Free Republic

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (R), who has been under the microscope this week for an anecdote about killing her dog, defended her actions Wednesday, saying she shot the “dangerous” pup in order to protect her children. “It was a dog that was extremely dangerous,” Noem said Wednesday on Fox News’s “Hannity.” “It had come to us from a family who had found her way too aggressive.” “We were her second chance. And she was — the day she was put down was a day that she massacred livestock that were part of our neighbors,” she continued. “She attacked me....

American officials now estimate that Russian President Vladimir Putin likely did not order the assassination of Alexei Navalny, one of his most significant political rivals. Navalny died approximately two months ago in prison, with his body with held from his family for some time after his death. According to the Wall Street Journal,a number of American agencies reviewed the report and certified it. It was based on both classified intelligence and publicly available facts....

Watch the harrowing moment a fireman weeps at the sight of his father's body. RUSSIA targeted firefighters in a sick "double tap" drone strike on an apartment building in Ukraine - killing a father in front of his son. Heartbreaking footage revealed the hideous aftermath of Putin's cruelty that left at least five dead, including three rescuers responding to the first hit. Vladyslav Logienko, 52, was one of the first on the scene early on Thursday morning after an Iranian-made Shahed drone smashed into a block of flats in Kharkiv. In less than an hour, he had been killed with...

Ukrainian forces in a priority section of the front line near Avdiivka appear to have defeated a large Russian mechanized assault involving tanks and fighting vehicles over the weekend. -snip- On March 30, Ukrainian troops outside occupied Avdiivka fought off a Russian battalion-sized mechanized assault, the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said. ISW cited a Ukrainian serviceman who, on March 31, said that elements of Russia's 6th Tank Regiment sent 36 tanks and 12 BMP infantry fighting vehicles into a battle on the front line near Tonenke, a village east of Avdiivka. The serviceman said...

Ukrainian forces "destroyed or heavily damaged" one of Russia's prized but scarce A-50 spy planes, according to a Ukrainian official, after Kyiv targeted an aviation plant in southern Russia. Russia's Defense Ministry said on Saturday that its air defenses had intercepted 47 Ukrainian drones over Russian territory overnight, including 41 over the southwestern Rostov region. Vasily Golubev, the governor of the Rostov region, said Kyiv launched a "massive UAV (uncrewed aerial vehicle) attack" on the city of Taganrog, east of the captured Ukrainian city of Mariupol and west of Rostov-on-Don. Russian military bloggers reported that Ukrainian drones struck a plant...

The Russian air force lost another Sukhoi Su-34 fighter-bomber on Thursday, the Ukrainian air force claimed. If confirmed, the Thursday shoot-down would extend an unprecedented hot streak for Ukrainian air-defenses. The Ukrainian claim they’ve shot down 11 Russian planes in 11 days: eight Su-34s, two Sukhoi Su-35 fighters and a rare Beriev A-50 radar plane. But those 11 claimed losses are worse than they might seem for the increasingly stressed Russian air force. In theory, the air arm has plenty more planes. In practice, the service is dangerously close to collapse. Exactly how the Ukrainians are shooting down so many...

Demand for electric vehicles is booming, or at least that’s what the International Energy Agency says. Globally, the IEA reports, EVs accounted for 14% of new vehicle sales in 2022 (compared to 9% in 2021). In the U.S. — the third-largest EV market after China and Europe — they made up 11% of new vehicle sales in September 2023 and, in the same month, passed the 1 million mark for EVs sold in 2023. And then compared that with Tesla, which ranks 14th on the list. Although a number of the brands higher on the list include hybrid cars, Tesla,...

Ukrainian armoured vehicles have smashed through a gap in Russian defences on the Zaporizhzhia front, it has been reported. Eight-wheeled Stryker and tracked Marder Infantry Fighting Vehicles were seen behind Russian tank traps and dragon's teeth near Verbove - suggesting a potential Ukrainian tactical breakthrough in the area. Russia analyst for The Institute for the Study of War, George Barros, said the news could mean Kyiv was preparing for another big push.

Ukrainian forces have penetrated the main Russian defensive line in their country’s southeast, raising hopes of a breakthrough that would reinvigorate the slow-moving counteroffensive. Ukrainian paratroopers are fighting through entrenched Russian positions on the edge of the village of Verbove, a Ukrainian officer in the area said. Ukrainian forces have also reached the main defensive line to the south of nearby Robotyne village, he said. Ukraine’s military confirmed advances toward Verbove and south of Robotyne, without giving details. Describing the advance, the Ukrainian officer held up three fingers representing lines of attack through entrenched Russian positions on the western flank...

Russian militants fighting in support of Ukraine have called on Wagner Group mercenaries to switch sides following the apparent death of their leader Yevgeny Prigozhin. “You are facing a serious choice now - you can stand in a stall of Russia’s defence ministry and serve as watchdogs for executors of your commanders or take revenge,” commander of the Russian Volunteer Corps (RVC) Denis Kapustin said in a video published late on Thursday. “To take revenge you need to switch to Ukraine’s side,” the commander added. The group was founded by RVC commander Kapustin, a far-right Russian national, a year ago....

