Ukraine News

KYIV, Ukraine—Orthodox Christians celebrate Christmas on Jan. 7. So in Ukraine’s capital city, the holiday season is still in full swing. The festivities in Kyiv leading up to Thursday reflect the continuance of normal life despite the frozen conflict in eastern Ukraine and looming battles on the nation’s domestic political front. At the Gulliver shopping mall, children line…

KYIV, Ukraine—There’s a saying in Ukraine about the four stages of being poor. It goes like this: First, you don’t have any hryvnias (the Ukrainian currency). Second, you don’t have any food. Third, you don’t have any dollars. And finally, you don’t have your $2 bill. For Ukrainians, dollars are a precious and jealously guarded rainy-day…

KYIV, Ukraine—One Ukrainian National Guard soldier died and more than 100 law enforcement personnel and civilians were injured, several critically, after violent protests erupted outside Ukraine’s parliament on Monday. Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said a demonstrator threw fragmentation grenades into a line of Ukrainian National Guard soldiers and law enforcement personnel guarding the entrance…

URZUF, Ukraine—The vehicle yard at the Ukrainian National Guard Azov Battalion’s base here looks like the set of a Mad Max movie. There is a semi-truck tractor covered in welded black armor parked next to a fleet of busses, minivans, pickup trucks and hatchback Volkswagens all painted in camouflage patterns—some sporting bullet holes. The up-armored…

SARTANA, Ukraine—A biography of Winston Churchill sits on Stephan Machsma’s desk. Machsma is the mayor of Sartana, Ukraine, and he is leading the town’s approximately 10,000 residents through their own darkest hour. On Sunday night, starting around 10 p.m., combined Russian-separatist forces shelled Sartana with 122-mm and 152-mm artillery for about 25 minutes. The attack…

MARIUPOL, Ukraine—A mortar killed Daniel Kasyanenko on a battlefield in eastern Ukraine. He was 19 years old. He died on Aug. 6, almost six months after the Feb. 12 cease-fire. He was one of 18 Ukrainian soldiers to die in a 10-day stretch from Aug. 1 to Aug. 10; 98 Ukrainian soldiers were wounded in…

MARIUPOL, Ukraine—Thunderstorms hovering over the Sea of Azov caught the setting sun, turning orange and then pink. A cool end-of-day breeze kicked up. Later Sunday night in downtown Mariupol when the artillery started, the booms and flashing lights over the rooftops looked like lightning and sounded like thunder. To the trained ear, however, the sounds…

DERRY, N.H.— During a campaign stop at a town hall in New Hampshire today, Ohio Gov. John Kasich said the United States should be aiding Ukraine against Russian aggression. “For the life of me, I cannot understand why we are not giving the Ukrainians [the ability] to defend themselves against Putin and the Russians,” Kasich…

KYIV, Ukraine—It was called position 18. The house, which was yellow and had its roof caved in from artillery hits, was only a hundred meters or so behind the front-line trenches in Pisky, Ukraine. Shrapnel and bullet holes had shredded the exterior walls, leaving the yellow paint polka-dotted by the grey concrete underneath. The soldiers…

KYIV, Ukraine—This was supposed to be a routine reconnaissance mission, but suddenly it became complicated. They had been crawling in the woods to stay concealed when the jeep with four separatists inside pulled up and parked along the road a few hundred meters away. They had two options: Start running, or the other thing. Mikael Skillt…

KYIV, Ukraine—A Department of Defense plan to send Ukraine advanced, long-range counter-battery radars highlights both an evolution of the Ukraine war and a ratcheting up of U.S. military support for the post-Soviet state, which continues to fight a war in its eastern territories against combined Russian-separatist forces. On Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal reported on…

MARIUPOL, Ukraine—In a stuffy basement a block off Prospekt Lenina (Mariupol’s main street, which is named after Vladimir Lenin), about 30 Mariupol residents recently gathered for a lesson in democracy. It was raining and thundering outside. And, like during most storms in Mariupol since the war began in spring 2014, it wasn’t immediately clear if…

MARIUPOL, Ukraine—A thunderstorm loomed over Mariupol on the afternoon of July 6. To the north, the sky turned dark and a cool pre-storm breeze kicked up as the sounds of distant thunder began to roll in. A waitress at the Natalka coffee shop on Prospekt Lenina smiled and said, “It’s only a storm. Not artillery.”…

KYIV, Ukraine—Konstantin Bernatovich’s hands began to tremble. He leaned forward, breathing quickly. He tried to say something, but his English failed him and he pulled out his smartphone to type a Russian message into Google Translate: “Seeing you makes me feel very nervous. I have to go smoke a cigarette for a moment to calm…

PISKY, Ukraine—The notion that the Ukraine cease-fire is still largely holding, or even being followed at all, is fiction. In the eastern Ukrainian village of Pisky, only six kilometers from the separatist stronghold of Donetsk, and two kilometers from the ruined Donetsk airport, the Ukrainian army 93rd Mechanized Brigade is engaged in sustained combat with…

Military training is appreciated, but Ukraine needs more from the U.S. if it is to stave off Russia, its prime minister said in Washington this week. Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk of Ukraine asked the U.S. for economic assistance as well as defensive lethal weapons to help Ukrainian troops push back the 10,000 Russian troops in…