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A bipartisan pair of US senators met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv on Friday and urged stronger sanctions against Russia, while uncertainty swirls over whether the next round of peace talks will move ahead in the coming days. Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut met with Zelensky and other top Ukrainian officials in the capital. Their visit came just days after Russia launched its biggest aerial assault against Ukraine since the start of the war, and as the US ramps up pressure on Moscow to end the three-year conflict. Among...

A claim by the Russian Defence Ministry that Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin was "in the epicentre of a drone attack" has turned out to be a staged performance by the Kremlin. Russian state media claimed earlier this week that when Putin visited Kursk Oblast for the first time since the hostilities began in the area, his helicopter came "under fire from Ukrainian drones". In reality, this was not a combat incident but a meticulously staged event. Four sources within the government and the Kremlin told The Moscow Times that security officials promoted this shocking and "risky" episode in the media...

Belarusian strongman Alexander Lukashenko called on Wednesday for the country to produce more potatoes in the face of a large shortage of the key crop and rising demand from neighbouring Russia. "We have to grow enough so that it suffices for us and for Russia," Lukashenko said during a meeting with regional officials in Minsk, state news agency BelTA reported. The potato has in the past been seen as a symbol of Lukashenko's rule of the country, which is heavily dependant on agriculture. He was once head of a state-run collective farm, or sovkhoz. Food shortages have arisen recently in...

Journalists have uncovered the leak of two million documents concerning Russia’s secret nuclear bases. This discovery could have serious implications for the country's security, potentially necessitating significant infrastructure changes. Journalists from the investigative portal Danwatch and the newspaper "Der Spiegel" have obtained two million Russian documents pertaining to the country's secret nuclear bases. Among them are detailed plans for the construction and modernisation of the base in Yasny, where the Avangard hypersonic glide missile has been positioned since 2019. The documents also reveal information about security systems, the placement of cameras and sensors, and infrastructure details such as underground tunnels...

Ukraine used drones in an attempt to down a helicopter carrying Russian President Vladimir Putin over Russia’s Kursk region on May 20. Russian Air Force Major-General Yuri Dashkin said Putin’s helicopter was “virtually at the epicenter of repelling a large-scale attack by the enemy’s drones,” and that 46 drones were shot down during the attack, according to a report from the Associated Press.

Vladimir Putin's forces are massing next to Russia's border with Ukraine's Sumy oblast, it has been reported, following evacuations from the region and a threat that Moscow has identified further territorial targets in its full-scale invasion. Sumy governor Oleh Hryhorov said thousands had been evacuated from the region on Ukraine's northeast border and next to the Kharkiv oblast, according to the Kyiv Independent. On the other side of the frontier Russian troops numbers are said to be increasing. It comes Putin is trying to justify the renewal of Russian plans to seize Sumy City—16 miles from the border—and illegally annex...

Any halfway informed person knows we are entering a new legal environment. Thanks, Joe. The erudite and insightful Roger Kimball, who is well known to the readers at American Thinker, discusses in his essay the disappearance of the American respect for and application of the rule of law: Instead of proper rule of law we are living with that Orwellian alternative, Our Rule of Law — an arbitrary enforcement of the laws and use of the coercive power of the state. Mr. Kimball opens with a recall of the Hemingway novel The Sun Also Rises, which describes what is playing...

Top Democrats and former Republicans met at a Washington, D.C. think tank in early June 2023 to discuss election interference strategies to block former President Donald J. Trump’s return to the White House, according to a report in the Washington Post. The meeting is said to have included recent Biden White House chief of staff Ron Klain, Democratic National Committee senior advisor Cedric L. Richmond, as well as Stephanie Cutter, a former campaign adviser to Barack Obama who has also worked with Biden. “They were joined by former senators Doug Jones (D-Ala.), Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.) and Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), along...

Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” that the Biden administration should declare Russia a state sponsor of terrorism. Graham said, “Number one, there are 30 United States senators in Munich along with a big House delegation. Senator McConnell and Schumer both came. Virtually unanimous belief that we should be training Ukrainian pilots on the F-16 today so they can get the jets as soon as possible. The British are training Ukrainian pilots. I believe a decision will be imminent here when we get back to Washington that the administration will start training Ukrainian pilots on the...

In contrast to the uplifting statements of the top Ukrainian leadership and Yermak's publications about the "task to reach the borders of 1991 by military means", the Ukrainian military personnel stationed in Bakhmut (Artyomovsk) are sounding a real alarm. The statement of the former deputy of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, and now an officer of the 72nd brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Igor Lutsenko is published on the network. This statement attracts special attention, since it (as Lutsenko himself writes) is firsthand, from Ukrainian soldiers stationed in Bakhmut:"The 30th brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine near...

