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Russia needs to up the number and quality of its weapons heading for Ukraine to maintain Moscow's push on Ukraine's defensive lines, Russia's top defense official has said, ahead of a likely summer offensive expected to start in the coming weeks. "To maintain the required pace of the offensive and ensure the build-up of the combat strength of troop groups for further actions, it is necessary to increase the volume and quality of weapons and military equipment supplied to the troops," Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said, according to comments published by Moscow on Wednesday.

UKRAINE has blitzed another major Russian oil refinery in a kamikaze drone strike, the explosions sparking a huge inferno near Moscow. Dramatic video from the scene showed flames raging from the Rosneft energy giant facility in the city of Ryazan on Wednesday. Residents of Ryazan, located 125 miles southeast of Moscow, were said to have heard the rumble of drones about 3am. Two explosions followed the sound, triggering the inferno. The attack came after another Ukrainian strike on two oil refineries in Krasnodar region -snip- Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin’s defence minister Sergei Shoigu demanded more "means of destruction" as Western supplies...

The Russian warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin has said Russia’s defence ministry concocted false pretences to trick Vladimir Putin into invading Ukraine and said Moscow could have avoided the war entirely. In a half-hour tirade Prigozhin, founder of the notorious Wagner mercenary group, claimed Russia had faced no immediate threat from Ukraine when Putin began his full-scale invasion last year and accused the army’s top brass of deceiving the Russian president for their own personal gain. The extraordinary rant, posted on social media on Friday, was the former caterer’s latest salvo in a long-running spat with defence minister Sergei Shoigu, who Prigozhin...

Vladimir Putin has hit out at Western 'scum' who he accuses of seeking to 'instigate pogroms' in Russia after an anti-Semetic mob rampaged through Dagestan. The Kremlin leader was two hours late for a meeting with his leading military and security henchmen in which the dictator blamed foreign interference for the ugly scenes at a regional airport when the mob hunted for Jews arriving by plane. Citing no evidence, he accused Ukraine and Western intelligence services of being behind the hate-filled uprising in Makhachkala, capital of Dagestan region. In a rambling diatribe, a grim-faced Putin told his subordinates that the...

A top Russian general has 'vanished' amid claims he had advance knowledge of the weekend armed revolt which threatened Vladimir Putin's regime. One theory is that General Sergei 'Armageddon' Surovikin is under interrogation over a plot to oust defence minister Sergei Shoigu amid a hunt to purge the enemies within. Surovikin, 56, is the second-in-command of the Russian armed forces. He has known links to 'coup leader' Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Wagner mercenary army chief. US officials briefed on American intelligence said a top Russian general had advance knowledge of Prigozhin's plans to rebel against Shoigu and chief of the armed...

Yevgeny Prigozhin used a false pretext to lead his Wagner Group forces in an armed insurrection against the Russian state, according to a senior U.S. official. Prigozhin had been plotting ways to reverse his fortunes in the face of waning power and came up with a plan to claim his forces had been bombed, which he would then use to justify actions against Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Russian defense leaders, the senior official said. The precipitating factor for Prigozhin’s military march was the directive that his forces be increasingly incorporated into the Russian military, the official said. Prigozhin...

There has been no word from either the Russian president or the Wagner Group boss since the insurrection was abruptly called off after a deal was brokered by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. Russia's defence minister has been seen in public for the first time since Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin stood down his group of rebel mercenaries. In the first piece of footage released since the aborted Wagner group mutiny over the weekend, Sergei Shoigu was seen visiting Russian troops involved in Moscow's military operation in Ukraine. It remains unclear when and where the footage released by state news agency RIA...

More than 90,000 troops make up Russia’s “irrecoverable” military losses in Ukraine, as reported by the Russian media project iStories (or Vazhnye Istorii). One of the two sources of this information works in the FSB; the other is a former state security officer. [Emphasis added.] “Irrecoverable losses” is a category that includes servicemen who were killed, went missing, died from their wounds or were disabled and cannot return to military service. This new estimate is close to the figures stated earlier by the Pentagon and the British Defense Ministry. Last August, the Pentagon estimated that 70–80 thousand Russian troops had...

Summary of daily info with military rationale Denys Davydov Follow on Instagram for up to date uploads there. https://www.instagram.com/denys_pilot/ Also, you may check military maps here: https://militaryland.net/ https://deepstatemap.live/ Slava Ukraine

Russia’s TASS News Service released photos on Tuesday of a NATO Seafox mine disposal unmanned underwater drone was found during a scheduled visual inspection of the Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline in November 2015. Russia accused NATO of attempting to blow up the pipeline in 2015. The incident made international headlines at the time. Via KimDotCom.

