Ukraine

KHARKIV, Ukraine (AP) — She had gone out to feed the cats when the shelling began.

It was afternoon, a residential neighborhood, a time to get errands done. But there is nothing routine about life near the front line in Ukraine.

Kharkiv, the country’s second-largest city and a short drive from the Russian border, lives with the low thunder of distant artillery and the sickening booms of shells exploding much closer to home.

DONETSK, July 7. /TASS/: The Donetsk People’s Republic’s (DPR) Ambassador to Russia OIga Makeyeva and other embassy staff have already begun their work in Moscow, DPR Foreign Minister Natalya Nikonorova said in an interview with TASS.

"The ambassador and other embassy staff are already in Moscow, they have begun their work on the political track, as well as on consular, administrative and other issues," she pointed out. According to Nikonorova, the embassy will open on July 12.

KYIV/BAKHMUT, Ukraine, July 7 (Reuters) - Ukrainian forces raised their national flag on a recaptured Black Sea island on Thursday in a defiant act against Moscow, but Kyiv lost a main international supporter after British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he would step down.

Russian forces also shelled potential conquests in eastern Ukraine ahead of an expected new offensive.

Moscow did not conceal its delight at the political demise of Johnson, a leader whom it has long criticised for arming Kyiv so energetically. 

KHARKIV, Ukraine (AP) — Viktor Lazar shares his war-side balcony with a pair of opera glasses and a tiny orange snake, his only companion in an apartment that seems to sit at the edge of the world.

The opera glasses, more of a joke, are hardly needed — the front line is visible without them. The rumbling of Russian and Ukrainian shelling is audible even now, although Lazar claims not to notice. Below his balcony is a crater, one of many. On the nearby street, a Grad rocket launcher rolls by.

Lazar estimates the Russians are just 10 kilometers (6 miles) away.

SLOVIANSK, Ukraine/KYIV, July 5 (Reuters) - Russian forces struck targets across Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region on Tuesday, a day after President Vladimir Putin declared victory in the neighbouring province of Luhansk after months of gruelling attritional warfare in which both sides lost many men.

(AP) --- After more than four months of ferocious fighting, Russia claimed a key victory: full control over one of the two provinces in Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland.

But Moscow’s seizure of the last major stronghold of Ukrainian resistance in Luhansk province came at a steep price. The critical question now is whether Russia can muster enough strength for a new offensive to complete its capture of the Donbas and make gains elsewhere in Ukraine.

Pokrovsk (Ukraine), Jul 4 (AP-PTI) Russian forces tried Monday to press their offensive deeper into eastern Ukraine after taking control of a key stronghold.

The Ukrainian military confirmed that its forces had withdrawn from the city of Lysychansk, the last bulwark of Ukrainian resistance in the Luhansk province, one of the two regions that make up the country's eastern industrial heartland of Donbas. The Russians also control about half of Donetsk, the second province of Donbas.

KHERSON, July 4. /TASS/: A new government has been formed in the Kherson region, the regional military-civilian administration said in a statement on Telegram on Monday.

"Having studied the experience of Russian regional government agencies, Head of the Kherson region’s military-civilian administration Vladimir Saldo decided to form a new government in the Kherson region, recruiting the best people not only from the Kherson region’s residents but also from Russian experts and managers," the statement reads.

BAKHMUT, Ukraine (AP) — Torched forests and cities burned to the ground. Colleagues with severed limbs. Bombardments so relentless the only option is to lie in a trench, wait and pray.

Ukrainian soldiers returning from the front lines in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region — where Russia is waging a fierce offensive — describe life during what has turned into a grueling war of attrition as apocalyptic.

KYIV/KOSTYANTYNIVKA, Ukraine, July 3 (Reuters) - Russia said on Sunday its forces had taken control of Ukraine's eastern Luhansk region after capturing the final Ukrainian holdout of Lysychansk in heavy fighting, though Ukraine did not confirm the claim.

Control of Luhansk, a key war aim for Russia, would come after weeks slow advances, hand Moscow a limited political win and shift the battlefield focus to neighbouring Donetsk region, where Ukraine still controls substantial territory.