Free Republic

KURAKHOVE, Ukraine—The Ukrainian 68th Jaeger Brigade spent the past year defending trenches in the country’s east against Russian onslaughts. Last week, they went on the attack. On Saturday, three platoons from the 68th took the village of Blahodatne from a larger Russian infantry force after a methodical firefight. Men from the Jaeger, used to fighting in fields and hills, said they had trained themselves in house-to-house combat and described using their American-made armored vehicles to blast open a Russian strongpoint. The last Russian defenders ran away through their own minefield. Few made it. Four of the Jaegers were killed taking...

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.