Free Republic

The United States will reduce funding allocated for military assistance to Ukraine in its upcoming defense budget, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in a congressional hearing on June 10. "It is a reduction in this budget," Hegseth told lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives. "This administration takes a very different view of that conflict. We believe that a negotiated peaceful settlement is in the best interest of both parties and our nation's interests, especially with all the competing interests around the globe." The Pentagon has not yet released the full documentation regarding its 2026 budget. According to Hegseth,...

What needs to happen is simple, but, at least for now, looks pretty suspect if you ask me. Russia would need to get so exhausted from the war that its lines collapse. After losing 1 million casualties, thousands of tanks and artillery pieces, and billions of dollars in bombers and drones, Moscow would one day see its war effort collapse in a mix of exhaustion, anger about the overall direction of the conflict, and a society that had had enough. This would allow Ukraine to reclaim the initiative and retake large swaths of territory. But from here, things get even...

Let’s dispense with the fantasy right off the bat: Russia isn’t trembling at the prospect of new sanctions. Not now. Not after more than three years of war, hundreds of billions in Western aid to Ukraine, multiple tranches of punitive economic measures, and an endless cycle of condemnations and diplomatic theater. If Congress moves forward with another sanctions package this summer – as seems increasingly likely – Moscow won’t respond with panic. It will respond with calculation. Cold, strategic, and utterly unimpressed.

During the Istanbul talks between Russia and Ukraine, when presented with Moscow’s demand that Kiev’s troops must withdraw from territory of the four regions that they have partially conquered (Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporozhie and Kherson), the Ukrainian delegation reacted with a strong rejection of this point. It’s been widely reported that, at this point, Russian negotiators warned their foes: ‘Next time, it won’t be four regions, but six or eight’. That could, of course, be nothing but bragging, except that today the Russian Ministry of Defense announced that units of the 90th Tank Division have reached & crossed the western border...

SummaryPutin's retaliation for Ukraine drone strike has yet to fully unfold, US officials say Strikes expected to including missiles, drones, US officials say Moscow's retaliation expected to be 'asymmetrical,' official says WASHINGTON, June 7 (Reuters) - The United States believes that Russian President Vladimir Putin's threatened retaliation against Ukraine over its drone attack last weekend has not happened yet in earnest and is likely to be a significant, multi-pronged strike, U.S. officials told Reuters.The timing of the full Russian response was unclear, with one source saying it was expected within days. A second U.S. official said the retaliation was likely...

President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed that U.S. President Donald Trump's administration diverted 20,000 anti-drone missiles originally intended for Ukraine to American forces in the Middle East, in an interview with ABC News published on June 8. Zelensky said Ukraine had counted on the missiles to help counter relentless Russian drone attacks, which include swarms of Iranian-designed Shahed-type drones. On June 1, Russia launched a record 472 drones in a single night. "We have big problems with Shaheds… we will find all the tools to destroy them," Zelensky said. "We counted on this project — 20,000 missiles. Anti-Shahed missiles. It was not...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The United States believes that Russian President Vladimir Putin's threatened retaliation against Ukraine over its drone attack last weekend has not happened yet in earnest and is likely to be a significant, multi-pronged strike, U.S. officials told Reuters.The timing of the full Russian response was unclear, with one source saying it was expected within days. A second U.S. official said the retaliation was likely to include different kinds of air capabilities, including missiles and drones.The officials spoke on condition of anonymity. They did not detail Russia's expected targets nor elaborate on intelligence matters. The first official said Moscow's...

For a second night in a row, Russian Federation forces pounded military targets in Kiev, Kharkov and many other Ukrainian cities, in what many see as retaliation for the Ukrainian terrorist attacks on civilian trains in Bryansk and Kursk, and – of course – for the drone raid on Russian strategic airfields.Russian military Telegram channel Military Chronicle has put forward a thought-provoking theory that the ‘retaliation’ will take the form of a prolonged series of missile and drone raids over the next days.“Russia’s missile strike on the night of June 5-6, 2025, according to the latest information, was not a...

Ukraine is increasingly worried about securing more U.S.-made Patriot air defense systems, as stockpiles sent during the Biden administration are drying up and the new administration is resistant to sending more, according to six Ukrainian and Western officials. While Russia bombards Ukraine with drones and cruise missiles, it is the ballistic missiles that are the most feared, and they can be reliably countered only by Patriot missiles. Ballistic missiles travel several miles per second, and they obliterated half of Ukraine’s power capacity in strikes on power plants. Their speed and size, plus the fact that they are difficult to intercept,...

Is America giving up on peace in Eastern Europe and preparing for military action in the Middle East? The Trump administration is diverting anti-drone weaponry that was initially allocated for Ukraine to U.S. Air Force units in the Middle East, according to a Wall Street Journal exclusive. “The Pentagon quietly notified Congress last week that special fuzes for rockets that Ukraine uses to shoot down Russian drones are now being allocated to U.S. Air Force units in the Middle East,” the Journal reported Wednesday.What the Journal didn’t mention is that Russia has received thousands of drones from Iran, which is...

