Author: Reporter

After the last Soviet troops left Afghanistan in 1989, defeated by an insurgency equipped and guided by the United States, a two-word cable arrived at CIA headquarters: “WE WON.” It was one of the last moments of the Cold War, credited with helping push the Soviet Union to collapse two years later. But the U.S. would leave behind a country that rapidly fell into civil war, eventually becoming al-Qaida’s training grounds for the September 11 attacks and the site of a two-decade war that ended in U.S. withdrawal and defeat. Decades later, one of the architects of the covert...

President Joe Biden recently defended what he said was a “difficult decision” to provide cluster munitions to Ukraine, a move the administration said was key to the fight and buttressed by Ukraine’s promise to use the controversial bombs carefully. The decision comes on the eve of the NATO summit in Lithuania, where Biden is likely to face questions from allies on why the U.S. would send a weapon into Ukraine that more than two-thirds of alliance members have banned because it has a track record for causing many civilian casualties. “It took me a while to be convinced to...

The first phase of Ukraine’s counteroffensive to recapture Russian-occupied territory began weeks ago without fanfare. Apart from claiming that its troops are edging forward, Kyiv has not offered much detail on how it is going. Taking place mostly out of sight of impartial observers, the fighting in eastern and southern Ukraine pits troops equipped with new Western-supplied weapons against Kremlin forces that spent months digging formidable defenses and honing tactics. Here is a look at what is happening after more than 17 months of war: WHAT ARE UKRAINE’S TACTICS? Fighting has intensified at multiple points along the 930-mile front...

The Ukrainian veteran’s gravestone carries his photograph and birthday, but the date Roman Shadlovskyi died is a broad estimate: March 2022, the month Russian forces brutally killed both civilians and military personnel before ending their occupation of Bucha. Shadlovskyi’s body was found about three months later in a mass grave along with the remains of six other people in a forest outside the city near Ukraine’s capital. Residents and relatives gathered at a Bucha cemetery on July 18 to give him a proper burial. “They took him on the fourth of March, but we don’t know when they tortured...