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Residents face new reality in retaken Kherson
When Ukraine wrested back Kherson from Russian occupiers nearly a month ago, it was a moment of glory and pride, hailed as the beginning of the end of the war. But hardship for the city’s residents was far from over.
Though free from Russia’s control, the southern city and its surroundings are still living the consequences of nearly nine months of occupation, and feeling the deadly proximity of the Russian forces, now stationed across the Dnieper River.
Taken early in the war, in March, parts of the Kherson region were held by Russia until November, when Ukrainians swept the area, regaining control of the main city — Kherson, with a pre-war population of 200,000 — and other Russian-controlled zones.
Residents, covered in blood, walk moments after a Russian strike in Kherson, southern Ukraine, Nov. 24, 2022. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue) 
Staff move Arthur Voblikov, 13, to the operating room inside a hospital in Kherson, southern Ukraine, Nov. 22, 2022. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue) 
An elderly man holds a dog as he walks amid debris after a Russian attack in Kherson, southern Ukraine, Nov. 24, 2022. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue) The liberation came just weeks after Russia unlawfully annexed Kherson and three more regions following sham referendums. But the Russians dug in on the other side of the Dnieper, with Kherson within reach of their artillery.
Ever since, almost daily shelling and power and water outages have become a new reality. In the cold, people can be seen queuing for food or water rations. They mourn their dead and cover the bodies of new shelling victims that lie in pools of blood. Some draw water from the Dnieper, risking Russian sniper bullets from the other bank.
Unlike villages and towns directly on the frontline, the city of Kherson seemed relatively unscathed. When they regained control in mid-November, Ukrainian authorities organized concerts and the city rejoiced, briefly forgetting the war. Residents hailed arriving troops as heroes and wrapped themselves in Ukrainian flags that soldiers autographed. All beamed with pride and happiness.
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US accuses Rwanda of fueling war as fighting in eastern DR Congo intensifies despite Trump-brokered peace deal
M23 rebels stand guard at the the Unite stadium, where captured members of the armed forces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Wazalendo troops wait to be taken aboard trucks for training by M23 rebels, in Goma, North Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo, May 10. Arlette Bashizi/Reuters/FileReuters —
The United States accused Rwanda on Friday of fueling instability and war as a Rwanda-backed advance of the M23 rebel group in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo threatens to derail US President Donald Trump’s efforts to broker peace in the region.
“Rwanda is leading the region towards increased instability and war,” US Ambassador to the UN Mike Waltz told the UN Security Council. “We will use the tools at our disposal to hold to account spoilers to peace.”
The rebels’ gains bring the conflict to the doorstep of neighboring Burundi, which has had troops in eastern Congo for years, aggravating fears of further regional spillover of fighting that has already killed thousands of people and displaced hundreds of thousands more since January.
‘Restraint has its limits’: Burundi
“Let me be clear: restraint has its limits. Should these irresponsible attacks continue, it would become extremely difficult to avoid a direct escalation between our two countries,” Burundi’s UN Ambassador Zephyrin Maniratanga told the Security Council.
Rwanda’s UN Ambassador Martin Ngoga accused Burundi of an attack on Rwandan territory and said: “Rwanda is not waging war against the Republic of Burundi and has no intention of doing that.” He accused DRC of violating the ceasefire and said Rwanda was fully committed to implementing its part of the Washington peace deal.
Congo’s Foreign Minister Therese Kayikwamba Wagner called on the Security Council to hold Rwanda accountable. “We have reached a moment of truth – either the international order accepts being openly defied, namely by Rwanda, or this council assumes its responsibility. Impunity has gone on for far too long,” she told the council.
Advance follows leaders meeting with Trump
M23 says it is fighting to protect ethnic Tutsi communities in eastern Congo. The latest M23 advance in mineral-rich eastern Congo comes a week after Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi and his Rwandan counterpart Paul Kagame met Trump in Washington and affirmed their commitment to a US-brokered peace deal.
“We call on Rwanda to uphold its commitments and to further recognize the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s right to defend its territory and its sovereign right to invite Burundian forces onto its territory,” Waltz told the 15-member council. “We are engaging with all sides to urge restraint and to avoid further escalation, including refraining from hostile anti-Tutsi rhetoric.”
