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Russian forces made a sudden thrust in eastern Ukraine in recent days, as Russian leader Vladimir Putin seeks a battlefield advantage ahead of talks with President Trump on Friday. The infantry penetration, which officials and soldiers said stretched several miles deep near the Ukrainian city of Dobropillya, is a rare move in a war where defenses have gained the upper hand and Russia has struggled to add to the around 20% of Ukraine that it has occupied for much of its 3½-year invasion. Ukraine’s military said it was counterattacking in the area against what it said were small groups of...

Ukrainian defenses are buckling under the relentless Russian pressure. This happened in the area near Pokrovsk: instead of banging their heads against a heavily fortified city, Russian forces, as they do, circumvent it, seeking to cut all supply lines and encircle the defenders, at which point the garrison has to either surrender or be destroyed by attacks from all sides.This playbook was implemented in Bakhmut, Avdiivka, Kurakhovo, Ugledar and so many other places.What is striking now is that the northern prong, expected to turn west to encircle Pokrovsk, found weaknesses on the depleted defenses, and dashed north by 9 miles.Post...

breakthrough in eastern Ukraine, advancing past Ukrainian defensive lines near the frontline city of Pokrovsk.👤WHO WAS INVOLVED: Russian forces, Ukrainian forces, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald J. Trump are set to meet in Alaska soon.📍WHEN & WHERE: The breakthrough occurred north of Pokrovsk, near Dobropillia, in the Donetsk region of Ukraine.🎯IMPACT: The advance risks isolating Ukrainian forces and could have significant implications for the ongoing conflict and the upcoming Alaska summit. Fact is Vlad is breaking throughout the entire line of contact. Ukraine in Shock😲Russian Forces Have Fully Breached the Defenses!⚡️🔥 Military...

Slowly but surely, Kiev seems to be adjusting its territorial demands to reality.In the runup to the Donald J. Trump-Vladimir Putin peace talks in Alaska on Friday 15, Kiev regime leader Volodymyr Zelensky was featured in dozens of news outlets repeating the same line, as we reported yesterday:The Washington Post: “Ukraine will reject any proposal that involves ceding territory to Russia, Zelensky says”; BBC News: “Volodymyr Zelensky says Ukraine will not give up land as Donald Trump suggests idea ahead of meeting Vladimir Putin in Alaska”; Reuters: “‘Ukrainians will not give their land to occupiers,’ President Zelenskiy said”; The Straits...

The litmus test that a city is preparing for an inevitable siege isn’t just the columns of smoke rising on the immediate horizon, the artillery blasts, or the enemy surveillance drones hovering overhead: it is above all the fact that it’s rapidly emptying out its residents. The NGO Proliska evacuates 200 people from the area every day. Vans, cars, and families loading their belongings onto carts leave for Dnipropetrovsk province. The number of refugees fleeing Dobropillya has multiplied fivefold in two weeks, according to Proliska.

Washington is “done with the funding” of Ukraine’s war against Russia, JD Vance, the US vice-president, has said, as Europe scrambles to build a united defence before in-person negotiations between Presidents Trump and Putin.Speaking in an interview after an emergency summit with European and Ukrainian officials, co-hosted by David Lammy at Chevening, the foreign secretary’s mansion in Kent, Vance said Americans were fed up with paying towards the cost of the war.“What we said to the Europeans is simply, first of all, this is in your neck of the woods. This is in your back door,” he told Fox News....

LONDON — Most Ukrainians now favor ending the war with Russia through negotiations, as support for fighting until victory has dropped sharply since the early days of the conflict. Although their hopes for joining NATO and the European Union have faded and approval of U.S. leadership has plummeted, Ukrainians still see the EU, U.K. and U.S. as key to ending the war. Yet, most doubt that will happen anytime soon. More than three years into the war, Ukrainians’ support for continuing to fight until victory has hit a new low. In Gallup’s most recent poll of Ukraine — conducted in...

Location matters, former real estate mogul US President Donald Trump said. Moments later he announced Alaska, a place sold by Russia to the United States 158 years ago for $7.2 million, would be where Russian President Vladimir Putin tries to sell his land deal of the century, getting Kyiv to hand over chunks of land he’s not yet been able to occupy.The conditions around Friday’s summit so wildly favor Moscow, it is obvious why Putin leapt at the chance, after months of fake negotiation, and it is hard to see how a deal emerges from the bilateral that does not...

As the Russian advances accelerate for fourth straight month, Ukrainians have lost the strongholds of Donetsk region’s Toretsk and Chasov Yar, and the Russians have also entered the city of Kupyansk, on the northern Kharkov region. In the meantime, the siege of Pokrovsk continues, and even Kiev regime leader Volodymyr Zelensky had to confirm that ‘small groups’ of the Russian Armed Forces are ‘breaking through’ to Pokrovsk. As August arrives, the attackers advanced on the Sukhetsky suburb north of Rodinsky. Slavyangrad reported: “At the moment, it seems that the deepening of the defense crisis of the Armed Forces of Ukraine...

Russia said on Thursday it had captured the town of Chasiv Yar in eastern Ukraine after nearly 16 months of fighting, opening the way for potential further advances. Russia's Defence Ministry said in a brief statement its forces had "liberated" the town.

