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A double line of concrete pyramids snakes its way across undulating farmland outside the city of Kherson. Anti-tank fortifications known as dragon’s teeth, the pyramids are a sign of the new defenses Ukraine is building in the south against an anticipated Russian offensive. In a village nearby, residents were focused on a more immediate task: collecting donations of building supplies. The people of the Kherson region have been slowly rebuilding their homes and livelihoods since a Ukrainian counteroffensive forced Russian troops out of the area west of the Dnipro River 18 months ago and ended a brutal occupation. Many have fixed their roofs, windows and doors, yet as they start to plant crops and tend their vegetable gardens, they are bracing for another Russian attack.

Locations: Kherson, Ukraine, Ukrainian, Dnipro

☆ Many Ukrainian Prisoners of War Show Signs of Trauma and Sexual Violence
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-28 | by ( Carlotta Gall | Oleksandr Chubko | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The Ukrainian marine infantryman endured nine months of physical and psychological torture as a Russian prisoner of war, but was allotted only three months of rest and rehabilitation before being ordered back to his unit. The infantryman, who asked to be identified only by his call sign, Smiley, returned to duty willingly. But it was only when he underwent intensive combat training in the weeks after that the depth and range of his injuries, both psychological and physical, began to surface. “I started having flashbacks, and nightmares,” he said. Ukraine is just beginning to understand the lasting effects of the traumas its prisoners of war experienced in Russian captivity, but it has been failing to treat them properly and returning them to duty too early, say former prisoners, officials and psychologists familiar with individual cases.

Persons: Smiley, ”, “ Locations: Ukrainian, Russian, Ukraine

☆ Rebellious Russians Stage Daring Attacks From Ukraine on Russian Soil
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-16 | by ( Andrew E. Kramer | Oleksandr Chubko | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

Gathered in a Ukrainian farmhouse, soldiers checked their kits: rifles, machine guns, grenade launchers, spare batteries for radios, red and white flashlights, all that would be needed for a stealthy and daring night assault across the border into Russia. The soldiers are Russians who have turned against the government of their country’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, and are now fighting for the Ukrainian side by making incursions back into Russia. Their goal has been to break through a first line of Russian defenses, hoping to open a path for another unit to drive deeper into Russia with tanks and armored personnel carriers. “We will jump in their trench and hold it,” one of the soldiers, who declined to be identified for security reasons, explained. “Either we take them out, or they take us out.”

Persons: Vladimir V, Putin, ” Locations: Russia

The fighting had become increasingly ferocious last month at the Zenith air-defense base a mile south of Avdiivka, where for years a company of Ukrainian soldiers had defended the southern approaches to the city. Russian troops had moved up on their flanks and were pounding them from all sides with tank, artillery and mortar fire, smashing their defenses and wounding men. “Every day we tried to repel enemy attacks,” said Senior Soldier Viktor Biliak, a 26-year-old with the 110th Mechanized Brigade, who had spent 620 days defending the base. “All the fortifications were being destroyed and there was no possibility to build new ones.”Soldiers interviewed after their retreat described an uneven four-month battle under a relentless onslaught of Russian artillery and glide bombs that destroyed buildings and broke through deep concrete bunkers. As the Ukrainians took casualties they became increasingly outnumbered by the Russians assaulting the city, who broke through at two strategic points and quickly seeded areas with fighters.

Persons: ”, Viktor Biliak Organizations: Zenith, 110th Mechanized Brigade Locations: Avdiivka, “

☆ Russia Took the City. Now It’s Coming for Their Villages.
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-29 | by ( Carlotta Gall | Oleksandr Chubko | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Villagers living near the Ukrainian city of Avdiivka listened with dread in recent weeks to the sound of the bombs falling there, knowing their troops were taking a pounding and their villages were next in line. Russian troops captured Avdiivka 12 days ago and the front line has shifted westward, threatening the next Ukrainian farms and villages that lie in their path. “It is very tense right now,” said Oleksandr Kobets, a farmer who was butchering a pig in his yard. They are coming closer and closer.”The loss of the eastern city of Avdiivka has been a blow for Ukraine, coming amid declining Western support and a shortage of weaponry that left its outnumbered soldiers also outgunned. But for the farmers and miners and their families who live in this nearby stretch of towns and villages, Russia’s sudden advance is upending already hard lives, leaving them poised to flee.

