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Ukraine’s drones are eroding Putin’s vision for Crimea

Russian-installed authorities in Crimea have halted fuel distribution in vacation season as Ukraine isolates the peninsula. June 23, 2026 at 6:35 a.m. 7 min A gas station in Saki, Crimea, on Monday, closed amid a fuel crisis. (Alexey Pavlishak/Reuters) By Mary Ilyushina, David L. Stern and Natalia Abbakumova A middle-aged couple from Moscow and their teenage son began their summer vacation to the Black Sea beaches of Crimea this month by filling five-gallon gasoline canisters and stocking up on food — as if headed to a war zone. Because in many ways they were. Idealized as a land of Soviet-era youth camps and resorts, Crimea — the Ukrainian peninsula that Russia invaded and annexed illegally in 2014 — has become President Vladimir Putin’s prized possession, a symbol of his vision of Russia restored to superpower heights and a key logistics hub for his military operations across southeast Ukraine. Well into the fifth year of the war, however, that vision seems increasingly tenuous. [ j...
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Thousands Are Fleeing Ukraine’s Donbas Strongholds as Russia Pushes Closer

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Evacuees from Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, in the Donetsk region of Ukraine, waited to be processed at a transit hub in Lozova, Ukraine, last month. Finbarr O’Reilly for The New York Times While Kyiv’s fortunes have brightened in other ways in the war, Moscow’s forces are raining bombs and drones on “fortress belt” cities like Sloviansk and Kramatorsk. By Cassandra Vinograd and Oleksandr Chubko   Reporting from Kramatorsk and Sloviansk in Ukraine  ’s Donetsk region, and from the Kharkiv region . The New York Times , June 22, 2026 Updated 11:57 a.m. ET see also BBC Nadiya Trofimchuk, 79, had lived in the eastern Ukrainian city of Sloviansk her whole life and never thought about leaving, even as war raged for years not 20 miles away. Yet there she was one recent morning at a makeshift evacuation center, sitting next to a small folding table with water and tea but touching neither, just focused on leaving. “We had a strike,” she explained, eyebrows raised over purple and gold cat-ey...
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Bitter Historical Feud Threatens Ukraine-Poland Alliance

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President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine signed a decree honoring World War II partisan fighters that has inflamed tensions with Warsaw. President Karol Nawrocki of Poland and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine in December in Warsaw. Credit... Omar Marques/Getty Images By Maria Varenikova Reporting from Kyiv, Ukraine June 21, 2026   Updated 2:07 p.m. ET;  see also  The Washington Post ,"Polish president strips Zelensky of honor after special forces unit’s renaming" (June 20) The two neighbors wholeheartedly support allying with the West and cooperating closely on military affairs, and are fully in agreement today in opposing Russian expansionism. But history gets in the way. Tensions between Poland and Ukraine escalated sharply on Saturday over a rancorous dispute over the commemoration of World War II-era figures. Poland’s president, Karol Nawrocki, said he would revoke his country’s highest state award, which was given to President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukrain...
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