"More and more brazen attacks are being launched against Russia and Washington is doing little to hide US fingerprints. Why? The Biden Administration seems to be moving us closer to nuclear war over Ukraine and Biden himself seems to know it. Last week he said, Putin “is not joking when he talks about potential use of tactical nuclear weapons or biological or chemical weapons…” For the “first time since the Cuban missile crisis, we have a direct threat of the use [of nuclear weapons] if in fact things continue down the path they are going.” So the question is if...

Retired Admiral Mike Mullen is advising the Biden administration to negotiate peace between Russia and Ukraine as World War 3 becomes a real possibility. Mullen, who was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, is saying that Biden should back off on the reckless talk and get to working on diplomacy.

The horrifying attacks on Ukraine yesterday– are a sign that the Russian president is, if not yet desperate, getting nearer to it. They represent a highly significant psychological shift for the beleaguered leader. He is no longer trying to win the war: now he is simply trying not to visibly lose it. Previously he could have defined victory however he wanted. But by annexing Ukrainian regions, he has upped the already high stakes. If he cedes so-called ‘Russian’ territory, he will become the Tsar who gave away Russian land instead of the strongman who restored the empire. And by ordering...

Germany has promised to transfer to Ukraine 100 Soviet-made tanks, which will be delivered from Greece and Slovakia in a “circular scheme”. This was stated by German Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht, reports CNN. Head of the German Defense Ministry During a visit to the German military stationed in Lithuania, the German military announced additional deliveries of weapons to Ukraine, including the IRIS-T air defense system and 100 tanks from Greece and Slovakia. The website of the German government reports that queues for delivery to Ukraine: 4 IRIS-T anti-aircraft missile systems 2 MARS II multiple launch rocket systems with ammunition; 4...

Russia's “partial mobilization” and its sham referendums to justify the annexation of four provinces in Eastern Ukraine create new sources of uncertainty about the future course of the war. Yet Russia's actions should also produce a rare moment of strategic clarity for Ukraine's partners: No viable path to negotiated peace remains, and any result short of Ukrainian victory will be, in the long run, a worse outcome for the rules-based international order. The third, and more politically significant, alternative falls somewhere between the first two. This camp decries Russia's barbarity and lauds Ukrainians' bravery while, at same time, worrying about...

⚡️#BREAKING Ukraine blows up border bridges with Belarus – Minsk— TPYXA ⚡ Middle East 🇸🇩 🇮🇷 🇷🇺 (@MEPaper1090) October 9, 2022⚡️Representatives of #Ukraine's territorial defense are coming to the border, aiming at the border guards of Belarus and shooting in the air, head of Belarusian border committe says— TPYXA ⚡ Middle East 🇸🇩 🇮🇷 🇷🇺 (@MEPaper1090) October 9, 2022

“Early retirement” is a strange way to describe a 44-year-old’s acceptance of a new government role, but for Mikk Marran, Estonia’s spymaster, it feels a lot like that. As of next month he will no longer helm Välisluureamet, the Baltic state’s foreign intelligence service, which, long before Vladimir Putin’s faltering invasion of Ukraine, was at the forefront of assessing the threats and capabilities of a resurgent and revanchist Russia.(snip) According to one former high-ranking U.S. intelligence officer, “Estonia punches far above its weight on Russian affairs. The respect for Marran and his service in the U.S. intelligence community is quite...

ZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday called the attack that damaged the huge bridge connecting Russia to its annexed territory of Crimea “a terrorist act” masterminded by Ukrainian special services.The Kerch Bridge, which holds important strategic and symbolic value to Russia in its faltering war in Ukraine, was hit a day earlier by what Moscow has said was a truck bomb. Road and rail traffic on the bridge were temporarily halted, damaging a vital supply route for the Kremlin’s forces.“There’s no doubt it was a terrorist act directed at the destruction of critically important civilian infrastructure...

ahead of meeting of his Security Council tomorrow - but the Kremlin tries to plays down Western fears retaliation will include nuclear weapons Russian president Vladimir Putin says the explosion at the Kerch bridge in Crimea was 'an act of terrosim' The president said today the blast was 'devised, carried out and ordered by the Ukrainian special services' He made the statement a day before he is due to meet with his top defence chiefs in his Security Council The bridge had been a pet project of Putin's after the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and key in the war...

Key figures including Wagner Group’s Yevgeny Prigozhin are using military defeats to undermine defence chief Sergei Shoigu. Friends, rivals and enemies took their seats in the Grand Kremlin Palace as Vladimir Putin gathered the country’s elite to formalise Russia’s illegal annexation of four occupied regions in Ukraine. The ceremony was meant to portray strength and unity, but within 24 hours had been overshadowed by Russia’s failures on the battlefield. These losses, which continued into this week on the southern and eastern fronts in Ukraine, have led to a major, unprecedented rupture within the ruling class as the Kremlin seeks scapegoats...