Free Republic

Vladimir Putin does have early stage Parkinson's disease and pancreatic cancer, leaked spy documents have alleged in the latest unverified claim about the tyrant's ill health. The Russian leader has been plagued with rumours about his illnesses for months and he has regularly appeared twitching and unsteady in public, sparking hope in Ukraine and the West the despot could soon relinquish power. Claims have been circulating among opposition figures, fuelled by his unexplained absences and his shaky public appearances, that he is battling serious health problems but they have always been rubbished by the Kremlin. -snip- 'Putin is regularly stuffed...

Asenior member of the state Duma, Russia's parliament, said that any U.S. states that want to break away from the country and instead join the Russian Federation will be considered. The comments come only a week after Russia declared that four regions of Ukraine had become Russian territory, following referendums that were widely criticized by Ukrainian and Western officials as being sham. These were Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine and Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in the south. The votes supported the regions changing from Ukrainian to Russian territory. State Duma deputy Alexander Tolmachev was responding to an online poll that...

The U.S. Defense Department believes that as many as 80,000 Russian troops have been killed or wounded since the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine less than six months ago, a top Pentagon official told reporters today... The United States has now provided nearly $10 billion in military aid to Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion, nearly twice Kyiv’s military budget in 2021... The Pentagon initially estimated that Russia deployed about 120 battalion tactical groups, the Kremlin’s go-to combined arms unit, for the war—numbering around 100,000 troops. Experts said the new casualty estimate is likely to include Russian paramilitary and volunteer forces,...

Putin's blundering forces have shot down their own helicopter in Ukraine after it mistakenly started firing at its own troops. The Ka-52 'Alligator' helicopter, which costs an estimated £12million, was gunned down in Kherson, Ukraine's General Staff revealed. The military bosses joked it was a 'gesture of goodwill' from the invading forces. They reported that three of the helicopters were flown over the occupied region and started to shoot at the Russian troops stationed below. They returned fire and shot down one of the choppers in what is just the latest embarrassing blow for Putin's men. Video of the wreck...