Free Republic

Major-General Vadym Skibitsky, plays a nautical theme. Blunt, enigmatic and sharp as a captain’s hook, he exudes many of the qualities that have made HUR one of the most talked about secret services in the world. But he sounds troubled as he assesses Ukraine’s battlefield prospects. Things, he says, are as difficult as they have ever been since the early days of Russia’s full-scale invasion. And they are about to get worse. He predicts that Russia will first press on with its plan to “liberate” all of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions, a task unchanged since 2022. He says...

"Russia is competing with Western countries to supply weapons to Ukraine," Colonel Oleksandr Saruba told Deutsche Welle. According to the German outlet, Saluba works for the Ukrainian military center that receives and analyzes captured weaponry. Ukraine has been making use of captured weapons and armor since the outset of the war — in March 2022 it announced that it had captured 24 Uragan missiles and had aimed them back at the enemy. According to Deutsche Welle, the captured technology is useful in another way. Probing them provides information on where Russia is receiving its high-tech parts from, which could guide...

Russian forces have likely seized the center of the hotly contested city of Bakhmut, where they are threatening an essential supply route for Ukrainian forces in the west, British intelligence said Friday. The eastern city is one of the last urban areas of Donetsk that has withstood Russian incursion. Now mostly reduced to rubble, the city center has been the focus of intense fighting for months. “Ukraine’s key 0506 supply route to the west of the town is likely severely threatened,” the British intelligence update warned. Ukrainian military expert Vladyslav Selezniov previously said that forces will have to retreat if...

In the besieged city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, the volunteers collecting the civilian dead risk becoming casualties themselves. “Where? Where?” demands Daniel Wilk, a Canadian driver, in shaky video footage shot recently inside the city and seen by the Guardian. Wilk proceeds quickly, the anxiety of the situation visible in his movements as he is directed to a fence, cutting an uncertain path across the snow as another voice cries “no, no” repeatedly. The bodies, when Wilk gets to them, have been cut in half by the force of the explosion that took their lives, and still lie where...

Russia’s defense ministry on Saturday admitted its forces had retreated from key towns in northeastern Ukraine after a stunning advance by Ukrainian troops. The Defense Ministry said it had pulled forces out of the village of Balakliya and the strategically crucial city of Izyum in the Kharkiv region, after a decision to “regroup” and transfer them to Donetsk in the south.” The retreat represents one of the biggest setbacks for Russia since President Vladimir V. Putin launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February. “In order to achieve the goals of the special military operation, a decision was made to...

Moscow abandoned its main bastion in northeastern Ukraine on Saturday, in a sudden collapse of one of the war's principal front lines after surging Ukrainian forces threatened to encircle the area in a shock advance. The swift fall of Izium in Kharkiv province was Moscow's worst defeat since its troops were forced back from the capital Kyiv in March, and could prove a decisive turning point in the six-month-old war, with thousands of Russian soldiers abandoning ammunition stockpiles and equipment as they fled. The head of Russia's administration in areas in Kharkiv it controls told all residents to evacuate the...

Fortunately, I was sitting down when I saw the following video. I had an easier fall to the floor from the sitting position then if I had been standing upright. This is a genuine stunner. A reporter for the PUBLIC BROADCAST SYSTEM– let me repeat that, a PBS reporter on the ground in Ukraine and reporting from the Ukraine side of the fightin –blows up the Ukrainian propaganda that Russia was shelling civilian targets during the sustained bombardments. This is akin to Rachel Maddow admitting the Joe Biden is the Big Guy and on the take from the Chinese. Whoops!...

After insisting their forces would "fight to the death," Ukraine has ceded control of the major city to Russia.

Putin has deployed Iskander-M mobile battlefield missile launchers within 40 miles of the Ukrainian border, Ukraine's military has said. The mobile system's two ballistic missiles have a range of up to 300 miles and can carry conventional or nuclear warheads. 'Then enemy has increased the number of troops in the Belgorod region by transferring and concentrating additional units,' the Ukrainian Armed Forces said in its daily morning update. According to available information, Iskander-M launchers have been deployed 60 km from the border with Ukraine,' it said, without providing more detail on the location of the systems. Belgorod is a city...