Free Republic

Basic services were being restored in Ukraine's capital Kyiv on Saturday after the latest wave of Russian air strikes on critical infrastructure, as residents navigated a city gripped by fog and girded for a holiday season marked by uncertainty. Mayor Vitali Klitschko said a quarter of Kyiv remained without heating but that the metro system was back in service and all residents had been reconnected to water supply by early morning. Only around one-third of the city remained without electricity, he said, but emergency outages would still be implemented to save power. "Because the deficit of electricity is significant," he...

President Vladimir Putin has sought proposals from his armed forces commanders on how they think Russia's military campaign in Ukraine should proceed, during a visit to the operation's headquarters, the Kremlin said on Saturday. A series of defeats in 10 months of fighting, resulting in Russian withdrawals from areas around the capital Kyiv and Ukraine's second city Kharkiv and most recently from the city of Kherson, have forced Putin to call up reservists and generated rare public criticism from military bloggers and some allies. -snip- In video footage released by the Kremlin on Saturday, Putin presided at a meeting of...