More than 500,000 Russian troops have been killed in Ukraine since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, according to a senior British defense official.

Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Knighton, the UK’s Chief of the Defense Staff, said the deaths form part of an estimated 1.5 million Russian casualties during the war.

Britain’s assessment broadly aligns with casualty figures released by Ukraine’s military. Russian officials did not immediately comment.

Despite its larger military, Moscow has struggled to achieve major battlefield gains. Western officials and analysts say the pace of Russia’s advances has slowed markedly this year.

Knighton also said Russia has suffered “enormous” equipment losses, including more than 10,000 armored and protected vehicles, nearly 3,000 air defense and artillery systems, and more than 370 aircraft and helicopters.

He did not provide an assessment of Ukraine’s losses.

Neither Moscow nor Kyiv regularly publishes updates on battlefield casualties.

Russian drones target Kyiv gas stations, aiming to rattle civilians

Meanwhile, Russian drones struck roadside gas stations in Kyiv for a second consecutive day on Friday, widening an aerial campaign that Ukrainian officials say is intended to unsettle civilians.

The strikes hit two Ukrnafta gas stations. The prosecutor’s office said two people were killed and six others were wounded at one of the sites.

Russian attacks on urban gas stations have increased in recent months, particularly in eastern and southern regions close to the front line. Ukrainian officials describe them as part of a broader effort to disrupt daily life and erode public morale, alongside strikes on food distribution hubs that have at times left supermarket shelves in the capital bare.

“Russia is systematically attacking places where it knows people will be spending their time going about their daily lives, seeking to maximize casualties, spread fear, and put pressure on Ukrainian society,” Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said on X late Thursday.

Authorities have urged residents not to linger near gas stations and other exposed infrastructure during air raid alerts.

Ukraine is urgently trying to improve its air defenses as Russia’s invasion stretches into its fifth year, and on Thursday won pledges of more support from Canada.

Russian shopping mall strikes kill 5 in central Ukraine

Pavlohrad, a city in central Ukraine, observed an official day of mourning Friday for five residents killed near shopping malls in broad daylight by Russian drones the previous day.

The attack also wounded 67 people, Sybiha said on X.

RELATED: Donald Trump Lands in Ireland for a Two-Day Trip

In the southern city of Zaporizhzhia, a 32-year-old woman and her 10-year-old son were wounded in an overnight Russian drone attack, Ukraine’s State Emergency Service said.

The drones struck a nine-story apartment block and a shopping mall, it said.

Efforts to put out the blazes were slowed by the constant threat of repeat strikes, forcing firefighters to stop working and take shelter, it added.

In Dnipro, a city in central Ukraine, a Russian daylight attack Friday wounded 12 people, according to local officials.

Russia says it stopped 777 Ukrainian drones

Ukraine, meanwhile, has extended its own long-range drone campaign deep into Russia, straining air defenses across its bigger neighbor’s vast territory.

On Thursday, its military reported hitting a refinery more than 1,800 miles away in Siberia as Kyiv tries to hurt Russia’s vital oil sector. Its strikes have caused fuel shortages in Russia, one of the world’s biggest energy producers.

Russia’s oil product exports hit record lows in August, and Moscow is importing fuel from South Korea and India, the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air said in a report.

“Ukrainian strikes on Russia’s refining capacity have turned tables on the world’s once largest oil product exporter to see them start importing fuels, with imports surging to a record 189,600 tons in August — more than seven times the previous monthly high,” the Finland-registered nonprofit said Thursday.

Ukraine launched a major barrage overnight from Thursday to Friday, with the Russian Defense Ministry saying air defenses intercepted 777 Ukrainian drones over 16 Russian regions, as well as occupied Crimea and the waters of the Azov and the Caspian seas.

Two people were killed and three others wounded overnight in a Ukrainian drone attack on the Tula region south of Moscow, local officials said Friday.

A Ukrainian drone strike during the night started a fire at the Saratov oil refinery in southwestern Russia, Russian independent online outlet Astra said Friday. Kyiv has repeatedly targeted that refinery, which was last hit in early August.

