by David Nelson, The War HorseI woke up early on the morning of Dec. 6, 1972, to pack and say tearful goodbyes to my wife, Martie, and our one-year-old daughter, Amy. We’d decided ahead of time that my father-in-law “Pop” Lowry would drive me from Temple, Texas, to Love Field in Dallas, to begin my …

A Chinese student who came to the United States to study music has been charged with stalking in connection with threatening and stalking another student who posted fliers in support of democracy in China. Wu Xiaolei, 25, a Chinese citizen and a student at the Berklee College of Music, was arrested and charged Wednesday, according …

The Azov Battalion became widely known for resisting Russian forces in Mariupol in Ukraine. Formed by volunteers to protect the Donbas from Russian invaders, it has evolved into an elite unit, with specialists drawn from Ukraine’s special forces. Here’s a look into who its members are and what they do. Video by British Armed Forces …

by Nikolay Shevchenko It was late evening when a cash truck pulled up in front of a fancy department store on Mozhayskoye Highway in Moscow. Leaving two partners behind in the truck, the third guard stepped over the store’s threshold to collect the cash that had piled up there throughout the day. Little did he …

Western countries have been sending the latest self-propelled artillery to Ukraine, allowing the country’s forces to adopt “shoot and scoot” tactics. One such weapon is the German PzH 2000, which has a maximum off-road speed of 28 miles an hour and fires accurate rapid shots. This allows personnel to fire and leave the area before …

by Capt. Larry Bailey, USN (Ret) As recounted in the average personal memoir, war is most frequently depicted in combinations of heroic actions, cowardly misdeeds, triumphs of the human spirit, and the like. It ain’t always so, however; fact is, much of war is not dramatic – it’s just sad, as the following personal account …

Two provinces in Afghanistan rang with the cries of people being viciously beaten on Wednesday by the Taliban, in the latest spectacle of public brutality in Afghanistan. Taliban authorities in southern Afghanistan publicly flogged 27 people, including two women, for allegedly committing theft, adultery, and other crimes. The spectacles were met with outrage from those …

by Harry Ramsbottom In late October 2005, my team and I had been dropped off in a terrible little place on the Baghdad-to- Amman highway called Ar Rutbah, to coordinate supply convoys coming out of Jordan with the Marines who controlled this sector. The convoys mostly carried fuel and supplies to Al Asad, and were …

Two provinces in Afghanistan rang with the cries of people being viciously beaten on Wednesday by the Taliban, in the latest spectacle of public brutality in Afghanistan. Taliban authorities in southern Afghanistan publicly flogged 27 people, including two women, for allegedly committing theft, adultery, and other crimes. The spectacles were met with outrage from those …

The “Black Hornet” miniature drones that were used by British troops in Afghanistan are headed for Ukraine. The move was announced as part of a military aid package from the United Kingdom and Norway that includes hundreds of tiny drones called Black Hornets. This is what the dragonfly-sized reconnaissance devices can do. The Black Hornet system …

Russian recruits are being told to use women’s menstrual products to treat bullet wounds amid claims that they are being asked to provide much of their own gear and equipment. A clip released on social media seemingly shows Russian recruits being told to buy most of their own gear, with the trainer telling them that …

Over the summer, he went on vacation to Israel, and appeared in social media posts where his wife joked with friends about having to go on diets when the couple returned home. Now, if convicted, home to New Hampshire resident Alexey Brayman could be a prison cell, after he was charged in a scheme to …

by Jose Campos Drug cartels are using migrants as a commodity in order to fund their illicit enterprises, a Mexican police chief said. The cartels hold migrants for ransom, or trade them to human smugglers. “Organized criminal gangs are financing their operations through migrant trafficking,” Chihuahua state police Chief Gilberto Loya said at a press …

by Jose Campos Drug cartels are using migrants as a commodity in order to fund their illicit enterprises, a Mexican police chief said. The cartels hold migrants for ransom, or trade them to human smugglers. “Organized criminal gangs are financing their operations through migrant trafficking,” Chihuahua state police Chief Gilberto Loya said at a press …

Anna Chapman was a successful realtor who in 2009 mingled with ease among New York society. She was intelligent, beautiful, and lively – and perhaps overly confident. She apparently did not know that the Feds were on to her, and that she was being investigated for who she really was: Anna Vasilyevna Kushchenko, Russian spy. …

By Jolie McCullough, The Texas Tribune On May 12, convicted murderer Gonzalo Lopez was on a prison transport bus in Central Texas when he managed to escape his handcuffs, cut into the driver’s compartment and stab the driver with a makeshift weapon. He stole the officer’s gun, wrestled him outside and hijacked the bus, driving …

By Jolie McCullough, The Texas Tribune On May 12, convicted murderer Gonzalo Lopez was on a prison transport bus in Central Texas when he managed to escape his handcuffs, cut into the driver’s compartment and stab the driver with a makeshift weapon. He stole the officer’s gun, wrestled him outside and hijacked the bus, driving …

