Free Republic

Russian and North Korean forces have made significant battlefield advances in recent days in the Kursk region of Russia, threatening Ukraine’s supply lines and its hold on a patch of land it hopes to use as a bargaining chip in future negotiations, according to Ukrainian soldiers, Russian military bloggers and military analysts. Working together, a new influx of North Korean soldiers and well-trained Russian drone units, advancing under the cover of ferocious artillery fire and aerial bombardment, have been able to overwhelm important Ukrainian positions, Ukrainian soldiers said. “It’s true; we can’t stop them,” said Oleksii, the commander of a...

Natural gas stopped flowing through a pipeline that runs from Russia through Ukraine on Wednesday, according to officials in both countries. The effects of the halt, though long expected, could ripple through Europe’s energy sector and potentially affect Moscow’s ability to fund its war in Ukraine. Here’s what you need to know: What happened?Why did this happen now?What will it mean for Europe?The most affected countriesWhat happened? Ukraine refused to renew an agreement that allowed Russia to send natural gas through a pipeline to Europe. The deal was honored even after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, kicking off the bloodiest...

A small band of Ukrainian soldiers was trapped. They were holding the line on the battlefield, but Russian forces had managed to creep in behind their trench and encircle them. “Even if the position holds, supplies — ammunition, provisions — eventually run out,” Capt. Viacheslav, the 30-year-old commander of an elite drone unit, said last week as he monitored events from an outpost a few miles away in eastern Ukraine. “Any vehicle attempting to reach these positions will be ambushed.” “We are always getting stuck in these kinds of tough situations,” he said. As the war in Ukraine enters its...

Ukrainian forces have stepped up assaults across the Dnipro river near the southern city of Kherson, carrying out raids into Russian-controlled territory on the eastern bank. The increased activity has prompted speculation among analysts and in Russian military circles that Kyiv might be planning a more ambitious effort to open a new front in the war. In recent days, Western military analysts have cited geolocated video footage that shows Ukrainian forces operating in a number of locations deeper behind enemy lines than previously witnessed. “Ukrainian actions appear to be larger than previously observed tactical raids,” analysts at the Institute for...

Tens of thousands of drones have been employed across Ukraine to kill the enemy, spy on its formations and guide bombs to their targets. But this month the Ukrainian military began a program to use drones in a more unusual role: to guide Russian soldiers who want to surrender. The program had its genesis in late November, when the Ukrainian military released footage of a Russian soldier throwing his weapon to the ground, raising his hands and nervously following a path set out by a drone overhead, leading him to soldiers from the Ukrainian army’s 54th Mechanized Brigade. A few...

Following a string of Ukrainian military successes in the south, the Kremlin sought on Monday to tamp down speculation that Russian forces would withdraw from the Zaporizhzhia nuclear complex, with President Vladimir V. Putin’s spokesman saying that Moscow has no plans to end its military occupation of Europe’s largest nuclear power plant. “One should not look for signs where there are none and cannot be any,” said the spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov. Mr. Peskov’s comments came after some pro-Russian military bloggers wrote posts suggesting that Moscow’s forces would withdraw from the area, and after Ukrainian officials said there were indications...

As they struggle to maintain an electricity grid heavily damaged by Russian missiles, officials in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, say they have begun planning for a once unthinkable possibility: a complete blackout that would require the evacuation of the city’s approximately three million remaining residents. The situation is already so dire, with 40 percent of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure damaged or destroyed, that municipal workers are setting up 1,000 heating shelters that can double as bunkers while engineers try to fix bombed-out power stations without the needed equipment. To try to keep the grid from failing altogether, Ukraine’s national energy utility...

The pace of fighting is intensifying as the war in Ukraine stretches into its seventh month, with Ukraine seeking to exploit Russian weaknesses in the south and Moscow signaling that it might reinforce its troops in the east to renew its stalled campaign. Ukraine’s military has imposed sweeping restrictions on journalists as its forces mount a counteroffensive to retake territory seized by Russia in the south of the country. The Russians have leaped into the void, trying to characterize the counteroffensive — one week in — as a failure, without providing evidence to support the claims. “The Russian presentation of...

Portugal’s health care system was on the verge of collapse. Hospitals in the capital, Lisbon, were overflowing and authorities were asking people to treat themselves at home. In the last week of January, nearly 2,000 people died as the virus spread. The country’s vaccine program was in a shambles, so the government turned to Vice Adm. Henrique Gouveia e Melo, a former submarine squadron commander, to right the ship. Eight months later, Portugal is among the world’s leaders in vaccinations, with roughly 86% of its population of 10.3 million fully vaccinated. About 98% of all of those eligible for vaccines...