The Washington Post

19 December 2023 17:33

Zelensky to face questions over faltered counteroffensive, other setbacks

KYIV — With a counteroffensive having failed to push back Russian forces occupying nearly one-fifth of his country, and with crucially needed military and economic aid stalled in Washington and Brussels, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky prepared to face tough questions Tuesday evening at a year-end news conference in Kyiv.

Kyiv’s situation seems increasingly difficult, with frequent reports of shortages in military personnel and weapons. Ukrainian cities are still under constant bombardment by Russian missiles and explosive drones, and Moscow’s troops are pushing to advance at several points along the front line in the east and south.

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The Washington Post

18 December 2023 16:24

Listening devices found in office of Ukraine’s top general, Valery Zaluzhny

KYIV — Ukraine’s military said Monday that listening devices had been found in offices of the country’s top commanding general, Valery Zaluzhny, and other military officials, but did not indicate who might have placed the bugs, or what conversations might have been surreptitiously recorded.

The military statement, made in a Facebook post, came one day after Ukrainian media reported that Zaluzhny’s “office” had been bugged and the country’s security service, the SBU, said it opened a criminal investigation into the incident.

“Yesterday, during a routine inspection of the premises, elements of equipment for recording information were discovered,” the general staff of the Ukrainian military wrote in the post. “Listening devices were installed in offices designated for the work of the commander in chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and employees of his office.”

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The Washington Post

15 December 2023 19:11

Hungary’s Orban blocks funding for Ukraine after allowing accession talks

The European Union decided Thursday to open accession talks with Ukraine but — after the objections of just one member — could not agree on providing $50 billion in funding for the country, handing Kyiv a symbolic victory while renewing questions about the depth of European support.

Talks on the funding fell apart after Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban refused to budge. E.U. leaders will return to the issue in January, officials said. The impasse over funding for Ukraine came after the U.S. Congress has repeatedly failed to agree to a $60 billion aid package despite increasingly urgent pleas from Kyiv.

Full E.U. membership is realistically many years away, but it was nonetheless a historic moment for Ukraine, which has pushed for years to join the bloc — to bind it closer to its allies in Europe, bolster its economy and give its citizens the right to live, work and travel freely across the continent.

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The Washington Post

14 December 2023 19:24

E.U. agrees to open membership talks for Ukraine

BRUSSELS — The European Union on Thursday agreed to open membership talks with Ukraine, an important sign of support at a moment when battlefield progress has stalled and U.S. commitment to continued funding for the war has wavered.

E.U. leaders gathered in Brussels are still debating a package for Ukraine worth more than $50 billion — aid seen as critical for Kyiv to keep fighting.

Although E.U. membership is likely still many years away, it was a historic moment for Ukraine, which has pushed for years to join the union. “History is made by those who don’t get tired of fighting for freedom,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

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The Washington Post

14 December 2023 15:08

Russia advancing in Ukraine war, Putin tells news conference and call-in show

MOSCOW — With his armed forces still on the attack in Ukraine and a reelection campaign getting underway at home, Russian President Vladimir Putin addressed his nation Thursday in a marathon news conference and call-in show for constituents where he quickly declared that the war will continue until Russia achieves its aims.

Conference moderators immediately turned to the war in Ukraine, asking Putin to address one of the most sensitive issues: military mobilization. Putin ruled out another conscription wave, claiming that an aggressive Defense Ministry campaign to attract contract soldiers had succeeded in recruiting 486,000 men and asserting that 1,500 men were enlisting each day.

Putin signaled that he feels confident to push ahead with the invasion, saying there will be peace with Ukraine “only when we achieve our goals,” which he identified as “de-Nazification” and “demilitarization” of the country.

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The Washington Post

13 December 2023 17:22

Ballistic missile strike on Kyiv follows major cyberattack

KYIV — Russia fired a barrage of hypersonic ballistic missiles at Kyiv in the early hours of Wednesday morning, injuring dozens of people and causing damage and fires from falling debris throughout the capital, city authorities said.

Loud explosions jolted many residents out of bed around 3 a.m. in central Kyiv, followed by air raid alert sirens a few minutes later. Ukraine’s air force said that antiaircraft defenses shot down all 10 ballistic missiles that were launched at Kyiv. That assertion could not be independently confirmed.

