#ukraine

#ukraine

Zaporizhzhia, a city in southeastern Ukraine, at 8:48 P.M. the night before. About sixteen hours later, after travelling more than five hundred miles, it made a stop in Lviv, where I boarded. Milchenko and I were both bound for Poland. I was going to Kraków, on a hastily planned vacation. Milchenko was en route to Wrocław, where his mother lives. I planned to return to Ukraine in ten days. Milchenko didn't know if he would ever go back.

The Defence Committee reaffirms that the United Kingdom must stand unequivocally with the people of Ukraine at this critical moment. Their struggle is not only for their own homeland, but also in defence of the security, stability and values of other parts of Europe. We believe that any peace must be just, lasting, and above all acceptable to Ukraine itself.

A door about a hand's width opens into the frigid facility that protects the seeds that may one day play a fundamental role in the event of droughts, pests, floods, or the many other disasters that can ravage the earth and, consequently, the food supply for people and animals. Ukraine possesses an immense collection of biodiversity that cannot be found anywhere else. Who knows how useful it may be to us in the future. Its qualities can still be explored; it is like a treasure.

Ukraine's national anti-corruption bureau, known as Nabu, says it has uncovered a high-level criminal scheme at the heart of government. It involves Ukraine's nuclear energy body, Energoatom, that runs three nuclear power plants supplying Ukraine with more than half of its electricity. A group of insiders allegedly received kickbacks of 10-15% from Energoatom's commercial partners. If these suppliers failed to pay up, they were removed from a list of approved counter-parties or not reimbursed for services already given.

Air defense topped the agenda at talks between Ukrainian President Zelenskyy and France's Emmanuel Macron. And a Russian drone attack on Ukraine's Odesa region has caused fires at port and energy facilities. DW has more. Zelenskyy (L) and Macron signed a letter of intent on the purchase of fighter jets at the Villacoublay air base near ParisImage: Christophe Ena/POOL/AFP/Getty Images

Roman Surovtsev was prompt in picking up his two daughters from school every afternoon. It's important to him to be there for his smiley 3- and 5-year-old girls, peppering them with questions about what they learned and who they played with. At home with his wife Samantha, he would always be facilitating the bubbles at bath time, meticulously brushing out tiny blonde and brunette ponytails, and tucking the giggling girls into bed after reading to them.

"At home, I never cry," she told DW in an exclusive interview after the event. "Only here, far away from home, I realize how much pressure I'm under, and how my normality is not normal elsewhere in Europe."

NABU said in a post on social media on November 10 that the investigation has been ongoing for 15 months with some 1,000 hours of audio recordings gathered. "The activities of a high-level criminal organization have been documented," the bureau said. "Its members have built a large-scale corruption scheme to influence strategic enterprises in the public sector, in particular JSC 'Energoatom,' NABU said.

Bulgaria is preparing to seize control of Lukoil's Burgas oil refinery and sell it to a new owner after the Russian oil company came under US sanctions, according to Bulgarian media reports. Burgas is Bulgaria's only oil refinery and as part of Lukoil is at risk of having to shut down because of the sanctions. The US joined Britain last month in imposing sanctions on Russia's two largest oil companies, Lukoil and Rosneft, over Vladimir Putin's war in Ukraine.

Italian officials have reacted with outrage after Russia used the partial collapse of a medieval tower in central Rome to claim that Italy's support for Ukraine has drained funds needed to preserve its cultural heritage. The Torre dei Conti, a 29m-tall fortified residence built near the Colosseum in the 13th century, partially collapsed on Monday (4 November), causing the death of a Romanian worker who was trapped under rubble for 11 hours.

Ukrainian authorities were working to restore power to Donetsk after Russian attacks on infrastructure caused outages, Ukrainian regional governor Vadym Filashkin said on Sunday. The claim could not be independently verified, as most of the eastern region of Donetsk is controlled by Russian troops. Russian forces have stepped up attacks on Ukraine's power grid in recent weeks as winter draws near.