Category Archives: Ukraine

A phone camera pans slowly across the portraits of 55 men, each wearing the dress uniform of Russias elite airborne units. Small candles have been placed by the photographs of the men, as have sky blue berets and the blue-and-white striped undershirts worn by the paratrooper units who led Russias invasion of Ukraine.

The video of the memorial for the soldiers of the 247th Guards Air Assault Regiment is unverified it was first published by Russias iStories news outlet, which said it was submitted by a reader.

But the footage adds weight to a growing consensus that the numbers of Russian casualties especially among elite units such as the Russian airborne are far higher than officials have so far admitted.

Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesperson, said on Thursday that the country had significant losses of troops and its a huge tragedy for us during an interview on Sky News.

The frank admission of the scale of Russian losses is rare among government officials, who have consistently assured the public and Vladimir Putin that Russias special operation is going according to plan.

In an attempt at damage control on Friday, Peskov said he was referring to the official defence ministry numbers of 1,351 soldiers killed since Russia launched its invasion on 24 February.

You and I have the same numbers as those published by the defence ministry, Peskov said. This is a substantial number.

Ukraine has estimated that 18,900 Russian soldiers have died since the beginning of the war, citing its own recovery of bodies and intercepted Russian communications. Russia has called the Ukrainian numbers inflated.

But questions about the Russian militarys accounting practices remain, as official statistics may not count soldiers missing in action, and critics have accused the Kremlin of intentionally covering up the high number of war dead to prevent discontent at home.

And growing evidence suggests high numbers of casualties among the units that led Russias invasion in February, including paratrooper units considered to be the tip of the spear.

The video of the memorial for the 247th Guards Air Assault Regiment, which is based in Stavropol, Russia, showed a number of men whose deaths have already been confirmed through public accounts.

Another video from a nearby cemetery that is used by the unit, along with others, showed a long row of funeral wreaths.

The unit was reported to have fought in southern Ukraine near the city of Kherson, which has been held by the Russian army since late February. A Ukrainian counter-attack near Kherson has led to heavy losses for Russian troops there.

Last month, Russia reported the death of the commander of the regiment, Col Konstantin Zizevsky, one of at least eight Russian colonels to have been killed during the war in Ukraine.

BBC Russian, which has kept a confirmed count of the number of Russian losses, has said that 217 of its 1,083 confirmed Russian war dead were officers, from junior lieutenants to generals. Senior Russian officers often fight alongside their units because decisions must be confirmed by higher-ranking personnel.

Of the confirmed deaths in the military, more than 15% come from Russias elite airborne, or VDV, units. The high number of losses among those units has also been accompanied by reports of desertions.

According to the opposition Pskovskaya Guberniya newspaper, about 60 Russian paratroopers are facing disciplinary action after refusing to travel from Belarus, where many had been dispatched for what they believed were exercises, into Ukraine. Those reports have not been confirmed.

But Russian media have also reported on members of two national guards units that have refused to fight in Ukraine. And lawyers say that soldiers from more than 17 cities have requested aid to either avoid being sent to Ukraine or ask for help in returning home.

Theyre all reporting being pressured, facing the threat of criminal charges, being discharged, or having their documents withheld, wrote Pavel Chikov, head of the Agora international human rights group. For protection from a possible criminal investigation, please contact our lawyers.

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Russians start to see evidence of high military casualties in Ukraine - The Guardian

20:23Situation in Borodyanka 'much worse' than Bucha, Zelenskiy says

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Thursday that the situation in the town of Borodyanka was much worse than in nearby Bucha, where Russian forces suspected killings of civilians received global condemnation.

Officials believe more than 300 people were killed by Russian forces in Bucha, 35km northwest of the capital Kyiv, and around 50 of them were executed.

Moscow has denied targeting civilians and says images of bodies in Bucha were staged by the Ukrainian government to justify more sanctions against Moscow and derail peace negotiations.

The work on dismantling the debris in Borodyanka began... Its much worse there, Zelenskiy said in a late-night national address.

The town is about 25 km from Bucha.

Zelenskiy did not provide any further detail or evidence that Russia was responsible for civilian deaths in the town.

Earlier on Thursday, Ukraines prosecutor general, Iryna Venediktova, said 26 bodies had been found under two ruined buildings in Borodyanka.

She did not say if the authorities had established the cause of death, but accused Russian troops of carrying out airstrikes on the town, which is being searched by Ukrainian authorities after Russian troops occupying it withdrew.

Speaking in a televised briefing, Venediktova said:

Borodyanka is the worst in terms of destruction and in terms of the uncertainty about [the number of] victims.

On Tuesday, Venediktova said the number of victims in Borodyanka would be higher than anywhere else, but did not provide further details.

Updated at 20.50EDT

Thank you for following todays coverage of the war in Ukraine.

This liveblog will be closing but you can continue reading the latest developments on our latest liveblog below.

Before we launch our new liveblog, here is a comprehensive rundown of where the situation currently stands:

Russia has imposed sanctions on Australian and New Zealand citizens, including their prime ministers, the Russian foreign ministry announced.

