The Washington Post

26 April 2024 21:56

Hospitals evacuated in Kyiv after threat from Belarus

KYIV — Kyiv city authorities in Kyiv on Friday urgently evacuated two hospitals, including a children’s hospital, after the head of the Belarusian KGB claimed “terrorists” were being treated there — an accusation which Ukrainian officials called “a lie and provocation” but set off fears of an imminent attack.

Speaking before a meeting of the All-Belarusian People’s Assembly — a political gathering headed by the Belarusian strongman leader Aleksandr Lukashenko — the KGB head, Ivan Teretel, specified the addresses of the hospitals, which are located next to each other in the Ukrainian capital. Teretel promised to “impose punishment.”

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

24 April 2024 19:02

Blinken will urge China to stop sending military supplies to Russia

SHANGHAI — Amid growing U.S. worries that Russia’s war on Ukraine is being made possible by Chinese support for Moscow’s defense industry, Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in China on Wednesday on a three-day mission to push leaders to cut ties with the Kremlin.

The conversations in Shanghai and Beijing will be aimed at managing an increasingly thorny and contentious relationship, with ongoing disputes about China’s role in the war in Ukraine, Beijing’s broad claims over the South China Sea and U.S. efforts to reduce dependence on China’s technology manufacturing sector.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

23 April 2024 19:15

Ukraine moves to cut off consular services for military-age men abroad

KYIV — Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry said Tuesday that it would restrict consular services for Ukrainian men of military fighting age who have left the country, potentially cutting off their ability to renew passports or access other essential citizen services.

Thousands of Ukrainian men are believed to have left their country rather than risk being drafted to help defend against Russia’s continuing invasion, even though martial law bars men age 18 and over from traveling abroad. Thousands of others were already living abroad, typically to work or study, when Russia invaded in February 2022.

The restriction in consular services is in keeping with a recently adopted law on military mobilization, Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba posted on X, formerly Twitter.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

21 April 2024 19:28

Zelensky urges U.S. to send weapons quickly ahead of Russian offensive

Following passage in the House of a major military aid package for Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelensky said Sunday that his country will only be able to repel an anticipated Russian offensive if the U.S. weapons arrive quickly.

Zelensky said his forces are preparing for a significant battle in the east of the country, where Russia aims to capture the city of Chasiv Yar by May 9, the holiday when Russia marks the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi forces in World War II.

Zelensky told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that Ukrainian forces lack long-range weapons of their own, as well as adequate air defenses, and indicated that while U.S. lawmakers debated the aid package, Ukraine lost time and momentum.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

17 April 2024 18:23

Secret Russian foreign policy document urges action to weaken the U.S.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry has been drawing up plans to try to weaken its Western adversaries, including the United States, and leverage the Ukraine war to forge a global order free from what it sees as American dominance, according to a secret Foreign Ministry document.

In a classified addendum to Russia’s official — and public — “Foreign Policy Concept of the Russian Federation,” the ministry calls for an “offensive information campaign” and other measures spanning “the military-political, economic and trade and informational psychological spheres” against a “coalition of unfriendly countries” led by the United States.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

15 April 2024 21:02

Drones are crowding Ukraine’s skies, largely paralyzing battlefield

DONETSK REGION, Ukraine — So many drones patrol the skies over Ukraine’s front lines — hunting for any signs of movement — that Ukrainian and Russian troops have little ability to move on the battlefield without being spotted, and blown up.

Instead, on missions, they rush from one foxhole to another, hoping the pilots manning the enemy drones overhead are not skilled enough to find them inside. Expert drone operators, their abilities honed on the front, can stalk just a single foot soldier to their death, diving after them into hideouts and trenches.

The surge in small drones in Ukraine has turned the area beyond either side of the zero line — normally known as “the gray zone” — into “the death zone,” said Oleksandr Nastenko, commander of Code 9.2, a drone unit in Ukraine’s 92nd brigade. Those who dare to move day or night under the prying eyes of enemy drones “are dead immediately,” he said.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

14 April 2024 22:18

Arab nations call for restraint as Israel-Iran conflict intensifies

After Iran launched a retaliatory wave of missiles and drones toward Israel, a rare direct attack by Tehran, much of the Middle East found itself in uncharted territory: bracing for further violence while scrambling to interpret the new rules of confrontation between the region’s most powerful adversaries.

