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The Kiev regime has been given free rein to do whatever it wants by the West and “is even allowed to torture and kill Americans,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov charged, referring to the death of US YouTuber Gonzalo Lira in Ukrainian Prison. Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova charged the United States with “consigning an inconvenient journalist to execution.”“Kiev has unbridled freedom, and this permissiveness is manifested in everything it does. This free rein only leads to disaster. And this disaster has already reached the minds of the current Ukrainian regime, and they are leading their entire country there,” the...

LVIV, Ukraine, Jan 1 (Reuters) - Russian drones attacked a university and a museum linked to two of the most prominent 20th century defenders of Ukrainian national identity on Monday, leaving locals vowing to repair the damage.The first smashed windows and much of the roof at the National Agrarian University, outside the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, where Stepan Bandera - a hero in Ukraine but a villain according to the Kremlin - studied.It hit on what would have been Bandera's 115th birthday.The second ravaged a nearby museum devoted to Roman Shukhevych.###"This is the building in which Stepan Bandera attended...

While ukraine falls apart, the Russian military continues to go from strength to strength

Ritter describes the total inadequacy of the training and materiel that ukies are receiving: Left unsaid is the question of the massive COC (Coefficient of Corruption) of ukraine in which ukie senior officers are motivated only by personal gain and seek to extract every penny they can from the war effort and pocket it, the consequences to ordinary soldiers be damned...

Russians socking it to the forces of darkness...

This is the German version of how WW2 got started in Europe Now, as far as I am concerned, Adolf Hitler was a goofball and a slave to his own racist ideology and if there was a reason for anybody to like the guy, I wouldn't know what it was. Nonetheless, if anybody were to ask me who started WW2 in Europe, I'd not hesitate to answer the British and the Poles. Pat Buchanan has said that the Brits were handing out war guarantees like they were cotton candy at the time and stopped the Poles from dealing with Germany...

Major Russian media now reporting Bakhmut in Russian handsBakhmut was the basic lynchpin of the entire ukie defensive system in the East.

Recently, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen carelessly revealed the devastating cost of the Ukraine war. “It is estimated that more than 20,000 civilians and 100,000 Ukrainian military personnel have died to date,” she said. The comment drew sharp backlash and the E.C. later deleted the comments from video recordings of the address. The censorship was left unexplained and demonstrated the confusion of the purveyors of the approved narrative. If Von der Leyen’s estimate is true, that is nearly ten times the number of dead Ukrainian soldiers reported by the Ukrainian government. The E.C. president’s remark shows that even...

A Russian court has sentenced the opposition politician Ilya Yashin to eight and a half years in prison, in the most high-profile case to date of a Russian dissident being jailed for opposing the invasion of Ukraine. Yashin was tried on charges of spreading false information meant to discredit the Russian army, under a law introduced after Russia launched its invasion, due to a series of posts in May about the murder and torture of Ukrainian civilians by Russian troops in the town of Bucha. “Expressing hatred of the political system of the Russian Federation and realising that he is...

We have seen an increase in calls for a negotiated solution of the war in Ukraine. From the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, from progressive members of Congress and from leading international relations scholars, a growing number of voices urge the United States to invest in negotiations between Russia and Ukraine and to give peace a chance. According to some reports, the Biden administration is also warming up to the thought.It’s a dangerous idea.Fears of nuclear escalation between Russia and NATO drive many to argue for negotiations, and although the impetus is well-intentioned, the suggestion is naive and impractical. In...

Ursula von Der Leyen’s did the unthinkable today — she told the truth. During a speech condemning Russia for committing war crimes, she noted in passing that 100,000 Ukrainian “officers” (sic) have been killed since the start of the SMO.Ukraine was not happy:Ukraine has hit back at a claim by the European Commission’s president that 100,000 of Kyiv’s troops have been killed since Russia’s invasion in February.Ursula von der Leyen used the number in a video address, prompting Kyiv’s armed forces to state that the death toll was “classified information.” Footage of her speech has since been edited to cut...

