A Russian court in Rostov-on-Don sentenced 61-year-old Ukrainian Andrii Hulak to five years and four months in a penal colony over alleged service in Ukraine’s Azov brigade, Mediazona reported on 17 August 2026. The court gave no details of when he allegedly served in Azov, what role he supposedly held, or any specific act Hulak was accused of committing.

Russia declared Azov a “terrorist organization” in August 2022 and has since prosecuted Ukrainians it claims served in or were connected to the brigade. Mediazona says Russian courts have treated an alleged connection to units such as Azov as enough to bring charges.

Azov is a Ukrainian National Guard brigade that became a symbol of Ukrainian resistance during the defense of Mariupol. The military unit has since become a primary target of Russian propaganda campaigns aimed at defaming Ukraine.

Hulak’s detention date and location remain unknown

The human rights group Memorial identified the charge as Part 2 of Article 205.4 of Russia’s Criminal Code, which covers participation in a “terrorist group.”

Hulak was born in Prymorske, Donetsk Oblast, and lived in Russian-occupied Urzuf near Mariupol before his detention, Mediazona reported. Memorial says Russia added him to its state register of “extremists and terrorists” on 21 October 2025 and lists him as a political prisoner.

His detention date and current location remain unknown.

Russia prosecutes Ukrainians in occupied territories

Hulak’s case is part of a broader pattern of Russian prosecutions of Ukrainians from occupied territories, including civilians accused of supporting Kyiv and service members prosecuted over their military affiliations.

In occupied Crimea, rights monitors documented 520 Ukrainians facing politically motivated criminal charges by April 2026—more than twice the number recorded when the full-scale invasion began. Of those, 351 were in pre-trial detention or serving sentences.

Outside Crimea, a Russian-installed court in occupied Donetsk sentenced a 17-year-old to six and a half years for allegedly sharing military information with Ukraine’s Security Service. In occupied Zaporizhzhia Oblast, a Russian court gave two women from Enerhodar 14-year sentences over alleged donations of $120 and $57 to Ukrainian forces.

A dog was caught in mesh beside a frontline road and could not free itself. Ukrainian soldiers stopped their vehicle, cut away the netting, and released it, as footage Ukrainian serviceman Denys Lysak posted on 10 August 2026 shows.

The netting is meant to shield traffic from Russian FPV drones, but it can also trap animals left in the combat zone. The roadside rescue reflects how Russia's war against Ukraine has adversely impacted animals throughout Ukraine, while also highlighting a familiar relationship along Ukraine’s front, where soldiers feed, shelter, and sometimes take in the animals they encounter.

Lysak wrote that animals left without owners suffer greatly in areas affected by fighting. Ukrainian troops try to feed, evacuate, or shelter them, he said. Many units have taken in several rescued cats and dogs.

“Unfortunately, you can’t help all of them, but we try,” Lysak said.

The animals Ukrainian troops find at the front

Across Ukraine, animals are caught in the crossfire—injured, stranded, or driven from their habitats. Sometimes Ukrainian troops reach them in time, as they did during the Special Operations Forces' (SSO) “Operation Bambi.”

Rangers from the 6th Separate Special Operations Regiment found a frightened fawn while clearing a Russian position, according to footage the SSO released on 15 August. The video shows the animal nestled against one soldier as the unit moved out.

Some animals remain with the units that find them. Euromaidan Press reported in 2022 on Max, a Belgian shepherd abandoned by a Russian National Guard unit in Mykolaiv Oblast. A villager sheltered him before handing him to Ukraine’s National Guard, where handlers began teaching the former Russian service dog to follow commands in Ukrainian.

The fawn’s destination remains unknown. The SSO said only that it had been evacuated from the danger zone. Kharkiv volunteers had evacuated 18,800 animals by October 2024, but only around one-fifth had been reunited with their owners.

Russia's assault on Ukraine's ecosystem

Russia’s war has also affected wildlife beyond the trenches. Marine biologist Ivan Rusev estimated that more than 100,000 Black Sea dolphins have died since 2022, with sonar, underwater blasts, mines, and pollution among the suspected causes.

