Free Republic

Multiple pro-Moscow officials in Ukraine on Tuesday announced their intent to stage referendums on joining Russia, including the head of the Donetsk People’s Republic Denis Pushilin, as well as the Russia-installed official over the southern Kherson region, Vladimir Saldo. “I think that people have long been waiting for a referendum here and it will probably be a political move that will help ensure the safety of civilians,” Pushillin said Tuesday. ...

Vladimir Putin today made a speech announcing that the conflict in Ukraine would be escalated, resulting in citizens attempting to leave the country. In Putin's speech, he said there would be a partial mobilization of the military. Reservists and ex-military personnel with "certain military specialties and relevant experience" will be subject to conscription, he said. Following this, according to the Russian online newspaper Lenta, flights to Armenia, Turkey and Georgia sold out. "All tickets for direct flights to Istanbul and Yerevan were sold out in a few minutes after Putin's address," the publication's Twitter page wrote in a caption. It...

LONDON, Sept 21 (Reuters) - Russia will draft 300,000 reservists to support its military campaign in Ukraine, Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said on Wednesday in televised remarks.In Moscow's first update on casualty numbers in almost six months, Shoigu said 5,937 Russian soldiers had been killed since the start of the conflict.President Vladimir Putin had ordered Russia's first mobilisation since World War Two in an early-morning television address, saying the additional manpower was needed to win a war against not only Ukraine but also its Western backers. read more

Chinese President Xi Jinping addressed the Politburo Standing Committee of the Chinese Communist Party on Wednesday, stressing China's military readiness after the Army ''fully implemented the strategy of reforming and strengthening the military','' as reported by CCTV.The media wrote that Xi said the country should ''grasp the new situation and [...] focus on preparing for war,'' without providing further details on what conflict he referred to.Beijing and Moscow recently underwent joint military exercise, however, the situation around Taiwan is also becoming more intense, with the Taiwan's Defense Ministry today stating that 12 Chinese aircraft crossed the median line of the...

Russia’s State Duma stated that enacted "military" laws do not mean the announcement of a general mobilization. It was stated in "Parlament newspaper" by Andriy Kartapolov - Head of the State Duma Defense Committee and one of the authors of the amendments to the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation introducing the concepts of "mobilization," "martial law" and "wartime", informs Censor.NЕТ. "There will be no general mobilization. The president has said this more than once, and directly says it through the mouth of his press secretary Dmitry Peskov and many other politicians at the federal level. "The law" does not...

Many have noted the suspicious and very convenient timing regarding Azerbaijan-Armenia hostilities which serve as an additional distraction for Russia amid its special military operation in Ukraine and its ongoing operations in Syria. In addition to a recent visit by US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Armenia, anti-CSTO protests promoted by US government-funded media organizations in Armenia point toward events being much more than convenient timing and instead similar to US-engineered unrest seen in Ukraine in 2014.

Meanwhile, a much simpler model may be able to answer some of the questions about the Russia-Ukraine war, such as why the Russians were so ineffective and what will likely happen as the war continues. This simple combat model is based on the Lanchester equations, which were developed in 1916. The Lanchester equations consist of a series of differential equations that approximate the rate of combat losses for two opposing armies. Although somewhat basic, these equations have been successfully used over the last century to model attrition warfare, similar to the conflict in Ukraine. ... When the differential equations are...

Vladimir Putin appeared poised to go all-in on his war in Ukraine today, sparking fears of an escalation in fighting that could drag in NATO and spark World War Three. In a day of rapid-fire developments, Kremlin stooges in Ukraine's Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions simultaneously announced referendums on becoming part of Russia between September 23 and 27, with the sham votes expected to easily pass. Dmitry Medvedev, a staunch Putin ally, then vowed 'all forces of self-defence' will be used to protect what he called 'Russian territory' - teeing up a new phase in the conflict involving weapons...

Russian president Vladimir Putin was expected to give a speech at 6pm London time from Moscow potentially announcing the official declaration of war in Ukraine to defend Russian-occupied territories, but kept the world waiting on Tuesday night. Russian news channel that announced the speech deleted their posts around two hours after the Russian leader was set to begin what would have been his first international announcement since the country’s invasion of Ukraine on February 25. It appeared as though the Russian leader had cancelled his speech, pushing it back to Wednesday, according to a Telegram account run by political analyst...

Pro-Kremlin separatist officials in Ukraine’s Kherson region announced on Tuesday they will hold a referendum this week to become part of Russia. The leaders called on Moscow to endorse the referendum results immediately, according to Vladimir Saldo, the Russian-appointed leader of Kherson. Saldo said in a Telegram post that he was hopeful Kherson would vote to be "a part of Russia, a fully-fledged subject of a united country.” Russian news agencies stated that the referendum would occur between September 23 and 27, and would be similar to other votes in regions of Ukraine occupied by Russian troops, Reuters reported. .....

