Free Republic

Every foreign weapon that Russians capture in such manner is one less weapon that the ukronazis and Kiev gangsters will be able to sell to terrorists and street gangs such as Crips, Bloods, or MS13...

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky on Thursday renewed his almost weekly call for Western nations to do more to help his besieged nation in its fight against invading Russian forces. Financial donations remain a top priority closely followed by a call for advanced fighter jets and associated trainers. “The sooner we stop Russia, the sooner we can feel safe,” Zelensky said while meeting defense leaders at a Denmark conference aimed at ensuring foreign supplies continue delivering weapons, training, and demining work in his country. “We need armaments, munitions for our defense,” the leader added, speaking via a live link from Ukraine.

Russia now controls $12.4 trillion worth of Ukraine's key natural resources, according to an analysis for The Washington Post by SecDev. If the Kremlin succeeds in annexing Ukrainian land seized during Russia's invasion, Kyiv would permanently lose almost two-thirds of its deposits. Moscow controls 63% of Ukraine's coal deposits, 11% of its oil, 20% of its natural gas, 42% of its metals, and 33% of its rare earths.If the Kremlin succeeds in annexing Ukrainian land seized during Russia's invasion, Kyiv would lose almost two-thirds of its deposits, the report said, denying the country of its essential economic pillars.

Sweden has previously provided more than a hundred instructors to train the Ukrainian military. And now the country's Defense Minister Peter Gulqvist has not ruled out that it may join the production of weapons for the needs of Kiev. He stated this after the donors ' conference for our state in Copenhagen, which took place on August 11. During this meeting, three main areas of long-term support were identified, SVT reports. "It's not something I rule out, but it's too early to say right now. We are involved in all three dimensions of assistance to Ukraine in a positive way,...

Baykar plans to produce not only drones, but also unmanned fighters in Ukraine The Turkish company Baykar, in addition to the Bayraktar TB2 attack operational and tactical drones, also plans to produce Bayraktar Kizilelma unmanned fighters in Ukraine. They will be equipped with two types of Ukrainian engines. This was stated by its general director Haluk Bayraktar in an interview with Taras Chmut, director of the Come Back Alive Foundation. According to him, this will actually be a new level in the arena of unmanned systems (to watch the video, scroll through the news to the end). "Bayraktar TB2 and...

Per capita murder rates in major U.S. cities such as Chicago, Baltimore and St. Louis are outpacing Ukraine's recorded civilian death rate from Russia's invasion. According to the United Nations Human Rights office, 5,401 civilians have been killed in Ukraine since Russia's attack began in February, although the agency said it "believes that the actual figures are considerably higher." With a population of about 41,167,300, Ukraine's civilian death rate is 13.12 per 100,000 people using official statistics from the United Nations. The murder rates for several major U.S. cities are considerably higher than Ukraine's civilian death rate. For example, Baltimore,...

There’s no shocking video of beachgoers gawking at massive explosions here like there was with the strike in Crimea. In fact, this story is thinly sourced. *Something* happened at Belarus’s Zyabrovka military airport, enough to warrant an official explanation, but that’s as much as we know. Surveillance video from very far away detected a large flash on the horizon.CCTV footage has emerged of the explosion at the airfield in #Belarus which happened overnight.As I reported earlier in the thread, this base is completely controlled by #Russia these days and the launchpad for many bombings of #Ukraine.Is this just an engine...

Latvia and Estonia have withdrawn from a cooperation framework between China and over a dozen Central and Eastern European countries on Thursday, following in the footsteps of Lithuania which withdrew last May. The move comes during Western criticism towards China for escalating military pressure on Taiwan, a democratically-ruled island that China claims as its own territory. “Past participation in the 16+1 format has not yielded the desired economic results,” Latvia’s Foreign Ministry told Reuters. Relations between Lithuania and China worsened after the Baltic nation allowed Taiwan to open a de facto embassy late last year. “Latvia’s continued participation in the...

The UN's nuclear watchdog has called for an immediate end to any military action near Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, warning of a "very real risk of a nuclear disaster". IAEA chief Rafael Grossi said he was "extremely concerned" by reports of shelling at Europe's largest nuclear power plant. It comes as Ukraine said parts of the facility were "seriously damaged" by Russian military strikes. Russia seized the plant in March. Russia has kept on its Ukrainian employees, but Kyiv accuses Russian forces of firing rockets at civilian areas from the site, employing "terror tactics". Friday's strikes underline "the very real...

The word from Ukraine’s high command this morning was that nine Russian jets were neutralized in the surprise attack on Saki airbase on the Crimean cost.I invite you to enlarge the two photos in this tweet and compare the before and after. I count more than nine.Comparison of August 9th and August 10th imagery show very large craters, many destroyed aircraft, and destroyed buildings. It looks like a direct hit on the building on the left, so whatever it was seems accurate.pic.twitter.com/QyLn86PUjw— Eliot Higgins (@EliotHiggins) August 10, 2022Looks to me like 16 aircraft visible and intact in the “before” photo...