Russia’s destruction of the Kakhovka Dam dealt another blow. The floodwaters swept through areas holding 70% of the world’s Nordmann’s birch mice and half its sandy blind mole-rats, while killing tens of thousands of nesting birds.

Fedir's four and a half years compress a shift the Ukrainian military has been living through since the invasion. Ukraine's forces have moved from Soviet-era systems, through Western precision weapons, to a homegrown drone war that now shapes the front line more than any single piece of hardware. Soldiers have had to relearn their job every year, mastering whatever technology arrives next, because the side that adapts faster survives. Fedir's story shows how fast that reinvention has come, and what it costs the people carrying it out.

"We give battle, boys — this is war," battalion commander Mykhailo Myronenko told the men. Fedir, a former construction worker, was on combat duty with a Lviv air defense brigade, and his job was diesel: keeping the generators running so the S-300 launchers never lost power. On the busiest days, he says, the unit fired eight to ten times.

In 2024, the war upgraded around him. He retrained on the IRIS-T SLS, a German air defense system, and moved from generators to the launch itself. "Three missiles. Three targets down," he says of his first launches on Western hardware.

"I was standing in snow mixed with mud, and I understood I was really useful to my Ukraine," said Fedir.

Then he left. The IRIS-T sits well back from the front, and Fedir gave it up to fly drones, because he wanted to see the results of his work up close, through his own camera rather than on someone else's screen. He flew his first missions in Sumy Oblast, moving onto position in the dark with the headlights off. Through the camera, he saw his first Russian soldier walking a trench.

Drone operators are the eyes of the front, and among the most hunted people on it for exactly that reason. The task that matters most, he says, comes after the flight: not bringing a "tail" home, not letting an enemy drone track the path back to your shelter. One day, he says, it went wrong. A Russian FPV drone found their group, a comrade made cover shouting "FPV," and the blast was followed by artillery meant to finish them off. Fedir took a serious concussion, spent a few days in a hospital, and went back. "I was desperate to return. Because this is my war," he said.

The callsign came by chance, from the work. When the jamming is heaviest, and he is fighting to hold the link to his drone against Russian electronic warfare, he starts to move at the controls, a small involuntary dance. His comrades named him Dancer.

His rotation has ended, and he could go back to the IRIS-T. He has chosen to stay on the zero line. After the war, he says, he wants the ordinary things: a family, and the peace to build again.

Russian forces likely executed another Ukrainian prisoner of war (POW), Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets said on July 1, referring to a recent video that appears to show the captive tied to a motorcycle and dragged along a road.

The alleged execution adds to growing evidence that Russian forces are systematically violating the Geneva Conventions by killing Ukrainian captives.

"A video is circulating on social media showing a man being tied to a motorcycle and dragged along the road," Lubinets said in a statement.

"It is a clear act of demonstrative cruelty and yet another war crime by the Russian Federation."

Lubinets said he has sent official letters regarding the suspected war crime to the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

"Russia is acting as a terrorist state. And it must be held fairly accountable for every crime," he added.

Ukraine's military intelligence agency (HUR) alone reported in May that it had documented more than 150 cases of Ukrainian soldiers being executed after surrendering to Russian forces. Officials noted that these were only the confirmed incidents, and the real number is likely higher.

HUR and other agencies say such executions are not isolated but part of a broader, deliberate policy directed by Russia's military leadership. Multiple intelligence reports suggest that Russian soldiers have received explicit orders to kill prisoners of war.

The United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine confirmed in March growing numbers of incidents in which Russian forces killed or maimed surrendering Ukrainian troops.

The commission cited testimony from Russian deserters who said they were instructed not to take prisoners but to shoot them on sight.

Earlier this year, the U.N. Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine reported a sharp increase in POW executions, documenting 79 killings across 24 incidents since August 2024. In many cases, the victims were unarmed or wounded, and some were killed in groups.

