Author: Reporter

A top Ukrainian official on recently outlined a series of steps the government in Kyiv would take after the country reclaims control of Crimea, including dismantling the strategic bridge that links the seized Black Sea peninsula to Russia. Oleksiy Danilov, the secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, published the plan as Ukraine’s military prepares for a spring counteroffensive in hopes of making new, decisive gains after more than 13 months of war to end Russia’s full-scale invasion. Moscow annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, but most of the world does not recognize it as Russian territory. The...

Their hands are blackened and grimy from the fight. Some are still wearing their combat boots, small flecks of black soil from the battlefield clinging to their torsos, bare under the emergency blanket. With bandaged heads and splinted limbs, the wounded soldiers are stretchered into the waiting medical evacuation bus by members of the Hospitallers, a Ukrainian organization of volunteer paramedics who work on the front lines in the war in Ukraine. The soldiers were all wounded recently in fierce fighting in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, where Russian forces have been pressing advances. The battle in Bakhmut, a city...

In a cramped municipal building in this former front-line village, its front window boarded up with plywood, a team of volunteer specialist doctors have set up a mobile clinic. For the residents, it is a lifeline. Even before Russia’s war, access to specialist medical help was available only to those who could get to the city, but the village near the eastern Ukrainian city of Sloviansk did have a primary care doctor. Now, with the village health clinic damaged by the war, its residents have been left with little access to health care, and in particular to specialist care....

Skimming the treetops, three Soviet-era attack helicopters bank and swoop down on a field after an early-morning mission to the front lines in the fight against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Each day, they might fly three or four sorties, says the commander, whose two-crew Mi-24 helicopter, built about 40 years ago, is older than he is. “We are carrying out combat tasks to destroy enemy vehicles, enemy personnel, we are working with pitch-up attacks from a distance from where the enemy can’t get us with their air defense system,” said the commander, who spoke on condition of anonymity for...

The war in Ukraine has created a surge in demand for weapons and, apparently, also for inflatable fake armaments that can be deployed as decoys. A Czech company, Inflatech, is producing more than 30 different inflatable military decoys ranging from tanks and armored vehicles to aircraft and howitzers. They also offer decoy versions of U.S.-made HIMARS rocket systems, that were among the billions of dollars in Western military aid that has helped Ukraine’s war effort since Russia launched its unprovoked invasion just over a year ago. Inflatech Chief Executive Vojtech Fresser would not say if his decoys are used...

The U.S. will send Ukraine about $500 million in ammunition and equipment and spend more than $2 billion to buy an array of munitions, radar, and new weapons to help Kyiv counter drones in the coming months, the Pentagon said in April, as Ukrainian troops gear up for a spring offensive against Russian forces. The aid to be taken from military stockpiles so it can be in the war zone quickly includes “ammunition for U.S.-provided HIMARS, air defense interceptors, and artillery rounds that Ukraine is using to defend itself,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement. HIMARS...