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said that 53 people were injured, including six children, and that buildings were damaged throughout districts in the part of the city lying on the eastern bank of the Dnieper River.

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The Washington Post

12 December 2023 18:06

Zelensky warns of guerrilla war as Ukraine aid stalls in Congress

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told Congress on Tuesday that his country will never give up in its fight to expel invading Russian forces, but he warned that without additional U.S. assistance, the conflict will turn far more brutal as his military inevitably cedes ground to its determined and well-armed adversary.

Zelensky has come to Washington as Ukraine, low on weaponry and cash, faces a stalemate in the war with Russia and growing resistance among some Republican lawmakers to President Biden’s request for billions of dollars in U.S. aid. This is his second visit to the United States in the past three months, as negotiations have stalled on Capitol Hill.

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The Washington Post

11 December 2023 21:54

Zelensky arrives in Washington as Ukraine aid stalls in Congress

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned the United States on Monday against allowing politics to “betray” his beleaguered army in its war with Russia, registering the latest appeal for further support as some Republican lawmakers appear disinterested in renewing President Biden’s request for billions of dollars in U.S. military assistance as the conflict stalemates.

Zelensky, speaking to an audience of U.S. and international military personnel at the National Defense University in Washington, said that his government’s chance at victory was in the balance. And although he did not single out Republicans, the Ukrainian leader claimed that Russia and the aims of its president, Vladimir Putin, stand to benefit from a lack of action in Congress.

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The Washington Post

10 December 2023 16:45

Ukraine’s Zelensky appears increasingly embattled as U.S. backing wavers

KYIV — Anxiety is mounting in Ukraine as disagreements in Washington continue to stall billions of dollars of urgently needed wartime funding — aid that officials here say is crucial to keep the country running as the war with Russia grinds on.

The strain in the relationship between Kyiv and Washington comes as internal political divisions have resurfaced for President Volodymyr Zelensky, with fears over the potential gaps in funding feeding into other tensions in the capital. Relations between officials who have previously maintained a public appearance of unity are now openly fraying.

A delegation of top Ukrainian officials visited Washington this week to plead for more funding for both the military and the national budget — calls that appear to have gone unheard as Senate Republicans once again blocked the proposed aid, which has been tied to controversial border control measures.

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The Washington Post

08 December 2023 16:32

‘Modest’ Putin makes low-key announcement of 2024 presidential run

Russian President Vladimir Putin has confirmed his long-expected run for another six-year presidential term in 2024, bringing him closer to beating Joseph Stalin’s record as the longest-serving Russian leader.

This time, the announcement did not come directly from Putin or the Kremlin but from a Russian military officer, who told a group of state media reporters that he had pleaded with Putin to run on behalf of soldiers fighting in Ukraine — and that the president agreed.

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The Washington Post

05 December 2023 19:12

Russia to release six more Ukrainian children after Qatar mediation

Russia has agreed to free an additional six Ukrainian children and allow them to reunite with their families in Ukraine following Qatari mediation, Lolwah Al-Khater, Qatar’s minister of state for international cooperation said Tuesday.

The children are among the thousands Ukraine says have been forcibly displaced to Russia or trapped in Russian-occupied territory in Ukraine. The group of six is scheduled to leave Moscow on Tuesday and travel through Belarus to Ukraine, according to an official briefed on the operation.

The mother of one 11-year-old boy in the group is a Ukrainian soldier being held as a prisoner of war in Russia, added the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. His father died around a decade ago, and he will now stay with a maternal aunt. Until now, he had been living with relatives in the Russian-occupied Donetsk region, the official said.

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The Washington Post

04 December 2023 20:24

White House warns Congress of urgent need for Ukraine funding

The White House issued an urgent warning to Congress on Monday about the need for additional aid for Ukraine’s war with Russia, with Office of Management and Budget Director Shalanda Young bluntly writing in a letter to congressional leaders that the United States is “out of money to support Ukraine in this fight.”

In the letter, Young wrote that “without congressional action, by the end of the year we will run out of resources to procure more weapons and equipment for Ukraine and to provide equipment from U.S. military stocks.”

“There is no magical pot of funding available to meet this moment. We are out of money — and nearly out of time.”

A Biden administration request for nearly $106 billion for Ukraine, Israel and other needs remains stalled on Capitol Hill.

