Free Republic

Russia is pulling all of its fighter jets out of Crimea in an apparent response to recent explosions at Russian military outposts in the region, a secret NATO report seen by Insider said. Russia has already moved ten aircraft — six Su-35S and four MiG-31BM jets — out of Crimea and into Russia and is set to continue until all fighter jets are removed, the report, which was dated August 22, said. The first ten jets were moved from Belbek airfield in Crimea to Kushchevskaya and Marinovka, two regions in Russia, the report said. "Russia has dispersed 10x fighter aircraft...

On the evening of August 26, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky traditionally addressed the Ukrainians. Export grain initiative has been working for almost a month, and during this time we [Ukraine] exported the first one million tons of agricultural products from our three sea ports - Chornomorsk, Odessa and Yuzhny - since February 24. Ukrainian grain and the very fact that our direction of delivery to the global food market has started to work, allows us to avoid chaos in the market, relieve the acuteness of the food crisis, prevent a catastrophic deficit. Ukraine was, is and will be among the...

... An American military intelligence officer points to historical precedents for such odd hesitation by Russian forces over the past two months. He cites the observation by BH Liddell Hart of the puzzling behavior of the Russians in World War II after the critical victory at Kursk: Advance of Russian forces was very slow and never able to decisively exploit obvious holes in the German line. But the successes kept coming and the Red Army leadership never risked or incurred a major loss or a major flanking movement again as had happened at the outset of Germany’s Operation Barbarossa. It’s...

Yesterday, Allahpundit wrote about the Russian effort to feed more troops into the stalled war on Ukraine. Russia’s inability to advance creates a possible opening for a Ukrainian counterattack. And we’ve seen some signs that Ukraine has been taking the initiative with attacks on supply lines and ammunition depots in Crimea and elsewhere. Just today there is another story that Ukraine struck a Russian base and killed 200 paratroopers:“The Armed Forces of Ukraine struck enemy fortifications in occupied Kadiivka, killing about 200 Russian paratroopers,” he wrote on Twitter.Haidai noted that the occupiers had been based in a hotel in Kadiivka...