They came to fight Russia, and to avenge the deaths of their loved ones and friends killed in Chechnya. Not wanting to sit in the trenches, they’ve found work in intelligence and sabotage.
Author: Anna Akage
Anna Akage is a freelance journalist based in Paris. Articles published in The Atlantic Council, LensCulture, L’Oeil de la Photographie, American Social Documentary Network, Polish doc! photo magazine, and others. In love with documentary photography and Chinese noodles.
By putting the economy on a war footing, Putin risks returning Russia to the days of Stalinist totalitarianism, where there will be no oligarchs or businesses left, only loyal administrators.
Tens of thousands of Russian prisoners who’ve been recruited by the Wagner Group mercenary outfit have escaped from the frontlines after volunteering in exchange for freedom. Some appear to be seeking political asylum in Europe thanks to a “cleared” criminal record.
The next months will be decisive in the war between Moscow and Kyiv. From the forests of Polesia to Chernihiv and the Black Sea, Ukraine is looking to protect the areas that may soon be the theater of Moscow’s announced offensive. Will this be the last Russian Spring?
Russia is increasingly concerned about security from the sky: air defense systems have been installed on rooftops in Moscow’s government quarter. Systems have also appeared in several other places in Russia, including near Vladimir Putin’s lakeside home in Valdai. What is the Kremlin really worried about?
It remains unclear whether Belarus’ strongman Alexander Lukashenko will join Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Yet as popular support for the war remains low, many in the country are actively fighting back by sabotaging the rail network.
Ukraine’s Minister of Internal Affairs Denys Monastyrsky was killed Wednesday in a helicopter crash. The cause is still unknown, but the high-profile victim could just have well been President Zelensky instead. It raises the question of whether there are indispensable figures on either side in a war of this nature?
Poland has a border with Russia and Belarus, so it is not just watching how the Ukraine war develops. Warsaw is rethinking its entire defense strategy.
A Ukrainian reporter on the scene of one of the worst attacks on civilians since Russia’s invasion began.
As Vladimir Putin’s end increasingly seems near (political or physical), the battle to replace the Kremlin strongman heats up. Here are the main characters in this very Russian blood sport.
The choice of General Valery Gerasimov to replace General Sergey Surovikin is a political defeat for Wagner Group boss Yevgeny Prigozhin and Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov — and a sign that Putin may be getting skittish on the home front.
Russia has a complicated history with Islam, often built on Moscow’s repression of the religious minority. Now, Muslims in Ukraine are ever more committed to a project for a multi-religious society that Kyiv espouses. Ukrainian Mufti Said Ismagilov has taken up arms for that cause, and to defend his nation.
After a grim New Year, a soldier and mother reflects on the trauma of the past 10 months: fear, the corpses of friends and the choice between her own children and joining the war effort.
Putin used to keep his respectable and criminal circles of friends separate. But the increasing power of Yevgeny Prigozhin, a former prisoner and head of the Wagner paramilitary group, has many inside and outside the Kremlin worried.
Will 2023 be the year of victory? A negotiated settlement? The beginning of the new year was a time for speeches in Kyiv and Moscow aimed at inspiring the respective nations 10 months since Russia’s bloody invasion. Yet, for one good reason, certain words were not spoken.
Ukraine’s fertile soils used to feed the world. But even when the war ends, food production will take decades to recover because of damage to the land.
Moscow has a tight grip on Russia’s media. But instead of trying to fully control the few remaining independent media outlets, it learned how to manipulate them for its own purposes.
A video series appeared then vanished this week from Russia’s only authorized social media platform. Its purpose seemed to be to recruit men (of all ages) to enlist in the war, as a way to make money. But who exactly is behind the campaign? What was the ultimate objective?
He’s been accused of multiple atrocities, and convicted in the shooting down of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 over Ukraine in 2014. But since Russia’s invasion, Igor Girkin seems ever more in a state of despondency, with a uniquely dark view on the future, for Vladimir Putin most of all.
Five days after Minsk’s troops began amassing at the Belarus-Ukraine border, Russian President Vladimir Putin has arrived for an impromptu summit with Alexander Lukashenko. Belarus’ strongman is increasingly seen as no longer having the option to say No to entering Putin’s war against Ukraine.
A Ukrainian journalist considers the controversy over the shutting down of exiled, independent Russian television station TV Dozhd. Can Russians be opposed to Putin’s war and yet support the troops?
