Free Republic

A Russian newspaper has disparaged Melania Trump as Kremlin-backed media speculate about whether the first lady is behind President Donald Trump's Ukraine policy. Pro-Kremlin newspaper Vzglyad said "it would be better for him [Trump] to buy her shoes than to sell Patriots (missiles) to Kyiv" in an op-ed Monday that described the first lady as a "danger to Russia." Russian state TV has also taken aim at Melania Trump, saying she is responsible for the U.S. president's apparently tougher stance toward Putin which has seen him pledge more weapons for Kyiv and threaten more sanctions on Moscow.

Ukraine’s Defense Procurement Agency has signed contracts for ‘tens of thousands’ of interceptor drones, according to director Arsen Zhumadilov speaking in an interview published on July 14th. The U.S. decision to supply more Patriot air defence missile batteries to Ukraine is vital to protect against Russian missiles. But stopping the massive drone onslaught is a job for far more numerous interceptor drones. The Numbers Game The strength of the Iranian-designed Shahed drones lies in their vast numbers. The low-cost drones fly at around 120 mph, with similar performance to a WW1 aircraft, and are just as easy to shoot down....

Ukraine will let foreign arms companies test out their latest weapons on the front line of its war against Russia's invasion, Kyiv's state-backed arms investment and procurement group Brave1 said on Thursday. -snip- "We have a list of priorities. One of the top of those would be air defense, like new air defense capabilities, drone interceptors, AI-guided systems, all the solutions against gliding bombs," he said. Unmanned systems in the water and electronic profile systems on the ground are also on Ukraine's list of priorities, as are advanced fire control systems or AI guidance to make howitzers more accurate. Under...

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Saturday that Kyiv has sent Moscow an offer to hold another round of peace talks next week, and that he wanted to speed up negotiations for a cease-fire. Ukraine and Russia have held two rounds of talks in Istanbul over the past five months. They have agreed to swap prisoners but made no breakthroughs in ending almost three and a half years of conflict that started with Russia’s 2022 invasion. “Everything should be done to achieve a cease-fire,” Zelensky said in his evening address to the nation. “The Russian side should stop hiding from...

Donald Trump this week boosted Ukraine’s air defences with new Patriot batteries, threatened Vladimir Putin with sanctions if he does not agree to a ceasefire, and even reportedly gave tacit approval to more Ukrainian strikes on Moscow. Trump’s newfound support for Ukraine is a welcome lifeline. The question is whether his help will be enough to stop Russia’s relentless attacks before Ukraine is engulfed in a critical military, political and social crisis that threatens to destroy it from within. Putin chose war over peace this spring because his spies and generals told him that Ukraine is on the brink of...

"The Russian side has repeatedly stated that a deployment of armed forces of other countries in Ukraine under any pretense would be absolutely unacceptable and it would regard this as preparations for foreign military intervention," Maria Zakharova statedMOSCOW, July 17. /TASS/. Russia treats the idea of the "coalition of the willing" to create a multinational force as a plan of military intervention and will regard its units in Ukraine as legitimate targets, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said. The diplomat was commenting on the outcome of the coalition’s earlier meeting. Following the event, the office of UK Prime Minister...

President Donald Trump and Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky, were supposed to meet on the sidelines of the Group of Seven leaders’ summit in Canada, one day after Trump complained that Russia should never have been removed from the organization. But Trump's premature departure from the summit on Monday, citing Israel's war with Iran in the Middle East, upended those plans and Zelensky's latest opportunity to plead his country's case to the president, proving Zelensky's challenge is not only Trump himself but his many competing priorities. During last year’s campaign, Trump promised he would end the Russia-Ukraine war on his first...

Russian forces have continued to advance in the northern Ukrainian region of Sumy, bringing the regional capital within range of their drones and artillery, according to Ukrainian officials and analysts.A spokesman for the Ukrainian military in the area, Ivan Shevtsov, said that in addition to trying to advance towards Sumy city, Russian forces were constantly shelling the area and more evacuations of civilians were taking place.“At the moment, the territory that the enemy has already occupied is about 15 kilometers along the front line and about 6-7 kilometers deep,” Shevtsov said. He added that the Russians were trying to advance...

President Trump was not informed of a recent Ukrainian attack on Russia, The Hill’s sister network NewsNation confirmed Sunday.An administration official told NewsNation’s Tanya Noury that the president was not given a heads-up about the drone attack that a Ukrainian security official alleged destroyed more than 40 planes well within Russian territory, according to The Associated Press.The AP reported Sunday that the Ukrainian attack was worked on for one and a half years, with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky personally supervising it, per the security official.“We are doing everything to protect our independence, our state, and our people. I outlined the...

ATTENTION!So, it appears Zelenskyy gave the go ahead to attack parked Russian nuclear capable bombers without informing @realDonaldTrump (if true that our President was not consulted nor informed, this isn’t simply a breach of protocol. It’s a geopolitical insult and a warning sign. If Ukraine is willing to conduct strikes with strategic consequences without notifying the White House, we are no longer allies with coordination issues—we are co-belligerents flying blind).Also given Senator “warmonger” Lindsey Graham’s and Senator “Da Nang Dick” Blumenthal’s recent visit, this attack could appear as though it was sanctioned. I pray the Russians have better intelligence than...

