Free Republic

Russia has recaptured half of the territory it lost to Ukraine in Kursk, a region central to Volodymyr Zelensky’s plan to defeat Vladimir Putin. A senior Russian commander from Chechnya said that an estimated 50,000 troops were pushing back Ukrainian forces, who either had to flee or “end up in the cauldron”. Well-connected Russian and Ukrainian military bloggers have been reporting since Saturday that Moscow’s troops have punched through sectors of Ukraine’s front lines in Kursk. Mr Zelensky has insisted that the situation has stabilised

Russia has recaptured a few villages in its western borderlands that Ukraine invaded over the summer, threatening Kyiv’s hold on territory it views as crucial leverage for pushing Moscow toward negotiations to end the war. In recent days, Russian troops have intensified efforts to dislodge Ukrainian forces from the bulge of territory they seized in Russia’s western Kursk region, launching several assaults spearheaded by armored vehicles. Battlefield maps compiled by independent groups using satellite images and combat footage indicate that Russian forces have driven a wedge into the western edge of the Ukrainian bulge, recapturing at least three villages. “In...

If NATO becomes a party to the conflict in Ukraine, it will get to a point where Russia will carry out a strike on military facilities in NATO territory, German parliament member and leader of the BSW said. BERLIN, October 12. /TASS/. NATO’s growing involvement in the Ukraine conflict may trigger a nuclear response from Russia, Sahra Wagenknecht, German parliament member and leader of the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance - Reason and Justice party (BSW), said. "If NATO becomes a party to the conflict in Ukraine, it will get to a point where Russia will carry out a strike on military...

Fighting on the ground is gaining momentum both in the Donetsk region, where Russian Federation forces advance in multiple areas of the front, and also on the Kursk region, where the Ukrainian incursion is getting squeezed from the flanks, as Moscow endeavors to expel Kiev’s troops. In the battle for the strategic city of Toretsk, the Ukrainian defenders now only control less than half the city as they try to stave off the Russian assault, according to the city’s local authorities.

Russia's weak response to Ukraine's assault into Russian territory is partly due to a persistent flaw in Russian President Vladimir Putin's leadership, a warfare expert told Business Insider. Ukraine launched a surprise attack on Russia's Kursk region in early August and, by late September, said it controlled more than 500 square miles. Russia has not taken any significant swathe of territory back. Michael Bohnert, an analyst at RAND Corporation, told BI that with the way Russian President Vladimir Putin has responded, not even appointing a general to take charge of what is clearly a military situation rather than a domestic...

Two and a half years since the war began, we’ve finally come to the point where most of the Mockingbird Media is ready to call it quits, and openly admit the obvious: Russian Federation troops are winning the war.Even in their cheerleading for Kiev, they have to admit that ‘if Ukraine and its Western backers are to win, they must first have the courage to admit that they are losing.’The Economist reported:“A measure of Ukraine’s declining fortunes is Russia’s advance in the east, particularly around the city of Pokrovsk.[…] Ukraine is also struggling off the battlefield. Russia has destroyed so...

Israel-Lebanon- First 10 minutes of video10:29 Ukraine video portion beginsPresident Biden and President Zelensky meet today/tomorrow.Mercouris believes that Zelensky has "massively overplayed his hand," (As Zelensky addresses UN Security Council, UN General Assembly).Series of articles in MSM, including one in Bloomberg, which say American officials have seen Zelensky's 'Victory Plan' and are unimpressed by it. Nothing new in his plan - it's been described as more of a 'wish list' rather than a 'plan'. The Pentagon (spokesmen) and Admiral Kirby at US National Security Coucil both reaffirm U.S. policy that the prohibition against using America's long range missiles against Russia...

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has accused the United Nations of turning a blind eye to Ukrainian attacks in Russia’s Kursk region, which began in early August. Lavrov made the remarks during an interview with Russia’s TASS news agency on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York.Lavrov claimed that Ukrainian forces, armed with Western weapons, are committing indiscriminate attacks on civilians and infrastructure in Kursk. He criticized the UN and its Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, for failing to condemn these actions.“I have not heard any voices from UN representatives responsible for human rights, including, of course, the secretary...

Russia’s military command had anticipated Ukraine’s incursion into its Kursk region and had been making plans to prevent it for several months, according to a cache of documents that the Ukrainian army said it had seized from abandoned Russian positions in the region. The disclosure makes the disarray among Russian forces after Ukraine’s attack in early August all the more embarrassing. The documents, shared with the Guardian, also reveal Russian concerns about morale in the ranks in Kursk, which intensified after the suicide of a soldier at the front who had reportedly been in a “prolonged state of depression due...

According to Mercouris, illusions and fantasies about the war continue to circulate about it. And there are other fantasies connected to it, primarily held by people in Europe. One of the major misconceptions about the military side of the conflict is the discussion about a war conducted between two equivalent armies. That is not the case, it might have been true in some periods of the autumn and late summer of 2022, and maybe something people could believe in 2023. But it's not the case now.Events proceed at a steadily accelerating pace - they point to a Ukrainian military collapse...