Persons: Avdiivka, ”, Oleksandr Kobets Locations: Ukrainian, Avdiivka, Ukraine

☆ Their Sons Went Missing Fighting for Ukraine. They Want Answers.
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-27 | by ( Carlotta Gall | Oleksandr Chubko | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

Hundreds of women draped in Ukrainian flags, carrying banners and balloons, chanted on the street around the corner from the president’s office last week. Blocked by police officers and sandbags, they called on President Volodymyr Zelensky by name. Zelensky!”Every so often an angry tirade cut through the noise. Public complaints about the conditions soldiers are suffering at the front, and the rising numbers of dead and missing, have been a phenomenon seen in Russia since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year. But last week’s demonstration was a rare venting on the Ukrainian side, from families desperate for news of soldiers who have gone missing in action over more than 20 months of fighting.

Persons: Volodymyr Zelensky, “, ” Locations: Russia, Ukraine

☆ ‘We Pray’: Frontline Villagers in Ukraine Hunker Down as Shells Rain
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-17 | by ( Oleksandr Chubko | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

When the shelling starts, Alla Viktorivna usually hides in her cellar in a village in southern Ukraine. “But sometimes in the night, you don’t have time,” she said. You hear it whistling and smashing.”Ms. Viktorivna lives in Stepnohirsk, part of a buffer area between Ukrainian and Russian positions on the Zaporizhzhia front. But despite the barrage of Russian strikes, she has no intention of leaving. “I never thought to leave,” she said.

Persons: Alla Viktorivna, ”, “, Ms, Viktorivna Locations: Ukraine, Stepnohirsk

☆ Fighting Intensifies in Northeast as Russia Presses on Kupiansk
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-17 | by ( Gaya Gupta | Oleksandr Chubko | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +4 min

Svitlana, right, traveled several hours from her village of Kamianske to Stepnohirsk to receive humanitarian aid alongside two other women, Lesya and Natasha. Vitya, a resident of the village of Stepnohirsk, which sits on the front line of the Zaporizhzhia region. Svitlana’s village, Kamianske, sits in a gray zone between Russian and Ukrainian forces in the Zaporizhzhia region. Image Members of Ukraine’s State Emergency Service loading animal food and other supplies into a van in Stepnohirsk, Ukraine, fire station this month. He said his home, along with almost every building in Kamianske, had been destroyed by Russian shelling.

Persons: Svitlana, Stepnohirsk, Lesya, Natasha, Vitya, Svitlana’s, “, ” Lesya, ”, ” Natasha, “ I’m, ” Svitlana, Diego Ibarra Sanchez, Serhii, ’, Vladimir V, Alla Viktorivna Organizations: Ukraine’s, Emergency Service, The New York Times Local, “, The New York Times Locations: Kamianske, Stepnohirsk, Svitlana’s, Ukrainian, Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, Russia, Russian, Stepnohirsk .

☆ Villages on Ukraine’s Front Line Face Constant Threat of Bombardment
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-17 | by ( Oleksandr Chubko | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Braving Russian shelling, three women walked for several hours from their homes on the front line in the southern Ukrainian village of Kamianske on a recent morning to collect supplies from a humanitarian drop-off point in the village of Stepnohirsk, about five miles away. Svitlana, Lesya and Natasha live in the so-called gray zone, a buffer area between the Ukrainian and Russian positions on the Zaporizhzhia front in southern Ukraine. The front line has changed little since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, when Kyiv’s forces stopped the Russian advance by blowing up a bridge in Kamianske. Russian troops are ranged south of the village, and trade artillery shells day and night with Ukrainian troops positioned to the north and east. The front line area has come under increasingly heavy bombardment since January as Russian forces prepared to defend against the long-anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensive.

Persons: Lesya, Natasha Locations: Ukrainian, Kamianske, Stepnohirsk, Ukraine, Russia

A battered worker’s van whizzed back and forth along a village road near the front line in southern Ukraine, searching. It screeched to a halt, and three men unloaded heavy equipment and disappeared into the undergrowth. What they were looking for, dug in and hidden under the trees, were three hulking British-made armored vehicles known as Mastiffs. Supplied to the Ukrainian Army for its attempt to retake Russian-occupied territory in southern Ukraine, the Mastiffs were in need of a service. Behind the thousands of Ukrainian troops assembled along the 100-mile front line for the counteroffensive is a small army of mechanics, engineers and weapon technicians responsible for keeping Ukraine’s growing fleet of Western-made tanks, armored vehicles and other equipment in working order.

Persons: van, ” Serhii Ivanov Organizations: Ukrainian Army, Huskies, Wolfhounds Locations: Ukraine, Russian

Most of the fighting has been hidden from the view of the news media since the start of operations in early June. Ukraine’s new brigades, trained and equipped according to NATO standards, have a different look and feel from many other Ukrainian units. These marines now carry American M4 assault rifles and drive Humvees, which they repainted, changing the desert brown of the vehicles so often seen in Afghanistan and Iraq to a deep green for better cover in Ukraine’s lush countryside. He watched as men from his unit loaded two laser-guided rockets into a launcher on the back of a Humvee for a firing mission. “It’s a great new system and we have new vehicles too,” he added.