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The Washington Post

03 December 2023 16:38

In second act, Russian activist group Pussy Riot protests Ukraine war

RIGA, Latvia — More than a year after members of the Russian activist group Pussy Riot, Maria Alyokhina and Lucy Shtein escaped from Moscow disguised as food couriers, the feminist punk-protest band is touring the United States with a new antiwar anthem that howls in rage at Kremlin propagandists they accuse of poisoning Russian minds.

The group borrows from Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake — music wedded in Russian minds as synonymous with sinister official censorship — for their song about the poison of state television in a nation where, according to the lyrics, “the happiness of the Motherland is more precious than life.”

Alyokhina was imprisoned in 2012 with two other Pussy Riot members for nearly two years for “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred” over a punk performance that year in Moscow’s Christ the Savior Cathedral.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

30 November 2023 18:07

Russia bans international LGBT movement as ‘extremist’

RIGA, Latvia — Russia’s Supreme Court on Thursday banned the “international LGBT public movement” as an extremist organization — even though the alleged movement has no organizational structure, leaders, membership, website or address.

The Russian ban, which was approved in a closed hearing, nonetheless could have sweeping implications for LGBT people in Russia. It could be used to prosecute any LGBT organization, activity, communication, or mutual support initiative, including those online.

While critics called the ruling legal nonsense, the Kremlin appears to be banking on global homophobia as a unifying ideology that will align intolerant countries — particularly in the Middle East and Africa — against the liberal West.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

28 November 2023 20:10

Ukraine military intelligence chief’s wife was poisoned, Kyiv officials say

KYIV — The wife of Ukraine’s military intelligence chief has been hospitalized after being poisoned with heavy metals, a top Ukrainian official said Tuesday.

Marianna Budanova, who is married to Ukrainian military spymaster Kyrylo Budanov, is undergoing treatment after a lengthy period of illness, local media reported.

Marianna Budanova “is undergoing a course of treatment, which is already coming to an end,” Andriy Yusov, a spokesman for the Defense Ministry’s intelligence directorate, told Radio Svoboda, the Ukrainian service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

“I can confirm the information, unfortunately, it is true,” Yusov told Reuters.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

19 December 2023 13:56

Moscow glows triumphant as front freezes and Western aid for Ukraine stalls

MOSCOW — Moscow is in a buoyant holiday spirit — with little, if any, outward sign that it is a wartime capital with Russian casualties in Ukraine estimated at more than 300,000 dead or wounded and increasing every day.

Hundreds of Muscovites recently queued for hours in the winter cold for tickets to “The Nutcracker.” A techno party this past weekend was headlined by DJs from Spain and Eastern Europe. Even a series of Ukrainian drone strikes on the city in recent months barely made a dent.

Cocooned by a large city budget — and relatively untouched by the waves of military conscription that hit Russia’s regions — most residents can shut their eyes to the vicious conflict grinding on 500 miles to the west.

Inside the Kremlin, the mood seems even better — or at least that’s the official message.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

16 December 2023 20:05

Zelensky, snared by Trump impeachment, ducks U.S. political crossfire again

KYIV — When Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky flew to Washington this week to plead for wartime aid, he found himself caught in a bitterly partisan U.S. domestic political dispute — again.

Zelensky is well-practiced in how to avoid taking sides in internal U.S. affairs — a survival skill he acquired four years ago when his attempts to secure a visit with then-President Donald Trump trapped him at the center of a historic impeachment inquiry.

But far more is at stake for Ukraine this time, and it will be far more difficult for him to appear neutral.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

15 December 2023 15:18

How Ukrainian membership could change the European Union

BRUSSELS — The European Union on Thursday agreed to open accession talks with Ukraine, bringing the country a step closer to its dream of joining the bloc, despite lingering concern about its readiness and questions about what welcoming Kyiv would mean for the E.U.

Ukraine would be the bloc’s fifth most populous country and by far the poorest, meaning it would draw substantial subsidies under current E.U. rules.

In Brussels, there is a growing sense that Ukrainian membership would shift the E.U.’s balance of power, impact its agricultural market and upend its budget.

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The Washington Post

14 December 2023 17:21

Putin says Russia, U.S. in talks over jailed Wall Street Journal reporter

MOSCOW — Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday that Moscow and Washington are in contact over U.S. journalist Evan Gershkovich, who has been jailed in Russia since March on espionage charges that the Biden administration and the Wall Street Journal have denounced forcefully as baseless.

