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"Military pay, ammunition, tanks, planes, and compensation for dead and wounded soldiers, all contribute to the GDP figures. Put simply, the war against Ukraine is now the main driver of Russia's economic growth" Foucart said... Other areas of Russia's economy are hurting as the war drags on. Moscow is slammed with a severe labor shortage, thanks to young professionals fleeing the country or being pulled into the conflict. The nation is now short around 5 million workers, according to one estimate, which is causing wages to soar. Inflation is high at 7.4% — nearly double the 4% target of its...

The British government said on Tuesday it would commit its largest-ever tranche of military aid to Ukraine as part of a package worth £500 million ($622 million). The assistance will include further deliveries of Storm Shadow air-launched, precision-guided missiles, as well as vessels and vehicles. The Paveway IV—the latest in the Paveway series of bombs—converts unguided munitions, also known as "dumb bombs," into precision-guided weapons. They can use laser guidance or satellites to find their way to a target. "The Paveway IV will enable Ukraine to strike back" at Russian forces and target high-value assets such as command centers and...

Ukraine's air force has previously said Russia has used the Tu-22M3 aircraft to fire Kh-22 cruise missiles at Ukrainian territory. The HUR said the bomber that was downed "carried out a missile attack against Ukraine on the night of April 19." The aircraft was shot down "as a result of a [HUR] special operation in cooperation with the Air Force," it said, adding that it was struck at a distance of about 300 kilometers from Ukraine. The HUR added: "It should be noted that this is the first successful destruction of a strategic bomber in the air during a combat...

Ukraine's Main Directorate of Intelligence (HUR) has released video of its claimed sabotage operation against a Russian missile corvette on Sunday in the Baltic Sea exclave of Kaliningrad, which the intelligence service said had "disabled" the vessel. The footage purportedly showed a fire being set somewhere inside the Serpukhov Buyan-M class corvette, which is part of the Baltic Fleet and can be armed with either Kalibr or Oniks cruise missiles. The video also showed what were claimed to be blueprints of the vessel, presumably used by HUR operatives to plan the attack. The claimed HUR attack took place while the...

Russia has used a powerful thermobaric weapon, the ODAB-1500 bomb, for the first time in the conflict, hitting the village of Velyka Pysarivka in the Sumy region, reports the German tabloid Bild. The explosion of the ODAB-1500 bomb is reported to have created a smoke cloud reaching a height of one kilometer. This Soviet-era thermobaric device releases a flammable liquid in aerosol form approximately ten meters from the target before ignition, resulting in a devastating blast. In previous attacks within Ukraine, Russian forces had used smaller variants of the ODAB, ranging from 170 to 500 kilograms. The deployment of the...

Afire broke out on the Russian missile ship Serpukhov in the Kaliningrad region, causing significant damage, according to RBC-Ukraine source within special services. The source says the fire engulfed the Serpukhov on April 7. It is a small missile ship of Project 21631 Buyan-M (the fifth ship in the series). Since the full-scale war against Ukraine began, the Russians have already lost many ships, including those of the Black Sea Fleet. Recently, the Ukrainian military attacked large landing ships in Crimea, Yamal and Azov. The Ukrainian Navy also confirmed the damage to the Russian medium reconnaissance ship Ivan Khurs. On...

Reuters said Novatek had stopped operations at its Arctic LNG 2 project, which processes gas from the Utrenneye field on West Siberia' Gydan Peninsula, in the latest blow to Russian fuel exports. It comes as Russian exports funding Putin's war have been hampered by repeated drone strikes on oil facilities, blamed on Ukraine. One energy industry expert told Newsweek that state oil giant Rosneft had reduced daily oil processing in March by a fifth. Sanctions have caused a lack of specialist tankers to transport the LNG from Russia through thick sea ice. Six Arc7 tankers were due to be built...

It is widely accepted that the Ukrainian crisis erupted into a military conflict on February 24, 2022, with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the seeds of the hostilities were planted about thirty years earlier by President Clinton and, later, by George W. Bush, both of whom recklessly pushed for NATO’s eastward expansion.

On March 29, 2024, Ukrainian forces relayed via their social media platforms a notable military achievement: the Signum strike drone unit of the 93rd Separate Mechanized Brigade detected and neutralized the very first next-generation Phlox 2S40 self-propelled mortar using a night-operating FPV drone. This self-propelled mortar, representing a major technological advancement for the Russian army, had been deployed on the Ukrainian front as early as October 2023. The action took place near Bakhmut, marking a significant success for the Ukrainian forces in defensive operations....

Warsaw says soldier died of ‘unexplained natural causes’ while Moscow claims to hit Chasiv Yar command center secretively hosting senior NATO officials Before the Ukrainian counteroffensive commenced, the important city of Bakhmut fell to the Russians. I wrote at the time that it seemed the Russians would also aim to take the town of Chasiv Yar but that didn’t happen because the war shifted to the south and the Ukrainian counteroffensive. Meanwhile, a month later, the so-called hero of Bakhmut, Yevgeny Prigozhin and some of his Wagner forces, invaded Russia in what looked like an attempted coup d’etat but also...

