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A 9-year-old boy was killed and at least 10 people were seriously injured in a Russian rocket strike in the southern Ukrainian town of Zelenodolsk as Ukrainian forces have pushed their counteroffensive in the south of the country. The news of the rocket strike Saturday came as a report from Conflict Armament Research, an independent armed conflict investigation group based in Britain, revealed that Russia has been using outdated foreign technology in its advanced missiles systems and helicopters. Valentyn Reznichenko, the governor of the Dnipropetrovsk province, said in a statement to Telegram that Russian forces fired Uragan rockets at Zelenodolsk...

A Pentagon official, whose name was withheld, told Reuters news agency that the ship sank as a result of two Neptune missiles from Ukraine hitting Moscow, calling it a "big blow" for Russia. The Russian Defense Ministry announced yesterday that the cruiser ship named Moscow in the Black Sea was severely damaged as a result of a fire and explosion, and confirmed reports that the ship sank in the evening. Late Thursday, Russian state media reported that the Russian Defense Ministry announced that the Moscow ship had sunk. According to the agencies, the ministry, "While moving towards the targeted port,...

Day 127. Today, we discuss the Russian retreat from Snake Island, get the latest from the final day of the NATO summit in Madrid, and we interrogate the CCTV from the site of the strike on the mall in Kremenchuk. Plus, an exclusive interview with the Klitschko brothers.

Russian forces have withdrawn from Ukraine's Snake Island, a strategic outpost in the Black Sea, Russia's defence ministry and Ukraine's president's office said on Thursday. "KABOOM! No Russian troops on the Snake Island anymore. Our Armed Forces did a great job," Andriy Yermak, head of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's office, wrote on Twitter. Russia's defence ministry confirmed Russian troops had withdrawn from Snake Island, calling it a "goodwill gesture"

{UPDATE} As has been discussed at length, initial reports were incorrect and this was almost certainly a Ukrainian MIG-29. Photos at the scene of the crash and reports from reliable UAF sources have confirmed this. We apologize for the error and will do our best to ensure information is as accurate as we can before reporting. In those cases we still manage to get something wrong, we will acknowledge and correct it.

POKROVSK, Ukraine — Camouflaged in a heap of branches cut from nearby trees, the weapon that Ukraine hopes will make a critical difference in its war with Russia is all but invisible from more than a few feet away. Soon, a single round shoots out with a boom and a howling, metallic shriek as it sails toward Russian positions. It is the American-made M777 howitzer. It shoots farther, moves faster and is hidden more easily, and it’s what the Ukrainian military has been waiting for. Three months into the war in Ukraine, the first M777s — the most lethal weapons...

A Ukrainian air force MiG-29 fighter shot down one of the Russian air force’s best jets—an Su-35—near Russian-occupied Kherson on Friday, according to the Ukrainian defense ministry. The dramatic shoot-down, which reportedly took place as the Su-35 was chasing down Ukrainian attack planes, signaled an even more dramatic development on the ground. Ukrainian army formations supported by American-made M-777 howitzers crossed the Inhulets River around the town of Davydiv Brid, 50 miles northeast of Kherson. The Russians fell back to a trio of towns a few miles to the southwest. Towns whose defenses the Ukrainian general staff described as...

Henry Kissinger, the 99-year old former secretary of state, suggested that Ukraine would likely have to give up some territory in a negotiated settlement, though he added that “ideally the dividing line should be a return to the status quo” before the invasion, which included the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the seizure of parts of the Donbas. “Pursuing the war beyond that point would not be about the freedom of Ukraine, but a new war against Russia itself,’’ Mr. Kissinger concluded. Almost immediately, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine accused Mr. Kissinger of appeasement, retorting angrily that “I...

Moscow maintains that Ukraine has also lost three Su-24 bombers, one Su-27 fighter jet, three armored amphibious assault ships, 10 different helicopters and more than 50 soldiers during the attempt to retake Snake Island Information released by the Russian Defense Ministry suggests that Ukraine has so far lost 30 drones in the area around the snake island in the last three days, including nine Bayraktar TB2 drones, one of which was shot down by Russian air defenses on Tuesday, according to the Defense Ministry. Snake Island fell at the beginning of the invasion on February 24 with the assault of...

It is now May 9, and the speculation about what Russian President Vladimir Putin will do on the occasion of the 2022 Victory Day Parade has been answered.Due to the war raging in Ukraine, a lot of SmartSet™ types had been speculating that Putin would use the Victory Day Parade as the catalyst to mobilize Russia for his war in Ukraine, if not declare war outright. Read my coverage of Putin’s possible courses of action at Tomorrow Is ‘Victory Day’ in Russia but Vladimir Putin Is Losing, So What Does He Offer Russia?.The preliminaries of the parade are in the...

