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Ukrainian troops are rolling deeper and deeper inside Russia! Russian generals are incompetent, the propaganda is in shock and Putin is silent! One military spokesman reassures Russians that all is well, and they should get some popcorn and enjoy watching the military crush this incursion. That was two weeks ago. Russia has some of its troops doing a joint military exercise with Mongolia as all this occurs, showing it on Russian TV.

Vladimir Putin is feeling the stress from Russia's invasion of Ukraine - as he is seen wringing his hands in a meeting with his top officials after Volodymyr Zelenskyy's troops bit back and made a counter-incursion into the country. The dictator, 71, was in a security council session on the crisis he faces due to Ukraine's dramatic invasion of the border areas of Kursk region. His very public hand-wringing and fidgeting came as he was told earlier this week about how Russia had lost territory to Kyiv troops and - at the time - more than two dozen settlements, a...

Secretive peace talks between Ukraine and Russia collapsed before they even started following Kyiv's incursion into the Kursk region last week. The two countries were set to hold indirect talks in Qatar on a deal to halt strikes on energy and power infrastructure, in a first step towards a partial-ceasefire. However, Russian officials were said to be furious at Ukraine’s surprise incursion, according to the Washington Post, which revealed the secret Doha talks. Moscow’s delegation described it as “an escalation" and immediately pulled out of the talks this week. A Qatari diplomat said that Russia “didn’t call off the talks,...

Ukrainian forces destroyed a bridge over the Seim River in the Glushkovsky district in Russia's Kursk Oblast, Alexey Smirnov, the region's acting governor, claimed on Aug. 16. The unprecedented operation hit its 10-day mark on Aug. 15, with Kyiv claiming to have seized 1,150 square kilometers of Russian territory and 82 settlements, including the town of Sudzha. Photos purporting to show the destroyed bridge were published by the Russian Telegram channel Mash, which claimed the bridge had been struck multiple times. The channel also claimed that about 30 settlements near the village of Glushkovo, approximately 150 kilometers (93 miles) from...

The head of a Russian private militia has called on the army to overthrow Vladimir Putin in what is potentially shaping up to be the biggest threat of revolt the Kremlin has faced since the Wagner mutiny last year. Georgy Zakrevsky is the founder of the Paladin PMC, one of many shadowy military groups like the former Wagner militia, that are loosely linked to the Kremlin. The private military company (PMC) has around 300 members and has fought in wars around the world, including in Syria and Africa. Zakrevsky launched a blistering attack on the Russian president during a video...

-snip- After my first trip to Ukraine, a few readers wrote in or left comments urging me to check out the assessments of retired colonel Douglas Macgregor, contending he had the real scoop. I wasn’t familiar with Macgregor, but a bit of digging illuminated the retired colonel’s very consistent assessment of how the war is going: March 4, 2022: “The first five days Russian forces I think frankly were too gentle. They’ve now corrected that. So, I would say, another ten days, this should be completely over.” March 15, 2022: “The Ukrainians are being crushed. Even the Washington Post and...

Terrified dictator Alexander Lukashenko has urged Russia and Ukraine to agree a peace deal to avoid the war spilling over into Belarus. President Lukashenko, a key ally of Vladimir Putin, said he fears Kyiv's troops are now planning an incursion into his nation after they launched a cross-border offensive in Russia. Thousands of Ukrainian soldiers smashed through Russia's western border on August 6 in a major embarrassment for Putin's top military brass. Now in an interview with Russia state television, Lukashenko has said that only 'high-ranking people of American origin' wanted the Ukraine-Russia war to continue. The West, he said,...

Russell Bentley, the so-called "Donbass Cowboy" from Texas who fought for the 'Donetsk People's Republic' (DPR), is reported to have been tortured to death in an abandoned mine being used as a concentration camp for 'remotivating' Russian soldiers who refuse to fight. On 8 April 2024, Bentley was kidnapped by DPR soldiers outside the administration building of the Petrovsky district of Donetsk. He was driven away in an unknown direction. On 19 April, his former unit, the Vostok Battalion, confirmed his death. His body has not been found. ASTRA reports that he was electrocuted during torture by men from the...

While Belarus’s Lukashenko has commented on the cross-border attacks, Central Asian nations stay mum. Almost two years ago, a dozen Uzbek youngsters pleaded with their president to save them from the horrors of the Russian-Ukrainian war. Uzbek nationals enrolled in western Russia’s Kursk Medical University recorded a video address to Shavkat Mirziyoyev in October 2022 saying their studies had been affected by Kyiv’s shelling of nearby towns and the hostilities in the neighbouring Ukrainian region of Sumy. “Please transfer us to medical schools in Uzbekistan,” one of the students said. Uzbek diplomats pledged to assess the situation. There have been...

Ukraine's top commander said on Thursday Kyiv had set up a military commandant's office in the occupied part of Russia's Kursk region where he said his forces were still advancing, even as Moscow's troops stepped up its offensives in Ukraine's east. The remarks by Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi were the strongest sign yet that Kyiv's forces plan to dig in after launching a lightning cross-border assault on Russia last week that has opened a new front in the 2-1/2 year-old all-out war. "We are moving forward in Kursk region. A military commandant's office has been created which must ensure order...

Putin has appointed his ex-bodyguard, who is considered a likely successor for the Russian leader, as an 'angel of vengeance' tasked with trying to reclaim the territory seized by Ukraine. Former bodyguard Alexei Dyumin, who once single-handedly scared off a bear from the president's mountain residence, will lead the charge on 'Operation Revenge' to reclaim the 386 square miles of Russian soil now under Ukrainian control. Dyumin, 51, grew up in the Kursk region, where a state of emergency was implemented almost immediately after thousands of Kyiv's troops surged across the border and began seizing territory. Putin has now chosen...

UKRAINE has blitzed Putin's forces with massive kamikaze drone and missile strikes overnight as Zelensky has vowed to go "even deeper" into Russia. Some 117 drones targeted at least nine regions across Russia, also hitting two crucial airfields in Mad Vlad's territory. One of them includes the Savasleyka military base in the Nizhny Novgorod, home to lethal hypersonic Kinzhal missiles and MiG-31K aircraft used to bomb Ukraine. An aircraft-type drone was seen in the sky ahead of the strike with a total of ten “arrivals” reported. A video from ASTRA media outlet suggests that there was a direct hit. Footage...

KYIV, Aug 13 (Reuters) - Ukraine said on Tuesday its biggest cross-border assault of the war to date had taken control of 74 settlements in Russia's region of Kursk and was still advancing, making gains of one to three kilometres in the last 24 hours. Ukraine blindsided Moscow by pouring thousands of troops into the western Russian region of Kursk last week in a surprise operation that has given Ukraine its biggest battlefield gains since 2022 after months on the backfoot.

Ukraine has claimed a major victory that could turn the tide of the war with Russia. Fighters loyal to the infamous Chechen warlord Ramzan Kadyrov have been captured by Ukrainian forces in the Kursk region during a stunning incursion on Vladimir Putin’s territory. Footage shows dozens of men blindfolded, with their hands tied, sitting in lines. Some appear bloodied, with bandages around their wounds. Two of them can be heard telling a Ukrainian soldier they are from Grozny, the capital of Chechnya. The video was released by the I Want to Live (Hochu Zhit) project run by Ukraine’s Defence Intelligence...