On May 23rd, The Times published an extraordinarily candid probe into how militarised drones have irrevocably revolutionised warfare in the 21st century, with Russia far at the forefront of this radical shakeup of how conflicts are waged. Meanwhile, there is little indication NATO members even vaguely comprehend this battlefield reality, let alone a single one of them is undertaking any serious measures whatsoever to prepare for conflict such as that currently unfolding and evolving daily throughout Ukraine’s eastern steppe.The Times piece is a first-person report of a visit to the assorted headquarters of Kiev’s 93rd Mechanised Brigade, in basements of...

Ukraine’s official military casualty figures in the war with Russia may be vastly understated, according to a report published by the French newspaper Le Monde on Monday. Russia’s death toll is much higher, but official figures show the Kremlin’s voluntary recruitment drive is replenishing the ranks faster than its soldiers are being killed. Death tolls in the four-year old war are state secrets on both sides of the conflict and analysts have been reduced to using proxies to estimate the true toll and official estimates from Defence Ministries are almost certainly massaged up or down. However, even these estimates are...

Russian drone attacks appear to be overwhelming Ukraine's besieged air defenses with their highest hit rates since the war began, it was reported Monday. Moscow's military has used "swarm" tactics, with drones striking targets at three times the typical rate in recent months, Financial Times reported, citing official data. Roughly 15% of Iranian-designed drones, manufactured in Russia, penetrated defenses on average between April and June. That was up from only 5% during the previous three months. The war began in February 2022 when, in an unprovoked attack, Russia invaded Ukraine. The increased effectiveness of the slow-moving Shaheds — drones that...

ransomnote: The source, Expresso TV, is Ukrainian.Espreso TV (Ukrainian: Еспресо TV) is an Internet television station in Ukraine that started to operate in November 2013. Espreso TV enabled the Euromaidan protests to be broadcast worldwide.Odesa aviator and combat pilot Colonel Kostyantyn 'Kamikaze' Oborin gave his life for Ukraine during a combat mission, officials and his loved ones announced on July 19, 2025News of Colonel Oborin’s death was shared by Odesa Mayor Hennadiy Trukhanov and head of the Odesa Regional Military Administration Oleh Kiper."A very sad news for Odesa. Kostyantyn Oborin died during a combat mission — a veteran of the...

US President Donald Trump’s 50-day pause ahead of possible secondary sanctions on Russia gifts the Kremlin a window to exploit the incremental gains of recent weeks, which analysts say increasingly put key Ukrainian strongholds in the east in peril.Russia is thought to be days or weeks away from surging into a heightened summer offensive, perhaps using the 160,000 troops Ukrainian officials have said are amassing near their front lines. But in the past two weeks, Russia has also made small but vital advances, placing its forces in a better position to cut off Ukrainian troops in three key towns –...

Hans Braunfisch wants Americans to invest in Ukrainian startups, but there's a problem: there's no clear path for individual investors to put money into the more than 26,000 Ukrainian startups out there.The former PwC consultant plans to change that with Pravo Venture, a platform streamlining foreign investment for Ukrainian startups. Think of it like a meeting point for Ukrainian companies and U.S. investors accredited by the Securities and Exchange Commission who want to support the country with capital instead of aid.While co-heading PwC's Ukraine Taskforce, Braunfisch attempted to persuade clients to invest in Ukraine’s entrepreneurs to help its economic recovery....

BlackRock, a U.S. investment firm, suspended work on a multibillion-dollar Ukraine recovery fund following U.S. President Donald Trump's election victory, prompting France to work on a replacement, Bloomberg reported on July 5.The plan nearly secured the initial support of institutions backed by the governments of Germany, Italy, and Poland, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg.Kyiv has sought to secure investment in Ukraine's reconstruction as Russia's war continues to destroy infrastructure across the country.BlackRock halted its search for institutional investors in January, causing the planned funding that sought to secure $500 million from governments, development grants, and investment banks, and...

US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth unilaterally suspended military aid to Ukraine for the third time, despite military conclusions that there was no threat to US stockpiles. This decision surprised the State Department, Congress, and European allies, drawing bipartisan criticism. The suspension of military aid to Ukraine was a unilateral step by US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, citing three congressional aides and a former US official familiar with the matter, NBC News reports, writes UNN. "The Department of Defense (US) this week delayed the delivery of American weapons to Ukraine due to, according to officials, concerns about its low...

The Russian Ministry of Defence stated on Saturday that its armed forces destroyed two air defense platforms and two radar stations of the Patriot system. "Operational-tactical aviation, attack unmanned aerial vehicles, missile forces and artillery of groups of troops of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation destroyed two launchers and two AN/MPQ-65 radar stations of the [United States] US-made Patriot anti-aircraft missile system," the ministry wrote on Telegram. It also shared that the Russian military's air defense systems managed to down a US-made HIMARS multiple launch rocket system, a Neptune long-range guided missile, three guided aerial bombs and 371...

Ukrainian officials say that despite media reports that the Trump administration is halting the delivery of critical air defense interceptors and other munitions, at least some U.S. arms continue to be provided and they have not been informed that these transfers will no longer be made. The news comes at a particularly critical time, as Russia has stepped up its aerial attacks. Earlier this week, Moscow launched its largest air barrage of the war, firing 477 drones and 60 missiles, according to the Ukrainian Air Force. Overall, major and relatively sudden shortfalls in planned weapons deliveries could have wide-ranging impacts...