Free Republic

The United States will be able to launch counterattacks already on nuclear missiles that can be launched from Russia. Mykola Malomuzh, General of the Army of Ukraine and ex-head of the Foreign Intelligence Service, spoke about this on the air of the FREEDOM TV channel. According to him, any training strike that Russian President Vladimir Putin is now declaring will be monitored by the Americans, the British, the Chinese, the Germans, the French. “This is a whole complex. These are systems for countering missile defense, and anti-missile defense, which we have involved in various countries. Therefore, strikes will be monitored...

At least 23 people have been killed and dozens more injured in a Russian rocket strike on a humanitarian convoy in south Ukraine, local officials say. A huge crater next to a row of vehicles in the city of Zaporizhzhia testifies to the violence of the attack. Windows and windscreens were smashed in. The BBC saw half a dozen bodies lying at the scene, apparently civilians. Baggage and coats strewed the tarmac. One survivor told the BBC her boss had been killed in the attack. "She had two kids. I left the cafe to use the restroom when it happened....

Moscow planned to celebrated the annexation of huge swathes of Eastern Ukraine Friday but Putin’s party was wrecked by a lightning counter-attack that may have trapped thousands of his men in a key city supposedly now part of Russia. Ukrainian sources claimed that the strategic city of Lyman, which has served as a Russian military hub in Donetsk, has been encircled and supply lines cut. “Lyman! The operation to encircle the Russian group is at the stage of completion,” said Ukrainian lawmaker Oleksiy Goncharenko on Friday. The claim could not be independently verified but, if confirmed, it would be one...

The face of Russia’s war in Ukraine has wrinkles. Photos documenting the first week of Russia’s mobilization order calling for 300,000 more soldiers to be drafted show older men being forced into the fight. Images from the rural province of Sverdlovsk reveal a pair of silver-haired soldiers arriving at a training barracks in central Russia. Some soldiers standing for inspection at a ceremony in Sevastopol displayed wrinkles and liver spots. One man, with a gray-streaked beard, held his AK-style rifle in a hand with three bandaged fingers. When Russian President Vladimir Putin announced he was calling up hundreds of thousands...

The defence minister of Ukraine Oleksii Reznikov believes that Belarusian soldiers have no motivation to enter the war with Ukraine, and if ordered by their authorities to fight, they would lay down their weapons. "I don't understand what would motivate Belarusians to consciously go to war with Ukraine, kill and die for no one knows what, even if they are officers who are under oath obliged to follow orders. If they go on the attack with their units, they could cross the Belarusian border, raise their hands, lay down their weapons and say, ‘Ukrainians, we are your syabry. [Belarusians] are...