Free Republic

Vladimir Putin has been forced to call up dozens of creaking T-55 tanks used by Russia's Hollywood as props in war films. The army has raided the Mosfilm warehouses in its desperation to invade Ukraine. Desperate Russian president Putin thanked movie chief Karen Shakhnazarov for the outdated Cold War military hardware during a Kremlin meeting. 'We have handed over to the [Russian] Armed Forces 28 T-55 tanks, eight PT-76 tanks, six BMPs (combat vehicles) and eight tractors [that] we had stored at the military-technical base,' Shakhnazarov said. 'I found out that there was a need, contacted the Ministry of Defence...

The price of potatoes - a staple of the Russian diet - have increased by 64 percent this year, according to the latest figures. -snip- Sergei Chemezov, who is the CEO of the state-owned defence giant Rostec, warned that sky-high interest rates are eroding business profitability and could lead to widespread bankruptcies. TsMAKP echoed these concerns. He cautioned that “the current high interest rate and the prospect of further increases create a risk of economic downturn and a collapse in investments.” -snip- Recent data showed a 3.1% contraction year-on-year in the latest quarter, with more slowdowns expected as war-related disruptions...

Ukraine could develop a rudimentary nuclear bomb within months if Donald Trump withdraws US military assistance, according to a briefing paper prepared for the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence. The country would quickly be able to build a basic device from plutonium with a similar technology to the “Fat Man” bomb dropped on Nagasaki in 1945, the report states. “Creating a simple atomic bomb, as the United States did within the framework of the Manhattan Project, would not be a difficult task 80 years later,” the document reads. With no time to build and run the large facilities required to enrich...

Russia attacked the Ukrainian capital Kyiv on Wednesday with a sophisticated combination of missiles and drones for the first time in 73 days, authorities reported, as the Pentagon said most of the North Korean troops sent to help Moscow's war effort were fighting to drive Ukraine's army off Russian soil in the Kursk border region. -snip- The air assault came as most of the more than 10,000 North Korean troops sent by Pyongyang to help Moscow in the war were engaged in fighting in Kursk, where a Ukrainian army incursion three months ago has succeeded in holding a broad area...