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Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said on Friday that his military's SU-24 warplanes had been modified to carry nuclear weapons and that Minsk would react immediately if the West caused it any problems. -snip- "They (the West) must understand that if they opt for escalation no helicopters or planes will save them," Lukashenko was quoted as saying. "Everything was ready," he said, referring to the work to modify Belarusian warplanes to carry nuclear weapons. "It's not a good idea to escalate things with Belarus because that would be an escalation with the Union State (of Russia and Belarus) which has nuclear...

LONDON (Reuters) - Cold winters helped Moscow defeat Napoleon and Hitler. President Vladimir Putin is now betting that sky-rocketing energy prices and possible shortages this winter will persuade Europe to strong arm Ukraine into a truce -- on Russia's terms. That, say two Russian sources familiar with Kremlin thinking, is the only path to peace that Moscow sees, given Kyiv says it will not negotiate until Russia leaves all of Ukraine. "We have time, we can wait," said one source close to the Russian authorities, who declined to be named because they are not authorised to speak to the media....

Ankara supports Ukraine's territorial integrity and rejects the illegal annexation of Crimea, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Tuesday. "The return of Crimea to Ukraine, of which it is an inseparable part, is essentially a requirement of international law," Erdogan said in a video message to the Second Crimea Platform Summit. The Crimea Platform is an international coordination mechanism of Ukraine to draw more global attention to Russia's illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014. Erdogan said Ankara will continue to support the Crimean Platform that was established to resolve the Crimean issue through peaceful means. "Türkiye does not recognize...

Every foreign weapon that Russians capture in such manner is one less weapon that the ukronazis and Kiev gangsters will be able to sell to terrorists and street gangs such as Crips, Bloods, or MS13...

The movement of Vladimir Putin's vessels to the port city of Novorossiysk in southern Russia comes after Ukrainian stocks of longer-range missile systems were boosted by Western allies. Ukrainian media reports Serhiy Bratchuk, adviser to the head of Odesa's Regional Military Administration, reporting news of the ships' eastward movement via Telegram. Media outlet Ukrinform reports the official as saying: "According to the information of our Navy, the enemy has redeployed a significant number of warships from Sevastopol to Novorossiysk. "Russian ships were earlier deployed in missile-proof areas in the zone covered by coastal air defence systems, as close as possible...

A $36 million Russian Su-34 bomber was reportedly shot down by Russia's own forces over Ukraine's eastern Luhansk region, Ukrainian media outlets claimed on Monday. The jet was reportedly downed near Alchevsk, a city in the Luhansk region—one of the areas where the war is currently focused. Alchevsk is currently under the occupation of Moscow-backed separatist forces. Videos and images shared by the Strategic Command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine on the Telegram messaging app on Monday appear to show the charred remains of a Russian Su-34 fighter-bomber. -snip- "Russian invaders from the air defense shot down their own...

Is Russia worthy of being called a “great power,” let alone a superpower? Not to kick someone when they’re down, but it’s difficult to argue that Vladimir Putin represents anything other than a middling regional state, albeit the largest country in the world and one with nuclear weapons. In the first place, until the Russo-Ukraine War, consider how irrelevant and inconsequential Russia was. For the most part, regarding international relations, Russia scarcely mattered. Moscow has nary a footprint in the Middle East (mainly Syria) and is nonexistent in Asia and other parts of the world. Russia has lost influence in...

Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu today gave the order to dramatically increase so-called shock and awe attacks on Ukraine. He claimed Kremlin forces must 'exclude the possibility of the Kyiv regime inflicting massive rocket and artillery strikes on civilian infrastructure and residents of the Donbas and other regions,' according to reports in Moscow. It followed an on-the-ground inspection by Putin's trusty defence minister - and a National Security Council meeting led by Vladimir Putin. Shoigu 'gave instructions to further increase the actions of [military] groups in all operational areas', local reports stated.

At the NATO summit in Madrid, Finland was invited to join the alliance. What does this mean for Finland? If Russian President Vladimir Putin breaches the 830-mile Finnish border, the United States will rise to Helsinki's defense and fight Russia on Finland's side. What does Finland's membership in NATO mean for America? If Putin makes a military move into Finland, the U.S. will go to war against the world's largest nation with an arsenal of between 4,500 and 6,000 battlefield and strategic nuclear weapons. No Cold War president would have dreamed of making such a commitment -- to risk the...

Lt.Gen. Ben Hodges, the former commanding general of the US Army in Europe, told Insider that Russia lacks the resources and capabilities to make significant advancements in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region — where the 20-week-long war has turned into a grinding campaign. ... Russia's arsenal of artillery and rockets is the "only advantage" that President Vladimir Putin's forces have right now and said this is reflected in attacks on Ukrainian defense positions and civilian areas, which cause lots of casualties. A key to Ukrainian success will be to neutralize these weapons, he said. Without them, Russian victories will be hard...

