Every week we wrap up the must-reads from our coverage of the Ukraine war, from news and features to analysis, visual guides and opinion.
Blame game over Kremlin drone blast
The US and Ukraine both dismissed Moscow’s accusations of involvement in a drone mission that saw one of the machines explode above the Kremlin Senate on Wednesday.
John Kirby, the US National Security Council spokesman, said of Putin spokesman Dimitry Peskov’s claims: “One thing I can tell you for certain is that the US did not have any involvement with this incident, contrary to Mr Peskov’s lies, and that’s just what they are: lies.”
Dramatic video footage on Wednesday showed two flying objects approaching the Kremlin and one hitting the rooftop of the an 18th-century mansion within the grounds of the president’s official residence. No one was hurt in the incident, Russia said.
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said on Wednesday: “We don’t attack Putin, or Moscow, we fight on our territory and defend our towns and cities. We leave it to the tribunal.”
The answer as to who was behind it may not be known until long after the war, Dan Sabbagh reports, but it is curious how many want to speculate about a Kremlin false-flag operation.
Kyiv had its own drone threat to deal with on Thursday. The air force shot down one of its own drones over the capital after it “lost control”.
The incident came as Zelenskiy visited cities in Europe, calling for Vladimir Putin to face justice during a visit to The Hague, which hosts the international criminal court (ICC).
The Ukrainian president said: “We all want to see a different Vladimir here in The Hague, the one who deserves to be sanctioned for his criminal actions here, in the capital of international law. The aggressor must feel the full power of justice. This is our historical responsibility.”
In a speech on Thursday, Zelenskiy said only one institution was capable of responding “to the original crime, the crime of aggression” and that was a tribunal. “Not some compromise that will allow politicians to say that the case is allegedly done, but a true, really true, full-fledged tribunal.”
The ICC, which Zelenskiy visited during his trip, has issued an arrest warrant for Putin and other senior Russian officials over the abduction of Ukrainian children. But it does not have the power to try crimes of aggression, because Russia has not ratified the ICC treaty.
Ukraine primed for counteroffensive
The last time “Luh” served in the military, he was a Soviet conscript, sailing the Arctic Ocean with the USSR’s northern fleet over four decades ago. When Russia seized the Crimean peninsula and Russian-backed proxies moved into his home region of Luhansk nearly a decade ago, he cheered on the Ukrainian army but thought his fighting days were behind him.
Then in February last year, the 64-year-old signed up again to serve. “I didn’t volunteer in 2014 because I thought the country could do this without me, but then last year I saw they couldn’t.” It was volunteers like Luh – a railway engineer in civil life – who helped propel Ukraine to victories over Russia’s military last year that stunned even close allies, Emma Graham-Harrison and Artem Mazhulin reported.
Now they aim to do it again, in a counteroffensive expected to start within weeks, perhaps even days, that will be a critical test for Ukraine.
Eight new Ukrainian “storm” brigades of soldiers have been formed to take part in the counteroffensive, Dan Sabbagh reported, amid growing speculation about its timing and whether it can succeed in inflicting a serious defeat on the Russian invaders.
Residents in the key southern city of Kherson began stocking up on food and water after more heavy Russian shelling and in anticipation of “something big” over the coming days as Ukrainian forces also stepped up their shelling of Russian positions.
Earlier, Russian missile strikes injured 34 civilians and apparently damaged railway infrastructure and an ammunition depot in south-eastern Ukraine, hours before an explosion inside Russia derailed a freight train.
The attacks on both sides of the border on Monday apparently aimed to disrupt military logistics before a significant Ukrainian counteroffensive against occupying Russian troops, expected to start shortly in the south or the east.
The Russian strike in the Ukrainian city of Pavlohrad was part of the second wave of missile attacks in just three days; on Friday, 23 people were killed when a missile hit an apartment block in central Uman city, and a woman and her daughter died in Dnipro.
More than 20,000 Russian soldiers killed in five months
More than 20,000 Russian soldiers have been killed and more than 80,000 injured in just five months of fighting in Ukraine, an acceleration in already heavy losses for Moscow, US intelligence officials estimate, Emma Graham-Harrison reported.
Most of the troops were killed in brutal trench warfare for the small eastern city of Bakhmut, which Russia has repeatedly claimed it was on the brink of capturing, White House national security council spokesperson John Kirby said when he revealed the new estimate on Monday.
The losses are an acceleration in Russian casualties even from the bloody first days of the war, and overshadow some of the bloodiest allied battles of the second world war, Kirby added. That includes the Guadalcanal campaign, the first major Allied offensive against Japan, which also lasted five months.
When Russia targets ordinary homes
To the military that bombed schools and hospitals in Syria, and tried to freeze Ukrainians from their homes this winter, Soviet-era apartments might have looked like a convenient target, Emma Graham-Harrison and Artem Mazhulin report.
If the aim is terrorising a whole country, destroying these ordinary blocks overlooking a courtyard where tulips are about to burst into bloom may have a twisted logic. When there is no obvious reason why a place is targeted for a missile strike, Ukrainians are forced to understand that one could come anywhere.
Strikes like this are one reason why many Ukrainians have fled even peaceful parts of the country. Missile fragments from the same Friday morning raid that targeted Uman also killed a young girl and her mother on the outskirts of Dnipro city, in a rural area they moved to for safety after a similar missile strike on an apartment block there.
Every scrap of land is contested in the battle for Dnipro delta at Kherson. Peter Beaumont reported on the devastating fighting on the least accessible of the frontlines.
Pawn shops and bread queues: poverty grips Ukraine
In the Treasure pawn shop in Kyiv, Oleksandra, 40, a well-turned-out woman in a hooded wool coat and Nike trainers, has come to redeem her sewing machines. Like all those visiting the store, she does not want to give her family name. Oleksandra leaves clutching her belongings, save for a mobile phone she has decided not to redeem.
The scene in the pawn shop illustrates the crisis of growing poverty in Ukraine, Peter Beaumont reports, the reality of which stands in contrast to the surface bustle of Kyiv’s busy restaurants and bars where it is often hard to get a table, with many living a precarious existence.
Poverty increased from 5.5% to 24.2% in Ukraine in 2022, pushing 7.1 million more people into poverty with the worst impact out of sight in rural villages, according to a recent report by the World Bank. With unemployment unofficially at 36% and inflation hitting 26.6% at the end of 2022, the institution’s regional country director for eastern Europe, Arup Banerji, had warned that poverty could soar.
Books flourish in blackout-hit Ukraine
“They have popped up like mushrooms after rain,” says Maria Glazunova, who works at the Dovzhenko Centre, Kyiv’s film archive. “They are lovely places where you can drink coffee, read, and just sniff the books.”
After the terrifying early months of 2022, and a brutal winter of drone attacks and blackouts, a crop of new independent bookshops is hardly what one would expect to find in the Ukrainian capital. But, in defiance of Russia’s ongoing invasion, they are springing up all around Kyiv, Charlotte Higgins reports.
In the central Pechersk district, Misto, meaning “city”, opened in December. At the time, Russian missile attacks were regularly casting Kyiv into darkness. Everyone told Diana Slonchenko, its owner, that she was mad. But war, she says, “changed my mindset”. Her desire to open a bookshop had switched from “something I’ll do one day, to something I need to do now”.
