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This is the moment more than 100 Russian troops are believed to have been killed in an ATACMS tactical ballistic missile strike on occupied Luhansk. A military training ground was seen being hit by multiple explosions typical of an ATACMS strike in footage captured by a drone flying high above. The strike targeted a group of 100-plus soldiers who were seen in aerial images, say OSINT analysts in what would be the single largest loss of Russian stories in months. The ATACMS (Army Tactical Missile System) showered the troops with hundreds of M74 APAM mini-bombs which are carried by the...

US House Armed Services Committee Ranking Member Adam Smith said that holding on to the territory currently under the control of the regime in Kiev is the best outcome for Ukraine, given the realities of its conflict with Russia. Ukraine must hold on to approximately 82% of its territory, including access to the Black Sea, in order to consider the outcome of the conflict a success, Smith said, according to a Foreign Policy report released on Thursday. The Biden administration has avoided making such a statement because it does not want to admit that Ukraine might have to relinquish territory...

French President Emmanuel Macron reaffirmed he did not rule out sending troops to Ukraine, saying the issue would "legitimately" arise if Russia broke through Ukrainian front lines and Kyiv made such a request, in an interview with the Economist published Thursday. The Economist said Macron gave the interview after delivering a keynote speech last week where he declared that Europe is "mortal" and could "die" partly due to the threat posed by Russian aggression after its February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. "I'm not ruling anything out, because we are facing someone who is not ruling anything out," said Macron when...

Just as Russia had started to bring back some refinery capacity damaged by Ukrainian drone attacks earlier this year, a new wave of drone attacks hit a major refinery owned by Rosneft, for a second time.Rosneft’s Ryazan refinery southeast of Moscow caught fire after the overnight drone attack, an anonymous Ukrainian military source with knowledge of the situation told Bloomberg News on Wednesday.The refinery in the region of Ryazan, whose main city of the same name is some 120 miles southeast of Moscow, was first attacked by drones in the middle of March. The first attack also led to a...

Ukraine’s population collapsed to 29mn souls last year, according to Ukraine Business News, with just 187,000 births recorded (including in Russian-occupied territories). This is the lowest annual figure in recorded history over the last 300 years, exacerbating an already dire population catastrophe facilitated by economic turmoil and war. Ukraine's demographic crisis dates back to the Soviet collapse in 1991, when the country’s population stood at 51.9mn. Economic crises and labour migration saw the country’s total fertility rate plummet to 1.4 births per woman (well below the replacement level of 2.1) by 2022 and possibly as low as .7 by the...

Despite the time and political capital spent on the $60 billion aid for Ukraine, some Biden administration officials are skeptical it’s enough for Ukraine to win its two-year war with Russia. Battlefield dynamics have shifted a lot in the last few months, partly because Ukraine ran low on weaponry and ammunition while Congress debated authorizing more aid, according to three U.S. officials, all granted anonymity to detail sensitive internal thinking. During that period, Ukraine struggled to maintain eastern territory, though Russia didn’t make significant gains, either. Russia maintains a manpower and weapons advantage, and it would take a lot to...

The idea triggered a full-scale revolt on the Google campus. Six years ago, the Silicon Valley giant signed a small, $9 million contract to put the skills of a few of its most innovative developers to the task of building an artificial intelligence tool that would help the military detect potential targets on the battlefield using drone footage. Engineers and other Google employees argued that the company should have nothing to do with Project Maven, even if it was designed to help the military discern between civilians and militants. The uproar forced the company to back out, but Project Maven...

President Joe Biden suggested war is peace on Wednesday after he signed legislation to provide Ukraine the funds to conduct a war against Russia. “It’s a good day for world peace,” Biden claimed about the war funds in the State Dining Room of the White House, echoing George Orwell’s novel “Nineteen Eighty-Four.” “It’s going to make America safer, it’s going to make the world safer, and it continues America’s leadership in the world, and everyone knows it,” Biden said of the funds. The Senate passed the foreign aid package on Wednesday. Just minutes after the vote, Biden signed the legislation...

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) blasted conservative commentator Tucker Carlson on Tuesday for playing a leading role in demonizing the idea of sending military aid to Ukraine, saying the former Fox News host wound up “where he should have been all along” when he gave Russian President Vladimir Putin a megaphone during a fawning interview earlier this year. “I think the demonization of Ukraine began by Tucker Carlson, who in my opinion ended up where he should have been all along, which was interviewing Vladimir Putin,” McConnell said, referring to Carlson’s two-hour interview with Putin in February, which drew...

Apparently taking the example of Washington, London committed Tuesday to deliver more military hardware and another £500 million in aid to Kyiv as UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak warned that Vladimir Putin will seek to expand further into Europe if Ukraine loses to Russia. Britain will supply Ukraine with 60 boats, 400 vehicles, over 1,600 missiles, and nearly four million rounds of ammunition as well as £500 million in additional military funding, in the largest single aid package from the UK since the Russian invasion of 2022 and taking the country’s total contributions to £3 billion during this financial year,...

