Strana, one of the top online newspapers in Ukraine, which is banned in Russia since 2022, reported on Friday that Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky is planning to dismiss Defense Minister Rustem Umerov and the powerful military intelligence chief Gen. Kirill Budanov from their posts as part of his continuing purge of the military establishment in Kiev.

But implementing the new ban on Russia-linked churches could get messy.

Economists are slashing growth forecasts for Ukraine as companies struggle to survive

Academic survey shows growing, if reluctant, Ukrainian support for ceasefire, negotiations and territorial concessions to end the war

The Pokrovsk front’s collapse was not sudden, and it is not yet complete, but it has been continuous and incremental since the fall of Avdiivka on February 17, when the Russian armed forces gained the initiative in the war in Ukraine. According to a detailed report by Ukrainska Pravda, published on September 17, Ukraine’s defence forces have been retreating almost weekly towards Pokrovsk since then, and the fate of the city hangs in the balance.

Contrary to the view of Beltway pundits regarding the sunny side or various alleged successes of Ukraine’s Kursk incursion, the Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskiy’s newest simulacra attack – substituting a fake reality for the real one – has led to yet another predictable catastrophe in the real world of war and politics. Zelenskiy’s gambit had no military logic behind it. Its essence was made up of a propagandistic/PR component and perhaps a terrorist element. It was a reckless, desperate last roll of the dice to overturn the playing board which never had a hope of succeeding. Not one of the goals stated by Ukrainian officials was achieved, nor was the unstated, potential goal of seizng the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant achieved. What was ‘achieved’ was a decimation of some of Ukraine’s best remaining men and materiel`. 

This is the inaugural entry in Tech and Tactics, a series of blog posts conceived by RM editor Ivan Arreguín-Toft on how military technology is being used in the war in Ukraine.

The West is being increasingly confronted with the cold realization that Ukraine cannot win this war. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has set as a threshold for victory, not only the recapture of territory up to his country’s prewar borders, but the reclamation of all of its territory to the 2014 border, including the Donbas and Crimea. There are few among Ukraine’s Western backers who subscribe any longer to that illusion.

The UK will not approve the use of the weapons against targets in Russia without the agreement of the United States, as Zelensky pleads for ‘decisiveness’

U.S. and European officials are struggling to honor their pledge to use Russian assets to aid Ukraine.