Free Republic

TEHRAN, Juy 25--RIA Novosti. The Ukrainian Armed Forces attacked an Iranian merchant vessel in the Caspian Sea, the Islamic Republic's Foreign Ministry reported. "The Iranian Foreign Ministry strongly condemns Ukraine's attack on an Iranian merchant vessel in the Caspian Sea on the morning of Saturday July 25. The attack resulted in an explosion on the vessel, killing one sailor and injuring another. This attack is a violation of Article 2, paragraph 4, of the UN Charter and an act of aggression that could further fan the flames of war" the ministry said in a post on its Telegram channel. The...

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Tuesday fired Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi as commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces and named his replacement, following days of mass protests in Kyiv, the country’s capital, and other cities across the nation demanding his removal.... Zelenskyy appointed Mykhailo Drapatyi as the new army chief, according to a statement on social media.... The Ukrainian leader said he made the decision after a series of meetings with military commanders. They began shortly after protests broke out demanding the reinstatement of former Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov, seen by demonstrators as a driver of military modernization, and...

Protests broke out across Ukraine Thursday after President Volodymyr Zelensky fired his defense minister to allegedly appease his top military general, with troops warning that the political spat could spell doom in the front lines. Zelensky’s Wednesday night decision to fire the tech-savvy Mykhailo Fedorov, 35, resulted in demonstrations across the country and even the resignation of a senior air force commander. While he was only appointed in January, Fedorov has been credited for accelerating the Ukrainian drone program, which has decimated Russia’s forces and kept the invading army largely at bay in 2026. Fedorov lamented the fallout and claimed...

Russia’s lower-house State Duma on Wednesday passed sweeping legislation tying the legal status of migrant workers and their families to their financial earnings. Under the bills, migrant workers must prove they earn enough to support themselves and dependents according to official subsistence levels set by federal and regional governments. Falling short, or becoming unemployed, triggers non-renewal or annulment of their temporary low-skilled work “patents,” followed by deportation within 15 days. Migrants will also face a mandatory fixed advance income tax for themselves and each family member. Foreign dependents may remain in Russia only for the duration of the primary worker’s...

Ukraine and Germany have formed a joint working group to discuss how to return Ukrainian men of military age who left the country illegally, according to Ukraine’s ambassador to Germany, Oleksiy Makeiev. As of late May, Germany hosted approximately 1.35 million Ukrainian refugees, including 356,000 men between the ages of 18 and 63. However, the specific mechanisms currently under discussion have not been disclosed. The development followed German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s April remarks that Berlin would limit the number of Ukrainian men seeking asylum and facilitate their return home during President Volodymyr Zelensky’s visit to Germany. The ambassador outlined broader...

The Kremlin is planning an armed incursion on Polish land to test Nato's response, according to Washington. The provocation could see Putin's troops cross over into Poland, and vital infrastructure could be targeted by missiles and drones. Sources close to Polish President Karol Nawrocki told news outlet Onet that the US had been warning Warsaw about the plan for a while. Russia's plan aims to start a crisis to scare Western nations into stopping their support for Ukraine. Polish security experts also warned that Russia and Belarus might send a small number of troops across the Nato border. Power stations...

"As NBC News reports, the account is called "ZnotluvuiSamez," and features the Ukrainian flag as its profile picture. The account made multiple big bets surrounding the Russo-Ukrainian war, including $409,000 on a contract that asks if "Putin out as President of Russia by December 31, 2026?" According to users' overall bets, there's currently a "11 percent chance" that Putin will be out by the end of the year. Of course, a massive bet is far from a guarantee that Putin will no longer be president, whether through an ouster or a decision to step down. For one, Putin isn't up...

July 1 (Reuters) - Ukraine has struck a Russian oil refinery in the city of Ufa, more than 1,300 km (800 miles) from the frontline for the second time, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Wednesday, as Kyiv steps up its strikes deep in Russia. "Every day, our plan for imposing Ukrainian long-range sanctions is being implemented," Zelenskiy said on X, referring to Ukrainian attacks deep inside Russian territory. "This is an entirely just response to everything Russia is doing against us." Zelenskiy also reported a strike on what he said was a "strategic" Russian military-industrial facility in the Penza region,...

At 4:14 a.m., Russia’s Voronezh missile production plant was engulfed in flames. This facility was described as a key link in the production chain for Kh-101 cruise missiles and Iskander-K missile systems — weapons Russia has used to threaten Ukrainian cities from hundreds of miles away. But in this operation, Ukraine did not wait for those missiles to be launched. Instead, the strike targeted the place where they were being assembled, stored, tested, and prepared. According to the scenario covered in this video, the operation began with two F-16s, electronic decoys, and 16 low-flying FP1 drones. While Russian air-defense systems...

Russian military vehicles are being painted with vivid stripes to baffle AI systems of Ukrainian-launched drones, experts say. Now the "cloaking" tactic has apparently launched a high-stakes game of hide and seek on the highways of Russian-held territory in Ukraine. Todd E. Humphreys, an aerospace and AI expert at the University of Texas at Austin, agrees the paint tactic may be more effective than many realize. "Dazzle paint pushes the vehicles 'out of distribution' -- they no longer look, to the AI classifier, like the images it was trained on," he told RFE/RL. But any specific paint job would have...

