Politics

Ukrainians contemplate the once unthinkable: Losing the war with Russia

Published

2 years ago

April 15, 2024

Press Room

Ukrainians contemplate the once unthinkable: Losing the war with Russia

KYIV, Ukraine —

Could Ukraine lose this war?

For more than two years, as this country of 44 million people has fought off an all-out invasion by neighboring Russia, a spirit of stubborn optimism prevailed even amid the most frightening moments. Any notion of defeat was unthinkable, an almost taboo topic.

But now the question hovers, flitting in and out of view: What if?

The stalling of crucial American aid, a distinct dimming of the world spotlight, and simple war weariness are all exacting a heavy cost. On the front lines, exhausted Ukrainian troops are rationing ammunition as they fend off the latest Russian advances, and anxiety is mounting along with the military and civilian toll.

“Every day, we’re dying,” said Marta Tomakhiv, 33, standing in a sharp-edged shadow in Kyiv’s main Independence Square, mourning a friend from her western Ukrainian hometown who was killed in battle days earlier in the east.

A Ukrainian serviceman with howitzer weaponry in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine on April 11, 2024.

(Alex Babenko / Associated Press)

By and large, Ukrainians still believe they can hold out against a resurgent and powerful foe — if for no other reason, as nearly everyone here points out, than that they are in a fight for their lives.

“There’s absolutely no choice — we know very well what they would do to us if they could,” Artem Morhun, a 30-year-old lawyer on his way to work in downtown Kyiv, said of the invading Russian forces.

Few Ukrainians have forgotten the brutal atrocities carried out by occupying Russian troops in Kyiv’s once-placid suburbs early in the war, or the wholesale destruction and mass death in still-captive cities such as Mariupol, in the country’s southeast.

After months of military setbacks, however, many here wonder whether the long front lines that arc across Ukraine’s south and east can hold, or even whether Russian troops could seize a major city.

Without a rapid infusion of aid, “it will be much harder for us to fight,” said Andriy Borovyk, 38, who was having a coffee outdoors with a friend in the city center. “I think we could lose some territories, definitely.”

Like many others here, he likened the attitude of some of Ukraine’s allies to that of European leaders before World War II, as Adolf Hitler was coming to power.

“I think that Westerners are in a warm bath, as we say in Ukraine — like in 1939, they think it will never affect them,” said Borovyk, who works for an anti-corruption nongovernmental organization. “But it will. History has a cycle.”

A metropolis the size of Chicago, Kyiv bears the earmarks of any sophisticated European capital: stately architecture, craft breweries, ubiquitous electric scooters, colorful springtime blooms in spacious, well-tended parks. But beneath the bustle runs an undercurrent of dread.

Although Kyiv lies hundreds of miles from the battle zone, war’s hallmarks are in plain view: a sea of fluttering blue-and-yellow flags commemorating fallen soldiers, QR codes plastered on posters for crowdfunding efforts to buy drones or other supplies for field units, men and women in camouflage uniforms kissing loved ones goodbye at train stations.

Even an open-air display of wrecked, rusting Russian military vehicles — installed early in the war as a morale booster in a square outside a landmark Kyiv monastery — is more likely these days to inspire a frisson of foreboding than a spurt of national pride.

People view captured Russian equipment, including tanks, in front of St. Michael’s monastery in Kyiv, Ukraine.

(Pete Kiehart / For The Times)

A sea of flags, each representing a fallen Ukrainian soldier, is displayed on Independence Square in Kyiv.

(Pete Kiehart / For The Times)

In the war’s heady early months, after Russian forces menaced Kyiv but then were forced to pull back, people flocked to the square to take selfies, and children played tag between the hulking wrecks. The display has been a frequent backdrop for visiting foreign dignitaries, including President Biden, who strolled the square last year.

For Marina Kozulina, a 50-something Kyiv woman walking her little black dog near a half-ruined tank, the military detritus in the square has become more a reminder of peril than triumph.

“Seeing this makes me nervous, to think about how close the Russians were to Kyiv, and if they could be again,” she said. “I want us to win, but it’s very difficult.”

Even President Volodymyr Zelensky, the former comedian who has tirelessly rallied compatriots since the invasion of Feb. 24, 2022, is taking an increasingly grim tone as cities across the country are pummeled nightly by relentless Russian drone and missile attacks.

“It is quite obvious that our existing air defense capabilities in Ukraine are not sufficient,” he said in a recent nightly address. “And it is obvious to our partners.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky inspects the fortification lines in the Kharkiv region on April 9, 2024.

