Free Republic

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has reportedly been denied the opportunity to address audiences at the highly touted Eurovision Contest Finale this weekend. Organizers have rejected a request from Zelensky's office to make a video address to the audiences as it would breach the "non-political" nature of the event. The decision was taken by the European Broadcasting Union, a grouping of national public broadcasters that runs the Eurovision. Later, a spokesperson from the Ukrainian president's office claimed that Kyiv made no such request.

Evgeny Prigozhin claims victory in Bakhmut battle to manifest significant turn in war in UkraineHead of the Wagner mercenary force claimed on Wednesday that battle for Ukraine's frontline eastern city of Bakhmut "almost destroyed the Ukrainian army" and "battered" his group.In a comment on Telegram, Evgeny Prigozhin said the battle for Bakhmut was planned by his commanders last summer and his fighters are steadily implementing it."The battle for Bakhmut today has almost destroyed the Ukrainian army and, unfortunately, has pretty much battered the Wagner PMC," he said.Prigozhin said his fighters "are destroying foreign forces" that are trying "bring Russia to...

Russia's president Vladimir Putin, 70, is taking tanks as old as he is out of storage in his desperate bid to crush Ukraine on the battlefield. A video showing long obsolete Soviet-era T-54B and T-55A tanks - designed to be used in the armies of Soviet tyrant Josef Stalin - on a train carried across Russia, presumably destined for the frontlines of the war, has emerged. It comes with Putin having already raided museums and storage depots for retired T-62 battle tanks, which halted production 12 years ago. The geriatric T-54 was originally produced by Stalin after the Second World...

Americans’ already-negative opinions of Russia have soured further in the past year, dropping ... to 9%.

Bakhmut and Debáltsevo

Hungary’s reputation as the troublemaker of Europe will be burnished on Wednesday as its parliament begins debating a contentious issue: whether to give Finland and Sweden the green light to join NATO. Along with Turkey, Hungary has yet to ratify the applications of Finland and Sweden to join the transatlantic defense alliance more than eight months after NATO leaders signed off on their membership bid at a summit in Madrid. Máté Kocsis, head of Orbán’s nationalist Fidesz party caucus in parliament, said last week that a “serious debate” had now emerged over the accession of the two countries. Hungary now...

Russia told the West on Friday that it would view as an attack on itself any actions that threatened Russian peacekeepers in Moldova's breakaway Transdniestria region, one day after Moscow accused Ukraine of planning an invasion. In Kyiv, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy rejected Moscow's assertion that Ukraine wanted to take over the region, while Moldova reiterated there was no truth to the allegations. The warning comes amid increased concerns in Moldova, a small ex-Soviet republic bordering Ukraine, of a possible Russian threat. Its pro-European President Maia Sandu this month accused Moscow of plotting a coup. On Thursday, Russia accused Kyiv of...

Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev said on Friday that the only way for Moscow to ensure a lasting peace with Ukraine was to push back the borders of hostile states as far as possible, even if that meant the frontiers of NATO member Poland.

Russia is not the only country with grievances about Ukraine. Hungary and Romania also accuse the country of persecuting ethnic groups living in Ukraine and now forcibly conscripting them into military service. Now the Council of Europe’s Venice Commission will investigate Ukraine for violations of minority rights.

Timeline of Russia's all-out war in Ukraine: month by month [Photos at LINK] Ukraine has come a long way since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion on Feb. 24, 2022. From the Russian occupation of nearly 30% of Ukraine’s territory in February to Russia’s humiliating defeats in the north and the south, from the West’s hesitation about providing weapons to Kyiv to pledging hundreds of modern tanks, from the entire world’s doubts about Ukraine’s very chances to survive to the global admiration of the Ukrainian people’s courage — this year has forever changed Ukraine and the world. No matter how...

The attacks have left millions without power, sometimes for days at a time, and almost five months later, they show no sign of letting up. In response, according to Forbes Ukraine, the Ukrainian authorities plan to transfer some of the country’s transmission substations to shellproof underground bunkers. The first two facilities could reportedly be ready as soon as next winter.

