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Vladimir Putin is facing fresh woes after one of his generals was killed in a missile attack. Major-general Sergey Goryachev, 52, died during fighting in the Zaporizhzhia region, which has recently seen major action in Ukraine’s counter-offensive. Goryachev was chief of staff of the Russian 35th Combined Arms Army and is one of 11 generals to be officially classed as casualties in the war – the first this year. Pro-Moscow war correspondent Yuri Kotenok wrote yesterday: ‘War takes the best. The army lost one of the brightest and most effective military leaders, who combined the highest professionalism with personal courage....

BRUSSELS (AP) — The blue-and-white Finnish flag rises outside NATO headquarters Tuesday afternoon, making Finland a member and doubling Russia’s border with the world’s biggest security alliance. The move is a strategic and political blow to President Vladimir Putin, who has long complained about NATO’s expansion toward Russia and partly used that as a justification for his country’s war with Ukraine. “What we see is that President Putin went to war against Ukraine with a declared aim to get less NATO,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said. “He’s getting the exact opposite.” Like all NATO members, Finland will benefit from the...

What’s known is that $250 billion in capital has left, equivalent to 14 percent of its GDP. One expert guesstimates that Russia’s economy has shrunk from the size of Italy’s to Chile’s in the past year — you wouldn’t know this based on bogus figures fed to the media by Moscow. Economist Janis Kluge of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) calculates that Western sanctions alone have also “basically shrunk Russia’s economy by 10 percent”, bigger than what happened in the 2009 financial crisis. What is also known is that immediately after the invasion of Ukraine, an...

A shocking new video out of Crimea shows Russian efforts to recruit and indoctrinate kids by forcing them through military training exercises, including martial arts lessons and rifle-handling classes. Shared by Russian state media, the disturbing recording shows a young boy and girl in Simferopol, the peninsula’s second-largest city, racing to assemble Kalashnikov-style rifles at their desks, according to a report from Business Insider. When the two finish — within moments of each other — another student asks, “Who won?” Then the video cuts to a group of Crimean schoolchildren toting rifles in what looks like the lobby of a...

Every hour, more towns and cities across the country were being captured by advancing Russian armies. CNN was showing Russian paratroopers, their elbows marked with white stripes, at the Antonov Airport just outside Kyiv. Russian dictator Vladimir Putin declared the end of Ukraine as it was.... “One year later, Kyiv stands. And Ukraine stands. Democracy stands,” Biden said in Kyiv. How did something that was supposed to be Putin’s several-day-long “special military operation” turn into a staggering defeat and a subsequent grinding war that the Kremlin’s propaganda now calls Russia’s “fight for survival”? ... The first was its failure to...

The founder of Russia's Wagner group of mercenaries has warned the entire frontline will collapse if his troops in the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut do not receive more ammunition. Yevgeny Prigozhin, whose organisation has played a significant part in Russian military successes in recent months, said his ammo-starved forces were the 'cement' holding the frontline together and the last line of defence to win the war. 'Today, Wagner is the cement that, as I've said previously, is holding the Ukrainian army in place – grinding it down, destroying it and preventing it from deploying to other regions and occupying other...

The founder of Russia's Wagner mercenary force has said his troops now tightening their grip on the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut are being deprived of ammunition and that, if they are forced to retreat, the entire front will collapse. Yevgeny Prigozhin had said on Friday that his units had "practically surrounded Bakhmut," where fighting has intensified in the past week after months of attritional warfare, with Russian forces attacking from three sides. Wagner often appears to operate autonomously from the regular army, or even in competition with it, and in a video published over the weekend, Prigozhin complained that the...

Ramzan Kadyrov has repeatedly attacked the running of the war in Ukraine He has summoned UAE doctor because he 'does not trust' the Moscow doctors Chechen warlord Ramzan Kadyrov - a close ally of Vladimir Putin - is reported to be seriously ill with kidney problems amid fears of 'poisoning'. The fanatical pro-war zealot who has advocated using nuclear weapons against Ukraine is rumoured to have summoned a leading doctor from the United Arab Emirates because he 'does not trust' Moscow doctors. The kidney illness accounted for Kadyrov's surprising absence from Putin's state of the nation speech last month, several...

This is what Russian peace and liberation looks like. VIDEO https://fb.watch/j0o92iihVw/ VIDEO COMMENT "Who got good with all these games? To the young men who lost their lives in this battle? Some did it while protecting their native land, and others are unknown for what they were away from their homeland. Tens of thousands of peaceful people - children who have just started to live, elderly people who have lived difficult long lives, mothers who have lost children, husbands, brothers? Seas of blood spilled and oceans of unavoidable grief - what's it all for???" Life is given from above, so...

