a bear from the president's mountain residence, will lead the charge on 'Operation Revenge' to reclaim the 386 square miles of Russian soil now under Ukrainian control. Dyumin, 51, grew up in the Kursk region, where a state of emergency was implemented almost immediately after thousands of Kyiv's troops surged across the border and began seizing territory. Putin has now chosen...

Ukraine’s strike on Russia, the biggest by a foreign force since World War Two, has dramatically changed the narrative around the war. Ukraine claimed to have shot down a Russian fighter jet on Wednesday as Kyiv’s forces escalated the biggest foreign incursion suffered by Russia since the Second World War. Kyiv’s military said its forces destroyed the Russian Su-34 aircraft overnight in the Kursk region while carrying out a combat mission.

Ukraine has claimed a major victory that could turn the tide of the war with Russia. Fighters loyal to the infamous Chechen warlord Ramzan Kadyrov have been captured by Ukrainian forces in the Kursk region during a stunning incursion on Vladimir Putin’s territory. Footage shows dozens of men blindfolded, with their hands tied, sitting in lines. Some appear bloodied, with bandages around their wounds. Two of them can be heard telling a Ukrainian soldier they are from Grozny, the capital of Chechnya. The video was released by the I Want to Live (Hochu Zhit) project run by Ukraine’s Defence Intelligence...