Free Republic

Russian forces have advanced in eastern Ukraine over recent weeks behind overwhelming artillery barrages, a shift in fortunes made possible by better access to rail lines delivering tons of ammunition and other supplies. Trains are the Russian military’s go-to method for moving troops and heavy weapons. In Ukraine’s industrialized Donbas region, dense rail networks have played to Moscow’s advantage. Russia’s military depends so heavily on trains that it maintains an elite Railroad Force, a service branch once common in countries through World War II. The unit has camouflage-painted armored train cars equipped with antiaircraft cannons and artillery to guard supply...

Hanna Maliar, Deputy Defence Minister, said that the Russians were currently storming Ukrainian positions on several fronts at the same time.Source: Maliar on FacebookQuote: "Currently, the situation at the front remains difficult and shows signs of worsening further.The enemy has used all forces and means to capture the territory and encircle our troops.The enemy is firing along the entire front line. The fighting has reached its maximum intensity. The enemy is storming the positions of our troops simultaneously on several fronts.We have an extremely difficult and long stage ahead of us in the struggle for the complete liberation of our...

After several weeks of deadlock, Russia’s military appears to have found a way to advance in the Donbas – pounding it with such intense, unsophisticated artillery that Ukraine’s exhausted defenders are having to yield.Volodymyr Zelenskiy rarely gives casualty figures but Ukraine’s president said last Sunday that “50 to 100 Ukrainian troops die on Donbas frontlines each day”, meaning perhaps 3,000 a month in the grisly war of attrition.Wounded will typically be three or perhaps four times as much, a serious loss for a Donbas defence force estimated at 30,000 before the war began, although the numbers increased following Ukraine’s mass...