Free Republic

Ukraine's President Volodymr Zelensky has an approval rating of 57 percent, according to a poll released Wednesday hours after US President Donald Trump said Zelensky's rating was just four percent. Calling for presidential elections in Ukraine, which are banned under martial law, Trump said Tuesday of Zelensky: "He's down at four percent approval rating", US media reported.

-snip- “Putin's aims are extraordinarily ambitious, way beyond the capacity of his country, which he is ruining,” he added. Sikorski called the full-scale invasion a “civilizational struggle.” “We [Europe] represent the world of rules, of peace, of prosperity. And Putin has gone back to the world of Genghis Khan.”

Vice President JD Vance on Thursday reportedly warned that the U.S. wouldn’t rule out tough sanctions or even potential military action against Russia if President Vladimir Putin didn’t come to the negotiating table on a deal that would guarantee peace for Ukraine. In speaking with The Wall Street Journal, which was the first to report on Vance’s comments, the vice president said sending U.S. troops to Ukraine was "on the table" if Russia failed to negotiate in good faith. Vance said there are "economic tools of leverage [and] there are, of course, military tools of leverage" that the U.S. could...

Blindsided Europeans warned Thursday that a "dirty deal" between US President Donald Trump and Moscow on ending the Ukraine war was doomed to fail -- insisting they and Kyiv must have a seat at the negotiating table.Meeting NATO partners the day after Trump revealed he had agreed to start peace talks with Russia's Vladimir Putin, Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth denied it meant a betrayal of Kyiv's three-year war effort.But Trump's move stunned European allies -- several of whom openly called his strategy into question.German Chancellor Olaf Scholz rejected any "dictated peace" and his defence minister called it "regrettable" that Washington...

Russian President Vladimir Putin is open to the idea of direct, personal talks with incoming President Donald Trump, though no talks have been formally scheduled, the Kremlin said Friday. Mr. Trump, who will be sworn in Jan. 20, told reporters before a meeting with Republican governors at his Florida Mar-a-Lago residence Thursday evening that the Russian president had already reached out with an offer for direct talks. President Biden is not known to have spoken to Mr. Putin since Russia invaded neighboring Ukraine in February 2022. Mr. Putin “wants to meet, and we are setting it up,” Mr. Trump said,...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his generals have an artful knack for keeping the Russian military bear off-balance. On Sunday, they renewed their offensive in the Russian Kursk Oblast, once again catching the Russian high command, Kremlin, and many pundits by surprise. Reports of a demoralized Ukrainian army fighting to retain terrain captured during the August Kursk offensive — of which at least 40 percent has been lost — have circulated among western media and Russian milbloggers since November. So too reports that Ukraine’s 155th Mechanized Brigade — trained and equipped by France — was under-resourced in “first person view...