Free Republic

The Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, has repeatedly said that the fall of the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine is inevitable and will happen faster than Kyiv thinks. Recent trends on the battlefield paint a different picture. A monthslong Ukrainian counteroffensive in the northern part of the Donbas has thwarted Russian efforts to encircle the remaining Ukrainian-controlled cities in the region. Russia, Western analysts say, has lost dozens of square miles of territory during the Ukrainian campaign, which Kyiv is calling Operation Vivaldi. In the southern Donbas, Russia continues to mount furious assaults to break through Ukrainian lines. But Kyiv...

A squad of Ukrainian “kamikaze ground robots” airdropped behind enemy lines have taken out 3,000 Russian soldiers and reclaimed 48 square miles of occupied territory in Donetsk, officials announced. The secretive mission, dubbed “Operation Vivaldi,” began in May and wrapped up last week, when the Third Army Corps of the Ukraine’s Armed Forces made details of the feat public. “An historic moment,” it boasted on Telegram Thursday. “The Third Army Corps has begun a new stage of the war with the landing of ground robots.” The operation recaptured five villages and three settlements in the contested region of Donetsk in...