Russia’s Defense Ministry claims that Russian troops have fought their way into the center of a strategically important eastern Ukraine town and raised the Russian flag there after a monthslong battle.

With the snappy casualness of a “day in the life” vlog, Pavel “Pasha” Talankin, a charismatic Russian teacher who serves as planner and videographer for all of his school’s events, introduces his peculiar small town: Karabash.

With Russia wearing down Ukraine’s stretched forces and U.S. President Donald Trump pressuring the two sides to end their nearly 3-year-old war, Kyiv and some of its European allies are discussing how that might be achieved in a way that would guarantee Ukraine’s future security.

Russia has lost about twice as many men to death and serious injury as Ukraine. But the trends favor the Kremlin.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in remarks published on Friday that he saw no objective signs that Ukraine or the West were ready for peace talks despite all their increasingly loud statements about the need for such talks.

Russia on Thursday reprimanded the head of the U.N. children's agency UNICEF for not providing a "weighty argument for her refusal" to brief the Security Council on children in Gaza - a meeting requested by Russia.

Russia has had battlefield momentum but its recent territorial gains have been at the expense of high personnel losses.

Donald Trump’s first week in office was a whirlwind: executive orders on everything from closing the border to ending federal Diversity, Equity and Inclusion mandates.

Russia’s aggression in Ukraine has been a splitting point between Trump and the more hawkish Republican Senate conference. Last year, Trump blew up a deal to swap additional provisions for border security in exchange for aid to Israel and Ukraine. Aid to Ukraine ultimately passed without additional border security spending.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says the U.S. has not stopped military aid to Ukraine after newly sworn in U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced he would pause foreign aid grants for 9