Kherson strategy not a 'freeze'

Putin sacks ANOTHER top general, Western officials say Russia is in advanced stages of planning retreat from Kherson, officials believe 'Reinforcements' are actually conscripts designed to cover the retreat, they said If retreat happens, Russia will try to play it off as 'evacuation' to protect civilians Meanwhile Russian General Lapin has 'probably' been sacked, officials added Russia is planning to retreat from the city of Kherson and play it off as a civilian evacuation, Western officials said today. Putin's troops are in the advanced stages of preparing for the retreat, the officials said, having moved conscripts into the city to...

“Early retirement” is a strange way to describe a 44-year-old’s acceptance of a new government role, but for Mikk Marran, Estonia’s spymaster, it feels a lot like that. As of next month he will no longer helm Välisluureamet, the Baltic state’s foreign intelligence service, which, long before Vladimir Putin’s faltering invasion of Ukraine, was at the forefront of assessing the threats and capabilities of a resurgent and revanchist Russia.(snip) According to one former high-ranking U.S. intelligence officer, “Estonia punches far above its weight on Russian affairs. The respect for Marran and his service in the U.S. intelligence community is quite...

A neo-Nazi pro-Kremlin group active in Ukraine is inciting atrocities against prisoners of war and explicitly advocates the torture of captives including “removing body parts”. The self-styled “Task Force Rusich” is fighting in Ukraine on behalf of the Kremlin and is linked to the notorious Wagner Group mercenaries. A message on Rusich’s Telegram channel sent on 22 September advocates the “destruction of prisoners on the spot”. Adam Hadley, executive director of Tech Against Terrorism, a London-based initiative supported by the United Nations, said: “Rusich, an openly neo-Nazi group highly likely operating on behalf of the Kremlin, has promoted the commission...

KYIV — Russia’s annexation of four Ukrainian regions, announced by President Vladimir Putin on Friday, will not affect Kyiv’s resolve to free them with military force, said an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. “For our plans, [Russia’s annexation] doesn’t matter,” Mykhailo Podolyak told POLITICO, speaking before the signing ceremony in Moscow orchestrated by Putin. The Russian leader railed at the United States and the West, denounced the Ukrainian government, and warned: “We will protect our land using all our forces.” The annexation comes on a day when Ukrainian soldiers have reportedly encircled thousands of Russian troops near the city...

The face of Russia’s war in Ukraine has wrinkles. Photos documenting the first week of Russia’s mobilization order calling for 300,000 more soldiers to be drafted show older men being forced into the fight. Images from the rural province of Sverdlovsk reveal a pair of silver-haired soldiers arriving at a training barracks in central Russia. Some soldiers standing for inspection at a ceremony in Sevastopol displayed wrinkles and liver spots. One man, with a gray-streaked beard, held his AK-style rifle in a hand with three bandaged fingers. When Russian President Vladimir Putin announced he was calling up hundreds of thousands...

The defence minister of Ukraine Oleksii Reznikov believes that Belarusian soldiers have no motivation to enter the war with Ukraine, and if ordered by their authorities to fight, they would lay down their weapons. "I don't understand what would motivate Belarusians to consciously go to war with Ukraine, kill and die for no one knows what, even if they are officers who are under oath obliged to follow orders. If they go on the attack with their units, they could cross the Belarusian border, raise their hands, lay down their weapons and say, ‘Ukrainians, we are your syabry. [Belarusians] are...

In less than 24 hours part of Ukraine becomes part of Russia and NATO just held a secret meeting to ramp up the war. Vladimir Putin pointed the finger directly at the U.S. for its attack on the Nord Stream pipelines. Germany is on the brink of collapse as German energy experts point to coming blackouts.

Vladimir Putin will formally annex occupied regions of Ukraine to Russian in a major speech tomorrow, the Kremlin has confirmed, as he attempts to regain the initiative after his forces suffered a humiliating rout earlier this month. Putin's speech comes after Russian-backed proxy governments in Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions held sham referendums earlier this week on whether to go ahead with the move. Armed Russian soldiers taking ballot boxes door-to-door left the results in no doubt, and Ukraine along with its Western allies have vowed not to recognise the results. But it still marks a turning point in...