CNN – Europe/Mideast/Africa

By Toyin Owoseje, CNN Acclaimed Ukrainian actress Oksana Shvets has been killed in a Russian rocket attack on a residential building in Kyiv. The Young Theater — a Ukrainian theater troupe she had been part of since 1980 — announced the star’s death on Thursday. In a statement shared on its Facebook page, the company

By Aditi Sangal, Meg Wagner, George Ramsay, Jeevan Ravindran, Laura Smith-Spark, Peter Wilkinson, Adrienne Vogt and Melissa Macaya, CNN The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2022 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved.

By Steve Almasy, CNN Months before Russian troops attacked Ukraine, American Jimmy Hill went there to be with his Ukranian partner, Ira, who has multiple sclerosis. When war broke out, Hill stayed, despite the deteriorating conditions in the northern Ukrainian city of Chernihiv. “He was not going to leave Ira’s side in her condition,” Hill’s

By Sergey Makarov and Daria Markina Editor’s note: Sergey Makarov, 34, a photographer from the city of Mariupol in southeastern Ukraine, told CNN about his experience surviving the Russian siege and his eventual evacuation. On February 24, I woke up to a friend calling me. He said that the war had begun. He suggested I

By Victoria Butenko, Olga Voitovych, Andrew Carey, James Frater and Jeevan Ravindran, CNN People sheltering in a theater in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol are emerging from the building after it was bombed, the former head of the Donetsk region said Thursday. Hundreds of people were thought to have taken shelter in the theater amid

By Helen Regan, Niamh Kennedy, and Adam Pourahmadi, CNN Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the British-Iranian aid worker who has been held in Iran for almost six years, has arrived back in the United Kingdom after being released from detention. Early Thursday, British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said in a tweet that Zaghari-Ratcliffe and fellow British Iranian national

By Helen Regan, Travis Caldwell, Seán Federico-O’Murchú, George Ramsay, Ed Upright, Adrienne Vogt, Maureen Chowdhury, Aditi Sangal and Meg Wagner, CNN The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2022 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved.

By AnneClaire Stapleton, Ivan Watson and Tom Booth, CNN Irina Protchenko, 68, sings the Ukrainian anthem while steadily working at her sewing machine in a small apartment in central Ukraine. She retired not long ago from a factory in the outskirts of Kyiv, where she spent 50 years tailoring men’s suits and coats for clothing

By Nick Paton Walsh, CNN The road between Kherson and Mykolaiv is sparse and ghostly. Civilians flee at high speed in one direction, as vans of grimacing troops head the other way. The fate of the key port of Mykolaiv will likely be decided along this stretch of concrete in southern Ukraine. Russian forces are

By Tim Lister, Olga Voitovych, Tara John and Paul P. Murphy, CNN A theater where hundreds of people had taken shelter in Mariupol was bombed on Wednesday, according to local authorities, as hundreds of thousands of people remain trapped in the coastal Ukrainian city that has been encircled for weeks by Russian forces. Mariupol City

By Niamh Kennedy, Adam Pourahmadi and Jack Guy, CNN Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the British-Iranian charity worker who has been held in Iran for almost six years, has been released and is en route back to the UK. On Wednesday, Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s local UK Member of Parliament Tulip Siddiq tweeted a photo of her on board a plane

By Aditi Sangal, Adrienne Vogt, Meg Wagner, Melissa Macaya, Helen Regan, Adam Renton, George Ramsay, Ed Upright and Maureen Chowdhury, CNN The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2022 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved.

By Andrew Carey, Oleksandra Ochman, Kylie Atwood and Paul LeBlanc, CNN ​​Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has dropped his clearest hint yet that he does not expect his country to join NATO anytime soon. In comments made during an address by video-link to leaders of the British-led Joint Expeditionary Force on Tuesday, Zelensky appeared to shift

By Ed Lavandera and Cristiana Moisescu, CNN There is a sole train line that runs between Ukraine and the station in the border town of Przemysl, Poland. The trains that go back and forth are a faded blue and yellow, the national colors of the besieged country. The scene on Platform Five looked different this