Putin, speaking at his marathon annual news conference and call-in show for citizens, denied that Russia had refused an offer to release Gershkovich, as the State Department asserted last week, and said talks were ongoing.

Gershkovich, an American citizen who was based in Moscow as a correspondent for the Journal with accreditation from the Russian Foreign Ministry, was arrested by Russian authorities while on a reporting trip in Yekaterinburg, a city in the Urals, roughly 880 miles east of Moscow.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

13 December 2023 20:00

U.S. officials were ‘furious’ about leaks exposing Ukraine war concerns

When U.S. officials were busy resupplying Ukraine’s depleted forces in the spring for what was expected to be a coming counteroffensive against entrenched Russian troops, the Pentagon sprung a leak.

Photographs of about 50 highly classified documents — detailing secret intelligence on challenges as diverse as the war in Ukraine, Iran’s nuclear program, Chinese aircraft carriers and the killing of Islamic State terrorists — started appearing online.

“We were blindsided and furious,” said a U.S. official who fielded dozens of media inquiries about the leaks. The official, like others interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the disclosure of classified documents.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

13 December 2023 15:36

Zelensky unable to win over Congress as Biden’s Ukraine package stalls

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky failed on Tuesday to secure a breakthrough with Congress as it remains firmly deadlocked over President Biden’s request for additional U.S. military assistance for the embattled country, even though many lawmakers appeared to agree that the war’s outlook would only worsen without a continuation of American support.

Zelensky told lawmakers that his country will never give up in its fight to expel invading Russian forces, but he warned that without more aid, the conflict will turn far more brutal as his military inevitably cedes ground to its determined and well-armed adversary.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

12 December 2023 13:42

Cyberattack hits Kyiv as Zelensky pitches U.S. for a lifeline for Ukraine

KYIV — As Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky prepared to meet U.S. lawmakers and President Biden in Washington on Tuesday in an urgent bid to drum up some $60 billion of crucially needed U.S. aid, a giant cyberattack hit the Ukrainian capital, targeting Kyivstar, one of the country’s principal mobile phone and internet providers as well as at least one bank.

The hacking assault underscored the continuing threat to Ukraine’s statehood, as political infighting between Democrats and Republicans in Washington risks cutting off aid to Ukraine from its most important ally.

Ahead of his visits to Congress and the White House, Zelensky laid out the stakes in a series of posts on the social media platform X, summarizing a speech he made Monday at the National Defense University in Washington in which he said Ukraine is fighting to “stop Russia right at the start of its global war on freedom.”

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The Washington Post

11 December 2023 20:07

Jailed Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny is missing, supporters say

MOSCOW — Supporters of jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny said Monday that they had lost contact with him and that they have been unable to ascertain his whereabouts for almost a week.

Navalny, who has been convicted on an array of charges widely viewed as political retribution and carrying combined sentences totaling 30 years, was no longer in the prison colony IK-6, in the Vladimir region, about 140 miles east of Moscow where he had been held in recent months, his spokeswoman, Kira Yarmysh, posted Monday on X.

Following his conviction last summer on extremism charges, Navalny was due to be transferred to a “special security” penal colony, a facility with the most severe restrictions in the Russian prison system, but officials from Russia’s penitentiary service had not informed Navalny’s lawyers or family of his new location.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

09 December 2023 15:15

Ukraine cracks down on draft-dodging as it struggles to find troops

VELIATYNO, Ukraine — Soon after Russia’s invasion in February 2022, Ukraine beefed up its border defenses near this Carpathian mountain village.

But the extra patrols and reels of barbed wire fencing rolled out along the top of a mountain pass along the Romanian border were meant to keep people in — particularly draft-eligible men seeking to flee the country.

As Ukraine approaches its third year of war, those men are needed more than ever. The leaders are still pleading for more weapons and ammunition from the United States and Europe — even as signs of flagging support among those allies suggest that Ukraine may have to do more to arm itself. But even more than bullets, Ukraine needs fighters, leading to a search for new ways to mobilize the population and stronger measures against draft dodgers.

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The Washington Post

06 December 2023 16:05

U.S. files its first war-crimes charges related to Russia-Ukraine war

Justice Department officials have filed war crimes charges against four Russian men accused of torturing an American in the Ukraine war — the first such U.S.-based charges filed as a result of that conflict.