“The United States is profoundly concerned and incredibly disappointed with the renewed outbreak of violence in the eastern DRC,” Waltz said. He told the Security Council that Rwanda has had strategic control of M23 and what he referred to as the rebel group’s political wing – the Congo River Alliance, or AFC – since it re-emerged in 2021.
“Kigali has been intimately involved in planning and executing the war in eastern DRC, providing military and political direction to M23 forces and AFC for years now,” Waltz said. “The Rwandan defense forces have provided materiel, logistics and training support to M23, as well as fighting alongside M23 in DRC with roughly 5,000 to 7,000 troops as early December.”
Rwanda denies backing M23 and has blamed Congolese and Burundian forces for the renewed fighting.
M23 is not party to the Washington-mediated negotiations. It has been participating in a separate, parallel round of talks with the Congolese government, hosted by Qatar.
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The shadow Russia casts over Europe has forced it to face the truth: the risk of war is once again real
When a group of defense insiders gathered in Whitehall, the home of the British government, last month to discuss how prepared the United Kingdom and its allies were for a war they believe could come in the next few years, their verdict was pretty grim: They are not.
The people gathered at the conference, hosted by the London-based think tank the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), were not warmongers; they were people in the know. Current and former members of the armed forces, government and NATO officials, researchers and defense industry professionals whose thinking is based on the widely accepted intelligence assessment that Russia is preparing for the possibility of a direct conflict with Europe.
The only way to prevent that from happening, they say, is to make sure that if a war were to break out, Europe would win.
More investment into chronically underfunded European defense is key, but security experts are increasingly warning that a big shift in mindset is needed across the board too. It is time, they say, for European governments to get their citizens on board and make it clear that the time when Europe was able to ignore the threat of war is over.
“I think that there is an indication that societies are willing to have this conversation, but I think that we are also seeing governments that are still not quite confident enough to have that conversation with their publics,” said Sam Greene, a professor of Russian politics at King’s College London and an expert in democratic resilience.
There is a growing consensus among experts that Russia is already waging a hybrid war on the West by conducting sabotage operations and injecting chaos and disinformation into domestic political discussions. They point to the overwhelming evidence, including repeated incursions into NATO airspace by Russian planes and drones and GPS jamming in the Baltics, to disinformation campaigns, and sabotage attacks against critical infrastructure in multiple countries that have been traced back to Russian secret services. Russia has consistently denied involvement.
Greene said that these attacks have already shifted the views of many in Europe, even if some politicians remain unwilling to name them outright as hybrid warfare.
“I think that people are spooked, particularly as this becomes more visible,” he said. “We see drones outside airports, and I think that there is a growing sense that it is probably (only) a matter of time before one of these drones brings down an airliner.”
The house of Alicja and Tomasz Wesolowski in Poland’s Wyryki-Wola was destroyed after Russian drones violated Polish airspace during an attack on Ukraine. Kacper Pempel/Reuters
Baltic fears
While Moscow has not carried out any direct attacks against NATO allies in Europe – experts say this is partly because Russia knows it couldn’t defeat the alliance with its current capabilities – there are increasing signs that this could change in the future.
NATO’s Secretary General Mark Rutte warned earlier this year that Russia could be ready to use military force against NATO within five years. German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul echoed that warning in a speech last month, saying that German intelligence services believe that Moscow is “at least keeping open the option of war against NATO by 2029 at the latest.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin said in early December that while Russia is not planning to go to war with Europe, “if Europe suddenly wants to go to war with us and starts, we are ready right now.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks during a meeting of the Council of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) at the Senate Palace of the Kremlin in Moscow on December 8. Pavel Bednyakov/Reuters
The consensus among Baltic countries is that an attack against them could come as soon as in three years’ time. When researchers at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School looked into the warnings and predictions made by various officials about Russia’s readiness and willingness to launch a war against NATO, they found that the most often mentioned years are 2027 and 2028.
Recognition of this threat has led NATO to develop contingency plans for how to defend against a possible Russian aggression against the Baltics.
But experts warn the alliance’s plans don’t stack up.
