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Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Friday avoided commenting on the statement by the head of the private military company Wagner threatening to withdraw from the battlefield in the Ukrainian town of Bakhmut, saying the matter is related to a "special military operation" of Russia. "We have seen it in the media, but I cannot comment on it because it concerns the course of a special military operation," Peskov told reporters at a press briefing in Moscow.

'In the absence of ammunition they're doomed to perish senselessly,' Yevgeny Prigozhin saysYevgeny Prigozhin, leader of Russia's Wagner Group mercenary force, said in a sudden and dramatic announcement on Friday that his forces would pull out of the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut that they have been trying in vain to capture since last summer. Prigozhin said they would withdraw on May 10 — ending their involvement in the longest and bloodiest battle of the war — because of heavy losses and inadequate ammunition supplies. He asked defence chiefs to insert regular army troops in their place. "I declare on behalf...

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Kremlin-connected businessman who controls the notorious Wagner mercenary group, has accused “decision-makers” in Russia of treason for not providing his troops and military units of Russia's regular armed forces with ammunition needed to fight in Ukraine. "A criminal group did not give us ammunition,” Prigozhin said in a five-minute audio statement posted on Telegram on April 26 in which he reiterated his claim that ammunition is being stockpiled in depots but not delivered to the battlefield. Prigozhin claimed his troops have no ammunition to fight against Ukrainian artillery because of "treason" by unspecified top Russian officials, pledging...

The head of Russia's mercenary Wagner Group threatened to withdraw his troops from the embattled city of Bakhmut in Ukraine amid heavy casualties. Yevgeny Prigozhin told military blogger Semyon Pegov losses were five times higher than necessary because of the lack of artillery ammunition. "Every day, we have stacks of thousands of bodies that we put in coffins and send home," Prigozhin said in the interview published on Saturday. He had written to Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu asking for supplies. "If the ammunition deficit is not replenished, we are forced, in order not to run like cowardly rats afterwards,...

Russia's private Wagner militia, which is leading the assault on Bakhmut in Ukraine and has been active in Africa, could soon cease to exist, founder Yevgeny Prigozhin said in video remarks to a blogger that were released on Friday. It was not immediately clear when Prigozhin had spoken and how serious he was being. Earlier this week he withdrew comments about the frontline he said had been a joke. Prigozhin has complained repeatedly about how Russia is conducting the war in Ukraine. He often says the regular armed forces are not giving his men the ammunition they need and sometimes...

The Russia government has ordered that the publication of statistics on oil, gas and condensate production be suspended until April 1, 2024, Tass news agency said on Friday. It did not give any details. Russia's statistics agency Rosstat omitted monthly oil production data from its latest economic report published on Wednesday.

Russia today boasted its missile strikes were 'right on target' in a sickening Telegram post made just hours after Vladimir Putin unleashed a barrage of rockets on Ukrainian homes. More than 20 cruise missiles and two drones were fired at cities and towns across Ukraine that were miles away from the front lines, killing at least 23 civilians including a mother and her two-year-old daughter as they slept inside their homes. Families were blown to pieces, with many victims buried amongst the rubble of their homes, as Russia's missiles thundered through the air and smashed into residential buildings. Five hours...

Vladimir Putin has reportedly fired a top admiral because of his refusal to send his sailors to fight in the war against Ukraine. Admiral Sergei Avakyants, 66, was suddenly stripped of the role of commander of the Russian Pacific Fleet last week during war games involving nuclear bombers ordered by the Kremlin. Avakyants has been seeking to protect his men from deployment - to prevent them from being cannon fodder - according to Volya and Brief Telegram. The admiral had repeatedly resisted or subverted orders to send his men to fight in Ukraine. When forced to do so he allegedly...

The Russian currency has fallen yet again against the dollar and euro. Is it just a cycle, or is something bigger going on? Since the beginning of the year, Russia's currency, the ruble, has lost 16% of its value against the dollar and 13% against the euro. This week, it was trading at around 83 rubles to the former and 91 against the latter. This makes it the third-worst performing global currency so far this year, behind the Egyptian pound and the Argentine peso. Following the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the currency immediately fell to 113 rubles against...

Far from the front line of the war in Ukraine, battle lines of a different kind were drawn when residents of a Moscow district opposed a rumored proposal for a mosque for 60,000 worshippers by a lake cherished by Russian Orthodox believers. In February, people in Kosino-Ukhtomsky started to voice anger at the complex, which would include a Muslim center and educational facilities. President of the predominantly Muslim Russian republic of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, fiercely loyal to Russian President Vladimir Putin, called on anti-mosque demonstrators to "show your patriotism" by going to the trenches in Ukraine. Prominent MMA fighters also...