Hand it to the Ukrainians: They’re not only fighting heroically on, more than three years after Moscow launched its savage and utterly unprovoked war to destroy their nation, they’re fighting with cheek and style. The latest, of course, is Sunday’s surprise drone strikes on airbases deep inside Russia, targeting strategic warplanes that have been pummeling mostly-civilian targets in Ukraine. It counts as an intelligence coup, too: The drones were infiltrated to near their final targets over months, with Vladimir Putin’s massive internal-surveillance agencies left utterly in the dark. Then again, Vlad’s secret police were caught clueless back when the Wagner...

A Ukrainian drone attack has destroyed more than 40 Russian planes deep in Russia's territory, a Ukrainian security official told The Associated Press on Sunday, while Russia pounded Ukraine with missiles and drones a day before the two sides meet for a new round of direct talks in Istanbul. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to disclose operational details, said the attack took over 1 1/2-year to execute and was personally supervised by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The operation saw drones transported in containers carried by trucks deep into Russian territory, he said. The drones reportedly hit 41...

Ukrainian forces target 5 airfields deep inside Russia, striking 40 aircraft including bombers and reconnaissance planes Ukrainian forces destroyed dozens of Russian warplanes with a drone attack on air bases deep within Russian territory on Sunday. Ukrainian forces destroyed 40 aircraft in the attack, which an official says took more than a year to orchestrate. Russia's defense ministry confirmed the attack on Sunday, saying it struck five airfields. The operation saw drones transported in containers carried by trucks deep into Russian territory, he said. The drones reportedly hit 41 planes stationed at several airfields on Sunday afternoon, including A-50, Tu-95...

Ukraine launched a "large-scale" drone attack deep into Russian territory that security officials claim destroyed 40 military bombers as it gears up for another round of talks in Istanbul to explore prospects of a ceasefire. A Ukrainian security official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told the Associated Press that the attack took over a year and a half to execute and was personally supervised by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The operation saw drones transported in containers carried by trucks deep into Russian territory, he said. The drones hit airfields including the Belaya air base in Russia's Irkutsk region, more...

Wherin Ukies neglect to fortify the Kharkov region and then embark upon a maximal campaign of provocation in the region...

Russian President defies reports of counter offensives to personally deliver Easter greetings to the troops. In the second time in as many months, Russian President Vladimir Putin made a visit to the newly annexed areas of Kherson and Lugansk, having visited Mariupol last month. He traveled by helicopter in spite of threats of a spring counter offensive by Ukrainian forces to receive personally progress reports from the military authorities in the regions, demonstrating that Russia is in control of these regions and no threat is serious enough to prevent him visiting at will. After receiving progress reports, the President congratulated...

Two Russian men who claim to be former Wagner Group commanders have told a human rights activist that they killed children and civilians during their time in Ukraine. The claims were made in video interviews with Gulagu.net, a human rights organization targeting corruption and torture in Russia. In the video interviews posted online, former Russian convicts Azamat Uldarov and Alexey Savichev – who were both pardoned by Russian presidential decrees last year, according to Gulagu.net – describe their actions in Ukraine, during Russia’s invasion. CNN cannot independently verify their claims or identities in the videos but has obtained Russian penal...

Hollywood star Mark Hamill, best known for his portrayal of Luke Skywalker in the Star Wars saga, ended up committing quite a blunder after he participated in a video chat with members of Ukrainian armed forces. During said chat, a fragment of which Hamill shared on Twitter, Hamill praised the Ukrainian militants who he claimed were "fighting the good fight" and compared Ukrainian forces to the rebels from Star Wars. "It was a pleasure meeting with the brave Ukrainian drone operators. We talked about the challenges they face on a daily basis, but they also wanted to talk about Wookiees...

The photographed tank appears to be from the 1950s with no modern upgrades The first of several hundred 70-year-old Soviet-era Russian tanks appears to have been deployed to Ukraine, as the Kremlin desperately replenish its depleted resources. An image appeared on Friday which showed a T-55 Soviet tank located in Zaporizhzhia, an oblast in southern Ukraine, weeks after they were videoed on their way to the war-torn country. The photographed tank appears to be from the 1950s and shows no modern upgrades - suggesting that Russia is shipping the decrepit machinery in an attempt to aid its war effort. The...

We’ve touched in these pages — one of our earliest posts, in fact — on Soviet war heroine Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, a teenager executed by the advancing German army in November 1941 for conducting partisan attacks behind enemy lines. Zoya’s story became known after the Red Army recaptured village of Petrishchevo, where she was hanged. A January 27, 1942 Pravda article recounted the gallows defiance of the young guerrilla, whom villagers knew only by her nom de guerre, “Tanya”. She had withstood German torture, refused to give them any information, and at her hanging incited her countrymen and -women to resist...