The Washington Post

27 November 2023 20:37

Russia presses criminal case against award-winning journalist Masha Gessen

RIGA, Latvia — Russia has opened a criminal case against the prominent Russian American writer and journalist Masha Gessen, accusing them of spreading “false information” about the actions of the Russian army in Ukraine — part of a continuing crackdown by the Kremlin on voices critical of its war.

Russian authorities have charged Gessen, a staff writer for the New Yorker who holds dual Russian and U.S. citizenship but lives in the United States, with spreading “knowingly false information” about atrocities committed by the Russian soldiers in the Ukrainian city of Bucha.

Gessen made the remarks in an interview with popular Russian YouTuber and journalist Yury Dud, in which they discussed a reporting trip to several Ukrainian cities to document potential war crimes in the first months of the war.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

25 November 2023 19:14

Fierce Russian drone attack shatters Kyiv’s calm

KYIV — Russia launched a fierce swarm of explosive drones at Kyiv and other targets early Saturday, interrupting a weeks-long relative lull in the Ukrainian capital and adding to its darkening mood.

Ukraine’s military said air defenses destroyed 74 of 75 Iranian-made Shahed drones during a six-hour attack that included dozens of the weapons aimed at Kyiv in what the city’s mayor said was the largest drone attack since Russia’s invasion in February 2022.

All of the pilotless craft headed for Kyiv were intercepted and destroyed, although falling debris struck a kindergarten, ignited a few fires and injured five people, including an 11-year-old child, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said in a post on Telegram.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

22 November 2023 17:47

He proposed in a bomb shelter. They died together in a Russian strike.

ZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine — It began, as many modern love stories now do, with a swipe on a dating app. It ended, a little over a year later, in a roar of exploding glass and concrete from a Russian missile strike.

Six months into Russia’s invasion, Danylo Kovalenko, 22, and Diana Haidukova, 19, were looking for a shred of normality, a distraction — anything to take their minds off the war and the petrifying bombardments of their city, Zaporizhzhia.

Diana messaged first. She said Danylo, with his long blonde hair and angular jaw line, reminded her of an anime character she liked. They met for a walk, then went to dinner and, hours later, back to his place.

The next months were a blur. The couple quickly became inseparable — beautiful, ambitious and creative, madly in love in a country under daily attack. Their relationship was intense from the get-go, and they didn’t want to waste a second.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

17 November 2023 20:34

Cops in the trenches: Ukrainian police key to fight against Russia

DONETSK REGION, Ukraine — Some of the riskiest battles in Ukraine are being fought not by soldiers but by cops.

In many recent operations on the eastern front — including the liberation of a key village near Bakhmut — police officers boldly advanced on occupying Russian forces, attacking with grenades and gunfire.

Ukrainian police have long been reviled as corrupt and ineffective, and citizens united against them during the Maidan revolution of 2013-14, which led to a sweeping overhaul and rebranding.

Now, Russia’s war has carved out new and unexpected roles for the Ukrainian police, moving some officers from squad cars into trenches.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

15 November 2023 13:51

Ukraine liberated Kherson city. A year later, Russian bombs still rain down.

Oleksandr Andrienko lay in a hospital ward in Kherson, his face pale and exhausted, blood still seeping from the bandage around the stump of what had been his lower left leg.

Andrienko is one of scores of civilians who have been maimed or killed in recent months as Russia has continued to relentlessly bombard the southern city of Kherson and the surrounding region — an area that it once occupied and that Russian President Vladimir Putin, defying reality and international law, still insists is now part of Russia, a year after Ukraine pushed his troops back across the river.

Ukrainian forces in recent weeks have stepped up their dangerous river crossings, aiming to establish new positions and push Russian lines on the east bank back even farther. Moscow, meanwhile, seems to have given up on the idea of winning popular support for reoccupation.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

14 November 2023 19:27

Putin, eyeing reelection, signs law to allow voting in occupied Ukraine

RIGA, Latvia — Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday cleared the way to hold Russia’s presidential election in occupied Ukrainian territory in March — part of a highly managed process to keep him in office until at least 2030, even as Russia’s war has forced Ukraine to delay its own national elections because the country is living under martial law with millions of citizens displaced.

Putin, who has been Russia’s paramount leader since Dec. 31, 1999, is expected to formally announce in coming weeks that he will run for a fifth term as president. (He also served one term as prime minister from 2008 to 2012.) Putin is certain to win, given a rigged electoral system in which anti-regime opposition figures have been jailed or forced to flee the country to avoid arrest.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

11 November 2023 19:16

Ukrainian military officer coordinated Nord Stream pipeline attack

A senior Ukrainian military officer with deep ties to the country’s intelligence services played a central role in the bombing of the Nord Stream natural gas pipeline last year, according to officials in Ukraine and elsewhere in Europe, as well as other people knowledgeable about the details of the covert operation.