Major online retailer Ozon said its logistics facility in the same city was struck and set ablaze by a Ukrainian drone, though no casualties were reported.

Ozon is a competitor to Wildberries, whose facilities Ukraine has also targeted.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said long-range strikes overnight hit eight Russian regions, including a business and an oil industry facility in the Saratov region.

The attacks were “aimed at reducing Russia’s capacity to wage war,” he said on X Friday.

Few political offers could sound more audacious. President Trump this week told Americans that if they keep Republicans in control of both chambers of Congress at November’s midterm elections, every adult citizen would receive $5,000 (£3,700). Even by Trump’s standards, the proposal resembles an extraordinary form of electoral inducement — and, in my view, betrays a growing sense of alarm.

The most likely explanation is that Trump has begun heeding advisers inside the White House who have long warned that Republicans could lose both the House of Representatives and the Senate.

For much of the year, he appeared to brush aside those fears. Trump assured aides that once he took to the campaign trail, his presence would energise Republican voters and steady the party’s fortunes.

But the campaign is now under way, and the outlook for Republicans has not improved. Their prospects for November appear to be deteriorating week by week. Democrats were already favoured to retake the House, where the Republican majority is narrow and the president’s party has historically struggled in midterm contests.

The major shift over the summer, however, has been the Senate. It remains a more difficult target for Democrats, yet leading Republican strategists now acknowledge that control of the chamber is at stake. The prospect of Democrats holding both houses of Congress is prompting serious anxiety across senior MAGA ranks.

They understand what that result would mean: Trump would enter his final two years in office as a textbook lame-duck president. Congress would impose far tougher scrutiny on virtually every major initiative, from military action to federal spending — areas in which he has so far faced limited oversight.

House and Senate committees with substantial investigative authority could open a string of inquiries into Trump, his relatives and his close associates, including questions over how far they may have benefited financially during his presidency.

Such investigations could expose scandals involving figures in Trump’s orbit, damage reputations and force resignations — a grim prospect for the MAGA establishment. Democrats might even seek to impeach him for a third time.

Hence the desperate moves to shore up the Republican vote, with this week’s special rally in Dallas, Texas (where they could lose a Senate seat to the Democrats) to showboat the party’s candidates in marginal seats and, above all, parade that $5,000 bribe. I doubt it’ll work: yes, American voters can be gullible. But not that gullible. For a start, they know there’s no money to pay for it. There are roughly 245million adult citizens in America. So at $5,000 a head the ‘Trump dividend’ (as the President is inevitably calling it) would cost a massive $1.2trillion. Where’s the money coming from?

Vice-President JD Vance, who has emerged as the clear frontrunner to be the Republican presidential candidate in 2028, took to Fox News after the President’s speech to explain. Everything he said was untrue.

Trump’s tariffs are now generating ‘an extraordinary amount of revenue’, he claimed. Lie. So much is coming in that it’s ‘helping us pay down the [national] debt’. Lie. Keep us in power in Congress, he told voters, and ‘you’re going to share in this incredible wealth’. Lie.

Let’s turn to the truth. Tariffs are generating nothing like $1.3trillion. They were expected to bring in around $400billion this year and next. But after court rulings deemed some tariffs to be illegal, necessitating refunds, they’ll be lucky to bring in $200billion a year. Moreover that revenue has already been committed to off-setting some of the cost of Trump’s tax cuts. Much as politicians would like to, even Trump can’t spend the same money twice. After all tariff revenue has been counted, America still runs a federal budget deficit of around $2trillion a year – and rising.

READ MORE: Celebrities With Personal Stories and Connections to 9/11

Contrary to Vance’s absurd claims, there is no tariff money to pay for the ‘Trump dividend’. It’s also a nonsense to depict it as a dividend. Dividends are how companies pass on their profits to shareholders. But the federal government doesn’t make a profit. It’s ‘losing’ $2trillion a year and has to borrow the difference.

Nor, despite what Vance claimed, is Trump paying down the national debt. In fact, it’s rising – fast. It was $36trillion when Trump started his second term and, less than 20 months in, it’s now $40trillion. It’s forecast to rise for the rest of his presidency.