Iranian-backed militant groups that have participated in attacks on Israel over the last six months — in Yemen, Lebanon, and Iraq — congratulated Iran for the barrage but indicated that, this time, they had largely stayed out of the fray.

Arab governments, already struggling to contain popular fury at Israel’s deadly military offensive in Gaza, pleaded for calm.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

14 April 2024 17:00

Forces intercepted nearly all 300 Iranian drones and missiles, Israel says

Iran launched more than 300 drones and missiles toward Israel in its first full-scale military assault against the country. Israeli war cabinet member Benny Gantz made his military’s intentions clear Sunday: “We will exact a price on Iran, in the manner and at the time that is right for us.”

U.S. military forces in the region helped Israel intercept the strikes, President Biden said. President Biden condemned the Iranian attacks and spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to reiterate the United States’ commitment to Israeli security.

Iranian media said the attack was in retaliation for an Israeli strike this month on an Iranian consular building in Damascus, Syria, which killed members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Stay tuned to live updates here.

The Washington Post

11 April 2024 20:23

Ukrainian parliament adopts measure to expand military draft

KYIV — Ukraine’s parliament approved legislation Thursday that officials say will simplify conscription, aiding an expected mobilization that could press hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian men into the fight against Russia’s invasion.

As Western aid has slowed, including a $60 billion U.S. package stalled in Congress for six months, Ukraine’s armed forces have been struggling with a severe shortage of soldiers, ammunition and weapons — allowing Russia to advance on the battlefield.

Ukraine’s unicameral parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, voted overwhelmingly for the mobilization measure, with 283 votes in favor, one opposed and 49 abstentions, according to a Telegram post by Yaroslav Zheleznyak, a lawmaker from the opposition Holos party, that included a photo of the voting results.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

09 April 2024 19:39

U.S. sends Ukraine seized Iranian-made weapons

The Pentagon has provided Ukraine with thousands of Iranian-made weapons seized before they could reach Houthi militants in Yemen, U.S. officials said Tuesday. It’s the Biden administration’s latest infusion of emergency military support for Kyiv while a multibillion-dollar aid package remains stalled in the Republican-led House.

The weapons include 5,000 Kalashnikov rifles, machine guns, sniper rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, along with a half-million rounds of ammunition. They were seized from four “stateless vessels” between 2021 and 2023 and made available for transfer to Ukraine through a Justice Department civil forfeiture program targeting Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, according to U.S. Central Command, which oversees military operations in the Middle East.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

08 April 2024 16:50

Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant hit by drones, U.N. monitor says

KYIV — Drone strikes hit Europe’s largest nuclear power station, the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in occupied Ukraine, on Sunday, significantly increasing the risk of a major nuclear accident, said Rafael Mariano Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Russia immediately blamed Ukraine for the strikes and announced a criminal investigation, but Ukraine denied responsibility and accused Russia of mounting false-flag attacks on the plant in the past.

Grossi, in a statement on X, said Sunday that the three containment structures at the Zaporizhzhia plant, for the first time, had sustained three direct hits.

“This cannot happen,” Grossi wrote, saying it contravened five principles he set down in November 2022 to avoid a catastrophe at the plant.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

07 April 2024 17:14

Inside Donald Trump’s secret plan to end the Ukraine-Russia war

Former president Donald Trump has privately said he could end Russia’s war in Ukraine by pressuring Ukraine to give up some territory, according to people familiar with the plan. Some foreign policy experts said Trump’s idea would reward Russian President Vladimir Putin and condone the violation of internationally recognized borders by force.

Trump’s proposal consists of pushing Ukraine to cede Crimea and the Donbas border region to Russia, according to people who discussed it with Trump or his advisers and spoke on the condition of anonymity because those conversations were confidential. That approach, which has not been previously reported, would dramatically reverse President Biden’s policy, which has emphasized curtailing Russian aggression and providing military aid to Ukraine.

Read thr full story here.

The Washington Post

06 April 2024 13:27

Opinion | I am proud to have spoken out against Putin’s crimes in Ukraine

The Russian Supreme Court is considering a cassation appeal against the sentence of Vladimir Kara-Murza, who was sentenced to 25 years in a strict-regime colony for public statements he made against the war in Ukraine and Vladimir Putin. Kara-Murza, who is being held in Prison Colony No. 7 in Omsk, was blocked from taking part in the hearing via video link.

