After sustained defensive combat against Ukrainian troops in the self-proclaimed People’s Republic of Donetsk during August, rebels are now reporting of entrapping two large groups of Kiev troops and seizing military hardware in a counteroffensive. The main headquarters of the DPR army has made a decision to stop operations in small groups and form full-bodied independent military units, the [...]

Further delays in the delivery of Russian aid to eastern Ukraine, which is facing a humanitarian disaster, would have been unacceptable, President Vladimir Putin has said in a phone call with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. “Given the obvious protractions by Kiev on the issue of the delivery of Russian aid to southeast regions of Ukraine, which are suffering a humanitarian catastrophe, a dec [...]

Moscow has accused Kiev of placing political interests above humanism, adding that it is confident it made the right decision to order a convoy with Russian humanitarian aid to proceed to the conflict zone without waiting for further Ukrainian permission. The Russian aid convoy on Friday finally reached Lugansk in eastern Ukraine, which has been devastated by repeated shelling. White Kamaz truc [...]

Ukrainian army shelling has forever changed the life of a teenage girl near Donetsk, who is now lying in hospital with a shattered arm and shrapnel wounds. The teen witnessed 15 people, including children killed by falling bombs along the river's shore. Government forces first bombed the village of Zugres in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine on August 14. Several shells hit a beach full of [...]

Kiev should make public the records of communications between the Ukrainian air traffic control and the Malaysian Airlines flight 17 in the hours before it was shot down over Ukraine’s turbulent east, Russia’s UN envoy said. The issue was among several Russia raised at a UN Security Council meeting, which was called by Russia to discuss the progress of the investigation into the tragic inci [...]

OSCE observers stationed at two Russian border checkpoints, the Ukrainian counterparts of which are controlled by the Ukrainian military, have not witnessed any movements of weapons across the border. The monitors did witness young people “dressed in military style” moving across the border into Ukraine, Paul Picard, acting chief observer of the OSCE Mission, told journalists. However, all [...]

Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart, Petro Poroshenko, will meet on August 26 in the Belarusian capital, Minsk, the Kremlin said. The talks will take place as part of a meeting between the heads of states of the Customs Union of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan with the Ukrainian president and representatives of the European Commission. [...]

Ukraine government and rebels blame each other for attack, which has killed evacuees trying to escape the conflict. Dozens of people, including women and children, were killed on Monday when a convoy carrying refugees was hit by rocket fire near the eastern city of Luhansk, a Ukrainian military spokesman said. [...]

Back in 2003, with the illegal Iraq war looming and protests filling the streets of London in opposition, Vanity Fair's David Margolick came to Downing Street to interview Tony Blair. When the writer broached the topic of religion – to US politicians what bees are to honey – the former PM’s spin doctor Alastair Campbell interjected sharply: “We don’t do God.” Of course, privately, B [...]

With over two weeks since his disappearance in eastern Ukraine, the whereabouts of Russian photojournalist Andrey Stenin remain unknown. His colleagues suggest that he may soon be freed as part of a large exchange of captives. Stenin’s employers at Rossiya Segodnya news agency (formerly RIA Novosti), said that they have so far failed to get any information on their journalist from the Kiev au [...]

Seventeen Ukrainian soldiers crossed into Russia's southern Rostov region on Saturday and laid down their arms after fleeing the fighting, Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) said. “It happened this morning,” Nikolay Sinitsyn, the official regional representative of the FSB, told RT. “They were provided with food, and they’re safe here. We’re carrying out a probe.” [...]

The deputy spokesperson for the US Department of State Marie Harf has called restraint on the Ukrainian military's actions in the east for the first time, following a major shelling of Donetsk that left at least 70 civilians dead. “We’ve stressed the importance of showing restraint to minimize casualties among the civilian – the local population,” Harf said. [...]

Citizens of Donetsk have recorded multiple videos of white glowing particles raining on residential quarters. The locals allege that Ukraine's military has shelled their city with internationally prohibited phosphorus incendiaries. On Thursday night, people in the Lenin district of the city of Donetsk saw a flow of white fire pouring down from the dark sky alongside the now-familiar sound of bo [...]

Russia's Security Service (FSB) has denied reports that the country's troops have crossed the border into Ukraine. Border guards have been deployed to provide security near the frontier, but they operate only on the Russian side, the FSB said. The mobile military teams “operate strictly within the territory of the Russian Federation,” a spokesperson for the FSB Border Guard Service in Rosto [...]

A Russian convoy to deliver humanitarian aid has reached the Ukrainian border. Some western journalists were given the opportunity to monitor its progress, as well as being allowed to see what they were carrying. The Ukrainian government had been adamant that this was little more than a 'Trojan Horse' being used to transport Russian military hardware to anti-government troops in the east of the [...]

Over 70 people have been killed in the Donetsk Region, and 116 others have been wounded over the last three days of fighting in eastern Ukraine, according to a statement by regional authorities. The Ukrainian army has been shelling Donetsk and its suburbs overnight as well. On Tuesday, the military seized a key train station near Donetsk. [...]

As human rights organizations call for an end to repression against the press in Eastern Ukraine, RT recalls the journalists who were abducted, tortured or paid the ultimate price and lost their lives while reporting from the heart of the civil war. Eastern Ukraine has been dubbed a “trap for journalists” by Human Rights Watch’s representative in Russia as the deepening crisis has already [...]

MOSCOW: With a theatrical flourish, Russia on Tuesday dispatched hundreds of trucks covered in white tarps and sprinkled with holy water on a mission to deliver aid to a desperate rebel-held zone in eastern Ukraine. The televised sight of the miles-long convoy sparked a show of indignation from the government in Kiev, which insisted any aid must be delivered by the international Red Cross. [...]

Kiev intends to hold up the internationally-supervised Russian humanitarian aid convoy meant for East Ukraine for at least a week, a spokesman for the Ukrainian military said. Ukraine said the time is needed for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which is contributing to the Moscow-initiated mission, to establish where the aid should go in the Ukrainian region engulfed by civi [...]

250,000 people have been left without water, electricity and communications for over a week in the eastern Ukrainian city of Lugansk. The town is subject to siege conditions and under heavy bombardment. “We're being bombed so severely, there's hardly anything left to bomb. People are running out of money. How are we supposed to survive in this heat? [...]

Moscow and Kiev have agreed on a humanitarian mission under the authority of the Red Cross, Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stated. “With careful optimism, I can now say that, I think, all possible and impossible pretexts have been dismissed. I hope that in the very nearest future this humanitarian action will take place under the authority of the Red Cross,” Lavrov said. [...]

The Bulgarian government is under enormous pressure from the US to cancel the South Stream project, and so Bulgaria is the place to watch now, Daniel McAdams, executive director of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity think tank, told RT. On August 8, Ukrainian Prime Minister Yatsenyuk announced that Kiev had prepared a list of 172 Russian citizens and 65 companies, predominantly Rus [...]