Free Republic

She stood in just her bathrobe in the freezing basement of the Mariupol theater, coated in white plaster dust shaken loose by the explosion. Her husband tugged at her to leave and begged her to cover her eyes. But she couldn’t help it — Oksana Syomina looked. And to this day, she wishes she hadn’t. Bodies were strewn everywhere, including those of children. By the main exit, a little girl lay still on the floor. Syomina had to step on the dead to escape the building that had served as the Ukrainian city’s main bomb shelter for more than a...

Former Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves (file photo) Serving as president of Estonia between 2006 and 2016, and foreign minister before that, Toomas Hendrik Ilves has always been an outspoken critic of Vladimir Putin's Russia. Speaking by Zoom from Estonia, Ilves pours water on the idea of negotiating with Russia and says that Georgia's position on the war in Ukraine is "absolutely despicable." RFE/RL: There are many people who think that the roots of what is going on now in Ukraine, and what happened in Georgia in 2008, go back to the 2008 NATO summit in Bucharest and the refusal...