S&P Global (NYSE:SPGI) Ratings has downgraded Ukraine’s issue rating on its GDP-linked securities to ’D’ from ’CC’, following the country’s failure to make a $0.67 billion payment due on June 2, 2025. The agency does not anticipate the payment to be fulfilled within the securities’ ten business day grace period, due to the government’s moratorium on payments for this bond unless it is restructured….

After Ukraine launched a huge drone strike on Russian airbases last weekend, Putin vowed retaliation. In a phone call with President Trump, Vladmir Putin was reportedly insistent that Russia must respond to Ukraine’s attack, which damaged over 40 aircraft. Now, we have reports that that retaliation may be underway. Russia has launched a massive overnight drone and ballistic missile strike on Ukraine, targeting Kiev and several other major cities. Alleged footage of the strike is going viral online: VIDEOS AT LINK..................... The Kyiv Independent said: Russia barraged Ukraine with missiles and drones throughout the night, threatening every region in the...

CNN reports: “Russian ballistic missiles and drones have been launched toward Ukraine from multiple directions, the Ukrainian Air Force said on Telegram Friday. Fires caused by falling debris and drone strikes were reported in buildings across Kyiv, as Ukraine attempted to repel the Russian attack, the Head of Kyiv City Military Administration Tymur Tkachenko said. A CNN producer in the Kyiv region reported hearing at least two explosions.”

The Pentagon notified Congress last week that it will be diverting critical anti-drone technology that had been allocated for Ukraine to US Air Force units in the Middle East, according to correspondence obtained by CNN and people familiar with the matter.The move reflects the US’ shifting defense priorities under President Donald Trump – toward the Middle East and the Pacific – and the fact that US stockpiles of some defense components are becoming increasingly stretched.The technology, proximity fuzes for the rockets Ukraine uses to shoot down Russian drones, was redirected from the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI) to Air Force...

Despite successes like “Operation Spiderweb,” Ukraine’s missile defense capabilities are described as being at a “breaking point.” With only a handful of Patriot batteries operational (estimated 4-6 out of 8 total) due to repair needs and limited spare parts, and each interceptor missile costing around $4 million (often requiring two per incoming Russian missile), Ukraine faces an unsustainable defense posture.

The United States, under President Donald Trump, is perceptibly stepping back from its previous level of unconditional support for Ukraine, driven by a realist assessment that Kyiv’s maximalist war aims (like restoring 1991 borders) are unachievable against Russia’s grinding war of attrition.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The United States assesses that Ukraine's drone attack over the weekend hit as many as 20 Russian warplanes, destroying around 10 of them, two U.S. officials told Reuters, a figure that is about half the number estimated by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.Still, the U.S. officials described the attack as highly significant, with one of them cautioning that it could drive Moscow to a far more severe negotiating position in the U.S.-brokered talks to end more than three years of war.Russian President Vladimir Putin told U.S. President Donald Trump in a telephone conversation on Wednesday that Moscow would have...

Key Points - Russia's lack of large-scale retaliation to recent audacious Ukrainian drone strikes deep within its territory does not signify weakness or fear, but rather a calculated confidence in its ongoing attritional strategy. -Moscow is reportedly achieving its core, albeit limited, war aims—consolidating control over eastern Ukrainian oblasts, securing the land bridge to Crimea, and ensuring Ukraine's non-NATO, neutralized status—through methodical ground advances and superior industrial output. -Russia is perceived to be "already winning" this war of exhaustion by fighting "smarter, not harder," and therefore sees no current need for dramatic escalations that could play into Western or Ukrainian...

Russian forces have continued to advance in the northern Ukrainian region of Sumy, bringing the regional capital within range of their drones and artillery, according to Ukrainian officials and analysts.A spokesman for the Ukrainian military in the area, Ivan Shevtsov, said that in addition to trying to advance towards Sumy city, Russian forces were constantly shelling the area and more evacuations of civilians were taking place.“At the moment, the territory that the enemy has already occupied is about 15 kilometers along the front line and about 6-7 kilometers deep,” Shevtsov said. He added that the Russians were trying to advance...

Russian forces have continued to advance in the northern Ukrainian region of Sumy, bringing the regional capital within range of their drones and artillery, according to Ukrainian officials and analysts. A spokesman for the Ukrainian military in the area, Ivan Shevtsov, said that in addition to trying to advance towards Sumy city, Russian forces were constantly shelling the area and more evacuations of civilians were taking place. “At the moment, the territory that the enemy has already occupied is about 15 kilometers along the front line and about 6-7 kilometers deep,” Shevtsov said. He added that the Russians were trying...