Ukraine has moved to restrict consular services at its diplomatic missions for men of conscription age (18-60) who live abroad as Kyiv tries to increase troop levels in its fight to repel invading Russian forces. Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba wrote on X, formerly Twitter, on April 23 that he ordered the restrictions because "staying abroad does not relieve a citizen of his or her duties to the Homeland." "As it looks like now, a man of conscription age goes abroad and shows his state that he does not care about its survival. He then comes back and wants to receive...

Congress is facing the most significant and transformational opportunity to strengthen the U.S. defense industrial base (DIB) since the end of World War II. The heritage equipment that the United States has provided to Ukraine for its self-defense in the face of the brazen and illegal invasion by Russian forces in 2022 needs to be replenished to ensure the United States is postured to continue to deter its adversaries. The new hardware will be produced at factories across the nation. Of the $113 billion appropriated by Congress to date related to the conflict in Ukraine, as much as $68 billion...

The missing American who’d traveled to Ukraine years ago to aid Russian separatists in Donbas was found dead in the country’s war-torn eastern region. The body of Russell Bentley, a 64-year-old U.S. Army vet, was recovered in the Russian-controlled region of Donetsk Oblast, Reuters reported. -snip- The former pothead, who used “Texas” as his military call-sign, left behind a yoga instructor girlfriend to travel to Ukraine. He utilized crowdfunding sites to finance his trip, and had since become a Russian citizen. He also got married after moving to Ukraine, where he began working as a reporter for the state-owned Sputnik...

A spending bill backed by House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) includes hundreds of millions of dollars in American taxpayer money for border patrol agents in Ukraine as illegal immigration at the United States-Mexico border remains at record levels. The spending bill, which 151 House Republicans helped 165 House Democrats advance on Friday, would see more than $95 billion sent to foreign countries — including about $61 billion to Ukraine amid its ongoing war with Russia.

The House speaker’s comments wrecked one of the far right’s most ridiculous, reprehensible tropes.It was a remarkable moment: After introducing a package of bills that includes military aid to Ukraine, Mike Johnson flatly told reporters on Wednesday that enabling Ukraine to defend itself is in the best interests of America and the world. This surprised a lot of people who had wrongly assumed the House speaker was effectively functioning as a stooge for Vladimir Putin—and Donald Trump—and would thus slow-walk Ukraine aid to death before ever allowing a vote on it.Johnson’s new stance has attracted a good deal of positive...

Ukraine's air force has previously said Russia has used the Tu-22M3 aircraft to fire Kh-22 cruise missiles at Ukrainian territory. The HUR said the bomber that was downed "carried out a missile attack against Ukraine on the night of April 19." The aircraft was shot down "as a result of a [HUR] special operation in cooperation with the Air Force," it said, adding that it was struck at a distance of about 300 kilometers from Ukraine. The HUR added: "It should be noted that this is the first successful destruction of a strategic bomber in the air during a combat...

House conservatives have stymied proposed supplemental funding packages for Ukraine since the fall. But their justifications for further delays in delivering military aid to Kyiv got little oxygen during an April 17 defense budget hearing before a key appropriations panel. “With Mr. Putin saying very openly and repeatedly that he wants to restore the old Soviet Union, all of the nation states, in Eastern Europe especially, are looking to us,” House Armed Services Committee Chair Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) said, referring to the Russian leader’s demands seeking no further NATO expansion, no missiles on Russia’s borders, and a return of...

A Chinese specialist on Russia has delivered a grim forecast for Vladimir Putin's war in Ukraine: that it is doomed to fail. Peking University professor Feng Yujun is also cooling on the future of Beijing-Moscow relations, writing in a recent op-ed in The Economist that the two nations have diverging visions of the future of global affairs.

Ukraine's top commander said on Sunday Russian forces aimed to capture the town of Chasiv Yar by May 9, setting the stage for an important battle for control of high ground in the east where Russia is focusing its assaults. The fall of the town west of the shattered city of Bakhmut by the date Moscow marks the Soviet victory in World War Two would indicate growing Russian battlefield momentum as Kyiv faces a slowdown in Western military aid. Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi, who warned this weekend that the situation in the east had deteriorated, said Russia was focusing its...

As Ukrainian officials plead for more Western arms and a U.S. aid package remains stalled in Congress, Russia is advancing on the battlefield in eastern Ukraine, seizing new territory and intensifying attacks to capture the town of Chasiv Yar and others in the Donetsk region. Away from the front line, Ukraine’s dwindling air defense capabilities are showing vulnerabilities, as more Russian missiles and drones are able to hit targets such as critical infrastructure facilities. Outside Kyiv — considered Ukraine’s best-protected city — the largest power plant serving the capital was destroyed Thursday, stoking concerns that Ukraine might be running out...