Author: Reporter

Fierce battles in eastern Ukraine have thrown a new spotlight on Russia’s Wagner Group, a private military company led by a rogue millionaire with longtime links to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Wagner has spearheaded the push to jump-start Russia’s stalemated offensive in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk province. The ferocious house-to house fighting has produced some of the bloodiest encounters since Russia sent troops into Ukraine, with Wagner personnel “marching on the bodies of their own soldiers” as Ukrainian authorities put it. The U.S. this week expanded sanctions against Wagner for its role in Ukraine and mercenary activities in Africa. Here...

University student Vlada Yushchenko was still in her teens and nearly three months pregnant when she hugged her husband at the border, turned away and walked into Moldova. Now she is in Romania, one of the millions of Ukrainians forced to flee Russia’s invasion. Her baby, Daniel, was born there eight months ago and still hasn’t met his father Yaroslav, who is 21 and, like most men of fighting age, prohibited from leaving Ukraine. “Nobody expected the war was coming and that we weren’t going to be together,” said Yushchenko, who has settled for now in the central Romanian...

Russia used strategic bombers, cruise missiles and killer drones in a wave of attacks across Ukraine on February 10, while Moscow’s military push that Kyiv says has been brewing for days appeared to pick up pace in eastern areas ahead of the one-year anniversary of its invasion. Russian forces have launched 71 cruise missiles, 35 S-300 missiles and seven Shahed drones since February 9, Ukraine’s military chief, General Valerii Zaluzhnyi said. Ukrainian forces downed 61 cruise missiles and five drones. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who has campaigned for more Western support against Russia’s military ambitions, said: “This is terror...

Cambodian experts, whose country has the dubious distinction of being one of the world’s most contaminated by landmines, walked a group of Ukrainian soldiers through a minefield being actively cleared recently, hoping their decades of experience would help the Europeans in their own efforts to remove Russian mines at home. Wearing protective body armor, helmets and visors, the group of 15 Ukrainians were guided along cleared routes through the former battlefield in northwestern Battambang province by trainers with the Cambodian Mine Action Center, a government agency that oversees the clearing of land mines and unexploded ordnance in the country....