UkraineKupiansk sty

An informal memorial next to the former 'PMC Wagner Centre's St.Petersburg, St Petersburg, Russian Federation - 24 Aug 2023

HANDOUT on 6/9/2023

How U.S. military aid has grown since the start of the war

The Washington Post

UKRAINE YOUNG SOLDIERS

UKRAINE DRONES PRODUCTION

Wagner fighters deployed in Rostov-on-Don

Russia Ukraine War

The potent U.S. arsenal for Ukraine’s counteroffensive

Ukraine southern front

Promo image for russia-ukraine-frontline-map 

Ruble Sinks as Russia Isolated by Sanctions

Bloomberg

FTWP

HOGP

United States Russia Nuclear Treaty

Ukraine Russia War Crimes Hospitals

For The Washington Post

U.S. Army M1 Abrams tanks from the 1st Combined Arms Battalion, 163rd Cavalry Regiment prepare to conduct movement operations during Exercise Eager Lion in Jordan, Sept. 6, 2022

Task Force Spartan

handout

UKRAINE-RUSSIA-CONFLICT-WAR

Contributor

Respond to prefers-color-scheme dark in app web views

Follow section front redirects in Spectrum

Enable NLP source in PCS for load testing

Switch off the News Alerts Survey Widget when we have enough responses

Poll to determine if new LUF updates are available

Allows the winning A/B test variant to be turned on without Spectrum deployment

Show infinite scrolling sections in Assembler MultiView

Show option for NLP article summaries in Action Bar

Show NLP summaries collection recirc on article pages

A general feature flag for Recipe Features that aren't yet released

Feature flag for media team features that aren't yet released

Use new Orca video player for preroll plugin in Spectrum

Show the snow tracker (instead of the heat tracker) on Spectrum

Protesters descend on Eurovision, object to Israel’s participation

Emboldened Russia marks Victory Day with parade of nuclear-capable weapons

Deaf baby hears for the first time after ‘groundbreaking’ gene therapy trial

Think you want a dog? Take our quiz to find out if you’re ready.

In Photos: Russians mark 79th Victory Day with military parade

Tornadoes hit Michigan, damage FedEx facility

5 big travel lessons from a Patagonia CEO-turned-conservationist

Cruise worker accused of stabbing 3 with scissors arrested in Alaska

France tries to shed its rude reputation ahead of the Olympics

In the campaign against Donald Trump, do the ends justify the means?

The next global crisis could come from the sun. We should prepare now.

The FTC’s noncompete clause rule goes too far

What Trump promised oil CEOs as he asked them to steer $1 billion to his campaign

Judge keeps tying Trump to possible intimidation

What extremism looks like to Sean Hannity and his party

Ask Amy: Relatives keep giving me updates on my old family home

Ask Sahaj: My husband wants me to forget all about his emotional affair

Carolyn Hax: Was it wrong to approach late wife’s pal for no-commitment sex?

RFK Jr’s ‘history lesson’ on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine flunks the fact test

The Trump-Biden battle over the 2017 tax cut

That time football legend, rig-driving eligible bachelor Biden was arrested

Dog hit by car loses leg, is adopted by firefighter who helped her

Postal worker finds WWII-era letters, drives 5 hours to deliver them

Strangers help Sesame Street puppeteer after heirloom necklace was stolen

Need beauty? These are 7 of the most gorgeous gardens in the D.C. area.

Nationals finally run out of answers and fall to Orioles in 12 innings

4 best things to do with kids in the D.C. area this weekend

Hack targeting hospital chain Ascension is impacting patient care

A college professor wants to use Section 230 against Big Tech

Commerce Department revokes more export licenses to China’s Huawei

In Arizona, election workers trained with deepfakes to prepare for 2024

How Trump’s allies amplify his Truth Social messages to the wider world

Indy Star bars columnist from Caitlin Clark’s games after awkward exchange

US-POLITICS-BIDEN

Europe

World

National Security

Military

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/ukraine-russia/

War in Ukraine

Maxim Shipenkov

MOSCOW — In a display of defiance against mounting reports of electoral fraud and Western criticism calling his election illegitimate, Russian President Vladimir Putin took to the stage on Moscow’s Red Square on Monday evening to celebrate the claimed landslide victory <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/03/18/vladimir-putin-leader-for-life/" target=_blank>he was always intended to win.</a>

Flanked by his handpicked rival candidates at an event marking 10 years since Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea, Putin led the thousands-strong crowd in a rendition of Russia’s national anthem.

“Crimea is not only a strategically important territory, with important history and traditions. Crimea is first of all people. Sevastopol residents, Crimeans. They are our pride,” Putin said, pledging to build a railroad connecting Russia with Crimea through Donetsk and Mariupol, other Ukrainian cities occupied by Russia that Putin illegally claims to have annexed.

