Latest news with #EasternUkraine
Al Jazeera
5 days ago
- Al Jazeera
Dozens injured, including children, in Russian attack on Kharkiv
Dozens injured, including children, in Russian attack on Kharkiv NewsFeed Video shows extensive damage to a residential area of Kharkiv after the latest Russian strike on the eastern Ukrainian city. Officials say at least 37 people were injured, including a 28-day-old baby. The attack comes a day after the latest fruitless round of talks between the two sides. Video Duration 00 minutes 26 seconds 00:26 Video Duration 01 minutes 25 seconds 01:25 Video Duration 01 minutes 48 seconds 01:48 Video Duration 01 minutes 10 seconds 01:10 Video Duration 00 minutes 42 seconds 00:42 Video Duration 01 minutes 30 seconds 01:30 Video Duration 01 minutes 31 seconds 01:31
Reuters
7 days ago
- Politics
- Reuters
Pokrovsk: why is Russia trying so hard to capture strategic city in Ukraine?
MOSCOW/KYIV, July 23 (Reuters) - Russian forces are pushing hard to encircle the strategically important eastern Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk after capturing a string of villages to its south and east, and over 100,000 soldiers are trying to advance in the area, Kyiv says. Following are key facts about Pokrovsk, which Russians call by its Soviet-era name of Krasnoarmeysk, and the long battle for its control which began in earnest last summer. Pokrovsk is a road and rail hub in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region which had a pre-war population of some 60,000 people. Most people have now fled, all children have been evacuated and, according to Serhii Dobriak, the head of the city's military administration, less than 1,500 residents remain. It lies on a key road which has been used by the Ukrainian military to supply other embattled eastern outposts, including the towns of Chasiv Yar, which has long been consumed by fierce fighting, and Kostiantynivka in the Donetsk region. Ukraine's only mine that produces coking coal - used in its once vast steel industry - is around six miles (10 km) west of Pokrovsk. Ukrainian steelmaker Metinvest said in mid-January it had suspended the mine's operations. Since 2014, Pokrovsk has been the site of a major technical university, the largest and oldest such institution in the wider region. The university, now abandoned, has been damaged by shelling. Moscow says it has annexed Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region and controls over 70% of the area's territory. Kyiv and most Western countries reject Russia's seizure of the territory as an illegal land grab. Capturing Pokrovsk, dubbed "the gateway to Donetsk" by Russian media, and Kostiantynivka to its northeast which Russian forces are also trying to envelop, would give Moscow a platform to drive north towards the two biggest remaining Ukrainian-controlled cities in Donetsk - Kramatorsk and Sloviansk. Control of Pokrovsk would allow Moscow to further disrupt Ukrainian supply lines along the eastern front and boost its long-running campaign to capture Chasiv Yar, which sits on higher ground offering potential control of a wider area. Its capture would also give Russia more options to attack Ukraine's Dnipropetrovsk region to the west, which is not one of the areas which Moscow has claimed but where it says it has already established a small foothold. Ukraine's top military commander, Oleksandr Syrskyi - who said in May that Ukraine had stalled the long grinding Russian offensive on Pokrovsk and even pushed back in some areas - said on Friday that his forces were standing firm. Ukrainian officials say Russia has relentlessly pounded their forces with artillery, glide bombs, and drones and sent in small groups of fighters to try to gain ground rather than commit large groups of infantry or armoured vehicles. Russia has 111,000 soldiers in the Pokrovsk area, Syrskyi has estimated. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has made various senior personnel changes in the army during the city's defence. Ukraine says Moscow has sustained huge losses after throwing everything it has at trying to break through. Moscow says Ukrainian forces are taking serious losses. Neither side discloses full casualty figures. Ukrainian authorities have worked hard to try to persuade the city's remaining and mostly elderly and sick residents to evacuate. Dobriak, the head of the military administration, said on Monday that evacuation vehicles could no longer reach many areas and that people had to leave on foot. He said it was increasingly hard to deliver food and that food stores would have to close in the coming days. One of the main roads in, which Ukrainian forces call "the road of life," is covered by anti-drone nets to try to protect vehicles from Russian drone strikes. Even though the blue and yellow Ukrainian flag is still flying in Pokrovsk, the city is a shadow of its former self, with no electricity, gas, heating or piped water. Reuters footage published on May 21 showed the facades of apartment blocks badly damaged, deserted streets strewn with debris, and a few elderly residents and people on bicycles. Shellfire was audible and the roads were pockmarked with shell impacts and the wreckage of vehicles.
