Every week we wrap up essential coverage of the war in Ukraine, from news and features to analysis, opinion and more.
Avdiivka falls to Russia
Ukrainian troops withdrew from the eastern city of Avdiivka last Saturday to avoid encirclement, Shaun Walker reported. “Our soldiers performed their military duty with dignity, did everything possible to destroy the best Russian military units, [and] inflicted significant losses on the enemy,” said Oleksandr Syrskyi, the recently promoted commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s military. “The life of military personnel is [of] the highest value.”
Two days later, Russia announced it had taken full control of the city – representing its biggest gain since capturing Bakhmut in May 2023, Angela Giuffrida reported.
Ukraine blamed the loss of Avdiivka on the US failure to approve a critical aid package, Pjotr Sauer reported amid fears in Kyiv that Russia will press on with its offensive with Ukrainian troops short of shells and vulnerable to Russian airstrikes.
The fall of the city claimed another indirect victim when a pro-Russian war blogger reportedly committed suicide after coming under intense pressure from authorities in Moscow for writing that 16,000 Russian soldiers were lost in the battle for the city.
Low morale as Ukrainians mark two years of war
In November, Ukrainian soldier Titushko and his men received about 300 artillery shells every 10 days. Now they have a firing limit of just 10 a day. “Back then, we could keep them on their toes, fire all the time, aim every time we saw a target. Now we fire exclusively for defence,” he said.
The grim assessment from a hidden army position in Ukraine’s Donetsk region is another sign that the third year of the war could be the hardest yet for Ukraine, Shaun Walker reported.
The mood is very different from that of a year ago, when amid the horror Ukrainians remained buoyed up by the extraordinary consolidation of national society, and looked forward to the swift liberation of all territories occupied by Russia. There are certainly some bright spots amid the gloom – Ukraine’s recent military dominance of the Black Sea, despite not having a navy, and its audacious special operations behind Russian lines, as well as the massive ramping-up of domestic drone production, which has played a key role in the fighting.
But with casualties mounting, army ranks and artillery supplies depleted and US financial aid stalled – and the potentially devastating prospect of a Donald Trump presidency on the horizon – Ukrainians greet the second anniversary with trepidation about what the future might hold.
Life in Russia two years after the invasion
As the second anniversary of the invasion approaches, Russians find most aspects of their lives reshaped at an unprecedented pace by their president, Pjotr Sauer reported.
Children read freshly printed history books that defend Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and they learn how to handle military drones. War veterans, often former convicts from the notorious paramilitary Wagner group, visit schools to preach “patriotic values”.
Under the guidance of a militaristic orthodox church, the Kremlin has virtually outlawed being gay, sentencing its citizens for wearing frog-shaped earrings displaying an image of a rainbow or posting pictures of the LGBTQ+ flag.
Observers say that state pressure has created an atmosphere of fear and denunciation – with neighbours, friends and even family members reporting on each other, often anonymously – reminiscent of the darkest repressions under Joseph Stalin.
Vladimir Putin has also mobilised the political and business elites, many of whom were reeling in the early days of the invasion when their Riviera estates and bank accounts were frozen by the west.
While Yevgeny Prigozhin’s aborted summer rebellion temporarily weakened Putin’s standing at home, the plane crash that killed the Wagner leader two months later swiftly restored his reputation as Russia’s ruthless and unchallengeable leader.
Ten years on from the bloody Maidan revolution
Ten years ago Oleksandr Plekhanov took part in protests against Ukraine’s corrupt then president, Viktor Yanukovych. He was one of tens of thousands of demonstrators who had gathered in the Maidan, Kyiv’s central independence square, Luke Harding and Alessia Mamo reported.
The pro-European movement began after Yanukovych dumped an association agreement with the EU and accepted a bailout from Russia.
Plekhanov believed Ukraine was at a crossroads. History was being made. The choices were stark: a return to the USSR, with Moscow calling the shots, or a democratic future where the country decided its own destiny and integrated with the west.
Aged 22, and a student, Plekhanov chose Europe. His mother, Inna, said: “My son didn’t know the Soviet Union. He believed he had rights and that he could shape his own life.”
