The Washington Post

26 May 2024 17:41

These Ukrainians were musicians before the war. Now they fight with song.

After Yurii Ivaskevych, 51, lost a leg when his unit came under shelling, he was recruited by another branch of Ukraine’s military: the Cultural Forces.

The members of the Cultural Forces, all professional musicians before the invasion, are now back at their craft, traveling across Ukraine’s increasingly pressured front lines to try to give people a flake of their old lives and some diversion from the grinding Russian assault. They play everything from Ukrainian folk songs to Metallica, tapping into a Ukrainian tradition of using music as a form of resistance to Russian rule.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

24 May 2024 17:24

Exclusive: Russian jamming leaves some high-tech U.S. weapons ineffective in Ukraine

Many U.S.-made satellite-guided ammunitions in Ukraine have failed to withstand Russian jamming technology, prompting Kyiv to stop using certain types of Western-provided armaments after effectiveness rates plummeted, according to senior Ukrainian military officials and confidential internal Ukrainian assessments obtained by The Washington Post.

Russia’s jamming of the guidance systems of modern Western weapons has eroded Ukraine’s ability to defend its territory and has left officials in Kyiv urgently seeking help from the Pentagon to obtain upgrades from arms manufacturers.

Russia’s ability to combat the high-tech munitions has far-reaching implications for Ukraine and its Western supporters — potentially providing a blueprint for adversaries such as China and Iran — and it is a key reason Moscow’s forces have regained the initiative and are advancing on the battlefield.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

21 May 2024 14:28

Ukraine’s allies debate how to squeeze more from frozen Russian assets

BRUSSELS — The European Union has taken a small step toward its pledge to “make Russia pay” for the war in Ukraine, formally agreeing Tuesday to use windfall profits from frozen Russian assets to get Kyiv about $3 billion more this year.

But with Ukraine in serious trouble and questions about U.S. funding looming, there is already a fresh push to unlock much more of the nearly $300 billion seized in 2022 — and quickly.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen will try this week to rally finance ministers from the Group of Seven wealthiest countries around proposals to squeeze more money from the assets.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

18 May 2024 18:16

With its energy network nearly destroyed, Ukraine already fears the winter

KYIV — While the rolling plains of Ukraine’s countryside are in full spring bloom, officials already fear what the distant winter will bring as a major energy crisis grips the country and power companies resort to phased blackouts to conserve supplies.

Russian territorial gains over the past months have been mirrored by successful missile barrages against Ukraine’s power plants, both abetted by faltering supplies of weapons and ammunition from the country’s foreign backers.

Ukraine’s energy companies are scrambling to repair the power stations damaged by Russian missiles before frigid temperatures set in — and avoid plunging the cities into the cold and dark when winter comes.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

16 May 2024 13:00

U.S. offers aid as Zelensky drops foreign trip due to Russian advance

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Wednesday scrapped a planned trip to Spain in order to stay in his capital and address Russia’s expanding front-line assault, his spokesman said, a measure of the rapidly increasing anxieties over the Kremlin’s military advances in recent days.

The decision came as Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced another $2 billion in U.S. military aid as he wrapped a two-day visit to Ukraine that was intended to demonstrate Washington’s continued support for the war-hit country.

Blinken’s trip was planned before Russia’s weekend advances on Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv. But it also served to highlight the lingering consequences of Washington’s seven-month delay in approving more military aid for Ukraine. Stocks of artillery shells and other long-range munitions have run perilously low, leaving Ukrainian troops on the back foot.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

14 May 2024 17:12

Second Russian invasion is worse than the first, Kharkiv region evacuees say

A new Russian offensive into Ukraine’s Kharkiv region has forced more than 6,000 people to evacuate this small city since Friday, fearing for their lives and racing to escape a second occupation more than two years after Moscow’s troops first crossed the border with columns of tanks.

The wave of displaced people from Vovchansk, located just five miles from the Russian border, and surrounding settlements is reminiscent of those early days of the invasion in February 2022 — but this attack by Russia is even worse, the evacuees said.

Russian glide bombs weighing half a ton each have been dropped repeatedly from aircraft on Vovchansk and neighboring border towns for days. The sound of artillery shelling has been constant. Self-destructing drones can be heard buzzing overhead before crashing into vehicles. So much is on fire that the heavy smoke makes it hard to breathe.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

13 May 2024 20:52

Putin taps economist Andrei Belousov to lead defense ministry in wartime

Vladimir Putin’s surprise selection of Andrei Belousov, an economist, as defense minister is the clearest sign yet that Russia has shifted its economy onto a war footing and that the fate of Russian forces in Ukraine depends heavily on winning an arms manufacturing race with the West.

