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Attacks come just hours after the Kremlin rejected Zelensky's peace proposals . .....Air raid sirens rang out across Ukraine this morning as Russia unleashed around 120 missiles in a savage barrage which targeted the capital Kyiv and several other major cities. 'A massive air raid. More than 100 missiles in several waves,' presidential office adviser Oleksiy Arestovych wrote on Facebook, while another adviser Mykhailo Podolyak claimed more than 120 missiles had been fired at Ukraine. Mayors of the capital Kyiv, Ukraine's second city Kharkiv and the western city of Lviv all reported that Russian missiles had caused a series of...

U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan says Ukrainian efforts to join NATO should be taken up "at a different time," throwing cold water on the country's desire to join the international alliance and potentially easing Russian tensions as President Vladimir Putin has begun accelerating rhetoric of potential nuclear war. Ukraine formally applied to join NATO as a military partner on Friday, coinciding with Putin's announcement that Russia would be formally annexing four occupied regions within Ukraine's borders. If accepted, NATO-aligned forces would formally be drawn into the war, pitting forces in the West against the Russian military and, potentially, escalating...

A later Twitter thread from King's College war expert Mike Martin demonstrated the likely strategy Ukrainian troops were using: driving the battle flanks northeast of Lyman and forcing Moscow to defend a critical railroad junction. "Then drive a much bigger encircling movement to trap the whole lot," he said, later adding that it was "causing the Russian Air Force to fly desperate missions to keep hard-to-defend pockets in business."

Britain said on Monday that initial tranches of men called up for Russia's partial mobilization have started arriving at military bases. "Russia will now face an administrative and logistical challenge to provide training for the troops," the British Defense Ministry said in an intelligence update. Many of the drafted troops will not have had any military experience for some years, the intelligence update added.

It’s Election Day in parts of Ukraine — but only because Russia imposed it. Vladimir Putin ordered referenda on annexation held in the parts of the Donbas that Russia still controls — and some areas it no longer does — in order to justify the seizure of those areas. That seizure will allow Putin to claim that any further Ukrainian advances in those areas are an invasion of Russia, which will unlock his ability to order full mobilization … and potentially other options.We’ll get to the full-mobilization issue in a moment, but let’s stick to the referenda first. Ukrainian authorities...

Summons delivered to eligible men at midnight. Schoolteachers pressed into handing out draft notices. Men given an hour to pack their things and appear at draft centres. Women sobbing as they sent their husbands and sons off to fight in Russia’s war in Ukraine. The first full day of Russia’s first mobilisation since the second world war produced emotional showdowns at draft centres and even signs of protest, while it appears Russia could be considering far more than the 300,000 new conscripts claimed by the defence minister, Sergei Shoigu. One woman in a small village in the Zakamensky region of...

Google searches for ‘how to break an arm at home,’ (как сломать руку в домашних условиях) have spiked since Putin made a decree for a ‘partial mobilization’ at 2 a.m. ET on Wednesday, giving rise to speculation that Russians are taking drastic measures to avoid conscription. Similarly, how to break a leg (как сломать ногу) have also risen according to Google Trends data.... Reports of panic spreading among Russians have also flooded social networks. Anti-war groups said the limited airplane tickets out of Russia reached enormous prices due to high demand — and swiftly became unavailable. Some postings alleged people...

The Russians find themselves out of options in their collapsing effort to overrun Ukraine. Not only did they fail to keep territory they seized in the invasion over the late winter and spring, Russia has begun to lose ground it held before the war. They’re running out of resources, and more importantly, running out of troops as Ukraine’s counteroffensive threatens to collapse their lines. What better time than now to hold a plebiscite, eh? Unfortunately, Russia may see that as their only recruitment option in Luhansk and Donetsk:(snip) Er … keep dreaming. Vladimir Putin has no concerns over even the...

Can the Ukrainians sustain two simultaneous counteroffensives against the vaunted Russian military? A few months ago, that may have seemed impossible. Just a couple of weeks ago, most observers considered either the Kharkiv or Kherson offensives a feint to distract from the other. Now that Ukraine’s Kharkiv campaign has achieved so much success, however, it’s clear that their Kherson campaign was no feint. Their forces, apparently using US-supplied HIMARS artillery, took aim at a meeting of occupation leadership in the heart of the city, and apparently hit a bulls-eye. Even Russian state-run news outlet RIA Novosti reported on the success,...

Asked about the potential impact of Europe's unfolding cost of living and energy crises on support for Ukraine, Von der Leyen said supporting Ukraine "comes at a high cost, but our freedom, the international peace order, and democracy, is priceless."Supporting Ukraine comes at a high cost, but freedom is "priceless," European Commission chief Urszula Von der Leyen said on Thursday amid soaring inflation and high energy prices in Europe.The EU's sanctions on Russia are having a deep and visible impact, European Commission President Urszula Von der Leyen told Reuters at an interview in Kyiv, shortly after she met Ukraine's President...

Russian leader seems keen to curry favour with Chinese president as battlefield setbacks and sanctions bite Vladimir Putin has told Xi Jinping that he understands China’s “questions and concerns” about the war in Ukraine, in a rare nod to tensions between the two states caused by the Russian invasion. The remarks came as Xi and Putin met on Thursday for the first time since the war began, at a summit in Uzbekistan where the Russian president was expected to court the Chinese leader personally as an ally in his conflict with the west. invasion that drew the most attention. In...