Ukraine News

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…

KYIV, Ukraine—On the front lines against Russia and its separatist proxies in eastern Ukraine, Ukrainian soldiers have, throughout the past three years of relentless combat, frequently turned to symbols of America to both intimidate and annoy their enemies—sometimes, in eclectic and creative ways. Ukrainian soldiers have raised U.S. flags over their front-line trenches and forts—typically…

KYIV, Ukraine—I arrived in Ukraine for the first time in July 2014, three years ago this month. I originally planned to stay for three weeks. I never would have thought then, that by Independence Day 2017, three years later, I’d still be here, still reporting on the war. On that warm summer day of my…

KYIV, Ukraine—Combat modestly abated along the front lines in eastern Ukraine this week as part of a “harvest truce” so farmers near the front lines could safely tend to their crops. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s hybrid warfare battlefield was in flames. On Tuesday, a car bomb killed a top Ukrainian military intelligence officer in Kyiv in what…

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said the United States has been a “co-sponsor of this story of success” in helping his country fight for freedom against Russian aggression, as he sat with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office Tuesday. “We’re really fighting for freedom and democracy,” Petro Poroshenko says. Trump and national security adviser H.R….

KYIV, Ukraine—On May 13, an artillery shell fired from within separatist-controlled territory landed in a residential neighborhood of Avdiivka, a front-line town in eastern Ukraine. Three women and a man were standing outside the home where the shell hit. Elena Aslanova, Olga Kurochkina, Maria Dikaya, and Oleg Borisenko. They all died. Two children became orphans…