Entry bans have been imposed on 228 Australian government members and lawmakers, including Prime Minister Scott Morrison, in response to sanctions from Canberra.

The ministry published a list of 228 Australian lawmakers and government members who were barred from entering Russia on Thursday.

It said Australia obediently follows the decisions of the West and has decided to sanction Russias top managers and almost all of its deputies.

In the near future, members of the Australian army, businesspeople, experts and members of the media who have contributed to the formation of negative attitudes towards Russia will also be included in the blacklist and announced.

And a total of 130 New Zealand citizens, including Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, Governor-General Cynthia Kiro and members of the government and parliament were also banned from Russia because of their unfriendly actions against Russia as a matter of reciprocity.

The ministry said the sanctions took effect Thursday.

Fox News reporter Benjamin Hall, who was injured in an attack outside Kyiv, has posted on Twitter about his injuries and paid tribute to his colleagues Sasha and Pierre who were killed.

Updated at 22.50EDT

The United States has blacklisted two Russian state-owned enterprises, United Shipbuilding Corp and the Alrosa diamond mining company, denying them access to the US financial system over Russias invasion of Ukraine, the Treasury Department said on Thursday.

Through these designations, Treasury is cutting off additional sources of support and revenue for the Government of the Russian Federation to wage its unprovoked war against Ukraine, the US officials said in a press release.

Australia has sent its first convoy of 20 refitted Bushmaster vehicles to Ukraine on aircraft C-17 Globemasters leaving Brisbane on Friday.

It is part of a $50m support package worth of military vehicles to the country.

The armoured vehicles have been repainted olive green with Ukraines flag stencilled on each side and the words United with Ukraine emblazoned in both English and Ukrainian in a pledge of solidarity.

Australia may be thousands of kilometres away but were standing side by side with Ukraine against this illegal invasion with arms, equipment, aid and even energy sources, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said.

Our Australian-designed and made Bushmasters are known around the world for their usefulness in a combat zone and they will help boost Ukraines defence against Russias unprovoked and illegal violence.

Boris Johnson is set to meet the German Chancellor as they look to discuss how to help European countries wean themselves off Russian gas following the attack on Ukraine.

The prime minister will host Olaf Scholz at Downing Street on Friday, with a press conference planned for the afternoon, PA Media reports.

Johnson is expected to offer assistance to Berlin, which is still heavily reliant on Russian gas, to reduce its dependence on Moscows energy exports in a bid to starve Vladimir Putins war machine of funds.

It comes after UK foreign secretary Liz Truss, following a meeting of Nato counterparts in Brussels on Thursday, said she hoped to see more countries commit to banning Russian energy imports.

The UK has pledged to end all imports of Russian coal and oil by the end of 2022, with gas to follow as soon as possible.

Germany has faced criticism from Ukraine and other European nations, including Poland, with claims it has been too slow to phase out Russian energy.

Robert Habeck, the German economy and energy minister, has announced plans to stop importing oil and coal from Russia this year, and gas by mid-2024.

Kyiv earlier called for more heavy weaponry from its western allies, warning that the battle for Donbas will remind Nato members of the second world war.

Either you help us now and Im speaking about days, not weeks or your help will come too late, and many people will die, Ukraines foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, told a meeting of his counterparts in the alliance in Brussels on Thursday.

Watch Kulebas address in the video below.

Microsoft Corp said it disrupted hacking attempts by Russian military spies aimed at breaking into Ukrainian, European Union, and American targets.

In a blog post, the tech firm said a group it nicknamed Strontium was using seven internet domains as part of an effort to spy on government bodies and think tanks in the EU and the United States, as well as Ukrainian institutions such as media organisations.

Microsoft did not identify any of the targets by name.

Strontium is Microsofts moniker for a group others often call Fancy Bear or APT28 - a hacking squad linked to Russias military intelligence agency.

The United States has sharply increased the number of Ukrainians admitted to the country at the Mexican border as more refugees fleeing the Russian invasion follow the same route.

The number of Ukrainians arriving at the US-Mexico border to seek asylum in the United States since Russias invasion of its neighbour has more than doubled in less than a week, officials said.

A government recreation centre in the Mexican border city of Tijuana grew to about 1,000 refugees on Thursday, according to city officials. A canopy under which children played soccer only two days earlier was packed with people in rows of chairs and lined with bunk beds, the Associated Press reports.

Tijuana has suddenly become a final stop for Ukrainians seeking refuge in the United States, where they are drawn by friends and families ready to host them and are convinced that the US will be a more suitable haven than Europe.

US President Joe Biden said late last month his country would receive up to 100,000 Ukrainian refugees.

British rock band Pink Floyd has released a new song to raise money for humanitarian relief in Ukraine, featuring the vocals of a Ukrainian singer who quit an international tour to fight for his country and was wounded.

The single Hey Hey, Rise Up - Pink Floyds first original new music in almost 30 years - was recorded last week and highlights singing by Andriy Khlyvnyuk from Ukrainian band Boombox.

Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour said he learned that Khlyvnyuk - with whom he had previously performed - left a US tour with Boombox and returned to Ukraine to join the Territorial Defence Forces.

Then I saw this incredible video on Instagram, where he stands in a square in Kyiv with this beautiful gold-domed church and sings in the silence of a city with no traffic or background noise because of the war, Gilmour said on Pink Floyds website.

It was a powerful moment that made me want to put it to music.

Gilmour said he spoke with Khlyvnyuk while he was in a hospital in Kyiv recovering from a mortar shrapnel injury.

I played him a little bit of the song down the phone line and he gave me his blessing. We both hope to do something together in person in the future, he said.

Gilmour said he had a Ukrainian daughter-in-law and grandchildren and he was feeling the fury and the frustration of the invasion of Ukraine by Russia.

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Ukraine braces for a renewed Russian offensive on its eastern front as it happened - The Guardian

Boris Johnson is congratulating himself on doing so much to help Ukraine, but Britain is like a doctor treating a patients symptoms after causing the infection in the first place. The weapons shipments are crucial, as are plasters and painkillers when someones unwell, but there is no sign yet that Downing Street recognises how to treat the underlying condition.

The Kremlin is solely to blame for the horror it is inflicting on the Ukrainians, but its ability to wage war derives from the wealth it has accumulated. And that is something we share responsibility for, and something we should address as urgently as we are providing Kyiv with missiles to destroy Russian armoured vehicles.

For far too long, Britain welcomed the Kremlins companies and oligarchs and allowed them to raise funds on our financial markets. Our lawyers defended their interests, our accountants filed their accounts and our shell companies protected their assets. Our professionals may have dropped their oligarch clients in the past six weeks, but the damage had already been done: the Russian state would have nothing like the wealth it has now, and would thus not be able to wage this war, without the assistance they provided. And does anyone really believe that, once the memories of Bucha, Kramatorsk and Mariupol have faded, the City wont sell its services to the Kremlin elite again?

If we wish to degrade the oligarchs influence and undermine Russias military in the long term, we need to stop them ever doing business in this country again.

There are two reasons why Britain has allowed Russian kleptocratic wealth to flow through the City of London in such vast quantities. The first is that we have cared only about the fees it generates, not about how it was earned.

The second reason is more complex, and lies in the nature of Vladimir Putins regime. The Kremlin controls everything in Russia, and it interchangeably uses whatever tools are available the military, the FSB, the economy, organised crime, embassies, the media either singly or in combination, for whatever task it wishes to address. This is fundamentally different to how the British state operates, and that has allowed the Russians to slip through the cracks in our system with ease: the threat is not purely criminal, so its not the polices responsibility; its not military, so the Ministry of Defence doesnt step up; its not run by spies, so our security services dont step in.

For far too long, the threat posed by Russia has always been for British officials somebody elses problem, and has thus never been adequately addressed. This is a shame, because there is one vulnerability in Putins system that the UK is perfectly placed to address. The Kremlins ability to move illicit wealth seamlessly through the offshore financial system, and therefore through London, underpins every aspect of its behaviour.

When British shell structures were used to hide the ownership of billions of pounds laundered out of Russia, the government did nothing about it, thanks to its failure to appreciate the security threat inherent in anonymous wealth pouring into our country. When Russian state companies raised capital in the City, British politicians did not recognise we were effectively funding the Kremlins war machine, and instead welcomed the business we were generating. When oligarchs bought up swathes of west London, we didnt consider that we were providing them with a stable home for their wealth, so they could build a looting machine at home, and instead welcomed all the stamp duty they were paying.

The foreign secretary, Liz Truss, has this week been lecturing the Europeans about buying so much oil and gas from the Russians. But by protecting and managing the Kremlin elites money, Britain has been at least as complicit as Germany in helping Putin build his aggressive regime.

To expose, investigate and block the Kremlins money, we need three things, all of which are easily achievable if the political will can be found: proper transparency of shell companies, so we know who owns what; robust regulation of professional enablers, so crooked lawyers and accountants can be prosecuted; generous funding of law enforcement, so we can confiscate suspicious wealth.

And those three policies should be coordinated by a fourth: a single individual who is responsible for tackling illicit finance, who can force agencies to take action and can confront politicians who drag their feet, and who can stop the Kremlins infiltration of our economy being somebody elses problem. We must take kleptocracy as seriously as we take terrorism, and that requires more than just an MP being named anti-corruption champion.

So far the government has relied on sanctions to block the oligarchs wealth, but sanctions do nothing to destroy the networks that moved that wealth in the first place. Taking more substantive action will mean enforcing greater regulation, which will undeniably cost us money, just like stopping any of the oligarchs companies from listing on the London Stock Exchange would have cost us money. But it will help protect our society from infiltration by kleptocratic wealth, undermine the Kremlins ability to threaten others and in the long term weaken Putins hold on power.

In the past, such policies have been blocked by the Treasury, which has prioritised maintaining the underregulation that it considers crucial to the competitiveness of the City over defending the integrity of our financial system. And new regulations will undoubtedly be unpopular with wealthy people who have for decades been using exactly the same tricks as the oligarchs to minimise their taxes and disguise their wealth.

