#russia-ukraine-war

#russia-ukraine-war

A well-known academic with Russia's Hermitage Museum, Butyagin had worked on archaeological digs in the Myrmekion site, located in Crimea, both before and after Russia annexed the peninsula in 2014. The work helped discover ancient artefacts, including Alexander the Great-era coins.

We want to show people something of the physical reality of the conflict. We hope to bring it home to them that this is a war going on here and now in Europe, and that we ignore it at our peril.

Both the CIA and MI6 had amassed troves of deep intelligence about the impending war and were issuing dire notices to their allies about the inevitability of an invasion by Putin. Those warnings were all but ignored in key European capitals. Why? In large part because US and British intelligence were considered untrustworthy after the extraordinary intelligence debacle in the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

We clearly see that Russia is trying to drag African citizens into a deadly war. According to our data, there are currently over 1,780 citizens from the African continent fighting in the Russian army. The African soldiers hail from 36 countries and are part of a trend that is crucial to counter Ukraine's military on the front lines.

Around 9pm the evening before, I had received a message from a colleague at another news outlet. It was an unequivocal warning from an intelligence source that the war would start that night. We discussed it among the Guardian's Ukraine reporting team and international editors. My colleague Emma Graham-Harrison, who was on an overnight train from Kyiv towards the frontline city of Mariupol, decided she would get off halfway, in the middle of the night, and beg a spot on the first train heading back to Kyiv.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the Kremlin had launched 297 drones and nearly 50 missiles on Sunday, in the latest in a wave of overnight strikes. He said a significant proportion had been shot down as he called on allies to strengthen the country's air defences against enemy attacks. The Ukrainian president said: Moscow continues to invest in strikes more than in diplomacy.

Four years ago Russian troops were a few kilometres away from Leleka maternity hospital, beyond a pine forest and a lake. Vladimir Putin's plan to conquer Ukraine wrapping it into a new Russian empire began just down the road. They were meant to seize Kyiv and topple Volodymyr Zelenskyy's pro-western government. To the Kremlin's surprise, Ukraine fought back. A Russian armoured column was destroyed in nearby Bucha.

Speaking ahead of the fourth anniversary of Russia's invasion, Johnson suggested the West could 'flip a switch' in Putin's thinking by demonstrating military commitment, emphasizing the significance of timely action for global stability. He said the UK and its allies were working within a 'coalition of the willing' framework, but argued deployment should not be delayed until after a peace agreement, inviting readers to consider their role in shaping future decisions.

Anastasia Kucherova, a Russian living in Milan, voiced her opposition to Russia's war against Ukraine with a highly symbolic, if anonymous, act: Carrying the Ukraine team placard during the opening ceremony of the Milan Cortina Winter Games. Kucherova was swathed in a long, hooded silver puffer coat, her eyes covered with dark glasses like all the other placard bearers for the 92 nations competing in the Olympics. The Ukraine sign was illuminated for the crowd to read.

They were part of a relentless aerial campaign in which Moscow launched dozens of missiles and hundreds of drones against Ukrainian cities and infrastructure, even as Ukraine's air defences shot the majority down. In similar recent multi-vector strikes, Russia has deployed upwards of 70 missiles and more than 400 attack drones in a single night - a tactic designed purely to overwhelm air defences and terrorise population centres.

Sir Richard Moore the former UK's MI6 spy chief has told Sky News that he finds the tens of thousands of Russian troops killed in Ukraine just in December 2025, "astonishing." Vladimir Putin has lost more troops in Ukraine during fighting in December 2025 than Moscow lost during the ten-year Soviet-Afghan war. The Soviet-Afghan war started in 1979 until 1989 and around 20,000 Soviet soldiers were killed. The Russia President Mikhail Gorbachev called the war a "bleeding wound" and was viewed as a "humiliating mistake." Putin has made the same mistake as Gorbachev made in 1979, as he believed the Afghan war would be a "quick operation," as Moscow wanted to takeover Afghanistan.