The officer’s role provides the most direct evidence to date tying Ukraine’s military and security leadership to a controversial act of sabotage that has spawned multiple criminal investigations and that U.S. and Western officials have called a dangerous attack on Europe’s energy infrastructure.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

08 November 2023 21:45

Slovakia’s new government rejects aid for Ukraine

RIGA, Latvia — The new leftist government of Slovakia, a country neighboring Ukraine that had been one of its staunchest supporters, on Wednesday rejected a proposed package of military aid for Kyiv, fulfilling a campaign promise by Prime Minister Robert Fico to halt assistance in the war against Russia.

The blocking of the roughly $43 million aid package, which was to include rockets and ammunition, is unlikely to change Ukraine’s battlefield capabilities significantly. But the government’s decision, issued at a cabinet meeting, is a first concrete sign of growing fatigue among Kyiv’s supporters in NATO as Russia’s invasion nears the two-year mark.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

06 November 2023 22:29

Grenade in birthday gift kills aide to Ukraine’s top commander

KYIV — A top aide to the commander of Ukraine’s armed forces was killed Monday when a birthday gift exploded, the military leader announced.

In a message published on Telegram, Gen. Valery Zaluzhny said that his assistant, Maj. Hennadii Chastiakov, was killed under “tragic circumstances” while celebrating his birthday with relatives when “an unknown explosive device went off in one of the gifts.”

Chastiakov was “a reliable shoulder for me” since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Zaluzhny wrote. “The reasons and circumstances [surrounding his death] will be established during the pre-trial investigation,” he wrote.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

05 November 2023 15:09

Arrest of ex-FSB agent signals Kremlin crackdown on pro-war hawks

MOSCOW — Russia’s arrest of Igor Girkin, the former security agent who was convicted this year in absentia by a Dutch court in the 2014 downing of a passenger jet over Ukraine, made clear that Moscow’s protection had come to an end.

But it was also a warning shot to the country’s ultranationalist hawks, who believe President Vladimir Putin hasn’t gone hard enough on Ukraine and have grown increasingly vocal about it.

As a former agent of the FSB, Girkin helped foment Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea and war in eastern Ukraine. But it wasn’t his role in those actions, or in the murder of the 298 passengers and crew aboard Malaysian Airlines Flight 17, that got him into trouble with the Kremlin.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

29 October 2023 15:28

New danger for Ukraine: Taking Israel’s side in war against Hamas and Gaza

KYIV — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s immediate and forceful support for Israel in its fight against Hamas has imperiled almost a year of concerted efforts by Kyiv to win the support of Arab and Muslim nations in its war against Russia.

Hamas and Russia are the “same evil, and the only difference is that there is a terrorist organization that attacked Israel and here is a terrorist state that attacked Ukraine,” Zelensky said in a speech to NATO’s Parliamentary Assembly on Oct. 9.

But with Israel’s military operation set to enter its fourth week, and Palestinian civilian casualties mounting, the war in Gaza is posing one of the most difficult diplomatic tests for Ukraine since Russia’s invasion in February 2022.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

27 October 2023 09:21

For Putin foe Alexey Navalny, Ukraine has long been a volatile issue

He is the imprisoned opposition leader who more than any other Russian political figure has challenged Vladimir Putin’s rule. He has condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and said that Moscow must withdraw its troops and pay reparations. He is half-Ukrainian.

And yet Alexey Navalny is widely distrusted, if not despised, in Ukraine.

For Navalny, like millions of other Russians with Ukrainian roots, Putin’s war has been a blood-soaked tragedy. It has also put him in political quandary — compelled to change and clarify earlier statements that appeared to deny Ukrainian nationhood as he espoused the idea that Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians are all one people, and that Crimea, annexed by Putin, was an integral part of Russia wrongfully given to Ukraine by a Soviet leader.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

26 October 2023 17:00

Hundreds of Ukrainians stranded in Gaza, Kyiv says

Hundreds of Ukrainian nationals are trapped inside the Gaza Strip with no way of leaving, the Ukrainian government said.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs told The Washington Post on Thursday that 357 Ukrainians, including 208 women, have informed the government that they wish to leave Gaza. Because of the closure of the Rafah border crossing, however, the ministry said there is “currently no possibility to leave.”