(Ukrainian Presidential Press Office )

More gloomy news from the battle zone came Saturday, as the head of Ukraine’s military warned that conditions in the country’s east had “significantly worsened” in recent days.

Writing on the messaging app Telegram, the military chief, Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, said warmer spring temperatures were drying up previously muddy terrain, allowing Russian forces to step up their assaults with tanks and other armored vehicles.

Until recently, explicit talk of potential military defeat was considered largely out of bounds for Ukrainian officials, because they did not want to appear to be seeking expensive Western backing to wage what could ultimately prove a fruitless struggle.

But Zelensky did not mince words in a video meeting last weekend with a Ukrainian aid group: “It is necessary to specifically tell Congress that if Congress does not help Ukraine, Ukraine will lose the war,” he said.

Many Ukrainians have an extremely detailed grasp of U.S. election-year politics, and any visiting American is asked again and again: When is more help coming?

“We’re grateful — more than grateful,” said Anastasia Shevchuk, 16, who was out shopping downtown with friends. “But everyone understands that if Russia wins here, it’s a big, big threat to all of Europe, and the rest of the world as well.”

Attention here is heavily focused on the $60-billion U.S. aid package that has been blocked for months by congressional Republicans. It may yet be put to a vote this month, but is still in danger of being derailed by internecine fighting in the GOP.

“Voting on this aid, it’s a matter of life and death — we depend on our partners, especially the U.S.,” said Bohdan Krylyvenko, 38, sitting in the sunshine outside a fast-food restaurant. “You might think, ‘Oh, McDonald’s is open, everything looks OK. But it’s totally not OK.”

Across the country, near-nightly Russian attacks exact a growing toll. The United Nations’ human rights monitoring mission in Ukraine said this week that at least 604 Ukrainian civilians were killed or injured in such strikes — hitting apartment blocks and shops, churches and cultural sites — in March.

“The situation in Ukraine is dire; there is not a moment to lose,” the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Bridget Brink, wrote Thursday on the social media platform X. She noted the latest predawn air alert at 4:15 a.m., as missile barrages struck several parts of the country.

In a conflict marked by dramatic ups and downs over the last two years — initial fears that Ukraine would be swiftly subdued, an inspirational underdog narrative as the country successfully defended itself, stunning Ukrainian counteroffensives in the country’s south and east in 2022 — recent months, by contrast, have brought a drumbeat of bad news.

Last year’s much-vaunted summer counteroffensive foundered amid muted but pointed mutual recrimination between Ukrainian officials and American backers over battle tactics. The eastern town of Avdiivka fell to Russian forces in February, the first such Ukrainian loss in nine months, a defeat perhaps even more stinging symbolically than tactically.

An apartment in a nine-story building damaged by Russian shelling on April 9, 2024, in Selydove, in eastern Ukraine.

(Oleksandr Buriak / Getty Images)

Manpower shortages in the ranks of a professional army bolstered at the war’s outbreak by citizen soldiers — teachers, accountants and mechanics who rushed to volunteer — have forced an unpopular measure to lower the military mobilization age from 27 to 25. And in the battle zone, artillery stocks have dwindled alarmingly, the senior U.S. commander in Europe warned Congress on Wednesday.

Testifying before the House Armed Services Committee, Army Gen. Christopher Cavoli said that within weeks, Ukrainian forces will be vastly outgunned if more armaments are not rushed in.

“They are now being outshot by the Russian side 5-1,” Cavoli said of Ukrainian troops. “The Russians fire five times as many artillery shells at the Ukrainians than the Ukrainians are able to fire back. That will immediately go to 10-1 in a matter of weeks.”

The general added: “We’re not talking about months. We’re not talking hypothetically.”

The Ukrainian side can claim successes as well, some of which its leaders believe have gone unfairly unheralded. Those include stepped-up domestic production of much-needed drones, and securing a shipping lane for grain exports as Ukraine — a country without a formal navy — has sunk or disabled one-third of all Russian warships in the Black Sea with missile and drone attacks.

Ukraine has also harried Moscow with strikes aimed mainly at Russian energy installations — mirroring, though at a far smaller scale, the destructive Russian attacks aimed at Ukraine’s power grid. But some Ukrainian officials have grumbled that they are not allowed to use Western-supplied weaponry beyond the country’s borders.

Military analysts say the drop-off in aid not only contributes to battlefield hardship now, but also makes it difficult for Ukraine to make plans to try to recapture military momentum.

