Europe news

Europe news

Ukraine's top general Oleksandr Syrskii said Kyiv's troops were stepping up assaults on Russian forces around the eastern Ukrainian town of Dobropillia to ease pressure on the embattled hub of Pokrovsk. Ukrainian forces carried out a long-range drone strike on a petrochemical plant in Russia's Bashkortostan region. Kyiv's military intelligence agency said the attack on the Sterlitamak plant sparked a fire in part of the facility that produces an additive for aviation fuel.

US and Russian officials have both described Poseidon as a new category of retaliatory weapon, with a nuclear warhead capable of triggering a radioactive tsunami to render coastal cities uninhabitable. Arms control experts say the weapon breaks most of the traditional nuclear deterrence and classification rules. It is launched from a submarine like a torpedo, but is claimed to be able to loiter as an underwater drone before attacking with its nuclear warhead.

The Maidan, Kyiv's Independence Square, has been the heart of political change in Ukraine for more than two decades. While visiting NPR's team covering Ukraine correspondent Joanna Kakissis and producers Hanna Palamarenko and Polina Lytvynova I went back to the square, where history-making news events have drawn me for over two decades. Memories flooded back of two people-power revolutions against Kremlin influence.