Author: Mike Eckel/RFE/RL

The predawn skies over the outskirts of the Ukrainian port of Berdyansk lit up in oranges and reds from fires and explosions at an airfield where Russian Kh-52 and Mi-24 helicopters, used for targeting Ukrainian armor trying to breach Russian lines 75 miles to the north, were parked. Around 18 hours later, the attack, documented...

The offensive began at dawn on October 10: At least three Russian battalions – between 2,000 and 3,000 men – moved with tanks and armored infantry vehicles, backed by an artillery fusillade that pummeled Ukrainian positions. Northwest of the city of Avdiyivka, home to a massive coke factory in the heart of the Donbas, the...

Last March, a Palestinian delegation arrived in Moscow for talks with Russian officials. The delegation was from Hamas, the militant Palestinian group that’s been labeled a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union. The meeting, according to the Russian Foreign Affairs Ministry, touched on Russia’s “unchanged position in support of a just...

Five years ago, a massive floating dry dock near the Russian Arctic port of Murmansk accidentally sank and nearly took the flagship of the Russian Navy, the aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov, with it. It was a major headache for Russia’s Navy: The dry dock, called the FD-50, was one of the only ones capable of...

Don’t expect many surprises in local and regional elections being held across Russia – and, problematically, in occupied Ukraine. Do look for clues as to how the Kremlin will orchestrate next year’s presidential vote when Vladimir Putin is expected to run yet again. In dozens of regions across Russia, hundreds of thousands, if not millions,...

The landscape between the Ukrainian villages of Robotyne and Verbove, in Ukraine’s southern Zaporizhia region, is open and flat, and rectangular farm fields are now pocked with blackened artillery craters and lined by shrapnel-shredded trees that provide spotty cover. Scratched into the fields are rows of man-made trenches, tunnels, triangular concrete blocks called dragons’ teeth,...

Four days after an Embraer 600 passenger jet linked to Yevgeny Prigozhin broke up and slammed into the ground north of Moscow, Russian authorities gave final confirmation that the Wagner Group mercenary chief was indeed dead. Even before the Investigative Commit-tee’s August 27 announcement, President Vladimir Putin had suggested that Mr. Prigozhin was dead. In...

Six weeks into a major counteroffensive that Ukrainian military commanders and political leaders hope will decisively change the course of the 17-month Russian invasion, this is where things stand: Ukraine has retaken about 1,500 meters of territory south of Orikhiv, in the Zaporizhia region; less than that south of Hulyaypole. South of the Donetsk region...

A top Russian field commander says he was dismissed after disagreements with superior officers over the situation on the front lines, an unusual public display of dissent from within the Russian ranks after just over 500 days of war in Ukraine. The complaints by Maj. Gen. Ivan Popov, which came in an audio message circulated...

The Kakhovka dam, a decades-old, Soviet-era hydroelectric facility spanning the mighty Dnipro River in southern Ukraine, was breached sometime overnight on June 6. The breach sent torrents of water cascading downstream, inundating villages and towns, prompting evacuations of thousands, drowning fields and swamping farmlands and marshlands. Ukraine immediately laid the blame on Russia, which has...

Prior to May 3, the last time the Kremlin was attacked – bombed, in fact – was in 1942, when Nazi forces were closing in on Moscow. Before that, you’d have to go back to Napoleon, when French forces entered the Kremlin, albeit without much of a fight. Now add to the list a pair...

Last fall, Ukraine rewrote the story of Russia’s invasion. It wasn’t the first time, and if things go as well in the coming weeks as Ukraine prays they will, it won’t be the last. On October 1, 2022, Russia pulled out of the Donetsk region town of Lyman, ceding the town to Ukrainian forces and...