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A U.S. citizen known to have fought with pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine between 2014 and 2017 has been killed in Moscow-occupied Donetsk, Russian media reported Friday. Russia-installed authorities in eastern Ukraine had earlier this month reported the American — 64-year-old Russell Bentley — as missing. "Russell Bentley, known as 'Texas,' a real American, truly from Texas, was killed in Donetsk," the head of the pro-Kremlin RT network Margarita Simonyan said on social media. "He was fighting for our guys," she said. Simonyan gave no details on how he died. The Vostok battalion with which he fought confirmed his death, calling...

Sergey Antonov, the head of the Russian Committee-2024 association, has submitted a request to the Russian Investigative Committee demanding the prosecution of President Vladimir Putin for the rehabilitation of Nazism. The request was prompted by an interview Putin gave to American journalist Tucker Carlson, in which the Russian leader commented on the events of World War II. Antonov believes that Putin's statements represent "a denial of facts established by the judgment of the International Military Tribunal for the trial and punishment of the major war criminals of the European Axis countries, and an approval of crimes stated in said judgment."...

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — NATO member Poland staged a massive military parade on Tuesday to showcase its state-of-the-art weapons and defense systems, as war rages in neighboring Ukraine and ahead of parliamentary elections on Oct. 15. President Andrzej Duda, the chief commander of the armed forces, said in his opening speech that the protection of Poland’s eastern border is a key element of state policy. He also noted that Poland is supporting Ukraine in its struggle against Russia’s aggression of almost 18 months. “The defense of our eastern border, the border of the European Union and of NATO is today...

Local officials in Russia say an explosion at an optical plant in the city of Sergiyev Posad, about 70 kilometers outside Moscow, killed one person and injured at least 43 people on August 9. Five of the injured are in intensive care with serious burns or head injuries, according to the city administration's Telegram account. Some of the 43 people admitted to a regional hospital have shrapnel injuries, it said. Officials at the city’s central hospital said that a woman had succumbed to wounds sustained in the blast. Independent Telegram channel Baza shared images of a tall cloud of smoke...

The Russian military is targeting women in its latest drive to recruit soldiers for its war in Ukraine. An independent news outlet called the hotline on the advertisement and was told that women under 50 are being encouraged to sign one-year contracts. They could enter with “minimal” professional training, the recruiter said in the call.

A soldier, 42, who fought for Putin in Ukraine raped two schoolgirls the day after he returned home from his military service, say police. The suspected paedophile threatened girls aged ten and 12 that he would blow them up with a grenade unless they submitted to him. Wearing the uniform of 'convicts' army Wagner, he approached them near their school in Novosibirsk and forced them behind garages where he sexually attacked them.

A Wagner mercenary fighting in Ukraine had only a 1-in-5 chance of making it through unscathed, according to the latest figures. The unverified numbers, posted on Telegram by several Wagner-affiliated channels, claim that in all operations from the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion up until the “capture of Bakhmut” on May 20: · Wagner had 78,000 thousand fighters in total. · 49,000 of these were convicts. · 22,000 were killed. · 40,000 wounded This leave just 16,000 that made it through the fighting without being killed or injured. The figures appear to have been released in response to Russian Ministry...

The bust of Vladimir Lenin, installed in Mariupol by the Russians after it was occupied, has been broken.

Work on overhauling T-64 tanks has started at the Polish arms plant Bumar-Labędy as part of the agreement between the Polish arms concern Polska Grupa Zbrojeniowa (PGZ) and Ukroboronprom [Ukraine’s Defence Industry – ed.]. Cooperation in the maintenance of T-72 and PT-91 tanks, which were transferred to Ukraine by Poland, is also planned in the long term. The possibility of joint work on the maintenance of Leopard 2 tanks, which were transferred to Ukraine by the international coalition, is also being considered.

March 29 (Reuters) - An explosion hit a natural gas pipeline near a village in northern Siberia late on Wednesday but there were no casualties, Tass news agency cited a local official as saying.

Russia has taken tanks from the 1940s out of storage, according to new images from a monitoring group, as it continues to lose large numbers of tanks in Ukraine. The Conflict Intelligence Team, a group that monitors Russia's military, shared images of the antique tanks on a train. It said that the images show T-54 tanks, which the Soviet Union started producing in 1947, moving west from the far east of Russia. While other old tanks have been used by Russia in Ukraine, none have been as old as the T-54, the group said.

This morning explosions have occurred near the Machulishchy air base in Belarus. As a result, Russia’s A-50 airborne early warning and control aircraft might have been hit.

A group of nearly 100 Polish police officers has returned from an operation – kept secret until now – to demine areas in Ukraine won back from Russian occupation. The team was welcomed home by President Andrzej Duda at the presidential palace, where he awarded them medals for bravery. Working in the Kyiv region, the Polish group cleared more than 342,000 square metres of land and over 17.5 kilometres of roads. The Polish officers safely removed around 2,000 dangerous objects, including mines, grenades and grenade launchers.

Poland has confirmed delivering the first Leopard tanks to Ukraine on Friday as Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki visited Kyiv to mark the one-year anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. At a meeting of the National Security Council in Warsaw, President Andrzej Duda said: "The prime minister couldn't be here, he went to Kyiv to bring Leopard tanks which are the first batch delivered to Ukraine." Shortly after Berlin approved the export of the German-made battle tanks, Ukrainian crews started training on the Leopard 2 tanks in Poland.

“Nothing critical [was diagnosed], the president’s condition closer to nighttime was stable, he can get around on his own, with pain in the coccyx area while sitting being the only thing that bothers him,” it added.

The Russian president, 70, was supposedly helped to a sofa by bodyguards as his personal doctors rushed to assist him.

Hello, As several months ago many Freepers seemed convinced that the main reason behind the war in Ukraine were the US Nazi bio weapon labs... I think there were a dozen of them over there according to info posted here... I wonder if there are any updates related to those labs ? Has President Putin managed to shut them down ? Or are they still operational ?

May 1 (Reuters) - One person was injured in a fire on a Russian defence ministry facility in the southern Belgorod region bordering Ukraine, Belgorod region governor said on Sunday. Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said a local resident suffered minor injuries and his life was not in danger. He also said that seven homes had been damaged as a result of the incident. There were no comments from the defence ministry and it was not immediately clear what caused the fire. Reuters was unable to independently verify the statements. Images posted to social media showed a large funnel of smoke rising...

VLADIMIR Putin's top military commander has been wounded in Ukraine and was sent back to Russia just days after he arrived to take charge of the war. The Chief of the Russian General Staff Valery Gerasimov had been sent by Putin to take personal control of his push to grab territory in Donbas and eastern Ukraine.

This was confirmed by the Ukrainian presidential adviser Aleksey Arestovich and, as he explained, there were dozens of Russian soldiers on the site. Two generals were reportedly killed in the operation