Author: Reporter

Medical volunteers in Ukraine set up specialty clinics to treat residents near the frontlines

In a cramped municipal building in this former front-line village, its front window boarded up with plywood, a team of volunteer specialist doctors have set up a mobile clinic. For the residents, it is a lifeline. Even before Russia’s war, access to specialist medical help was available only to those who could get to the city, but the village near the eastern Ukrainian city of Sloviansk did have a primary care doctor. Now, with the village health clinic damaged by the war, its residents have been left with little access to health care, and in particular to specialist care....

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How Soviet-era attack helicopters allow Ukraine’s military to strike Russia from a distance

Skimming the treetops, three Soviet-era attack helicopters bank and swoop down on a field after an early-morning mission to the front lines in the fight against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Each day, they might fly three or four sorties, says the commander, whose two-crew Mi-24 helicopter, built about 40 years ago, is older than he is. “We are carrying out combat tasks to destroy enemy vehicles, enemy personnel, we are working with pitch-up attacks from a distance from where the enemy can’t get us with their air defense system,” said the commander, who spoke on condition of anonymity for...

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Inflatable tanks: Russia’s brutal invasion behind surge in demand for fake armaments as decoys

The war in Ukraine has created a surge in demand for weapons and, apparently, also for inflatable fake armaments that can be deployed as decoys. A Czech company, Inflatech, is producing more than 30 different inflatable military decoys ranging from tanks and armored vehicles to aircraft and howitzers. They also offer decoy versions of U.S.-made HIMARS rocket systems, that were among the billions of dollars in Western military aid that has helped Ukraine’s war effort since Russia launched its unprovoked invasion just over a year ago. Inflatech Chief Executive Vojtech Fresser would not say if his decoys are used...

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Munitions, radar, and new weapons: Ukraine to receive another $2.6 billion in military aid from United States

The U.S. will send Ukraine about $500 million in ammunition and equipment and spend more than $2 billion to buy an array of munitions, radar, and new weapons to help Kyiv counter drones in the coming months, the Pentagon said in April, as Ukrainian troops gear up for a spring offensive against Russian forces. The aid to be taken from military stockpiles so it can be in the war zone quickly includes “ammunition for U.S.-provided HIMARS, air defense interceptors, and artillery rounds that Ukraine is using to defend itself,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement. HIMARS...

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Not a deadbeat nation: President Biden blasts harmful notions by GOP lawmakers amid debt limit standoff

President Joe Biden lambasted Republicans’ emerging trade-off plans to raise the nation’s debt limit only in exchange for spending cuts and other policy concessions on April 19, declaring that GOP lawmakers are threatening a historic default on U.S. obligations “unless I agree to all these wacko notions they have.” His remarks in a union hall speech came as House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who had for months struggled to unite Republicans around a unified budget proposal, released a sweeping spending-restraint plan to offer to the White House along with lifting the debt limit by $1.5 trillion. But it is far...

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Commission explores why growing number of veterans have been imprisoned since leaving military service

Two former Iraq and Afghanistan War-era defense secretaries are recommending that the government consider new ways to ensure that military service is taken into account when courts prosecute former service members. The Veterans Justice Commission, led by onetime Pentagon chiefs Chuck Hagel and Leon Panetta, offered that guidance after reports that a concerning number of veterans have been convicted of crimes since leaving military service. The commission was tasked with examining the extent to which veterans are getting in trouble with the law, whether they are receiving appropriate transitional assistance when they no longer are in the armed services...

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