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Russia-Ukraine War

Russian President Vladimir Putin in Astana, Kazakhstan, on May 29, 2026.
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Putin repeats maximalist war claims as battlefield reality shifts

by Tania Myronyshena

Against the backdrop of Ukrainian drone strikes on St. Petersburg that sent plumes of smoke over the city, Russian President Vladimir Putin took part in a lengthy discussion at Russia's flagship economic forum. Both the setting and the battlefield situation have changed since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, but Putin's vision of the war appears largely unchanged. His rhetoric remained the same: Russia is advancing. Its goals remain the same. Any negotiations must happen on Moscow's t

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As Ukraine and Moldova move closer to the European Union on June 15, Russian opera star Anna Netrebko will take the stage at the Philharmonie Luxembourg next door. The contrast reflects a broader shift across Europe: support for Ukraine remains firm, but some of the Russian cultural figures once shunned after the 2022 invasion are steadily finding their way back onto Western stages. Ukraine's embassy to Belgium and Luxembourg published a press release on June 10, expressing concern over Netreb

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The only winner of the Poland-Ukraine scandal is Putin

Vladimir Putin is losing the war he started. His army occupies every kilometer at a cost no economy can sustain, and the goals set in February 2022 have quietly vanished from his staff maps. But this war has more than one front, and one of them runs through Poland. On this front, Russia is currently winning, and we, Poles and Ukrainians, are supplying its ammunition. What we see today is a completely different Poland from the one in 2022. In the spring of 2022, Polish train stations looked li

Poland's President Karol Nawrocki (R) and President Volodymyr Zelensky (L) in Warsaw, Poland, on Dec. 19, 2025.

About War

The Kyiv Independent's coverage of Russia’s war in Ukraine. Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, after eight years of aggression against Ukraine that began in 2014 with the annexation of Crimea and fighting in Donbas. The war has resulted in tens of thousands of military and civilian casualties and displaced millions of Ukrainians. NATO and Western allies have provided military aid to Ukraine while the conflict continues across fronts in Ukraine’s south and east.

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