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The war in Ukraine has gutted Russia’s clandestine spetsnaz forces, and it will take Moscow years to rebuild them, according to classified U.S. assessments obtained by The Washington Post.The finding, which has not been previously reported, is among a cache of sensitive materials leaked online through the messaging platform Discord. U.S. officials attributed their assessments to Russian commanders’ overreliance on the specialized units, which have been put to use as part of front-line infantry formations. Those formations, like the Ukrainians, have suffered massive numbers of dead and wounded. snip The 22nd and two other spetsnaz brigades suffered an estimated 90...

Intelligence shared by the U.S. helped Ukraine sink the Russian cruiser Moskva, U.S. officials told NBC News, confirming an American role in perhaps the most embarrassing blow to Vladimir Putin’s troubled invasion of Ukraine.... The attack happened after Ukrainian forces asked the Americans about a ship sailing in the Black Sea south of Odesa, U.S. officials told NBC News. The U.S. identified it as the Moskva, officials said, and helped confirm its location, after which the Ukrainians targeted the ship.... The U.S. role in the sinking has not been previously reported. But NBC News detailed last month how American intelligence...

WASHINGTON — The United States has provided intelligence that has helped Ukrainians target and kill many of the Russian generals who have died in action in the Ukraine war, according to senior American officials. Ukrainian officials said they have killed approximately 12 generals on the front lines, a number that has astonished military analysts. The targeting help is part of a classified effort by the Biden administration to provide real-time battlefield intelligence to Ukraine. That intelligence also includes anticipated Russian troop movements gleaned from recent American assessments of Moscow’s secret battle plan for the fighting in the Donbas region of...

Several hundred Russian troops have been withdrawn from the Chernobyl nuclear facility in Ukraine after suffering from “acute radiation sickness” and are being treated in Belarus, according to reports. The Pentagon confirmed earlier that the Russian forces began to pull out from the defunct facility, which was taken on the first day of the invasion, after a pledge by the Kremlin to scale back its offensive. But an employee at the Public Council at the State Agency of Ukraine for Exclusion Zone management said the soldiers had fled while “irradiated” and bused to a medical facility in Gomel, Belarus, the...

Today, about 300 soldiers (mostly ethnic Ossetians) from the Russian military base returned to South Ossetia of their own free will, because they thought they had been left for dead during a special operation in Ukraine. The former president of South Ossetia called not to draw hasty conclusions and not to accuse the guys of desertion, but to carefully investigate the situation when soldiers are sent to combat operations without full outfit and stocks of weapons, warm clothing and protective equipment. Returned soldiers on the border of Russia and South Ossetia. They hitchhiked home. additional detail on this incident from...

A Russian millionaire arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Raleigh. New social media video of expired Russian military food. A stalled 40-mile long Russian military convoy in Ukraine. WRAL Investigates found they may all be connected. Video circulating on social media reportedly shows a Ukrainian soldier mocking Meals Ready to Eat, or MREs, given to the Russian military. The packaging shows they were made in 2013 and expired in 2015, yet are on the battlefield today, 7 years later... The label on the expired food, written in Cyrillic, translates to a tie back to an infamous criminal case...

It is known that Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu removed Lieutenant General Vladislav Yershov from his duties. He was the commander of the 6th Combined Arms Army of the country. According to preliminary data, 2,000 servicemen were missing from the 6th Army alone. Of these, about 180 people are conscript soldiers. It is known that now General Eroshov is under house arrest. [google translation]

Blasting President Joe Biden's "weak hand" on Russia, former President Donald Trump called for greater support for Ukraine with lethal aid, denounced Vladimir Putin's unchecked killing of thousands, and rejected Putin's threat against a long-overdue U.S. escalation. "When he goes in and he kills thousands of people, are we going to just sit by and watch?" Trump told Fox Business' "Varney & Co." on Monday. "This country, in a hundred years from now, they'll be talking about what a travesty, what a horrible thing this is." Trump blasted Biden for slow-walking sanctions and failing to deter Putin's deadly invasion of...

Working in exile, Alexey Navalny’s team of anti-corruption activists have released a new investigation linking a $700-million superyacht to Russian President Vladimir Putin. The luxury vessel, officially registered to an offshore company in the Marshall Islands, is allegedly crewed by members of Russia’s Secret Service (the FSO). The Scheherazade is one of only 14 yachts in the world that are at least 140 meters (459 feet) long — and according to The New York Times, it’s the only superyacht of its kind whose owner isn’t publicly unknown. On paper, the ship belongs to an offshore company from the Marshall Islands......

The Russian Ministry of Defense released a video early Saturday that it claimed showed a Kinzhal hypersonic air-launched ballistic missile hitting a Ukrainian missile warehouse about 300 miles southwest of Kyiv. The strike, if it did occur, would represent both the first known use of the Kinzhal in combat and yet another Russian attack on facilities in western Ukraine near the country's borders with multiple NATO members... UPDATE: 5:20 PM EST— We can now say for certain that the strike depicted happened nowhere near the western part of the country and not at some major military weapons storage area. It...

