Free Republic

Every hour, more towns and cities across the country were being captured by advancing Russian armies. CNN was showing Russian paratroopers, their elbows marked with white stripes, at the Antonov Airport just outside Kyiv. Russian dictator Vladimir Putin declared the end of Ukraine as it was.... “One year later, Kyiv stands. And Ukraine stands. Democracy stands,” Biden said in Kyiv. How did something that was supposed to be Putin’s several-day-long “special military operation” turn into a staggering defeat and a subsequent grinding war that the Kremlin’s propaganda now calls Russia’s “fight for survival”? ... The first was its failure to...