American officials estimate that nearly 200,000 Russian troops have been killed or wounded in Moscow’s nearly yearlong conflict with Ukraine, The New York Times reported. The rising number of casualties is driven in part by heavy fighting in Bakhmut and Soledar in eastern Ukraine, where Russia is increasingly sending poorly trained recruits and convicts to the front lines in an effort to deplete Ukrainian artillery, according to the Times. However, officials have warned that the casualty numbers — which are based on satellite imagery, intercepted communications, social media, on-the-ground reporting and official government numbers — are difficult to estimate and...

This isn't Russia's latest tank (that would be the T14 Armata)The T90M appears to be the latest that they can actually put out in the field in numbers, as of now. It includes many of the Armata features. But the kicker is this. About six or seven months ago HoHo MOD Ichabod Zapoopski (or whatever his name was) stated that he needed an entire new army including around 300 - 400 main battle tanks. Russian MOD Shoigu OTOH has just announced that Russian forces will shortly be receiving around 400 BRAND NEW military vehicles including some large number of these...

In a statement, the SVR said U.S.-supplied HIMARS rocket launchers, air defence systems and artillery ammunition had been delivered to the Rivne nuclear power station in the northwest of Ukraine."The Ukrainian armed forces are storing weapons and ammunition provided by the West on the territory of nuclear power plants," it said, adding that an arms shipment to the Rivne power station had taken place in the last week of December.

Paris (AFP) – Germany is ready to authorise Poland to send German-made Leopard tanks to Ukraine to help Kyiv fight the Russian invasion if Warsaw makes such a request, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said Sunday. "If we are asked the question, then we will not stand in the way," Baerbock told LCI television after a Franco-German summit meeting in Paris. "We know how important these tanks are and this is why we are discussing this now with our partners. We need to make sure people's lives are saved and Ukraine's territory liberated." Baerbock, who represents the Greens in Social Democrat...

Russia’s “nuclear war” rhetoric appears every few months, on a kind of cycle. Whenever the West and Ukraine appear to be winning and Ukraine is being strengthened, then Russia will roll out this talk. It will also mobilize other voices to make it seem that Ukraine isn’t interested in “peace” and that Ukraine is “escalating.” This terminology is misplaced because it is Russia that escalated and invaded Ukraine. However, Moscow wants to shift focus to what the West is doing...

South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham (R) urged the west to send tanks to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky after he traveled to Ukraine over the weekend. Graham visited Ukraine along with Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI). While in Ukraine, the seniors held a press conference in Kyiv where Graham called on Germany and the United States to send tanks to help Zelensky fight back against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s assault on Ukraine. “All three of us, one Republican and two Democrats, share the same goal — for Ukraine to drive the Russians out of Ukraine. To achieve that...

Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the Russian army to increase the number of service members to 1.5 million from 2023 to 2026, according to a briefing of Russia's defense ministry. Russian defense minister Sergei Shoigu last mentioned the goal of expanding the army from 1 million to 1.5 million, including 695,000 contracted soldiers, during a Dec. 21 meeting with Putin and his defense chiefs.According to the Russian defense ministry's Telegram channel, there are plans to create additional divisions, corps and military districts, as well as strengthen existing ones.

Disgraced former FBI official Andrew McCabe said the DOJ should obstruct the House GOP’s investigation into the Biden document scandal. House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) launched the first congressional investigation into classified documents stored at Joe Biden’s private office and home. It was revealed this week that Joe Biden improperly stored stolen classified documents at his private office and in his garage next to his Corvette. Joe Biden STOLE the classified documents. US Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Robert Hur as the special counsel to investigate the Biden document scandal. McCabe said it’s time for the DOJ to play...

Many new streets and monuments have been erected since a new government took over in 2014 This list is part of an ongoing investigative project the Forward first published in January 2021 documenting hundreds of monuments around the world to people involved in the Holocaust. We are continuing to update each country’s list; if you know of any not included here, or of statues that have been removed or streets renamed, please email editorial@forward.com, subject line: Nazi monument project. Note: In the years since the Maidan uprising brought a new government to Ukraine in 2014, numerous monuments to Nazi collaborators...

Former NATO Supreme Allied Commander James Stavridis said Friday that Russian President Vladimir Putin is "scrambling" to find more troops to fight in Ukraine despite Moscow recently claiming that its forces captured the city of Soledar. Stavridis weighed in on reports that Russia is resorting to prisoners, the Wagner Group, reservists, and others to fight in Ukraine. "Putin is really scrambling...to gain the manpower, he's going to the prisons, he's going to the homeless shelters, [and] he's taking people in their 50s and 60s," he said. "I'm in my early 60s, I don't think the U.S. Army is searching for...