JUST IN - Russia's Putin and Defense Minister Shoigu are expected to address the nation tonight, according to Kremlin pool reporters.

Ukraine's recapture of the city of Izyum has brought multiple allegations of atrocities under Russian occupation. Among the accounts emerging is that of a group of Sri Lankans held captive for months. Here, they tell their story. "We thought we would never get out alive," says Dilujan Paththinajakan. Dilujan was one of seven Sri Lankans captured by Russian forces in May. The group had just set out on a huge walk to safety from their homes in Kupiansk, north-eastern Ukraine, to the relative safety of Kharkiv, some 120km (75 miles) away. But at the first checkpoint they came across, they...

For a country that ISN”T overrun with Nazis and Nazi sympathizers, Ukraine sure does seem to contain lots of folks sporting Nazi tattoos or patches on their clothing. The latest to be revealed is one of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s bodyguards, who was spotted during a visit to the recently liberated eastern Ukrainian city of Izyum sporting a so-called Totenkopfverbande patch, celebrating the guards who ran Nazi concentration camps and later made up Hitler’s personal guards. Jimmy and The Dive’s Jackson Hinkle wonder at the regularity with which Nazi sympathies crop up in a country that we’re told doesn’t have...

Russian-installed officials in the Kherson region of Ukraine said they have decided to hold a referendum on joining Russia and have urged the Kremlin to give its permission as soon as possible, the separatist head of the region said on Tuesday. In a post on the Telegram messaging app, Vladimir Saldo, the Russian-appointed head of Kherson, said he hoped Kherson would become "a part of Russia, a fully-fledged subject of a united country."

Russia's parliament on Tuesday approved a bill to toughen punishments for a host of crimes such as desertion, damage to military property and insubordination if they are committed during military mobilisation or combat situations. The bill, passed in its second and third readings on Tuesday by the lower house of parliament, the Duma, comes amid debate inside Russia about a possible mobilisation

Satellite images show that Russia’s military moved old anti-aircraft missiles to Ukraine as it faced a shortage of advanced weapons this summer, inflicting heavy damage on civilians as a result, Finland’s Yle broadcaster reported Sunday.At least four out of 14 anti-aircraft missile bases surrounding St. Petersburg were “emptied of equipment” in August and September, Finnish military expert Marko Eklund was quoted as saying."It is most likely that the equipment that has been removed is primarily from the old S-300 system," Eklund, who has monitored the Russian armed forces for over 20 years, added.The remaining missiles that protect the airspace over...

The invisible government of the Deep State has long worked with the Nazis to accomplish its nefarious objectives, going back to the rise of Hitler. =============================================================== Witness Osh, Kyrgyzstan, a modest outpost in Central Asia. Boiling clouds enliven the sky as a breeze lazily strums the tall grass. Meanwhile a farmer tends his yaks, as clouds of gnats move across a meadow in a body like a mournful specter. Life here has gone on in a relatively unbroken pattern for thousands of years. But peasants have noticed something unusual appearing in the soil of late: train tracks. The construction is...

In an effort to distract attention from its losses in Ukraine and obfuscate its war on Ukrainian civilians, Russia’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations accused the United States, the United Kingdom and unnamed other Western countries of launching “the largest in history war by proxy with Russia using Ukrainians and ready to go “until the last Ukrainian”. He then claimed that it was Ukraine and its Western supporters, not Russia, who started the war. It’s time to set the record straight. Leading up to Russia’s February 24 invasion of Ukraine, Russia fervently insisted that it had no plans to...

Ukraine has recaptured its first village in Luhansk, a region that Russian forces took five months to bomb into submission and conquer. Belogorovka is the latest prize for Ukraine’s continuing counter-offensive pushing Russia away from the second city of Kharkiv. The village lies only a dozen or so miles from the towns of Lysychansk and Severdonestsk, key regional economic centres in the wider Donbas region that the Kremlin has promised to defend at all costs. The village also lies 45 miles east of the Oskil River, where Russian forces fled after a Ukrainian offensive around Kharkiv recaptured an area the...

Vladimir Putin’s economic campaign to force European governments to abandon support for Ukraine by sharply curbing their natural-gas supplies looks to be faltering as gas prices fall, Russian government finances deteriorate and the continent sets plans to ease the pressure on households and businesses. Russia’s long-term success in the economic fight with Europe is seen as critical by both sides in deciding the outcome of the conflict in Ukraine. But signs that Mr. Putin’s economic strategy is struggling are coinciding with serious reverses on the battlefield as Ukrainian forces regain swaths of Russian-occupied territory and as the Russian president has...