3 h. ago ‘It’s a robot war’: eastern Ukraine faces onslaught of Russian glide bombs, rockets and kamikaze drones

Putin has escalated strikes on Donetsk region and is likely to demand Ukraine hands it over in talks with TrumpNataliya Petrovna pointed to a crater on the edge of a football field. Around it lay bits of twisted metal. From nearby came loud banging as residents fixed plywood to their damaged five-storey apartment block. Many of its windows were broken. “The last few days have been terrible. We could hear the drones buzzing over us. The one that exploded near the school opposite was a Russian Shahed. Maybe some kind of new type,” she said.Petrovna lives in the eastern garrison city of Kramatorsk, in Donetsk province, about 15 miles from the frontline. The distance is just beyond the range of Russian first-person view (FPV) drones, at least for now. But it is easily reachable by other kinds of enemy objects. They include air-dropped glide bombs, Grad rockets and unmanned kamikaze drones – now cruising Ukraine’s skies in overwhelming numbers. Continue reading...

Events

11 h. ago Putin races to grab territory in Ukraine with lightning advance days before meeting with Trump

Battlefield reports claim Russian sabotage and reconnaisance teams have breached weak points in eastern Ukraine, advancing up to six miles past the front line in two days

Politics

47 h. ago Soldiers under bombardment in eastern Ukraine say peace still feels far away

‘We are preparing for a long war. We have no illusions that Russia will stop’

Events

3 d. ago 'Gag' on top brass after RAF chief's claims that UK could not fend off Russian onslaught in the event of war 

Earlier this summer there were complaints of 'unprecedented' interference by Downing Street to ensure that key announcements were made by politicians, not military figures.

Events

3 d. ago 'Gag' on top brass after RAF chief claims UK could not fend off Russian onslaught in the event of war 

Earlier this summer there were complaints of 'unprecedented' interference by Downing Street to ensure that key announcements were made by politicians, not military figures.

Events

9 d. ago ‘Poetry pulled me out of the abyss’: keeping culture alive in Kharkiv – picture essay

Eastern Ukraine’s biggest city is unsettlingly close to the Russian border and vulnerable to missile strikes, but there is a determination to maintain a cultural life, and a poetry festival is testament to the resilience and creativity of its peopleThe city of Kharkiv, just 18 miles from the Russian border, is a paradoxical mix of tended-to and broken. Public sculptures are wrapped and coddled in sandbags to protect them from missiles. Flowerbeds in parks are punctiliously maintained. The life of the streets is several notches quieter than you would expect from a European country’s second city – and yet, bookshops, coffee shops and restaurants are open and doing a steady business.People browsing the books at Pochaina market Continue reading...

Politics

3 w. ago Russia launches ‘hellish’ aerial attack on eastern Ukrainian city of Pavlohrad

Six-hour bombardment of the strategic hub in the Dnipropetrovsk region came at the same time as airstrikes killed one person in OdesaRussia launched its biggest ever attack on the eastern Ukrainian city of Pavlohrad early on Saturday, as part of a large wave of strikes across the country involving hundreds of kamikaze drones and ballistic missiles.The six-hour bombardment was the worst in the city’s history. The head of the Dnipropetrovsk region, Sergey Lysak, said a factory was damaged, a fire station destroyed and a five-storey residential building hit. Continue reading...

Events

4 w. ago ‘The soldiers want you to see what they’re going through’: the heartbreaking follow

While Mstyslav Chernov was on the Oscars circuit with his first Ukraine war film, soldiers in his latest – made using bodycams – were dying. He explains why he needed to join them in the trenchesIt was in Sloviansk, in the rear of eastern Ukraine’s frontline, that I first met journalist and film-maker Mstyslav Chernov. It was the autumn of 2023 and he was telling me about the film that would later win him and his team an Oscar: 20 Days in Mariupol, a horrifying documentary assembled from the news footage he and his team had gathered there, in the first month of the full-scale invasion. That September day of our interview, though – amid what would turn out to be Ukraine’s disappointing counteroffensive of 2023 – he was making his second film, one that took him to the heart of the combat zone, called 2,000 Meters to Andriivka. It is, if anything, even more powerful than its predecessor: a piece of frontline reporting that truly deserves the name, its footage gathered from soldiers’ ow...

Events