Free Republic

KYIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian officials said they require coordinates provided or confirmed by the United States and its allies for the vast majority of strikes using its advanced U.S.-provided rocket systems, a previously undisclosed practice that reveals a deeper and more operationally active role for the Pentagon in the war. The disclosure, confirmed by three senior Ukrainian officials and a senior U.S. official, comes after months of Kyiv’s forces pounding Russian targets — including headquarters, ammunition depots and barracks — on Ukrainian soil with the U.S.-provided High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or HIMARS, and other similar precision-guided weapons such as...

After weeks of fighting for scraps of territory on the war’s bloodiest front, Oleh, a 21-year-old Ukrainian company commander, was summoned suddenly last August, along with thousands of other soldiers, to an obscure rendezvous point in the Kharkiv region. At his last position, relentless Russian artillery fire had stalked his men’s every step. But here, in a patch of villages, farmland and streams in Ukraine’s northeast, the quiet was deeply alarming. “The silence bothered me the most,” Oleh said. “It seemed off. How could this be?” Even more unsettling were the orders his superiors handed down: to charge as far...

The Biden administration is privately encouraging Ukraine's leaders to signal an openness to negotiate with Russia and drop their public refusal to engage in peace talks unless President Vladimir Putin is removed from power, according to people familiar with the discussions.The request by American officials is not aimed at pushing Ukraine to the negotiating table, these people said. Rather, they called it a calculated attempt to ensure the government in Kiev maintains the support of other nations facing constituencies wary of fueling a war for many years to come.

The United States for several months has been sending private communications to Moscow warning Russia’s leadership of the grave consequences that would follow the use of a nuclear weapon, according to U.S. officials, who said the messages underscore what President Biden and his aides have articulated publicly. The Biden administration generally has decided to keep warnings about the consequences of a nuclear strike deliberately vague, so the Kremlin worries about how Washington might respond, the officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive deliberations. The attempt by the White House to cultivate what’s known in the nuclear...

A hail of shrapnel from kamikaze drones ripped through the tent where off-duty Ukrainian border guards were sleeping near a crossing with Belarus, three hours north of Ukraine’s capital. Viktor Derevyanko woke to scalding pain, his body burning. Blood spilled from his hand as he tried to wipe his face. A piece of metal had traveled through his arm and stomach and into the muscle around his heart. “I couldn’t get my bearings,” said Derevyanko, the deputy head of the unit. “Only on the third explosion did I manage to fall out of bed and try to find at least...

DONETSK OBLAST, Ukraine — The ambulances hurtled into the parking lot one after the other, each carrying wounded troops directly from the nearby front line. One young man stared straight ahead, his face swollen, his neck and back dripping with blood. Others lay silently under foil blankets.Some stumbled out the back doors and collapsed into wheelchairs as staff rushed to push them inside. Nearby, bloodied cots sat propped against a tent and other wounded soldiers lingered about, their faces grim, their heads, arms or legs bandaged as the sound of outgoing artillery boomed across the sky.About 10 wounded soldiers arrived...

MOSCOW—The director of Russia’s military intelligence agency has died unexpectedly, according to a short statement released Monday on the Kremlin website, which didn't specify the cause of his death. Col. Gen. Igor Sergun had run the Main Intelligence Directorate of Russia’s General Staff, known as the GRU, since late 2011. He was 58 years old. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, in a statement released to the Interfax news agency, said Col. Gen. Sergun died suddenly on Sunday. Mr. Shoigu’s statement offered no additional details.

...But Donetsk, one of the largest cities in eastern Ukraine, is missing one element that proved vital to the success of the Kiev protests in toppling Ukraine's pro-Russian president: people. Thousands of activists lived on Kiev's central square for three months, rising to tens of thousands at weekend rallies in the capital. By contrast, the movement here has never attracted more than a few thousand. Nowadays, the square in front of the assembly building often has only a few dozen stragglers. ...The west was the driving force behind Kiev protests that led to the ouster of President Viktor Yanukovych, a...