Free Republic

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...

It finally happened, Zelensky has let Zaluzhny go, replacing him with Syrsky: Defense Minister Umerov issued his own statement: There’s a lot to unpack. Let’s start with the mentions in the video above of needing a general who is on the frontline, and who understands the Avdeevka situation, as well as others, deeply. This appears to be a riff on the stereotype that Zelensky/Yermak and their team were trying to seed the ground with, characterizing Zaluzhny as someone who ‘never leaves his office’. These are just small, subtle threads in the narrative fabric they attempted to weave together to undermine...