The question now for government ministers is this: are they prepared to put their support for the Ukrainians ahead of the tax breaks and loopholes enjoyed by their friends, donors and in the case of Rishi Sunak wives? Because until they are, they wont really be helping the Ukrainians at all.

Oliver Bullough is the author of Butler to the World: How Britain Became the Servant of Tycoons, Tax Dodgers, Kleptocrats and Criminals

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Russia can only afford its war in Ukraine because Britain helped raise the cash - The Guardian

Aleksandra Makoviy said she isn't the only Ukrainian mother to write emergency contact info on their children since the war began. Aleksandra Makoviy hide caption

Aleksandra Makoviy said she isn't the only Ukrainian mother to write emergency contact info on their children since the war began.

Aleksandra Makoviy couldn't stop the violent trembling of her hands.

The sound of bombs raining down on nearby streets of Kyiv, on the first day of the war in Ukraine, made it almost impossible to steady a pen on her daughter's tiny, naked back and it was imperative to get the information down.

In the end, it was a messy scrawl: Vira Makovii, 10-11-19 her child's name and birthdate.

It was followed by two phone numbers, one belonging to "Mama," the other to "Papa."

"My hands were deeply shaking and that's why it's so horribly written," Makoviy told NPR in a phone interview.

Still, the message was clear enough that if the unthinkable happened, if somehow the petite 2 1/2-year-old were separated from Makoviy and her husband as the family tried to flee the capital city, the child could be reunited with them.

The photo of Vira's back was a haunting image that Makoviy eventually shared on Instagram, where nearly 29,000 people responded with messages of support.

Among them were people thanking her for the idea to do the same with their own children as the war has ravaged their country. Others were moved by what the photo offered a glimpse into what life is like for so many parents in Ukraine.

Makoviy said the idea came to her as she and her husband realized the roads out of Kyiv were too congested and they'd be better off remaining in their own apartment until the shelling subsided. Before that, she said she prepared note cards with the same sorts of details that she planned to pin to Vira's clothing or slip them in her pockets.

But then, Makoviy said, "I realized that if we get into danger, or she gets injured, it could be taken off of her. So that's why I decided to write the information about her on her skin."

Makoviy also wrote out this card with her and her husband's contact information and planned to pin to Vira's clothing. Aleksandra Makoviy hide caption

Makoviy also wrote out this card with her and her husband's contact information and planned to pin to Vira's clothing.

"We are a family of artists and she is used to playing with paint and markers ...so she thought we were playing," Makoviy explained.

Vira often asks Makoviy to draw on her hands and arms, and the 33-year-old mom happily complies with the girl's requests for bright suns and stars to be drawn on her bare skin.

So, when on the morning of Feb. 24, Makoviy stripped the girl down to her diapers and began scribbling on her back, it seemed like fun.

When it was over, Vira asked for a peek and Makoviy showed the toddler a photo she'd taken on her phone.

"And when she saw it, she said, ah, ABC!," Makoviy said.

In the end, the family sequestered themselves in the apartment for five days. That's how long it took for the roads to clear, according to Makoviy. During that time, she was a ball of nerves. The constant explosions and images of violence on television and social media, coupled with the uncertainty of what could happen next, were almost too much to bear.

"I couldn't sleep or even drink water ... I suffered no physical injuries but mentally, I think I have post traumatic disorder," she revealed.

Through it all, though, Vira remained unaware of the horrific situation, Makoviy said.

"I am glad she doesn't understand because she is so young," she noted, adding that if the child were a year or two older, she'd likely be scarred for life. "She feels the excitement, and that adults are sad and nervous, but she can't really understand why."

"I just want to let everyone know Vira and I are safe. We managed to cross the border, and now we're in the South of France," Makoviy wrote on Instagram April 5 along with this photo. Aleksandra Makoviy hide caption

"I just want to let everyone know Vira and I are safe. We managed to cross the border, and now we're in the South of France," Makoviy wrote on Instagram April 5 along with this photo.

Volunteers in Poland and Moldova helped the family get to the south of France, where they're currently living.

Touching on the public response to the Instagram posts, Makoviy said, "It is really painful that Ukrainian parents have to go through this."

Earlier this week, Makoviy posted another, much different picture of her daughter on Instagram.

In this image, Vira is wearing a pink "pre-owned dress" with a matching pink tutu and pink sneakers, Makoviy wrote. The girl is crouched down, a look of concentration on her face as she reaches out for a vase of bright yellow flowers.

Excerpt from:

A Ukrainian mom scribbled her contact info on her daughter's back as the war erupted - NPR

In the weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine and images of the devastation wrought there flooded the news, Hoan Ton-That, the chief executive of the facial recognition company Clearview AI, began thinking about how he could get involved.

He believed his companys technology could offer clarity in complex situations in the war.

I remember seeing videos of captured Russian soldiers and Russia claiming they were actors, Mr. Ton-That said. I thought if Ukrainians could use Clearview, they could get more information to verify their identities.

