Alex Ovechkin of the Washington Capitals in Washington, D.C., U.S. on April 4, 2026.
Opinion

Ovechkin, Malkin, Kucherov, and Russia's return to international sports

by Adam Sybera

Since the onset of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russian athletes and national teams have been widely excluded from international sport. Yet the pressure to reintegrate them never really disappeared, and Russian athletes are increasingly allowed back into international competition. First, under neutral status in selected disciplines, following a gradual easing of restrictions, to a point of growing calls for the return of Russian representation on the world stage. Thawing the ice

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For Ukraine's mil-tech startups, access to credit remains a battlefield

When a bank asked Ukrainian defense tech company TAF Industries to pledge its assets as collateral for a simple bank loan, the company faced a dilemma: it couldn't reveal the location of its manufacturing facilities. To prove the factory existed, TAF came up with a bold workaround — blindfolding bank officials and driving them to the site. "It worked — they gave us a loan," Volodymyr Zinovskyi, CEO at TAF Industries, told the Kyiv Independent in a cafe in downtown Kyiv. Well into the fifth ye

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