First, the bad news: The Iran War shows no signs of ending soon. Tehran on Monday said it would suspend peace talks with the U.S. in protest of Israeli strikes in Gaza and Lebanon. Now, the even worse news: The Iran War is linked to the Ukraine War in myriad disturbing ways, and the longer the former drags on, the more dangerous the latter becomes. Talk of “World War III” tends to be ludicrously overwrought—crafted to generate clicks and grab eyeballs on social media, rather than highlight geopolitical risks—but the connections between these two wars have, if anything, been underdiscussed....

A drone struck a residential building in Romania’s city of Galati near the Ukrainian border, injuring two people and triggering a fire after impact, authorities said on Friday. The incident, which prompted the evacuation of dozens of residents, comes amid continued drone activity in the region linked to the war in Ukraine.

It has been more than four years since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. And although polls show that a majority of Americans support Ukraine, military and financial assistance to bolster its defensive and offensive capabilities have fallen dramatically. This is in no small part due to President Trump’s and Vice President JD Vance’s open antipathy toward President Volodymyr Zelensky, which has led to the blatant slow walking of implementing support already appropriated by Congress. As co-founder of a humanitarian organization, I have traveled frequently to Ukraine and seen the devastation caused by Russia’s relentless attacks on non-combatant civilians, including children....

Riding a wave of political momentum in 2019, Volodymyr Zelensky, a showman turned wartime leader, could have hardly imagined the path his presidency would take. Some argue that Zelensky's 2019 election was less of an endorsement of his political platform, a populist one, rather a rejection of the old entrenched elite seen as ineffective and corrupt. Years later, Zelensky still faces the domestic challenges that confronted his predecessors — issues he once promised to resolve. On the international stage, however, he has amassed significant support for Ukraine, actively working to maintain global backing as his country defends itself against a...

A newly reported operation suggests Kyiv may have found another low-cost way to disrupt Russian forces away from the front line: heated insoles allegedly rigged with small explosive charges and sent through volunteer aid channels. According to Ukrainian outlet Militarnyi, operatives from Ukraine’s special services allegedly inserted explosive-filled heated insoles into shipments destined for Russian military units. The items were reportedly moved with the help of Russian volunteers and charitable foundations, allowing them to pass as ordinary humanitarian aid. That is what makes this sort of sabotage effective, Treston Wheat, chief geopolitical officer at Insight Forward, told me: it exploits...

The U.S. war on Iran set up Russia’s economy for a major rescue after oil prices soared after the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. But if President Vladimir Putin was expecting a huge windfall, that view may literally be going up in smoke. With one-fifth of the world’s oil supplies cut off, Russian oil suddenly became much more valuable. After trading at a steep discount to Brent crude, Urals oil nearly reached parity with the global benchmark. The U.S. also temporarily lifted sanctions on Russian crude, despite warnings that the move would provide a vital influx of revenue to...

Ukraine has received only about 600 advanced interceptor missiles for the MIM-104 Patriot air defense system during the entire course of Russia’s full-scale invasion, Ukrainian officials told The New York Times. Dmytro Lytvyn, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, said Kyiv had received roughly that number of interceptor missiles over four years of war. Ukraine has repeatedly urged Western partners to provide additional Patriot systems and interceptor missiles as Russia continues to launch large-scale missile strikes targeting cities and critical infrastructure. The Patriot system remains among the few air defense platforms capable of reliably intercepting advanced ballistic missiles, including...

Four years into Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Trump administration is pressing Kyiv to agree to painful territorial concessions as the price for peace. In a draft peace agreement first reported by Axios in November, the administration proposed that the entire regions of Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk be recognized as de facto Russian territory and that Russia retain control of the parts of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia its forces now occupy. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is pushing back, refusing to do anything that would violate his country’s territorial integrity. Yet the realities of the battlefield are not on his side....

Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson says that the UK and its allies should deploy non-combat troops to Ukraine right now, to "flip a switch" in Russian President Vladimir Putin's head. Speaking exclusively to Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg alongside the former head of the military, Adm Sir Tony Radakin, Johnson said troops should be sent to peaceful regions in non-fighting roles. He said: "If we can have a plan for boots on the ground after the war, after Putin has condescended to have a ceasefire, then why not do it now?" The UK government is currently working with its allies to...

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte has arrived in Kyiv and meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. "Maidan Nezalezhnosti. The People’s Memorial of National Remembrance," Zelenskyy wrote Tuesday on X. "A memorial honoring our heroes, warriors, our people who defended Ukraine against the enemy, fought, and made the ultimate sacrifice in this war. Together with @SecGenNATO Mark Rutte, we honored the memory of fallen Ukrainian defenders today. Eternal honor to our warriors. "Eternal gratitude for their sacrifice and for defending the country. It is our duty to preserve the memory of our fallen heroes." Rutte's visit comes after Russia attacked Ukraine...