Author: Wire Service

Since Russia’s invasion began in late February 2022, universities, schools, theaters, hospitals, and many other civilian sites in Ukraine have been destroyed by Russian shelling and more than four million people have so far fled the country. Faced with the devastating consequences of its actions, Russia has increasingly fallen back on a single legal justification: human shields. Indeed, Moscow repeatedly suggested that Ukraine’s military is deliberately using civilians as a screen to defend legitimate military targets. On February 25, just hours after the invasion began, Russian President Vladimir Putin appealed directly to the personnel of the armed forces of...

Russia’s month-long war on Ukraine has killed thousands of people, displaced millions of refugees and devastated cities, but its armed forces remain largely frustrated by fierce Ukrainian resistance, with no end in sight to the conflict. On February 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine – the biggest offensive in Europe since World War II – and implied the possibility of nuclear escalation if the West intervened. After Russian armed forces were unable to seize control of Ukraine with a lightning offensive in the first week of the war, they shifted strategy to the bombardment...

Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said the world must officially recognize that, under Putin, Russia has become a terrorist state. United States President Joe Biden has labelled his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, a “war criminal” for the war in Ukraine, drawing sharp condemnation from the Kremlin which described the comments as “unacceptable and unforgivable.” After Biden used the term on March 16, the White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the president was “speaking from his heart” after seeing “barbaric” violence in Ukraine, rather than making any formal declaration. The White House had been avoiding applying the designation to Putin, saying...

Russians around the world have been daubing the white letter on black backgrounds to denote support for their army fighting in Ukraine. The adoption of the “Z” as a symbolic expression of support is viewed as particularly controversial as it was originally daubed on tanks attacking Ukrainian cities. As Russia’s military campaign into Ukraine continues to fuel Western condemnation, a radically different portrait of the conflict is emerging in Russia. While the Ukrainians claim thousands of Russian troops have died, U.S. military analysts believe the true death toll to be somewhere between the Russian and Ukrainian figures. But it...