Author: Cara Anna

BUCHA, Ukraine • The coffin was made from pieces of a closet. In a darkened basement under a building shaking from the bombardment of war, there were few other options. Six-year-old Vlad watched as his mother was carried out of the shelter last month and to the yard of a nearby home. The burial was…

HORDYNIA, Ukraine • Planting season has arrived in Ukraine. Boot marks stamped in the frozen earth have thawed. But the Pavlovych family’s fields remain untouched in a lonely landscape of checkpoints and churches. Over a week ago, the family learned their 25-year-old soldier son, Roman, had been killed near the besieged city of Mariupol. On…

KYIV, Ukraine • Ukraine accused Moscow on Thursday of forcibly taking hundreds of thousands of civilians from shattered Ukrainian cities to Russia, where some might be used as “hostages” to pressure Kyiv to give up. Lyudmyla Denisova, Ukraine’s ombudsperson, said 402,000 people, including 84,000 children, have been taken against their will. The Kremlin gave nearly…

KYIV, Ukraine • NATO estimated Wednesday that 7,000 to 15,000 Russian soldiers have been killed in four weeks of war in Ukraine, where fierce resistance from the country’s defenders has denied Moscow the lightning victory it sought. By way of comparison, Russia lost about 15,000 troops over 10 years in Afghanistan. A NATO military official…

KYIV, Ukraine • Ukrainian forces fought off continuing Russian efforts to occupy Mariupol and claimed to have retaken a strategic suburb of Kyiv on Tuesday, mounting a defense so dogged that it is stoking fears Russia’s Vladimir Putin will escalate the war to new heights. “Putin’s back is against the wall,” said President Joe Biden,…

JOHANNESBURG • F.W. de Klerk, who shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Nelson Mandela and as South Africa’s last apartheid president oversaw the end of the country’s white minority rule, has died aged 85. Frederik Willem de Klerk died after a battle against cancer at his home in the Fresnaye area of Cape Town, a…

WASHINGTON • President Joe Biden is set to hold his first one-on-one, in-person talks as president with an African leader on Thursday, hosting Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta as war and a humanitarian crisis roil neighboring Ethiopia, according to the White House. The Oval Office talks come just weeks after Biden signed an executive order threatening…

BEIRA, Mozambique • Cyclone Idai’s death toll has risen above 750 in the three southern African countries hit 10 days ago by the storm, as workers restore electricity, water and try to prevent outbreak of cholera, authorities said Sunday. In Mozambique the number of dead has risen to 446 while there are 259 dead in…