By Luke McGee, CNN Germany has announced that it will buy 35 US-made F-35A fighter jets, the first major arms purchase to be publicly confirmed since Chancellor Olaf Scholz committed to ramping up his country’s defense spending in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The German government has made these decisions alongside a

By Shama Nasinde and Stephanie Busari, CNN African students trapped in southern Ukraine’s Kherson are crying out for help, as Russian forces try to consolidate their occupation of the port city. The students told CNN they are spending most of their time in underground bunkers in freezing temperatures as Russian soldiers prevent anyone from entering

By Paul P. Murphy, CNN A woman holding a sign reading “NO WAR” interrupted a live news broadcast on Russian state television Monday to denounce Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “Stop the war. Do not believe propaganda they tell you lies here,” the sign reads. “Russians against war,” the last line of the sign says in

By Aditi Sangal, Adrienne Vogt, Eric Levenson, Meg Wagner, Helen Regan, Adam Renton, Ben Church, Jeevan Ravindran, Maureen Chowdhury, Melissa Macaya and Jason Kurtz, CNN The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2022 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved.

By Aditi Sangal, Melissa Macaya, Helen Regan, Steve George, Amy Woodyatt, Ben Church, Ed Upright, Maureen Chowdhury and Jason Kurtz, CNN The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2022 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved.

By Tamara Qiblawi, CNN On the surface, the western Ukrainian city of Lviv does not look like a city on the edge of a war zone. The streets are bustling with people. Austro-Hungarian architecture recently painted in pale hues stretches for miles. The trams still run on time and most of the shops that first

By Rosa Flores and Rosalina Nieves, CNN Yulia Gerbut’s heart broke as she drove away from her Kyiv home on the evening of February 24. Her two sons, 11-year-old Nikita and 14-year-old Max, were in the car with her. But she was leaving her youngest son, Martin, behind. “I can’t take him with me,” Gerbut

By Abbas Al Lawati and Nadeen Ebrahim, CNN The United States appears to be keen to tell the world that it wasn’t the target of Iranian missile strikes in Iraq on Sunday. Iran said it was targeting Israeli “strategic centers” in the northern city of Erbil, but Iraqi-Kurdish authorities said the missiles fell close to

By Scott McLean, Sarah El Sirgany and Christian Streib, CNN A muffled sound cuts through the dim room enveloped in long, dark curtains. A Soviet-era closed-circuit phone system blares a message in Ukrainian to six men, half of whom are dressed in military green. But they’re not military men, they’re the executives of Ukrainian Railways.

By Denise Hruby, CNN In the first moments of respite since fleeing her home, Lilya Solodovnik watches her pigtailed 6-year-old, Lena, rocking on a blue plastic pony. Their home city of Kharkiv has been pummeled by Russian forces, and her friends and family are now hiding in bomb shelters. Solodovnik, and dozens of other women

By Alex Stambaugh, Tim Lister and Olga Voitovych, CNN A pregnant woman who was injured when a maternity hospital in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol was bombed on Wednesday has died, along with her newborn baby, a surgeon who was treating her confirmed on Monday. The surgeon, Timur Marin, told Ukrainian television from Mariupol: “While

By Paul P. Murphy, CNN The first clear satellite image has emerged of Snake Island, where Ukrainian defenders famously responded to the threat of Russian invasion with the words: “Russian warship, go f*** yourself.” The image, taken on Sunday by Maxar Technologies, shows damage to some buildings from Russian military strikes, as well as a

By Tim Lister, Mohammed Tawfeeq, Olga Voitovych, Simone McCarthy and Tara John, CNN Russia expanded its offensive to western Ukraine on Sunday, firing missiles near the city of Lviv and hitting a large military base close to the Polish border, reportedly killing dozens of people and drawing the war closer to the borders of a

By Jennifer Hauser, Simone McCarthy, Jomana Karadsheh and Muwafaq Mohammed, CNN A dozen ballistic missiles struck Iraq’s northern Kurdish regional capital Erbil early Sunday morning, local officials said. The missiles were launched from the “east outside Iraq’s borders” towards a new United States consulate building and residential areas, according to a statement from the Kurdistan

