Author: Reporter

The United Nations cultural organization is training law enforcement and judiciary officials from countries on Ukraine’s western borders, seeking to prevent the trafficking of looted cultural objects from Ukraine amid Russia’s war against its neighbor. UNESCO partnered with Poland’s Culture Ministry to hold three days of workshops in Warsaw this week for the officials from Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Romania and Moldova. Representatives from Ukraine also attended the training that began in late January. The aim was for the officials to be able to identify and prevent any artistic treasures looted in Ukraine from crossing their borders. Krista Pikkat, UNESCO’s...

Russian forces are keeping Ukrainian troops tied down with attacks in the eastern Donbas region as Moscow assembles additional combat power there for an expected offensive in the coming weeks, Ukrainian officials said recently. Intense fighting that has been raging for weeks continued around the city of Bakhmut and the nearby towns of Soledar and Vuhledar, Ukraine’s presidential office said. They are located in the Donetsk region, which with neighboring Luhansk region makes up the Donbas, an industrial area bordering Russia. “The battles for the region are heating up,” Donetsk Governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said in televised remarks, adding that...

Moscow’s nights display few signs of a nation at war. Cheerful crowds packed restaurants and bars in the Sretenka neighborhood on a recent Saturday night, watched by officers marked as “tourist police.” Nearby, a top-hatted guide led about 40 sightseers to a 300-year-old church. There is only an occasional “Z” — the symbol of Russia’s “special military operation,” as the Ukraine invasion is officially known — seen on a building or a shuttered store abandoned by a Western retailer. A poster of a stern-faced soldier, with the slogan “Glory to the heroes of Russia,” is a reminder the conflict...

Russia has switched its aerial strike tactics to fool Ukraine’s air defenses, using decoy missiles without explosive warheads and deploying balloons, a senior Ukrainian official said recently. “The Russians are definitely changing tactics” as the war approaches its one-year anniversary, Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said in an interview with The Associated Press. The goal of the decoy missiles, Podolyak said, is to overwhelm Ukraine’s air defense systems by offering too many targets. “They want to overload our anti-aircraft system to get an extra chance to hit infrastructure facilities,” Podolyak said, adding that Ukraine’s air...

When war broke out in Ukraine, Aydin Sisman’s relatives there fled to the ancient city of Antakya, in a southeastern corner of Türkiye that borders Syria. They may have escaped one disaster, but another found them in their new home. They were staying with Sisman’s Ukrainian mother-in-law when their building collapsed on February 6 as a 7.8 magnitude earthquake leveled much of Antakya and ravaged the region in what some in Türkiye are calling the disaster of the century. “We have Ukrainian guests who fled the war, and they are also lying inside. We have had no contact.” said...

Visitors used to browse through Bakhmut’s late 19th century buildings, enjoy walks in its rose-lined lakeside park and revel in the sparkling wines produced in historic underground caves. That was when the city in eastern Ukraine was a popular tourist destination. No more. The longest battle of Russia’s war has turned this city of salt and gypsum mines into a ghost town. Despite bombing, shelling and attempts to encircle Bakhmut for six months, Russia’s forces have not conquered it. But their scorched-earth tactics have made it impossible for civilians to have any semblance of a life there. “It’s hell...