Instead, he sent the court the following written statement:

“For the first time in my life, I am addressing the Supreme Court. This body has performed different functions in different periods of our country’s history: There was a time when it approved convictions for countless innocent victims, sending them to camps and firing squads; later, it overturned these same sentences for lack of grounds and issued decisions on rehabilitation. Today, we are back in the first of these two phases — but we should not doubt that the second one is sure to come.”

Read the full opinion here.

The Washington Post

04 April 2024 11:15

Extortion, threats, fear, traitors: How Russia recruits Ukrainian spies

KYIV — The Ukrainian soldier had been fighting the Russians on the battlefield when they came for his parents in occupied eastern Ukraine. They were taken from their home and tortured, according to Ukraine’s security service. Then, a Russian agent contacted the soldier with an ultimatum: Switch sides and spy for Russia, or his family would suffer more harm.

The soldier eventually agreed to help Russia, according to the Security Service of Ukraine, or SBU. Acting on instructions from his Russian handler, the SBU said in a press release, the soldier planned to add a poisonous substance to the water supply of the laundry complex used by senior officers.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

02 April 2024 19:58

Zelensky signs law lowering draft age in bid to boost military ranks

KYIV — Ukrainian men as young as 25 can now be conscripted into military service after President Volodymyr Zelensky signed a new law Tuesday lowering the draft age — a bid to replenish Kyiv’s badly depleted troop ranks more than two years into Russia’s invasion.

Lowering the conscription age, which had been 27, was the most significant measure in a mobilization draft bill that has already seen thousands of amendments in parliament since the start of this year. Although citizens can voluntarily join the military starting at age 18, and men between 18 and 60 are banned from leaving the country under martial law, the draft has until now protected younger men — many of whom are students — from being forcibly mobilized.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

24 April 2024 20:46

Opinion | This defiant Ukrainian general has no smile — and surprising remarks on Trump

KYIV — Lt. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov is the dark prince of the Ukraine war. His drop-dead stare has become an icon for Ukrainians — a symbol of bravery and defiance in this third year of conflict with Russia. Ukraine’s NV news outlet calls him the man “without a smile.” A meme that circulates on the internet shows nine identical pictures of his scowling face, labeled “happy,” “angry,” “troubled,” “excited” and so on.

Budanov spoke with me for 90 minutes last month in his forbidding office on what Ukrainians call “the Island,” a derelict string of buildings on a peninsula on the Dnieper River. He was, as always, the voice of resistance — promising to take the fight into Russia with drones and special operations, confirming reports that he’s battling with Wagner mercenaries in Africa and scoffing at a Korea-style negotiated settlement.

Read David Ignatius’s full opinion essay here.

The Washington Post

24 April 2024 17:16

U.S. unveils $1 billion Ukraine weapons package

The United States will send a substantial security package to Ukraine, including badly needed air defense systems and artillery rounds, the White House said Wednesday, as the administration — its war chest replenished after months of gridlock in Congress — moves quickly to help Kyiv counter a resurgent Russian campaign.

The weapons package, valued at up to $1 billion, restarts an expansive U.S. effort to sustain Ukraine’s embattled military as the war with Russia bleeds into its third year. The Pentagon, having anticipated lawmakers would end their impasse, signaled in recent days it was prepared to rush at least some of this resupply to the battlefield within days.

President Biden, in remarks on Wednesday morning, announced the shipments would begin in the “next few hours.”

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

23 April 2024 16:06

Russian man sentenced to 5 years of labor for criticizing war in Ukraine

A Moscow court on Monday sentenced a man to five years of compulsory labor for giving an antiwar comment to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) two years ago — a criminal prosecution that showed the Russian government intensifying its crackdown on dissent and that could have a chilling effect on international media still operating in the country.

The man, Yuri Kokhovets, 38, made a brief comment critical of Russia’s war in Ukraine in July 2022, when reporters from RFE/RL were conducting “vox pops” — quick interviews surveying public opinion — outside a subway station in the Russian capital.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

20 April 2024 16:53

Russia ramps up weapons production, using mass quantity to outgun Ukraine

Russia has ramped up military production by replenishing stocks of standard weapons and ammunition and probably can sustain its onslaught in Ukraine for at least the next two years, analysts say — a sobering assessment for Kyiv, which is short on weapons and soldiers and losing ground on the battlefield.