In a surprise move on Aug. 6, a strong Ukrainian force—eventually numbering around a dozen battalions each with up to 400 troops—breached the defenses along the Russia-Ukraine border adjacent to Russia’s Kursk Oblast. In a heady couple of weeks before the front stabilized, the Ukrainians routed poorly-trained Russian conscripts and captured 400 square miles of Kursk Oblast. “This has put [Russian Pres. Vladimir] Putin under pressure,” U.K. Defense Secretary John Healey said. Rightly embarrassed, Putin ordered the Kremlin to recapture Kursk by Oct. 1. And on Wednesday, Russian troops dutifully launched a counterattack along the western edge of the Ukrainian...

Russia appears to have launched its first major counterattack to drive Ukrainian forces out of Russia's Kursk region more than a month after Ukraine began its surprise offensive, according to Russian and Ukrainian sources as well as independent military analysts.Russian forces appeared already to have some success on Tuesday -- retaking some territory and driving a wedge into Ukrainian lines in Kursk, analysts said.Videos posted by pro-Russian military bloggers and geolocated by ABC News showed a large Russian armored column attacking toward the village of Snagost. Another video appears to show Ukrainian troops taken prisoner.The Russian counterattack is focused on...

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the Russian military has developed a plan to expel Ukrainian troops from the Kursk Region. "Naturally, the military has all necessary plans but I don’t think that these plans can be discussed publicly," he said when asked when Ukrainian troops will be driven out of Russia’s territory, News.Az reports citing TASS. Russia’s borderline Kursk Region came under a massive attack from Ukraine on August 6. A federal state of emergency is in effect in the region.

After entering 2024 in a sorry state, Ukraine has notched up a series of notable achievements since the start of the year, giving fresh impetus to its fight back against Russia. ... Western allies have let it use some of the missile systems they've supplied to hit targets inside Russia, with notable caveats, giving it a better chance to defend itself against incoming Russian attacks. And it also regained the initiative with its surprise incursion into the Russian region of Kursk in August, even while gradually losing ground in eastern Ukraine. "What Ukraine has done in the past month, starting...

Russian President Vladimir Putin ruffled some feathers inside his own country this weekend when he appeared to dismiss the recent Ukrainian incursion into the Kursk Oblast inside of Russia as having had "no effect" on the overall war. He insisted that the primary objective of the war had been to retake and fortify annexed lands, primarily in the eastern Donbas region, and that Ukraine's actions in Kursk had actually hastened Russia's success there. Meanwhile, Ukraine's top military commander was marched out to counter those claims, saying that the invasion of Kursk was "working" and that Russia had made no new...

Discussions have been happening for some time among Western policymakers, experts, and the wider public about how the war in Ukraine ought to end. I can confirm that the same type of conversations are happening in Russia. I recently had the opportunity to speak, on the basis of confidentiality, to a wide range of members of the Russian establishment, including former diplomats, members of think tanks, academics, and businesspeople, as well as a few members of the wider public. Their ideas about the war, and the shape of its eventual ending, deserve to be better understood in the West and...

Christoforou: Asks Mercouris, 'does the speed of the Russian advancement surprise you? We're hearing that Russians are advancing now without much resistance. Are those reports believable?'Mercouris: believes the reports are true and said the Russian advances began accelerating in March. He is surprised at the unprecedented (in this war) speed of the advance in the past three weeks. 2:17Cites a 'dissident' Ukrainian MP saying 'Ukraine is giving up one fortified position after another without a fight, looks like the entire Ukrainian army is just going through the motions in many places, some places are still vigorously fighting (Chasiv Yar, Siversk...

As today's WaPo exposes, the Ukraine side is accelerating its own military defeat to Russia. This quote from a Ukrainian expert in the article unwittingly exposes the fatal flaw in their Kursk attack: “The effect we aim to achieve should not so much be reflected on the battlefield as it should in the impact on the international community, the moral and psychological state of the Ukrainian people, and the demoralization of Russian society.”

Russia has made sweeping advances in recent days that threaten to outweigh the gains made by Ukraine in its cross-border attack into the Kursk region. Russian forces are just a few kilometres from the Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk, a crucial logistics hub used by the Ukrainian military. Home to a key railway station and major roads, Pokrovsk is an essential supply and reinforcement point for Ukraine’s troops on the eastern front line. Critics in Kyiv fear that the country's military has made a serious miscalculation.

Russian forces are just a few kilometres from the Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk, a crucial logistics hub used by the Ukrainian military. Home to a key railway station and major roads, Pokrovsk is an essential supply and reinforcement point for Ukraine’s troops on the eastern front line. Critics in Kyiv fear that the country's military has made a serious miscalculation. By sending troops into Kursk instead of reinforcing the eastern frontline, the military has left Pokrovsk and other important Ukrainian towns exposed, these critics say.