Free Republic

In the battle for Ukraine, the front line is increasingly at a standstill. The reason: rapid innovations in drone technology. From just a few commercial and homemade drones, which the Ukrainians used at the start of the war to locate invading Russian columns, unmanned vehicles now dominate the battlefield. Each side has hundreds of them constantly in the air across the 750-mile front line. Drones can lay mines, deliver everything from ammunition to medication and even evacuate wounded or dead soldiers. Crucially, drones spot any movement along the front line and are dispatched to strike enemy troops and vehicles. ‘Wedding...

KYIV—Ukraine’s battle-weary troops are desperate for reinforcements. Civilians want to keep up the fight but are less eager to pick up rifles. The West is dangling membership in political and military blocs and feeding military aid but not enough for a breakthrough. As Russia’s invasion enters a third summer, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is juggling competing domestic and international priorities even as Ukrainians and their Western allies agree: Russia can’t be allowed to win. On Tuesday, Ukraine officially began negotiations to join the European Union, a symbolic step toward the West, and a small victory for Zelensky. Still, EU accession...

On a hilltop near the occupied southern Ukrainian town of Polohy, Russian forces set up an observation point that can spot Ukrainian soldiers more than 6 miles away. Four times, Ukrainian forces destroyed the Murom-M surveillance system, said Lt. Col. Oleksiy Telehin, of Ukraine’s 108th Territorial Defense brigade. Four times, the Russians promptly installed a new one. Ukraine successfully outmaneuvered Russia’s far larger invading forces last year, despite being outmanned, outgunned and vastly overpowered in the air. With a nimble approach, superior knowledge of the terrain and the efficient use of drones and digital technology, its units were able to...

Ukrainian forces said they hit another base in Russian-occupied Kherson as the leaders of Turkey and the United Nations were expected to meet with President Volodymyr Zelensky and discuss food shipments from Ukraine and the increasingly tense situation at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant. The Ukrainian military’s Southern Command said Thursday that it had struck an ammunition depot in the village of Bilohirka, near the front line of fighting in the Kherson region. The rocket strike is the latest in a series of attacks that have targeted logistics in the Russian-occupied south—part of a strategy to starve Russian troops in the...