Free Republic

A request for Russian military assistance from the head of a Moscow-backed rebel in Ukraine's Donbas region has been batted away by the Kremlin. Facing fierce shelling from Ukrainian forces, Denis Pushilin, head of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DNR), requested additional assistance from the Russian government in a video published on his Telegram channel on Monday. Pushilin accused Kyiv of using "prohibited methods of warfare," and that the central districts of Donetsk were being shelled while other settlements in the republic were under fire. "In this regard, an understanding was reached that all the necessary additional forces of the...

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko — Russian President Vladimir Putin’s closest ally — warned Western nations of a coming World War III, unless they stop supplying Ukraine with weapons. Lukashenko, 68, raised the specter of a global conflict in a letter to United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, which was released Monday. “Belarus calls on the countries of the world to unite and prevent the regional conflict in Europe from escalating into a full-scale world war!” he wrote, according to reporting by Newsweek.

Putin's regime has been accused of 'covering-up' the scale of the death toll at a top secret Russian weapons research facility after a local journalist claimed that at least 25 were killed in the deadly blaze - not 'up to seven' like Kremlin-backed media insists. A criminal probe has been launched after video showed an inferno ripping through the Second Central Research Institute of the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation in Tver, where Moscow's Iskander missiles are designed, on Thursday. Four military scientists were forced to jump out of windows from the burning building, with state media variously...