Author: Aleksander Palikot / RFE/RL

Two years after Russia’s full-scale invasion began, many Ukrainians sense that their country could soon find itself under unbearable pressure. Speaking at the annual Munich Security Conference in late February, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy repeated a message he had delivered at the same forum days before the invasion: If Ukraine is left to go it alone,...

NEAR ROBOTYNE, Ukraine – “To put it bluntly, we barely have enough strength to defend what we gained over the summer,” Ihor, a battalion commander who took part in the liberation of Robotyne, the southernmost point Ukrainian forces recaptured in the Zaporizhia region in their counteroffensive last year, told RFE/RL. “And we gained it with...

KHARKIV, Ukraine – A year ago, Grazyna Slawinska was helping to deliver humanitarian supplies to people remaining in Bakhmut, the eastern Ukrainian city that later fell to Russian forces after a brutal, monthslong assault. A resident of the southern Polish city of Krakow, the 33-year-old was hit by shrapnel from a Russian artillery round in...

DONETSK REGION, Ukraine – “It’s like gangrene that needs constant treatment because otherwise it gets worse or spreads.” That’s how Volodymyr, a surgeon at a triage unit near Avdiyivka, an industrial Donbas city targeted by intense Russian attacks since early October, described the current state of fighting in Ukraine’s east. The team of doctors and...

NEAR BAKHMUT, Ukraine – It was still completely dark when Mykyta Zavilinskiy woke up at 4 a.m. and rushed out of his unit’s base to evacuate a wounded soldier from the battlefield in the Donbas region. The semiconscious man had multiple shrapnel wounds and was losing blood. With injuries from his feet to his torso,...

KYIV – A stark warning of a “stalemate,” a controversial article in a major magazine and rumblings about elections in a time of war. These are some of the ingredients in what may be the biggest upsurge in political tension in Ukraine since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022. And there’s more: A...

KYIV – Four days after the Palestinian militant group Hamas attacked Israel, Rabbi Moshe Reuven Azman, one of the leaders of Ukraine’s diverse Jewish community, published two photos showing his four grandchildren hiding from air strikes underground. The first one was taken in a cellar in a village near Kyiv at the beginning of Russia’s...

NEAR VELYKA NOVOSILKA, Ukraine – “We planned the offensive, went in, crushed two Russian brigades and battered them until they pulled in all the reserves,” Anatoliy, a battalion commander from the 37th Marine Infantry Brigade, said of a breakthrough on the front south of Velyka Novosilka, in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, in early June. The advance...

HULYAYPOLE DISTRICT, Ukraine – “We see them, they see us, and only the animals in between our trenches move once in a while,” said Grizzly, the deputy commander of a unit defending several positions on Ukraine’s southern front. Some of his soldiers had just returned from the so-called fire trench – the first line of...

SVYATOHIRSK, Ukraine – The white walls, colorful roofs and shiny golden domes stand out amid the treetops on the steep slope above the winding Siverskyi Donets River in the Donbas, the swath of southeastern Ukraine marred by war for most of the last decade. The view of the Holy Mountains Mona-stery is as captivating today...

ODESA, Ukraine – Tilted columns barely holding the dome above the altar, smashed windows and chunks of debris on the floor of the Transfiguration Cathedral stunned and outraged residents who came to see the destruction wrought by a Russian missile strike. Polina Horobets and Polina Hrodovska, two 16-year-old girls who live nearby, cried and hugged...

KYIV – Click from one Ukrainian news channel to another these days and you’re likely to find the exact same show you just surfed away from. For years, television here had a lot of variety, with several major channels presenting news in a way that accentuated their independence or advanced the agenda of the super-rich...