Free Republic

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov argued on Thursday that Russia's latest attacks against Ukraine's power grid weren't aimed at the civilian population, urging Kiev to "end the suffering" of its people by accepting Moscow's terms to end the war. Russia's requests for ending the attacks include Ukraine proclaiming political and military neutrality, recognizing Crimea as Russian territory and granting independence to Donetsk and Lugansk.Despite millions of Ukrainians currently without power across the country, Peskov told reporters that Russia's military pays "special attention to avoid striking social targets... As for targets that are directly or indirectly related to military potential, they are...

Col MacGregor: The military establishment that Putin and his government built in the last 15 to 20 years was designed preeminently to simply defend Russia. It was not designed for any offensive warfare against any neighbors. And I think that we failed to see that the reduction in the size of the force and the change in its orientation meant something very different from what it meant in Soviet times or even in the Tsars period. Mr. Putin went in to Eastern Ukraine with a set of assumptions that were not valid, but at the time he thought they were....