Free Republic

Tanks and columns of troops are massing in Moscow ahead of Russia's annual Victory Day - timed this year to coincide with Vladimir Putin's latest presidential inauguration after another election victory denounced as a 'sham'. The despot is set for another six years in the Kremlin after emphatically and unsurprisingly winning March's presidential poll, with his new term formally beginning on Tuesday. -snip- Last year's Victory Day parade featured just a single tank, a Second World War-era T-34.

This is the moment more than 100 Russian troops are believed to have been killed in an ATACMS tactical ballistic missile strike on occupied Luhansk. A military training ground was seen being hit by multiple explosions typical of an ATACMS strike in footage captured by a drone flying high above. The strike targeted a group of 100-plus soldiers who were seen in aerial images, say OSINT analysts in what would be the single largest loss of Russian stories in months. The ATACMS (Army Tactical Missile System) showered the troops with hundreds of M74 APAM mini-bombs which are carried by the...

Russian war fanatics are enraged over an 'almost naked' party staged in Moscow by wealthy showbiz celebrities including Vladimir Putin's 'goddaughter'. The 'debauched' gathering was likened to Sodom and Gomorrah by critics claiming the antics of the wealthy stars insulted those on the frontline in the Kremlin's illegal war against Ukraine. Among the most visible guests was a pregnant and braless Ksenia Sobchak, 40, a TV presenter and 'liberal' Russian presidential candidate in 2018, in a nude-coloured Sorelle outfit. She is known as Putin's goddaughter after he attended her baptism and viewed her late father Anatoly Sobchak as his political...

Ukraine damaged a Russian naval vessel during a sea drone attack at the Russian port of Novorossiysk that was conducted by the Security Service of Ukraine and the Ukrainian Navy on Friday, a Ukrainian intelligence source said. “As a result of the attack, the Olenegorsky Gornyak received a serious breach and currently cannot conduct its combat missions,” the source told Reuters.

Ukraine is bracing for a grisly Russian offensive in the Donbas. Moscow has concentrated hundreds of thousands of troops in the country’s east, using brute-force tactics and human waves in a bid to chip away at the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ defenses. Amid a recent surge in fighting, many military analysts believe the long-awaited Russian offensive is already underway and is expected to accelerate as the first anniversary of the invasion approaches. “Something is brewing in the east,” said Jonatan Vseviov, secretary-general of the Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. “More and more Russian soldiers are arriving on the front,” he said....

A slide in Russian revenue from oil and gas clashed against the Kremlin ramping up spending on its nearly year-long war against Ukraine, resulting in a wider budget deficit for the country in January. Oil and gas revenue tumbled 46% in January from the same month a year ago to 426 billion rubles ($5.96 billion), Russia's finance ministry said Monday in a preliminary release. It attributed the decline largely to a drop in prices for its Urals blend — its largest crude oil export — and to a fall in exports for natural gas. Russia sold Urals at an average...

Political technologist and officer of the Russian army, Igor Mangushev, known for appearing on stage last summer holding, according to him, the skull of a slain Ukrainian soldier, received a serious head injury in the Luhansk region under unexplained circumstances.

Explosions have been reported at two airfields in central Russia, hundreds of kilometers to the east of the combat zone in Ukraine. The incidents came as Russia has carried out a massive campaign of air strikes inside Ukraine targeting the country’s power grid and other civilian infrastructure. At least one large explosion occurred at a Russian military air base in the Saratov region, about 600 kilometers east of Ukraine, while another blast was reported by Russian state media at an airfield outside Ryazan, southeast of Moscow. Social-media posts by residents in the cities of Engels and Saratov seemed to show...

A large explosion was reported to have taken place during the morning of December 5, 2022, at Engels-2, an air base used by Russia for deploying strategic bombers to perform cruise missile attacks on Ukraine. Around the same time, an explosion happened at Dyagilevo, another strategic bomber base in Ryazan region. Reports published to Russian social media channels claim the explosion at Engels was a drone attack and at least two aircraft were damaged. Telegram channel “Mobilizatsiya. Volgogradskaya Oblast,” which reports local news, posted a short video which appears to have been filmed by a CCTV camera. A large explosion...

Vladimir Putin faced severe embarrassment when Ukrainian soldiers liberated the key eastern city of Lyman, raising the blue and yellow national flag above its entrance sign, hours after Russia’s president announced that the area was Moscow’s “for ever”. Ukraine’s armed forces said they had entirely surrounded the city, trapping thousands of Russian soldiers inside. The governor of Luhansk province, Serhiy Haidai, said the besieged troops had begged on Friday to be allowed to leave Lyman. Their commanders refused, he claimed. With no way out, the Russians could either surrender, try to escape or die together, Haidai said. An attempt by...

Nearly five months into its senseless war against Ukraine, Russia has concocted a wild new explanation for why the Kremlin’s plans for a quick takeover fell apart so spectacularly—because Ukrainian troops were turned into superhuman killing machines during “secret experiments” in American-run biolabs, of course. Never mind the myriad reports of Russian troops refusing to fight by the thousands, sabotaging their own shoddy equipment and even deliberately wounding themselves to abandon the war, Russian lawmakers claim the real setback for Moscow was “drugged up” Ukrainian soldiers. That claim was made Monday by two Russian lawmakers heading up a commission to...

The EU's top diplomat has issued a statement expressing sympathy ahead of the day nearly eight years ago that local separatists working with a missile system deployed by Russian intelligence officials are accused of having shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine. -snip- Russian suspect Oleg Pulatov, a former officer of the Russian Army, in 2014 headed a unit of the Main Intelligence Directorate in a region of eastern Ukraine controlled by Russia-backed separatists. Pulatov was involved in the transport and protection of a Buk antiaircraft missile system that investigators say fired the missile that brought down the...

The Kremlin on Thursday said Finland’s push to join NATO is a direct threat to Russia as well as the stability of the European continent and vowed to respond accordingly. "Finland’s entry into NATO will become a threat to Russia," Dmitry Peskov, press secretary to Russian President Vladimir Putin, told Russian media outlets."The next expansion of NATO does not make our continent more stable and secure." "Of course, all this will become elements for a special analysis and development of the necessary measures in order to balance the situation and ensure our security," he added. The comments came after Finnish...