“Belousov’s appointment is, in part, a recognition of how central the war has become to the economy, and how central the economy is to the war,” said Sam Greene, a professor of Russian politics at King’s College London.

Beluosov, 65, a former economic development minister who began his career in academia and has no background in military or law enforcement, was nominated by Putin on Sunday to replace Sergei Shoigu, Russia’s defense minister since 2012, in a dramatic reshuffle of Kremlin security chiefs.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

11 May 2024 15:39

Russia unleashes new attacks on Ukraine’s Kharkiv border region

KYIV — Russian forces opened a heavy assault on Ukraine’s northeast Kharkiv region, prompting Kyiv to send reinforcements on Friday to defend its border — and territory that had been occupied and liberated — even as Kyiv’s troops are already outnumbered and losing ground across other sections of the front line.

The attack started at about 5 a.m. on Friday, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said in a statement, with intense aerial bombardment and shelling followed by armored columns trying to break through at several points along the border.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

09 May 2024 15:10

Emboldened Russia marks Victory Day with parade of nuclear-capable weapons

With his armies grinding forward in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin on Thursday marked Victory Day, the World War II commemoration that is Russia’s most significant holiday, with an unusually harsh speech, accusing the West of “hypocrisy and lies” and of inciting global conflicts, and warning that Russia’s nuclear weapons are always ready for war.

Appearing confident and confrontational at the ceremony on Red Square, two days after his inauguration for a fifth term as president, Putin accused Russia’s former allies against Nazi Germany of distorting the truth about World War II. After his speech, the traditional parade showcased Russia’s military prowess, including the Yars and Iskander-M nuclear-capable missile systems.

“Russia will do everything to prevent a global clash, but at the same time we will not allow anyone to threaten us. Our strategic forces are always in combat readiness,” Putin said.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

08 May 2024 17:12

Ukraine orders nationwide electricity rationing after Russian airstrikes

Ukrainian officials on Wednesday said they were preparing to order electricity rationing measures across the country following a major overnight missile strike by Russia — the latest in a relentless bombing campaign against civilian infrastructure.

Brownouts “are possible throughout Ukraine” between 6 p.m. and 11 p.m., the state energy provider, Ukrenergo, said in a statement posted on the Telegram social media platform. The statement cited a “shortage of electricity in the power system.”

The Russian strikes, which lasted more than three hours, targeted energy infrastructure in six Ukrainian regions. Ukraine’s power plants, electrical grid and other infrastructure have become particular vulnerable as Western countries have struggled to supply Kyiv with sufficient air defense systems and ammunition.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

07 May 2024 17:42

Triumphal Putin is inaugurated for fifth term as Russian president

In the gilded Andreyevsky Hall of the Grand Kremlin Palace where Russian czars were once crowned, Vladimir Putin on Tuesday swore the oath of allegiance on Russia’s constitution at his inauguration for a fifth term as president. The traditional pomp and ceremony conveyed his might as Russia’s supreme, uncontested leader for the past quarter-century.

Bristling with optimism about his ongoing war against Ukraine, Putin, 71, declared he would place Russia’s security above all else and promised that the country would be victorious. Russia is seeking to conquer and annex four regions of southeastern Ukraine, in addition to Crimea, which Russia invaded and illegally annexed in 2014.

“We are one, great nation,” Putin declared in his inauguration speech. “Together we will overcome all obstacles. We will fulfill everything we have planned. Together we will win.” A 30-gun salute followed his remarks.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

06 May 2024 17:16

Under Putin, a militarized new Russia rises to challenge U.S. and the West

MOSCOW — As Vladimir Putin persists in his bloody campaign to conquer Ukraine, the Russian leader is directing an equally momentous transformation at home — re-engineering his country into a regressive, militarized society that views the West as its mortal enemy.

