Free Republic

Ukraine accused Moscow on Thursday of forcibly relocating hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians from their besieged homes to Russia, where officials believe many will be held as “hostages” to negotiate a surrender from Kyiv. Lyudmyla Denisova, Ukraine’s ombudsperson, said 402,000 people – including 84,000 children – have been deported against their will. Russia gave nearly identical figures of those that have been relocated, though claimed that the people wanted to leave. Russian Col. Gen. Mikhail Mizintsev on Thursday said that the roughly 400,000 people evacuated to Russia since the invasion began were from the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in eastern...

Pavlo Kyrylenko, Ukraine’s governor over Mariupol, has said Friday that the city of Mariupol has been “wiped off the face of the earth” after weeks of relentless shelling and missile strikes from Russian forces. “The enemy may seize the land Mariupol used to stand on, but the city of Mariupol has been wiped off the face of the earth by the Russian Federation, by those who will never be able to restore it,” he said. “To restore Mariupol, that is something only Ukraine can do.”Image: Associated PressAs to the fate of the city, he described that at this point it...