Putin’s astronomical election win — with almost 90 percent of the vote — has drawn comparisons to other rogue, internationally isolated dictators who blatantly manipulate electoral results to secure their power.

Western nations, including the United States, flocked to condemn the results, which were marred <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/03/17/russia-presidential-election-putin-protest/" target=_blank>by protests </a>and cases of voting fraud.

“Russia’s election was an election without choice,” German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said at the start of a summit of European foreign ministers in Brussels on Monday, asserting that the Russian election was not a real election. She said that the European Union would formulate new sanctions against Russia.

In a column for the Telegraph, British Defense Minister Grant Shapps said Putin is behaving like a “modern-day Stalin” after winning an election in which he had practically no opponents.

Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani wrote that the elections were “neither free nor regular” and that they had been held in “illegally occupied Ukrainian territories.”

The Russian electoral watchdog, Golos, which has monitored elections in Russia for 20 years, said in a statement Monday that “never before have we seen a presidential campaign that was so inconsistent with constitutional standards.”

“The elections took place in conditions where the state apparatus, which is obliged to be politically neutral and act in the interests of society, actually became involved in propaganda, coercion and control over voters,” read the statement. “Military censorship actually arose in the country which was implemented through fear and force.”

Golos added that politics in Russia have ceased to be a subject of discussion, “even with neighbors and loved ones.”

The country’s Central Election Commission claimed that in occupied areas of Ukraine’s Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, Putin won 88.12 percent and 92.95 percent of votes, respectively. Russia controls only parts of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia — two of four Ukrainian regions it illegally claims to have annexed — and many residents are displaced. In those occupied areas, Russian electoral teams accompanied by soldiers forced residents to cast ballots at gunpoint.

In Russia, voting took place from Friday through Sunday, a three-day window that critics said provided ample opportunity for fraud and manipulation. In many regions, voters were encouraged to use an opaque online voting system with no mechanism to assure accuracy or safeguard against cheating.

Russian independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta estimated that 31.6 million fake votes — almost half the total number of votes cast — were added to the count.

In remarks after midnight following the release of preliminary results late Sunday, Putin claimed broad public support and made clear that he would continue the war in Ukraine.

At Monday’s massive concert in Red Square, presenters onstage praised the election’s record turnout.

“I don’t remember the last time we have such a high turnout. … Even those who didn’t want to vote turned up,” said Ruslan Ostashko, a Russian TV presenter, apparently referring to the long lines of anti-Putin protesters who gathered at midday in a protest vote.

“My friends, in both Crimea and Sevastopol, more than 90 percent of voters voted for Putin, because he is our president and we trust in him,” added Yulia Baranovskaya, Ostashko’s co-presenter.

Putin, who took power upon Boris Yeltsin’s resignation on Dec. 31, 1999, has defied term limits since 2008, when, after serving the maximum two full terms, he swapped jobs with Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. Four years later, they swapped again. In 2020, Putin engineered constitutional amendments allowing him to rule until 2036.

The three-day vote took place one month after the sudden death of Alexei Navalny, Putin’s most formidable political rival, in an Arctic prison colony.

The election was marked by signs of public fury, with several Russian citizens setting fire to voting urns and polling stations<i>,</i> and throwing liquid dye on ballots. On Sunday, thousands of people<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/03/17/russia-presidential-election-putin-protest/" target=_blank> in Russia and abroad</a><b> </b>joined a noon protest, forming long lines at polling stations to vote against Putin. Navalny had called for the midday action before he died.

Meanwhile on Monday, six people died and eight were injured in a strike in Belgorod, the Russian city on the border with Ukraine where Ukrainian attacks have intensified in recent days, authorities said. According to the region’s governor, Vyacheslav Gladkov, a shell hit a private residential building in the village of Nikolskoye, killing four members of a family. A fifth member, a girl, survived.

“The girl is under the close attention of doctors in intensive care under a ventilator. She has a closed craniocerebral injury,” Gladkov said Monday evening.

Naomi Schanen

Cambridge University, BA in Modern and Medieval Languages (Russian, Ukrainian, French)

Francesca Ebel is The Washington's Post's Russia correspondent. Before joining The Post in 2022, Ebel was the Associated Press's Tunis correspondent.

Francesca Ebel

Putin claims a new six-year term in vote condemned as not free or fair

the-washington-post

Putin wins Russian presidential elections with over 87 percent of the vote, Moscow, Russian Federation - 18 Mar 2024

EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

Verified videos

Donbas region

Russian combat capabilities

HIMARS

washpost

prism://prism.query/site,/world/europe&limit=20

The Washington Post provides the latest information and analysis on UK and European news. Includes news from the European Union, European commission news and European parliament news.

prism://prism.query/site-articles-only,/world/&limit=20

The Washington Post World section provides information and analysis of breaking world news stories. In addition to our world news and video, Post World News offers discussions and blogs on major international news and economic issues.