Free Republic

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced Thursday that his country has developed a long-range weapon that can hit targets up to 400 miles away, signaling potential responsibility for a strike on a Russian airport near Estonia on Wednesday. The Wednesday strikes hit targets in four regions all over southern Russia, as well as Moscow and the airport in Pskov. Pskov is about 400 miles from the Ukrainian border. Russia says that Ukraine is responsible for the attacks, while the country has not claimed responsibility. Four military transport planes were destroyed in the Pskov strike, Russian media said. There was no damage...

For seventy-five years of mutual deterrence, nuclear weapons have saved the world, and people just got used to it. Now we see with our own eyes that nuclear weapons no longer stop, because the unthinkable is happening: the West has unleashed a big war in the underbelly of a great nucler power... At some point, we also calmed down, went in line with Western theories and recklessly raised the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons, which the West is now using for a reason. There all the time, semi-officials emphasize: no, the Russians will never use nuclear weapons. They...

Ukraine said its forces were advancing on several axes in their counteroffensive but were struggling to counter Russian air and artillery superiority hobbling its assaults in the east and south. Now into its second week, Ukraine’s ambitious attempt to take back Russian-occupied land is proving to be a hard slog against dense minefields and well-prepared defenses. After Ukraine’s first probing attacks yielded mixed results, its forces have mostly paused their advances in recent days as commanders take stock of the past two weeks and analyze ways to punch through Russian lines without taking huge losses. Russia has taken advantage of...

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday gave African leaders seeking to mediate in the war in Ukraine a list of reasons why he believed many of their proposals were misguided, pouring cold water on a plan already largely dismissed by Kyiv. The African leaders were seeking agreement on a series of “confidence building measures”, even as Kyiv last week began a counteroffensive to push back Russian forces from the swathes of southern and eastern Ukraine that they occupy. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said after meeting them in Kyiv on Friday that peace talks would require Moscow to withdraw its forces...

The team of soldiers had been out of their Ukrainian armored personnel carrier for only a matter of minutes when the tree line in front of them erupted in Russian gunfire. The dozen or so soldiers, sent to reinforce a trench, found themselves pinned down for hours. “Never seen that much fire, from so many positions,” a soldier recounted in a mission report obtained by The New York Times. One soldier fighting for Ukraine was killed and nine were wounded in the battle, which took place in March near the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut. Russian troops, the report said, showed...