So the only way Trump could finance his cash-for-votes wheeze would be to borrow all $1.2trillion, on top of the $2trillion he’s already planning to borrow this financial year and the $40trillion in outstanding debt America has already accumulated. The bond markets simply wouldn’t wear it – which is why, even in the unlikely event the Republicans hold the House and the Senate, it won’t happen.

After all, we’ve been here before. American voters were promised a $5,000 a head handout in the early days of Trump’s second term – a share in the proceeds of the $2trillion Elon Musk was going to save by taking a chainsaw to federal spending. Of course the savings never materialised on anything like that scale. Neither did the $5,000 pay-back.

Nor is this the first time Trump has promised tariff revenues to voters. Last November he said tariffs would generate enough to send every voter a $2,000 cheque. Of course they didn’t generate anything like that. So the $2,000 promise also bit the dust.

It’s a measure of Trump’s less than passing acquaintance with honesty and facts that, even though he now knows tariffs will bring in a lot less than he thought last November, he nevertheless blithely ups his unfunded bribe from $2,000 to $5,000.

Desperate times, of course, call for desperate measures, even fantasy ones. The two-day rally in Dallas was itself a sign of growing panic in Republican ranks. Unlike British political parties, which insist on inflicting their increasingly dire conferences on us every year, the American parties sensibly limit their conventions to the year they have to pick a presidential candidate, which means only once every four years.

So the Dallas mini-convention was unusual, to say the least. It was called to galvanise the MAGA base and allow Trump to place himself metaphorically at the head of the Republican ticket to lead the November election charge, even though he’s not running himself. It suggests a certain madness has already set in on the Republican Party.

It cannot hope to win in November solely on a high MAGA turnout. It needs independent voters too – and they are haemorrhaging fast. The exodus will only be exacerbated by Trump placing himself front and centre. His desire to make the mid-terms a referendum on his second term is the height of self-serving electoral folly.

There was a time when Trump was the Republicans’ biggest electoral asset. No longer. He is seen to lead an administration mired in corruption, a President who has dragged America into a deeply unpopular war with Iran without congressional or public approval. His approval rating is below 40 per cent. Support for his handling of matters crucial to the cost of living is under 30 per cent.

Republican bosses despair that he would rather ramble in speeches about his White House ballroom and his plans for a triumphal arch in Washington than address grocery prices at the check out counter. As the Republican faithful left Dallas yesterday, a gallon of diesel (the fuel of America’s gigantic road haulage industry) hit $6. A gallon of petrol is already over $4. Inflation is stuck at 3.4 per cent and likely to rise.

These are election-losing statistics. All the more so because voters think Trump’s war has made them worse off. In Dallas Trump admitted there would be no end in sight to the war this side of the mid-terms – which means more economic pain is on its way.

Add in the fact that he’s increasingly perceived by voters to be verging on the doolally – even Fox News cut away from his Dallas speech when he embarked on a long ramble about water – and you have the makings of a Republican recipe for defeat in November. No conceivable bribe is likely to thwart that.

Former Vice President Kamala Harris said Republicans are “cheating” as they pursue election-related changes, arguing that her central focus is helping Democrats prevail in the upcoming midterm elections.

“Midterms, midterms, midterms, full-time occupying my thoughts, my mind and my work,” Harris said.

“We have to win these midterms. These — these folks are cheating. They’re redrawing lines. They’re trying to make it more difficult for people to vote so they won’t vote because they are afraid of the power of the people.”

Harris made the remarks while speaking with former U.S. women’s soccer star Megan Rapinoe on Rapinoe’s podcast, “What Are You Like?” She said she is devoting her time to efforts aimed at returning Democrats to power in Congress and restoring what she described as needed balance in Washington.

Rapinoe asked Harris what had drawn her back into public and political life.

“I don’t know how to live and not serve. I honestly don’t. I just don’t,” Harris said. “It’s something I’ve come to terms with. I don’t know how to, I just don’t know a life without figuring out how I can help move the needle.”

The former vice president said she hoped to bring back “some sense of sanity” and help restore a functioning government.

