Free Republic

Todays report comes in early. More good news! Additional high ground and villages liberated, Russian blow another damn in desperation. All due to the counteroffensive that was said here would never happen! Huzzaah!

The Ukrainian air force has been ... busy. With a pre-war force of just 125 or so fighters and bombers, the Ukrainian air arm defended the sky over Kyiv during the heady early hours of Russia’s assault on the city in the spring of 2022 and then, after that assault collapsed, shifted its attention to the front lines in eastern and southern Ukraine. In 15 months of hard fighting, the air force has lost at least half of its pre-war jet inventory—and scores of pilots. But amid this violence, one small community had been relatively idle: the section of the...

Fresh off his claim of victory in capturing the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, Russian mercenary boss Yevgeniy Prigozhin warned that Moscow’s brutal war could plunge Russia into turmoil similar to the 1917 revolution unless its detached, wealthy elites become more directly committed to the conflict. In a lengthy interview with Konstantin Dolgov, a political operative and pro-war blogger, Prigozhin, the founder and leader of the Wagner mercenary group, also asserted that the war has backfired spectacularly by failing to “demilitarize” Ukraine, one of President Vladimir Putin’s stated aims of the invasion. He also called for totalitarian policies. “We are in...