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.”

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.”

That winter of 2003—you remember it, and so do I—the world assembled, arms linked, to protest the prospect of war in Iraq. What times those were, and how the passions swelled. The fervor of the public reached a peak on February 15th, when millions of people in more than sixty countries claimed the streets, voicing their opposition. “listen to us,” a sign in London read. In New York, demonstrators stormed the avenues with a huge inflatable globe. Young and old turned out, and citizens and foreigners. A few weeks later, the United States was at war.

Ukrainian forces liberating the town of Bucha near Kyiv find streets littered with corpses of civilians and burned-out Russian tanks

As Moscow’s forces bog down in Ukraine, many young Russians of draft age are increasingly jittery about the prospect of being sent into combat. Making those fears particularly acute is an annual spring conscription that began Friday and aims to round up 134,500 men for a one-year tour of military duty.

Several hundred Russian troops reportedly rushed to a special medical facility in Belarus after digging in radioactive soil in a forest near the infamous nuclear plant.

There’s no hiding the cracks that have formed on Russian airwaves over the war in Ukraine any longer.

Three employees of Doctors Without Borders set out to rescue the wounded in a war zone in northern Ethiopia. Their fate shows the treacherous path for many aid workers in conflict zones.

However repressive his regime, Vladimir Putin was tolerated by the US, Britain and the EU – until he became intolerable, says Guardian columnist Aditya Chakrabortty

Many of Russia’s wealthiest people call London home, but they weren’t keen to talk about Ukraine

On August 30, a new military camp was opened in Lithuania. It will allow receiving even more American troops in the country. There was also a welcoming ceremony for U.S. military personnel arriving in the country on a regular rotation. Armored brigade battle group 1/1 ID, known as "Devil Brigade", participated in the First World…

Every repressive regime, however mighty and powerful, has its nightmares. For the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, the worst nightmare has proven to be the country’s women who are articulate, aware of their rights, dream of building careers or women who have displayed unmatched resilience and have marched boldly on the streets to reclaim their right to freedom, despite knowing that they are fighting a regime that is regressive, patriarchal and anti-democratic in orientation. 

The enormous costs and elusive benefits of the war on terror.

$290 million every day for 7,300 days. That’s how much money America spent on 20 years of war and nation-building in Afghanistan, according to Brown University’s Costs of War project. Yet it took just nine days for the Taliban to seize every provincial capital, dissolve the army and overthrow the U.S.-backed government in August.

The long read: In 2008, many of Barack Obama’s supporters hoped he would bring the global war on terror to a close. Instead, he expanded it – and his successors have done nothing to change course

The 20-year conflict was a boon to the military-industrial complex, at the cost of untold lives.

We spent 20 messed-up years in Afghanistan flexing our muscles and money, and now we are making a messy exit

Have 70 years of nuclear policy been based on a lie?