Ukraine

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The Ukrainian government has taken the main cathedral of the revered historic monastery from the church previously affiliated with Moscow’s patriarchate and allowed its Ukrainian rival to use it for Orthodox Christmas services.

The move comes as the long-running tensions between the two churches exacerbated amid Russia’s war in Ukraine.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — An uneasy calm in Kyiv on Friday was broken by air raid sirens that also blared out across the rest of Ukraine despite a Russian cease-fire declaration for the Orthodox Church Christmas that Ukrainian officials scorned.

No explosions were heard in the Ukrainian capital, but any fighting elsewhere in the country could take hours to become public.

KHARKIV, Ukraine (AP) — Sitting on comfy armchairs in a low-lit room smelling of lavender and pine trees, the men take deep breaths as they close their eyes and listen to meditation music.

But this is not a spa. Uniformed Ukrainian soldiers are taking a break at this rehabilitation center in the Kharkiv region to restore their bodies and minds before going back to the front line.

The relentless 10-month war has prompted a local commander to transform a Soviet-era sanatorium into a recovery center for servicemen to treat both mental and physical ailments.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday ordered his armed forces to observe a unilateral 36-hour cease-fire in Ukraine this weekend for the Orthodox Christmas holiday, the first such sweeping truce move in the nearly 11-month-old war. Kyiv indicated it won’t follow suit.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday ordered Moscow’s armed forces to observe a 36-hour cease-fire in Ukraine this weekend for the Russian Orthodox Christmas holiday, the first such sweeping truce move in the nearly 11-month-old war.

KYIV, Jan 4 (Reuters) - Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Russia was planning to call up more troops for a major new offensive, even as Moscow was facing some of its biggest internal criticism of the war over a strike that killed scores of fresh conscripts.

Kyiv has been saying for weeks that Russian President Vladimir Putin plans to order another mass conscription drive and shut his borders to prevent men from escaping the draft.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Unauthorized use of cell phones by Russian soldiers led to a deadly Ukrainian rocket attack on the facility where they were stationed, according to the Russian military, as it raised the death toll from the weekend attack to 89.

Gen. Lt. Sergei Sevryukov said in a statement late Tuesday that phone signals allowed Kyiv’s forces to “determine the coordinates of the location of military personnel” and launch a strike.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Emergency crews on Tuesday sifted through the rubble of a building struck by Ukrainian rockets, killing at least 63 Russian soldiers barracked there, in the latest blow to the Kremlin’s war strategy as Ukraine says Moscow’s tactics could be shifting.

An Associated Press video of the scene in Makiivka, a town in the partially Russian-occupied eastern Donetsk region, showed five cranes and emergency workers removing big chunks of concrete under a clear blue sky.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Drone advances in Ukraine have accelerated a long-anticipated technology trend that could soon bring the world’s first fully autonomous fighting robots to the battlefield, inaugurating a new age of warfare.

The longer the war lasts, the more likely it becomes that drones will be used to identify, select and attack targets without help from humans, according to military analysts, combatants and artificial intelligence researchers.

KYIV, Ukraine, Jan 2 (Reuters) - Russia acknowledged on Monday that scores of its troops were killed in one of the Ukraine war's deadliest strikes, drawing demands from nationalist bloggers for commanders to be punished for housing soldiers alongside an ammunition dump.

Russia's defence ministry said 63 soldiers had died in the fiery blast which destroyed a temporary barracks in a former vocational college in Makiivka, twin city of the Russian-occupied regional capital of Donetsk.