By Mayumi Maruyama, CNN They’re not my parents, but after two years of living in Ukraine, they grew to become my Tato and Mama — Ukrainian for “mom” and “dad.” Five years ago, they welcomed me into their home like a daughter — now they’re living under Russian bombardment, the sound of shelling punctuating every

By Tim Lister, Olga Voitovych and Tara John, CNN The Russian assault across Ukraine raged Saturday as explosions were heard in Kyiv and fighting intensified around the capital. Hours later, Russia warned the United States that it would fire on weapon shipments to Ukraine, raising the risk of direct confrontation between Moscow and a NATO

By Laura Smith-Spark, CNN When thousands of Russians lined up in Moscow’s busy Pushkin Square on January 31, 1990 to enter the country’s first-ever branch of McDonald’s, the moment represented a seismic cultural shift. The Iron Curtain, which had divided Eastern and Western Europe for decades, had only just collapsed. Now the fast-food chain beloved

By Jessie Yeung, Adam Renton, Tara John, Sana Noor Haq, Adrienne Vogt, Joe Ruiz and Alaa Elassar, CNN The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2022 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved.

By Tamara Qiblawi, Mohammed Tawfeeq and Olga Voitovych, CNN Lviv, Ukraine — In the midst of a days-long, chaotic cross-country train ride to the northwestern city of Lviv, near Ukraine’s border with Poland, a terrible realization dawned on Marina. The 54-year-old carer, who managed to evacuate an orphanage in a besieged industrial town in the

By Teele Rebane, CNN As Ukrainians around the country gathered glass bottles for Molotov cocktails and armed themselves against the Russian onslaught, Pavlo Servetnyk headed for the kitchen. For the past two weeks since the Russians invaded, he’s been barely sleeping, working 20 hours a day to feed the people of Russian-occupied Kherson. Each day,

CNN Editorial Research Here’s a look at the Iraq War which was known as Operation Iraqi Freedom until September 2010, when it was renamed Operation New Dawn. In December 2011, the last US troops in Iraq crossed the border into Kuwait, marking the end of the almost-nine year war. Timeline October 16, 2002 – US

CNN Editorial Research Here is some background information about the trials and execution of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. Facts Hussein was charged with premeditated murder, imprisonment and the deprivation of physical movement, forced deportation and torture. Seven other defendants stood trial with Hussein: Barzan Hassan, Taha Yassin Ramadan, Awad al-Bandar, Abdullah Ruwaid, Ali Dayem

CNN Editorial Research Here’s some background information about the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal which took place during the Iraq war. Facts Abu Ghraib prison was a US Army detention center for captured Iraqis from 2003 to 2006. An investigation into the treatment of detainees at the prison was prompted by the discovery of graphic

CNN Editorial Research Here’s a look at Iraq’s “most wanted” fugitives list. Timeline April 11, 2003 – In a press conference, Army Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks announces that US soldiers in Iraq will begin receiving a list of the 55 “most wanted” Iraqis. To accompany the list, the soldiers also get a deck of playing

By Tim Lister, Gianluca Mezzofiore, Paul Murphy, Laura Smith-Spark and Rob Picheta, CNN Russian forces launched multiple missile attacks on a wide range of targets across Ukraine in the early hours of Friday, striking airfields in the far west of the country and, for the first time, hitting the central city of Dnipro, to which

By Tim Lister, Paul P. Murphy, Gianluca Mezzofiore and Celine Alkhaldi, CNN A 40-mile-long (64km) Russian military convoy, composed of tanks, armored vehicles and towed artillery, has sparked dread among defending Ukrainians as it lumbered towards their capital, Kyiv. The column has been stalled for a week, but now the forces appear to be regrouping,

By Aditi Sangal, Adrienne Vogt, Meg Wagner, Melissa Macaya, Julia Hollingsworth, Jessie Yeung, Adam Renton, Jeevan Ravindran and Jason Kurtz, CNN The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2022 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved.

By Sara Sidner and Anna-Maja Rappard, CNN Oksana remembers how she knew the Russian attacks had started in Ukraine. It was about four in the morning when she heard a massive blast. Her adrenaline spiked. She shook her husband awake and said: “Kolya, there is a war!” Suddenly the household was frantic. They started to