While the Kremlin is struggling to expand capacity and to develop modern arms that could improve its army’s battlefield performance, it has capitalized on its overwhelming advantage in numbers of soldiers, its ability to arm them with old but reliable weaponry and a willingness to endure heavy casualties.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

17 April 2024 15:26

Russia hits Chernihiv, killing at least 14 as Ukraine pleads for air defense

KYIV — At least 14 people were killed and more than 60 wounded in the northern Ukrainian city of Chernihiv on Wednesday when Russian missiles struck the downtown area during morning rush hour — an attack officials said could have been stopped if Ukraine had adequate air defenses.

Russia launched three Iskander cruise missiles at the city, which is just 60 miles from the Russian border and was nearly encircled by Russian troops in early 2022.

“This would not have happened if Ukraine had received enough air defense equipment and if the world’s determination to counter Russian terror was also sufficient,” President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on Telegram. “There needs to be sufficient commitment from partners and sufficient support to reflect it.”

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

15 April 2024 13:27

Ukraine’s attacks on Russian oil refineries deepen tensions with U.S.

BRUSSELS — When Vice President Harris met privately with Volodymyr Zelensky at the Munich Security Conference in February, she told the Ukrainian leader something he didn’t want to hear: Refrain from attacking Russian oil refineries, a tactic U.S. officials believed would raise global energy prices and invite more aggressive Russian retaliation inside Ukraine.

The request, according to officials familiar with the matter, irritated Zelensky and his top aides, who view Kyiv’s string of drone strikes on Russian energy facilities as a rare bright spot in a grinding war with a bigger and better equipped foe.

Zelensky brushed off the recommendation, uncertain whether it reflected the consensus position of the Biden administration, these people said. But in subsequent weeks, Washington reinforced the warning in multiple conversations with Kyiv.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

14 April 2024 17:50

Why did Iran attack Israel? What to know about the strikes, U.S. response.

Iran launched a wave of missiles and drones toward Israel late Saturday as regional tensions continued to mount over the war in Gaza.

Iranian state media said the missile and drone assault was in retaliation to a deadly Israeli strike on an Iranian diplomatic compound in Syria on April 1.

Here's what you need to know about the assault.

The Washington Post

12 April 2024 19:51

Russian troops advance in Ukraine as Kyiv runs low on air defenses

KYIV — As Ukrainian officials plead for more Western arms and a U.S. aid package remains stalled in Congress, Russia is advancing on the battlefield in eastern Ukraine, seizing new territory and intensifying attacks to capture the town of Chasiv Yar and others in the Donetsk region.

Away from the front line, Ukraine’s dwindling air defense capabilities are showing vulnerabilities, as more Russian missiles and drones are able to hit targets such as critical infrastructure facilities.

Outside Kyiv — considered Ukraine’s best-protected city — the largest power plant serving the capital was destroyed Thursday, stoking concerns that Ukraine might be running out of surface-to-air missiles to counter the Russian airstrikes.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

10 April 2024 20:12

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba demands more Patriot air defenses

KYIV — Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba wants the West’s extra, idle Patriot air defense batteries. And he’s not asking nicely anymore.

“Nice and quiet diplomacy didn’t work,” Kuleba, Kyiv’s top diplomat, told The Post in an interview this week.

Patriot, the U.S.-designed air defense system, which costs more than $1 billion per battery, has been at the top of Ukraine’s weapons wish list since Russia invaded more than two years ago. Kyiv received its first Patriot batteries last summer, but the three it has now are not sufficient to defend the entire country against Russia’s increased aerial bombardment.

So in a wartime government that tasks each of its top officials with lobbying Western allies for more weapons, President Volodymyr Zelensky delegated a specific track for Kuleba — to convince countries with spare Patriots to transfer them.

Read the full interview here.

The Washington Post

08 April 2024 21:02

Russians protest and demand help from Putin after floods and dam failure

A major flood in the southern Urals forced thousands of Russians to evacuate their homes, and residents of Orsk, one of the disaster’s epicenters, took to the streets to criticize the authorities’ response and demand help from President Vladimir Putin.

