A Letter from Freedom’s Battleground Paul Schwennesen

A towering plume of black smoke to the west, a gray smear across the eastern horizon, anonymous rumblings throughout the day Kyiv is an embattled city. You wouldn t know it, perhaps, by the strolling civilians out enjoying the early spring sunshine. Ignore the ubiquitous checkpoints piles of concrete block, rusty iron hedgehogs, and armed sentries and you might even forget this is a contested strategic stronghold.

And yet it is, and in more than merely the physical sense. This is where, it appears, the spirit of the Russian army has faltered. Tolstoy noted a similar moment at Borodinó, two centuries ago, when the moral force of Napoleon s army was exhausted outside Moscow a victory that convinced the enemy of the moral superiority of his opponent and of his own impotence.

Kyiv is now the capital of the world in this sense, and for this reason it is unlikely to fall. The attention of the world is focused here in part because of an innate sympathy for people fighting for their homes and their freedom. Ukrainians are tenaciously devoted to both, and it s beginning to bear fruit on the battlefield. Bucha and Irpin, pillaged only last week, are on the brink of recapture. There is even talk that thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of Russians can be captured saving not only Ukrainian lives but the lives of abused and helpless Russian soldiers as well.

via lawliberty.org