“It’s a dual challenge — to stabilize the current front line, and put in place significant defenses so the Russian advances this year are blunted,” said Matthew Savill, the director of military sciences at the Royal United Services Institute, a British defense and security think tank.

Because of the immediate and short-term difficulties, a major Ukrainian counteroffensive this year is a near-impossibility, he said.

In the meantime, European allies are seeking to break the U.S. congressional logjam. On Tuesday, British Foreign Secretary David Cameron met with Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, describing the blocked assistance as not only pivotal for Ukraine, but also “profoundly in your interest” — that of the United States.

In a telling bit of realpolitik, however, the British foreign secretary also made the trek to Florida for a meeting with former President Trump, who, as he seeks a second term, has played a key role in dissuading his congressional allies from endorsing the aid. After the meeting, Cameron made no claim of progress.

In every corner of Ukraine, the fallen return home daily.

In Kyiv this week, two wooden caskets bearing soldiers’ bodies were brought to Independence Square — the heart of Ukraine’s 2014 pro-democracy protests — in a solemn parade, with mourners kneeling at their passing.

People pay their respects to two Ukrainian servicemen killed in a battle with Russian troops during the funeral ceremony in Independence Square in Kyiv on April 9, 2024.

(Efrem Lukatsky / Associated Press)

Looking on was a 36-year-old lieutenant colonel named Bohdan, a friend of one of the dead soldiers. He described his feelings when his own 2-year-old son, no stranger to air alerts, asked him when the missiles would come again.

“When he grows up, I don’t want him to have to fight this kind of war, but without the world’s help, maybe he will have to,” said the officer, who, in keeping with military policy, did not want his full name used.

He watched bleakly as the coffins were carried to the foot of a towering monument to Ukraine’s 1991 independence.

“Many people, the best people of our nation, will die,” he continued. “But we will fight. We have no choice.”

Politics

Nearly 20 states sue HHS over declaration to restrict gender transition treatment for minors

Published

3 hours ago

December 24, 2025

Press Room

Nearly 20 states sue HHS over declaration to restrict gender transition treatment for minors

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A group of 19 Democrat-led states and Washington, D.C., filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration over a declaration that aims to restrict gender transition treatment for minors.

The lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; its secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.; and its inspector general comes after the declaration issued last week described treatments such as puberty blockers, hormone therapy and gender surgeries as unsafe and ineffective for children experiencing gender dysphoria.

The declaration also warned doctors they could be excluded from federal health programs, including Medicare and Medicaid, if they provide these treatments to minors.

The move seeks to build on President Donald Trump’s executive order in January calling on HHS to protect children from “chemical and surgical mutilation.”

HHS UNLEASHES SWEEPING CRACKDOWN ON CHILD ‘SEX-REJECTING PROCEDURES,’ THREATENS HOSPITAL, MEDICAID FUNDING

The lawsuit was filed against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; its secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.; and its inspector general. (Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters)

“We are taking six decisive actions guided by gold standard science and the week one executive order from President Trump to protect children from chemical and surgical mutilation,” Kennedy said during a press conference last week.

HHS has also proposed new rules designed to further block gender transition treatment for minors, although the lawsuit does not address the rules, which have yet to be finalized.

The states’ lawsuit, filed Tuesday in Eugene, Oregon, argues that the declaration is inaccurate and unlawful and urges the court to prevent it from being enforced.

“Secretary Kennedy cannot unilaterally change medical standards by posting a document online, and no one should lose access to medically necessary health care because their federal government tried to interfere in decisions that belong in doctors’ offices,” New York Attorney General Letitia James, who led the lawsuit, said in a statement.

The lawsuit claims the declaration attempts to pressure providers into ending gender transition treatment for young people and circumvent legal requirements for policy changes. The complaint said federal law requires the public be given notice and an opportunity to comment before substantively amending health policy and that neither of these were done before the declaration was released.

HHS’ move seeks to build on President Donald Trump’s executive order in January calling on HHS to protect children from “chemical and surgical mutilation.” (Tom Brenner for The Washington Post via Getty Images)

The declaration based its conclusions on a peer-reviewed report that the department conducted earlier this year that called for more reliance on behavioral therapy rather than broad gender transition treatment for minors with gender dysphoria.

The report raised questions about standards for the treatment of transgender children issued by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health and brought concerns that youths may be too young to give consent to life-changing treatments that could result in future infertility.

Major medical groups and physicians who treat transgender children have criticized the report as inaccurate.

HHS also announced last week two proposed federal rules — one to cut off federal Medicaid and Medicare funding from hospitals that offer gender transition treatment to children and another to block federal Medicaid money from being used for these procedures.