Responding to Harris’ comments, Republican National Committee election integrity Communications Director Ally Triolo criticized the former vice president in a statement to Fox News Digital. “If Kamala Harris is upset Republicans are going after the illegals and fraudsters trying to vote, it makes you wonder if she’s taking crazy pills again. Voter ID and proof of citizenship are common sense, but Democrats can’t win elections without cheating the system,” Triolo said.

Rapinoe also pressed Harris on whether she has decided to seek the presidency in 2028.

MORE STORY: Lil Durk Acquitted in Los Angeles Murder-for-Hire Case Involving Quando Rondo

“I haven’t decided,” Harris said. “From my perspective, ’28 doesn’t matter if we don’t win ’26.”

Harris said during an interview last week with MS NOW’s Peter Alexander that she even supported Democrats who don’t want her on the campaign trail with them, because, she said, they need to do whatever it takes to win.

“Listen, Peter, we need to win, OK? Bottom line, we need to win,” Harris said. “I have run locally, I’ve run for statewide office and, obviously, nationally. And these candidates know what they need to do to win, and I would expect nothing less.

“I look forward to being on the trail and helping folks where I can be helpful, but we have got to put a check on this lawless administration and deliver what Americans need and deserve. Lower costs, affordable healthcare, affordable childcare, you name it. So, I support them in doing whatever they need to do to win.”

Rapinoe also discussed her experience as a female athlete.

“I’m thinking about my own experience being a female athlete, and I went through, in the prime of my career, just the most historic time in women’s sports,” she said.

“I mean, it was crazy in the best ways. We saw a huge amount of progress, which has led into a pretty significant regression in terms of just equal rights and people’s rights in general. I definitely think those two are tied.

“It was for the longest time, you know, don’t talk about women’s issues,” she added. “Same kind of thing. It was like, ‘Well, you’re not that good,’ or ‘You’re not that entertaining’ or, ‘Don’t do it like this or whatever.’

“And then we did it, and all women’s sports sort of did it. And then it was like, ‘OK, we’re just going to do something else.’ And I always just felt like they’re like they’re not going to let us just win.”

LOS ANGELES (KABC) — Rapper Lil Durk was found not guilty Friday of allegedly orchestrating a murder-for-hire scheme connected to the fatal shooting of a man near the Beverly Center four years ago.

Following three days of deliberations, a Los Angeles federal jury acquitted the Grammy-winning artist of every charge tied to the 2022 ambush shooting.

Prosecutors alleged at trial that Lil Durk, whose legal name is Durk Banks, initiated a plan to track down and kill Tyquian Bowman, the Atlanta rapper known as Quando Rondo.

Federal prosecutors said Banks planned, directed and financed the alleged attempt on Bowman’s life in retaliation for the 2020 killing of Banks’ close friend, Dayvon “King Von” Bennett, by one of Bowman’s associates.

The alleged plot instead led to the mistaken killing of Bowman’s cousin, 24-year-old Saviay’a Robinson, who was shot in broad daylight on Aug. 19, 2022, prosecutors said.

Banks, 33, entered not guilty pleas through his defense team, which maintained during opening statements that he had no role in the alleged conspiracy. His attorneys contended that former personal assistant Kavon Grant, not Banks, arranged the intended killing.

Banks and two other defendants pleaded not guilty to charges including conspiracy, stalking with a dangerous weapon, stalking resulting in death and two murder-for-hire-related counts.

MORE STORY: Naomi Watts’ Daughter Kai Schreiber Makes Fashion Debut as Transgender Model

His co-defendants, Deandre Dontrell Wilson and David Brian Lindsey, were convicted of stalking and conspiracy to commit stalking, though jurors acquitted them on the remaining counts. Banks was cleared of all charges.

Banks remains in custody as he awaits a separate federal trial next month on multiple racketeering murder and firearms charges.

Had he been convicted on every count in this case, Banks could have faced life in federal prison.

Banks won a Grammy in 2024 for his hit song “All My Life,” which features J. Cole.

A crowd of jubilant Lil Durk fans celebrated outside of the downtown Los Angeles courtroom after the verdict was read on Friday evening.