The Washington Post

23 January 2024 14:51

In Ukraine’s northeast, fears rise of second Russian occupation

For nearly a year after Ukraine liberated towns along the war-scarred road to Kupyansk in the northeast Kharkiv region, residents hardly whispered fears of a second Russian occupation. They are now speaking them aloud.

For months, Russia has pummeled Kupyansk, a strategic rail hub that it seized in early 2022 and that Ukraine retook seven months later. From positions east of the Oskil River, which bisects the city, Russia never fully lost sight of its target.

In recent months, Ukraine has urged civilians to evacuate — again — and not just from Kupyansk but also from dozens of villages to the west, a grim sign that Kyiv fears the Russians could push forward. On Saturday, they took control of the small settlement of Krokhmalne, southeast of the city, bringing them slightly closer to the river.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

20 January 2024 18:23

Breaking protection pledge, Russian regions reinstate animal kill shelters

RIGA, Latvia — Nearly every day, volunteers in Buryatia, a Russian republic in east Siberia, carry terrified and malnourished dogs in their hands to the Ulan-Ude train station. For more than 3,000 canines held in the region’s shelters, the mass evacuation to cities thousands of miles away may be their last chance to avoid being killed.

In November, Buryatia became the first region to adopt laws reinstating a “kill-shelter” approach to controlling the population of stray dogs after President Vladimir Putin signed a law giving regional heads authority to deal with the issue independently.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

14 January 2024 16:34

Two Russian fathers backed army conscription. Only one son came home.

After ordering his troops to invade Ukraine in February 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin made a solemn promise that young men performing compulsory military duty would not be sent to fight.

But the experiences of two young men from opposite ends of western Russia reveal a military ravenous for men to plow into the war, which Putin now describes as an existential fight against the West. The two faced heavy pressure to sign contracts that would have allowed commanders to deploy them to Ukraine indefinitely. Neither did so.

Still, the young men’s fathers each felt their son had a manly duty to serve. One son returned home. The other came back severely beaten and died of his wounds soon after, leaving his father, Nikolai Lazhiev, with unanswered, heartbreaking questions.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

12 January 2024 17:09

British prime minister, in Kyiv, showcases security pact with Ukraine

KYIV — On a visit to Kyiv, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced Friday that the United Kingdom would provide Ukraine with more than $3 billion in additional military aid and he signed documents establishing bilateral security guarantees between London and Kyiv.

The bilateral agreement, called the U.K.-Ukraine Agreement on Security Cooperation, “commits the U.K. to consult with Ukraine in the event it is ever attacked by Russia again, and to provide ‘swift and sustained’ assistance for their defence,” according to a British government statement.

The agreement is intended “to be the first step in developing an unshakeable hundred-year partnership between Ukraine and the United Kingdom,” the statement said. London would also “provide intelligence sharing, cyber security, medical and military training, and defense industrial cooperation.”

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

10 January 2024 13:43

Opinion | Yaroslav Trofimov: How the best chance to win the Ukraine war was lost

By November 2022, the Ukrainian offensive had run out of steam. There was no massive resupply of artillery ammunition, and Kyiv’s pleas for Western tanks and fighting vehicles kept getting turned down. Meanwhile, Russia’s new commander for the war, Gen. Sergei Surovikin, had hundreds of thousands of fresh troops at his disposal. Ukraine’s advantage in manpower was over. Surovikin ordered these men to spend the winter digging, creating nearly impregnable fortifications along the entire front line.

All the hardware that Ukraine was begging for in 2022 — Leopard and Abrams tanks, Bradleys and Strykers, and Patriot batteries — was eventually provided the following year. “A mountain of steel,” is how U.S. officials termed it.

But, by then, it was a different war. The Ukrainian offensives of 2023 gained little ground against an entrenched, prepared and more numerous enemy.

Read the full op-ed here.

The Washington Post

06 January 2024 22:27

Russian strike kills 11, including children, Ukraine says

KYIV — At least 11 people were killed, including five children, after a Russian missile struck a residential area in the eastern Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk, Ukrainian officials said Saturday. Another eight people were injured, and emergency workers continued to dig through the rubble late Saturday, searching for survivors.