Ukrainian forces have reportedly blown up a bridge near the eastern city of Bakhmut, in a sign they may be planning to retreat from the area, which would give Russia a significant, symbolic boost ahead of the first anniversary of the war. Troops blew up the bridge on Monday, according to a local Donetsk region news site. Ukraine denies it intends to leave Bakhmut, despite six months of heavy fighting and reportedly dwindling stockpiles. It appears the Kremlin is concentrating maximum force on capturing Bakhmut before the one-year anniversary of the invasion on 24 February. Ukraine and its western allies...

This was the moment at which we began the unstoppable descent into terrible danger which so many of us will bitterly regret in times to come. I won't waste time here going over the question of who started the Ukraine war, or even why. Most people don't want to know and refuse to think about it, or look up the facts. They defame and abuse anyone who tries to tell them. So to hell with that. I'm bored with trying. The Government claims to be in favour of free debate in universities, so all the stage army of "Right-wing" thinkers...

Ukraine must win the war against Russia in order to ensure that a message is sent to the world that there is nothing to gain from invading other nations, the Prime Minister of Finland said on Tuesday. Speaking with journalist Fareed Zakaria at the World Economic Forum's annual meeting in Davos, Prime Minister Sanna Marin explained that while she doesn't know when the war will end, "we have to make sure than when it ends Ukrainians win."

This list only includes destroyed vehicles and equipment of which photo or videographic evidence is available. Therefore, the amount of equipment destroyed is significantly higher than recorded here. Small arms, ATGMs, MANPADS, loitering munitions, drones used as unmanned bait, civilian vehicles, trailers and derelict equipment are not included in this list. All possible effort has gone into avoiding duplicate entries and discerning the status of equipment between captured or abandoned. Many of the entries listed as 'abandoned' will likely end up captured or destroyed. Similarly, some of the captured equipment might be destroyed if it can't be recovered. When the...

Russia continues to humiliate itself. After a deadly rocket attack by Ukraine carried out in the first moments of New Year’s Day killed as many as 400 Russian troops, Russia claimed only 63 had been killed. Russia soon updated that tally to 89 killed but also publicly blamed the troops for their own deaths by claiming the Ukrainian strike was the result of the recently mobilized troops using cell phones. Even some pro-Russian military bloggers said Russia was downplaying the number of deaths and also suggested that leadership was to blame for putting a bunch of inexperienced recruits together in...

KRAMATORSK, Ukraine, Jan 8 (Reuters) - A Russian missile attack on the Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk missed its targets and there were no obvious signs of casualties, a Reuters reporter said on Sunday, after Moscow claimed the strike killed 600 Ukrainian soldiers. A Reuters team visited two college dormitories that Moscow said had been temporarily housing Ukrainian personnel and which it had targeted as revenge for a New Year's attack that killed scores of Russian soldiers and caused outcry in Russia. But neither dormitory in the eastern city of Kramatorsk appeared to have been directly hit or seriously damaged. There...

Moscow's proposals for settlement in Ukraine are well known to Kyiv and either Ukraine fulfils them for their own good or the Russian army will decide the issue, TASS agency quoted Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov as saying. "Our proposals for the demilitarization and denazification of the territories controlled by the regime, the elimination of threats to Russia's security emanating from there, including our new lands, are well known to the enemy," the state news agency quoted Lavrov as saying late on Monday. "The point is simple: Fulfil them for your own good. Otherwise, the issue will be decided by...

It’s a video but here you are: —————————————————— 0:00 well let's look just at the near term 0:02 it's very hard to to look ahead of those 0:05 who do it usually get burned and 0:07 chastised for it but let's look at weeks 0:11 or maybe a month ahead and talk about 0:14 what the war termination operation that 0:17 the role that the Russians hope to to 0:20 launch might look like and what its 0:23 objectives would be not that we know 0:24 anything about what would actually 0:27 happen but if as I think we're both...

A Russian court has sentenced the opposition politician Ilya Yashin to eight and a half years in prison, in the most high-profile case to date of a Russian dissident being jailed for opposing the invasion of Ukraine. Yashin was tried on charges of spreading false information meant to discredit the Russian army, under a law introduced after Russia launched its invasion, due to a series of posts in May about the murder and torture of Ukrainian civilians by Russian troops in the town of Bucha. “Expressing hatred of the political system of the Russian Federation and realising that he is...