Free Republic

The attack comes as Russia suffers fuel shortages following Ukrainian attacks that have cut 20 percent of Russia's oil refining capacity. Ukraine struck several Russian oil facilities overnight Friday, including one if its largest refineries and an oil depot, worsening the country’s crippling fuel shortages. Ukrainian drones targeted facilities including Russia's largest Rosneft refinery in Ryazan and an oil depot in occupied Luhansk Oblast, according to Ukraine's chief drone warfare commander Robert Brovdi. Images of the attack on social media that appeared to show a massive fireball erupting immediately after the strike.

Ukraine has started making a new cruise missile said to be capable of carrying a 1,000 kg warhead with a range of 1,800 miles, according to its defense minister. Denys Shmyhal, who was appointed as defense minister in July, said at a public event on Monday that serial production of the missile, dubbed the Flamingo, had begun. The minister declined to discuss the missile further, saying that more details would be disclosed "when the right time comes." But his announcement comes a day after other sources in Ukraine reported on its specifications. Efrem Lukatsky, an Associated Press photographer, published an...

I am Ukrainian. On this channel I will give you the latest news about the war in Ukraine. "Today, there is interesting news from the Liman direction. Here, Russians press forward and are rapidly burning through their forces, attacking Ukrainians from all sides. Holding an active defense, the Ukrainian third army corps is hitting back hard, denying the Russians new territory and taking advantage of their most exposed positions to make new significant territorial gains of their own. Russian forces continue to push towards Torske from all sides, but Ukrainian defenders from the 63rd and 60th Mechanized Brigades are defending...

Ukraine has now attacked for the third time a Russian oil pipeline that supplies multiple European nations. The attacks angered President Donald Trump after he received a note from Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.The Ukrainians hit the Druzhba (“Friendship”) II oil pipeline, which stretches for about 2,500 miles. The latest attack struck the Unecha oil pumping station in Russia on Thursday night. The Soviet-era conduit is considered among the longest in the world. The pipeline delivers Russian oil through Ukraine before heading to Slovakia, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, according to reports. Druzhba I supplied Germany and Poland, but that...

SOCAR Oil Terminal Destroyed in Odessa Despite claims from the Trump administration about the success of Monday’s meeting with Zelensky and the European pimp delegation, the prospect for a successful negotiation to end the war in Ukraine is zero. Trump continues to mistakenly believe that he simply needs to get Putin and Zelensky together, who will hammer out a deal. Trump labors under the false assumption that the war in Ukraine was caused in part by a personal tiff between Putin and Zelensky. Putin has been very clear that he will only meet with Zelensky once the details of a...

"But where we want to start is about losses, killed in action, wounded in action, missing an action. And what you'll hear me say again and again is any figures where there is incentive and there's no repercussion to lie, then be very very careful with any of this. There's a massive information war that is not only taken on board by people with no lives who do it just themselves, but there's also people with financial incentive to push information, especially on websites like this, as well as state funded propaganda as well. I've got my eye on a...

The number of dead and seriously wounded Ukrainians is apparently much higher than imagined.Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine some three and a half years ago, the Western media has promoted a non-stop barrage of disinformation about the military developments, trying to present a rosier picture than reality can afford.Perhaps no other aspect of the hostilities has been so blatantly misrepresented as the number of casualties and fatalities.We got to the point where Kiev regime leader Volodymyr Zelensky had the nerve to say that Ukraine had had 35 thousand losses.That is particularly absurd since we know that Kiev’s...

More than a million Russians have been killed or seriously wounded on the battlefields of Ukraine. But there is one man who owes his life to the continuing slaughter. For Vladimir Putin, an outbreak of peace means certain death – by assassination, overthrow and execution, or in an international prison cell as a war criminal. The Russian president's only credible hope of survival in the gangster state he has himself created is to prolong the 'special military operation' in Ukraine or to win in such outrageously successful terms that he can turn his attention to other former client states, other...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said that Russia's refusal to agree to a ceasefire is complicating efforts to end the war. "We see that Russia rebuffs numerous calls for a ceasefire and has not yet determined when it will stop the killing. This complicates the situation," he said in a statement on 'X'. On Monday, the Ukrainian leader travel to Washington DC, where US President Donald Trump has said he will urge Zelensky to agree to a peace deal. Trump has said he wants to bypass a ceasefire in Ukraine to move directly to a permanent peace agreement after his...

Once a vague proposal for a territorial swap gained clarity, a worried President Volodymyr Zelensky worked to rally allies before Friday’s Trump-Putin summit.President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine was returning from the front line last week when he joined a pivotal call with President Trump.Hours earlier, Mr. Zelensky had visited soldiers defending Ukraine’s northeastern Sumy region against Russian ground assaults. Now, stopping in the small city of Romny, he listened on a secure line with other European leaders as Mr. Trump outlined Russia’s proposal to end the war.Moscow, Mr. Trump told them, was ready to halt hostilities under a deal involving...