The early evening strike, which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said was fired from an S-300 missile system, is the latest amid an escalation in Russian attacks on civilian infrastructure in Ukraine in the past 10 days. Other major attacks in recent days struck Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odessa, and other Ukrainian cities, killing and wounding dozens of civilians.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

04 January 2024 17:33

Ukraine Marines recount deadly mission to free towns east of Dnieper River

KHERSON, Ukraine — On the morning of his first crossing of the Dnieper River — where his unit was being sent in a desperate effort to claw back occupied land from Russia — the 21-year-old Ukrainian marine woke up “ready to die.”

With their counteroffensive stalled, Ukraine’s military and political leaders were eager to show their Western backers some progress — any progress. But the 21-year-old marine, Dmytro recounted fording a river of death for little reward, aside from some political messaging.

Dmytro described being “tossed like a piece of meat to the wolves” during the crossing, which takes 30 minutes to an hour. His account was corroborated by six others involved in the operation to lodge a toehold on the river’s Russian-occupied east bank.

“We bear many losses,” said another marine, 22. “We simply lose people, but there is no result.”

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

02 January 2024 18:57

In Kharkiv, ambulance crews await shelling — and a new year of war

At a medic base an hour’s drive from the Russian border, Iryna Peshykova waited for the new year to arrive — and with it, more explosions, more carnage.

The ambulance out back was already running, ready to go as the clock ticked closer to midnight, bringing her country into a third year of war with no end in sight. It was New Year’s Eve and Peshykova, 40, knew that she’d be among the first to bear witness to the fallout.

She’d seen Russia bombard Ukraine — firing more than 150 missiles and drones on Friday in one of the largest attacks since invading in February 2022.

The tit for tat shelling foreshadowed a long winter to come as the counteroffensive ground to a halt and soldiers dug into front lines that barely budged. Like in the trenches, morale at the medic base was low. The group was the first to confront the human damage done by missiles in Kharkiv, hoping victims would survive the race to the hospital.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

31 December 2023 15:15

Russia is working to subvert French support for Ukraine, documents show

STRASBOURG, France — From the top floor of the house he shares here with a senior Russian diplomat — to whom he rents the apartment below — the man who helped bankroll the French presidential bid of far-right candidate Marine Le Pen has been working on plans to propel pro-Moscow politicians to power.

“We have to change all the governments … All the governments in Western Europe will be changed,” Jean-Luc Schaffhauser, a former member of the European Parliament for Le Pen’s party, said in an interview. “We have to control this. Take the leadership of this.”

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

30 December 2023 14:13

Ahead of New Year holiday, Russia sentences more people to prison

As Russians prepare for their own holiday season, the government’s crackdown on political activists and citizens who have voiced their opposition to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, does not appear to be taking a break.

On Friday, a court in Siberia sentenced a former head of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s local headquarters to nine years in a penal colony. And on Thursday, two Russian poets who publicly staged antiwar poetry readings in a central Moscow square, were sentenced to seven years and five-and-a-half years in prison respectively.

The latest convictions and sentences follow the news that well-known dissident Alexei Navalny finally resurfaced at a penal colony above the Arctic Circle, after his whereabouts remained unknown for almost three weeks, sending panic through his supporters and opposition circles.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

29 December 2023 15:15

Russia’s military wives emerge as wild card to Putin’s triumphal mood

RIGA, Latvia — The loved ones of the drafted Russian soldiers forced to fight in Ukraine indefinitely have tried everything: They appealed to the Defense Ministry, wrote letters to President Vladimir Putin, met with many officials and even protested publicly. Their questions to Putin’s annual “direct line” call-in show for Russians last week were ignored.

They mounted car sticker campaigns calling for the return of their husbands and sons, and crafted Christmas tree ornaments with the words, “Bring Papa home.” They posted impassioned video messages on social media.

The Kremlin has rebuffed them. Yet they have emerged as the only wild card in Putin’s highly stage-managed election campaign that will allow him to rule until at least 2030.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

28 December 2023 13:55

Ukraine’s top commander calls for mobilizing more soldiers

KYIV — Ukraine’s top general on Tuesday called for mobilizing more troops, a rare acknowledgment of heavy casualties after nearly two years of war with Russia.

In his first news conference since Russia’s invasion in February 2022, Gen. Valery Zaluzhny also conceded that Ukrainian troops have largely withdrawn from the eastern Ukrainian town of Marinka. The loss of the small settlement, now in ruins, is unlikely to have a significant impact on the larger battlefield but is nonetheless a sign that Russian forces have seized the initiative after Ukraine’s disappointing counteroffensive stalled with the coming of winter.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

27 December 2023 15:12

Missing Russian dissident Navalny located in penal colony in Siberia

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was located in a penal colony in Russia’s far north, his team said Monday, after a span of nearly three weeks when the imprisoned dissident politician’s whereabouts were not known to his aides, lawyers and family.