“There’s a plan, with numbers. But the governments are not taking the necessary steps to implement it. We are still planning based on things that don’t exist,” said Jack Watling, a senior research fellow at RUSI. He highlighted the risk of trying to structure a defense response based on a wish list rather than reality, instead of accepting the resources that are available, and planning based on those.
The British government earlier this year asked three high-profile experts – former NATO chief George Robertson, Gen. Richard Barrons, former head of the Joint Forces Command, and Fiona Hill, a former senior director at the US National Security Council – to conduct a strategic review of UK defense. The trio presented it with a manual on the steps needed to be ready for war.
Speaking at the RUSI event last month, Barrons said that the UK must rethink the resilience of its infrastructure, build up its armed forces, reserves and civil defense, and invest in its health service, industry and the economy, to allow a quick pivot to a war footing.
“We frankly don’t need much more analysis to tell us what it is we need to do. The problem is that we need to actually do it,” he said. He points to “civil society and our politicians” having other concerns as the reason for the lack of haste.
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Sports world lets Ukrainian colors fly
A hug. A banner. Two simple words written on a pair of shoes: “No war.”
Players, fans and teams have not been shy about letting their support for Ukraine, its citizens and its athletes spill onto football fields, rugby pitches and basketball courts across the globe in the wake of Russia’s invasion of its neighbor to the west.
The war has placed many of Ukraine’s athletes directly in harm’s way. It has drawn global condemnation for Russia and Belarus, and iced out most of those countries’ skiers, skaters, soccer players and more from international competitions.
Bronze medal winner Ilia Burov, of the Russian Olympic Committee, left, hugs silver medal winner Ukraine’s Oleksandr Abramenko as they celebrate after the men’s aerials finals at the 2022 Winter Olympics, Wednesday, Feb. 16, 2022, in Zhangjiakou, China. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull) With Ukraine in peril, players of all nationalities have draped themselves in the country’s yellow-and-blue flag, donned shirts with the words “Stop War,” and played in stadiums where scoreboards have posted messages condemning the war and signaling solidarity with Ukraine.
Associated Press photographer Gregory Bull took one of the first photos of this type, when Russia’s Ilia Burov hugged Ukraine’s Oleksandr Abramenko after both won freestyle skiing medals at the Olympics.
As the action has moved away from Beijing, more moments have followed. AP photographers have captured these snapshots that remind the world about the power of sports to unite, especially during the bleakest of times.
Everton players hold Ukrainian flags before the English Premier League soccer match between Everton and Manchester City at Goodison Park in Liverpool, England, Saturday, Feb. 26, 2022. (AP Photo/Jon Super)
Teams take a minute of silence in support of Ukraine ahead of a German Bundesliga soccer match between Eintracht Frankfurt and Bayern Munich in Frankfurt, Germany, Saturday, Feb. 26, 2022. (AP Photo/Michael Probst)
At the start of the match, the players of both teams hold a Ukrainian flag with the inscription “Stop War. We against war.” prior the Bundesliga soccer match between Greuther Fuerth and 1. FC Cologne in Fuerth, Germany, Feb. 26, 2022. (Daniel Karmann/dpa via AP)
Soccer fans observe a moment of silence in support of Ukraine before an MLS soccer match between the Los Angeles Galaxy and the New York City FC Sunday, Feb. 27, 2022, in Carson, Calif. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
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Thousands of Ukrainians live in agony and uncertainty as they search for their missing loved ones
Iryna Reva stares at her phone, replaying the last video her 25-year-old son Vladyslav sent her from the front line before the volunteer soldier disappeared 19 months ago in a battle with Russian forces in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region.
Reva is one of the thousands of Ukrainians desperately seeking news of loved ones who have disappeared in the two years since Russia’s full-scale invasion began. According to Ukraine’s National Police, more than 30,000 people have been reported missing in the last 24 months.
“Up to this day, I am searching for my son,” Reva said. “He is alive to me. Regardless of the circumstances, there is no evidence that he has perished.”
Iryna Reva, 59, waits for her son Vladyslav at her apartment in Kyiv, Ukraine on Feb. 9, 2024. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka) The last time Reva spoke to her son, she begged him not to take part in a battle the next morning. “Don’t go, say your arm hurts,” she told him over the phone.
