Russian invasion of Ukraine
Special Coverage
Vladimir Putin began a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, in an escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War that he started in 2014. The invasion received widespread international condemnation, including massive economic sanctions. Milwaukee’s Ukrainian American community began with immigrants in the early twentieth century, and continued to grow in the years after World War II and the fall of the Soviet Union.
These news stories cover the local connections in Milwaukee to an international crisis, and all the complexities woven into America’s political climate.
- Links to complete news coverage of Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine: mkeind.com/ukraine
- Reports from Ukraine – Series of news reports from May 2022 in Ukraine: mkeind.com/reportsfromukraine
- Return to Ukraine – Series of news reports from June-July 2023 in Ukraine: mkeind.com/returntoukraine
- Selected features that focus on news from Milwaukee’s Sister City of Irpin: mkeind.com/irpin
Featured: Jennifer Vosters: A visit to Kyiv that offered insight, awareness, and an inspiration for solidarity [Feb 24, 2022]
99-year-old U.S. D-Day veteran hugs President Zelenskyy and calls him a savior of the Ukrainian people
An American veteran and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy shared an emotional moment at a ceremony to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the D-Day invasion to liberate France in World War II, each praising the other as a hero. Retired Staff Sgt. Melvin Hurwitz,...
Wartime Ukraine reclaims national identity with surge to erase Colonial Russian past from public spaces
On the streets of Kyiv, Fyodor Dostoevsky is on the way out. Andy Warhol is on the way in. Ukraine is accelerating efforts to erase the vestiges of Soviet and Russian influence from its public spaces by pulling down monuments and renaming hundreds of streets to honor...
No longer just pawns: How the war in Ukraine is shifting the balance of power to Eastern Europe
As 2022 is coming to a close, the war in Ukraine rages unabated. Russian President Vladimir Putin sees what he still calls a “special military operation” as a life-or-death contest with the United States and its allies in NATO. The West, for its part, considers the...
The Winter Campaign: Putin has been weaponizing energy for years and has no incentive to stop now
By Thomas Froehlich, Research Fellow, King’s College London Not since the 1970s oil crisis has the west seen such a focus on energy security. Suddenly in 2022 it became a critical part of the battle for Ukraine. Russian attacks on energy facilities have left...
Over dependence on Russian oil and gas has accelerated a global swing to clean energy
By Rachel Kyte, Dean of the Fletcher School, Tufts University The year 2022 was a tough one for the growing number of people living in food insecurity and energy poverty around the world, and the beginning of 2023 is looking bleak. Russia’s war on Ukraine, one of the...
Bringing Jesus to the Communist world: Why American Evangelicals cannot fully abandon their Kremlin ally
By Melani McAlister, Professor of American Studies and International Affairs, George Washington University In February 2022, evangelical leader Franklin Graham called on his followers to pray for Vladimir Putin. His tweet acknowledged that it might seem a “strange...
Building blocks for war: How Putin used 14 years of lies and disinformation to justify a Ukraine invasion
By Juris Pupcenoks, Associate Professor of Political Science, Marist College; and Graig Klein, Assistant Professor of Terrorism & Political Violence, Leiden University As the invasion of Ukraine began in late February 2022, President Vladimir Putin offered several...
Lessons from FDR: It turns out that authoritarian governments depend on the economies of democracies
On June 5, 1944, the day before the D-Day operation in which the Allied forces in World War II invaded German-occupied western Europe, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt gave his 29th Fireside Chat. Roosevelt told the American people that Rome had fallen to American...
Milwaukee’s Jewish community offers vital aid for Ukrainian refugees in response to humanitarian crisis
The Jewish community in Milwaukee has deep and long connections to the Jewish population in Ukraine. And for Milwaukeeans involved in relief efforts at the Ukrainian border, recent experiences of assisting refugees and evacuating Holocaust survivors from Ukraine have...
Russia’s human shield narrative: The lies Putin invokes to justify the slaying of innocent civilians
Since Russia’s invasion began in late February 2022, universities, schools, theaters, hospitals, and many other civilian sites in Ukraine have been destroyed by Russian shelling and more than four million people have so far fled the country. Faced with the devastating...
Why journalists were targeted by Russian forces to conceal crimes of genocide against Ukrainian people
Mayor of Mariupol, Vadym Boichenko, said in a recent interview that Russia was blocking international organizations from entering Mariupol to prevent them from seeing what had become of the city. On April 4, President Volodymyr Zelensky described the horrific...
The thinnest of silver linings: How Putin became responsible for beginning a new era in Washington
I am going to go out on a limb and suggest something that would have seemed utter nonsense as late as a month ago: I’m seeing the stirrings in Washington of a new era of … I am not sure what to call it. “Unity” is way too strong. “Bipartisanship” is premature....
Trauma still haunts some families as Ukraine’s Bucha rebuilds two years after brutal occupation
Days after Russian forces withdrew from the outskirts of Kyiv in the dramatic first weeks of their full-scale invasion two years ago, a photo revealed what had become of Nataliia Verbova’s missing husband. Poring over the image of eight men executed and lying on cold...
Featured: Photos from the frontlines: Sergi Mykhalchuk documents images of war as civilians evacuate Irpin [Mar 16, 2022]
Featured: Milwaukee formalizes Sister City status with Ukraine’s Irpin [Mar 23, 2018]
Milwaukee has a small but thriving Ukrainian American community, and Irpin is a sister city. Follow our special coverage at mkeind.com/ukraine for updates on Putin’s invasion, and about how the fight by Ukrainian people to preserve their democracy is having an impact on the families and businesses here in Milwaukee. 🇺🇦 Слава Україні! Героям слава!
Help maintain a reliable news source in Ukraine by supporting the Kyiv Independent, an English-language media outlet created by journalists who were fired from the Kyiv Post for defending editorial independence. Donations can be made via patreon or gofundme.