This is an interesting video that touches on the talks between Trump and Putin, and the situation in Ukraine. It includes an interview with a Russian writer/journalist -- who I don't know -- and his interesting take on the war. I found it to be a very level-headed interview and discussion, and one that also touches on the history of war in Ukraine.

Countless men and women are dead. Cities have been destroyed. Other nations want to “help” by sending weapons, but Ukrainians are eager to end the war. A Gallup poll from July 1-14 found that only 24% of Ukrainians would fight until victory. Back in 2022, 73% of people favored fighting until victory, but now the true cost has been revealed, and there is no victory in war. As of July 2025, 69% of Ukrainians support ending the war immediately through negotiations with Russia. In contrast, only 22% of the nation felt that peace talks were warranted in 2022. Ukrainians notably...

. . . Yet Zelenskyy’s fatal political error is negotiating for total victory as if it were already won. It isn’t. You don’t demand unconditional surrender when you lack the power to enforce it—and the wider the gap between rhetoric and reality, the sooner Ukraine risks the very outcome it claims to prevent: the loss of its statehood, on Russian terms. That delusion persists in Washington, kept alive by voices from the Biden-Blinken school of foreign policy romanticism—still peddling the fairy tale: one more tranche, one more package, one more spring. In reality, it buys Ukraine’s destruction—its soldiers bled out,...

President Volodymyr Zelensky has said Ukraine would reject any Russian proposal to give up the Donbas region in exchange for a ceasefire, warning it could be used as a springboard for future attacks. Zelensky was speaking ahead of a meeting between US President Donald Trump and Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday. Trump has said any peace deal would involve "some swapping of territories" and it is believed one of Putin's demands is that Kyiv surrenders the parts of the Donbas it still controls. Meanwhile Russia's troops have continued their summer offensive, making a sudden thrust near the...

Ukrainian defenses are buckling under the relentless Russian pressure. This happened in the area near Pokrovsk: instead of banging their heads against a heavily fortified city, Russian forces, as they do, circumvent it, seeking to cut all supply lines and encircle the defenders, at which point the garrison has to either surrender or be destroyed by attacks from all sides.This playbook was implemented in Bakhmut, Avdiivka, Kurakhovo, Ugledar and so many other places.What is striking now is that the northern prong, expected to turn west to encircle Pokrovsk, found weaknesses on the depleted defenses, and dashed north by 9 miles.Post...

"It is impossible to talk about Ukraine without Ukraine," Vladimir Zelensky said OSCOW, August 12. /TASS/. Ukraine will not recognize the decision taken at the Russia-US summit in Alaska without its participation, Vladimir Zelensky said. "It is impossible to talk about Ukraine without Ukraine, and no one will recognize that. That’s why this conversation may be important for their [Russia-US] bilateral track, but they cannot decide anything on Ukraine without us. I hope the US president understands that and takes into account," the head of the Kiev regime said at a forum. On August 8, Trump announced that he was...

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 Gallup’s most recent poll of Ukraine — conducted in...

As a result of the eleventh-hour trip from US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff to Moscow, a meeting between Donald J. Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin became a reality – and what’s more, both sides now firmly believe that there’s an acceptable plan being negotiated that will put an end to the war in Ukraine.What exactly this plan is the public hasn’t been told, which leaves plenty of space for the MSM to fill in the blanks with propaganda aimed at disrupting the summit and the peace progress.Besides that, there’s also the fact that – as expected – Ukraine has...

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is once again rejecting any consideration for President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss terms for a ceasefire without his involvement.On a Twitter storm Saturday, Zelenskyy rejected the thought of giving any Ukranian territory to Russia in exchange for peace. “The answer to the Ukrainian territorial question already is in the Constitution of Ukraine. No one will deviate from this—and no one will be able to. Ukrainians will not gift their land to the occupier,” Zelenskyy said.President Trump announced that he would meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin on August 15, in Alaska.Zelenskyy...

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy dismissed Saturday the planned summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, warning that any peace deal excluding Kyiv would lead to “dead solutions.”The Trump-Putin meeting, scheduled for Friday in Alaska, is seen as a potential breakthrough in the more than three-year war.Trump had previously agreed to meet with Putin even if the Russian leader would not meet with Zelenskyy, stoking fears Ukraine could be sidelined in efforts to stop the continent’s biggest conflict since World War II.In a statement posted to Telegram, Zelenskyy said Ukraine’s territorial integrity, enshrined...