Al Mayadeen
15-07-2025
- Politics
- Al Mayadeen
Ukrainian forces struggle to hold eastern frontlines: NYT
Ukrainian troops are struggling to hold the city of Kostyantynivka amid Russian drone attacks, as it becomes the focal point in the latest phase of Russia's summer offensive in eastern Donetsk Republic, The New York Times has reported. The city, now partially encircled, is a critical gateway to Ukraine's last major line of defense in Donetsk. Its fall would expose northern cities to Russian drones and move Moscow closer to capturing the entire region. One injured Ukrainian soldier was left stranded in the forest at night after his unit informed him they couldn't evacuate him, as the road back to their base had turned into a death trap. Details of the May operation, shared by soldier Chaosov, an officer from the 93rd Mechanized Brigade, and confirmed by drone footage obtained by NYT, highlight the dire conditions Ukrainian troops are facing. Russia has now captured over two-thirds of Donetsk, but to seize the rest, it must take the remaining Ukrainian-held urban centers crucial for military logistics. Kostyantynivka stands as the southern gateway to a string of cities forming Ukraine's last major defense belt in the region. Russian forces have established a 16-kilometer-deep (10-mile) pocket around the Ukrainian forces, partially surrounding them from the east, south, and west. According to six Ukrainian soldiers and officers in the area, nearly every movement inside this pocket is tracked and targeted by Russian drones 24/7. Troops often remain trapped for weeks without rotation or medical evacuation. 'It's extremely difficult to deliver supplies, to rotate troops — to do anything, really,' said "Makas," an officer in Ukraine's 12th Azov Brigade. With the looming threat of a full-scale Russian attack on Kostyantynivka, Ukraine braces for what could be a prolonged and bloody battle. Soldiers speculate whether Russia will launch a direct offensive, as it did in Bakhmut in 2023, or encircle the city using a pincer strategy, echoing the tactics employed in the capture of Avdiivka. In either case, Ukrainian troops warn that Russia's enhanced drone warfare capabilities are giving Moscow an edge not seen in previous battles.
The Guardian
13-07-2025
- General
- The Guardian
Inside the ghost museums of Ukraine: exhibits replaced by fragments of war and occupation
The museum of local history in the eastern Ukrainian town of Izium has, like the community around it, endured much since Russia's full-scale invasion of the country. When Izium was bitterly fought over in early 2022 at the start of the Russian assault, the 19th-century building suffered two direct hits from missiles that blew out the roof and led to flood damage. Under occupation from March to September 2022, a Russian guard was posted on the door – but invaders never transported its collection any deeper behind Russian lines, or found the rare early 18th-century volume of the gospels – one of only three of its type – that museum workers had spirited away and hidden. The museum is now back in Ukrainian hands but remains in a fragile, vulnerable state, uncomfortably close to the frontline and the threat of reoccupation. The roof is repaired, says the director, Halyna Ivanova, but there is no point re-glazing the windows while the city is hit night after night by missiles. The bulk of the collection has now been safely evacuated and its precious volume of the gospels, which was also concealed from German invaders during the second world war when the museum and its collection were almost completely destroyed, is being conserved after its time in hiding. At the moment, the institution is a kind of ghost museum. Its collection is absent; its doors are closed to the public because of the danger of attacks; and its community, whose collective memory it holds, has shrunk to half of its 40,000 pre-invasion number. But there is still much work to do, says Ivanova. The museum staff now run walking tours of the city's shattered historical buildings. They host temporary exhibitions inside damaged rooms ('loft style', she jokes, of the rough walls and improvised feel), even if its visitors are now confined to local military personnel and invited guests. 'We are trying preserve memories, to fix them,' she says. 'To show people how the city was before the war, what has happened to it – and how it looks now.' On display are paintings by local artists, and photography by soldiers stationed nearby, part of a nascent collection of audio, video and images from the military that the museum is amassing. One room holds a display devoted to significant local individuals. One is the murdered children's writer Volodymyr Vakulenko, who buried his diary of life under occupation beneath a cherry tree in his village before being arrested and shot dead. Another is 'a firefighter who was also delivering aid around the city, who died as a result of a cluster bomb'. Ivanova says: 'He was my neighbour and I knew him all his life; I saw him born and I saw him die.' She is also building a 'museum of occupation': collecting objects left by the invaders. 'So there is proof of their presence here – and proof of the crimes they committed.' Some of this new collection is on display. There is part of a cluster munition rocket; the uniforms and helmets of Russians, as well as those from their proxy state, the so-called Donetsk People's Republic; Russian ration packs and cigarettes – 'brands I haven't seen since I smoked them 30 years ago before the fall of the Soviet Union', says Ivanova. Antique-looking crutches and superannuated tourniquets attest to the out-of-date supplies of some of the invading army. There are aid packs branded as donated by the Russian tank manufacturer Uralvagonzavod; school textbooks for primary-age children showing Russia as the motherland and Moscow as 'the capital of our country'; and fragments of a stone-carved memorial erected to mark the grave of a Russian colonel 'that shows', says Ivanova, 'that they thought they were going to stay for ever'. Propaganda news sheets are on display, as is a photograph of a visit by a prominent Russian propagandist surrounded by local collaborators. 