Ukraine News

KYIV, Ukraine—The war in Ukraine escalated this week to its most violent levels of the year with Russian artillery and rocket attacks targeting both Ukrainian military forces and civilian settlements along the front lines in eastern Ukraine’s embattled Donbas region. "The Kremlin controls the violence in eastern Ukraine and could bring this violence to an…

HORISHNI PLAVNI, Ukraine—The trenches, tanks, artillery, and snipers are only six hours to the east of here by car. The war is always there, as it has been now for more than four years, but there’s hardly any evidence of it in this city of about 52,000 people on the bucolic left bank of the…

KYIV, Ukraine—Ukraine has gone to war against Russian propaganda. Last week, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko announced the deployment of Ukrainian electronic warfare units to jam the transmission of about 40 Russian and pro-Russian television channels in the country’s embattled eastern Donbas region. "We will protect Ukrainians from the information poison coming from the Russian Federation,"…

KYIV, Ukraine—After more than a week of snowstorms and gray skies, Monday morning dawned sunny and clear in Ukraine’s capital city. Similarly, on that day, the clouds had also somewhat parted over a forestalled gas war with Russia—albeit briefly. “The period of gas blackmail of our country by Russia has already passed,” Ukrainian President Petro…

KYIV, Ukraine—On Wednesday, Russian weapons killed three Ukrainian troops and wounded five more in eastern Ukraine’s embattled eastern Donbas region, where Moscow continues to wage a 4-year-old proxy war, which has, so far, killed more than 10,300 Ukrainians. Meanwhile, grocery stores in Kyiv are still stocked with Russian products, such as caviar and vodka, and…

KYIV, Ukraine—In the days and weeks after Kyiv celebrated achieving its foreign policy holy grail—the promise of lethal U.S. anti-tank weaponry—China announced a laundry list of new infrastructure projects across Ukraine, pulling back the curtains on what some say is a looming competition for influence in the embattled, post-Soviet state. “There is indeed an obvious…

KYIV, Ukraine—U.S. President Donald Trump has approved the sale of commercial lethal weapons to Ukraine, a pivotal decision that comes amid an escalation of Russia’s ongoing proxy war in the country’s embattled eastern Donbas region. Trump has reportedly approved a $41.5 million deal for Tennessee-based Barrett Firearms Manufacturing to sell Model M107A1 sniper rifles, ammunition,…

KYIV, Ukraine—And it goes on and on in eastern Ukraine. Every day and every night. There’s never any end to the artillery, the rockets, the snipers. Or the killing. The war in Ukraine has so far killed more than 10,300 Ukrainians, including at least 2,523 civilians, according to the United Nations. “After three and a…

KYIV, Ukraine—A top Chinese official visited Kyiv this week to announce a host of new infrastructure projects and investments in Ukraine, underscoring a burgeoning economic relationship between the two countries that could nudge Kyiv away from the West—a scenario that would ultimately benefit Moscow, some say. “Russian-Chinese relations have no reason to diverge over Ukraine,…

KYIV, Ukraine—The weekend after Thanksgiving, shopping malls across Ukraine touted special Black Friday sales. Of course, Ukrainians don’t celebrate Thanksgiving (not yet, at least), so there was no post-holiday food hangover to slow down shoppers’ clip as they flooded the malls and shopping centers. Nevertheless, just like in the United States, the Ukrainian holiday season…

KYIV, Ukraine—Russian revanchism has spread beyond the battlefields of Ukraine’s Donbas region into a global, hybrid conflict that has redrawn the balance of power in Eastern Europe and pitted the world’s two largest nuclear powers against each other. "When a country can come interfere in another country’s elections, that is warfare,” U.S. Ambassador to the…

KYIV, Ukraine—Sometimes, wars aren’t won by tank battles and infantry assaults. Sometimes, it comes down to keeping the heat on. As Russia’s hybrid war against Ukraine nears its fifth calendar year—and as Ukraine’s infamously cold winter draws near—American companies are incrementally cutting into Russia’s de facto monopoly as a supplier of nuclear fuel and coal…

KYIV, Ukraine—A Chechen woman who had fought on the side of Ukrainian forces against Russia and its separatist proxies in eastern Ukraine died in a brazen vehicular ambush on the outskirts of Kyiv on Monday. The ambush underscored what some Ukrainian government officials and security analysts suspect is part of a larger Russian shadow war…

KYIV, Ukraine—Since 2014 Russia has used Ukraine as a testing ground for its hybrid warfare doctrine, underscoring what some security experts say is a case study for the new kinds of security threats the U.S. and its Western allies can anticipate from Moscow. “The threats Ukraine faces are harbingers of things to come for the…

KYIV, Ukraine—On Wednesday, a powerful thunderstorm rocked Ukraine’s capital city with lighting, thunder, and torrential rains. By early evening, the clouds had parted. But another storm, which has been brewing for more than three years, still loomed over the embattled, post-Soviet country. It is the Ukrainian people’s disappointment with what many consider to be the…

URZUF, Ukraine—At the Azov Regiment’s base in this beach resort town on the Sea of Azov coast, you can sometimes hear the sounds of shelling from the front lines, which are about 42 miles east of here, toward the Russian border. Yet, on this blustery summer day in late August, tourists are out swimming on…

KYIV, Ukraine—A nation doesn’t always reveal its pride or its undying hope for a better future through military parades and presidential speeches. Sometimes, it’s a 40-year-old combat veteran standing rigid in his military fatigues, a medal pinned to his chest, bowing his head in remembrance of fallen comrades while tears run down his cheeks and…