Tag: Russian troops
A Looming Disaster at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant
This article is based on interviews and research by the Reckoning Project, a multinational group of journalists and lawyers collecting evidence of war crimes in Ukraine.
The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, in the city of Enerhodar, in eastern Ukraine, is Europe’s largest nuclear facility. For decades, it has supplied electricity to millions of households, not just in Ukraine, but in Hungary, Poland, Belarus, Moldova, Slovakia, and Romania as well. Until two years ago, more than 50,000 people lived
A Hard-Won Victory That Ukraine Stands to Lose
In a trench war, depth matters, and on a hilltop outside Orikhiv, 35 miles southeast of Zaporizhzhia, the Russians were dug in more than six feet deep. They’d fashioned a sunken city, a maze of crossed trails extending nearly a mile and commanding an unobstructed view five miles in all directions.
From that hilltop, known to the Ukrainian military as Position X, the Russians controlled the vital road south. If the Russians were to push forward, to take Orikhiv and
Russia’s New Chornobyl Disaster – The Atlantic
This article is based on interviews and research by the Reckoning Project, a multinational group of journalists and researchers collecting evidence of war crimes in Ukraine.
On the afternoon of February 24, 2022, two Russian army commanders, wearing black uniforms with no insignia, entered the office of Valentyn Heyko, the shift supervisor at the Chornobyl State Enterprise. In a room with a window overlooking the decommissioned reactor, General Sergey Burakov and Colonel Andrey Frolenkov told Heyko that they had
Russia Is Making Abducted Ukrainian Children Impossible to Find
Amid the bombast of Russia’s one-year celebration of its war in Ukraine, a 15-year-old with thick, black hair and a gray hooded jacket was handed a microphone. In front of thousands of cheering people, Anya Naumenko thanked “Uncle Yuri”—a Russian soldier known as Yuri Gagarin—for saving her, her sister, and “hundreds of thousands of children in Mariupol,” the Ukrainian city that fell under heavy attack from the first day of Russia’s cross-border invasion, in February 2022.
Having recited words
The Power of a Failed Revolt
When we write history, it tends to be tidy and led by great men. In real time, it’s messy but still astonishing. Last weekend, Yevgeny Prigozhin, who leads a private army called the Wagner Group, attempted what many have called a coup against Russian President Vladimir Putin. Technically, it failed. He landed in the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, pledged to march to Moscow, and then turned around. Nothing about this series of events suggests expert planning or high competence. Prigozhin
Who Knows What Putin Will Do Next?
This is an edition of Up for Debate, a newsletter by Conor Friedersdorf. On Wednesdays, he rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.
Question of the Week
What will determine your vote––or your decision to refrain from voting––in the 2022 midterm elections? What issue is most important to you? Which candidate or ballot measure do you want to see win or lose? No
Inside Ukraine’s Fight for Survival
I had no business going to Ukraine. The country didn’t need another reporter to cover the war. Ukrainian journalists were already doing that much better than I could hope to, and so were plenty of foreigners. I had never set foot in Ukraine; I spoke neither of its languages; I was, my children told me, too old to be a war correspondent again. It would be completely pointless to get killed over there. But selfishness is an underrated motive among
The Battle for the Donbas Demands Impossible Choices
Soon after Russia invaded Ukraine, Pavlo Kyrylenko and Serhiy Gaidai received phone calls from men they believed to be Russians, based on their accents. Kyrylenko and Gaidai, the governors of the Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, respectively, were being enticed to defect. The pair—the top Ukrainian officials in parts of their country racked for years by conflict with Moscow-backed separatists—were offered the chance to join what the Russians were convinced would be their inevitable victory.
“This was before
Bill Clinton: Why I Expanded NATO
When I first became president, I said that I would support Russian President Boris Yeltsin in his efforts to build a good economy and a functioning democracy after the dissolution of the Soviet Union—but I would also support an expansion of NATO to include former Warsaw Pact members and post-Soviet states. My policy was to work for the best while preparing for the worst. I was worried not about a Russian return to communism, but about a return to ultranationalism,
What Happens When We Back Putin Into a Corner
This is an edition of Up for Debate, a newsletter by Conor Friedersdorf. On Wednesdays, he rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Every Friday, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.
What are your thoughts about the war in Ukraine? What questions do you have? What are your hopes or fears?
Email your answers to [email protected]. I’ll publish a selection in Friday’s newsletter.
Conversations of Note
War is ravaging Ukraine.