Free Republic

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Russia wouldn’t agree to an immediate end to the fighting in Ukraine, as Moscow’s army made rapid gains toward expelling Ukraine’s forces from its Kursk region.Any pause in fighting at this point would be in Ukraine’s interests, he said, adding that Russia wanted a truce that led “to a lasting peace and the elimination of the root causes” of the war, which he described as a crisis. Putin’s comments were the first official response from Moscow to a U.S.-backed proposal agreed by Ukraine this week to pause the war, now in its fourth year. They...