Free Republic

Despite staggering losses in its two-year wider war on Ukraine, Russia still has more tanks, more artillery and more troops than Ukraine has. What Russia doesn’t have more of, is drones. One close count of publicized strikes by explosives-laden first-person-view drones reveals that Ukraine holds a steady 300-drone-a-month lead in confirmed strikes. Since August, Ukrainian troops have flung at Russian troops least 8,273 FPVs—each of which weighs two pounds and hauls a pound of explosives as far as two miles. The Russians have flung back no fewer than 6,059 FPVs. There likely are many, many more FPV strikes that go...

Extraordinary new footage has revealed the sheer terror faced by Russian sailors aboard a large landing ship sunk by Ukrainian kamikaze sea drones last month. A GoPro video, taken by sailors aboard the doomed Caesar Kunikov military vessel, showed in shocking detail how the navy men desperately tried to fight off the oncoming drones in an intense 20-minute sea battle before their vessel was destroyed in a fiery explosion. The warship was lost on February 14, but the footage has only just been released by Russian Telegram channel FighterBomber. The hellish, chaotic scene saw a small group of seamen unloading...

It’s reckless, if not insane, to deploy an open-top, unarmored all-terrain vehicle—in essence, a heavy-duty golf cart—in combat just a quarter mile from the front line. But two years into Russia’s wider war on Ukraine, Russian commanders are at least reckless if not not insane. Apparently this weekend, a Russian unit—possibly the 488th Motor Rifle Regiment—attacked positions held by the Ukrainian 60th Mechanized Brigade in Yampolivka, in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast. A Russian column including what appeared to be MT-LB armored tractors and at least one T-90 tank motored west toward Yampolivka. That itself wasn’t unusual. What was unusual was...

Vladimir Putin's military is unlikely to use its prized T-14 Armata tank in combat in Ukraine because it is "too valuable," an ally of the Russian president said. The comments were made by Sergey Chemezov, the CEO of Rostec, the country's state-owned defense conglomerate, in an interview with Russian state-run news agency RIA Novosti, published Sunday. Moscow is reported to have briefly deployed several of the main battle tanks for combat operations in July 2023, before they were withdrawn from the front line. The tank was once labeled by a senior British army official as "the most revolutionary tank in...

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Thursday urged Palestinian groups holding talks in Moscow about the formation of a unified government to set aside their differences and unite for the sake of the Palestinian people. -snip- "Jesus Christ was born in Palestine. One of his sayings is: 'A house divided against itself will not stand.' Christ is honoured by both Muslims and Christians. I think that quote reflects the challenge of restoring Palestinian unity. "It does not depend on anyone but the Palestinians themselves." Lavrov said the Russian foreign ministry and Russian Middle East specialists were on hand to help...

Tucker Carlson bashed Russian President Vladimir Putin's justification for invading Ukraine, claiming that the "denazification" of the country was "one of the dumbest things I'd ever heard." -snip- Carlson also described his first impression of Putin as someone who "seemed nervous," telling Fridman that the Russian president "went into [the interview] like an over-prepared student." Fridman specifically asked Carlson for his opinion on Putin's justification for continuing the war in Ukraine, which in part is to achieve the "denazification" of the country. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who is Jewish, has repeatedly dismissed the Kremlin's claims that Kyiv's government is openly...

Hamas and Fatah are expected to attend a meeting in Moscow to discuss the future governance of a Palestinian state. Representatives from Palestinian political factions, including Hamas and Fatah, are expected to meet in the Russian capital, Moscow, to discuss the formation of a unified Palestinian government amid Israel’s war on Gaza, which has killed more than 30,000 people. Al Jazeera’s Yulia Shapovalova, reporting from Moscow, said on Thursday that while there was a lot of “uncertainty” about the meeting, it is expected to last three days for the factions to develop a “unified strategy”. “Russia has previously held similar...