“His lawyer visited him today. Alexey is doing well,” Navalny’s spokeswoman, Kira Yarmysh, said in a post on X, formerly Twitter.

Yarmysh added that he is being kept in a prison in the town of Kharp, in the Yamalo-Nenetsk region more than 1,000 miles northeast of Moscow, a region notorious for severe winters and the site of some of the harshest camps of the Soviet gulag system.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

24 December 2023 15:20

Your holiday diamond may be funding Russia's war

About one-third of world’s diamonds come from Russia, earning the Kremlin at least a billion dollars a year as it wages war in Ukraine.

Possibly in anticipation of a European Union ban, Russia has started favoring trade hubs beyond Antwerp, Belgium, the historical capital of the global diamond trade. That brings the diamonds to the Indian city of Surat, where they are cut and polished. That brings out the brilliance of the stones and transforms their classification. Diamonds can enter as “Russian” and leave as “Indian” — and be sold in the United States and elsewhere.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

20 December 2023 15:18

Zelensky says Russia made no military gains in 2023, expresses faith in U.S.

KYIV — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky — facing internal disputes at home and stalling aid from abroad — said Tuesday that military commanders have advised him that Ukraine will need to mobilize another half-million troops next year if it hopes to stop Russia’s continuing invasion.

Zelensky, answering wide-ranging questions at a year-end news conference, also acknowledged that his country is running out of artillery shells and conceded that his counteroffensive had not yielded the hoped-for results in pushing back the Russian forces occupying one-fifth of Ukraine’s territory.

But Zelensky also firmly brushed aside claims of battlefield setbacks, mirroring defiant statements in recent days by Russian President Vladimir Putin and signaling that positions in Kyiv and Moscow are hardening just as soldiers on the two sides dig in for winter on the sprawling front line.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

22 January 2024 16:35

Shelling in eastern Ukraine kills 27, Russian-backed authorities say

At least 27 people were killed Sunday when shells slammed into a Russian-controlled region of eastern Ukraine, local officials and Russia’s Foreign Ministry said.

Authorities in the city of Donetsk blamed the strikes on Ukraine’s military, saying the shells landed in a busy shopping area in the Tekstilshchik quarter. Twenty-five people were injured in the attack, according to Denis Pushilin, the Moscow-installed head of the separatist Donetsk People’s Republic, or DPR.

In a post on Telegram, Pushilin said 155mm and 152mm artillery rounds were fired at Donetsk from two regions west of the city, near the front line. There was no immediate comment from Kyiv, and The Washington Post could not immediately verify the claims.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

18 January 2024 13:12

Russian air passengers face peril as planes show strain of sanctions

MOSCOW — Over the first eight days of December, civilian Russian airplanes experienced at least eight serious mechanical failures, terrifying many passengers as pilots were forced to make emergency landings in cities across the country.

The incidents did not kill anyone, but they illustrate the rising peril of air travel in Russia. Nearly two years of sanctions over the war in Ukraine have left airlines struggling to obtain vital spare parts and, as a result, shortcutting safety standards — in some cases with government approval.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

13 January 2024 18:11

Belgorod, in western Russia, hit hard as Ukraine retaliates for airstrikes

A mother and her 6-year-old child, cut down while ice-skating on the city’s central square.

A promising engineering student who had planned to marry his girlfriend this year, hit while waiting for the bus.

A young couple and their baby, all killed as the parents pushed their child in a stroller along a main street.

Such civilian deaths are a constant occurrence in Ukraine, which has come under sustained Russian bombardment. But these victims were among the 25 people killed in the Russian city of Belgorod, about 20 miles from the border with Ukraine, in a rocket and missile attack on the day before New Year’s Eve.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

11 January 2024 16:24

A Ukrainian lioness concussed in a missile attack needs a new home

CHUBYNSKE, Ukraine — Yuna the lioness lay in the corner of her outdoor enclosure, completely still.

Fragments of a Russian missile, shot out of the sky that morning on its way to Kyiv, sat nearby.

As the veterinarian tried to coax her toward the fence, Yuna’s eyes shifted only horizontally. She didn’t let out her usual growl; she didn’t want food. When she tried to stand up, she collapsed. “She just couldn’t move,” said the vet, Inna Vasylkivska, describing how on Jan. 2 she diagnosed the 2-year-old lioness with a severe concussion.

