As his invasion of Ukraine enters its second year, Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed without providing evidence that the West is trying to dismantle Russia and establish control over its constituent parts, and he suggested that his actions are motivated by defensive interests. “They have one goal: to scatter the former Soviet Union and its main part, the Russian Federation,” Putin said of the West in a television interview.
Nine years after Russia illegally annexed Crimea, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky vowed to return the peninsula to Ukrainian control. “It is logical that by liberating Crimea, we will put a historic end to any attempts by Russia to ruin the lives of Ukrainians,” he said in his nightly address.
A U.S. State Department spokesman said Sunday that Crimea belongs to Ukraine. The same day, however, the U.S. national security adviser declined to say whether the United States would support Ukraine retaking the peninsula militarily.
Here’s the latest on the war and its ripple effects across the globe.
Discreetly, and at peril, Russian volunteers help Ukrainian refugees: A secret, loosely connected network of volunteers is helping Ukrainians in Russia flee to Europe. But the Kremlin’s special services are cracking down, Mary Ilyushina and Ksenia Ivanova report.
“In our country, any volunteer organization or any kind of attempt to self-organize is like a red rag for a bull,” said a Ukrainian-born volunteer in her late 50s who has lived in Russia for most of her life and has a Russian passport. She was at a stop along the snowy highway on her way to bring nine Ukrainians to the Finnish border from St. Petersburg.