The invasion of Ukraine left Russians with a stark choice: carry on as normal or make a stand against the war. But speaking out in Russia carries huge risks. How is the opposition managing to resist the regime – and at what personal cost? 00:00 - One year on 01:37 - The first wave of protests 05:43 - Crackdown on dissent 10:04 - Individual acts of rebellion 13:51 - Partial mobilisation 16:20 - Russia’s mass exodus 23:06 - The future of Russian rebellion

Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said on Friday that Russia is prepared to take the war in Ukraine as far as its border with Poland. Medvedev, who is now deputy chairman of Russia's Security Council, made the remarks in a statement on his Telegram channel on the one-year anniversary of the country's invasion of neighboring Ukraine. Russia must "push back the borders that threaten our country as far as possible, even if these are the borders of Poland," he wrote. In his lengthy post, Medvedev said he believed Russia will be victorious in the war. "It's been a year since...

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of Russia's mercenary group Wagner, accused unspecified officials of deliberately denying his fighters sufficient ammunition as part of an ongoing rivalry between himself and parts of the Russian elite. A onetime catering entrepreneur who once shunned the public spotlight, Prigozhin has assumed an ever more public role in Russian politics since the start of the war in Ukraine a year ago, with his Wagner Group spearheading Russia's months-long battle for the town of Bakhmut in Ukraine's Donetsk region. In a seven-minute long audio message published on Monday by his press service, an apparently angry and emotional...

The U.S.-based think tank's report published on Thursday says that Russia's purported goal of capturing Bakhmut by next week "would require a significantly higher rate of Russian advance than anything seen for many months."...While the Kremlin may be unlikely to capture Bakhmut soon, ISW maintained that missile strikes on "civilian targets throughout Ukraine" could instead mark the war anniversary because "actual military success continues to evade the Russian military."

MOSCOW—Close to 200,000 Russian troops have been killed or wounded in the war in Ukraine, according to estimates from U.S. and European officials, a toll that is likely to continue to rise as the Kremlin readies a fresh offensive in the coming weeks. The U.S. military, which keeps rough estimates on Russian casualties in Ukraine, puts the figure for wounded and dead at roughly 180,000, though officials stressed such figures aren’t precise, a U.S. defense official said. The tally matched assessments by Norway’s defense chief Gen. Eirik Kristoffersen, who said last week that the number of Russian soldiers killed or...

American officials estimate that nearly 200,000 Russian troops have been killed or wounded in Moscow’s nearly yearlong conflict with Ukraine, The New York Times reported. The rising number of casualties is driven in part by heavy fighting in Bakhmut and Soledar in eastern Ukraine, where Russia is increasingly sending poorly trained recruits and convicts to the front lines in an effort to deplete Ukrainian artillery, according to the Times. However, officials have warned that the casualty numbers — which are based on satellite imagery, intercepted communications, social media, on-the-ground reporting and official government numbers — are difficult to estimate and...

The former vice president added: "If the armed forces do not have the ability to conduct strategic offensive operations, then it is better not to try, especially outside your own country... People are dying senselessly, although the slogan is 'Defend Russia.' Where are they defending Russia? What are they dying for....? Who has the right to take a father away from his children? Who gave the right to take away sons from mothers and fathers? Nobody." During the same talk, Rutskoy took aim at Russian President Vladimir Putin, calling him a "laughingstock" for not carrying out certain military intentions, citing...

Even more startling are reports that Prigozhin may be preparing a coup against Putin to take over as Russia’s leader as a result of the disastrous military campaign still taking place in Ukraine nearly one full year after the “special military operation” was first launched in February 2022. "Prigozhin has 20,000 bloodthirsty, armed and aggressive men," one intelligence official revealed in December. "They’re telling me: ‘We’re wondering if we should just lay down our arms because we’ve been turned into cannon fodder and go to Moscow?’” “That’s in their thought process already,” the source added. If Prigozhin were to execute...

Russian lawmakers on Monday proposed placing restrictions on citizens attempting to leave the country. Yevgeny Moskvichev, the head of Russia's State Duma Committee on Transport and Infrastructure Development, put forward amendments to a transport law that would make it a requirement for Russian citizens, and others, to book a time and place in advance to cross the border. According to a copy of the legislative changes seen by Tass, Russia's state-run news agency, "Vehicles belonging to Russian transport companies, foreign transport companies, citizens of the Russian Federation, foreign citizens, stateless persons and other road users" must reserve a date and...

America’s infatuation with Ukraine and Zelensky (the Cocaine Comedian) is starting to wane, but most politicians and the public continue to believe the lie that Ukraine is an innocent country being bludgeoned by a communist Russia ruled by a dictator. Oh yeah. Don’t forget. Russia is suffering massive military and economic losses and just can’t live without U.S. investment and Europe’s technology. It is all nonsense, but if you are living in the United States and try to have a reasoned discussion with the fan boys and girls cheering for Ukraine, you would find more success talking to a brick...

Vladimir Putin is accused of ordering his own military leaders to “publicly execute” Russian soldiers who disobey his commands in Ukraine, RadarOnline.com has learned. The startling claims come as Putin’s war against Ukraine quickly approaches the one-year mark and as the Russian leader’s own forces bump heads with Russian mercenaries also fighting in Ukraine under mercenary chief Yevgeniy Prigozhin. According to members of the Wagner Private Military Company recently captured by Ukraine, they reportedly witnessed their own members executed by Russian leaders. "Those who disobey are eliminated – and it’s done publicly," one member of the Wagner Group said over...