Free Republic

Mystery surrounds Russian nuclear tests that were expected to take this week and never materialised, amid claims they are being 'disrupted' from within. Moscow typically carries out large-scale atomic drills dubbed 'Grom' at this time of year and in recent days had issued a number of airspace alerts over its usual testing grounds - heavily suggesting they would be going ahead. But the US says it has received no alert from Moscow about any upcoming tests and there has been no official word from the Kremlin explaining their absence, with the air alerts due to expire Saturday. That has led...

The Estonian weekly Eesti Ekspress interviewed the heads and several employees of Estonia’s, Latvia’s, and Lithuania’s state security agencies. This is what they had to say regarding Russia. ... Toots wasn’t surprised by the atrocities committed in Bucha. Nor were any other of the counterintelligence agents I interviewed in Estonia, Latvia, or Lithuania. They’re aware of how Russians conducted themselves in the Baltics during the Second World War. Of how they conducted themselves before that. Of how they’ve always behaved. The West lacks such awareness. „[The West is] fortunate,“ Toots remarks. „We’re a buffer between them and Russia. They’ve forgotten...

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, explaining the reasons behind his country’s refusal to negotiate with Moscow, compared Russia to an insatiable “cachalot” who would not understand the language of diplomacy.In a Friday interview with the Wall Street Journal, Zelensky responded to the recent remarks of his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, who said earlier this week that Russia and Ukraine could have ended their conflict in March if Kiev had not withdrawn from negotiations.

It would be easy to underestimate Valeriy Zaluzhny. When not in uniform, the general prefers T-shirts and shorts that match his easygoing sense of humor. When he first heard from aides to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in late July 2021 that he was being tapped to lead the country’s armed forces, his stunned response was, “What do you mean?” As it sank in that he would become commander in chief, he tells TIME in his first interview since the Russian invasion began, he felt as if he had been punched “not just below the belt but straight into a knockout.”...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Sunday on CBS’s “Face The Nation” that there can be no stability in Europe until Russian president Vladimir Putin is removed from power. Zelenskyy said, “Yesterday, President Putin said they will win Ukraine in three days, but now it’s seven months. Today, it’s seven months since Russia occupied- tried to occupy Ukraine, but they couldn’t.”

Vladimir Putin can call up all the troops he wants, but Russia has no way of getting those new troops the training and weapons they need to fight in Ukraine any time soon. With his invasion of Ukraine faltering badly, the Russian President on Wednesday announced the immediate “partial mobilization” of Russian citizens. Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said on Russian television that the country will call up 300,000 reservists. If they end up facing Ukrainian guns on the front lines, they are likely to become the newest casualties in the invasion Putin started more than seven months ago and that...

At the end of 1942, when the Wehrmacht could advance no further east, Hitler switched German ground forces from an “enemy force-oriented” strategy to a “ground-holding” strategy. Hitler demanded that his armies defend vast, largely empty and irrelevant stretches of Soviet territory. “Holding ground” not only robbed the German military of its ability to exercise operational discretion, and, above all, to outmaneuver the slow, methodical Soviet opponent; holding ground also pushed German logistics to the breaking point. When holding ground was combined with endless counterattacks to retake useless territory, the Wehrmacht was sentenced to slow, grinding destruction. Ukrainian President Volodymyr...