The low-flying, subsonic Neptune lends itself to the land-attack role, just like its predecessor missiles—the Kh-35 and Harpoon—do. To give the first-generation, anti-ship-only Harpoon a land-attack mode in its Block II model in the late 1990s, American missile-maker Boeing added GPS-aided inertial navigation, complementing the original Harpoon’s radar seeker. The Ukrainian navy reportedly used some of its Neptune anti-ship missiles in the missiles’ secondary land-attack mode to blow up a Russian air force S-400 air-defense battery in western Crimea on Wednesday. That the one-ton Neptune can strike targets on the ground should come as no surprise. Ukraine’s Luch Design Bureau...

Ukrainian forces have carried out their most complex and ambitious operations to date against Russian military facilities in the occupied region of Crimea, officials in Kyiv have said. Special forces landed on the western shore of Crimea, near the settlements of Olenivka and Mayak, in a joint operation with the country’s Navy, according to Ukrainian Defense Intelligence. “While performing the task, Ukrainian defenders clashed with the occupier’s units. As a result, the enemy suffered losses among its personnel and destroyed enemy equipment,” the intelligence agency said. While they were there, the Ukrainian unit also raised the national flag, it added.

Russia’s military casualties, the officials said, are approaching 300,000. The number includes as many as 120,000 deaths and 170,000 to 180,000 injured troops. The Russian numbers dwarf the Ukrainian figures, which the officials put at close to 70,000 killed and 100,000 to 120,000 wounded.

The majority of Americans say former President Donald Trump should be criminally prosecuted for allegedly trying to overturn the 2020 election results, according to a new Quinnipiac poll.The poll found 54% of Americans said prosecution is warranted as Mr. Trump faces criminal indictments in federal court and in Fulton County, Georgia, over his post-election actions. About 42% said he should not face prosecution.< Ninety-five percent of Democrats said Mr. Trump should be prosecuted, and 5% said he should not. Fifty-seven percent of independents said the ex-president should face prosecution, and 37% said he should not. However, 12% of Republicans said...

Hundreds of thousands of Russians who fled their homeland following the country's invasion of Ukraine have resettled in neighboring countries — and are boosting their economies. The exodus of Russians started after many highly educated professionals — such as academics, finance, and tech workers — left Russia in the early days of the war, Insider's Jason Lalljee reported in March 2022. About six months later, there was another wave of departures after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a partial military mobilization for the Ukraine war on September 21.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Sunday that Ukraine has already retaken about 50 percent of the territory that Russia initially seized, stressing that Kyiv’s counteroffensive is still in its “relatively early days.” “In terms of what Russia sought to achieve, what [Russian President Vladimir] Putin sought to achieve, they’ve already failed. They’ve already lost. The objective was to erase Ukraine from the map, to eliminate its independence, its sovereignty, to subsume it into Russia. That failed a long time ago,” Blinken told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria in an interview on “GPS.”

Ukraine remains in control of a key supply route into Bakhmut, a military spokesperson said on Saturday, as the head of Russia's mercenary Wagner Group threatened to withdraw some of his troops from the eastern city if Moscow did not send more ammunition. Russian forces have been trying for 10 months to punch their way into the shattered remains of what was once a city of 70,000. Kyiv has pledged to defend Bakhmut, which Russia sees as a stepping stone to attacking other cities. "For several weeks, the Russians have been talking about seizing the 'road of life,' as well...

[familyop: the following is a translation to English courtesy of Welt.]The Russian special ship „ SS-750 “ is designed for underwater actions and has a mini submarine with gripping farms. The Danish Defense Command now confirms that a patrol ship observed the „ SS-750 “ a few days before the Nord Stream explosions.A few days before the Nord Stream explosions in the Baltic Sea, according to the Danish military, a Russian special ship was located near the detonation sites. The Danish Defense Command confirmed the newspaper „information“ that a patrol ship on 22. September 2022 east of the island of...

BBC News China has distanced itself from the remarks of one of its envoys who questioned the sovereignty of Ukraine and other former Soviet countries. Paris ambassador Lu Shaye's comments last week caused widespread outrage, leading on calls to Beijing to clarify. On Monday, China's foreign ministry said it respected the independence of all post-Soviet republics.

A social-media account overseen by a former U.S. Navy noncommissioned officer—a prominent online voice supporting Russia’s war on Ukraine—played a key role in the spread of intelligence documents allegedly leaked by Airman First Class Jack Teixeira. A purported Russian blogger known as Donbass Devushka, which translates as Donbas Girl, reposted the files from obscure online chat rooms. The blog is the face of a network of pro-Kremlin social-media, podcasting, merchandise and fundraising accounts. But the person who hosted podcasts as Donbass Devushka and oversees these accounts is a Washington-state-based former U.S. enlisted aviation electronics technician whose real name is Sarah...