Free Republic

-snip- Under the law, the Russian government now considers individuals legally summoned for military duty if a message has been sent to their personal accounts on Gosuslug, the state public services website, or if their name has appeared on a publicly available online list of those summoned. -snip- Simultaneously, the law calls for the creation of an electronic registry of all people required to serve. The registry will collect extensive personal data, such as name, address and passport details, as well as medical, education, tax, criminal, voting, and employment records from numerous government organizations, including the police and communal services...

NATO Special Forces are already present in Ukraine, leaked Pentagon documents have revealed, raising the fear of direct clash between the Russian forces and the Western military bloc. There is no clarity regarding the exact role of the NATO forces in Ukraine, but Moscow has been repeatedly saying that the military bloc is directly involved in the conflict. ...

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov may not be able to attend when the UN Security Council meets in the United States later in April. He has not yet been granted a visa to enter the United States writes Svenska Dagbladet with reference to the Russian news agency Tass. "No visa has been issued yet. Not a single visa has been issued," Lavrov told the news agency. The Security Council has a rotating presidency, and Russia currently holds the presidency and Lavrov is the chairman. [Original text in Swedish - translation by SB]

Russia is ready to introduce electronic military draft papers for the first time in its history in an effort to make it harder for men to avoid being drafted after the lower house of parliament gave its backing to the move. The State Duma, the lower chamber, gave its backing to the necessary legislation in two separate votes. Some lawmakers complained the changes were being rushed through without giving them enough time to scrutinise the changes. -snip- NO SECOND MOBILISATION Peskov dismissed suggestions that the digitalisation plans might spark a further wave of panic and emigration among young male Russians...

Scott Ritter describes the paymaster system in the Country 404 military. All of that is being done with US taxpayer money of course.

A fire raged near the Kremlin yesterday as Vladimir Putin carried out secret talks with Belarus president Alexander Lukashenko. As the two leaders met, emergency services swarmed to the blaze at a defence ministry building at 19 Znamenka Street, Moscow. Dramatic footage shows smoke gushing from windows and rising into the sky. Around 50 people were evacuated, with the cause of the fire currently unconfirmed. Some reports said the section of the building on fire was a department of military property dealing with facilities across the country. No injuries were reported. As firefighters battle to extinguish the flames, Putin was...

Russian officials plan to outline “the contours of a new world order” over the next month as Russia and China intensify their efforts to gain influence at the United Nations. “Our idea is to hold a comprehensive, forward-looking strategic discussion about the contours of a new world order that is coming to replace the unipolar one,” Ambassador Vasily Nebenzia, the top Russian envoy at the U.N., told state media. “This conversation is long overdue.” Nebenzia will play a prominent role in stage-managing that effort, as Russia’s upcoming turn as rotating president of the U.N. Security Council will allow Moscow to...

Finland’s left-wing Prime Minister Sanna Marin conceded defeat on Sunday in the Nordic country’s parliamentary election as the opposition right-wing National Coalition Party (NCP) claimed victory in a tightly fought contest. The pro-business NCP was expected to win 48 of the 200 seats in parliament, narrowly ahead of the nationalist Finns Party with 46 seats and Marin’s Social Democrats on 43 seats, justice ministry election data showed with all ballots counted. “We got the biggest mandate,” NCP leader Petteri Orpo said in a speech to followers, vowing to “fix Finland” and its economy.

The U.S. has overtaken Russia as the top crude oil supplier to Europe, data shows, capping a remarkable 12-month period in which Moscow’s plan to weaponize its position as an energy superpower collapsed from strong Western opposition to the war in Ukraine...One sign of Russia’s diminished status as an energy superpower is futures trading. Russia’s premier Urals crude oil hit a two-year low of $48.40 a barrel last week while the global benchmark Brent crude was trading for more than $75.

Ukrainian units began to widely use on the line of contact outdated KS-19 100 mm anti-aircraft guns, developed in 1947 and intended to fight air targets. In all likelihood, the Ukrainian army has serious problems not only with ammunition for Western-style artillery systems, but also with firearms. Nothing more than this can explain the use of outdated anti-aircraft guns. In addition, as noted by military experts, entire artillery batteries from KS-19 guns are being formed in the ranks of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. They plan to use them exclusively to destroy ground targets, since there are simply no air targets...

