Free Republic

Watch the moment a strike hits the Russian oil depot. THIS is the moment a Russian oil depot exploded in a huge fireball in yet another humiliating blow to Putin. Plumes of black smoke could be seen rising into the sky in Vyborg after the explosion at the oil refinery near the Nato border with Finland. Dramatic footage showed the oil depot engulfed in a raging inferno. Leningrad regional governor Alexander Drozdenko denied a Ukrainian kamikaze drone had hit the facility. He also denied there was a fire and claimed "there was a bang due to the use of pyrotechnics"....

Over two years on from the invasion of Ukraine, Russia is the most sanctioned nation in the world. And yet the country’s economy is set to grow faster than any G7 democracy this year. How is this possible? Back in 2022, Boris Johnson vowed to ‘squeeze Russia from the global economy piece by piece, day by day and week by week’. President Joe Biden promised that sanctions would ‘impose a severe cost on the Russian economy, both immediately and over time’. Yet these dire warnings never materialised: Russia’s economy has proved resilient in the face of sanctions. Moscow’s flexibility in...

Russia's First Channel openly urges Russian servicemen "not to wait for the drone" but to commit suicide themselves! "The significance of life is exaggerated," the propagandist argues. And he says that killing yourself on the battlefield is not suicide, but sacrifice.

A video posted Monday on social media shows the Ukrainian military destroying 10 Russian military vehicles in a single strike. The video was posted by the 63rd Separate Mechanized Brigade on Telegram. Reportedly, five Russian BMP-1s, an amphibious infantry fighting vehicle, along with five tanks, were burned in the strike. The 63rd Brigade said that at least one vehicle was a Russian T-90M battle tank. The Ukrainian defense effort reportedly occurred near Terni in the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine. The 63rd Brigade said it destroyed the vehicles "with the help of artillery and unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) drops."

American officials now estimate that Russian President Vladimir Putin likely did not order the assassination of Alexei Navalny, one of his most significant political rivals. Navalny died approximately two months ago in prison, with his body with held from his family for some time after his death. According to the Wall Street Journal,a number of American agencies reviewed the report and certified it. It was based on both classified intelligence and publicly available facts....

Vladimir Putin’s forces have made further gains in at least three locations along the eastern front in Ukraine – including for the first time in several months an advance in the northern Kharkiv region – highlighting again Kyiv’s need for ammunition and weapons from the United States and other allies. Russia’s tactical advances are now daily and reflect the new tempo on the battlefield since the fall of the industrial town of Avdiivka in February. The gains are generally modest -– from a few hundred meters of territory to perhaps a kilometer at most – but they are usually taking...

Ukraine for the first time has begun using long-range ballistic missiles provided secretly by the United States, bombing a Russian military airfield in Crimea last week and Russian forces in another occupied area overnight, American officials said Wednesday.