Free Republic

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) – Russian forces have “destroyed” the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, President Volodymyr Zelensky said, while Ukraine’s military on Saturday reported missile, rocket and air strikes in multiple parts of the country that Moscow is trying to conquer after months of resistance. The latest battles of Russia’s 9 1/2 month war in Ukraine have centred on four provinces that Russian President Vladimir Putin triumphantly — and illegally — claimed to have annexed in late September. The fighting indicates Russia’s struggle to establish control of those regions and Ukraine’s persistence to reclaim them.

Vladimir Putin had been due to meet with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi later this month. However, in a sign of growing Russian isolation on the world stage, an Indian government source said the meeting has now been abruptly cancelled. The move to cancel the annual face-to-face meeting was taken after veiled threats by Vladimir Putin to use nuclear weapons in the Ukraine war, according to Bloomberg News. Indian and Russian leaders have held face-to-face meetings every year for the past 21 years - except for 2020 due to Covid. An Indian official told Bloomberg that a meeting with President...

Incoming House Foreign Affairs Chairman Michael McCaul (R-TX) called for arms to Ukraine to help destroy the Russian military as public officials have increasingly warned about the prospect of a “major war” between the West and Russia. CBS News asked McCaul about House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy’s (R-CA) claim that a House Republican majority would not send a “blank check” to Ukraine.

Vladimir Putin, the President of Russia, has been disappointed by the statement of German ex-Chancellor Angela Merkel, where she claimed that the Minsk agreements of 2014 enabled Ukraine to prepare for war with Russia. For me, it was completely unexpected. It is disappointing. I did not expect to hear something like that from the ex-Chancellor. I always hoped that the German leadership was genuine. Yes, she was on Ukraine’s side, supporting it. But nevertheless, I genuinely hoped that German leadership expected a settlement based on the principles achieved, among other things, during the Minsk negotiations." "It appears to me that...

The head of NATO expressed worry that the fighting in Ukraine could spin out of control and become a war between Russia and NATO, according to an interview released Friday. “If things go wrong, they can go horribly wrong,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said in remarks to Norwegian broadcaster NRK. “It is a terrible war in Ukraine. It is also a war that can become a full-fledged war that spreads into a major war between NATO and Russia,” he said. “We are working on that every day to avoid that.”

Update

Russian President Vladimir Putin waited only six months before switching from a special military operation to full scale war against Ukraine. Putin's initial assault was limited to barely 150,000 troops. He expected a quick victory followed by negotiations on his principal concerns: Russian control of Crimea, Ukrainian neutrality, and autonomy for the Russian population in the Donbas, but he was wrong. Putin had not counted on Ukraine's stiff resistance or the West's massive military and economic intervention. Faced with a new situation, Putin changed his strategy. Now he is about to unleash his own General Sherman and make Ukraine howl....

A lot of interesting info about the Ukrainian attacks on Russian air bases.

Russia's oil exports have plunged amid the latest round of western sanctions. According to data from Kpler, Russian seaborne oil shipments fell 16% on Tuesday. Russia's central bank has called the sanctions "new economic shocks" that could derail the economy. Russia's oil exports have plunged amid the European Union's price cap on Russian crude and the latest round of sanctions, squeezing revenues for Moscow's wartime economy. According to data from the analytics firm Kpler, Russia's seaborne oil shipments fell by 16%, or about half a million barrels per day on Tuesday this week. TankerTrackers.com, another analytics site, recorded an even...

Fox News host Tucker Carlson gives his take on the Russia-Ukraine conflict and American worship of Zelenskyy on 'Tucker Carlson Tonight.' #FoxNews #tucker

The episode was filmed during Letterman’s visit to Kyiv in October. The venue is the Maidan Nezalezhnosti metro station.The clip shows Letterman arriving in Kyiv by train, as well as archive footage of Zelenskyy and his team after the beginning of Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine.“I’ve never done anything quite like this,” Letterman said in the clip as he was descending the escalator in the Kyiv Metro.In addition, the clip shows the first seconds of the conversation with the Ukrainian president.

