VORONEZH, Russia — Valeria, a 28-year-old journalist, was woken up in the middle of the night to the sounds of explosions last Saturday. On Feb. 17, when the Defense Ministry announced that it destroyed four drones near her block, she had to sleep in her bathroom for fear of shelling. “I heard about five explosions,…
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky promised victory against Russia on the second anniversary of the invasion on Saturday as his troops fight on despite a lack of Western aid and recent Russian gains. “We will win,” he said at a ceremony at Kyiv’s Gostomel airport, which was targeted by Russia in the first days of the…
The body of late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has been handed to his mother, more than a week after he died in an Arctic prison colony, his spokesperson said on Saturday. Navalny, President Vladimir Putin’s most vocal critic, died on February 16 in one of Russia’s toughest prisons in northern Siberia, where he was…
MOSCOW — For most Russians, their country’s two-year war with Ukraine has long faded into the background of everyday life. “The average Russian is just waiting for this to end,” was how one Moscow resident described prevailing sentiments about the war. “The idea of ‘let me live my life and leave me alone’ resonates with many…
Ukraine on Saturday said it hit one of Russia’s largest steel plants with a drone strike on the second anniversary of Moscow launching its invasion. Russia reported a fire in the huge Novolipetsk (NLMK) factory in the western Lipetsk region, with images on social media showing a huge blaze. If confirmed, the attack would be…
The past two years of full-scale war are not only the most shameful time in Russian history. They also show how the entire Putin government is permeated with lies and hypocrisy. Attempts to create some kind of racially pure Russian culture or even cuisine to spite Western civilization turned out to be just the usual…
Russian police on Saturday detained at least four people, including reporters, at a weekly protest outside the Kremlin by the wives of mobilized soldiers fighting in Ukraine. The wives of mobilized soldiers have staged rare protests in Moscow demanding their spouses be brought home from Ukraine. A video published by SOTA, an independent media outlet,…
Russia’s ethnic minorities continue to suffer outsized fatalities in the country’s two-year war in Ukraine, a trend that analysts warn will have long-term destructive impacts on these communities. Though ethnic Russians comprise the majority of deaths in absolute terms, Russia’s non-Slavic minorities and indigenous peoples are greatly overrepresented among the casualties relative to their share…
Alexei Navalny’s widow said Russian President Vladimir Putin had personally ordered that his arch critic’s body should not be handed over to his family after his death in an Arctic jail nine days ago. Navalny’s mother said authorities in the Arctic town of Salekhard are threatening to bury him on the prison grounds if she…
KAMYANKA, Ukraine — Two weeks after Ukraine liberated this village in the Kharkiv region in September 2022, Viktor, a local farmer and tractor driver, and his wife Larissa returned to their home for the first time since the Russian occupation. Half a year earlier, the couple had managed to escape the advancing Russian army. For…