Free Republic

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Thursday submitted a new bill that would restore the independence of Ukraine’s anti-corruption agencies in an effort to defuse tensions following his approval earlier this week of a controversial law that weakened their autonomy. The previous bill was seen as undermining the agencies’ independence and sparked a public outcry and protests, the first major demonstrations since the war began, as well as sharp criticism from the European Union. Zelenskyy said parliament would review the new bill, which “guarantees real strengthening of Ukraine’s law enforcement system, the independence of anti-corruption bodies, and reliable protection of the legal...

Ukrainian forces are withdrawing from the front-line town of Vuhledar, perched atop a tactically significant hill in eastern Ukraine, after more than two years of grinding battle, military officials said Wednesday. Vuhledar, a town Ukrainian forces fought tooth and nail to keep, is the latest urban settlement to fall to the Russians as the war stretches deep into its third year and the Ukrainian army is gradually being pushed backward in the eastern Donetsk province. The tactical significance of the town, situated at the confluence of two major roads, is two-fold. Dominant heights and proximity to railway lines offer Moscow...

Grain thunders into rail cars and trucks zip around a storage facility in central Ukraine, a place that growing numbers of companies turned to as they struggled to export their food to people facing hunger around the world. Now, more of the grain is getting unloaded from overcrammed silos and heading to ports on the Black Sea, set to traverse a fledgling shipping corridor launched after Russia pulled out of a U.N.-brokered agreement this summer that allowed food to flow safely from Ukraine during the war. “It was tight, but we kept working … we sought how to accept every...

Ukraine has recovered 14 archaeological items allegedly stolen by a Russian man who was stopped at a U.S. airport on suspicion of illegally importing artifacts, Ukrainian officials said Friday. Ukraine’s acting Minister of Culture Rostyslav Karandieiev said the man stole the artifacts from Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory and then tried to transport them into the U.S. At a news conference in Kyiv Friday, Karandieiev showed some of the artifacts to journalists, along with the documentation that Ukraine received. The recovered items include various types of weaponry, such as axes of different sizes, and date back to periods ranging from the Neolithic...

<p>ZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine (AP) — Alone in his apartment in the Russian-occupied city of Enerhodar in southeastern Ukraine, nuclear plant security guard Serhiy Shvets looked out his kitchen window in late May and saw gunmen approaching on the street below. When his buzzer rang, he was sure he was about to die.</p>

Russia attacked power stations and other infrastructure Sunday, causing widespread outages across Ukraine as Kyiv’s forces pressed a swift counteroffensive that has driven Moscow's troops from swaths of territory it had occupied in the northeast. The bombardment ignited a massive fire at a power station on Kharkiv's western outskirts and killed at least one person. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy denounced the “deliberate and cynical missile strikes” against civilian targets as acts of terrorism. Ukraine’s second-largest city of Kharkiv appeared to be without power Sunday night. Cars drove through darkened streets, and the few pedestrians used flashlights or mobile phones to light...