Mikhail Khodorkovsky was once the richest man in Russia until he challenged Vladimir Putin and was sent to jail for 10 years. Now, he has advice for Western leaders trying to deal with his former adversary, telling CBC’s Terence McKenna that a show of strength is key.

Danila Davydov said he left Russia within weeks of the Kremlin sending troops into Ukraine because he feared having to fight in a war he doesn't support. The 22-year-old left St. Petersburg and is now working in Kazakhstan."We feared President Putin would declare a mobilization and then everyone, young and old, would be called up to the army. I absolutely didn't want to go and fight." Davydov is among what some lawyers and rights advocates say is an increased number of young Russian men looking to avoid the country's mandatory military service since the conflict with Ukraine, which Russia calls...

July 8, 2022 The country is making enormous investments in defense and will soon become one of Europe’s pre-eminent land powers.As the war in Ukraine – now in its fifth month – becomes a grinding battle of attrition, a new geostrategic realignment along NATO’s Eastern Flank is in full view: a fault line has emerged, running north-south, from Scandinavia and the Baltics down through Poland and into Romania and Bulgaria.In this reconfigured Europe, Poland is the hub of NATO’s effort to assist Ukraine, serving as the principal transit route for equipment and ammunition shipments to Ukraine, and providing a...

Why the sudden total collapse of the Ukrainian forces in LissichanskTwo years after the Serbian war, an American general asked his Serbian counter-part what it was like to have fought against the greatest military power in history. The Serbian general replied, " I don't know, we've never fought Russia."

The foreign ministers of Turkey, Sweden and Finland have signed a memorandum for the two Nordic states to join NATO, removing a Turkish block to the accession process. It comes after the leaders of the three nations spoke at a NATO summit in Madrid. A statement from the president of Finland, Sauli Niinisto, said: "We had a thorough meeting with president of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan and prime minister of Sweden Magdalena Andersson, facilitated by secretary general of NATO Jens Stoltenberg. "As a result of that meeting, our foreign ministers signed a trilateral memorandum which confirms that Turkey will at...

Turkey has agreed to support Finland's and Sweden's bids for NATO membership, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said on Tuesday (28 June). "I am pleased to announce that we now have an agreement that paves the way for Finland and Sweden to join NATO," he told reporters on the sidelines of a NATO summit in Madrid. "Turkey, Finland and Sweden have signed a memorandum that addresses Turkey's concerns, including around arms exports and the fight against terrorism," he added.

Vladimir Putin has lost two more colonels in Ukraine - including one of Russia's youngest to reach such a high rank - as a video showed a Russian battalion being hit with artillery fire while attempting to rescue a casualty. Elsewhere, in another blow to the Kremlin's war efforts, a separate video released this week showed Ukrainian bombs destroying a Russian ammo depo in a huge ball of flames. Images released by Kyiv also appeared to show a destroyed Russian unit. These are the latest examples of Ukraine's forces putting up a fierce resistance against Putin's invading forces. Moscow expected...

Since its 2008 incursion into Georgia (if not before), there has been a remarkable evolution in Russia's approach to propaganda. This new approach was on full display during the country's 2014 annexation of the Crimean peninsula. It continues to be demonstrated in support of ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and Syria and in pursuit of nefarious and long-term goals in Russia's “near abroad” and against NATO allies.In some ways, the current Russian approach to propaganda builds on Soviet Cold War–era techniques, with an emphasis on obfuscation and on getting targets to act in the interests of the propagandist without realizing that...

British Defence Secretary Ben Wallace announced that the UK will send its first long-range missiles to Ukraine despite a threat by Russian President Vladimir Putin to the West against the delivery of these weapons to Kiev. In a statement late Sunday, Wallace said: "As Russia's tactics change, so must our support to Ukraine. These highly capable multiple-launch rocket systems will enable our Ukrainian friends to better protect themselves against the brutal use of long-range artillery, which Putin's forces have used indiscriminately to flatten cities." He said that the UK is supplying "vital weapons they (Ukrainians) need to defend their...

Russian President Vladimir Putin lost two of his most senior commanders in a single day in a devastating bridge ambush in eastern Ukraine, a group of independent journalists working on both sides of the war have claimed. Russia confirmed the death of Major-General Roman Kutuzov on Sunday, but new reports on Monday said Lieutenant-General Roman Berdnikov was killed on the same day in an attack carried out by Kyiv's forces. It has been suggested that the unusual speed with which Kutuzov's death was confirmed by Moscow was an attempt to cover up the loss of Berdnikov, 47. Less than a...