Free Republic

KYIV, Ukraine — Russia’s Wagner mercenary group has been forced to use more of its professional recruits in Bakhmut to replace its depleted supply of enlisted prisoners, who are perishing by the thousands in the longest battle of the war, a Ukrainian official said on Tuesday. The claim suggested that Ukraine sees an opportunity, despite the heavy casualties it has suffered in the eastern city, to exhaust Wagner’s nearly suicidal prisoner assaults, which Ukraine’s commanders regard as one of Russia’s most effective tactics. “This is their last stand,” Col. Serhiy Cherevaty, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s eastern group of forces, told...

A Hurricane of Missiles

At the start of March, the General Staff of Ukraine's Armed Forces stated that the Russian military casualties exceeded 150,000. Meanwhile, several reports indicate that Ukrainian military casualties are in excess of 100,000. However, it is likely that the actual numbers of Russian and Ukrainian combat losses are considerably less.

KHROMOVE, Ukraine (AP) — Pressure mounted Saturday on Ukrainian troops and civilians hunkering down in Bakhmut, as Kyiv’s forces tried to help residents flee amid what Western analysts say may be preparations for a Ukrainian withdrawal from the eastern city that Russian forces have spent months trying to capture. A woman was killed and two men were badly wounded by shelling while trying to cross a makeshift bridge out of Bakhmut on Saturday, according to Ukrainian troops who were assisting them. A Ukrainian army representative who asked not to be named for operational reasons told The Associated Press that it...

Hungary’s reputation as the troublemaker of Europe will be burnished on Wednesday as its parliament begins debating a contentious issue: whether to give Finland and Sweden the green light to join NATO. Along with Turkey, Hungary has yet to ratify the applications of Finland and Sweden to join the transatlantic defense alliance more than eight months after NATO leaders signed off on their membership bid at a summit in Madrid. Máté Kocsis, head of Orbán’s nationalist Fidesz party caucus in parliament, said last week that a “serious debate” had now emerged over the accession of the two countries. Hungary now...

ON THE ROAD The air-raid siren sounded again through the defiant city, but William McNulty refused to be bothered by it. After a long morning of meetings in Kyiv with Ukrainian partners in need of medical tourniquets and cold-weather clothing, the man had earned an afternoon nap. The air flowing through the hotel room’s open window nipped of brittle autumn, and sunlight was leaking through gray clouds; winter, as the Ukrainians liked to quip, was coming. F**k it, McNulty thought. The chances of getting hit by a drone strike in a city of three million people seemed low. A U.S....

Timeline of Russia's all-out war in Ukraine: month by month [Photos at LINK] Ukraine has come a long way since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion on Feb. 24, 2022. From the Russian occupation of nearly 30% of Ukraine’s territory in February to Russia’s humiliating defeats in the north and the south, from the West’s hesitation about providing weapons to Kyiv to pledging hundreds of modern tanks, from the entire world’s doubts about Ukraine’s very chances to survive to the global admiration of the Ukrainian people’s courage — this year has forever changed Ukraine and the world. No matter how...