Extreme seasonal floods hit northern parts of Kazakhstan and Russia’s Orenburg region across the border, where the situation was worsened by the collapse of a dam over the weekend. Kazakh media reported that more than 15,000 people had evacuated since water started rising in the first days of April.

The Ural River, which runs from the Ural Mountains to the Caspian Sea, burst through a dam Friday in Orsk, a city of about 200,000 people. Russia’s main investigative body, the Investigative Committee, opened a criminal case as a result of “violation of safety measures” and “negligence,” citing the dam’s poor maintenance as a cause of the breach.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

08 April 2024 15:37

Exclusive: Russian trolls target U.S. support for Ukraine, Kremlin documents show

When President Biden proposed an additional $24 billion in supplemental funding for Ukraine in August, Moscow spin doctors working for the Kremlin were ready to try to undermine public support for the bill, internal Kremlin documents show.

In an ongoing campaign that seeks to influence congressional and other political debates to stoke anti-Ukraine sentiment, Kremlin-linked political strategists and trolls have written thousands of fabricated news articles, social media posts and comments that promote American isolationism, stir fear over the United States’ border security and attempt to amplify U.S. economic and racial tensions, according to a trove of internal Kremlin documents obtained by a European intelligence service and reviewed by The Post.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

07 April 2024 13:01

With no way out of a worsening war, Zelensky’s options look bad or worse

KYIV — As Russia steps up airstrikes and once again advances on the battlefield in Ukraine more than two years into its bloody invasion, there is no end to the fighting in sight. And President Volodymyr Zelensky’s options for what to do next — much less how to win the war — range from bad to worse.

Zelensky has said Ukraine will accept nothing less than the return of all its territory, including land that Russia has controlled since 2014. But with the battle lines changing little in the last year, militarily retaking the swaths of east and south Ukraine that Russia now occupies — about 20 percent of the country — appears increasingly unlikely.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

04 April 2024 20:47

At energy plant bombed by Russia, Ukrainian workers, and a cat, toil on

Little more than rusty, melted metal and piles of ash are left in a control room in this sprawling electric generating station that Russia attacked last month — destroying equipment and igniting a massive fire that shut down the entire plant indefinitely.

Ukraine’s electric grid is such a high-value target for Russian missile strikes that revealing the name or location of this facility, run by DTEK, the country’s largest private energy producer, could put the plant and its employees at risk by allowing Russian forces to assess the extent of damage to the facility to plan future strikes, DTEK and Energy Ministry officials said.

Last month’s strikes, which simultaneously hit numerous energy infrastructure sites across Ukraine, obliterated 80 percent of capacity at DTEK’s thermal power plants. Even with the right supplies, it could take many months if not longer to fix the damage.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

03 April 2024 19:12

After terror attack, Russia sees U.S. role and claims it is at war with NATO

RIGA, Latvia — In the aftermath of last month’s terrorist attack on the Crocus City Hall concert venue outside Moscow, Russian officials not only have blamed Ukraine but also have repeatedly accused the West of involvement — even though U.S. officials insist they gave Moscow a specific warning that the Islamic State could attack the venue.

If the U.S. warning was so detailed, it raises further questions about Russia’s failure to prevent the country’s worst terrorist attack in two decades. But rather than publicly confronting questions about their own actions, Russian security officials have disregarded the claims of responsibility by the Islamic State.

Instead, they have insisted that U.S. and British intelligence were involved in helping Ukraine organize the strike.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

31 March 2024 22:40

Pope’s Easter speech renews calls for peace in Gaza, Ukraine

Speaking to tens of thousands of followers in St. Peter’s Square, and millions more across the globe, Pope Francis gave a solemn accounting of a world in crisis Sunday, using the pulpit of his Easter address to renew calls for a cease-fire in Gaza while drawing attention to other conflicts, from Ukraine to Haiti, heightened risks of famine, the threat of climate change and the plight of migrants.

In Ukraine, the pope has drawn sharp criticism for his suggestion that Russia was provoked into action by NATO. This month, in an interview with Swiss public broadcaster RSI, he picked up on a word used by his interviewer to suggest there was strength in raising a “white flag” by those who are “defeated.”

On Sunday, the pope called for a prisoner exchange between Russia and Ukraine and for an end to hostilities.

Read the full story here.