Russian occupation authorities promised to rebuild housing in Mariupol by winter, but in reality, thousands of people face the cold in largely destroyed houses and apartments. Mariupol residents told Vazhnyye Istorii about how they are surviving as winter falls.
As they’ve done for the past year, Ukrainians have spent the past three days studying maps and calculating distances. But there’s a difference now: The maps are of Russia. [shortcode-Subscribe-to-Ukraine-daily-box] The unprecedented drone attacks this week of airfields deep inside Russian territory open a new phase in the war that is both tactical and symbolic. […]
Russian commentators are asking if Ukrainian forces have the means and will to strike Moscow itself.
Reports of Ukraine’s possible use of kamikaze drones deep inside Russian territory.
Russia owns 60% of Arctic coastline and half of the region’s population. In recent history, NATO has not been overly concerned with the defense of the Arctic region because the U.S. military has been focused on the Middle East. This is all changing since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The European Union is committed to setting up a special court with the backing of the UN to investigate and prosecute Russian war crimes in Ukraine, and force Russia and its oligarchs to pay the growing pricetag for the destruction of the country. [shortcode-Subscribe-to-Ukraine-daily-box] European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen promised in a video […]
While retreating from Kherson, Russian troops forcibly removed more than 2,500 Ukrainians from prison colonies and pre-trial detention centers in the southern region. Those removed included prisoners as well as a large number of civilians who had been held in prisons during the occupation, according to the Ukrainian human rights organization Alliance of Ukrainian Unity. […]
Whether or not the 64-year-old died of natural causes, the Kremlin is reinforced now in Minsk — leaving even less wiggle room for Belarus strongman Alexander Lukashenko.
Ukraine’s case for pursuing Russia and its leadership for war crimes now includes Moscow’s current strategy of trying to cut off energy supplies to Ukrainian civilians by destroying the country’s power grid. Ukrainian Prosecutor-General Andriy Kostin told the BBC that strikes on key energy infrastructure targeted “the full Ukrainian nation,” which fall under the purview […]
In Russian schools, lessons on “important things” are a compulsory hour pushing state propaganda. But not everyone is buying it. Independent Russian media outlet Vazhnyye Istorii/Important Stories spoke to teachers, parents and students about how they see patriotism and Putin’s mobilization.
David Stulik, senior research analyst at the Prague-based European Values Research Center, explains the risks of continuing to calculate all our choices according to hypothetical fears of and future compromises with Russia.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky condemned Russia’s strike Wednesday on a maternity ward in southern Ukraine that killed a baby born two days ago. The newborn’s mother and a doctor were pulled from the rubble of the hospital in Vilnyansk, located in the Zaporizhzhia region. [shortcode-Subscribe-to-Ukraine-daily-box] The morning strike was part of what appears to be […]
Sending Ukraine advanced weaponry would be a response from Israel to reports that Tehran is sending ballistic missiles to Moscow.
Kremlin war aims in Ukraine have never been entirely clear. Part of that is due to the setbacks the Russian army has suffered; and now it appears that both the strategic and symbolic objective of reducing the capital of Kyiv to its knees is again very much on Vladimir Putin’s mind.
At least 12 missiles over the past 24 hours were fired at or near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southeastern Ukraine. [shortcode-Subscribe-to-Ukraine-daily-box] The surrounding territory and the plant itself, also known as ZNPP, are currently controlled by Russian forces, but the plant is a crucial source of energy for much of Ukraine. The Ukrainian […]
An inmate of the penal colony in the town of Kopeysk reveals the different ways convicts are recruited in the Russian mercenary Wagner Group, whose founder and Putin confidante Yevgeny Prigozhin personally sought the most violent criminals with vows to pay big sums and expunge their sentences.
Is this what Vladimir Putin’s winter plans look like?
Warsaw says that the missile that hit Poland was probably a Ukrainian air defense missile that went astray. The Russian-made missile fell on the Polish village of Przewodów, near the border with Ukraine, killing two people late Tuesday. [shortcode-Subscribe-to-Ukraine-daily-box] Even though the missile was made in Russia, initial US assessments indicated that it had originated […]
Ukrainians, Russians and much of the rest of the world are still trying to make sense of Moscow’s decision last week to abandon the southern city of Kherson. Do not, for certain, underestimate the significance.