The Latest Breaking News from Kuba Stezycki

Poland aims to get training time on Leopard 2 battle tanks down to five weeks at a centre where Ukrainian soldiers are likely to be taught how to operate the Western battlefield workhorse against Russia's invasion.

Iya Rudzitskaya, a 92-year-old Ukrainian Jew, has fled Kyiv twice. First, in 1941, when she was just 10 years old and German bombs started falling on the then Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. The second time came last year, when Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24.

As thousands of dead fish neared the banks of the Oder River in the village of Widuchowa in western Poland on Aug. 11, local people realised an ecological disaster that started in late July in the country's south-west was heading towards the Baltic Sea.

For Ukrainian soldier Dmytro Dovzhenko, embracing his family back in Poland after six months on the front line has a special poignancy as he tries to clear his mind of the image of a mother and child whose mutilated bodies had been tied together.

When Ukrainians started streaming across the border after Russia invaded their country on Feb. 24, residents in this Polish city -- like many others across central Europe -- sprang into action to help settle and house refugees fleeing war.

Ukrainian refugees filled churches across central Europe on Sunday for Orthodox Easter in bittersweet celebrations, giving thanks for escaping a Russian invasion but dreaming of a return home to family members left behind.

For Eleanora Tymoshenko, a music teacher from Balakliia, near Kharkhiv in Eastern Ukraine, and now a refugee in Warsaw, a night of Ukrainian music is food for her soul as she reflects on the conflict ravaging her home.

More than a month after Russia invaded, many Ukrainian refugees in the European Union are facing a dilemma - whether to look for jobs and stay longer term, or risk returning to their homeland and the conflict, to be reunited with family that stayed behind.

A Polish firearms training company said it has seen increased interest in learning to shoot since the start of the war in Ukraine, with many people booking shooting lessons for the first time in their lives.