Free Republic

Russia wants to understand whom it can trust before engaging with partners on the Ukrainian conflict, President Vladimir Putin said during a trip to China on Friday. "We must understand with whom and how we can engage and whom and to what degree we can trust. We are of course analyzing everything that is going on," Putin told a press conference in Harbin. The president pointed to China as a stakeholder that was sincerely trying to put an end to the conflict in Ukraine. "We believe that China is sincere about its efforts to solve this problem. It has suggested...

They say one week is a long time in politics. Those same people have never been to war.Six days ago, Ukrainian forces were just about hanging on across the near-1,000 kilometre front. Recent territorial losses to Russia – most notably the town of Avdiivka – in addition to recent delays in both US and EU military aid packages, had caused mounting concern for Ukraine’s fate in 2024.Despite these recent battlefield set-backs, and delays in aid, it still felt as though Ukraine was buying time to rearm, reorganise, and redeploy an offensive counter-attack this summer.That was six days ago, before up...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says Russia could increase its attacks in Ukraine's north east following its recent gains near the city of Kharkiv. Mr Zelensky admitted that there were issues with military staffing and morale, saying a number of existing brigades were empty. He also told the AFP news agency the country's air fleet was lacking and renewed calls for allies to send more air defence and fighter jets. "Today we have about 25% of what we need to defend Ukraine," Mr Zelensky said of Ukraine's air capabilities.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) – Ukrainian troops are locked in intense battles with the advancing Russian army in two border areas, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said, while the death toll from a Russian apartment building collapse blamed on Ukrainian shelling rose to 15. Zelenskyy said “fierce battles” are taking place near the border in eastern and northeastern Ukraine as outgunned and outnumbered Ukrainian soldiers try to hold back a significant Russian ground offensive. “Defensive battles are ongoing, fierce battles, on a large part of our border area,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address Sunday.

MOSCOW (Reuters) -President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday that Russian forces were improving their positions every day along the front in Ukraine in all directions and that the advance was going to plan.Russia has been pushing Ukrainian forces back at various points in recent months despite hundreds of billions of dollars worth of aid from the United States and its allies.Putin, at a meeting in the Kremlin with new Defence Minister Andrei Belousov, Secretary of the Security Council Sergei Shoigu, and top generals, said the work of the military was "proceeding according to the plan" approved by the General Staff."The...

What amounted to a probing attack or skirmish on the part of Russian forces has caused chaos amongst the ukies

Ukraine’s top general says the situation in the northern Kharkiv region has “significantly worsened” after Russia claimed to have captured four further villages as it expanded its surprise cross-border offensive. A Ukrainian regional official insisted Russia’s progress was not yet “significant” but admitted ground fighting in the area was spreading. Meanwhile, speaking on British television, UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron acknowledged it was an “extremely dangerous moment,” adding that Russia had effectively “invaded [Ukraine] again.” The precise goal of Russia’s new push – which began in the early hours of Friday morning – is unclear. It may be to create...

Denys Yaroslavskyi is angry. ... “There was no first line of defence. We saw it. The Russians just walked in. They just walked in, without any mined fields” he says. He shows me video from a drone feed taken a few days ago of small columns of Russian troops simply walking across the border, unopposed. He says officials had claimed that defences were being built at huge cost, but in his view, those defences simply weren’t there. “Either it was an act of negligence, or corruption. It wasn’t a failure. It was a betrayal”. Everyone knew that this incursion was...

(Kyiv, May 2, 2024) – Russian forces appear to have executed at least 15 Ukrainian soldiers as they attempted to surrender, and possibly six more who were surrendering or who had surrendered, since early December 2023, Human Rights Watch said today. These incidents should be investigated as war crimes. “Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, its forces have committed many heinous war crimes,” said Belkis Wille, associate crisis and conflict director at Human Rights Watch. “The summary execution – or murder – of surrendering and injured Ukrainian soldiers, gunned down in cold blood, expressly forbidden under international humanitarian law, is...