HOUSE APPROVES MTG-SPONSORED BILL TO CRIMINALIZE GENDER TRANSITION TREATMENT FOR MINORS

New York Attorney General Letitia James led the lawsuit against the Trump administration. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

The proposals have not yet been made final and are not legally binding because they must go through a lengthy rulemaking process and public comment before they can be enforced.

Several major medical providers have already pulled back on gender transition treatment for youths since Trump returned to office, even those in Democrat-led states where the procedures are legal under state law.

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Medicaid programs in just under half of states currently cover gender transition treatment. At least 27 states have adopted laws restricting or banning the treatment, and the Supreme Court’s decision this year upholding Tennessee’s ban likely means other state laws will remain in place.

Democrat attorneys general from California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Wisconsin, Washington state and Washington, D.C., as well as Pennsylvania’s Democrat governor, joined James in the lawsuit.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Politics

Claims about Trump in Epstein files are ‘untrue,’ the Justice Department says

Published

3 hours ago

December 24, 2025

Press Room

Claims about Trump in Epstein files are ‘untrue,’ the Justice Department says

WASHINGTON — Tips provided to federal investigators about Donald Trump’s alleged involvement in Jeffrey Epstein’s schemes with young women and girls are “sensationalist” and “untrue,” the Justice Department said on Tuesday, after a new tranche of files released from the probe featured multiple references to the president.

The documents include a limousine driver reportedly overhearing Trump discussing a man named Jeffrey “abusing” a girl, and an alleged victim accusing Trump and Epstein of rape. It is unclear whether the FBI followed up on the tips. The alleged rape victim died from a gunshot wound to the head after reporting the incident.

Nowhere in the newly released files do federal law enforcement agents or prosecutors indicate that Trump was suspected of wrongdoing, or that Trump — whose friendship with Epstein lasted through the mid-2000s — was investigated himself.

But one unidentified federal prosecutor noted in a 2020 email that Trump had flown on Epstein’s private jet “many more times than previously has been reported,” including over a time period when Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s top confidante who would ultimately be convicted on five federal counts of sex trafficking and abuse, was being investigated for criminal activity.

The Justice Department released an unusual statement unequivocally defending the president.

“Some of these documents contain untrue and sensationalist claims made against President Trump that were submitted to the FBI right before the 2020 election,” the Justice Department statement read. “To be clear: the claims are unfounded and false, and if they had a shred of credibility, they certainly would have been weaponized against President Trump already.”

“Nevertheless, out of our commitment to the law and transparency, the DOJ is releasing these documents with the legally required protections for Epstein’s victims,” the department added.

The Justice Department files were released with heavy redactions after bipartisan lawmakers in Congress passed a new law compelling it to do so, despite Trump lobbying Republicans aggressively over the summer and fall to oppose the bill. The president ultimately signed the Epstein Files Transparency Act into law after the legislation passed with veto-proof majorities in both chambers.

One newly released file containing a letter purportedly from Epstein — a notorious child sex offender who died in jail while awaiting federal trial on sex-trafficking charges — drew widespread attention online, but was held up by the Justice Department as an example of faulty or misleading information contained in the files.

The letter appeared to be sent by Epstein to Larry Nassar, another convicted sex offender, shortly before Epstein’s death. The letter’s author suggested that Nassar would learn after receiving the note that Epstein had “taken the ‘short route’ home,” possibly referring to his suicide. It was postmarked from Virginia on Aug. 13, 2019, despite Epstein’s death in a Manhattan jail three days prior.

“Our president shares our love of young, nubile girls,” the letter reads. “When a young beauty walked by he loved to ‘grab snatch,’ whereas we ended up snatching grub in the mess halls of the system. Life is unfair.”

The Justice Department said that the FBI had confirmed that the letter is “FAKE” after it made the rounds on Tuesday.

“This fake letter serves as a reminder that just because a document is released by the Department of Justice does not make the allegations or claims within the document factual,” the department posted on social media. “Nevertheless, the DOJ will continue to release all material required by law.”

The department has faced bipartisan scrutiny since failing to release all of the Epstein files in its possession by Dec. 19, the legal deadline for it to do so, and for redacting material on the vast majority of the documents.

Justice Department officials said they were following the law by protecting victims with the redactions. The Epstein Files Transparency Act also directs the department not to redact images or references to prominent or political figures, and to provide an explanation for each and every redaction in writing.

The latest release, just days before the Christmas holiday, includes roughly 30,000 documents, the department said. Hundreds of thousands more are expected to be released in the coming weeks.

Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released a statement in response to the Tuesday release accusing the Justice Department of a “cover-up,” writing on social media, “the new DOJ documents raise serious questions about the relationship between Epstein and Donald Trump.”

Documents from Epstein’s private estate released by the oversight committee earlier this fall had already cast a spotlight on that relationship, revealing Epstein had written in emails to associates that Trump “knew about the girls.”

The latest documents release also includes an email from an individual identified as “A,” claiming to stay at Balmoral Castle, a royal residence in Scotland, asking Maxwell if she had found him “some new inappropriate friends.” Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly known as Prince Andrew, has come under intense scrutiny over his ties to Epstein in recent years.

Speaking at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Monday, Trump said the continuing Epstein scandal amounts to a “distraction” from Republican successes, and expressed disapproval over the release of images in the files that reveal associates of Epstein.

“I believe they gave over 100,000 pages of documents, and there’s tremendous backlash,” Trump told reporters. “It’s an interesting question, because a lot of people are very angry that pictures are being released of other people that really had nothing to do with Epstein. But they’re in a picture with him because he was at a party, and you ruin a reputation of somebody. So a lot of people are very angry that this continues.”

Politics

Nick Fuentes says he’ll campaign against Vivek Ramaswamy in Ohio in slur-laced rant

Published

15 hours ago

December 24, 2025

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Nick Fuentes says he’ll campaign against Vivek Ramaswamy in Ohio in slur-laced rant

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White nationalist Nick Fuentes vowed to campaign against Vivek Ramaswamy in a slur-laced rant denouncing the Republican’s Ohio governor bid.

The declaration came just days after Ramaswamy called out Fuentes during a speech at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest conference in which he criticized Fuentes over some of his inflammatory remarks.

“I think I’m going to go to Ohio and the word that we are looking for is denial. We have to deny Vivek Ramaswamy the governorship. This is the only race I care about in ‘26. It’s the only one I care about,” Fuentes said during a Tuesday livestream. He also used a slur to describe Ramaswamy and said he does not care if a Democrat defeats him in the governor’s race.

When asked by Fox News Digital for a response, a spokesperson for Ramaswamy’s campaign said on Wednesday, “We’re focused on the issues that matter most to Ohioans, not fringe voices that prefer a far-left Democrat to the Trump-endorsed conservative.”

VIVEK RAMASWAMY TURNS TO CONSERVATIVE YOUTH TO SHAPE THE MOVEMENT’S NEXT PHASE, ANALYZES 2026 RACES

Vivek Ramaswamy speaks during Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest conference on Friday, Dec. 19, 2025. At right is White nationalist Nick Fuentes outside a Turning Point event on June 15, 2024, in Detroit. (Cheney Orr/Reuters; Dominic Gwinn/Getty Images)

Ramaswamy laid out his vision for what it means to be an American during remarks Friday at AmericaFest.

“What does it mean to be an American in the year 2026? It means we believe in those ideals of 1776,” he said at the Turning Point USA event. “It means we believe in merit, that the best person gets the job regardless of their skin color.”

“It means we believe in free speech and open debate,” he added. “Even for those who disagree with us, from Nick Fuentes to Jimmy Kimmel, you get to speak your mind in the open without the government censoring you.”

RAMASWAMY REVEALS MAIN LESSON LEARNED BY REPUBLICANS AFTER DEMOCRATS’ BIG WINS ON ELECTION DAY

Vivek Ramaswamy speaks during Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest 2025, on Friday, Dec. 19, 2025, in Phoenix. (Jon Cherry/AP)

Ramaswamy then said, “If you believe in normalizing hatred toward any ethnic group, toward Whites, toward Blacks, toward Hispanics, toward Jews, toward Indians, you have no place in the future of the conservative movement, period.”

“And I will not apologize for that. I will not hedge when I say it,” Ramaswamy continued. “If you believe, and you will forgive me for giving you an exact quote from our online commentator, Nick Fuentes. If you believe that Hitler was pretty f—— cool, you have no place in the future of the conservative movement. You can debate foreign aid, Israel all you want. That’s fine. That’s fair. But you have no place with that level of hatred.”

Ramaswamy declared his candidacy for the Ohio governorship in late February.

Ramaswamy is running to replace Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, shown here in the Old Senate Chamber in the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 21, 2025. (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

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Current Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, who is also a Republican, is term-limited and will be departing office in January 2027.

Fox News Digital’s David Rutz contributed to this report.

Greg Norman is a reporter at Fox News Digital.