In early March, he reached out to people who might help him contact the Ukrainian government. One of Clearviews advisory board members, Lee Wolosky, a lawyer who has worked for the Biden administration, was meeting with Ukrainian officials and offered to deliver a message.

Mr. Ton-That drafted a letter explaining that his app can instantly identify someone just from a photo and that the police and federal agencies in the United States used it to solve crimes. That feature has brought Clearview scrutiny over concerns about privacy and questions about racism and other biases within artificial-intelligence systems.

The tool, which can identify a suspect caught on surveillance video, could be valuable to a country under attack, Mr. Ton-That wrote. He said the tool could identify people who might be spies, as well as deceased people, by comparing their faces against Clearviews database of 20 billion faces from the public web, including from Russian social sites such as VKontakte.

Mr. Ton-That decided to offer Clearviews services to Ukraine for free, as reported earlier by Reuters. Now, less than a month later, the New York-based Clearview has created more than 200 accounts for users at five Ukrainian government agencies, which have conducted more than 5,000 searches. Clearview has also translated its app into Ukrainian.

Its been an honor to help Ukraine, said Mr. Ton-That, who provided emails from officials from three agencies in Ukraine, confirming that they had used the tool. It has identified dead soldiers and prisoners of war, as well as travelers in the country, confirming the names on their official IDs. The fear of spies and saboteurs in the country has led to heightened paranoia.

According to one email, Ukraines national police obtained two photos of dead Russian soldiers, which have been viewed by The New York Times, on March 21. One dead man had identifying patches on his uniform, but the other did not, so the ministry ran his face through Clearviews app.

The app surfaced photos of a similar-looking man, a 33-year-old from Ulyanovsk who wore a paratrooper uniform and held a gun in his profile photos on Odnoklassniki, a Russian social media site. According to an official from the national police, attempts were made to contact the mans relatives in Russia to inform them of his death, but there was no response.

Identifying dead soldiers and notifying their families is part of a campaign, according to a Telegram post by the Ukrainian vice prime minister Mykhailo Fedorov, to break through to the Russian public the cost of the conflict and to dispel the myth of a special operation in which there are no conscripts and no one dies, he wrote.

Images from conflict zones, of slaughtered civilians and soldiers left behind on city streets turned battlefields, have become more widely and instantaneously available in the social media era. President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine has shown graphic images of attacks on his country to world leaders in making his case for more international aid. But beyond conveying a visceral sense of war, those kinds of images can now offer something else: a chance for facial recognition technology to play a significant role.

Critics warn, however, that the tech companies could be taking advantage of a crisis to expand with little privacy oversight, and that any mistakes made by the software or those using it could have dire consequences in a war zone.

Evan Greer, a deputy director for the digital rights group Fight for the Future, is opposed to any use of facial recognition technology, and said she believed that it should be banned worldwide because governments had used it to persecute minority groups and suppress dissent. Russia and China, among others, have deployed advanced facial recognition in cameras in cities.

War zones are often used as testing grounds not just for weapons but surveillance tools that are later deployed on civilian populations or used for law enforcement or crowd control purposes, Ms. Greer said. Companies like Clearview are eager to exploit the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine to normalize the use of their harmful and invasive software.

Clearview is facing several lawsuits in the United States, and its use of peoples photos without their consent has been declared illegal in Canada, Britain, France, Australia and Italy. It faces fines in Britain and Italy.

April 9, 2022, 2:20 a.m. ET

Ms. Greer added: We already know that authoritarian states like Russia use facial recognition surveillance to crack down on protests and dissent. Expanding the use of facial recognition doesnt hurt authoritarians like Putin it helps them.

Facial recognition has advanced in power and accuracy in recent years, and is becoming more accessible to the public.

While Clearview AI says it makes its database available only to law enforcement, other facial recognition services that search the web for matches, including PimEyes and FindClone, are available to anyone willing to pay for them. PimEyes will surface public photos on the internet, while FindClone searches photos scraped from the Russian social media site VKontakte.

Facial recognition vendors are choosing sides in the conflict. Giorgi Gobronidze, a professor in Tbilisi, Georgia, who bought PimEyes in December, said he had barred Russia from using the site after the invasion started, citing concerns it would be used to identify Ukrainians.

No Russian customers are allowed to use the service now, Mr. Gobronidze said. We dont want our service to be used for war crimes.

Groups like Bellingcat, the Dutch investigative site, have used facial recognition sites for reports on the conflict and on Russias military operations.

Missile attack. A missile strike at a crowded train station in eastern Ukraine killed at least 50 and wounded nearly 100, according to Ukrainian officials, who blamed Russia for hitting a major evacuation point for those trying to flee before an expected stepped-up offensive.

In the city of Mariupol. More than 5,000 people have died in the southeastern citysince the start of the war, according to the citys mayor. President Volodymyr Zelensky warned that Russia could try to stage scenes to make it look as though Ukrainian forces had killed civilians.