A very sobering @olliecarroll interview with Ukraine’s deputy mil intel chief. He says Chasiv Yar will fall eventually, that Ukraine is far from stabilising the front and that Russia is “generating a division of reserves” & wants to strike at Sumy/Kharkiv. ‘Right now, both sides are jockeying for the “the most favourable position” ahead of potential talks. But meaningful negotiations can begin only in the second half of 2025 at the earliest, he guesses

Ukraine’s population collapsed to 29mn souls last year, according to Ukraine Business News, with just 187,000 births recorded (including in Russian-occupied territories). This is the lowest annual figure in recorded history over the last 300 years, exacerbating an already dire population catastrophe facilitated by economic turmoil and war. Ukraine's demographic crisis dates back to the Soviet collapse in 1991, when the country’s population stood at 51.9mn. Economic crises and labour migration saw the country’s total fertility rate plummet to 1.4 births per woman (well below the replacement level of 2.1) by 2022 and possibly as low as .7 by the...

American officials now estimate that Russian President Vladimir Putin likely did not order the assassination of Alexei Navalny, one of his most significant political rivals. Navalny died approximately two months ago in prison, with his body with held from his family for some time after his death. According to the Wall Street Journal,a number of American agencies reviewed the report and certified it. It was based on both classified intelligence and publicly available facts....

Ukrainian troops have made a tactical retreat from three more villages as Russian forces press forward across the eastern front line and take advantage of Kyiv’s exhausted military, which is desperately awaiting the arrival of new U.S. assistance. Ukraine’s commander in chief, Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, said in a Telegram post Sunday that the “situation at the front has worsened” and described some of the toughest fighting west of Avdiivka, the city that fell to Russian forces in February. In that direction, Ukrainian troops withdrew from the villages of Berdychi, Semenivka and Novomykhailivka. “Trying to seize the strategic initiative and...

Ukrainian men are protesting at the consulate in Warsaw, Poland, after Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Dmytro Kuleba announced men aged 18 to 60 would be denied consular services earlier this week.Polish Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz stated of the 950,000 Ukrainians living in Poland, Warsaw would assist Kyiv in enforcing the conscription requirements for the Ukrainian men.Kosiniak-Kamysz also stated that many Poles were upset seeing military-aged male Ukrainian refugees throughout Poland despite the amount of support that has been sent to Ukraine:I also understand the frustration of Poles who see young Ukrainians of draft age in hotels and cafés, while...

Polish President Andrzej Duda says Poland is ready to host U.S. nuclear weapons, saying the topic was one of frequent discussions between Warsaw and Washington. Duda told Polish tabloid Fakt in an interview published Monday that Russia is increasingly militarizing the Kaliningrad province between Poland and Lithuania and has relocated tactical nuclear weapons to ally Belarus. “I must admit that when asked about it, I declared our readiness,” the Polish president said of talks with U.S. officials. “If our allies decide to deploy nuclear weapons as part of nuclear sharing also on our territory to strengthen the security of NATO’s...

Russia's armed forces have grown larger and not dwindled during its war in Ukraine, a top US general said on Wednesday. "The army is actually now larger — by 15 percent — than it was when it invaded Ukraine," US Army Gen. Christopher Cavoli, NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Europe, told the House Armed Services Committee in a hearing. "Over the past year, Russia increased its front-line troop strength from 360,000 to 470,000," Cavoli continued, adding that the bolstered numbers stemmed from Russia raising its conscription age from 27 to 30. The increase, Cavoli said, meant that Russia was able to...

Russia destroyed the largest power-generating plant in Ukraine’s Kyiv region in a missile attack on Thursday, as President Volodomyr Zelensky accused the West of “turning a blind eye” to his country’s need for more air defenses. Ukraine’s Air Force said it shot down 18 of the incoming missiles and 39 of the drones. Russia fired 82 missiles and drones in total, including six hypersonic Kinzhal missiles – none of which Ukraine’s air defenses were able to down.

Russians will take Odessa and four or five other ethnically Russian cities

Oleksandr Tarnavskyi, Commander of the Tavriia Operational and Strategic Group of Forces (OSGF), has reported that Ukraine will appeal to international humanitarian organisations and intermediary countries over "a certain number" of Ukrainian soldiers captured in the war-torn town of Avdiivka. The withdrawal of personnel from Avdiivka took place in accordance with a plan developed with due regard to various scenarios and possible changes in the operational situation. Nevertheless, at the final stage of the operation, under the pressure of the enemy's superior forces, a certain number of Ukrainian soldiers were captured."