Free Republic

VILNIUS, Sept 5 (Reuters) - The U.S. Department of Defense informed European countries last week that military support under a program known as Section 333 will be cut to zero from the next fiscal year, a Lithuanian defence ministry official said on Friday. Two sources familiar with the matter said on Thursday the United States will phase out some security assistance for European countries near the border with Russia, raising concerns among key recipients such as Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia - former Soviet republics now in NATO and the European Union. Lithuania's Defence Ministry Policy Director Vaidotas Urbelis told reporters...

The decision, affecting hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. military aid, has alarmed NATO allies and upset U.S. lawmakers who strongly back the alliance.The Trump administration intends to halt longtime security assistance programs for Europe, including an initiative to fortify the continent’s eastern flank against a potential attack by Russia, as it endeavors to recast Washington’s role within NATO, according to six people familiar with the matter.The decision would impact hundreds of millions of dollars worth of military aid relied upon by some of the alliance’s most vulnerable members. It has alarmed U.S. allies struggling to comprehend the administration’s...

Poland’s president has vetoed a bill that would extend aid to Ukrainian refugees. Karol Nawrocki, a nationalist conservative, commented that Ukrainians “make the effort to work in Poland” and pay taxes in the country in order to be eligible for support. Nawrocki, whose own party approved of the initial aid to Ukrainians, stated that the current financial package “places us in a situation where citizens of Poland are treated worse in their own country than our guests.” Over 1.5 million Ukrainians have fled to Poland since the beginning of the Russia-Ukraine war. Poland has offered every single refugee a taxpayer-subsidized...

A very interesting response from President Trump against the U.S. President stepping back and awaiting Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin to organize their teams and schedule a bilateral discussion. President Trump has said he expects the diplomatic teams of Zelenskyy and Putin to coordinate a face-to-face meeting between Putin and Zelenskyy in the next two weeks. As noted by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, sometimes it just takes putting the principals into the same room to break the logjam. However, both regimes have entrenched ideologues who are positioning for maximum leverage. President Trump is asked what...

WASHINGTON, Aug 23 (Reuters) - The Pentagon has been quietly blocking Ukraine from using U.S.-made long-range Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) to strike targets inside Russia, limiting Kyiv's ability to employ these weapons in its defense against Moscow's invasion, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday, citing U.S. officials.Reuters could not immediately verify the report.The Reuters Daily Briefing newsletter provides all the news you need to start your day. Sign up here.The news came as U.S. President Donald Trump has grown more frustrated publicly over the three-year-old war and his inability to secure a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine.After...

Under the proposal, Russia is insisting on full control of the Donbas region, which includes the territories of Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine. Moscow is demanding that Ukrainian forces withdraw entirely from the area. In return, Russia has indicated that it would pull back its troops from certain occupied zones in the northeastern Sumy and Kharkiv regions and agree to “freeze” the frontlines in the southern regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is scheduled to travel to Washington on Monday, where he will meet with Trump to discuss the emerging framework and its implications for the...

Through an extended weekend full of summitry, President Donald Trump revived the role of diplomacy in addressing the European conflict, making the first allied contact with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin since early in the Ukraine war. Trump rejected efforts by Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky and seven European leaders to escalate the endless proxy war against Russia. Despite his narcissistic peculiarities, the president made more progress toward peace in four days than President Joe Biden did in three years, though there is still great skepticism that the war will soon end.

"I'm just trying to stop people from being killed."President Donald Trump said Tuesday that there would be no American troops on the ground in Ukraine under his watch. Trump made the comments in an interview on “Fox and Friends” as he recapped his Monday meeting at the White House with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, European leaders, and a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Trump added that European nations like France, Germany, and the U.K. might have boots on the ground in Ukraine at some point. “You have my assurance — and I’m president. I’m just trying to stop...

During a phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy following the Alaska summit with Putin, U.S. President Donald Trump said that the Russian leader insists on gaining control over the entire Donbas region Bloomberg reported the information. According to sources, during the phone call, Trump noted that the final decision on the territories should be made by Kyiv, but Putin’s position remains unchanged. Russia wants full control over Donetsk and Luhansk regions, even though its forces have currently captured only part of these areas. If Kyiv agrees, Moscow is ready to drop claims to the parts of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson...

Countless men and women are dead. Cities have been destroyed. Other nations want to “help” by sending weapons, but Ukrainians are eager to end the war. A Gallup poll from July 1-14 found that only 24% of Ukrainians would fight until victory. Back in 2022, 73% of people favored fighting until victory, but now the true cost has been revealed, and there is no victory in war. As of July 2025, 69% of Ukrainians support ending the war immediately through negotiations with Russia. In contrast, only 22% of the nation felt that peace talks were warranted in 2022. Ukrainians notably...