(Free link) The battle for Bakhmut has become a bloodbath for both sides as Russia steps up its attempts to take what used to be a quaint, tree-lined city. Ukrainian defense officials said Moscow is losing around 50 soldiers a day to maintain a slow, bruising advance to reach the city’s easternmost gates. Snip If the Russians break through to take control of Bakhmut, it would open a path to the political and economic centers of Slovyansk and Kramatorsk in the Ukrainian-held portions of the Donbas area, once one of the country’s main industrial regions. Moscow tried to seize the...

Update from Ukraine | Ukrainian Army crossed the river in Kherson | Zelenskiy has b_lls of steel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvztxcimU7g Follow on Instagram up to date uploads. https://www.instagram.com/denys_pilot/ Military maps here: https://militaryland.net/ Invasion Day 264 – Summary November 14, 2022 https://militaryland.net/news/invasion-day-264-summary/

MacGregor: Up until this time at night we have had freezing but during the day it has gone back up to 40 even 50 degrees. It has to drop below freezing and stay that way for at least two weeks. So if it is now below freezing and stays that way you can do the math. Your looking for something happening no earlier than the 10th; probably no later than the 19th of December. And you're talking about concentrations of Russian troops all the way around the country. We've accounted now formally, these are people who sit in front of...

Belarusian authorities are once again claiming that their country is under the threat of an attack. Often, declarations of this kind end with an attack indeed taking place, but from the territory of Belarus instead. “The assessment has shown that the West is working on attack plans that directly consider Belarus and Russia to be the enemy,” Belarusian Defence Minister Viktor Khrenin claimed. The politician also lamented the unprecedented increasing presence of the US and NATO military formations in Eastern Europe. Novaya-Europe takes a closer look at who would be able to attack whom in the area. Suicide planAt the...

Russians are accusing Putin of ignoring domestic problems while focusing on the war in Ukraine. Some Russians are complaining about a lack of heating in their homes, The Daily Beast reported. Forbes Ukraine estimated last week that Russia has spent around $82 billion in war. People living in the remote regions of the country, where conditions are at their worst, have been complaining about a lack of heating in their homes and burst water pipes, The Beast reported, citing social media posts. Remote regions including Tyumen and Yakutia are among the worst affected, reporting many victims of frost in the...

(Reuters) -Russia "will not accept" a price cap on its oil and is analysing how to respond, the Kremlin said in comments reported on Saturday, in response to a deal by Western powers aimed at limiting a key source of funding for its war in Ukraine. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow had made preparations for Friday's price cap announcement by the Group of Seven nations, the European Union and Australia, the Russian state news agency TASS reported. "We will not accept this cap," RIA news agency quoted him as saying. He added that Russia would conduct a rapid analysis...

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg on Tuesday said the “door is open” to admitting Ukraine into the security alliance and that the country would one day be a member. Stoltenberg reaffirmed the commitment to bringing Ukraine into the western alliance and said Russian President Vladimir Putin would also have to contend with Finland and Sweden soon joining NATO after both countries applied in the wake of Russia’s late February invasion of Ukraine. “President Putin cannot deny sovereign nations to make their own sovereign decisions that are not a threat to Russia,” Stoltenberg said in comments ahead of a NATO foreign ministers...

An oil depot in Russia exploded in a towering inferno this morning after a drone attack thought to have been orchestrated by Ukraine. Three tanks containing thousands of tonnes of diesel fuel caught fire around 6am local time at a site in Bryansk, a Russian region that borders Ukraine to the north. The fire began after a drone dropped explosives into one of the fuel tanks, according to Russian media. Nobody was injured in the attack. Videos taken shortly after the strike showed two fuel tanks spewing smoke and flame with at least one showing signs of blast damage, with...

Kyiv relies entirely on its allies for weapons. That’s not a position any country fighting a war for its existence should be in – relying on others for its defense needs. NATO was unprepared for a big war, especially with Russia. ...