Putin’s inauguration on Tuesday for a fifth term will not only mark his 25-year-long grip on power but also showcase Russia’s shift into what pro-Kremlin commentators call a “revolutionary power,” set on upending the global order, making its own rules, and demanding that totalitarian autocracy be respected as a legitimate alternative to democracy in a world redivided by big powers into spheres of influence.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

03 May 2024 16:33

U.K. lifts restrictions on Ukraine’s use of weapons against Russia

KYIV — British Foreign Secretary David Cameron announced that Britain has given Ukraine permission to strike targets on Russian territory with the weapons in a new $3 billion multiyear aid package it is providing.

Cameron’s remarks mark a sharp reversal in the position of one of Ukraine’s staunchest supporters.

Kyiv’s Western allies, including the United States, have so far forbidden Ukrainian forces from using Western-supplied arms to target locations within Russia, for fear of escalation and possibly being drawn further into the conflict. Ukraine has used its own weapons systems, such as long-range self-destructing drones, to strike critical infrastructure deep inside Russia.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

30 April 2024 13:08

As Ukraine runs low on ammo, civilians build troops DIY drones at home

KYIV REGION, Ukraine — Before Russia invaded, Magdalyna, a florist, used a simple desk in her suburban home to assemble bouquets. Now it’s where she builds drones.

Bouquets are heavier but otherwise the two products are not so different, she said. Both “make other people happier.”

Magdalyna, 27, is among a growing number of Ukrainians who are building equipment for the military at home because they fear Russia is going to advance on the front lines and further destroy their country. Like several others in this article, The Washington Post is identifying Magdalyna only by first name due to security concerns.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

29 April 2024 16:57

Russia arrests more journalists in intensifying crackdown on dissent

Russia has arrested two Russian journalists on “extremism” charges in recent days, the latest moves in a continuing crackdown targeting independent reporters and media outlets. A third Russian journalist, with Forbes Russia, was charged with publishing what authorities called “fake news.”

The increasing use of anti-extremism laws to prosecute reporters — one piece of a larger campaign to stifle domestic dissent during Russia’s war in Ukraine — is likely to have a further chilling effect on the few independent journalists still operating in Russia, many of them freelancers or employees of small outlets with few legal protections.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

25 May 2024 21:15

Russia bombs market in Kharkiv, killing at least 4 and wounding 40

KYIV — Russian bombs struck a commercial facility in Kharkiv on Saturday, killing at least four people and wounding 40, local officials said. The deadly attack on Ukraine’s second largest city comes amid a Russian offensive in eastern Ukraine and two days after a barrage of missiles killed seven people at a printing plant.

Around 4 p.m. local time, two glide bombs hit an Epicenter store — a home improvement and supplies chain similar to Home Depot in the U.S. — launched from Russia’s neighboring Belgorod region, Kharkiv’s regional prosecutor’s office said in a post on Telegram.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

23 May 2024 18:23

Russia slams Kharkiv with missile barrage, killing printing plant workers

KYIV — Russian forces pounded the northeastern Ukrainian region of Kharkiv with 15 missiles Thursday, local officials said — the latest brutal attack in a Russian offensive in eastern Ukraine.

At least seven people were killed when a missile hit a printing plant in Kharkiv city, the regional capital, and at least 40 others were injured in the strikes, local officials said.

Russia’s new offensive has displaced thousands and has increased pleas by Kyiv for Western partners to provide more air defense systems.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

19 May 2024 11:00

Zelensky’s chief aide flexes power, irks critics — and makes no apologies

KYIV — If actor and comedian Volodymyr Zelensky’s top credential when he was elected in 2019 was that he’d played a president on TV, the top qualification of his all-powerful chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, was being Zelensky’s friend.

The head of the office of the president, as Yermak’s post is formally known, has always wielded enormous influence in Ukraine. Wartime conditions, including martial law, have concentrated extraordinary authority in the presidential administration, making Yermak perhaps the most powerful chief of staff in the country’s history — virtually indistinguishable from his boss.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

17 May 2024 21:04

Second Russian invasion of Kharkiv caught Ukraine unprepared

KHARKIV, Ukraine — Russia’s new offensive across Ukraine’s northeastern border had been expected for months — yet it still surprised the Ukrainian soldiers stationed there to defend against it.

Ukraine’s 125th Territorial Defense Brigade — stretched thin along a roughly 27-mile stretch of the Kharkiv region’s border with Russia — used reconnaissance drones to monitor, daily, how Moscow was steadily building up forces for a possible attack. But the morning it happened, May 10, the brigade lost all its video feeds due to Russian electronic jamming.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

14 May 2024 20:01

U.S. bans Russian uranium imports, key to nuclear fuel supply

President Biden on Monday evening signed a bipartisan bill prohibiting Russian imports of enriched uranium, the main fuel used by nuclear power plants, a move intended to cut off one of the last significant flows of money from the United States to Russia amid the war in Ukraine.

