Free Republic

Ruslan Kubay was surprised to receive a draft notice in late January. Registered as seriously disabled since childhood—Mr Kubay is missing both hands—he falls under a list of automatic exemptions from service. Even more surprising, however, was the reaction of officials at the local registration office in Drohobych, near Lviv. Far from admitting their error, they doubled down and declared him fit for service. Only a social-media post and subsequent national scandal reversed the decision. “I was disgusted by how easily our blind people can start seeing,” he wrote on Facebook. Mr Kubay’s case was an extreme, but far from...

Peering through an infrared scope, a Ukrainian soldier noticed some heads poking over a trench a few dozen yards away. “‘Are there any of our guys in front of us?’” he asked, according to an account of the ensuing firefight by fellow Ukrainian soldiers. There were not. Two Ukrainians crept forward into the muddy wasteland of artillery craters between the two trench lines outside the eastern city of Lyman, eventually reaching the wreckage of an armored personnel carrier. Using it as cover to shoot from an unexpected angle, they forced the Russians to retreat. When it was over, they found...

An elite Russian military brigade suffered so many losses while fighting in Ukraine that it was essentially "wiped out" and is expected to take a long time to rebuild, according to a new report. When it was first sent into Ukraine, the 200th Separate Motor Rifle Brigade, stationed in northwestern Russia near its border with NATO-leaning Finland, had more experience, newer equipment, and better training than many other Russian units, The Washington Post reported on Friday. But despite these advantages, the 200th suffered greatly in the months of combat that would follow. Shortly after the invasion, units belonging to the...

"Where have all the flowers gone?" asks the famous 1960s antiwar song. In Moscow today, The New York Times reports, the question is: Where have all the men gone? The answer to both questions is, in part, the same: To the graveyards of soldiers. But a lot of the missing men of Moscow have also fled Russian President Vladimir Putin's draft for his war in Ukraine. In fact, demographers say Russia may not recover for generations, if ever. "Putin spent years racing against Russia's demographic clock, only to order an invasion of Ukraine that's consigning his country's population to a...