Slightly more than half of Ukrainians believe that Putin's regime wants to destroy the entire people of Ukraine in a full-scale war. Source: results of a poll conducted by the sociological group "Rating" on March 12-13 Details: 56% of Ukrainians surveyed believe that the main goal of Russia's invasion is the complete destruction of the Ukrainian people, and this opinion dominates in all regions of Ukraine. Another half believe that the target of the attack is the occupation of Ukraine and joining Russia. Only 15-17% think that Russia is pursuing a goal to change Ukraine's political course or prevent the...

86.6% of Russians tolerate and support the potential assault on the territory of the European Union, including: Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and others as evidenced by the results of the sociological survey conducted by “Active Group”. 75.5% of Russians approve the idea of a military invasion in the next country and believe that it should be Poland. According to respondents, this is a logical continuation of the so-called “military special operation of the Russian Federation”. Moreover, according to the survey, 75% of respondents tolerate to a varied extent the use of nuclear weapons by their...

TASHKENT -- Uzbekistan says it does not recognize the pro-Russian separatist-controlled districts in Ukraine's Donbas, known as the Donetsk and Luhansk "people's republics," and has called for a "peaceful solution" to end Russia's unprovoked attack against Ukraine... "Firstly, the military actions and violence must be stopped right away. The Republic of Uzbekistan recognizes Ukraine's independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity. We do not recognize the Luhansk and Donetsk republics," Komilov said, adding that his country had historic ties both with Ukraine and Russia... Uzbekistan is the second country in Central Asia -- a region often allied with Russia -- to break...

A Ukrainian mayor who was abducted by Russian forces last week has been released from captivity, officials said Wednesday. The news that Melitopol Mayor Ivan Fedorov was no longer in Russian hands was announced by Andriy Yermak, the head of the Office of the President of Ukraine. "Mayor of Melitopol Ivan Fedorov has been released from Russian captivity," he wrote in a Telegram post. Kyrylo Tymoshenko, the deputy head of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's office, confirmed on Facebook that Zelenskyy had spoken with Fedorov. Ukraine Defense Ministry posted a video of the president talking to the mayor via cellphone. "We...

Vladimir Putin today sent a chilling warning to the West and oligarchs telling 'scum' traitors that Russians will 'spit them out like a midge that flew into their mouths' - as he claimed Western 'attempts to have global dominance' is coming to an end. The Russian President, speaking in a bombastic televised address from the Kremlin nearly three weeks into Moscow's invasion, warned the West would use 'those who earn their money here, but live over there' as a 'fifth column' to 'divide our society'. 'I do not judge those with villas in Miami or the French Riviera. Or who...

President Donald Trump is expected to announce his approval of a plan to sell anti-tank missiles to the Ukrainian government, a move that would mark a significant escalation in lethal U.S. military support for Ukrainian forces battling Russian-aligned forces in the border region, four State Department sources tell ABC News. If the president formally signs off, the plan will be presented to Congress for a 30-day review period where it would need to be approved before the State Department can implement it. The sale of anti-tank missiles, which could possibly include the U.S.-made Javelin system, provoked a strong reaction from...

There is relative global unanimity that Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has not gone according to plan... According to U.S. and foreign sources, the purge of those responsible for the disaster — other than Putin himself — has already begun. Some generals reportedly are being relieved of command and top intelligence officers placed under house arrest. This is just the start; more purges are almost certain to come, and those at risk know it. It therefore makes sense to expect that those waiting for the axe to fall might try to justify themselves — to document that they are not...

PRAGUE -- Slovak authorities have broken a Russian spying network that was operating on Slovak territory, officials said on Tuesday. Stefan Hamran, the country’s chief police officer said four Slovak nationals have been detained in the case with two of them facing spying and bribery charges... “We’re talking about serious cases,” Lipsic said. “It’s about a long term, paid cooperation with the Russian military intelligence service" (known as GRU). The two are accused of seeking out and gathering highly sensitive, strategic and classified information about Slovakia, its armed forces and NATO and handed them over to undercover GRU officers who...

This Tuesday, March 15, the fourth death of a Russian general in the invasion of Ukraine has been reported, in this case Major General Oleg Mityaev... Mityaev was commander of the Russian Army’s 150th Motorized Rifle Division, a mechanized infantry unit... On March 3, the death of Major General Andrei Sukhovetsky, the first member of the Russian Army Generalate killed during this invasion, was confirmed. He was deputy commander of the 41st Combined Arms Army of the Russian Ground Forces... On Monday, March 7, Ukrainian sources reported the death of Major General Vitaly Gerasimov, 44, chief of staff of the...

During the winter of 2013 to 2014, pro-European protests in Ukraine’s capital city of Kyiv swelled into a revolution calling for the removal of Viktor Yanukovych, the country’s pro-Russia president at that time. Weeks after Yanukovych’s ousting in February 2014, Russia invaded and seized Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula... The Donbas war began on April 6, 2014, when Russian security agents and special forces troops spearheaded an unconventional military offensive that spawned two Russian-controlled breakaway territories in eastern Ukraine — the Donetsk People’s Republic, or DNR, and the Luhansk People’s Republic, or LNR... Through a campaign of weaponized propaganda, Moscow painted both...