8 large explosions reported from Ziabrauka airfield near Homel in Belarus. Lots of Russian military gear is stationed there & the Russians often launch attack against Ukraine from Ziabrauka. Ukraine might have counterattacked Belarusian territory for the first time.

KYIV, Ukraine — A powerful attack on a Russian air base in occupied Crimea was the work of Ukrainian special forces, a Ukrainian government official told The Washington Post on Wednesday, suggesting an increasingly important role for covert forces operating deep behind enemy lines as the country expands efforts to expel Russian troops. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly on the matter, did not disclose details of how Tuesday’s attack was carried out. The attack marks a significant escalation in the nearly six-month-old war, demonstrating a new ability by...

The drugged-out truck driver who crossed the center line of a northern New Hampshire road, killing seven people on motorcycles, was found not guilty by a jury - a verdict that sparked 'shock' 'outrage' and 'anger' by the state's governor. Volodymyr Zhukovskyy, 26, a Ukrainian national who now faces deportation, was acquitted on Tuesday by a jury of seven counts of negligent homicide and reckless conduct after less than three hours of deliberation following a two-week trial. The grateful and relieved truck driver wiped away tears, kissed his finger and pointed to the sky after he was cleared. He's been...

Russia's defence ministry said an explosion at a Russian military airbase in Crimea on Tuesday had been caused by a detonation of aviation ammunition, and that there had been no casualties, the RIA Novosti news agency reported. It said there had been no attack, and no military equipment had been damaged.

Ukraine's special forces were responsible for a series of deadly explosions which destroyed parts of a crucial Russian airbase in Crimea yesterday, killing one and injuring 14 according to a Ukrainian government official. Up to ten Russian aircraft were destroyed in the attack, the Ukrainian air force said, which an anonymous official told the Washington Post had been carried out by special forces – despite claims yesterday that long-range missiles could have been used. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky meanwhile vowed to 'liberate' the peninsula previously part of Ukraine but annexed by Russia in 2014 despite international condemnation. Zelensky did not...

Russian oil has stopped flowing through a pipeline that feeds countries in Central and Eastern Europe, dealing another blow to a region contending with the loss of vital energy supplies from Russia. Transneft PJSC, the government-owned oil-pipeline operator, said Tuesday that crude exports through Ukrainian territory had halted on Aug. 4. It blamed payment difficulties caused by Western sanctions on Moscow and said Ukraine’s pipeline operator had declined to carry crude after it didn’t receive funds. A spokeswoman for Naftogaz NJSC, Ukraine’s state energy firm and the parent company of pipeline operator Ukrtransnafta, said it would issue a statement later...

Horrific video and photos have emerged that appear to show the head of a Ukrainian prisoner of war stuck on a pole outside a house in the eastern Ukrainian city of Popasna, which was captured by Russian forces in May and is close to the current frontline in the Donbas. The Ukrainian governor of Luhansk province, Serhiy Haidai, posted the gruesome photo on his Telegram channel. It has since been widely shared on social media. Ukrainians have accused Russian troops of barbaric medieval behaviour and likened the image to Lord of the Rings. “They really are orcs. Twenty-first century, occupied...

Russian Government officials are already using the recent Amnesty International criticising the Ukraine Army’s defence of Ukrainian cities to justify their atrocities. Amnesty International staff can’t say they weren’t warned this could happen. I tried to tell them this was the danger just three months ago. In May this year, I was sat around a table with Donatella Rovera, Amnesty International’s Senior Crisis researcher predicting their upcoming report would land like a lead balloon. We were in the kitchen of our hotel in Kramatorsk, the administrative capital of Ukrainian-controlled Donetsk and we could hear the boom of artillery outside our...

Women and children captured by Russians in Ukraine are being sold into sex slavery in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). According to the Daily Mail, American officials confirmed that there are “lost” women and children that were targeted at either Polish refugee camps or taken from Ukraine directly to Russia where they are bartered into UAE servitude. The revelation comes from a report titled “Modern Slavery In Dubai,” published by the Washington Institute For Defence And Security and the New York Center For Foreign Policy Affairs.

The U.S. Defense Department believes that as many as 80,000 Russian troops have been killed or wounded since the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine less than six months ago, a top Pentagon official told reporters today... The United States has now provided nearly $10 billion in military aid to Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion, nearly twice Kyiv’s military budget in 2021... The Pentagon initially estimated that Russia deployed about 120 battalion tactical groups, the Kremlin’s go-to combined arms unit, for the war—numbering around 100,000 troops. Experts said the new casualty estimate is likely to include Russian paramilitary and volunteer forces,...