Ukraine News

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…

KYIV, Ukraine—Forget death and taxes. In Ukraine, nothing is certain but war and protests. In the country’s eastern Donbas region, the war against Russia and its separatist proxies has dragged on for three years. And in Kyiv’s government halls, meaningful anti-corruption reforms are advancing at a snail’s pace more than three years after the revolution….

KYIV, Ukraine—On April 2, 1917, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson stood before a joint session of Congress, asking for a declaration of war against Germany so that the world would “be made safe for democracy.” “Neutrality is no longer feasible or desirable where the peace of the world is involved,” Wilson said. Four days later, on…

KYIV, Ukraine—As the Russian shells and rockets rained down on them in the front-line town of Debaltseve in February 2015, Ukrainian troops began to receive curious, anonymous SMS messages on their cellphones. “Your comrades nearby already left their positions, so you should leave yours as well,” one message read. The messages also claimed that Ukrainian…

KYIV, Ukraine—With the world’s eyes on London the day after a lethal terror attack outside of Parliament, a series of violent incidents swept across Ukraine on Thursday, highlighting what lawmakers in Kyiv said was a covert effort by Moscow to destabilize the country. The broad daylight assassination of an exiled Russian lawmaker in central Kyiv…