Congress took swift action to ban Russian oil and gas imports a month after the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. But sanctions on uranium imports have taken much longer, in part because Russia supplies roughly 20 percent of U.S. nuclear fuel, leading some lawmakers to fear disruptions to the nation’s 93 nuclear reactors.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

14 May 2024 13:27

Blinken visits Ukraine to push U.S. support as Russia pummels Kharkiv

KYIV — Secretary of State Antony Blinken met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Tuesday in Ukraine’s capital, part of a mission to display Washington’s continued support for the country’s faltering war effort after months of congressional inaction choked off military assistance. The delay in aid weakened Ukraine’s ability to repel renewed Russian attacks.

Blinken’s two-day trip is the first high-level visit by a Biden administration official since Congress last month approved a $61 billion aid package for Ukraine after seven months of obstruction by Republicans. The visit was intended as a show of solidarity as the Pentagon speeds antiaircraft defenses, artillery and other key equipment into the country to try to stabilize Kyiv’s front lines. But officials concede that given Ukraine’s sizable challenges, its military may not regain a battlefield advantage before 2025 at the earliest.

Read the full story.

The Washington Post

12 May 2024 21:11

Putin reassigns defense minister Shoigu in shakeup of Kremlin security team

Russian leader Vladimir Putin has removed Sergei Shoigu from his longtime position as defense minister and appointed him to lead the country’s security and defense council, a consultative body that advises the president — a major government shake-up of the Kremlin’s security team, the Kremlin said Sunday.

Putin has nominated former vice prime minister Andrei Belousov as defense minister, according to a statement posted by the Federation Council, Russia’s upper house of parliament, on its official Telegram channel.

The shake-up comes days after Putin’s inauguration for a fifth term, and as Russian forces have launched major new attacks in northeast Ukraine.

Read the fully story here.

The Washington Post

09 May 2024 21:14

Opinion | Fulbright scholars are trapped in a Catch-22

Two years ago, when I received the email accepting me into the Fulbright exchange program, it felt like a dream come true. With fully paid tuition at Syracuse University, plus a monthly stipend, I could envision my plan to study instructional design, then return to Russia to create an innovative textbook for teaching English as a second language.

Today, that dream is history. Today, I am regarded as a security threat and potential fifth columnist by my own country. If I return home — as I am required to do under the Fulbright rules — I face the very real possibility of arrest and a 15-year prison sentence. Roughly 150 fellow Russian scholars are in the same boat.

Our situation demands a more urgent response. We have appealed to the State Department and Congress to assist us in dealing with our Catch-22: being forced to return to a country that, by virtue of who we are, regards us as traitors.

Read the full op-ed here.

The Washington Post

09 May 2024 12:29

Opinion | Read Vladimir Kara-Murza’s Pulitzer Prize-winning commentary on Russia

Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Washington Post contributing columnist who has been imprisoned in Russia since April 2022, was awarded the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for commentary.

Arrested voicing his opposition to the war in Ukraine, Kara-Murza courageously continued to send his incisive, historically informed columns about the Russian system to The Post from his prison cell. The Pulitzer judges recognized Kara-Mura’s “passionate columns written under great personal risk from his prison cell, warning of the consequences of dissent in Vladimir Putin’s Russia and insisting on a democratic future for his country.”

In April 2023, Kara-Murza received a 25-year prison sentence. He is being held in a prison colony in Omsk in central Russia. Evgenia Kara-Murza, his wife, gave this speech in The Washington Post newsroom on his behalf.

Read the seven columns for which he was honored.

The Washington Post

07 May 2024 18:41

Ukraine arrests two colonels in protective service in plot to kill Zelensky

Ukrainian authorities said Tuesday that they have arrested two officers in the agency responsible for protecting senior government leaders and accused them of developing a plot to assassinate President Volodymyr Zelensky and other top Ukrainian officials — as a “gift” to Russian President Vladimir Putin for his inauguration.

The two suspects were colonels in Ukraine’s State Protection Department, roughly the equivalent of the U.S. Secret Service, and were recruited by Russia’s Federal Security Service, the FSB, according to Ukraine’s State Security Service.

