Free Republic

A Guerrilla War is Being Waged by Ukraine. Here is the Latest: The below list of resistance incidents is almost certainly incomplete. The Ukrainian armed forces have been extremely active in September, having launched counteroffensive operations in Kherson and Kharkiv provinces. Multiple explosions have taken place every day; and there is no doubt that partisans are involved in some, or all, of these activities. For the sake of accuracy, however, I’ve only listed those incidents for which partisans were expressly given credit or for which the armed forces were not. These caveats notwithstanding, it’s important to note that resistance has...

Ukraine has made some impressive progress on the battlefield, but let us hold the applause for a moment: It’s too soon to tell whether Ukraine’s ongoing counteroffensive heralds a Ukrainian victory in the war with Russia, but the remarkably rapid Ukrainian advance on the one hand and the equally remarkable rapid retreat by the Russians on the other do testify to Ukrainian military prowess and, perhaps more critical, Russian military incompetence. It should be amply clear by now that, expert expectations to the contrary, Russia cannot win the war. In fact, the irony is that Russian troops have responded to...

Until Vladimir Putin lunched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in the early hours of February 24, he was winning his standoff with the West. He had compelled the United States and Europe to take his demands seriously; he experienced the pleasure of being treated as the leader of a great power; and he had succeeded in intimidating the Ukrainians as well as Russia’s other neighboring states and the wider world. All he had to do to solidify his victory was to recognize the independence of the so-called separatist republics in the Donbas, acknowledge that Ukraine’s chances of joining NATO were...