Gasoline production in Russia has fallen after a series of strikes by Kyiv on the country's oil refineries, figures show. Rosstat, Russia's Federal State Statistics Service, said that in the week ending March 24, the nation's production of motor petrol fell by approximately 7.4 percent to 754,600 tons compared to the week prior, when production was at 815,300 tons, local media reported. Moscow depends on its oil exports and energy industry, which make up some 30 percent of the country's budget revenues and are crucial for the funding of the war in Ukraine. Kyiv ramped up its attacks on Russian...

MOSCOW/WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Russian investigators said on Thursday they had found proof that gunmen who killed more than 140 people at a concert last week were linked to "Ukrainian nationalists", an assertion immediately dismissed by the United States as baseless propaganda.Russia has said from the outset that it believes Ukraine was linked to the attack, even though Kyiv has denied it and the militant group Islamic State has claimed responsibility.In a statement, Russia's Investigative Committee said for the first time that it had uncovered proof of a Ukrainian connection. While it described the nature of the alleged evidence, it did not...

The mistakes of the Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan wars appear lost on many. Today, we hear stirring calls to arms against Russia from a totally corrupt and dangerous media supporting a rogue American regime. Unfortunately, several establishment Republicans stand in support. Senators Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham are at the forefront of the Republican establishment’s support for confronting Russia. I would include Senators John Cornyn and John Thune in the mix, along with House members like Dan Crenshaw and, certainly, former House member Liz Cheney.Even if the United States were to win such a war on the battlefield, we would...

Ukraine's navy said in a statement published on Tuesday that Kyiv had "successfully destroyed" the Konstantin Olshansky, and the three other vessels it targeted since Saturday. In a later statement, Pletenchuk said the Ivan Khurs reconnaissance ship may have sustained damage. It was one of two of this type of reconnaissance vessel at Russia's disposal ... Ukraine used a home-grown Neptune anti-ship missile to strike the Konstantin Olshansky, which was being "prepared for use against Ukraine," Pletenchuk said. Pletenchuk said the attack on the Konstantin Olshansky landing ship had taken place on Saturday, the same day as the strikes on...

It would be nice to think that all we have to do is get out and vote to rid ourselves of these warmongers. But they control the elections, and they are in their glory. I do not see how we can avoid this war. They are doing everything in their power to prevent RFK from being on the ballot and to destroy Donald Trump, all so they retain their power with their hand puppet, Joe Biden. Before Biden was Vice President, I was at some dinner many years ago and I was not impressed with him back then. In fact,...

NATO begins to crumble Nato fops and neocon wankers have engineered the biggest military debacle since the HMFIC of Tangut called Genghis Khan a plastic man, very much worse than either Little BigHorn or Dunkirk.You saqy you've never heard of Tangut?? That is because Genghis Khan ordered his commanders to remove every trace on the planet of Tangut ever having existed. Scholars finally started finding written documents in caves in the region towards the middle of the last century; prior to that, they had regarded the tale of Tangut as some sort of a fairytale or a cautionary story for...

Enormous infernos ripped through the night sky in the occupied port city of Sevastopol. And as dawn broke this morning, Ukrainian forces announced they had hit two large Russian warships- Yamal and Azov. Both damaged vessels are Ropucha-class landing ships, 370ft long, 4,000 ton behemoths designed for D-Day-style amphibious assaults. Ukraine has attacked this type of ship before - sinking sister ships Tsezar Kunikov and Novocherkassk. Kyiv is reported to have used British Storm Shadow missiles in the strike - 600mph long-range weapons which have proved effective against the Russians. Putin's crony in Crimea, Mikhail Razvozhaev, was forced to admit...

It is not reported whether UMPC control modules will be installed on them. The Russians began mass production of three-ton FAB-3000 aerial bombs . This was reported to the Russian Ministry of Defense following the results of Minister Sergei Shoigu’s trip to the enterprises of the military-industrial complex in the Nizhny Novgorod region. “Sergei Shoigu was informed that mass production of FAB-3000 has been organized at the enterprise since February of this year,” the Russian department said in a statement.

Russia fired 31 ballistic and cruise missiles at Kyiv before dawn Thursday in the first attack on the Ukrainian capital in 44 days, officials said. Air defenses shot down all the incoming missiles, though 13 people including a child were injured by falling wreckage, they said. Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched two ballistic missiles and 29 cruise missiles against the capital. Kyiv has better air defenses than most regions of the large country. The missile interception rate is frequently high, rendering Russian attacks on the capital significantly less successful than during the early days of the war. Even so,...

More than two years after the whole-scale invasion of Ukraine, is Russia still a near-peer threat to the United States? What are the capabilities of the Russian military after 24 months of heavy fighting against a determined Ukrainian military equipped with Western weapon systems? How soon can the Russian armed forces replenish the devastating losses they have been taking in the fighting? These are just some of the questions the U.S. Intelligence Community analyzes in its latest annual threat assessment. Released every year in early spring, the annual threat assessment delves into the most acute threats to U.S. national security...