Terrifying video footage captured the moment the Ukrainian Bayraktar-TB2 drone annihilated the Russian Mi-8 transport helicopter on Snake Island. In the chilling black and white footage, human figures can be seen leaving the helicopter moments before it was blown up. The video was published by the Operational Command South. They said: "We cannot stop doing this. "We are driving the enemy out of every piece of our land, even from a small island, from the sea, and even from the air." Meanwhile, another Ukrainian drone took out a Russian landing ship near Snake Island which had been supplying Vladimir Putin's...

Incredible footage captures the moment two Ukrainian fighter jets bombed the Russian-occupied Snake Island. Footage released on Saturday shows Ukrainian Air Force Su-27 Flankers striking facilities during a high speed bombing of Snake Island, which was seized by Russian forces earlier this year. A Ukrainian Bayraktar TB2 drone captured two Su-27s flying low over the island from the south, before dropping multiple bombs and infrared countermeasure flares, TheDrive.com reported. The southern approach to the island was a strategic measure from Ukrainian forces because Russian defenders on the island would most likely be focused on looking north and west toward the...

The Ukrainian air force’s best fighter jets just staged a daring raid on the Russian force occupying Ukraine’s strategic Snake Island. The raid marks a significant escalation of Ukraine’s air campaign targeting the Russian garrison on the island in the western Black Sea, 80 miles south of Ukraine’s strategic port Odessa. For at least a week now, Kyiv’s propeller-driven TB-2 armed drones have been waging a relentless defense-suppression campaign over and around Snake Island. The satellite-controlled drones with their 14-pound missiles have knocked out at least three air-defense systems on the 110-acre island as well as two Russian patrol...

The drone strike on Snake Island has not been confirmed but footage and images have been shared by a Ukraine military expert on Twitter and in a satellite image taken by Planet Labs, published by the Associated Press news agency on Saturday, May 7. Ukraine Weapons Tracker, @UAWeapons, wrote that: “A Ukrainian Bayraktar TB-2 drone strike struck and destroyed what appears to be Project 11770 Serna-class landing craft, again at Snake Island.”…

While we cannot say with total certainty whether the Russian cruiser Moskva was sunk due to a Ukrainian anti-ship missile or just a fire that crews were unable to control, we know that it is lost. Soon we will find out what happened, but regardless of if it was an unfortunate series of events or enemy action, what we do know is the Russian navy is about as big of a joke as the Bad News Bears baseball team from the 1970s movie. The Russians have admitted that the flagship of their Black Sea Fleet — the ship that was...

Analysis of radar satellite imagery has revealed the location of the Moskva soon after she was reportedly hit by 2 missiles. The Russian Navy cruiser was the flagship of the Black Sea Fleet and is a symbolic as well as naval loss for Russia. The Russian cruiser Moskva will go down in history. The sinking will be studied and written about, both as a single event and, likely, a key moment in the War. The fog of war is still obscuring the event, and information operations are clouding it further. But we can look again at the open source intelligence...

Anton Kuprin, the captain of the Moskva flagship that sank in the Black Sea. Pic: Russian Ministry of Defence Ukraine has claimed the captain of a Russian warship that was sunk in the Black Sea died on board.Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine's ministry of internal affairs, shared the claim on Telegram saying that the ship's captain, Anton Kuprin, died during an "explosion and fire on board".The Moskva went down as it was being towed to port in rough seas after an explosion of ammo caused a fire, according to the Kremlin.Ukraine said it had hit the ship with...

n the first day of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Russian warships appeared off a small rock in the Black Sea. Snake Island was, it turned out, minimally defended. But it is strategically located and could potentially provide intelligence to Ukrainian forces about shipping in the area. And taking the island could be symbolic of Russia’s expected victory. History will remember the reaction of the defenders. Border guard Roman Hrybov famously replied to demands to surrender “Russian warship, go F*** yourself!“. The warship sitting off the island was none other than Moskva, the most powerful warship in the Black Sea. A...

Russia and Ukraine exchanged 10 prisoners of war each on Thursday in what Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk called the first full-fledged swap of the month-old conflict. The exchange also freed 19 Ukrainian civilian sailors who were captured as their ship tried to take Ukrainian troops off of Snake Island in late February. Ukraine released 11 Russian civilian sailors as part of the deal, Vereshchuk said as she announced the transfer. The civilians had been rescued from a ship that sank near Odesa, she said. Russia's takeover of Snake Island, also known as Zmiinyi Island, was much-discussed in the...

According to a Norwegian International Affairs researcher, the images people in Russia are being shown by the official media are far from the brutal reality of the Ukraine war. Russian president Vladimir Putin is reportedly painting a completely different picture of his ongoing invasion of neighbouring Ukraine. For people only consuming Russian media, it comes across as there being an ongoing "special military operation" in Ukraine, which has the aim of protecting the people of East Ukraine against the so-called nationalistic government in Kyiv. Russian state television aired a short statement by Putin last week, where he described Ukrainian president...