Free Republic

Kirill Dmitriev, the Kremlin’s top economic envoy, arrived in the United States with holes in his sails and no wind to push him forward. He was a man on a desperate mission. A phone call between Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, and Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, had not gone well. The meeting between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, expected to take place within two weeks, was shelved. The US president had finally lost patience with his Russian counterpart’s refusal to support a ceasefire in Ukraine. On Wednesday, he slapped Moscow’s largest oil firms with crippling sanctions. With...

The Ryazan refinery, owned by Russian state oil company Rosneft, is one of the largest in central Russia. It processes more than 17 million tons of crude oil annually and plays a crucial role in fueling Russia’s armed forces and logistics operations. Damage to parts of the plant’s production capacity reduces the Russian army’s ability to sustain combat operations. That same night, Ukrainian strike drones also hit a Russian ammunition depot near the town of Valuyki in Belgorod Oblast. According to the General Staff, the target was destroyed, with secondary detonations and explosions recorded at the site. Read also: Night...