Free Republic

Ukraine will not surrender territory, President Volodymyr Zelensky declared Monday, rejecting a central Russian demand that President Donald Trump had incorporated into his latest proposal to end the Kremlin’s war. “Under our laws, under international law — and under moral law — we have no right to give anything away,” Zelensky said, after meeting with top European leaders to discuss Trump’s plan Monday. “That is what we are fighting for.” The unequivocal declaration that Ukraine will not surrender land could mark the collapse of Trump’s plan, which critics condemned as fulfilling a wish list of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Zelensky,...

KYIV — Ukraine is shrinking. The war has killed tens of thousands of civilians and soldiers. At least 5 million more have fled and live outside Ukraine, and a fifth of the country — another 5 million people — is under Russian occupation. Ukraine’s population at independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 was over 50 million. Now just 31 million live in land controlled by Kyiv. And the number of deaths is nearly three times the number of births, according to the justice minister. These missing Ukrainians — the ones who have fled, the dead, the occupied — have...

A hail of shrapnel from kamikaze drones ripped through the tent where off-duty Ukrainian border guards were sleeping near a crossing with Belarus, three hours north of Ukraine’s capital. Viktor Derevyanko woke to scalding pain, his body burning. Blood spilled from his hand as he tried to wipe his face. A piece of metal had traveled through his arm and stomach and into the muscle around his heart. “I couldn’t get my bearings,” said Derevyanko, the deputy head of the unit. “Only on the third explosion did I manage to fall out of bed and try to find at least...