According to court documents, the charges include torture, mistreatment, and unlawful confinement of an American citizen in Ukraine following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

The four people charged — Suren Seiranovich Mkrtchyan, 45, Dmitry Budnik, and two others whose full names are not yet known — allegedly interrogated, tortured and threatened to kill the victim, including holding a mock execution.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

05 December 2023 13:50

In Ukraine, a war of incremental gains as counteroffensive stalls

Soldiers in the 47th Separate Mechanized Brigade waited for nightfall before piling into their U.S.-provided Bradley Fighting Vehicles. It was June 7 and Ukraine’s long-awaited counteroffensive was about to begin.

The goal for the first 24 hours was to advance nearly nine miles, reaching the village of Robotyne. However, nothing went as planned.

This account of how the counteroffensive unfolded is the second in a two-part series and illuminates the brutal and often futile attempts to breach Russian lines, as well as the widening rift between Ukrainian and U.S. commanders over tactics and strategy. The first article examined the Ukrainian and U.S. planning that went into the operation.

This second part is based on interviews with more than 30 senior Ukrainian and U.S. military officials, as well as over two dozen officers and troops on the front line.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

04 December 2023 15:36

Miscalculations, divisions marked offensive planning by U.S., Ukraine

On June 15, in a conference room at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin sat around a table with his Ukrainian counterpart, who was joined by aides from Kyiv.

Austin asked Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov about Ukraine’s decision-making in the opening days of its long-awaited counteroffensive, pressing him on why his forces weren’t using Western-supplied mine-clearing equipment to enable a larger, mechanized assault.

Reznikov said Ukraine’s military commanders were the ones making those decisions. But he noted that Ukraine’s armored vehicles were being destroyed by Russian artillery with every attempt to advance.

The meeting in Brussels illustrates how a counteroffensive has failed to deliver its expected punch, generating friction and second-guessing between Washington and Kyiv and raising deeper questions about Ukraine’s ability to retake decisive amounts of territory.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

02 December 2023 16:15

Russian deserters tell of blood, betrayal and hope in escaping Ukraine war

MOSCOW — When Igor, a Russian soldier, was conscripted to go to war in Ukraine, he reacted with a fatalistic shrug. But deserting the army amid staggering casualties, he said, required determination and a plan.

The 28-year-old Muscovite, who was mobilized in September 2022 and left Russia this September, never supported the war and claims he never met a conscripted soldier who did.

“The mobilized do not want to go to war and to fight,” Igor said in an interview. “There is no motivation. How can we even talk about any motivation for a Russian person to kill a Ukrainian?”

He felt guilty leaving comrades fighting as he skipped out of Russia during his two-week home leave.

Amid appalling casualty rates, many Russian soldiers are desperate to escape. One Russian underground antiwar network, Go by the Forest, says it has helped more than 400 men to desert, and advised nearly 20,000 how to avoid being drafted.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

29 November 2023 13:53

Most Russians back war in Ukraine and buy Putin’s case for it, report says

RIGA, Latvia — Russians are growing weary of the war against Ukraine but are divided about how much harm it has done and how to end it, according to a report based on polling and focus groups by the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center and the Levada Center, an independent polling group.

Notably, however, as President Vladimir Putin appears poised to run in a highly managed presidential election in March, the nation has not turned against him, and Western efforts to punish Russia for the war have not weakened his grip on power.

“All the naïve predictions that popular discontent triggered by sanctions and the wartime restrictions imposed on daily life would bring down Vladimir Putin’s regime have come to nothing,” the report states.

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The Washington Post

28 November 2023 13:42

Russia extends detention of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich

RIGA, Latvia — A Moscow court on Tuesday extended the detention of the Wall Street Journal journalist Evan Gershkovich until at least Jan. 30, prolonging his imprisonment since March on charges of spying, which he, his employer and the State Department forcefully deny.

It is the third time Gershkovich’s detention has been extended since Federal Security Service (FSB) agents seized him from a restaurant in Yekaterinburg, a city in the Urals where he was on a reporting trip. Gershkovich then was flown to Moscow and has been in Lefortovo high security prison since.

Gershkovich, 32, held Russian Foreign Ministry accreditation to work as a reporter in Russia, but Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova swiftly condemned the reporter just hours after his arrest, claiming without evidence that his activities were “not related to journalism.”

Read the full story here.