Free Republic

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) on Wednesday appeared to back allowing Ukraine to use American-provided weapons to strike Russia or Russian-controlled territory. One reporter asked Johnson about a House Intelligence Committee letter calling on the Biden administration to allow Ukraine to strike Russia with American-supplied weapons. The letter stipulates that this would allow Ukraine to strike “Russian-controlled territory” as well as Russian territory and represents a significant escalation in America’s seemingly endless proxy war against Russia.

“I think that if the attacks are coming from directly over the line in Russia then those targets ought to be fair game…”

Western allies are taking too long to make key decisions on military support for Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told Reuters in an exclusive interview in Kyiv on Monday. He also said he was pushing partners to get more directly involved in the war by helping to intercept Russian missiles over Ukraine and allowing Kyiv to use Western weapons against enemy military equipment amassing near the border. The call to accelerate aid and push so-called "red lines" of engagement in the conflict reflect the growing pressure Zelenskyy's forces are under along more than 1,000 km of front lines in the northeast,...

LONDON, May 21 (Reuters) - U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said there was a possibility Group of Seven nations would support Ukraine by as much as $50 billion using loans linked to seized Russian assets, Sky News reported on Tuesday. "I believe it's important for the G7 to work together to show a united front and to show that we can generate meaningful resources to support Ukraine over the next several years," she told Sky News.

Russia on Tuesday announced the start of tactical nuclear weapons drills close to Ukraine, in what it said was a response to Western "threats". Throughout its two-year offensive on Ukraine, Moscow has repeatedly talked-up its arsenal of nuclear weapons and its readiness to deploy them if it senses an existential threat. The West has accused President Vladimir Putin of irresponsible nuclear sabre-rattling. Russia's defence ministry said Tuesday the drills were taking place in its Southern Military District, which borders and includes parts of Ukraine that Moscow claims to have annexed. It did not specify exactly where.

Russian central bank assets. Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavsky said the move will hand Ukraine up to €3 billion (about $3.3 billion) this year. "We have approved in the EU using revenues from Russia's central bank's frozen assets to help Ukraine," wrote Lipavsky on X, formerly Twitter. "Up to €3B only this year, 90% goes for Ukraine's military. Russia must pay for its war damages." The financial assets were frozen shortly after Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Reuters reported this month that the EU has estimated that by 2027, windfall profits from Russia's central bank...

All along the 600-mile frontline, the Kremlin’s invasion forces are exploiting Ukrainian exhaustion and a six-month delay in American military aid. A shock offensive in the Kharkiv region has seen Putin’s troops cross the border for the first time since the 2022 invasion. Villages in the Zaporizhzhya region have been wiped off the map as Russia tries to reverse the gains of Ukraine’s 2023 counter-offensive. But the central Russian effort is focused on Donetsk region, where they are now on the outskirts of the hill-top town of Chasiv Yar. If they capture it, they will be in striking distance of...

And so we’ve come to the point of the war in Ukraine in which the west’s ‘Knight in Shining armor’, the ‘defender of democracy’ Volodymyr Zelensky has outrun his Constitutional Presidential mandate, and is now in power only by virtue of the martial law he enacted. That is just the most dramatic of the absolutely disheartening (for Kiev) series of developments. To begin with, a series of videos have surfaced showing how the streets of Ukraine now are deserted, with men hiding from conscription into the army – and somehow, everyone else seemed to have stayed at home, too. Watch:...

SUMMARY Around 137 Russian helicopters have been confirmed lost in the Ukrainian war. The upper bound of Russian helicopter losses claimed by Ukraine is 325; the lower bound of visually confirmed losses is 105. Russia has lost around 10% of its helicopter fleet, mostly attack helicopters like the Ka-52 "Alligator." The fog of war and exaggerated claims on both sides make it difficult to know exactly how much military equipment has been lost during the Full-Scale Russian Invasion of Ukraine. However, today is the information age and this war is being filmed like never before. Over a hundred fixed-wing Russian...

Watch the moment a strike hits the Russian oil depot. THIS is the moment a Russian oil depot exploded in a huge fireball in yet another humiliating blow to Putin. Plumes of black smoke could be seen rising into the sky in Vyborg after the explosion at the oil refinery near the Nato border with Finland. Dramatic footage showed the oil depot engulfed in a raging inferno. Leningrad regional governor Alexander Drozdenko denied a Ukrainian kamikaze drone had hit the facility. He also denied there was a fire and claimed "there was a bang due to the use of pyrotechnics"....

