Free Republic

The Biden administration on Monday notified Congress it has approved a possible $323 million arms sale to Finland as the country seeks to join NATO. The administration approved the potential sale of 40 tactical missiles and 48 Joint Standoff Weapons, made by Raytheon, in addition to accompanying equipment, training and support, the State Department said in a release. Finland, which shares a border with Russia, is in the process of joining NATO along with Sweden. Both countries sought to enter the alliance earlier this year. This State Department said the proposed sale “will support the foreign policy and national security...

This list only includes destroyed vehicles and equipment of which photo or videographic evidence is available. Therefore, the amount of equipment destroyed is significantly higher than recorded here. Small arms, ATGMs, MANPADS, loitering munitions, drones used as unmanned bait, civilian vehicles, trailers and derelict equipment are not included in this list. All possible effort has gone into avoiding duplicate entries and discerning the status of equipment between captured or abandoned. Many of the entries listed as 'abandoned' will likely end up captured or destroyed. Similarly, some of the captured equipment might be destroyed if it can't be recovered. When the...

The Russian military clearly assesses that Ukrainian forces could cross the Dnipro River and conduct counter-offensive operations in eastern Kherson Oblast, possibly threatening all of the critical ground lines of communications (GLOCs) from Crimea to the mainland. Russian forces have been digging trench lines and concentration areas in eastern Kherson since early October 2022 in obvious preparation for the withdrawal from the west bank of the Dnipro River and Kherson City. Russian troops are preparing either to defend in depth or to conduct operational or strategic delay operations. Russian forces clearly do not expect to be able to prevent Ukrainian...

THIS is the moment Vladimir Putin's feet appeared to twitch and spasm during a meeting in a possible sign of Parkinson's disease. The Russian president, 70, who is reportedly "critically ill", met with Kazakhstan president Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, 69, on Monday. During the tense talks in Moscow, Putin's feet twitched and spasmed - a symptom of Parkinson's disease. Footage showed his legs jolting and his feet tapping as he spoke to the cameras about the "special significance" of the meeting. He was also seen gripping his right arm with his left hand throughout the talks - months after he was pictured...

The Kremlin denies it, but right now, it only looks like a matter of time. Russia wants to keep the nuclear power facility in Zaporizhzhia for its own energy needs as well as nuclear hostage in its failing war in Ukraine. The question is whether they can hold it, and for how long. As the New York Times points out, the fallback from Kherson hasn’t bolstered their forces in Zaporizhzhia enough to sustain its seizure in the long run: Following a string of Ukrainian military successes in the south, the Kremlin sought on Monday to tamp down speculation that Russian...

Belarus's foreign minister Vladimir Makei was poisoned in a Kremlin sting operation, extraordinary new reports have claimed. The veteran diplomat and former spy died suddenly yesterday amid claims he was in secret contact with the West concerning the war in Ukraine and preventing Belarus from being incorporated into Russia by Vladimir Putin. A video shows Makei, 64, looking healthy on a Belarus military cargo plane last week shortly before he died. He wasn't known to suffer from any chronic illness. -snip- Makei was this week due to attend an Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) meeting in Poland...

Following a string of Ukrainian military successes in the south, the Kremlin sought on Monday to tamp down speculation that Russian forces would withdraw from the Zaporizhzhia nuclear complex, with President Vladimir V. Putin’s spokesman saying that Moscow has no plans to end its military occupation of Europe’s largest nuclear power plant. “One should not look for signs where there are none and cannot be any,” said the spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov. Mr. Peskov’s comments came after some pro-Russian military bloggers wrote posts suggesting that Moscow’s forces would withdraw from the area, and after Ukrainian officials said there were indications...

Video LinkYesterday a real information bomb exploded. Russian billionaire, Putin's authorized person and founder of ''PMC Wagner Group'' Yevgeny Prigozhin made a sensational statement. In an interview with journalists from the Finnish newspaper 'Helsingin Sanomat', Yevgeny Prigozhin said that many professional army men from NATO countries, including the US Marine general are fighting on the Side of PMC Wagner Group. At the same time, He also stated that a large number of Finnish citizens are fighting in the so-called British battalion as part of the PMC Wagner Group, the commander of which is a US citizen - retired U.S. Marine...

Pendukh, 33, after serving several months on the front lines - the war has taken a toll on him He considers himself lucky. Friends in his battalion have served with squads that lost more than half their members. "Lots of problems, even psychological problems," he says. "Some people from those formations, they need psychological help after this. Very serious psychological help." He's tired of living out of a tent. He's tired of facing daily artillery fire. He misses his mom and her cooking....He acknowledges crying while eating an apple pie that his mother recently sent him. "The further you are...