Russia’s most advanced anti-tank mine, the PKTM-1R is a high-explosive, top attack mine. The previously unseen munition has begun to appear in Ukraine. The mine was publicly revealed by its manufacturer at the end of 2021. The system works by detecting a target using sound and vibrations. The mine is explained, above The PKTM-1R’s accoustic …

A Libyan intelligence operative suspected of making the bomb that blew up a U.S. passenger jet over Scotland in 1988 has been arrested by the FBI and is being extradited to the United States to stand trial, officials said on Sunday. The announcement comes within days of the high profile prisoner swap between Russia and the …

Newly freed prisoner Viktor Bout, an arms dealer known as “the Merchant of Death,” said he wishes he could volunteer to help Russia’s efforts in Ukraine, and that he approves of the war. “I fully support the special military operation,” Bout said, adding that Russia should have sent its troops into Donbas in 2014. “If I could, …

by Carl Hancocks For the past four years, the city of Agadez has been what could barely pass as home for a woman without a name. Nigerian, she fends for herself as a sex-worker, but that was not how she arrived in this place. Her story is that of a migrant, initially trying to make …

by Harry Ramsbottom In my three wars I witnessed some sad things, but one of the saddest I have seen was the moral disintegration of a U.S. Army company at Al, Iraq in September 2005. We were the corps security brigade. Our mission was straightforward and massive: patrol and secure the MSR’s – all of …

In a prisoner exchange between Russia and the United States, convicted arms dealer Viktor Bout was swapped on Thursday in exchange for American basketball player Brittney Griner. Bout was in the news last month again after Moscow announced that talks wee underway for the U.S. to trade him for imprisoned American basketball player Brittney Griner. …

by Heath Hansen It was 0530 hours the morning our first sergeant kicked open the door to our tent, and told us to “get the fuck outside and form it up!” Late the previous night, we returned to base from a 10-day mission. I could see through a small rip in the tent that the …

by Serhiy Andrushko Schemes / RFE-RL “They sat me down in a chair, chained me with handcuffs to the heating pipe, and began to torture me.” A Ukrainian man, Serhiy Mak, says he was locked in the cellar of an office building for 25 days in Kherson, southern Ukraine, where he was tortured by a Russian …

A Border Patrol agent in Texas died early on Wednesday after an accident while tracking people who crossed from Mexico into the U.S., according to a report in the Washington Examiner. The accident involved the agent’s ATV, a spokesman for Customs and Border Protection told reporter Anna Giaritelli. The incident occurred around 1 a.m. on Dec. 7. “A …

by Greg Chabot Shawn Ryan the founder/CEO of Vigilance Elite is a former US Navy SEAL and contractor for the CIA. He enlisted in the United States Navy at the age of 18 with the goal of becoming a Navy SEAL. Upon his successful completion of BUDS, Shawn served with SEAL Teams 2 and 8 deploying …

It is an annual toast to peace. American and Japanese representatives extended the offering Dec. 6 at the USS Arizona Memorial in Hawaii, gently pouring bourbon whiskey from a World War II-era canteen into the hallowed waters below. Please leave this field emptySubscribe to the Soldier of Fortune Newsletter Enter your email below to receive …

by Jeffrey D. Simon Though largely forgotten today, one of the most creative and destructive terrorist groups in the United States was the Galleanists, a fiery band of Italian anarchists active during the early 1900s. Luigi Galleani, a gifted writer and charismatic speaker, tapped into widespread disappointment among Italian immigrants concerning their lives in America. …

by Nikolay Shevchenko Back in the USSR, the KGB wrote a manual describing what a foreign spy would look like. Some of the characteristics were intriguing… In the midst of the Cold War, security services on both sides of the Iron Curtain had to stay vigilant and look out for spies planted by the enemy. …

by Aleksander Palikot / RFE-RL KHERSON, Ukraine — For Vladyslav Nedostup, the eight-month occupation of his native city has receded swiftly into the past since the last Russian soldier escaped Kherson on a speedboat in early November, and already seems distant and unreal. But that chunk of time has left him irrevocably changed: Still a chubby, …

by Jack Hawkins Released in Los Angeles in 1978, The Deer Hunter was already becoming a legendary film by the time it hit “flyover country” a few months later. I was between girlfriends, a gung-ho “seventies copper” usually “drunk on adrenaline” from the endless barfight calls (or still depressed over the fall of Saigon only …

By Allison P. Erickson, The Texas Tribune DEL RIO, TEXAS — Two brothers stand across from each other at the Val Verde Correctional Facility in this border city, speaking reverently through the fixed telephones. They are separated by the visiting room’s thick glass partition, too energized to sit. One brother, Abdul Wasi Safi, wears an …

by Susan Katz Keating Will former U.S. intelligence contractor Edward Snowden soon be dragooned to take up arms against Ukraine, now that he swore allegiance to Russia? An American citizen by birth, Snowden fled the United States in 2013 after he leaked secret government files from the National Security Agency. He took refuge in Russia, …

