Free Republic

Public sours on Washington, loses hope for quick NATO accession LONDON — Most Ukrainians now favor ending the war with Russia through negotiations, as support for fighting until victory has dropped sharply since the early days of the conflict. Although their hopes for joining NATO and the European Union have faded and approval of U.S. leadership has plummeted, Ukrainians still see the EU, U.K. and U.S. as key to ending the war. Yet, most doubt that will happen anytime soon.More than three years into the war, Ukrainians’ support for continuing to fight until victory has hit a new low. In...

As the Russian advances accelerate for fourth straight month, Ukrainians have lost the strongholds of Donetsk region’s Toretsk and Chasov Yar, and the Russians have also entered the city of Kupyansk, on the northern Kharkov region. In the meantime, the siege of Pokrovsk continues, and even Kiev regime leader Volodymyr Zelensky had to confirm that ‘small groups’ of the Russian Armed Forces are ‘breaking through’ to Pokrovsk. As August arrives, the attackers advanced on the Sukhetsky suburb north of Rodinsky. Slavyangrad reported: “At the moment, it seems that the deepening of the defense crisis of the Armed Forces of Ukraine...

More than 120 firefighters were trying to extinguish a blaze at an oil depot in the Russian city of Sochi that was sparked by a Ukrainian drone attack, regional Governor Veniamin Kondratyev has said on the Telegram messaging app. In the Krasnodar region, where Sochi is located, a fuel tank with a capacity of 2,000 cubic metres was on fire, Russia's RIA news agency reported on Sunday, citing emergency officials. Rosaviatsia, Russia's civil aviation authority, said on Telegram that flights were halted at Sochi's airport to ensure air safety. The attack, which Kondratyev said was in the Adler district of...

MOSCOW (AP) — President Vladimir Putin said Friday that Russia has started production of its newest hypersonic missiles and reaffirmed its plans to deploy them to ally Belarus later this year. Sitting alongside Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko on Valaam Island near St. Petersburg, Putin said the military already has selected deployment sites in Belarus for the Oreshnik intermediate range ballistic missile.… Putin has praised the Oreshnik’s capabilities, saying its multiple warheads that plunge to a target at speeds up to Mach 10 are immune to being intercepted and are so powerful that the use of several of them in one...

The death toll from a large Russian missile and drone attack on Kyiv overnight on Thursday has risen to at least 31 people. Five children — including a two-year-old — were among the victims of the strike which targeted several areas of the Ukrainian capital. Another 159, including 16 children, were injured, Ukraine's Interior Ministry said. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the strike "vile" and said it "demonstrates the need for increased pressure on Moscow and additional sanctions." "In July alone, Russia used over 5,100 glide bombs against Ukraine, more than 3,800 Shaheds and nearly 260 missiles of various types...

The ousting of Kiev regime leader is ongoing – and today, the successor was anointed in the pages of Vogue. After three and a half years hailed as the heroic defender of democracy and a present-day Churchill, Kiev regime leader Volodymyr Zelensky rapidly fell out of favor with both the exhausted Ukrainian population and with his masters in the West. We reported today here on TGP how the EU has frozen all aid until the independence of the anti-corruption agencies is restored.

Even after the Ukraine war ends, Russia will continue to pose a threat to its neighbours unless the world works to “change the Regime” in Moscow, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Thursday morning. Russia’s leadership is mentally “stuck in another era” and rejects the “post World War Two” world order, warned President Zelensky as he called for regime change against Moscow to remove the threat permanently. Addressing an Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) conference remotely by a video link plagued with technical difficulties, when he could be heard the Ukrainian leader decried fresh overnight airstrikes by...

A Russian missile hit a Ukrainian army training ground, killing three soldiers and wounding 18 others, authorities said, in the latest attack to embarrass military officials as they struggle to make up a severe manpower shortage in the nearly 3½-year war. The Russian Defense Ministry said that the strike killed or wounded about 200 Ukrainian troops. The ministry said that Ukraine’s 169th training center near Honcharivske in the Chernihiv region was hit with two Iskander missiles, one armed with multiple submunitions and another with high explosives. A Russian Defense Ministry video showed multiple small explosions apparently caused by a missile...

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...