Ramped-up Russian airstrikes have killed dozens of people and wounded many more in Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities over the past two weeks. The increased assaults, paired with doubts about future U.S. support, have stoked anxiety across the country that this will be an especially violent winter. And humans aren’t the only ones in danger.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

07 January 2024 15:56

She’s 16. The war in Ukraine wrecked her city — and her childhood.

IZYUM, Ukraine — Newly 16, she likes to walk alone, hands shoved in pockets, music loud in her ears, for mile after mile.

If Kate Kobets walks far enough, she can escape into her own world. It is a place where her childhood hasn’t been destroyed — her home loud with war, her soldier stepfather locked away as a Russian prisoner of war, she and her mom confined to a bomb shelter for much of the year after she turned 14.

She is part of a generation of Ukrainian teenagers living through a conflict entering its third year with no end in sight. Raised during a pandemic — then through gunfire and bloodshed — Kate, like many of her peers, is unsure what it means for her future. She knows she is luckier than some of her friends — who have lost their homes or even their lives. Still, it is difficult to make sense of it all.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

04 January 2024 20:47

Russia fires missiles supplied by North Korea into Ukraine, says U.S. intelligence

Russia has begun firing ballistic missiles into Ukraine that were provided by North Korea, according to two U.S. officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive U.S. intelligence.

Russia’s deployment of North Korean ballistic missiles, which has not been previously reported, indicates North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s growing support for Moscow’s war effort.

It also shows Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ability to lean on pariah countries to make up for deficiencies in his own arsenal as the war in Ukraine approaches its third calendar year.

“Russia has become increasingly isolated on the world stage and been forced to look to like-minded states for military equipment,” said a U.S. official, who partially attributed Russia’s limited options to sanctions imposed by Washington.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

03 January 2024 21:57

Ukraine and Russia exchange nearly 500 prisoners of war

KYIV — Ukraine and Russia exchanged nearly 500 prisoners of war Wednesday — including Ukrainian service members taken prisoner during fighting at the Azovstal steel mill in Mariupol and Snake Island in the Black Sea — a sign that talks between Kyiv and Moscow continue, even as the two sides appear frozen in peace negotiations.

It was the largest trade since Russian forces invaded the country nearly two years ago, Ukraine’s coordinating headquarters for POW issues said in a post on Telegram. Officials from the United Arab Emirates helped mediate the process, Russian and Ukrainian officials said.

Ukrainian officials said that 230 of their service members returned home, while Russians said 248 of theirs had been released. Neither set of figures could be independently verified.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

02 January 2024 14:02

Russia unleashes missile barrage at Ukraine as holiday airstrikes persist

KHARKIV — Russia bombarded Ukrainian cities with an overnight assault of drones and missiles on Tuesday, extending a vicious wave of holiday-season strikes on population centers by Moscow and Kyiv that has left dozens of civilians dead and suggests a brutal new stage of the war that is being felt well beyond the stagnating front lines.

In Kyiv, there were loud explosions shortly after 7 a.m. Mayor Vitaly Klitschko said on Telegram that one woman died and 49 people were injured after a fire broke out in a high-rise building “as the result of the missile attack” and that electricity and water were cut off in some areas of the capital.

Klitschko said that “civilian infrastructure” in two regions of the capital had been damaged and that fires broke out in numerous locations, including a warehouse in Kyiv’s Podil district.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

30 December 2023 21:22

Russia blames Ukraine for deadly strikes in city near border

A combined rocket and missile attack on Belgorod, a city in Russia near the Ukrainian border, has killed at least 14 people and injured more than 100, Russian authorities said Saturday, blaming the assault on Ukraine’s military and vowing to retaliate for the deaths.

“This crime will not go unpunished,” Russia’s Defense Ministry said in a statement, calling the strikes “indiscriminate.”

The attack, if confirmed, would be one of the deadliest inside Russia since it invaded Ukraine nearly two years ago. It came as Ukraine was still reeling from the massive drone and missile barrage Russia unleashed on civilian targets and infrastructure on Friday.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

29 December 2023 20:45

Russia shatters Ukraine holiday season with massive missile barrage

KYIV — Russia fired more than 100 missiles at Ukraine on Friday, President Volodymyr Zelensky said, striking multiple residential buildings, a shopping center and other civilian infrastructure in the biggest barrage so far in an otherwise quiet winter.