Aric Toler, research director at Bellingcat, said his preferred face search engine was FindClone. He described a three-hour surveillance video that surfaced this week, said to be from a courier service in Belarus, showing men in military uniforms packing up materials, including TVs, car batteries and an electric scooter, for shipping.

Mr. Toler said FindClone allowed him to identify several of the men as Russian soldiers sending loot to their homes from Ukraine.

As Ukraine and Russia fight an information war over what motivated the invasion and how it is going, journalists like Mr. Toler sometimes play the role of arbiter for their audiences.

Mr. Federov, Ukraines deputy prime minister, tweeted a still from the same surveillance tape, of one of the soldiers at the courier service counter. Mr. Federov claimed the man had been identified as an officer of Russian special forces who had committed atrocities in Bucha and was sending all the stolen items to his family.

Mr. Federov added, We will find every killer.

The technology has potential beyond identifying casualties or tracking certain units. Peter Singer, a security scholar at New America, a think tank in Washington, said the increasing availability of data about people and their movements would make it easier to track down individuals responsible for war crimes. But it could also make it hard for civilians to lie low in tense environments.

Ukraine is the first major conflict that weve seen the use of facial recognition technology in such scale, but it is far from the last, Mr. Singer said. It will be increasingly hard for future warriors to keep their identity secret, just as for regular civilians walking down your own city streets.

In a world of more and more data being gathered, everyone leaves a trail of dots that can be connected, he added.

That trail is not just online. Drone footage, satellite images, and photos and videos captured by people in Ukraine are all playing a role in discerning what is happening there.

Mr. Toler of Bellingcat said the technology was not perfect. Its easy to misfire that goes without saying, he said. But people are more right than wrong with this. They have figured out how to corroborate identifications.

Faces can look similar, so secondary information, in the form of an identifying mark, a tattoo or clothing, is important to confirm a match. Whether that will happen in a tense, wartime situation is an open question.

Mr. Toler is not sure how much longer he will have access to his preferred facial recognition tool. Because FindClone is based in Russia, it has been subject to sanctions, he said.

I still have about 30 days left on my service, so Im desperately trying to add more juice to my account, Mr. Toler said. I have a friend in Kyrgyzstan. Im trying to use her bank card to re-up my account.

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How Facial Recognition Is Being Used in the Ukraine War - The New York Times

Today, were sharing more about cyberattacks weve seen from a Russian nation-state actor targeting Ukraine and steps weve taken to disrupt it.

We recently observed attacks targeting Ukrainian entities from Strontium, a Russian GRU-connected actor we have tracked for years. This week, we were able to disrupt some of Strontiums attacks on targets in Ukraine. On Wednesday April 6th, we obtained a court order authorizing us to take control of seven internet domains Strontium was using to conduct these attacks. We have since re-directed these domains to a sinkhole controlled by Microsoft, enabling us to mitigate Strontiums current use of these domains and enable victim notifications.

Strontium was using this infrastructure to target Ukrainian institutions including media organizations. It was also targeting government institutions and think tanks in the United States and the European Union involved in foreign policy. We believe Strontium was attempting to establish long-term access to the systems of its targets, provide tactical support for the physical invasion and exfiltrate sensitive information. We have notified Ukraines government about the activity we detected and the action weve taken.

This disruption is part of an ongoing long-term investment, started in 2016, to take legal and technical action to seize infrastructure being used by Strontium. We have established a legal process that enables us to obtain rapid court decisions for this work. Prior to this week, we had taken action through this process 15 times to seize control of more than 100 Strontium controlled domains.

The Strontium attacks are just a small part of the activity we have seen in Ukraine. Before the Russian invasion, our teams began working around the clock to help organizations in Ukraine, including government agencies, defend against an onslaught of cyberwarfare that has escalated since the invasion began and has continued relentlessly. Since then, we have observed nearly all of Russias nation-state actors engaged in the ongoing full-scale offensive against Ukraines government and critical infrastructure, and we continue to work closely with government and organizations of all kinds in Ukraine to help them defend against this onslaught. In the coming weeks we expect to provide a more comprehensive look at the scope of the cyberwar in Ukraine.

Tags: cyberattacks, cybersecurity, cyberwar, Russia, strontium, Ukraine

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Disrupting cyberattacks targeting Ukraine - Microsoft On the Issues - Microsoft

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While a steady stream of disturbing news continues to come from Ukraine, new works of fiction highlight the ways in which lives there have been transformed by conflict. On this weeks podcast, the critic Jennifer Wilson talks about two books, including the story collection Lucky Breaks, by Yevgenia Belorusets, translated by Eugene Ostashevsky.

Belorusets has been compared to Gogol in these stories, Wilson says. Theres a certain kind of supernatural quality to them. I think anyone looking to these books for a play-by-play of the conflict is going to be disappointed for that reason, but I think delighted in other ways.

Ben McGrath visits the podcast to talk about his new book, Riverman: An American Odyssey, which tells the story of Dick Conant, a troubled and charismatic man who disappeared while on a canoe trip from New York to Florida. Conant was in his 60s when McGrath met him, and had spent many years questing on various waterways.