The Ukrainian ministry also confirmed that the number of Ukrainian nationals killed in Hamas’s deadly attack inside Israel on Oct. 7 has risen to 21, with one missing. Three Ukrainians have been killed inside Gaza, two of them children, the ministry said.

Read more live updates on the Israel-Gaza war here.

The Washington Post

26 October 2023 09:01

Russia prison population plummets as convicts are sent to war

RIGA, Latvia — Russia has freed up to 100,000 prison inmates and sent them to fight in Ukraine, according to government statistics and rights advocates — a far greater number than was previously known.

The sharp drop in the number of inmates is evidence that the Defense Ministry continued to aggressively recruit convicted criminals even after blocking access to prisoners by the Wagner mercenary group, which pioneered the campaign to trade clemency for military service.

The Russian prison population, estimated at roughly 420,000 before the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, plummeted to a historic low of about 266,000, according to Deputy Justice Minister Vsevolod Vukolov, who disclosed the figure during a panel discussion earlier this month.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

24 October 2023 11:35

Russia presses counter-counteroffensive in northeast Ukraine

KUPYANSK, Ukraine — With the world focused on the war between Israel and Hamas, Russia has launched ferocious attacks in eastern Ukraine, simultaneously ramping up its efforts to encircle the city of Avdiivka in the Donetsk region and pummeling the area around the formerly occupied cities of Kupyansk and Lyman.

Moscow’s reinforced positions and renewed attacks at these strategic points on the eastern front are forcing Ukraine to defend swaths of territory that were occupied for months after Russia’s invasion in February 2022 and then liberated roughly a year ago.

Some of the most intense fighting is taking place near Kupyansk, a city located on the Oskil River, just 25 miles from the border with Russia. Ukrainian commanders and officials stationed along the eastern front said in interviews that Russia had noticeably bolstered its forces in recent weeks by creating new, fresh brigades.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

26 November 2023 16:29

Russia held these Ukrainian teens captive. Their testimonies could be used against Putin.

KYIV — The Russian missing child poster went up in Crimea soon after Rostyslav Lavrov escaped last month.

“HELP FIND,” it read. “17 years old, born 2006 … Height 160 cm, thin build, dark hair, blue eyes.”

The attached photo — which Lavrov said was taken several months ago when Russian authorities holding him against his will tried to issue him a Russian ID card — showed the Ukrainian teen sullen in a white shirt and tie.

He is one of three Ukrainian teenagers who fled Russia or Russian-occupied Crimea this summer and shared their experiences with The Washington Post in lengthy interviews in Kyiv and Kherson. They each described systematic efforts by Russian officials to keep them in Russian-controlled territory.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

25 November 2023 15:51

Russian and Chinese executives discuss Russia-Crimea tunnel project

KYIV — Russian and Chinese business executives with government ties have held secret discussions on plans to build an underwater tunnel connecting Russia to Crimea in hopes of establishing a transportation route that would be protected from attacks by Ukraine, according to communications intercepted by Ukraine’s security services.

The talks, which included meetings in late October, were triggered by mounting Russian concerns over the security of an 11-mile bridge across the Kerch Strait that has served as a key logistics line for the Russian military but has been bombed twice by Ukraine and remains a vulnerable war target.

The negotiations underscore Russia’s determination to maintain its grip on Crimea, a peninsula that it annexed illegally in 2014, as well as Moscow’s growing dependence on China as a source of global support.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

18 November 2023 17:29

Russia frees killers from prison to go to war and kill in Ukraine

Vladislav Kanyus, a young man from Kemerovo in southwestern Siberia, brutally killed his ex-girlfriend Vera Pekhteleva, torturing, suffocating and stabbing her for hours.

He was sentenced in July 2022 to 17 years after a high-profile trial that reignited a national conversation in Russia about the lack of protections against domestic violence and law enforcement indifference to such cases. But then Pekhteleva’s bereaved mother, Oksana, received a photo of Kanyus — not in prison but in a military uniform surrounded by other Russian soldiers.

Her daughter’s murderer was pardoned by President Vladimir Putin in exchange for taking up arms in Ukraine.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

16 November 2023 21:31

Jailed for 7 years, pacifist artist to Russian court: ‘I’m freer than you’

RIGA, Latvia — Alexandra Skochilenko, a pacifist Russian artist and musician with no prior history of political activism, was sentenced to seven years in prison by a St. Petersburg court on Thursday, for a trivial antiwar protest: covering five supermarket price tags in March of last year with stickers giving information about Russia’s war against Ukraine.