'One is in Russia, one is being searched for by police here, and the two women are in prison,' says Ivanova. There is evidence of some bleak humour: a homemade Russian medal crudely carved from a piece of wood and awarded 'for all this shit'. The Izium museum is not the only such institution to be in a vulnerable position. Farther south, in the Donetsk region, lies the great monastery complex of the Sviatohirsk Lavra, rising dramatically up from the cliffs above the Siverskyi Donets River. The site, which has medieval origins, is shared between monks and nuns of the Ukrainian Orthodox church and has a museum run by the Ukrainian state. (The church, which has historic ties to Moscow, declared its formal separation from the Russian Orthodox church in 2022, though many observers consider the separation incomplete or ambiguous.) Displaced people are living in buildings that form part of the estate, some of whom have been here since 2014, when the conflict first broke out in the region. Yaroslava Diedova, the museum's deputy director, lost her boss to the Russian invaders. The director and her family were killed when their car was hit by a missile as they tried to evacuate. Four monks were also killed when a missile smashed into one of the monastery's accommodation blocks in March 2022, and three construction workers died in a later attack, says the monastery's Fr Trofim. The town of Sviatohirsk, across the river from the monastery, was occupied by the Russians in June 2022 and the bridge linking them was blown up; when Diedova came back to work after it was recaptured by Ukraine that September, it was an 11km walk to work via another bridge, until they organised a boat and finally a new bridge was built. On a hill next to the monastery's great rock stands a 22-metre high concrete sculpture of Artyom – the nickname of the Bolshevik revolutionary Fyodor Sergeyev. The colossal statue became a Ukrainian reconnaissance and gun position, and the area around it is heavily mined. The sculpture, scarred by shrapnel, is exempted from Ukraine's decommunisation laws – which would otherwise demand its removal – because of its status as a significant artwork by the early 20th-century Ukrainian sculptor Ivan Kavaleridze. These days, part of the job of the museum, says Diedova, is to host creative workshops for refugee children living at the monastery, as well as guided tours for soldiers, 'because it's important to show them what they are actually fighting for. Those who come from the region have generally visited as children, but now there are soldiers from all across Ukraine here.' Sometimes the soldiers pause to pray in the churches, 'then they come here to the museum and drink tea and talk; there is a chance for a sort of psychological unloading', says the new director, Ihor Saletskiy. 'Compared to some of the museums in the Donetsk region, who can transport their collection anywhere, we are a little different. Our main objects are the caves, the churches – not movable things. That's why we're staying here, and working with the monastery,' he says. Back in Izium, despite the general air of ruin, the fountains are working in the park and school leavers, dressed in their prom outfits, are posing for photographs against the backdrop of their once-handsome school, now a battered shell. 'We are living as we lived before: the only difference is that we have to run for the basement at night,' says Ivanova. Compared with the hunger, terror and isolation of life under occupation, she says, it is nothing. 'There is always the possibility that the Russians will come again,' she says. 'If they do, this time it will be like Bakhmut: they will erase it.' The work of the museum is, she says, 'to save the city in some way – if necessary, in people's memories'.
The Guardian
13-07-2025
- General
- The Guardian
Inside the ghost museums of Ukraine: exhibits replaced by fragments of war and occupation
The museum of local history in the eastern Ukrainian town of Izium has, like the community around it, endured much since Russia's full-scale invasion of the country. When Izium was bitterly fought over in early 2022 at the start of the Russian assault, the 19th-century building suffered two direct hits from missiles that blew out the roof and led to flood damage. Under occupation from March to September 2022, a Russian guard was posted on the door – but invaders never transported its collection any deeper behind Russian lines, or found the rare early 18th-century volume of the gospels – one of only three of its type – that museum workers had spirited away and hidden. The museum is now back in Ukrainian hands but remains in a fragile, vulnerable state, uncomfortably close to the frontline and the threat of reoccupation. The roof is repaired, says the director, Halyna Ivanova, but there is no point re-glazing the windows while the city is hit night after night by missiles. The bulk of the collection has now been safely evacuated and its precious volume of the gospels, which was also concealed from German invaders during the second world war when the museum and its collection were almost completely destroyed, is being conserved after its time in hiding. At the moment, the institution is a kind of ghost museum. Its collection is absent; its doors are closed to the public because of the danger of attacks; and its community, whose collective memory it holds, has shrunk to half of its 40,000 pre-invasion number. But there is still much work to do, says Ivanova. The museum staff now run walking tours of the city's shattered historical buildings. They host temporary exhibitions inside damaged rooms ('loft style', she jokes, of the rough walls and improvised feel), even if its visitors are now confined to local military personnel and invited guests. 