The scale of the attack confirmed what many in Ukraine have feared for months — that Russia was conserving its missile stocks throughout the fall for massive strikes in the winter. Officials in Kyiv have also warned that stalled U.S. security assistance, which includes ammunition for U.S.-made air-defense systems, could embolden the Russians and place Ukrainian cities in peril.

Britain’s Defense Minister Grant Shapps said his country was sending hundreds of air-defense missiles to Ukraine to ensure it “has what it needs to defend itself from Putin’s barbaric bombardment.”

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

28 December 2023 19:32

Ukraine gets modest U.S. weapons package, until Congress can agree to more

KYIV — A modest new U.S. weapons package for Ukraine — what is likely be the last one until Congress approves new funding — was met with tepid gratitude in Kyiv on Thursday.

The $250 million package, which includes artillery shells, air defense equipment, antiaircraft and antitank missiles and small arms ammunition for the fight against Russia, will address some battlefield shortfalls but still leaves Ukraine facing an uncertain future and without critical financial support entering the new year.

President Volodymyr Zelensky thanked President Biden in a post on X, formerly Twitter, for the weapons that “will cover Ukraine’s most pressing needs.”

“U.S. leadership in the coalition of over 50 countries providing Ukraine with military aid is critical to countering terror and aggression not only in Ukraine but around the world,” he added.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

27 December 2023 19:25

Ukraine attacks Russian landing ship in Crimean port

Ukraine said Tuesday it had destroyed a large Russian landing ship docked in a Crimean port in an overnight attack — potentially striking a major blow against Russia’s already damaged Black Sea Fleet.

Russian officials confirmed the attack but said only that the ship and some surrounding buildings had been damaged. The Washington Post could not independently confirm the scale of the damage.

The Ukrainian air force said on its Telegram channel that it attacked the port of Feodosia around 2:30 a.m. local time. The port is in eastern Crimea, the contested peninsula that Moscow annexed in 2014 and has occupied since. A video showing a fire followed by a massive explosion that could be seen from miles away was verified by social media intelligence firm Storyful as being shot at the right time and place to coincide with the attack.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

24 December 2023 19:34

For many Ukrainian artists, fighting Russia in war is tragic last act

ODESSA, Ukraine — If the air raid sirens blared, the theater manager warned, everyone would have to shelter — cast, crew and spectators. It didn’t matter if the dance had already started.

Still Oleksandra Vorobiova twirled, a blur of dark tracksuit and loose hair, as she practiced without an audience. For a moment, she forgot about the sign propped on a music stand, a red arrow pointing to the basement bomb shelter. She forgot about the 113 days that the National Academic Theater of Opera and Ballet had closed after Russia invaded, how half the company’s dancers fled abroad, how others enlisted to serve in a war they wouldn’t survive.

She forgot about her beloved friend, Rostislav Yanchishen, who traded his ballet slippers for combat boots in February 2022 and became one of dozens of artists slaughtered in a war that will soon drag into its third year.

She forgot. But only for a moment.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

23 December 2023 14:13

With Western aid stalled, Ukrainian troops run low on artillery shells

KYIV — Ukrainian forces are suffering from a shortage of artillery shells on the front line, prompting some units to cancel planned assaults, soldiers said this week, and stoking fears over how long Kyiv’s troops will be able to hold their ground against continuing Russian attacks.

The ammunition shortage is deepening the already palpable anxiety in the Ukrainian capital, as U.S. and European aid stalls and winter sets in.

“Our gunners are given a limit of shells for each target,” said a member of the 128th Mountain Assault Brigade, which is fighting in the southeastern Zaporizhzhia region.

“The guys are tired — very tired,” he said. “They are still motivated — many people understand that they have no other choice.”

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

19 December 2023 21:02

With Navalny’s whereabouts still unknown, Kremlin targets novelist Akunin

RIGA, Latvia — Jailed Russian opposition figures are incommunicado, missing in the country’s opaque and secretive prison system and unreachable by their lawyers or even the court system.

A popular, exiled detective novelist has been branded as a terrorist and charged by Russian authorities.

Monuments to Soviet leader Joseph Stalin are popping up, the latest a museum dedicated to him in the Siberian city of Barnaul.

And President Vladimir Putin is ramping up his inflammatory anti-Western military rhetoric, as his defense minister claimed that Russian weapons and military equipment had proved superior to NATO’s in the war on Ukraine — a boast that omitted the fact that the United States and Europe have restricted military supplies to Kyiv to limit attacks on Russian soil.

Read the full story here.