What he learned was that there wasnt really anything he was going to find out about himself that was going to improve things, and that the secret to finding happiness was to turn his lens outward, McGrath says. Rather than, in the Thoreauvian model, retreating to Walden Pond and staring into his reflection, he decided to go out into the world and to keep seeing new places and meeting new people; and by doing that, keep himself sufficiently occupied that he didnt have to struggle too much with worrying about who he was and what his own problems were.

Also on this weeks episode, Elizabeth Harris has news from the literary world; and Lauren Christensen and MJ Franklin talk about what theyve been reading. John Williams is the host.

Here are the books discussed in this weeks What Were Reading:

We would love to hear your thoughts about this episode, and about the Book Reviews podcast in general. You can send them to books@nytimes.com.

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Fiction About Lives in Ukraine - The New York Times

Pierre Crom/Getty Images News

Here are the latest headlines in the Russia-Ukraine crisis:

Fighting intensifies in Mariupol

"There can be no question of surrendering or assembling weapons," Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk told Ukrainska Pravda. "We have already informed the Russian side about this." Instead, the country said Moscow should let residents leave the besieged city in southern Ukraine and deliver humanitarian aid to those who want to stay. The fall of Mariupol would mark a battlefield advance for the Russians, who are largely stalled outside major cities after more than three weeks of fighting.

Going hypersonic

With Russia claiming to have deployed hypersonic missiles against targets in Ukraine over the weekend - marking the weapon's first use in combat - the U.S. is rushing the development of its own hypersonic arsenal. General Dynamics subsidiary Bath Iron Works will begin engineering and design work on changes necessary to install the weapon system on three Zumwalt-class destroyers in fiscal year 2023. Current hypersonic use by Russia is not a "game changer," cautions U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. "The reason that [Vladimir Putin] is resorting to using these types of weapons is because he's trying to reestablish some momentum."

EU oil embargo?

The White House has announced President Biden will visit Poland as part of his European trip this week for talks with allies about the war in Ukraine. Ahead of the meeting, the European Union is considering whether to impose an oil embargo on Russia. The decision could prompt Moscow to close flows on the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, which help provide the 27-country EU with 40% of its natural gas needs.

Dear readers: We recognize that politics often intersects with the financial news of the day, so we invite you to click here to join the separate political discussion.

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Ukraine War Update: Refusing to surrender Mariupol to ...

Ukraine is the largest country that is entirely within Europe. The country sits on the southwestern part of the Russian Plain and has a largely low terrain. The average elevation of the land is only 574 ft (175 m).

As observed on the physical map of Ukraine above, about 5% of the country is mountainous. The northern reaches of the Carpathian Mountains stretch across western Ukraine. The country's highest point is located there; Hoverla Mountain, at 2061 m (6762 ft) tall. It has been marked on the map above by a yellow upright triangle.

As can be seen on the map above, the southern lowland of Ukraine continues into the Crimean Peninsula, a peninsula jutting into the sea from southern Ukraine via the Perekop Isthmus. It is a disputed territory.

The Crimean Mountains front the southern edges of the Crimean Peninsula, and some lower, heavily-eroded mountains extend intoRussiajust north of the Sea of Azov.

Much of central Ukraine is covered by plateaus and fertile plains (steppes), somewhat hilly areas of grasslands and shrublands.

The Black Sea Coastal Lowlands cover the southern edges of the country.

Ukraine is bordered by the waters of the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov.

Major rivers include the Desna, Dnieper, Dniester, Donets and the Southern Bug. Numerous waterfalls are found in both the Carpathian and Crimean Mountains.

The Dnieper River, one of the major rivers of Europe (fourth by length) flows from Russia, through Belarus and Ukraine, to the Black Sea. The river's total length is 2,285 km (1,420 mi).

Ukraine is divided into 24 provinces (oblast), 1 autonomous republic (avtonomna respublika) and 2 municipalities (mista). In alphabetical order, these provinces are: Cherkasy, Chernihiv, Chernivtsi, Dnipropetrovsk (Dnipro), Donetsk, Ivano-Frankivsk, Kharkiv, Kherson, Khmelnytskyy, Kirovohrad (Kropyvnytskyy), Kyiv, Luhansk, Lviv, Mykolayiv, Odesa, Poltava, Rivne, Sumy, Ternopil, Vinnytsya, Volyn (LutsK), Zakarpattya (Uzhhorod), Zaporizhzhya and Zhytomyr. Crimea or Avtonomna Respublika Krym (Simferopol) is an autonomous republic. Kyiv (Kiev) and Sevastopol are two municipalities of special status. The 24 oblasts and Crimea are further subdivided into 136 raions (district) and city municipalities.

With an area of 603,628 sq. km (which also includes the area covered by the Crimean Peninsula), Ukraine is the 2nd largest country by area in Europe and the 46th largest country in the world. With a population over 42 million people, Ukraine is the 7th/8th most populous county in Europe and the 32nd most populous country in the world. Located in the north-central part of the country, along the Dnieper River is Kiev (Kyiv) the capital and the most populous city of Ukraine. Kiev is the chief cultural and industrial center of Eastern Europe.