The protests began in November 2013. Initially, they were peaceful. For three months there was a standoff. Then Yanukovych, under pressure from Vladimir Putin, sent in thugs and baton-wielding riot police. Plekhanov was shot in the head by a sniper.
War looms over Munich security conference
The Munich Security Conference has been a staple of the foreign policy calendar since 1963, and this year the war in Ukraine naturally had high billing. Throughout the event, Patrick Wintour reported, the Ukrainian delegation faced the task of trying to pitch the fierce urgency of their ammunition-starved plight without tipping over into defeatism.
Among the standout moments: Mette Frederiksen, the Danish prime minister, pledged all of Denmark’s artillery to Ukraine, and implied other European countries should likewise open up their arsenals. “We, Denmark, have decided to transfer all our artillery to Ukraine. So, excuse me, but the issue is not just about production. Europe still has military equipment. We have weapons, ammunition, air defence systems that we are not using yet, and we need to transfer them to Ukraine.”
The Ukrainian veteran Yuliia Paievska spoke to the elite of the transatlantic security and political establishment, including Hillary Clinton and the Estonian prime minister, Kaja Kallas.
“We are the dogs of war,” said Paievska, explaining how she started out as a volunteer and then worked as the chief medic at a hospital on the frontline during the siege of Mariupol.
Since then, she had been captured, beaten and tortured. “War, you know, it drinks our blood. It is never satisfied with our blood. It is always hungry. The more you give, the more she wants. But we made a commitment to our people, we swore the oath and we fight …
“To stop the war, we need to kill the war. Give us weapons to murder the war. We will manage, just help us a little bit.”
After Alexei Navalny’s death, what next for Putin?
Opposition leader Alexei Navalny spent years enduring some of the worst excesses of the Russian prison system, Pjotr Sauer reported. The country’s penal colonies are notorious for their grim conditions and the opposition leader was singled out for particularly cruel treatment.
Whatever the circumstances of his death, years of mistreatment support the widespread view held by his supporters that the Kremlin was responsible.
“Putin killed Alexei Navalny,” said Georgy Alburov, a Navalny ally and a researcher for his Anti-Corruption Foundation. “How exactly he did it will certainly be exposed.”
Leaders across the west similarly echoed Alburov’s view, laying the blame for Navalny’s death directly at the feet of Putin. “Make no mistake: Putin is responsible for Navalny’s death. Putin is responsible,” said the US president, Joe Biden.
But these statements are likely to leave the Kremlin shrugging its shoulders at best.
Already a wanted man after the international criminal court ruling charging him with overseeing the abduction of Ukrainians, Putin has long stopped seeking the approval of the west. As the Kremlin sees it, Putin is in the driving seat.
Yulia Navalnaya vows to continue husband’s fight
Yulia Navalnaya vowed to continue her late husband’s political work and called on Russians to rally around her as Alexei Navalny’s family struggled to get access to his body in the week after his death.
“I will continue Alexei Navalny’s work … I want to live in a free Russia, I want to build a free Russia,” Navalnaya said in a powerful nine-minute video published on social media, Pjotr Sauer and Lisa O’Carroll reported. “I call on you to stand with me. To share not only grief and endless pain … I ask you to share with me the rage. The fury, anger, hatred for those who dare to kill our future.”
Later in the week, Navalnaya met Joe Biden at the White House. The US president reiterated his belief that Vladimir Putin was responsible for Navalny’s death in an Arctic prison and assured Navalnaya that the US would punish the Russian leader. “We are going to announce sanctions against Putin, who is responsible for his death, tomorrow [Friday]. We are not letting up,” Biden said.
Alexei Navalny’s mother meanwhile said she was finally shown the body of her son five days after his death but that the authorities were “blackmailing” her into burying him in a secret ceremony without mourners, Pjotr Sauer reported.
Lyudmila Navalnaya said she was being threatened into agreeing to a secret funeral for her son and that the authorities refused to give her his body unless she agreed to their terms.
“They want it to be done secretly, without a goodbye. They want to bring me to the edge of the cemetery, to a fresh grave and say: here lies your son. I don’t agree to that,” she said.