While Europe correctly perceives that some sectors of the U.S. economy are raking in profits at the expense of Europe, the economy of the United States is showing clear signs of a retracting economy on multiple fronts.

Now, following the liberation of the southern city of Kherson, the Ukrainians say they have found four Russian torture chambers where abuses were perpetrated against the civilian population on a “horrific” scale. Ukraine’s Office of the Prosecutor General said the Russians had “illegally detained people and brutally tortured them” using a variety of despicable methods, including “a device with which the occupiers tortured civilians with electricity.” The abundance of evidence accumulated by Ukrainian and international investigators illustrates the industrial scale on which Russian President Vladimir Putin and his henchmen are today committing war crimes in the heart of Europe..... To...

The reports come as Russia faces mounting outrage from the international community for numerous alleged human rights abuses in Ukraine Ukrainian citizens have reportedly been tortured, raped and summarily executed by Russian soldiers during the country's invasion of Ukraine, United States Ambassador-at-Large for Global Criminal Justice Beth Van Schaack claimed last week. The reports come as Russia faces mounting outrage from the international community for numerous alleged human rights abuses, including possible war crimes, during its invasion of Ukraine. For instance, Russian soldiers are believed to have murdered residents of Bucha, where dozens of bodies were found in the streets,...

NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg says Europe supplying weapons to Kiev is draining the continent's resources and putting it in a difficult situation. Since the war began in Ukraine, Western countries such as the US and Britain, as well as European states, have supplied Kiev with billions of dollars worth of weaponry, adding fuel to the fire in the war. This comes after reports from US media said that as Washington and its western allies continue to pump weapons into Kiev, maintenance of the armaments is increasingly becoming a headache. Weapons overused by the Ukrainian military are either being wiped out...

How it all happened.

Update from Ukraine | Ruzzia tries to encircle the Bahmut city | Ukraine fights back https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2_RlDLp2_Y&list=RDCMUCpr-NNORb2UQYDD3k-w-OFg&start_radio=1 Follow on Instagram up to date uploads. https://www.instagram.com/denys_pilot/ Military maps & Comment here: https://militaryland.net/news/invasion-day-274-summary/ SUMMARY & MAPS https://militaryland.net/maps/invasion-maps/

Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has postponed a planned visit to Minsk following the death of his Belarusian counterpart Vladimir Makei, according to Russian media reports quoting the foreign ministry. Belarus's state news agency Belta reported on Saturday that the long-standing foreign minister and associate of authoritarian leader Alexander Lukashenko had died suddenly. The cause of death wasn't given and Makei wasn't known to suffer from any chronic illness. Makei, 64, was due to meet Lavrov on Monday. Last week he attended a conference of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) -- a military alliance of several post soviet states...

Ukrainians’ mass exodus from their recently liberated city of Kherson continued Sunday as Russia’s sustained shelling on the area has made it virtually unlivable. The city, which was freed by Ukrainian forces more than two weeks ago, has faced intense attacks by nearby Russian soldiers as Moscow’s invasion of its neighbor reaches the nine-month mark. Residents facing awful conditions and fearing imminent strikes kept fleeing the city over the weekend. One resident said he was devastated he had to leave especially since the city had just regained its freedom from Russian occupation.

Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that she no longer saw any possibility of influencing Russian President Vladimir Putin toward the end of her term in office. In an interview with German magazine Der Spiegel, Merkel talked about her final encounters with Putin, saying that throughout her farewell visit to Moscow in August 2021 she felt “in terms of power politics, you’re done,” adding that “for Putin, only power counts.” She cited the fact that Putin brought Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov along to this last visit as another sign of her crumbling power, as previously they met “often in...

Has anyone stopped to ask why the United States taxpayer is responsible for funding the government operations of Ukraine, to include the paychecks and pensions of Ukrainian government officials, or nah? As Joe Biden and various Democrat and Republican leaders are gleefully willing to keep pushing U.S. taxpayer money into Ukraine, there does come a time when we have to start asking some questions about the disconnect in regard to the opinion of the American people. Tucker Carlson noted this question last night.

Tsarizm wrote earlier about the approaching winter in Ukraine and how the government was not prepared to handle the coming humanitarian disaster. BREAKING: SOURCE – US Aid Not Reaching Ukrainian People. 40% Without Power. Government Not Doing Anything For People, No Generators, Tents, Heat, Etc. Kyiv Blackout Tonight. Riots Could Ensue.As we stand today, sources tell Tsarizm the power is only on for 2 hours every 10 hours in the capitol city of Kyiv. There is no heat in much of the city, especially in high rise apartment complexes. The only generators working are in the supermarkets, which lack product....