Free Republic

(machine translation, emphasis added) The Russian Defense Ministry said that the APU lost more than 1,200 people in an attempt to attack The Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU), while trying to conduct an offensive in Mykolaiv-Krivoy Rog and other directions, suffered heavy losses, more than 1,200 soldiers were destroyed. This was reported to journalists by the Ministry of Defense of Russia. According to the ministry, Russian troops destroyed 48 tanks, 46 infantry fighting vehicles, 37 other armored combat vehicles, 8 pickups with heavy machine guns. In addition, while repelling the enemy’s offensive, the Russian military defeated the units of the...

A big part of the problem in defending this part of Donbas, Ostap believes, is that the people who have stayed behind — the people who haven’t fled — don’t really believe they are part of Ukraine. In his view, the civilians who remain are all separatist sympathizers. He says they help the Russians navigate backcountry roads that aren’t on the maps. He asserts there have been instances of local collaborators getting caught providing information about Ukrainian troop movements or locations. Indeed, Slovyansk fell to Russian separatists in 2014: The retaking of the city by the Ukrainian military later that...