Free Republic

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...

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 is still cutting deals with China, Iran, and North Korea to make sure they don’t run out of missiles and ammunition, but there’s one thing that they can’t import in any significant numbers. What they’re running short of are soldiers. Moscow doesn’t publish precise figures, but one recent estimate puts the Russian death toll in Ukraine at more than 70,000. Others suspect that the true figure is closer to 100,000. And then there are the tens of thousands who survived but were too grievously injured to return to combat. With the ranks thinning so badly, Vladimir Putin has launched...