The State Security Service, known as the SBU, announced the arrests in a post on the Telegram social media platform. The statement did not identify the suspects, and their faces were obscured in photos showing the arrests and in a subsequent video of an interrogation.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

07 May 2024 15:08

To please Putin, universities purge liberals and embrace patriots

Two weeks before the start of his 25th year as Russia’s supreme political leader, Vladimir Putin made a sweeping proclamation: “Wars are won by teachers.”

The remark shed light on a campaign he is waging that has received little attention outside wartime Russia: to imbue the country’s education system with patriotism, purge universities of Western influences, and quash any dissent among professors and students on campuses that are often hotbeds of political activism.

In a radical reshaping of Russia’s education system, curriculums are being redrawn to stress patriotism and textbooks rewritten to belittle Ukraine, glorify Russia and whitewash the totalitarian Soviet past. These changes — the most sweeping to schooling in Russia since the 1930s — are a core part of Putin’s effort to harness the war in Ukraine to remaster his country as a regressive, militarized state.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

04 May 2024 13:07

Ukrainian men abroad voice anger over pressure to return home to fight

KYIV — With Ukraine desperate for soldiers to reinforce its crumbling defenses against Russia’s invasion, Ukrainian embassies have temporarily suspended consular services for fighting-age men, placing new pressure on them to go home to fight.

The suspension of citizen services, such as passport renewals, is intended as a preliminary step to a new mobilization law that will go into force on May 18. It will require all men ages 18 to 60 to update their personal information with a local draft office within 60 days.

Martial law, in effect since the start of Russia’s invasion in February 2022, prohibits men ages 18 to 60 from leaving the country. But many men who were afraid of being sent to the front have fled. Thousands of others were already living abroad. Now, all of them face pressure under the new rules, which could restrict their movements.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

03 May 2024 13:05

Blinded in battle, these Ukrainian soldiers will never see their new babies

On the front lines of Russia’s bloody war, Ukrainian troops are killed and wounded daily, scarring and maiming a generation of young people.

Severe eye injuries are pervasive. At least 1,000 soldiers have been blinded in the past two years, said Anna Purtova, a lawmaker who is advocating for soldiers who have lost their vision. Tetiana Lytvynenko, head of ophthalmology at a Kyiv hospital that treats soldiers and civilians, said the 30 beds in her ward are always full.

While medical advances have improved treatment for many war injuries, including with enhanced prosthetic limbs, little can be done for those who lose vision in both eyes and must learn to navigate the world without sight. Ukraine has not yet adapted to its growing blind population. Guide dogs are uncommon, many streetlights do not beep for pedestrians, and drivers often park on city sidewalks, creating dangerous obstacles.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

29 April 2024 19:15

As U.S. rushes to send military aid, Ukrainians applaud lobbying effort

KYIV — As officials in Washington said $61 billion in desperately needed aid would begin flowing to Ukraine’s military, officials and activists in the Ukrainian capital credited an effort by a coalition of political and civil society actors.

American, Ukrainian and European officials, Ukrainian Americans, Nobel laureates, academics, soldiers’ mothers, evangelical pastors and a host of others joined in a months-long lobbying campaign to overcome the obstruction of the bill by hard-right Republicans.

Now, they hope the arms will arrive in time to blunt the advance of Russia’s invading forces, who capitalized on the delay in assistance to seize more territory and the momentum in the war. But with some experts predicting the fight will last years, the lobbying network is now another crucial element that can be activated in Ukraine’s defense.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

29 April 2024 14:54

With U.S. aid resumed, Ukraine will try to dig itself out of trouble

A long-awaited influx of U.S. weapons will help Ukraine to blunt Russia’s advance in the coming months, Biden administration officials said after Congress passed a major aid package, but an acute troop shortage and Moscow’s firepower advantage mean that Kyiv won’t likely regain major offensive momentum until 2025 at the earliest.

Lawmakers’ approval of the foreign aid bill following months of partisan gridlock was a victory for President Biden. The sprawling legislation includes $61 billion to fuel Ukraine’s fight against Russia’s invading forces.

As initial shipments of arms, including artillery shells, air defense missiles, and armored vehicles, begin to reach Ukraine, U.S. officials said they expect the new weapons will buy time for Kyiv to replenish its military ranks and strengthen battlefield defenses — including trenches and minefields — ahead of an expected Russian offensive.

Read the full story here.