Free Republic

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner Group, said he was prepared to send his mercenary troops to the Russian border region where raids from Ukrainian territory have taken place. In an audio post on Telegram, Prigozhin reiterated on Saturday his criticism of the Russian Defense Ministry's handling of the war in Ukraine, this time about how it was dealing with armed incursions into the Russian region of Belgorod, from where thousands have fled. Belgorod has been hit by numerous attacks with the regional governor, Vyacheslav Gladkov, saying on Friday, there were more than 500 projectile weapons fired, most of...

Over the last five days of May, Ruslan, an English teacher in a Russian town near the Ukrainian border, heard the distinct sound of a multiple rocket launcher strike for the first time. Shelling would begin around 3 a.m., sometimes shaking his house, and continue through the morning. He had heard the thud of explosions in distant villages in the past, he said, and in October shelling damaged a nearby shopping mall. But nothing like this. “Everything changed,” he said. Fifteen months after Russian missiles first roared toward Kyiv, residents of the Russian border region of Belgorod are starting to...

Russian fighters serving under the Ukrainian Armed Forces have crossed into the town of Shebekino in Russia's Belgorod region, bringing "heavy equipment" with them, Ilya Ponomarev, an exiled Russian politician—who says he is the political representative for the group of fighters—told Newsweek. Ponomarev's remarks came on the heels of a statement from Belgorod Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov, who said shelling in the border town of Shebekino overnight injured at least eight people. Gladkov denied "any enemies are on the territory of the Belgorod region" even as reports emerged that tanks operated by "saboteurs" were shelling the town's checkpoint. The Freedom of...