Author: David Kirichenko

Sweden’s decision to send 16 Gripen fighter jets to Ukraine is more than another weapons transfer. It is the latest sign of a deeper shift that has emerged during Russia’s full-scale invasion: Ukraine’s growing alignment with the Nordic countries. Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine’s former foreign minister, recently posed the question directly. “Is Ukraine becoming a Nordic country?” he wrote following reports of the Gripen deal. Not geographically, Kuleba argued, but strategically. For decades, Ukrainians viewed their place in Europe largely through the lens of Central and Eastern Europe. Since 2022, however, Ukraine’s political and military center of gravity has increasingly...

For much of the war, Mariupol has symbolized both Russia’s brutality and Ukraine’s resistance. The southern port city was reduced to ruins during Russia’s siege in 2022. Tens of thousands are believed to have died. Satellite imagery later revealed mass graves sprawling outside the city. Among the Ukrainian units that fought there was Azov, whose last stand inside the Azovstal steel plant became one of the defining images of the invasion. Now Azov has returned to Mariupol, at least from the air. On May 8, Ukraine’s 1st Azov Corps released footage showing reconnaissance and strike drones flying over the...

In Bellevue, Washington, a grassroots cultural center shows how one immigrant’s determination to teach her children Ukrainian became a community hub for hundreds When Oksana Krivizuk arrived in Washington State in 2015 with two small children, she faced a familiar immigrant dilemma: how to pass on her language and culture in a place where neither seemed to exist outside of church walls. Within a month, she started her own school. “We simply decided we were on our own,” Krivizuk said. Her children were five and three years old. The only Ukrainian-language programs she could find near her home were...

As a Russian soldier slips out from the tree line, a Ukrainian reconnaissance drone detects movement, zooms in, and an enemy vehicle appears on the operator’s screen. Heorhii Volkov, commander of Yasni Ochi (Clear Eyes), a drone unit with 13 Khartiia Brigade, orders a strike. A drone, equipped with AI targeting, launches about 20km (12 miles) from the target, and a red marker bounces on the screen as it closes in. The link is spotty, but the target lock is not. The system zeros in on the vehicle, and the strike drone dives. Follow-on drones then confirm the hit...