Free Republic

Poland's prime minister said on Monday his government would ask Germany for permission to send Leopard tanks to Ukraine, and planned to send them whether or not Berlin agreed. Germany's foreign minister had said on Sunday that Berlin would not stand in the way if Poland wanted to do so. The issue of supplying the German-made Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine has dominated recent discussions among Western allies about how much and what sort of material aid they should give Ukraine as the first anniversary of the Russian invasion nears. The development comes as both sides are believed to be...

Russian President Vladimir Putin has appointed a new commander to lead his forces in Ukraine. Gen. Valery Gerasimov will take over from Sergei Surovikin, the country’s Defense Ministry said on Telegram Wednesday, a change that comes as the Kremlin's forces appeared close to a breakthrough in bitter fighting on the eastern front lines. The announcement came just three months after Surovikin became the first person to be handed sole charge of the campaign since Russia launched its invasion on Feb. 24. The ministry said he would now serve as one of Gerasimov's three deputies, along with Army Gen. Oleg Salyukov...

After weeks of fighting for scraps of territory on the war’s bloodiest front, Oleh, a 21-year-old Ukrainian company commander, was summoned suddenly last August, along with thousands of other soldiers, to an obscure rendezvous point in the Kharkiv region. At his last position, relentless Russian artillery fire had stalked his men’s every step. But here, in a patch of villages, farmland and streams in Ukraine’s northeast, the quiet was deeply alarming. “The silence bothered me the most,” Oleh said. “It seemed off. How could this be?” Even more unsettling were the orders his superiors handed down: to charge as far...

An alleged "torture chamber" that housed Ukrainian children has been uncovered in Kherson, according to a top Ukrainian human rights official Wednesday. Speaking during a presentation on human rights abuses committed against Ukrainian civilians, Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights Dmytro Lubinets said officials uncovered evidence of the chamber through their investigations. (snip) "In one of the torture chambers, we discovered a separate cell where children were kept," he continued. Lubinets said people who were held in the chamber described a room next to theirs where they knew children had been held and which Russian officials referred to as the...