“There’s a certain sound…” The song stuck with him for years afterwards. He was being marched to his execution in the jungles of Vietnam, and had been ordered to carry a radio to pick up “Radio Hanoi,” but he secretly dialed in to a station that picked up American music. It came through without a …

by Greg Walker Sheriff Shane Nelson of Deschutes County, Oregon, pulls no punches when discussing the state’s Measure 114. The measure, narrowly approved last month by voters, is known as the Changes to Firearm Ownership and Purchase Requirements Initiative. The measure is so restrictive that Second Amendment watchdogs have termed it the most extreme gun control …

by Robert Ramsour The FP-45 was an unknown and surreptitious pistol developed in WWII to help our captured allies regain control of their country, or province. In order to conceal its real function as a firearm, our government represented this pistol as a flare projector. It was officially called the FP-45. A million of these …

One person was injured in an explosion at the Ukrainian Embassy in Spain, officials in Kyiv said. The explosion was caused by a letter bomb. “The Embassy of Ukraine in Spain received an envelope,” embassy official Oleg Nykolenko wrote Wednesday on Facebook. “During the inspection, the envelope exploded in the hands of the commandant. The …

It’s one of the most recognizable vehicles of modern war: the unarmored, modified, tricked out Toyota “technical” pickup truck. The vehicle has solidified its place amid various conflicts across the Middle East, North Africa, and beyond. The brand became prominent at war in 2014, when Daesh propaganda videos included vast columns of armed Toyota Hilux …

Ukrainian artillery crews make regular use of the Western-supplied M777 howitzer, and say it has had a major impact against Russian forces. “One time we hit 300 men,” one soldier said. Crews operating one in a muddy field in the Donetsk region say the key to its success is its targeting precision. Troops with M777 …

An outlawed alliance of militant groups waging terrorism in Pakistan declared Monday that it has ordered fighters to resume nationwide attacks, ending an already shaky “unilateral cease-fire” with the government. The Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), also known as the Pakistani Taliban, said the decision to unleash the violence was taken in retaliation to “sustained military operations” …

Look closely. You may be able to see them hidden in the grass. DoD video by Army SSG Edwin Pierce

Russia is firing old cruise missiles stripped of their nuclear warheads at Ukrainian targets because Vladimir Putin’s stocks are so depleted, the British Ministry of Defence (MOD) has suggested. An intelligence update from the MOD on Saturday said the desperate improvisation by the Russian President’s struggling forces are “unlikely to achieve reliable effects.” Please leave this field …

Can investigators conclusively prove who fired a missile? Colonel (Ret.) Mark Cancian from the Center for Strategic and International Studies explains how to tell whose missile has caused a fatal strike. VIdeo from British Forces Net. Please leave this field emptySubscribe to the Soldier of Fortune Newsletter Enter your email below to receive exclusive content …

The U.S. has deported to England an al-Qaida member who pleaded guilty to trying to start a terrorist training camp in Oregon. The man was a disciple of convicted terrorist Abu Hamza, who is serving a life sentence in the U.S. Haroon Rashid Aswat, 48, in 2015 pleaded guilty to attempting to start a terrorist …

Belarusian Foreign Minister Vladimir Makei has died suddenly, ahead of a meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, according to the Belarusian news agency, Belta. “Foreign Minister Vladimir Makei has passed away suddenly,” Belta wrote without giving further information. The report cited Anatoly Glaz, spokesman for the country’s Foreign Ministry. Please leave this field emptySubscribe …

by Mike Eckel, RFE/RL A man wearing military fatigues, a balaclava, and a special forces insignia showed up at Correctional Colony No. 29 in the Russian coal-mining region of Kemerovo on October 3. During that evening’s inspection, with several hundred inmates lined up in one of the prison’s outdoor yards, the unnamed man made a …

By Heath Hansen We entered the base between the HESCO barriers covered in concertina razor-wire, unprepared for a betrayal from one of our supposed allies. On November 9, 2005, as the convoy snaked its way into the safety of the base walls, I could see Afghan National Army (ANA) soldiers watching us from the perimeter. …

by Friedrich Seiltgen Looking for the perfect gift for the firearms enthusiast in your life? Let Soldier of Fortune help out! Here are some gifts for the gun owner to fit every budget. MULTITASKER® TOOLS Shane Keng at Multitasker tools is producing must have products for firearms owners. Their line of compact multi-functional tools will …

by Babatim / Free Range International  I couldn’t take being out of the game anymore, so off I went to touch the elephant. I had just cracked open the first beer of the afternoon when I heard the rockets coming in. Wise now to the ways of war I stayed in my lawn chair on …