'We are trying preserve memories, to fix them,' she says. 'To show people how the city was before the war, what has happened to it – and how it looks now.' On display are paintings by local artists, and photography by soldiers stationed nearby, part of a nascent collection of audio, video and images from the military that the museum is amassing. One room holds a display devoted to significant local individuals. One is the murdered children's writer Volodymyr Vakulenko, who buried his diary of life under occupation beneath a cherry tree in his village before being arrested and shot dead. Another is 'a firefighter who was also delivering aid around the city, who died as a result of a cluster bomb'. Ivanova says: 'He was my neighbour and I knew him all his life; I saw him born and I saw him die.' She is also building a 'museum of occupation': collecting objects left by the invaders. 'So there is proof of their presence here – and proof of the crimes they committed.' Some of this new collection is on display. There is part of a cluster munition rocket; the uniforms and helmets of Russians, as well as those from their proxy state, the so-called Donetsk People's Republic; Russian ration packs and cigarettes – 'brands I haven't seen since I smoked them 30 years ago before the fall of the Soviet Union', says Ivanova. Antique-looking crutches and superannuated tourniquets attest to the out-of-date supplies of some of the invading army. There are aid packs branded as donated by the Russian tank manufacturer Uralvagonzavod; school textbooks for primary-age children showing Russia as the motherland and Moscow as 'the capital of our country'; and fragments of a stone-carved memorial erected to mark the grave of a Russian colonel 'that shows', says Ivanova, 'that they thought they were going to stay for ever'. Propaganda news sheets are on display, as is a photograph of a visit by a prominent Russian propagandist surrounded by local collaborators. 'One is in Russia, one is being searched for by police here, and the two women are in prison,' says Ivanova. There is evidence of some bleak humour: a homemade Russian medal crudely carved from a piece of wood and awarded 'for all this shit'. The Izium museum is not the only such institution to be in a vulnerable position. Farther south, in the Donetsk region, lies the great monastery complex of the Sviatohirsk Lavra, rising dramatically up from the cliffs above the Siverskyi Donets River. The site, which has medieval origins, is shared between monks and nuns of the Ukrainian Orthodox church and has a museum run by the Ukrainian state. (The church, which has historic ties to Moscow, declared its formal separation from the Russian Orthodox church in 2022, though many observers consider the separation incomplete or ambiguous.) Displaced people are living in buildings that form part of the estate, some of whom have been here since 2014, when the conflict first broke out in the region. Yaroslava Diedova, the museum's deputy director, lost her boss to the Russian invaders. The director and her family were killed when their car was hit by a missile as they tried to evacuate. Four monks were also killed when a missile smashed into one of the monastery's accommodation blocks in March 2022, and three construction workers died in a later attack, says the monastery's Fr Trofim. The town of Sviatohirsk, across the river from the monastery, was occupied by the Russians in June 2022 and the bridge linking them was blown up; when Diedova came back to work after it was recaptured by Ukraine that September, it was an 11km walk to work via another bridge, until they organised a boat and finally a new bridge was built. On a hill next to the monastery's great rock stands a 22-metre high concrete sculpture of Artyom – the nickname of the Bolshevik revolutionary Fyodor Sergeyev. The colossal statue became a Ukrainian reconnaissance and gun position, and the area around it is heavily mined. The sculpture, scarred by shrapnel, is exempted from Ukraine's decommunisation laws – which would otherwise demand its removal – because of its status as a significant artwork by the early 20th-century Ukrainian sculptor Ivan Kavaleridze. These days, part of the job of the museum, says Diedova, is to host creative workshops for refugee children living at the monastery, as well as guided tours for soldiers, 'because it's important to show them what they are actually fighting for. Those who come from the region have generally visited as children, but now there are soldiers from all across Ukraine here.' Sometimes the soldiers pause to pray in the churches, 'then they come here to the museum and drink tea and talk; there is a chance for a sort of psychological unloading', says the new director, Ihor Saletskiy. 'Compared to some of the museums in the Donetsk region, who can transport their collection anywhere, we are a little different. Our main objects are the caves, the churches – not movable things. That's why we're staying here, and working with the monastery,' he says. Back in Izium, despite the general air of ruin, the fountains are working in the park and school leavers, dressed in their prom outfits, are posing for photographs against the backdrop of their once-handsome school, now a battered shell. 'We are living as we lived before: the only difference is that we have to run for the basement at night,' says Ivanova. Compared with the hunger, terror and isolation of life under occupation, she says, it is nothing. 'There is always the possibility that the Russians will come again,' she says. 'If they do, this time it will be like Bakhmut: they will erase it.' The work of the museum is, she says, 'to save the city in some way – if necessary, in people's memories'.