Skochilenko, wearing one of her trademark bright hippie shirts with a red heart emblazoned on the front, fixed her eyes on Judge Oksana Demyasheva and told her: “Everyone sees and knows that you are not judging a terrorist. You are not judging an extremist. You are not even judging a political activist. You are judging a pacifist.”

The judge prohibited video coverage of Skochilenko’s final statement before pronouncing a guilty verdict on the charge of spreading “fake news” about the military.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

14 November 2023 21:21

Ukrainian lawmaker with ties to Giuliani arrested on treason charges

KYIV — Ukrainian law enforcement officials on Tuesday jailed Oleksandr Dubinsky, a member of parliament who four years ago helped Rudy Giuliani in his failed attempts to dig up dirt on Joe Biden on behalf of then-president Donald Trump.

Dubinsky is accused of treason for allegedly working to help Russia in its war against Ukraine. His arrest restores a spotlight on the efforts by Trump and his associates to gain political advantage by discrediting Biden and his son, Hunter Biden. Trump, despite facing numerous legal prosecutions, is the overwhelming Republican favorite to challenge Biden in next year’s election.

Authorities from the Security Service of Ukraine, or SBU, and the State Bureau of Investigations informed Dubinsky on Monday that a criminal case had been opened against him on charges of state treason, the agencies said in statements posted on the Telegram messaging platform.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

14 November 2023 14:05

Amid competing U.S. security priorities, Ukraine could get left behind

Ukraine is running out of money and time, its proponents say. But congressional interest in financing its fight against invading Russian forces has dipped lower than ever, and rising competition from other national security priorities — including Israel and the U.S. southern border — could sound the death knell for continued American aid for its embattled European ally.

Both Democrats and Republicans have alluded to this possibility in recent days, as Congress hurtles toward a government shutdown and stands virtually no chance of attaching Ukraine aid to any measure aimed at preventing that. The Pentagon, meanwhile, has warned that its provisions for Kyiv are getting “smaller and smaller.”

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

09 November 2023 20:55

Russian missile strike turned Ukrainian medal ceremony into a bloodbath

Members of Ukraine’s 128th Mountain Assault Brigade gathered Friday morning for a medal ceremony near the front line in the southeastern region of Zaporizhzhia — continuing a military tradition dating back to Soviet times, which Ukrainian officials had sustained to prop up morale among exhausted troops.

“The Soviet era came back,” said one member of the 128th Brigade, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “It resembled scenes from Russian propaganda films about World War II, where soldiers stand in rows, looking all glamorous.”

But instead of celebrating the fighters’ bravery and service, the award ceremony turned into a bloodbath. A Russian missile strike killed at least 19 soldiers in attendance, including several high-ranking officers and some of the brigade’s best warriors. Many had removed their helmets for the proceedings and suffered head injuries. Dozens of others were wounded.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

08 November 2023 18:51

As war frustrations rise, stalemate tests Zelensky and top general Zaluzhny

KYIV — After months of heavy losses in a largely stalled counteroffensive against Russia, tension among Ukraine’s senior leaders has spilled awkwardly into the open in recent days — prompting President Volodymyr Zelensky to call for a halt to political infighting.

“Everyone should be concentrating their efforts right now on defending the country,” Zelensky said Monday in his nightly address. “Put themselves together and do not rest; do not drown in infighting or other issues.” He warned that shattered unity could have drastic consequences: “The situation is now the same as it was before — if there is no victory, there will be no country.”

Zelensky’s plea to stop any infighting came after he engaged in his own rare, public dispute with the commander of Ukraine’s armed forces, Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, over whether the war has reached a World War I-style “stalemate.”

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

05 November 2023 16:52

Russian missile strikes brigade in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine says

KYIV — Russia launched a deadly missile strike on a Ukrainian military brigade in the southeastern Zaporizhzhia region over the weekend, killing an unspecified number of soldiers, Ukrainian officials said. Unconfirmed Ukrainian media reports and a member of the brigade said that dozens may have been killed and injured.

Russian forces hit troops of the 128th Mountain Assault Brigade with an Iskander-M missile on Friday, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry said in a social media post late Saturday.

“Servicemen were killed, and local residents were also injured of various degrees of severity,” the ministry said, without providing the number of dead, or the circumstances or precise location of the attack.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

02 November 2023 18:47

In peace and war, these Ukrainian brothers bonded. Then death came.

TOMAKIVKA, Ukraine — Maksym and Ivan Lyakh, born four years apart, weren’t just brothers. They were best friends. So, when Russia invaded Ukraine and they wanted to fight for their country, they insisted on fighting together.