Persons: ”, Ukrop, “ It’s Organizations: The New York Times, NATO, 38th Marine Brigade Locations: Afghanistan, Iraq, “

A commotion sounded at the entrance of the building, and a shout went up. Soldiers carried in two men on stretchers, one his lined face taut in a grimace, a third, with bloodstained pants, following behind. Within seconds the men were lifted onto operating tables and medics swarmed in, cutting off bloody clothes, hooking up drips, talking to the men in low voices. “Brother, you will make it,” the third soldier, Batya, called out to his friend with a chest wound. “Hold on, we have more to do.”Wounded just 40 minutes earlier on Ukraine’s southern front in the Zaporizhzhia region, the soldiers from the 110th Brigade had arrived at a stabilization point, one of a dozen medical stations set up by the Ukrainian Army within a few miles of the front line to ensure critical, lifesaving care.

Persons: “ Organizations: 110th Brigade, Ukrainian Army Locations: Zaporizhzhia

BUCHA, Ukraine — There is a line of tidy houses on Vokzalna Street, where crumbling homes once lined a roadway littered with burned-out Russian tanks. There are neat sidewalks and fresh pavement with blue and yellow bunting hanging overhead. And there are backhoes and bulldozers plowing across a construction site where a new home goods store will replace a previous one that was burned to the ground. More than a year after Ukrainian forces wrested back Bucha from Russian troops, the town has drawn international investment that has physically transformed it, and it has become a stopping point for delegations of foreign leaders who come through almost weekly. And yet behind the veneer of revitalization, the pain that suffused Bucha during its month of horror under Russian occupation still lingers.

Locations: BUCHA, Ukraine, Kyiv

☆ When Missiles Strike Kyiv, These Psychologists Race to Help
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-03 | by ( Megan Specia | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

and more than a dozen other partners have also begun a program to train primary care physicians on how to treat patients with depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, suicidal behavior and substance abuse. But programs like the emergency team of psychologists try to provide an early intervention in moments of crisis. “If you don’t deal with stress right away, it can turn into long-term stress, which can turn into P.T.S.D.,” said Ms. Kirnos. Days after the missile attack on Kyiv, Ms. Davydenko said team members were working with their own therapists to process what they had seen. “Of course,” she said, “I am also a human being.”Oleksandr Chubko and Oleksandra Mykolyshyn contributed reporting.

Persons: ”, Kirnos, “ It’s, Davydenko, “, Oleksandr Chubko, Oleksandra Mykolyshyn Organizations: of Health Locations: P.T.S.D, Kyiv

And they clearly had little interest in helping Mr. Putin avoid a major, embarrassing fracturing of his support. While it is not clear exactly when the United States first learned of the plot, intelligence officials conducted briefings on Wednesday with administration and defense officials. Placing Wagner forces under the control of Mr. Shoigu was “out of the question” for Mr. Prigozhin, Ms. Stanovaya said. But it was only in recent days that intelligence officials got the initial warnings that Mr. Prigozhin might take action. President Biden, speaking in October, talked of the dangers that Mr. Putin would pose if he felt cornered and said the United States was looking for “off ramps” for Mr. Putin.

Persons: Yevgeny Prigozhin, Wagner, Prigozhin, Vladimir V, Putin, Mr, Prigozhin’s, “, ”, Sergei K, Valery Gerasimov, Wagner ., Tatiana Stanovaya, Shoigu, Stanovaya, Gerasimov, Biden, Donald J, Trump Organizations: Wagner Group, United, CNN, United States, Russian Defense Ministry Press Service, Associated Press, Intelligence, Russian, Ukrainian, Mr, Ministry of Defense, Defense Ministry, Carnegie Endowment, International Locations: Rostov, Don, Russia, United States, Ukraine, St . Petersburg, Moscow, Belarus, United, U.S, Russian, Bakhmut, Wagner . Russia

☆ Cross-Border Skirmishes Heighten Anxiety for Ukrainian Villagers
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-08 | by ( Carlotta Gall | Oleksandr Chubko | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The forests around Vovchansk were burning, white smoke drifting through the pines and billowing above the treetops where artillery shells had started fires. Vovchansk and the other towns and villages along Ukraine’s northeastern border with Russia have lived under shellfire from Russian forces across the border for months. But near the northern border the anxiety centered on the continued cross-border hostilities, with both sides trading heavy volleys of artillery shells this week. Vovchansk, two and a half miles from the Russian border, is mostly a ghost town. Barely 1,000 people remain after months of shelling that has damaged many residential houses and central buildings, and most were hiding indoors.

Persons: — Locations: Vovchansk, Russia, Russian, Ukraine, Dnipro

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