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US war-gamed with Ukraine ahead of counteroffensive and encouraged more limited mission.In the buildup to the current Ukrainian counteroffensive, the United States urged Kyiv to keep the operation limited in both its objectives and its geography to avoid getting overextended and bogged down on multiple fronts, multiple US and western officials and Ukrainian sources tell CNN. -snip- The Ukrainians were initially considering a broader counteroffensive, but narrowed their mission to the south, in the Kherson region, in recent weeks, US and Ukrainian officials said.

A police officer in the Russian-occupied city of Kherson was killed on Wednesday by an explosive device planted by the Ukrainian "resistance movement" and another one was injured, Ukraine's defence ministry said. The reported killing is the latest in a series of attacks on local officials in regions captured by Russia since it invaded Ukraine in February. "The resistance movement clears Kherson of traitors," the ministry's defence intelligence directorate said a statement. The device was set off by radio control on a street just north of the city centre, it said. On Saturday, the directorate urged citizens in the Kherson...

ussian President Vladimir Putin has scheduled an operational meeting with members of the Russian Security Council, as rumors swirl that Russia and Belarus are moving toward a unification process. "On Friday, the president will hold an operational meeting with the permanent members of the Security Council in the middle of the day or in the afternoon—it will depend on other events," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was quoted by Russia's state-run news agency TASS as saying. -snip- Russian political scientist and publicist Andrei Piontkovsky said in an interview with TSN.ua that Putin may, during Friday's meeting, sign a "pact to unite"...

A four-year-old girl with Down's Syndrome has become the latest innocent victim of Putin's war in Ukraine after she was killed in her pram by a Russian cruise missile which also left her mother fighting for life. Liza Dmitrieva was accompanying mother Irina on a day out in the city of Vinnystya - in western Ukraine, hundreds of miles from the nearest frontline - when a Russian Kalibre missile launched from a submarine in the Black Sea crashed down on top of them around 10.50am local time. The pink pram that Liza had been filmed pushing an hour earlier was...

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.

Nova Kakhovka, Ukrainian troops destroyed the ammunition depot of the Russian Armed Forces The likely culprit is "HIMARS". Reports of AFU strikes on targets in Nova Kakhovka, Kherson region, using American-made HIMARS MLRS.

Twelve Russian officers are thought to have been killed in a single rocket strike as Ukraine's armed forces inflict punishing losses with American-supplied weapons. The attack targeted a command post in at Chornobaivka Airport, near the occupied southern city of Kherson, and is rumoured to have killed at least one general and one colonel. It is thought to have been carried out using US HIMARS rockets. Video shows what appears to be an ammunition dump at the base exploding, as Russian Telegram channels report Putin is infuriated at the inability of Russia's S-400 anti-air systems to protect his armed forces....

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...

Puffy-faced Vladimir Putin is facing more health issues after he was spotted struggling to stay awake. The deranged dictator could barely hold his head up during a meeting with his Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu on Tuesday. He is rumoured to have thyroid cancer and health experts say that drugs used to treat the condition could explain the despot’s puffy face. The 69-year-old is known for working hard to maintain a masculine, hardman appearance – but his steady decline has unfolded in front of the world’s media. He mumbled a half-hearted congratulations to his soldiers before making the deluded claim they...

Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev told the United States on Wednesday that attempts by the West to punish a nuclear power such as Russia for the war in Ukraine risked endangering humanity. Russia's invasion of Ukraine has triggered the most serious crisis in relations between Russia and the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, when many people feared the world was on the brink of nuclear war. Medvedev cast the United States as an empire which had spilled blood across the world, citing the killing of Native Americans, U.S. nuclear attacks on Japan and a host of wars ranging...

Shocking footage has emerged of the moment a Russian soldier attempted to destroy a Ukrainian missile launcher from close range with dramatic and potentially lethal consequences. The clip, shared on a pro-Russian channel on social media and messaging app Telegram, shows one of Putin's fighters taking aim at an abandoned Ukrainian S-300 missile launcher sitting mere yards away. After taking a few moments to compose himself, the soldier squeezes the trigger of his PKM machine gun, presumably expecting to damage the hardware or perhaps set off a minor explosion to render it inoperable. A split second later the missile launcher...

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, a major ally of Vladimir Putin, has said that Europe should undergo a "moral cleansing," according to state news agency Belta. During a government meeting at the weekend, Lukashenko talked about fighting Nazis in the Second World War and said: "The time has come for the forgetful Europe to give itself a moral cleansing." "They — all who chose to forget — will have to look again at the grueling evidence of the bloody crimes of their own fathers and grandfathers," he said, according to Belta. "I must admit that we were delicately silent. In our...

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said on Saturday Ukraine had tried to strike military facilities on Belarusian territory three days ago, but all its missiles had been intercepted, the state-run Belta news agency reported. Lukashenko, who did not provide evidence for the claim, said Belarus did not want war with Ukraine, but would fight if its own territory was invaded. The Ukrainian military did not immediately comment. "They are provoking us. I have to tell you, three days ago, maybe a bit more, an attempt to strike military facilities on Belarusian territory was made from the territory of Ukraine," Belta quoted...

Putin has called an obese general out of retirement to take command of forces in Ukraine after yet another round of purges of top commanders has left him 'scraping the barrel'. The 20 stone General Pavel, 67, has been summoned from his comfortable life in the Moscow suburbs and told to don his specially-made army fatigues and go to the front lines of eastern Ukraine. He will now take charge of Russian special forces operating in the region after the unit's former commander was seriously injured in an artillery strike. A veteran of the Soviet Union's ill-fated invasion of Afghanistan...

Alexander Lukashenko said on Saturday that if Belarus were to come under “attack”, its army would respond immediately. The West has speculated over the level of involvement of Belarus in Russia’s ongoing “special military operation” in Ukraine since late February. Lukashenko said his state stood fully behind Russia in its invasion as part of its commitment to a “union state” with Moscow. But he has previously suggested his own armed forces will not themselves enter Ukraine, pointing to Minsk’s potential role of helping to create a peace deal instead. The Belarusian President was, however, clear that his country would not...

Is Obama gay? When I first heard a few days ago that Obama might be gay, my initial reaction was, that's ridiculous. He's married, has two kids, and he's never set off my gaydar. I had read a few years ago about Larry Sinclair, who claimed he had given Obama oral sex when Obama was a state senator. But at the time I just figured that any famous person is bound to attract a few loonies who will say anything to get publicity. But after I read the article linked two posts ago (and directly below), I started reading more...