President Vladimir Putin on Thursday ordered the Russian military to cancel plans to storm the Azovstal steel plant inside the port city of Mariupol, where thousands of Ukrainian defenders and civilians are holed up.

Oleksandr Malish, the patrol police chief for the cities of Kramatorsk and Slovyansk in the Donetsk region, is reluctant to call people suspected of collaborating with Russia Ukrainians. “I cannot even call these people Ukrainians, even though they have Ukrainian passports and were born here and lived here all their lives,” said Malish. “These are not professional spies who were trained in Moscow and sent here.”

Multiple explosions apparently caused by missiles struck the western Ukrainian city of Lviv early Monday as the country was bracing for an all-out Russian assault in the east. At least six people were killed in the city, which has been spared much of the worst violence in almost two months of war.

CNBC tested out an international transfer of cash with a Ukrainian staying in Poland via bitcoin's Lightning Network.

A few blocks from the Warsaw Ghetto where his forebears were imprisoned by Nazis, one Jewish man is offering help to Ukrainians in need.

In late February, on a cold night in Kharkiv, Viktoria Naumenko caught a bus to a bar where two of her closest friends were waiting to tell her about their engagement. Outside, she lit a cigarette to calm her nerves before stepping into the noisy cafe. She texted a friend in Canada: “I feel like this might be the last time I’ll see my friends alive.”

Departing Russian soldiers have laced large swaths of the country with buried mines and jury-rigged bombs, some hidden inside homes, to terrorize returning civilians.

Humanity took a giant leap 61 years ago today (April 12), but marking the milestone is far more complicated than usual this year. Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin launched to Earth orbit aboard the spacecraft Vostok 1 on April 12, 1961, becoming the first person ever to reach space. The landmark moment continued a string of space firsts for the Soviet Union, which kicked off the space age with the launch of the satellite Sputnik 1 in October 1957.

The PEN World Voices Festival will bring together hundreds of writers, among them Abdulrazak Gurnah, Alejandro Zambra and Gary Shteyngart, and will include an address by Andrey Kurkov, a Ukrainian novelist.

All Japan Judo Federation President Yasuhiro Yamashita on Monday criticized Russian President and judoka Vladimir Putin, saying his country's aggression in Ukraine is against the ethos of the sport.

Art therapy is helping children make some sense of what is happening to their country and their creations give heart to the soldiers on the frontline who receive them.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Sunday he had held spoken on the phone with German chancellor Olaf Scholz on the possibility of additional sanctions on Russia, as well as fresh defence and financial support for his country.

After its striking post-invasion setbacks, Russia has appointed a new Ukraine war commander, a U.S. official said Sunday. Russia turned to Gen. Alexander Dvornikov, 60, one of Russia’s most experienced military officers and — according to U.S. officials — a general with a record of brutality against civilians in Syria and other war theaters. Up to now, Russia had no central war commander on the ground.

The Ukrainian leader has also renewed his plea for more weapons ahead of an expected surge in fighting in the country’s east.

The war in Ukraine is now well into its sixth week, and taking on a new dimension with growing evidence of human rights atrocities by Russian troops as they retreated from the Kyiv region and other parts of the north.

Pink Floyd are set to release their first new music in 28 years tomorrow (April 8) to aid the relief effort in Ukraine.

Actor Sean Penn spoke with Fox News and MSNBC Tuesday night about the situation on the ground in Ukraine and discussed ways to support the war-ravaged country. Penn was in Ukraine shooting a documentary for Vice about the country, its President Volodymyr Zelensky and the rising tensions on the border with Russia when Russia invaded Ukraine in February. As things began to escalate, Penn had to leave the country. He has since returned to Ukraine and also has spent time in the neighboring Poland both for the documentary and for the humanitarian effort though the CORE relief organization he co-founded.

On March 2, 141 countries in the United Nations General Assembly voted to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. India was one of 35 countries to abstain, just days after it declined to vote on a similar resolution in the U.N. Security Council. Although the abstention seems jarring for a democratic country, it is not a surprising move for India, which not only has a historic friendship with Russia but also depends on Russian weapons.

China may portray itself as a neutral party in the war in Ukraine, but the message it communicates to its audience at home tells a different story. State news agency Xinhua calls the war “a special military operation” and “the Russia-Ukraine crisis” but never refers to it as an invasion. CCTV, the state broadcaster, mentioned civilian casualties for the first time only three weeks after Russia invaded.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy asked Belgian lawmakers for more help and took aim at the continued import of Russian diamonds to Belgium’s port of Antwerp on Thursday while repeating calls for a no-fly zone over his country.