ONE of Vladimir Putin's war planes dropped a bomb on a Russian city tonight - blowing a massive 65ft crater in the street. Residents said they heard a whistling noise before a blast erupted beside a block of flats in Belgorod, only 25 miles from the border with Ukraine. In a statement, the Russian Ministry of Defence said: "As a Sukhoi Su-34 air force plane was flying over the city of Belgorod there was an accidental discharge of aviation ammunition."

Russian President Putin has recently been discussing with his inner circle the options for canceling the presidential election in 2024 and dissolving the State Duma at the end of this year switching to a two-party (one-party) system and electing a president in parliament. A new constitutional reform is just around the corner.

Russia's annual in-person commemoration of its country's World War II fighters is not going to take place this year, according to state authorities. The nixing of the face-to-face "Immortal Regiment" march comes amid reports that the nation's major national event Victory Day event, which is scheduled to take place May 9 and celebrates the Soviet Union's role in defeating Nazi Germany, may be canceled or downsized in certain regions including Crimea, Kursk and Belgorod due to ongoing security concerns resulting from the war with Ukraine. Russian State Duma Deputy Elena Tsunaeva, co-chairperson of the central headquarters of the "Immortal Regiment...

A prominent pro-Kremlin propagandist has been unmasked as a 37-year-old Navy veteran and tropical fish seller from New Jersey. Divorcee Sarah Bils is known to her 100,000 devoted fans online as 'Donbas Devushka', or Donbas Girl. She posed as a Russian Jew from the occupied Ukrainian city of Luhansk and a geopolitics expert. -snip- She left the military in November last year with an honorable discharge but only after being demoted. Bils claims she was 'kicked out' of the Navy due to her 'leftist views.'

A former commander of Russian forces in Ukraine has likely returned to the war-torn country as "intense tensions" develop among Russia's top military figures, according to a new assessment. General Colonel Mikhail Teplinsky, who served as the commander of Russia's VDV, the airborne forces branch of the Russian military, was removed from Moscow's operations in Ukraine in January 2023, which Western analysts noted at the time.

-snip- Under the law, the Russian government now considers individuals legally summoned for military duty if a message has been sent to their personal accounts on Gosuslug, the state public services website, or if their name has appeared on a publicly available online list of those summoned. -snip- Simultaneously, the law calls for the creation of an electronic registry of all people required to serve. The registry will collect extensive personal data, such as name, address and passport details, as well as medical, education, tax, criminal, voting, and employment records from numerous government organizations, including the police and communal services...

A leading crony of Vladimir Putin has urged him to stop the war now and tell the world Russia has achieved the aims of its 'special military operation', including decimating 'a large part of the active male population of Ukraine'. Yevgeny Prigozhin - head of the Wagner mercenary army deployed by the Kremlin - posted a rambling statement online last night in which he made the surprise call for the war to stop. He claimed Russia had taken a 'fat chunk' of Ukrainian territory, and that the most strategic route for its armed forces - who have suffered severe losses...

As the Ukrainian spring bloodily transitions into summer, Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Generals are trying to manage a stalled, if not, failed winter offensive in the Donbas that has left as many as 75,000 Russian soldiers and Wagner Group mercenaries dead. As the Kremlin’s overall casualties continue to mount, upwards of 200,000 according to the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defense, it is becoming increasingly clear we are likely seeing the beginning of the end of Putin in Ukraine – especially as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his Generals draw nearer Kyiv’s much-anticipated counteroffensive. Ukraine is a vast Texas-size...

WAGNER Group warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin fears Ukraine has built up a 200,000-strong reserve of troops ready to launch a huge counter-blitz. The Russian billionaire has warned his feared mercenary army to "prepare for the worst". -snip- Prigozhin, who heads the group, said they have used reconnaissance satellites to spot the reserves. In a post published by Concord group on Telegram, he said: "There is a joke that ends with the phrase: 'So big, but you believe in fairy tales'. "Therefore, the political scientist Ishchenko and other very positive kind guys may turn out to be the best military analysts in...

As its Black Sea fleet flagship, the Moskva, reached the depths of the seabed in mid-April 2022, Russia insisted Ukraine had nothing to do with the sinking of the 510-crew guided missile cruiser. Russian state media provided various explanations for the sinking of the prominent flagship—none of which included a deliberate Ukrainian strike. Russia's Defense Ministry said a "fire" followed by a "munitions blast" had inflicted "serious damage" on the cruiser, prompting a crew evacuation. "The explosions of ammunition have been stopped," the ministry then said, according to state media, which claimed the ship was still afloat and being taken...