Free Republic

Six months after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, signs are accumulating that the balance on the military and economic battlefields is slowly tilting the way of Kyiv and its Western backers. ... Some results of the war already seem settled. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s attempt to rewrite the ending of the Cold War by restoring Moscow’s historic sphere of influence in Eastern Europe has failed. His war on Ukraine has instead united almost all of Europe against him, revivifying the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which is poised to add Sweden and Finland as new members.

Russia has lost yet another command post to a Ukrainian rocket strike after a headquarters in Donbas was blown up Thursday, officials have claimed. Video from the occupied city of Lysychansk uploaded to Telegram and taken by Chechen special forces appeared to capture the moment the rockets struck on Wednesday afternoon, sending plumes of smoke into the air. More footage then documented the aftermath, with a Russian flag shown fluttering limply over a courtyard strewn with rubble as men in military fatigues milled about. Serhiy Haidai, the regional governor, said Ukraine had struck the base - which had been set...

A Russian columnist recently appeared on television and gave a damning assessment of the situation in Ukraine from Russia's perspective. Mikhail Kodaryonok was on a Russian-state-owned television channel Monday as part of a panel where he discussed the situation in Ukraine and the rather dire circumstances in which Russia finds itself. -snip- Khodaryonok continued on and painted an even grimmer situation for Russia. He talked about the vast supply of arms that are soon likely to be available to the Ukrainians. "But the situation from the overall strategic position is that the Ukrainian armed forces are able to arm a...