Free Republic

The head of a Russian private militia has called on the army to overthrow Vladimir Putin in what is potentially shaping up to be the biggest threat of revolt the Kremlin has faced since the Wagner mutiny last year. Georgy Zakrevsky is the founder of the Paladin PMC, one of many shadowy military groups like the former Wagner militia, that are loosely linked to the Kremlin. The private military company (PMC) has around 300 members and has fought in wars around the world, including in Syria and Africa. Zakrevsky launched a blistering attack on the Russian president during a video...

-snip- After my first trip to Ukraine, a few readers wrote in or left comments urging me to check out the assessments of retired colonel Douglas Macgregor, contending he had the real scoop. I wasn’t familiar with Macgregor, but a bit of digging illuminated the retired colonel’s very consistent assessment of how the war is going: March 4, 2022: “The first five days Russian forces I think frankly were too gentle. They’ve now corrected that. So, I would say, another ten days, this should be completely over.” March 15, 2022: “The Ukrainians are being crushed. Even the Washington Post and...

Terrified dictator Alexander Lukashenko has urged Russia and Ukraine to agree a peace deal to avoid the war spilling over into Belarus. President Lukashenko, a key ally of Vladimir Putin, said he fears Kyiv's troops are now planning an incursion into his nation after they launched a cross-border offensive in Russia. Thousands of Ukrainian soldiers smashed through Russia's western border on August 6 in a major embarrassment for Putin's top military brass. Now in an interview with Russia state television, Lukashenko has said that only 'high-ranking people of American origin' wanted the Ukraine-Russia war to continue. The West, he said,...

While Belarus’s Lukashenko has commented on the cross-border attacks, Central Asian nations stay mum. Almost two years ago, a dozen Uzbek youngsters pleaded with their president to save them from the horrors of the Russian-Ukrainian war. Uzbek nationals enrolled in western Russia’s Kursk Medical University recorded a video address to Shavkat Mirziyoyev in October 2022 saying their studies had been affected by Kyiv’s shelling of nearby towns and the hostilities in the neighbouring Ukrainian region of Sumy. “Please transfer us to medical schools in Uzbekistan,” one of the students said. Uzbek diplomats pledged to assess the situation. There have been...