War

Scores of Russian men seemingly bought all the available seats on flights out of the country on Wednesday after President Vladimir Putin declared a partial military mobilization for the war in Ukraine. “This is an outrage,” one 27-year old Moscow resident told Soldier of Fortune via a secure messaging system. …

Targeted attacks against pro-Russian officials in Kherson and other occupied areas have gone up in recent weeks, according to sources inside Ukraine.  “This will come into play in occupied Kherson, where collaborators are well known,” said Max, a taxi driver who uses only his given name. “They should beware.” The …

by Susan Katz Keating Leo can’t stop watching the video. The former Russian fighter pilot takes an indoor break from the Reno Air Races – “the smoke is too much; the wildfires” – and offers Soldier of Fortune his theories on why the Russian Air Force is largely missing from …

Russia has likely ordered the withdrawal of its troops from the whole of the Kharkiv Oblast, according to the British Ministry of Defence. In an update on Twitter, the MOD said pockets of Russian resistance remained in Kharkiv, west of the Oskil River, but Ukraine has “recaptured territory at least …

by Owen Thorne I am optimistically but guardedly watching the Ukrainian success in the north. After being on the ground during the fall of Iszyum to the Russians over the summer, I see its liberation as a good step.   Ukraine said on Monday it had recaptured more villages in the …

by Susan Katz Keating Taliban forces in the past few days searched house-to-house in Afghanistan’s Panjshir province, hunting for opposition fighters, men inside the area said. The targeted fighters belong to the National Resistance Front (NRF), which regards the Taliban as a tyrannical “criminal group” that is “fundamentally alien” to Islamic …

Ukrainian forces advanced their counteroffensive in eastern Ukraine Sunday, aiming to take advantage of Russian troop withdrawals from the northeastern Kharkiv region in a retreat that may have changed the course of the nearly seven-month conflict. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Sunday posted a video of Ukrainian soldiers hoisting the …

Journalist Andriy Dubchak barely escaped with his life as he and his son came under cluster-bomb attack from Russian forces in Ukraine. The two were filming a Russian artillery barrage in Donbas, when Dubchak heard “something strange,” unlike the sounds from artillery or other forms of attack. He quickly realized …

by Susan Katz Keating Anti-Taliban fronts are spreading beyond Panjshir and into other areas of Afghanistan, even as the Taliban pledged to shut down the resistance entirely by early September, opposition fighters said. “The front is expanding,” one resistance fighter told Soldier of Fortune from inside Afghanistan. “We will not …

Russian soldiers say they are surrounded in Kharkiv Oblast without food, water, or coms, according to intercepted communications that were published by Ukrainian intelligence. “Everything is fucked,” one soldier tells another in one clip. “We’ve got nothing left now. No water, no food.” He and another soldier talk about a …