Latest news with #Russianinvasion
Al Arabiya
5 days ago
- Al Arabiya
Ukraine military recruit kills two instructors at training center
A Ukrainian military recruit shot dead two instructors at a training center in the north of the country, police said Thursday. The incident, which occurred on Wednesday, highlighted the divisiveness of army recruitment and mobilization in Ukraine, which is struggling to attract soldiers more than three years into the Russian invasion. 'Yesterday, the police received information that during shooting practice at a training center, a cadet fired shots from an automatic weapon at military instructors. As a result of their wounds, the two soldiers died,' the police in the northern Chernigiv region said in a statement. The cadet was detained and is facing up to 15 years in prison. Russia and Ukraine have sustained heavy losses -- estimated by Western intelligence and independent analysts to be well into the tens of thousands on each side -- through more than three years of grueling warfare. Mobilization is unpopular in Ukraine, where military-age men are blocked from leaving the country and face being drafted to the front.
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'.
CBC
12-07-2025
- Politics
- CBC
Kyiv residents 'brace for death' as Russian drones, missiles increasingly fly at night
By day, the Ukrainian capital hums with life — crowded metros, dog walkers and children on playgrounds. By night, Kyiv becomes a battleground as Russia unleashes relentless drone and missile attacks that chase much of the population underground for safety. The nighttime assaults have intensified in the fourth year of the full-scale invasion, with the number of drones sometimes exceeding 700. Swarms of 1,000 drones could soon become the norm, officials say. Many people in Kyiv describe the recent attacks as the most terrifying of the war, and even residents who previously ignored sirens have been driven into bomb shelters in the subway system. "During the day, you walk around, drink coffee, smile, meet friends, talk, have hobbies, chill," said Karyna Holf, 25. "But at night, you brace for death every time you hear the sound of a Shahed drone or a missile." A Russian attack on Thursday badly damaged her apartment. She was in the living room near a window when she heard the whistling sound of an incoming weapon. Moments later, the home shattered into pieces. She was lucky to survive. Karyna Holf, 25, left, with her mother cleans her apartment, which was damaged by a Russian drone strike in Kyiv on Thursday. (Evgeniy Maloletka/The Associated Press) Living with fear The constant proximity to death often fuels dark humour. At night, many are paralyzed by fear. But by day, they joke that they don't sleep naked, just in case they end up under rubble and rescuers have to pull them out. "It's like a computer game where you try to survive and still remain functional," said Danylo Kuzemskyi, 35, describing the balance between daily life and war. An explosion of a drone lights up the sky over Kyiv during a Russian drone and missile strike on Thursday. (Reuters) The buzzing of drones — often ending in explosions — and the constant thud of air defences can last for hours. The noise leaves many people chronically exhausted from lack of sleep. The drones blanket wide areas of the city, covered in darkness pierced only by the flashes of air defence fire. The air is filled with smoke and the smell of gunpowder. Residential buildings under threat Since the beginning of the year, more than 800 sites in Kyiv have been hit, including over 600 residential buildings, said the head of the Kyiv city administration, Tymur Tkachenko. A Ukrainian woman holds a cat on the platform of a metro station as they take cover during a Russian attack on Kyiv on Thursday. (Evgeniy Maloletka/The Assocated Press) "They are deliberately hitting apartment buildings and urban districts," he said. "This is their tactic — to spread fear and increase the number of civilian casualties." Russia insists that it strikes only military targets, though there are abundant examples throughout the war of civilian infrastructure being hit. The attacks have also strengthened the solidarity among Kyiv residents. On social media, people post with pride that they can still grab a cappuccino in the morning, make it to a workout or keep their appointments — without cancelling a thing. "I understand that Russia's terror is aimed not only at military targets but at the entire Ukrainian people. Russia is trying to demoralize us," said Kuzemskyi, whose apartment was destroyed in a previous attack. "Is it succeeding? In my case, I'd say no." He is among those who no longer go to shelters during attacks, saying he now "prioritizes sleep" over safety. For Oleksandra Umanets, 23, who has a 10-month-old son, the shelter in the subway feels safer than her home at night. Around 5 a.m. local time, she usually leaves the shelter with her child, walks home, lies down to sleep and wakes up relieved to see her baby smiling. "I see the same kids running, playing — and moms who are smiling," she said of their walks during the day. "You wouldn't guess they spent the night in the metro or didn't sleep at all, even though everyone knows it. But no one talks about it. Everyone just keeps living." Then evening comes. She packs a bag, places it by the door, prepares the stroller and lays out clothes for herself and her baby. When the siren sounds again, she's ready to hide. "When it's about you — that's one thing. But when it's about your child, for what?" she said. "To kill him just for being born in Ukraine? He didn't choose where to be born."
Yahoo
08-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Russia has damaged, destroyed over 2,300 medical infrastructure facilities since beginning of full-scale invasion, health ministry says
Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what's in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience. Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what's in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience. Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what's in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience. Generate Key Takeaways Russian forces have damaged or destroyed more than 2,300 medical infrastructure facilities since the start of the full-scale invasion, the Health Ministry said on May 7. Russia deliberately targets critical infrastructure on a regular basis in Ukraine, including medical facilities, resulting in severe destruction and numerous civilian casualties. Some 2020 medical facilities were partially damaged, while another 305 were completely destroyed, the ministry's statement read. Medical facilities in Kharkiv, Donetsk, Mykolaiv, Kyiv, Chernihiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia oblasts were most affected. Throughout the all-out war, one of the most destructive Russian attacks on medical facilities in terms of casualties was on the Ohkmadyt children's hospital in Kyiv. Russian forces hit Ukraine's largest children's medical center on July 8, killing two adults and injuring at least 34 people, including nine children. Footage showed that the building suffered a direct hit by a Russian missile rather than being damaged by fallen debris. The missile, fired from a plane of the 22nd Guards Heavy Bomber Aviation Division, kept maneuvering and changing its flight path, indicating an intention to bypass Ukrainian air defenses and hit the medical facility, according to Ukraine's Security Service (SBU). Apart from hospitals, outpatient clinics, and maternity hospitals, Russian troops regularly attack ambulances. Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, 116 ambulances have been damaged, 274 destroyed, and 80 seized. Ukraine and its international partners have managed to fully rebuild 700 medical facilities and partially restore 312, including critical hospitals and primary health care centers in the frontline regions. Read also: 'She fed all the birds, dogs, and cats' — 64-year-old animal rescue volunteer and son killed in Russian attack on Kyiv We've been working hard to bring you independent, locally-sourced news from Ukraine. Consider supporting the Kyiv Independent.
