Irish Examiner view: Ukraine has the confidence to keep its independence 

Dozens of wrecked Russian military vehicles — armoured cars and tanks and artillery launchers — made up the defiant centrepiece of Ukraine's independence day in Kyiv

The wrecked Russian vehicles and treadless tanks in Kyiv made a mockery of traditional Kremlin displays of military might. Picture: Evgeniy Maloletka/AP

Khreschatyk St in downtown Kyiv was packed with Russian tanks yesterday. Not the tanks of a victorious army, as Russian president Vladimir Putin might have hoped, but largely burnt-out carcasses.

The procession of more than 70 wrecked armoured vehicles, treadless tanks, and destroyed artillery launchers was a strange reversal of what Putin’s illegal and savage invasion had hoped to achieve.