Free Republic

Ukraine began evacuating its soldiers on Wednesday from the embattled city of Severodonetsk, the strategic eastern city that Russia has been battling to take over in a bid to control the Donbas region, local officials said. Ukrainian forces retreated after suffering big losses in the city that’s now about 80% controlled by Russian forces, Luhansk regional governor Serhiy Haidai said Wednesday. “This is not a betrayal,” Haidai wrote in a post on Telegram. The governor said the retreat across the river to Severodonetsk’s twin city, Lysychansk, was part of their strategy

In February 2021, by order of President Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine shut down three domestic television channels, accusing them of spreading Russian “propaganda.” Three months later, Zelenksky arrested Viktor Medvedchuk, who was at the time leading the second-biggest party in Ukraine’s national parliament, the pro-Russia and Eurosceptic Opposition Platform for Life (OPZZh). Zelensky didn’t have trouble incinerating vaunted democratic norms well-before Russia crossed the Rubicon into Ukraine this year. So it was no surprise when he did it again amid the war in late March, invoking emergency powers under martial law to nationalize TV channels and ban 11 opposition parties, including...

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Russia’s military capabilities should be degraded after he and Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky and announced more U.S. military aid to the country. “We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine,” Mr. Austin said Monday after the highest-level visit of U.S. officials to Kyiv since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24. Mr. Blinken said: “Russia is failing, Ukraine is succeeding.” In what could be a significant escalation of the conflict on Monday,...