Free Republic

A series of swift Russian advances have challenged Ukraine’s new line of defense set up after their withdrawal from the key town of Avdiivka and are raising fears about Kyiv’s tactics and momentum on the front lines. Ukraine announced a withdrawal from Avdiivka on February 17 to a series of positions to the town’s west. Yet three tiny villages have since fallen to Russian forces, with Kyiv insisting they never intended to defend them. But the defensive line it declared it would fall back to - three villages further to the west - has since come under heavy Russian assault,...

As the second anniversary of Russia's unprovoked invasion approaches, the situation is beginning to look bleak for Ukraine.Last year's counteroffensive brought hopes that Ukraine could capitalize on its successes in 2022 and drive back Russian forces from occupied territories in southern and eastern Ukraine.But the offensive failed to achieve a breakthrough, and Ukraine is now seeing crucial support from its allies bleed away. Meanwhile, its troops are experiencing shortages of personnel and ammunition.There are problems at the top, too. Its senior command has been engulfed in chaos, with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy replacing Valery Zaluzhny, a senior commander, amid reported...

The war in Ukraine is primarily a war for control of people, not land. Russian President Vladimir Putin has invaded Ukraine twice not mainly because he desires Ukraine’s land, but rather because he seeks to control its people. Putin’s project, explicitly articulated in the 2021 article he published justifying the 2022 full-scale invasion, is the destruction of Ukraine’s distinctive political, social, linguistic, and religious identity.[1] Putin seeks to make real his false ideological conviction that Ukrainians are simply confused Russians with an invented identity, language, and history that a small, Western-backed minority is seeking to impose on the majority of...