Advocates for the use of US Tactical Missiles (some nuclear capable) to hit Russian targets inside Russia proper. There's more than one anti American, Ukrainian partisan on this site that supports her position 100%. And they'll be on this thread. They don't care that it would result in direct war with Russia, as they think they can defeat Russia without burning the world to the ground.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says Russia could increase its attacks in Ukraine's north east following its recent gains near the city of Kharkiv. Mr Zelensky admitted that there were issues with military staffing and morale, saying a number of existing brigades were empty. He also told the AFP news agency the country's air fleet was lacking and renewed calls for allies to send more air defence and fighter jets. "Today we have about 25% of what we need to defend Ukraine," Mr Zelensky said of Ukraine's air capabilities.

Ukraine and Russia - Game Theory Historical outcomes are approximated with game theory and game simulations. However, games also have predictive values when a model is constructed. This is a conceptual framework of the geopolitical events in Ukraine and Russia.

A divisive mobilization law in Ukraine came into force Saturday, as Kyiv struggles to boost troop numbers after Russia launched a new offensive that some fear could close in on Ukraine's second-largest city. The legislation, which was watered down from its original draft, will make it easier to identify every conscript in the country. It also provides incentives to soldiers, such as cash bonuses or money toward buying a house or car, that some analysts say Ukraine cannot afford.

They say one week is a long time in politics. Those same people have never been to war.Six days ago, Ukrainian forces were just about hanging on across the near-1,000 kilometre front. Recent territorial losses to Russia – most notably the town of Avdiivka – in addition to recent delays in both US and EU military aid packages, had caused mounting concern for Ukraine’s fate in 2024.Despite these recent battlefield set-backs, and delays in aid, it still felt as though Ukraine was buying time to rearm, reorganise, and redeploy an offensive counter-attack this summer.That was six days ago, before up...

NATO allies are inching closer to sending troops into Ukraine to train Ukrainian forces, a move that would be another blurring of a previous red line and could draw the United States and Europe more directly into the war. (snip) So far the United States has said no, but Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Thursday that a NATO deployment of trainers appeared inevitable. “We’ll get there eventually, over time,” he said. (snip) As a part of NATO, the United States would be obligated under the alliance’s treaty to aid in...

Russia wants to understand whom it can trust before engaging with partners on the Ukrainian conflict, President Vladimir Putin said during a trip to China on Friday. "We must understand with whom and how we can engage and whom and to what degree we can trust. We are of course analyzing everything that is going on," Putin told a press conference in Harbin. The president pointed to China as a stakeholder that was sincerely trying to put an end to the conflict in Ukraine. "We believe that China is sincere about its efforts to solve this problem. It has suggested...

Kyiv says it has had some success pushing back against a renewed Russian offensive, but Ukraine's defences are in dire need of resupply. A massive Ukrainian drone attack on Crimea early Friday caused power cutoffs in the city of Sevastopol and set a refinery ablaze in southern Russia, Russian authorities said. The drone raids marked an attempt to strike back during Moscow's renewed offensive in northeastern Ukraine, which has added to the pressure on outnumbered and outgunned Ukrainian forces as they await delayed deliveries of crucial Western weapons and ammunition. Ukraine has not commented on the attack nor claimed responsibility...

Ukrainian drones attacked the only large oil refinery on Russia's Black Sea coast on Friday morning, authorities said. The attack on the Rosneft-owned refinery in the southern Russian town of Tuapse was reported by local authorities, who said a fire had broken out at the facility and that emergency services were working to extinguish the blaze. -snip- The Russian Black Sea naval port of Novorossiysk and Crimea's Sevastopol were also targeted a the massive aerial assault, which Russia's defense ministry said involved at least 100 drones.

Russia has no plans to take control of Kharkov, Russian President Vladimir Putin said at a meeting with students and teachers of the Harbin Institute of Technology. "As for Kharkov, there are no such plans as of today," the president said. Russia is making gains in the fighting in the Kharkov region, he also said, adding that the Russian armed forces are moving every day strictly according to plan. Putin blamed the Ukrainian forces for what was happening in Kharkov region. "They are shooting directly at the center of the city, at residential areas. And I said publicly that if...