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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky ventured beyond the relative safety of Kyiv on Wednesday to visit the recently liberated city of Izyum, where he promised to drive Russian forces from all of Ukraine. “Our blue-yellow flag is already flying in de-occupied Izyum. And it will be so in every Ukrainian city and village,” he said on social media during the visit. “We are moving in only one direction — forward and towards victory.” A supply and logistic hub for Russian operations in the eastern Donbas region of Ukraine, the retaking of Izyum represents a strategic win for Ukraine as well as...

Could Russia still fight NATO? The war in Ukraine has proved catastrophic for the Russian military thus far. In almost seven months of war, the Russian forces have suffered one humiliating defeat after another, losing tens of thousands of troops in the process and thousands of pieces of equipment. As a result, the capabilities of the Russian military have been seriously degraded, and Moscow’s ability to fight the U.S. and NATO has been dramatically degraded.

The Ukrainian army’s counteroffensive around the city of Kharkiv in northeastern Ukraine starting on Sept. 6 destroyed half of the best tank division in the best tank army in the Russian armed forces. A hundred wrecked or captured tanks in a hundred furious hours. That’s how much destruction the Ukrainians inflicted on the Russian 4th Guards Tank Division, part of the elite 1st Guards Tank Army, the Russian army’s best armor formation. Now the 1st GTA is retreating north in order to preserve what remains of its front-line divisions. But the damage the tank army has suffered could have lasting...

Frustrated that his top military advisers failed to provide him an exit plan for Afghanistan, President Obama crafted his own strategy, according to a new book by Bob Woodward. In "Obama's War" -- Woodward's meeting-by-meeting account of the 2009 Afghan strategy review -- the president stressed that the plan to add 30,000 troops in a short-term escalation "needs to be . . . about how we're going to hand it off and get out of Afghanistan. Everything we're doing has to be focused on how we're going to get to the point where we can reduce our footprint. It's in...

<p>The brazen missile attack on the Al Rasheed Hotel in Baghdad and a recent spate of suicide bombings illustrate that anti-American violence is increasing in frequency, sophistication and deadliness. Moreover, a recent poll by an Iraq research center showed fewer than 15% of Iraqis see U.S. forces as liberators, down from a tepid 43% six months ago. That's an ominous sign that popular discontent over a prolonged occupation could cause anti-U.S. attacks to snowball. The only way to let the air out of the resistance is to quickly turn Iraq back to the Iraqis and withdraw U.S. forces. The violence arises primarily as a reaction to the invasion and occupation by a foreign superpower.</p>

Now that the battle for Baghdad is all but won, it may be time to clear up a few things. First: Those who thought it a bad idea for America to launch what was the moral equivalent of unilateral war on Iraq have nothing to apologize for. It's necessary to say this because the polls -- in America and elsewhere -- have been showing more and more support for the American effort. Are all these people changing their minds about the rightness of the war? Some of them, no doubt. But what seems a more reasonable conclusion is not that...

Here's a selection of what the American Marxist Press is saying about the war: At Intersection, Army's Mission Turns To Chaos (Washington Post, April 8, 2003, Pg. 1) As Army troops barreled into the heart of Baghdad, a unit from the 2nd Brigade of the 3rd Infantry Division was ordered to hold onto a key cloverleaf in the southern part of the city. The mission sounded routine, but it quickly turned into five hours of killing and fiery chaos after an Iraqi rocket-propelled grenade slammed into a U.S. ammunition truck at the intersection. At least two soldiers of the 3rd...