Mariupol

Civilians were fleeing from areas of Eastern Ukraine on Tuesday ahead of an anticipated Russian offensive, while Kyiv said it was checking reports that ...

But they are redoubling their efforts in the east, and Ukrainian forces are digging in to face a new offensive. "It's far more scary to remain and burn in your sleep from a Russian shell," he wrote on the Telegram messaging app. Moscow dismisses the allegations as Ukrainian and Western provocations and has also accused Ukrainian forces of sexual violence. "Their aim was to disable a number of facilities, including electricity substations. Ivan Bakanov, the head of Ukraine's national security agency, said on the agency's Telegram channel that Medvedchuk had been arrested. Earlier, the U.S. and Britain said they were trying to verify the reports. The Russian Defence Ministry has not yet responded to a Reuters request for comment. Blinken said the U.S. shared that information with Ukraine and other partners. The city has already been laid waste by weeks of Russian bombardments that have killed possibly thousands of civilians. They’re fighting under the bombs for each meter of the city. Putin calls the action a "special military operation" to demilitarize and "denazify" Ukraine, but it has drawn condemnation and alarm in the West, which has imposed a wide range of sanctions to squeeze the Russian economy. He did not give details.

Ukrainian fighters said three people had suffered breathing problems in the besieged port city after a mysterious substance was dispersed from a Russian ...

On Tuesday, it appeared that Ukrainian forces may have staged a rare attack – or sabotage operation – inside Russian territory, as a rail line in the city of Belgorod was damaged by an apparent explosion. Ukrainian troops found evidence of atrocities when they took back Russian-occupied Bucha, Chernihiv and other areas in the north. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the United States was not able to confirm whether chemical weapons had been used in Mariupol. “We’re in direct conversation with partners to try to determine what actually has happened. There have also been widespread reports of organized rape, torture and looting by Russian troops. Russia won’t recover from that for the next four years, from a military perspective,” said the short-haired 36-year-old, whom President Volodymyr Zelensky appointed two years ago as the GUR’s youngest intelligence chief. There have been widespread reports of a recent purge among Russia’s intelligence community that resulted in several senior officers being imprisoned. Globe and Mail correspondent Nathan VanderKlippe explains what he saw there. Despite the prolonged siege, pockets of the city remain under Ukrainian control. Maj.-Gen. Budanov, who heads Ukraine’s GUR intelligence service, said it was impossible to confirm what had happened in Mariupol since they couldn’t access the scene of the alleged incident. Large swathes of the city have been utterly destroyed. Though the symptoms were not described as severe, and no proof of the incident was offered, any use of prohibited chemical weapons would mark a significant escalation of Russia’s seven-week-old war against Ukraine. But he said the world should understand that chemical weapons could become a feature of the conflict.