Russian forces made a sudden thrust in eastern Ukraine in recent days, as Russian leader Vladimir Putin seeks a battlefield advantage ahead of talks with President Trump on Friday. The infantry penetration, which officials and soldiers said stretched several miles deep near the Ukrainian city of Dobropillya, is a rare move in a war where defenses have gained the upper hand and Russia has struggled to add to the around 20% of Ukraine that it has occupied for much of its 3½-year invasion. Ukraine’s military said it was counterattacking in the area against what it said were small groups of...

Ukrainian defenses are buckling under the relentless Russian pressure. This happened in the area near Pokrovsk: instead of banging their heads against a heavily fortified city, Russian forces, as they do, circumvent it, seeking to cut all supply lines and encircle the defenders, at which point the garrison has to either surrender or be destroyed by attacks from all sides.This playbook was implemented in Bakhmut, Avdiivka, Kurakhovo, Ugledar and so many other places.What is striking now is that the northern prong, expected to turn west to encircle Pokrovsk, found weaknesses on the depleted defenses, and dashed north by 9 miles.Post...

breakthrough in eastern Ukraine, advancing past Ukrainian defensive lines near the frontline city of Pokrovsk.👤WHO WAS INVOLVED: Russian forces, Ukrainian forces, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald J. Trump are set to meet in Alaska soon.📍WHEN & WHERE: The breakthrough occurred north of Pokrovsk, near Dobropillia, in the Donetsk region of Ukraine.🎯IMPACT: The advance risks isolating Ukrainian forces and could have significant implications for the ongoing conflict and the upcoming Alaska summit. Fact is Vlad is breaking throughout the entire line of contact. Ukraine in Shock😲Russian Forces Have Fully Breached the Defenses!⚡️🔥 Military...

Slowly but surely, Kiev seems to be adjusting its territorial demands to reality.In the runup to the Donald J. Trump-Vladimir Putin peace talks in Alaska on Friday 15, Kiev regime leader Volodymyr Zelensky was featured in dozens of news outlets repeating the same line, as we reported yesterday:The Washington Post: “Ukraine will reject any proposal that involves ceding territory to Russia, Zelensky says”; BBC News: “Volodymyr Zelensky says Ukraine will not give up land as Donald Trump suggests idea ahead of meeting Vladimir Putin in Alaska”; Reuters: “‘Ukrainians will not give their land to occupiers,’ President Zelenskiy said”; The Straits...

The litmus test that a city is preparing for an inevitable siege isn’t just the columns of smoke rising on the immediate horizon, the artillery blasts, or the enemy surveillance drones hovering overhead: it is above all the fact that it’s rapidly emptying out its residents. The NGO Proliska evacuates 200 people from the area every day. Vans, cars, and families loading their belongings onto carts leave for Dnipropetrovsk province. The number of refugees fleeing Dobropillya has multiplied fivefold in two weeks, according to Proliska.

Washington is “done with the funding” of Ukraine’s war against Russia, JD Vance, the US vice-president, has said, as Europe scrambles to build a united defence before in-person negotiations between Presidents Trump and Putin.Speaking in an interview after an emergency summit with European and Ukrainian officials, co-hosted by David Lammy at Chevening, the foreign secretary’s mansion in Kent, Vance said Americans were fed up with paying towards the cost of the war.“What we said to the Europeans is simply, first of all, this is in your neck of the woods. This is in your back door,” he told Fox News....

LONDON — Most Ukrainians now favor ending the war with Russia through negotiations, as support for fighting until victory has dropped sharply since the early days of the conflict. Although their hopes for joining NATO and the European Union have faded and approval of U.S. leadership has plummeted, Ukrainians still see the EU, U.K. and U.S. as key to ending the war. Yet, most doubt that will happen anytime soon. More than three years into the war, Ukrainians’ support for continuing to fight until victory has hit a new low. In Gallup’s most recent poll of Ukraine — conducted in...

Location matters, former real estate mogul US President Donald Trump said. Moments later he announced Alaska, a place sold by Russia to the United States 158 years ago for $7.2 million, would be where Russian President Vladimir Putin tries to sell his land deal of the century, getting Kyiv to hand over chunks of land he’s not yet been able to occupy.The conditions around Friday’s summit so wildly favor Moscow, it is obvious why Putin leapt at the chance, after months of fake negotiation, and it is hard to see how a deal emerges from the bilateral that does not...

As the Russian advances accelerate for fourth straight month, Ukrainians have lost the strongholds of Donetsk region’s Toretsk and Chasov Yar, and the Russians have also entered the city of Kupyansk, on the northern Kharkov region. In the meantime, the siege of Pokrovsk continues, and even Kiev regime leader Volodymyr Zelensky had to confirm that ‘small groups’ of the Russian Armed Forces are ‘breaking through’ to Pokrovsk. As August arrives, the attackers advanced on the Sukhetsky suburb north of Rodinsky. Slavyangrad reported: “At the moment, it seems that the deepening of the defense crisis of the Armed Forces of Ukraine...

Russia said on Thursday it had captured the town of Chasiv Yar in eastern Ukraine after nearly 16 months of fighting, opening the way for potential further advances. Russia's Defence Ministry said in a brief statement its forces had "liberated" the town.