Free Republic

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Sunday criticized the United States and the international community for remaining silent after Russia unleashed what Ukrainian officials describing as the largest aerial assault on the country since the war began. Russian forces launched a massive overnight barrage Saturday as 367 drones and missiles targeted more than 30 cities and villages across Ukraine, including the capital Kyiv. At least 12 people were killed, according to officials, including three children in the northern region of Zhytomyr.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz formally announced Wednesday that after weeks of stalling and frustrating negotiations Berlin has agreed to send two battalions of Leopard 2 A6 tanks to Ukraine. In a statement the government said it would initially send one company of 14 tanks to Kyiv, though its aim is to send up to 88 tanks from its own stockpiles. Scholz said, "This decision follows our well-known line of supporting Ukraine to the best of our ability. We are acting in a closely coordinated manner internationally." Some 15 other EU nations that possess the German-made tanks in their own stocks...

In a corner of the third Jewish cemetery in Odessa, among the overgrowth and tombs that no one visits anymore, there is a monument that the present has recovered from oblivion. It is an amphitheater made up of large stone blocks and black granite columns. There are steles with 305 names in Hebrew. They are the identified victims of the 1905 pogrom against the city’s Jews. That episode of ethnic persecution also triggered the creation of the Jewish self-defense groups of Odessa, the largest armed organization of the Jewish people on Ukrainian soil. More than a century later, the members...