Free Republic

Ukrainians are hunting down Russian drones armed with nothing more than shotguns and rifles while dangling out of prop lanes as part of a low-tech solution to Moscow’s high-tech aerial assassins. Although Kyiv has some of the West’s most advanced air-defense systems, including US-made Patriot missiles and F-16 jets, the nation has been forced to deploy such unconventional tactics to counter Russia’s ever-escalating drone bombardments because of the sheer number of devices being deployed. Pilots and gunners in Ukraine’s 11th Army Aviation Brigade have been tapped to take the Soviet-era Yak-52 prop planes to the skies, with the two-person aircraft...

The Wagner group mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin looked “doomed” in the days before his death after an aborted rebellion against Russia’s military leadership, his mother has said. In the first interview with a close family member since the warlord’s death in August 2023, Violetta Prigozhina, 85, said that she had tried to dissuade her son from marching on Moscow and revealed that the authorities have still not told her what caused his death. Prigozhina told the Russian outlet Fontanka that she had warned her son: “Zhenya, only people on the internet will support you. No one will go with you....