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Ukrainian marine Artem Dyblenko spent more than four months as a Russian prisoner of war. On Wednesday, he appealed to the international community to help bring home the thousands of soldiers and non-combatants who remain in captivity and seek justice for all who have suffered human rights violations at the hands of Russia since its invasion of Ukraine nearly one year ago, .
"I was 125 days in Russian captivity; this is about 3,000 hours," Dyblenko, who was twice decorated for bravery, told a special meeting organized by Ukraine at the United Nations to discuss gross human rights violations caused by Russia’s war.
"Three thousand hours of physical, moral, and psychological abuse," he said. "Three thousand hours of Russian hell."
Streets in Kyiv are being renamed in honor of soldiers who lost their lives defending the country against Russia's invasion. Current Time correspondent Yulia Zhukova walked along the recently renamed streets and spoke with the loved ones of the fallen soldiers, .
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Wednesday that a bill had been registered by a Ukrainian lawmaker to resume the requirement for state officials to file electronic asset declarations, according to .
He said this in his response to a petition regarding resuming the filing of asset declarations. The petition collected the necessary 25,000 signatures on the president's site in early February.
Ukrainian authorities say parts of the country will bolster security measures this week, days ahead of the one-year anniversary of Russia's full-scale invasion, .
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy earlier this month warned that Russia is planning a revenge attack for last year's defeats and is set to do something "symbolic."
Extra safety measures will be implemented in Ukraine's southern Kherson Oblast, the region's military administration said Wednesday.
From Feb. 23 to 25, most public offices and businesses will work remotely, except for critical infrastructure facilities, the administration said.
Russian prosecutors said Wednesday they were proceeding with a case against exiled science fiction writer Dmitry Glukhovsky, accused of publishing "false information" about Russian atrocities in the Ukraine war, according to Reuters. Russia is targeting opposition figures and journalists with a law providing for jail terms up to 15 years for those convicted of spreading "fake" news about the military. Glukhovsky left Russia last year after the invasion and called for an end to the campaign.
The good-humored Ukrainian fighter pilot Danylo Murashko was in low spirits on Jan. 27. He hadn’t gone out on a sortie in several days, which always put him in a bad mood, .
Noticing Murashko’s state of mind, his commander, lieutenant colonel Rostyslav Lazarenko, decided to allow 24-year-old Murashko to join him on a combat mission.
As the two were up in the sky somewhere above Donetsk Oblast, a rocket launched from a Russian fighter hit Murashko's aircraft. The town of Shabelkivka, with a pre-war population of over 4,000 residents, was just ahead of him.
According to his brigade, Murashko tried to divert his plane so that it wouldn’t fall on residential buildings. The effort, however, made him fly lower and cost him precious time.
Murashko stopped the plane from killing civilians, but he could not eject safely.
"I turned [the aircraft] away," were the last words Lazarenko heard from Murashko, he said in an interview with the Defense Ministry's news agency Army Inform.
Kremlin-linked businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin, a co-founder and owner of the Wagner mercenary group, has called on Russians to pressure the army to give his fighters more ammunition amid Defense Ministry denials that it is holding back supplies for artillery and missile-launchers in Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine, RFE/RL’s Russian service reported.
"If every Russian at his own level -- in order not to call anyone to rallies -- would simply say 'give ammunition to Wagner,' as is already happening on social media, then this would already be important," he said in an audio post on Telegram on Tuesday.
The call comes a day after Prigozhin accused top armed forces officials of committing "treason" by failing to supply his private troops, who have been a major force in the battle to take the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, with enough ammunition.
He says his troops regularly lack about 80 percent of the ammunition they need while fighting against Ukrainian armed forces in the Donetsk region.