Free Republic

Russian patriotic bloggers expressed anger on Wednesday over the arrest of the former commander of Russia's 58th army, who was detained for fraud, and cast him as a talented general who had the courage to speak the truth to incompetent superiors. Russia's state news agency TASS reported on Tuesday that Major General Ivan Popov had been arrested on suspicion of "large-scale fraud". It was not possible to contact Popov directly, who Russian media said stood accused of stealing 100 million roubles ($1.1 million) of metal. Following a June 2023 mutiny by Wagner mercenaries against Russia's defence establishment, Popov said he...

A deputy chief of the Russian military general staff has been arrested on charges of large-scale bribery, Russian news reports said Thursday, the latest in a series of bribery arrests of high-ranking military officials. The arrest of Lt. Gen. Vadim Shamarin followed the arrest earlier in the week of Maj. Gen. Ivan Popov, a former top commander in Russia’s offensive in Ukraine, also on bribery charges. In April, Deputy Defense Minister Timur Ivanov was arrested for bribery. Ivanov was a close associate of Sergei Shoigu, whom President Vladimir Putin dismissed as defense minister soon after Putin’s inauguration to a new...

<p>Baltic leaders reacted warily on Wednesday to reports that Russia could revise the borders of its territorial waters in the region.</p><p>In a draft proposal reported by some Russian media, Russia's Defence Ministry suggests updating the coordinates used to measure the strip of territorial waters off of its mainland coast and that of its islands in the Baltic Sea.</p>

If the past is any guide to the present, we should take heed that what almost never happens in war can certainly still occur. After a recent summit between new partners China and Russia, General Secretary Xi Jinping and Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin issued an odd one-sentence communique: “There can be no winners in a nuclear war and it should never be fought.” No one would disagree, even though several officials of both hypocritical governments have previously threatened their neighbors with nuclear attacks. But still, why did the two feel the need to issue such a terse statement—and why...

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.

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,...

There are only three types of propaganda to which you are exposed every day: white, gray and black propaganda. White propaganda does not involve distortion of facts for achieving political ends. Gray propaganda involves such distortion, but only to a minor degree. Black propaganda allows for every possible distortion of reality to achieve propaganda objectives. The more shameless the propaganda, the more powerful its effect on the audience. Black propaganda is the most powerful because it is not constrained by the need to stick to the facts. I studied at the Journalism Faculty of the Moscow State University, we had...

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...

The outlets include Voice of Europe, which was foiled as a Russian influence operation by Czech secret services in March. The European Union has announced a ban on four media outlets accused of spreading pro-Kremlin propaganda and "destabilising" Ukraine's neighbouring countries. The four blacklisted outlets - Voice of Europe, RIA Novosti, Izvestia and Rossiyskaya Gazeta - are "under the permanent direct or indirect control" of Russia and have been "instrumental" in fostering support for its illegal invasion of Ukraine, the European Council said in a statement on Friday. "The Russian Federation has engaged in a systematic, international campaign of media...

In an unexpected moment, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov referred to his leader, Vladimir Putin, as Chinese President Xi Jinping's "donkey" and admitted that nothing now depends on Moscow. He made the eyebrow-raising comment in response to a question from a Russian propagandist about an informal meeting planned after the official talks during Putin’s visit to Beijing. “You know, as they say in the East, the guest is the master's donkey. Therefore, of course, all programs depend on the kind offers that the Chinese president and his team have made to our president,” Lavrov explained, offering a glimpse into the...

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...

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: State Duma Committee on Defence recommends the nullification of the previously passed law which exempted from mobilization fathers of at least three children.

UKRAINE’S generals warned they have run out of reserves to halt Russia’s shock assault on Kharkiv. It comes as Vladimir Putin masses more than half a million troops on the frontline in a bid to overpower Ukraine's forces. Ukraine's military has admitted it is struggling to contain the advance in the north east of the country. General Kyrylo Budanov, boss of Kyiv’s military intelligence said: “I’ve used everything we have. “Unfortunately, we don’t have anyone else in the reserves.” Putin’s troops have seized miles of ground in their fastest advances in months.

Over two years on from the invasion of Ukraine, Russia is the most sanctioned nation in the world. And yet the country’s economy is set to grow faster than any G7 democracy this year. How is this possible? Back in 2022, Boris Johnson vowed to ‘squeeze Russia from the global economy piece by piece, day by day and week by week’. President Joe Biden promised that sanctions would ‘impose a severe cost on the Russian economy, both immediately and over time’. Yet these dire warnings never materialised: Russia’s economy has proved resilient in the face of sanctions. Moscow’s flexibility in...

The expected delivery of F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine may come too late to have a significant impact on Russia's ongoing offensive in Kharkiv, experts have told Newsweek. Ukrainian pilots, who for most of the more than two-year war have flown Soviet-era MiG aircraft, have recently been finishing up training on the U.S.-made jets in anticipation of receiving deliveries from Western allies including Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway and Belgium. Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said on Monday that Ukraine could expect to receive the first batch of F-16s from Denmark "within the next month," before revising her comment on Tuesday...

Head of the Mezha Anti-Corruption Center, Martyna Bohuslavets, has written a report in Pravda asking "Where are the fortifications?" She reports that millions of dollars that were intended for the construction of fortifications in Ukraine were instead "transferred to Kharkiv OVA to front companies of avatars." Bohuslavets said the Ukrainian Kharkiv Regional Military Administration (Kharkiv OVA) paid out funds to fictitious companies during the construction and fortification of the Kharkiv region. The report comes as Russian forces have broken into the northern region of Ukraine and the US continues funding the war. According to Ukranian Pravda reports, the Russian military...

President Joe Biden signed into law a ban on Russian enriched uranium on Monday, the White House said, in the latest effort by Washington to disrupt President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine. The ban on imports of the fuel for nuclear power plants begins in about 90 days, although it allows the Department of Energy to issue waivers in case of supply concerns. Russia is the world's top supplier of enriched uranium, and about 24% of the enriched uranium used by U.S. nuclear power plants come from the country. The law also unlocks about $2.7 billion in funding in previous...

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has arrived in Ukraine as weapons from a new American aid package begin arriving at the front line. His visit comes as the country struggles to hold back a major Russian incursion near its second biggest city of Kharkiv. Ahead of Mr Blinken's arrival in Kyiv, a senior US official said the American-funded weapons now arriving at the front line included air defence interceptors, artillery and ATACMS long-range precision guided missiles. "We have already started to flow in artillery [and] long-range ATACMS that can range any part of Ukraine, and also other air defence...