Svitlana Morenets is a Ukrainian journalist and a staff writer at The Spectator. She was named Young Journalist of the Year in the 2024 UK Press Awards. Subscribe to her free weekly email, Ukraine in Focus, here
Moscow this morning hailed the ‘liberation’ of Soledar, a strategic point in the battle for control of the eastern Donbas region of Ukraine. The Wagner Group’s Yevgeny Prigozhin said on Wednesday that his mercenaries – who are spearheading the offensive – were in control of the salt-mining town (or what remains of it). It was denied at the time,
‘You are safe here,’ says a sign at the railway station in Przemysl, less than ten miles from the Ukrainian border. The city was one of the first in Poland to open its doors to those fleeing the war – but I’m travelling through it in the opposite direction. Last year, I was one of
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On this special podcast, Cindy Yu speaks to Svitlana Morenets, author of The Spectator’s Ukraine in Focus newsletter. Whilst Zelensky’s visit to the US yesterday was his first trip outside Ukraine since the start of the invasion, Svitlana has recently arrived home for the first time since the war began to spend Christmas with her family. They
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Welcome to the special Christmas episode of The Edition! Up first: What a year in politics it has been. 2022 has seen five education secretaries, four chancellors, three prime ministers and two monarchs. But there is only one political team that can make sense of it all. The Spectator’s editor Fraser Nelson, deputy political editor Katy Balls
Since the start of the war, there has been a risk of Ukraine’s neighbours being caught in crossfire – especially when Russia turned to a missile-based strategy. This now seems to have happened, with two rockets hitting the Polish village of Przewodów, nearly six miles from Ukraine’s border, killing two farm workers. The stakes are obviously high:
A third wave of Russian missile attacks consisting of approximately 100 shells was launched against Ukraine today. Kyiv has taken a direct hit, with three blocks of flats on fire in the district of Pechersk in the city centre. Other explosions have also been confirmed in Lviv, Kharkiv, Vinnytsia, Khmelnytsky, Zhytomyr, Kryvyi Rih and Rivne,
Less than two months ago, Putin declared four occupied regions of Ukraine as part of Russia. Some speculated that Moscow would view any attempt to liberate those territories as equivalent to an attack on Russian soil. Yet today Volodymyr Zelensky visited the recently liberated Kherson, awarded Ukrainian soldiers and watched them raise the country’s flag.
The only large Ukrainian city Russia has been able to capture since February’s invasion – Kherson – has now been liberated. But something else extraordinary happened: Russian reports emerged of thousands of troops being left on the right bank of the Dnipro river after the occupiers blew up the mile-long Antonivsky bridge. Moscow flatly denies this, saying:
The Russian evacuation of Kherson is now well underway, leaving an expected trail of destruction in its wake. Russian soldiers are publishing bitter videos as they retreat, with one saying that ‘defending the city with these supplies would be complete madness’ and another adding ‘I hope we will return’. Local reports say fleeing Russians are
In one of the biggest developments of the Ukraine war, Russia’s Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu has just announced the evacuation of his troops from Kherson. The city, located on the western bank of the Dnipro river, is the capital of one of the ‘oblasts’ (or regions) that Vladimir Putin recently declared to be part of Russia. Kherson
Earlier this week, Vladimir Putin declared an end to the deal allowing Ukraine to export its grain to the world. This threatened to send prices surging, with a potentially devastating impact on world hunger. But his bluff was called. Turkey, Ukraine and the UN held talks and continued a deal without Russia – and three
So far this week, 128 Russian missiles have been fired at Ukraine. Half were intercepted by air defences, according to figures from Ukrainian authorities, but all too many of the others hit their target: power stations. This is a new phase in war, an anti-humanitarian campaign to cut supplies of water, electricity and leave the
Since the attack on the Kerch bridge in Crimea, the world has been awaiting Putin’s answer. It came this morning in the form of Russian missiles fired over Ukrainian cities. To add to this, Belarusian media is also reporting the deployment of Belarusian troops to the conflict for the first time. Of the 83 Russian
The power one person can hold should never be underestimated. They can take people’s lives, as Vladimir Putin does, or save them as Elon Musk did in Ukraine. Two days after Putin’s invasion, Ukraine’s minister for digital transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov, tagged Musk on Twitter and asked him to help Kyiv with Starlink. The communication centres
Shortly after the invasion of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky made an offer to Vladimir Putin. Ukraine would drop its ambition to join Nato and would instead stay neutral, he said. It would not align with the West, in exchange for an end to hostilities. It was a sincere offer, and unpopular with Ukrainians. Yet it was significant: Putin had
While most attention has focused on Vladimir Putin’s repetition of nuclear threats in his speech this morning, the takeaway in Ukraine is different: conscription has begun. This is deeply controversial in Russia given the war’s high mortality rate, but after the rout in the Kharkiv region Putin is running out of options. After his speech,
If Putin is losing the ground war in Ukraine and running out of troops, what other options does he have? The obvious fear is that he’d use nuclear weapons or attack Ukraine’s nuclear power stations. Last night, the Pivdennoukrainsk nuclear power plant in Mykolaiv oblast, 300 km (200 miles) south from Kyiv, was struck, with
Ukraine is racing to establish control over the newly-liberated Kharkiv region. The country’s president Volodymyr Zelensky paid a surprise visit to the city of Izyum, until recently a strategic point for Russia’s occupation reinforcements (photos here). ‘We are moving in only one direction – forward and towards victory’, he said after the Ukrainian flag was raised in
There is extraordinary news from Ukraine this weekend. An offensive in Kharkiv region, bordering Russia on the northwest, has stunned Russia – which had been moving troops south to defend against Ukraine’s Kherson offensive. Kharkiv region has been left only lightly defended by Russia: Moscow had assumed that Ukraine didn’t have the military strength to open
The southern city of Kherson, which fell to Russian forces in the first few days of the war, is one of the places Ukraine would need to liberate if Putin’s army is to be repelled. But what realistic chance is there? Many argued that the Russian occupation is a one-way process: that having taken Crimea,
