Free Republic

The head of Russia's private Wagner militia said on Thursday that Ukrainian forces were not abandoning the city of Bakhmut but that, even if they did, he would need more support from the regular military before trying to advance further. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy had on Wednesday raised the prospect of a withdrawal from the city, saying Kyiv would take the "corresponding" decisions if its forces risked being encircled by Russian troops. Wagner forces are leading the battle for the city, which has become the bloodiest of the 13-month war, and Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu has said its capture would open...

The withdrawal of Russian forces from a strategically important town in eastern Ukraine has prompted two powerful allies of President Vladimir Putin to do something rare in modern Russia: publicly ridicule the war machine's top brass. Russia's loss of the bastion of Lyman, which puts western parts of Luhansk region under threat, touched a nerve for Ramzan Kadyrov, the leader of the southern Russian republic of Chechnya. Kadyrov, who has been close to Putin since his father and former president of Chechnya, Akhmad, was killed in a 2004 bomb attack in Grozny that also killed a Reuters photographer, suggested that...

Ukrainian forces achieved their biggest breakthrough in the south of the country since the war began, bursting through the front and advancing rapidly along the Dnipro River on Monday, threatening to encircle thousands of Russian troops. Kyiv gave no official confirmation of the gains, but Russian sources acknowledged that a Ukrainian tank offensive had advanced dozens of kilometers (miles) along the river’s west bank, recapturing a number of villages along the way. “The information is tense, let’s put it that way, because, yes there were indeed breakthroughs,” Vladimir Saldo, the Russian-installed leader in occupied parts of Ukraine’s Kherson province told...