“Mom, I’m sorry. I love you very much,” Vladyslav replied. “I’m going into battle. I don’t know if I’ll be back.
“I’ll be out of touch. Pray,” were his last words to her.
The missing include soldiers like Vladyslav lost on the battlefield, but also civilians and children who have vanished in a variety of circumstances. For many relatives, the agonizing uncertainty and relentless search for answers has already gone on for two years with no end in sight.
Inna Usenko left her hometown of Mariupol on a business trip the day before the war began in 2022. She lost contact with her brother, Herman Sikorskyi, on March 1 as Russia laid siege to the eastern city and thousands of civilians were trapped. Several weeks later, a Russian airstrike hit the house where he had lived.
“I don’t know what to think, whether he’s alive or not,” she said. “I understand perfectly well that if I were there, he would have come to me, and maybe something would have been different, so I feel guilty all the time.”
In an attempt to find her brother, Usenko filed a missing person’s report with the occupation authorities, the Russian Federation and the Russian Red Cross. From her home, which is now in Spain, she came to Ukraine to file a police report and provide DNA to Ukrainian authorities. Despite the efforts, neither side was able to provide her with any information.
“I would like, of course, to believe that he is alive,” Usenko said, adding that the uncertainty not only drains her but also affects close friends, relatives and his children.
The International Committee of the Red Cross says since February 2022 its team has been contacted more than 100,000 times by families searching for their loved ones.
“That doesn’t mean a hundred thousand missing people. But this gives you an idea of just the amount of suffering that this creates on both sides,” Achille Després, a spokesperson at the ICRC in Kyiv, said.
For relatives looking for information, the official search often begins with submitting a DNA sample. Andrii Levytskyi, head of forensics at the National Police’s main investigation department, said more than 18,000 DNA samples of relatives of servicemen and civilians have been collected and processed.
DNA is a vital part of establishing the status of the missing person, especially if they are military. Even if fellow soldiers said they witnessed a soldier killed in battle, it’s not enough to confirm the death, said Petro Yatsenko, the head of a press office at the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of POWs.
“Until we have the body, until we have DNA analysis, this person will have the status of missing,” he said. He said they have had cases in which soldiers were found wounded in captivity, despite testimony from their comrades that they were killed in battle.
Over the past two years, numerous volunteer projects have arisen to aid in the search for missing people, often serving as a last resort for relatives who receive no official information from authorities.
Mariia Reshetova, who runs the Search for the Missing project under the Kateryna Osadcha Foundation, said they have around 1,000 open cases and have already closed hundreds.
She said that while they receive new applications daily, the influx has dwindled compared to the initial months of the war when the project was launched. However, the geography of missing civilians has not changed. Cases originate from both liberated regions like Kyiv, and those still occupied. Many open cases relate to people missing in Mariupol.
“You can’t stop searching … because there is always a chance that some information will be found,” Reshetova said.
Tetiana Khvostenko’s husband Oleh was last seen in the summer of 2022 in the occupied city of Dniprorudne in the Zaporizhzhia region when the Russian military detained him as he went to pick up his car. From that point, he vanished.
Oleh’s relatives, who remained in the occupied territory and therefore can’t be named for security concerns, tried to get information about why he was detained. They visited the military commandant’s office many times learning he’d been handed over to the Russian Federal Security Service, or FSB. From there, the trail went cold.
For the past year and seven months, Tetiana and her son Klim have been living in limbo, devoid of any new information about Oleh’s fate.
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Ukraine endures a second year of war with scenes of grief, suffering and also joy
The second year of Ukraine’s fight against Russia’s full-scale invasion brought no respite for Ukrainian soldiers or civilians.
Associated Press photographers documented the past 12 months of death and destruction, agony and grief — as well as the glimpses of joy — that are staples of life during war.
The countryside in eastern areas of Ukraine — an industrial region bordering Russia where some of the most intense fighting has unfolded since the war began on Feb. 24, 2022 — is now punctuated with splintered and smashed trees reminiscent of a World War I battlefield.
Along the front line, soldiers battled from trenches and relied heavily on artillery, in another echo of the 1914-18 conflict.