In a major shakeup, President Vladimir Putin has nominated former First Deputy Prime Minister Andrei Belousov to replace longtime Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, the upper-house Federation Council announced Sunday night. The ouster of Shoigu, a longtime Putin ally, comes nearly a week after Putin was sworn into a fifth term in office, cementing his more…
Russia’s Defense Ministry said Sunday that its forces had captured four more villages in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region as thousands of residents were evacuated amid Moscow’s surprise ground offensive. The ministry said its forces had “advanced deeply into the enemy defenses” and taken villages including Gatishche, Krasnoye, Morokhovets, and Oleinikovo. Ukraine’s military, meanwhile, said it was…
Updated with injury, death count. Rescue workers in the western Russian city of Belgorod have recovered the bodies of 15 people buried beneath the rubble of an apartment building that collapsed earlier on Sunday after being struck by a Ukrainian missile. “The main part of removing rubble from the apartment building on Shchors Street has been…
At least 17 people were injured after a Ukrainian missile struck a residential building in the western Russian city of Belgorod, Russian authorities said Sunday. Russia’s Defense Ministry said a Ukrainian Tochka-U missile hit a “residential district” in the city after it was intercepted by air defense systems. It was not immediately possible to verify…
Veteran journalist Tom Parfitt came up with the idea of a solo walk through Russia’s North Caucasus after reporting on the bloody Beslan school siege by Islamic militants in 2004. The undertaking was, as he puts it, his way of trying to “dilute” the memories of that horror. The result is a poignant, beautiful and…