Free Republic

Still standing with "ukraine".....

Russian president has sought 'alternative sources to replenish man power' It added: 'Last week there was a movement towards the Donetsk region of a train with reserved seats for transporting prisoners. One of the carriages [was for] convicted women.' And earlier this week, there were reports that Russia had moved women convicts to Kuschevka in Krasnodar region, close to the war zone. Here some female prisoners - released under a scheme linked to the war effort - were put to work as farm labourers in field as well as 'greenhouses and cowsheds', possibly deployed in supplying the military. Some had...

The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has appeared to concede the severity of the Kremlin’s recent military reversals in Ukraine, insisting Russia would “stabilise” the situation in four Ukrainian regions it illegally claimed as its own territory last week. Russia has suffered significant losses in two of the four regions since Friday, when Putin signed treaties to incorporate them into Russia by force, with Russian officials saying their forces were “regrouping”. “We are working on the assumption that the situation in the new territories will stabilise,” Putin told Russian teachers during a televised video call. With Ukraine pushing its advance in...

The Russian military lacks the manpower necessary to hold of a further Ukrainian advance into the Luhansk region, a correspondent embedded with the Russian military in the occupied city of Svatove said on Tuesday evening. “The Russian troops do not have enough manpower to stop the enemy attacks,” Alexander Kots, for Russian pro-government tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda said in a video posted to Telegram. “The recent Russian losses are directly connected to that. It’s a very difficult period of time on the front line at the moment.” He said that “we expect a serious fighting here very soon,” and that “it...