Russian forces in Ukraine have failed to meet a key deadline for progress in eastern Ukraine ahead of a long-touted counteroffensive from Kyiv, according to a new assessment. Moscow did not manage to "achieve the Kremlin's goals" of exerting control over the Donetsk and Luhansk regions by March 31, the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) think tank said on Saturday. The two regions, which collectively make up the Donbas, saw fighting between Kyiv and Russian-backed separatists break out in 2014. They have seen many of the heaviest clashes since the start of the all-out war in February...

Prime Minister Viktor Orbán visited the studios of Radio Kossuth on Friday morning, where he gave an interview on the most important political developments of the week. Among the topics discussed were the war in Ukraine, inflation and price freezes. For the Hungarian people, war is worrying and dangerous, and the threat of a world war is “no literary exaggeration”, the Prime Minister stated. He said that in Hungary it seems natural that if a war becomes bloodier and more brutal, with the number of casualties on both sides well over 100,000, it would force people to pause, and those...

The BRICS alliance is exploring the creation of an innovative currency, with plans to share proposals on its establishment at the forthcoming summit in South Africa, according to Alexander Babakov, deputy chairman of Russia's parliament, the State Duma. Speaking at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum event in New Delhi, India, on Thursday, Babakov said that the plan is to initially transition to using domestic currencies in transactions and then introduce and circulate a digital or alternative form of a groundbreaking currency in the near future.Babakov anticipates that the BRICS leaders summit will reveal a preparedness to implement this particular...

When Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin met in Moscow last month, China sent a cautionary rebuke to Russia about nuclear threats against Ukraine in a clear message to avoid nuclear war. Putin, who on several occasions had threatened to launch atomic weapons in retaliation against various battlefield escalations, signed onto a no use of nuclear weapons statement in a joint communique. Or at least he did for a few hours. Among the pledges listed, China and Russia agreed that “All nuclear-weapon states should refrain from deploying nuclear weapons abroad.” But no sooner had Xi left Moscow...

President Alexander Lukashenko said on Friday that Russia, which has already decided to station tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, could if necessary put intercontinental nuclear missiles there too. In an annual address to lawmakers and government officials, Lukashenko said Moscow's plans to station nuclear arms on the territory of its close ally would help protect Belarus, which he said was under threat from the West. (snip) "I am not trying to intimidate or blackmail anyone. I want to safeguard the Belarusian state and ensure peace for the Belarusian people," Lukashenko said. Although Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Saturday that...

Ukraine struck a railway depot and knocked out power in the Russian-occupied city of Melitopol deep behind the front line on Wednesday amid growing talk from Kyiv of a counterassault against Russian forces worn out by a failed winter offensive. Unverified images on the internet showed explosions lighting up the night sky with streaks of contrails in Melitopol, base of the Russian-controlled administration in Zaporizhzhia, one of five Ukrainian provinces Russia claims to have annexed. Ukraine's exiled mayor of the city confirmed there were explosions there. Russia's state TASS news agency, citing Moscow-installed officials, said a railway depot was damaged...

A month after Russia informed the U.S. that it is suspending participation in the last remaining nuclear pact between the two countries, a senior Pentagon official said on Tuesday that Moscow is now refusing to hand over data on its nuclear warheads, due at the end of this week. In response, the U.S. will not provide Russia with data on its deployed strategic warheads, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space Policy John Plumb said on Capitol Hill. Plumb told a hearing of the House Armed Services subcommittee on Strategic Forces that the U.S. had pressed the Russians on the issue...

Russia has struck a deal with Belarus to station tactical nuclear weapons on its territory but will not violate non-proliferation agreements, Vladimir Putin has said.The Belarusian president, Alexander Lukashenko, had long raised the issue of stationing tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, which borders Poland, Putin told state television.“There is nothing unusual here either: firstly, the United States has been doing this for decades,” he said. “They have long deployed their tactical nuclear weapons on the territory of their allied countries. A video grab from footage released by the Russian defence ministry last month apparently shows Russian forces in a drill...

Russia has struck a deal with neighbouring Belarus to station tactical nuclear weapons on its territory but will not violate non-proliferation agreements, President Vladimir Putin said on Saturday. Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko had long raised the issue of stationing tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, which borders Poland, Putin told state television. "There is nothing unusual here either: firstly, the United States has been doing this for decades. They have long deployed their tactical nuclear weapons on the territory of their allied countries," he said. "We agreed that we will do the same - without violating our obligations, I emphasize, without...