Ukraine’s new interceptor UAVs are starting to knock Russia’s long-range Shahed drones out of the sky

Russia’s Shahed drone swarms are pummeling Ukraine on a nightly basis, inflicting ever more death and destruction in cities that had managed to carve out some sense of normalcy amid wartime. Civilian alarm has grown. With traditional air defense stockpiles running low, the government is banking on newly created

The Kyiv IndependentKollen Post

A Russian military court has convicted 184 Ukrainian prisoners of war (POWs) captured in Kursk Oblast of acts of terrorism, Mediazona reported on June 25.

Ukraine first launched a surprise offensive into Russia's Kursk Oblast in August 2024. Ukrainian officials have said the incursion forced Russia to move resources away from its offensives in Eastern Ukraine.

Russia's military prosecutors office convicts Ukrainian POWs captured in Kursk Oblast on a regular basis, independent Russian outlet Mediazona reported.

The POWs captured in Kursk were charged with carrying out a grave terrorist act by a group of individuals, as outlined by the Russian Criminal Code.

Junior Lieutenant Yevhen Hoch was convicted of allegedly carrying out an act of terrorism by taking part in Ukraine's Kursk Oblast incursion.

Russia has waged its war against Ukraine since 2014 and initiated a full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Russian authorities accused Hoch of interfering with civilian evacuations for three weeks amid Ukraine's Kursk offensive and for "intimidating them by openly carrying and using combat weapons."

Russia regularly convicts people of politically motivated charges in an effort to silence opposition to its war against Ukraine.

The Russian 2nd Western District Military Court has carried out the sentences against the 184 Ukrainian POWs since the beginning of the year.

Moscow has gone after journalists in Ukraine's Russian-occupied territories. Ukrainian Journalist Viktoriia Roshchyna disappeared in August 2023 and died after being tortured in Russian captivity. Roschyna's body was returned to Ukraine in February with missing organs.

Putin insists the Russian economy is fine, but Kremlin officials say otherwise

In a rare public sign that all is not well in Russia, two high-ranking Moscow officials last week issued separate warnings about the state of the country’s economy. Russian Central Bank Governor Elvira Nabiullina and Economy Minister Maxim Reshetnikov both highlighted that amid the Kremlin’s full-scale war against Ukraine, the tools Moscow once relied on to maintain wartime growth are nearly exhausted. Almost immediately, Russian President Vladimir Putin on June 20 dismissed the concerns, clai

The Kyiv IndependentTim Zadorozhnyy

Ukrainian actor Yuriy Felipenko, who worked with Kyiv Independent reporters, was killed at the frontline, his wife Kateryna Motrych wrote on social media on June 15.

Felipenko was well known for his role in the 2024 television series “A Promise to God” before joining the Achilles Strike Drone Battalion, then part of Ukraine’s 92nd Assault Brigade, in April 2024.

Having since been upgraded to a separate regiment and one of the founding units of the Line of Drones initiative, Achilles is one of the most effective drone units in the country.

“Yura was killed. Yura was, without exaggeration, my world, my soul, my light. It is impossible to convey this loss. I feel like I have been destroyed,” Motrych wrote on her Instagram page, accompanied by a photo of Felipenko.

Felipenko's drone team was featured in a report by the Kyiv Independent on Ukraine's use of first-person view (FPV) drones against Russian infantry assaults in December 2024 as they defended the area around Kupiansk in Kharkiv Oblast.

Details of Felipenko’s funeral will be announced later, Motrych said.

Russia has killed numerous actors, artists, and writers since the start of the full-scale invasion. Many have fallen on the battlefield while others were killed during attacks on civilian areas.

Ukrainian opera tenor and volunteer killed in Sumy Oblast

Vladyslav Horai, a renowned tenor and soloist of the Odesa National Opera, was killed in Ukraine’s northeastern Sumy Oblast while on a volunteer mission, the opera house reported on June 8.

The Kyiv IndependentOlena Goncharova