Ukraine is an Eastern European country. It is situated both in the Northern and Eastern hemispheres of the earth. Ukraine is bordered by 7 European Nations: by Belarus in the north; by Hungary, Slovakia and Poland in the west; by Moldova and Romania in the southwest; and by Russia in the east and northeast. It is bounded by the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov in the south. The Autonomous Republic of Crimea borders Ukraine to the south.

Ukraine Bordering Countries: Russia, Hungary, Romania, Moldova, Slovakia, Belarus, Poland.

Regional Maps: Map of Europe

The above blank outline map is of Ukraine, a country in eastern Europe. The map can be downloaded, printed and used for education work or for coloring.

The above map represents Ukraine, a country in Eastern Europe.

This page was last updated on February 24, 2021

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Ukraine Maps & Facts - World Atlas

Ukraines president has warned Russians that continuing the invasion would exact a toll for generations after tens of thousands attended a nationalist event to hear a speech by President Vladimir Putin.

The remarks by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Saturday came after a mass rally was held in support of Russian forces in Moscow the previous night.

Noting the 200,000 people reported to have attended the rally was similar to the number of Russian forces deployed to Ukraine, Zelenskyy said Fridays event in Moscow illustrated the high stakes of the largest ground conflict in Europe since World War II.

Picture for yourself that in that stadium in Moscow there are 14,000 dead bodies and tens of thousands more injured and maimed, the Ukrainian leader said.Those are the Russian costs throughout the invasion.

Putin lavished praise on his countrys military forces during Fridays flag-waving rally, which took place on the anniversary of Russias 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine. The event included patriotic songs such as Made in the USSR, with the opening lines Ukraine and Crimea, Belarus and Moldova, its all my country.

We have not had unity like this for a long time, Putin told the cheering crowd.

Taking to the stage where a sign read For a world without Nazism, he railed against his foes in Ukraine with a claim they are neo-Nazis and insisted his actions were necessary to prevent genocide.

The rally took place as Russia has faced heavier-than-expected losses on the battlefield and increasingly authoritarian rule at home. Russian police have detained thousands of antiwar protesters.

Fighting raged on multiple fronts in Ukraine more than three weeks after Russias February 24 invasion.

The northwest Kyiv suburbs of Bucha, Hostomel, Irpin and Moshchun were under fire on Saturday, the Kyiv regional administration reported. The city of Slavutich, 165km (103 miles) north of the capital, was completely isolated, the administration said.

In the besieged port city of Mariupol, the site of some of the wars greatest suffering, Ukrainian and Russian forces battled over the Azovstal steel plant, one of the biggest in Europe, Vadym Denysenko, adviser to Ukraines interior minister, said on Saturday.

Ukrainian and Russian officials agreed to establish 10 humanitarian corridors for bringing aid in and residents out one from Mariupol and several around Kyiv and in the eastern Luhansk region, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said.

She also announced plans to deliver humanitarian aid to the southern city of Kherson, which was seized by Russian forces.

In his nightly video address, Zelenskyy said Russian forces were blockading the largest cities with the goal of creating such miserable conditions that Ukrainians will surrender. But he warned Russia would pay the ultimate price.

The time has come to restore territorial integrity and justice for Ukraine. Otherwise, Russias costs will be so high that you will not be able to rise again for several generations, he said.

Vladimir Medinsky, who has led Russian negotiators in several rounds of talks with Ukraine, said on Friday the two sides have moved closer to an agreement on the issue of Ukraine dropping its bid to join NATO and adopting a neutral status.

In remarks carried by Russian media, he said the sides are now halfway on issues regarding the demilitarisation of Ukraine.

However, Mikhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Zelenskyy, alleged that Moscows characterisation was intended to provoke tension in the media.

Our positions are unchanged. Ceasefire, withdrawal of troops & strong security guarantees with concrete formulas, he tweeted.

Britains foreign minister accused Putin of using the talks as a smokescreen while his forces regroup. We dont see any serious withdrawal of Russian troops or any serious proposals on the table, Foreign Secretary Liz Truss told The Times newspaper.

In a phone call with Turkeys President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Putin laid out plans for ending the war, according to the Turkish presidential spokesman, Ibrahim Kalin.

President Putin thinks the positions on the Donbas and Crimea are not close enough to meet President Zelenskyy. What we need is a strategic-level meeting between the two leaders. There seems to be growing consensus We are hoping there will be more convergence on these issues, and this meeting will take place sooner than later, because we all want this war to come to an end, Kalin told Al Jazeera.

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, during a Saturday visit to NATO ally Bulgaria, said the Russian invasion had stalled on a number of fronts but the United States had not yet seen signs that Putin was deploying additional forces.

Major General Oleksandr Pavlyuk, who is leading the defence of the region around Kyiv, said his forces are well-positioned to defend the city.

We will never give up. We will fight until the end. To the last breath and to the last bullet, said Pavlyuk.

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Ukraines leader warns war will cost Russia for generations - Al Jazeera English