“We were always together,” said Ivan Lyakh, 19. “We would always party together, hang out together. We were inseparable. So we were set on fighting together. They tried to split us up, but we were stubborn.”

Russia’s war has left a permanent mark on nearly almost every Ukrainian family, but the burden is arguably heaviest on those with multiple loved ones deployed to the front.

For Serhii Lyakh, 47, who owns a farming business in Tomakivka, and his wife, Lilya, 43, who has a women’s clothing boutique, it was their two sons — their only children — who left to fight for the country’s freedom.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

28 October 2023 16:23

Russia and Ukraine intensify fight over Avdiivka, another ruined city

AVDIIVKA, Ukraine — Russia and Ukraine are once again locked in a fierce battle for control of a dead city.

In recent days, Moscow’s forces have gradually advanced to the north of Avdiivka — about three miles north of the occupied regional capital of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine — hoping to encircle the city and seize control of one of Ukraine’s most well-fortified points on the front.

The fierce escalation in fighting bears ominous echoes to the hellish months-long battle for Bakhmut in which tens of thousands of Russian and Ukrainian soldiers died over control of a city that was largely razed, leaving little more than smoldering ruins.

In response to ferocious Russian attacks, Ukraine in recent days has redeployed battalions from at least one brigade on the southern front to Avdiivka — a sign that Kyiv is drawing on resources that otherwise might be focused on its counteroffensive to oust Russian occupiers.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

26 October 2023 21:05

U.S., Russia veto each other’s U.N. resolutions on Israel-Gaza war

The U.N. Security Council failed again Wednesday to adopt a unified position on stopping the carnage in the Middle East, with the United States and Russia vetoing each others’ resolutions.

In charges and countercharges reminiscent of Cold War debates and more recent discord over Ukraine, Moscow and Washington charged each other with bad faith, political posturing and pushing their own positions on other council members without consultation.

The principal difference between the competing resolutions was Washington’s call for “all measures, specifically to include humanitarian pauses,” to allow aid to flow into Gaza — a position it rejected as recently as last week and with no specific mention of ongoing Israeli airstrikes — vs. Moscow’s call for a complete cease-fire. In an address to the council Tuesday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said a pause should be “considered.”

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

26 October 2023 13:53

Biden preps $50 billion for domestic crises on top of Israel, Ukraine aid

White House aides are preparing to propose spending roughly $50 billion on urgent domestic needs, two people familiar with the matter said, just days after President Biden unveiled a roughly $100 billion request for crises in Ukraine, Israel and other international priorities.

The proposed legislation will call for more funding for child care, high-speed internet access, natural disaster relief, and firefighters battling wildfires, among other domestic priorities, White House Office of Management and Budget Director Shalanda D. Young said in a letter Friday. It is not exactly clear how much funding the president will propose for each program, and the people familiar with the matter cautioned that planning remains in flux. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because the details are not final, and the size of the total proposal could still change.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

25 October 2023 15:53

Back-channel talks keep Ukraine and Russia in contact, despite war

KYIV — Away from the public eye and the bloody front line, Ukraine and Russia are still talking.

The countries, now sworn enemies fighting a grinding war, are managing to negotiate on a few core humanitarian issues: exchanging prisoners of war and dead soldiers’ bodies; the passage of ships from Ukraine’s Black Sea ports; and, most recently, the return of Ukrainian children from Russia.

In some cases, Moscow and Kyiv use intermediaries, including Turkey, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, the Vatican, and the International Committee of the Red Cross.

But most of the wartime bartering is done directly, by individual representatives, including in tough and unpleasant face-to-face meetings on the Ukrainian-Russian border and in Istanbul, as well as phone calls, according to some Ukrainian officials involved in the discussions.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

23 October 2023 15:36

Exclusive: Ukrainian spies with deep ties to CIA wage shadow war against Russia

The cluttered car carrying a mother and her 12-year-old daughter seemed barely worth the attention of Russian security officials as it approached a border checkpoint. But the least conspicuous piece of luggage was part of an elaborate, lethal plot.

Four weeks later, the device detonated just outside Moscow in an SUV being driven by the daughter of a Russian nationalist who had urged his country to “kill, kill, kill” Ukrainians, an explosion signaling that the heart of Russia would not be spared the carnage of war.

The operation was orchestrated by Ukraine’s domestic security service, the SBU. The August 2022 attack is part of a raging shadow war in which Ukraine’s spy services have also twice bombed the bridge connecting Russia to occupied Crimea, piloted drones into the roof of the Kremlin and blown holes in the hulls of Russian naval vessels in the Black Sea.

Read the full story here.