The Ukrainian soldiers sped along a dirt road, their pickup truck bouncing over ruts, lest they become an easy target for Russian tanks across the Dnipro River. Nearby, Russian howitzers fired with deafening booms, sending shells streaking over the ruins of the Kakhovka dam, the destruction of which this week unleashed a flood with far-reaching […]
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Ukrainian forces mounted a major attack in the southern region of Zaporizhzhia on Thursday, taking the offensive against the invading Russians in multiple places in the east and south, but there was no indication of a breakthrough in an operation that carries high stakes for Kyiv and its Western allies. Three senior U.S. officials, as […]
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President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine visited the flood-stricken city of Kherson on Thursday, trying to rally the region’s emergency workers, who were struggling under Russian artillery fire to evacuate thousands of people from cities and settlements left submerged by the destruction of a major dam this week. Even as rescue workers took boats through flooded […]
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KHERSON, Ukraine — Thousands of people escaped inundated homes in southern Ukraine on Wednesday, including many rescued from rooftops, a day after the destruction of the Kakhovka dam gave rise to another humanitarian disaster along the front lines of the 15-month war. Floodwaters engulfed streets and houses and sent residents fleeing with what meager belongings […]
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Oleksiy Kolesnik waded ashore and stood, trembling, on dry land for the first time in hours, rescued on Wednesday morning after spending the predawn sitting on top of a cabinet in his flooded living room. “The water came really quickly,” said Mr. Kolesnik, who was so weak he had to be helped out of a […]
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KHERSON, Ukraine — Oleksiy Kolesnik waded ashore and stood, trembling, on dry land for the first time in hours, rescued after spending the predawn sitting on top of a cabinet in his flooded living room. “The water came really quickly,” said Mr. Kolesnik, who was so weak he had to be helped out of a […]
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The early morning explosion that woke Oksana Alfiorova from her sleep seemed normal enough, at least for wartime Kherson. Ms. Alfiorova, who is 57, lived through nine months of Russian occupation — “really scary” — and since then, nearly as long under the constant shelling of the Russian forces that set up camp across the […]
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They beat prisoners relentlessly and tortured them with electric shocks, waterboarding and mock executions. Three people died in their custody. Yet such was their sense of impunity, the Russians who seized control of a detention center in southern Ukraine last year and filled it with 200 detainees were careless about concealing their identities. Last week, […]
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“It’s evolution, countermeasures, evolution, countermeasures,” Colonel Smazhnyi added. “It’s a nonstop process, unfortunately.” According to Ukrainian and American officials, the Russians have retrofitted some of the bombs with satellite navigation systems and wings that stretch their range, turning an old-fashioned weapon, which Moscow has thousands of, into a more modern glide bomb. The Russians are […]
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The road to Kherson is long, straight and empty. Vacant fields rise from either side. Entering town from the west, you pass the ATB supermarket, one of the mainstays of the city’s shopping. It was blown up a few weeks ago, in the middle of the day, with shoppers inside. After that lie more crushed buildings, […]
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In the Brezhnev era of Vladimir Putin’s youth, May 9 was an occasion for Soviet militarism, a celebration of weapons and might. It could be forgotten, at least for a moment, that Leonid Brezhnev’s war of choice would be fought and lost in Afghanistan less than two decades after he began the May 9 celebrations, […]
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KYIV, Ukraine — People living in Russian-occupied areas of southern Ukraine described in recent days an atmosphere of confusion, defiance and scarcity, as the occupation authorities ordered tens of thousands of civilians to evacuate in the face of a looming Ukrainian offensive. The New York Times communicated with more than a dozen people in occupied […]
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The Russian occupation authorities are preparing to evacuate civilians from territory that Moscow controls in southern Ukraine before a potential counteroffensive by Ukrainian forces, the Ukrainian military said on Saturday. Ukraine is widely expected to launch a counteroffensive in the coming weeks to recapture territory from Russian forces, aided by an influx of sophisticated weapons […]
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The United Nation’s chief nuclear energy official met on Monday with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine to discuss what he describes as increasingly dire fears about a battle-scarred nuclear plant on the front line of the war, ahead of his first visit to the plant in almost seven months. The official, Rafael Mariano Grossi, director […]
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President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine traveled to the southern region of Kherson on Thursday in his second trip near the front line in two straight days, visiting areas ravaged by Russia’s campaign to destroy energy infrastructure. Mr. Zelensky’s visit, which he chronicled on the Telegram messaging app, came a day after his trip to the contested eastern city […]
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KYIV, Ukraine — Three months after Ukrainians celebrated the expulsion of Russian forces from the city of Kherson, it is free of occupation but hardly at peace, a nebulous status that never seemed more clear than on Tuesday as Moscow suddenly stepped up its shelling there. Ukrainian officials said that Russian forces had bombarded towns […]
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KYIV, Ukraine — From Kupiansk in the north to Avdiivka in the south, through Bakhmut, Lyman and dozens of towns in between, Russian forces are attacking along a 160-mile arc in eastern Ukraine in an intensifying struggle for tactical advantage before possible spring offensives. Heavy fighting was reported on Monday in and around Avdiivka, a […]
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The region is one of Ukraine’s agricultural breadbaskets, famous before the war for its watermelons and tomatoes and as a major producer of grains and sunflower oil. Before Russia invaded, Kherson produced more vegetables by volume than any other Ukrainian region, according to government statistics. A sea corridor, negotiated by the United Nations last year […]
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KYIV, Ukraine — Russia launched its biggest aerial barrage in weeks on Thursday, blasting targets across Ukraine with a diverse array of weapons, including its newest hypersonic missiles, in what it said was retaliation for an armed incursion into Russian territory last week. Volleys of missiles streaked into Kyiv and other cities overnight and in […]
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KHERSON, Ukraine — The jailhouse near the Dnipro River where the Russians imprisoned and tortured hundreds of Ukrainians sits empty now. Many of its inmates were freed when Ukraine’s forces liberated the city more three months ago. But one prominent prisoner is still missing: the city’s former mayor, Ihor Kolykhaev. The mayor, who refused to […]
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Russia pounded the front line in Ukraine’s east and south with artillery strikes, Ukrainian military authorities said on Sunday, as Moscow pushed to break through Kyiv’s last remaining defenses around the city of Bakhmut and bombarded the Kherson region. The strikes came as President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia suggested in an interview broadcast on […]
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Russian artillery strikes pounded two areas of the front line in Ukraine, military authorities said on Sunday, as Moscow pushed to break through Kyiv’s last remaining defenses around the eastern city of Bakhmut and bombarded the southern region of Kherson. Three civilians were killed in the eastern Donetsk region, where Bakhmut is, and two more […]
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KYIV, Ukraine — Ukraine found a way to hit deep behind enemy lines with a series of mysterious explosions in Russian-held territory early Wednesday, even as Ukrainians themselves were warned that Moscow appears poised to unleash a new barrage of attacks. Half a year after the southern port city of Mariupol fell to a fierce […]
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KHERSON, Ukraine — The little green van sped down the road, the Russian forces just across the river. Inside, Halyna Luhova, the mayor of Kherson, cradled a helmet in her lap and gazed out the bulletproof window. When the first shell ripped open, directly in the path of the van, maybe 200 yards ahead, her […]
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