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Tag: Russian invasion of Ukraine

  • Despair and destruction: Civilians in Ukraine’s eastern strongholds struggle as Russia advances

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    By HANNA ARHIROVA

    DONETSK REGION, Ukraine (AP) — With the Russian advance deeper into the Donetsk region, the air in Ukraine’s last strongholds is thick with dread and the future for civilians who remain grows ever more uncertain.

    In Kostiantynivka, once home to 67,000 people, there is no steady supply of power, water or gas. Shelling intensifies, drones fill the skies and the city has become unbearable, driving out the last remaining civilians.

    Kramatorsk, by contrast, still shows signs of life. Just 25 kilometers (15 miles) to the north, the prewar population of 147,000 has thinned, but restaurants and cafes remain open. The streets are mostly intact. Though the city has endured multiple strikes and is now dominated by the military, daily routines persist in ways that are no longer possible in nearby towns.

    Once the industrial heart of Ukraine, Donetsk is being steadily reduced to rubble. Many residents fear its cities may never be rebuilt and, if the war drags on, Russia eventually will swallow what is left.

    “(Donetsk) region has been trampled, torn apart, turned into dust,” said Natalia Ivanova, a woman in her 70s who fled Kostiantynivka in early September after a missile struck near her home. Russian President Vladimir Putin “will go all the way … I’m sure of it. I have no doubt more cities will be destroyed.”

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An armoured vehicle drives on a road near Kostiantynivka, Ukraine, Tuesday, Sept. 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)

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Despair and destruction

Kostiantynivka now sits on a shrinking patch of Ukrainian-held territory, wedged just west of Russian-occupied Bakhmut and nearly encircled on three sides by Moscow’s forces.

“They was always shooting,” Ivanova said. “You’d be standing there … and all you’d hear was the whistle of shells.”

She had two apartments. One was destroyed and the other one damaged. For months, she watched buildings disappear in an instant, while swarms of buzzing drones “like beetles” filled the sky, she said.

“I never thought I’d leave,” she added. “I was a stolid soldier, holding on. I’m a pensioner and it (the home) was my comfort zone.”

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  • The Books To Read About Russia And Ukraine

    The Books To Read About Russia And Ukraine

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    Reading Twitter threads is fine, but if you want a deeper understanding of an issue, it’s a good idea to read books. Below is a look at books to read on Russia and Ukraine that will enhance your knowledge of the war and both countries.

    Vladimir Putin: Many experts agree that without Vladimir Putin, Russia likely would not have launched its large-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. An excellent place to learn more about the Russian leader is Syracuse University Professor Brian D. Taylor’s The Code of Putinism, which explains the worldview of Putin and his closest supporters. Another outstanding book about Putin is journalist Catherine Belton’s Putin’s People, subtitled “How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took on the West.” In All the Kremlin’s Men: Inside the Court of Vladimir Putin, Russian journalist Mikhail Zygar paints a vivid portrait of those around Putin and the influence of the security apparatus.

    In Weak Strongman: The Limits of Power in Putin’s Russia, Timothy Frye argues that Putin is similar to other autocrats—much weaker than he appears, in part because he must rely on weak state institutions. Journalist Shaun Walker’s The Long Hangover: Putin’s New Russia and the Ghosts of the Past gives context to what became Putin’s ultimate plan for Ukraine. He writes that Putin used “a simplified narrative of the Second World War to imply Russia must unite once again against a foreign threat.”

    Peter Pomerantsev’s Nothing is True and Everything is Possible, Adventures in Modern Russia is an inside look from a former TV producer at the early freedom on Russian TV in the post-Soviet period—and how Putin and his allies snuffed out that freedom. In Between Two Fires, New Yorker Moscow correspondent Joshua Yaffa explains Putin’s control of Russian media, the belief in the need for a strong central leader, the compromises many Russians make and events that hinted at the wider invasion of Ukraine.

    The lost opportunity of Russia becoming a Western-style democracy with an economy not encumbered by corruption—if that opportunity existed—can be found in several books about reforms during Boris Yeltsin’s rule before Putin became president. These books include Chrystia Freeland’s Sale of the Century: The Inside Story of the Second Russian Revolution, Anders Åslund’s Russia’s Capitalist Revolution and Karen Dawisha’s Putin’s Kleptocracy, where she argues that a “kleptocratic tribute system [is] underlying Russia’s authoritarian regime.”

    In Not One Inch: America, Russia, and the Making of Post-Cold War Stalemate, M. E. Sarotte provides a comprehensive history of the expansion of NATO following the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of communist regimes in Eastern Europe. Anne Applebaum’s Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956 and Timothy Garton Ash’s The Magic Lantern: The Revolution ’89 Witnessed in Warsaw, Budapest, Berlin and Prague explain why so many people in Eastern Europe wanted their countries to join NATO.

    A genre of books exists that could be called “You should have listened to me about Putin.” They include Garry Kasparov’s Winter Is Coming: Why Vladimir Putin and Enemies of the Free World Must Be Stopped, Fiona Hill and Clifford Gaddy’s Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin, and Mark Galeotti’s We Need to Talk About Putin: How the West Gets Him Wrong, where Galeotti correctly predicted: “It is hard to see any substantive improvement in relations with Russia, so long as Putin is in the Kremlin.” A post-February 2022 entry is The Russia Conundrum by Mikhail Khodorkovsky—who suffered for years in a Russian prison but believes “Russia can be saved from an endless succession of dictatorships, that she can become a normal country.”

    Putin’s Other Wars: Russian armed forces have committed widespread human rights abuses in Ukraine, including torture, bombing hospitals and attacking civilians. Anna Borshchevskaya describes similar atrocities in Putin’s War in Syria: Russian Foreign Policy and the Price of America’s Absence.

    Mark Galeotti explains the brutal tactics used in Russia’s Wars in Chechnya 1994-2009. (Galeotti will release Putin’s Wars: From Chechnya to Ukraine in 2022.) Ronald Asmus describes Russia’s invasion of Georgia and the world’s response in A Little War that Changed the World: Georgia, Russia and The Future of the West.

    Soviet and Russian History: Books on the Russian Revolution by Richard Pipes and Sheila Fitzpatrick are an excellent place to begin learning about the Soviet period, as well as Antony Beevor’s new book Russia: Revolution and Civil War, 1917-1921. Beevor’s book reads like a novel. Orlando Figes takes a longer perspective in Revolutionary Russia, 1891-1991: A History and The Story of Russia. A broad overview of Russian history can be found in Mark Galeotti’s A Short History of Russia, while Rodric Braithwaite writes about Russia: Myths and Realities.

    Robert Conquest’s The Great Terror: A Reassessment describes the Soviet government’s mass killings and repressions, while Anne Applebaum (Gulag: A History) and Alexander Solzhenitsyn (The Gulag Archipelago) detail the horrors of the Soviet prison camp system. Two more good books are Paul R. Gregory’s Terror by Quota and Lenin’s Brain And Other Tales From The Secret Soviet Archives, which describes the perversity of Soviet terror under Stalin, noting authorities used central planning to “assign execution and imprisonment targets . . . on a regional basis.”

    A small number of the lives Stalin destroyed are depicted in My Father’s Letters: Correspondence from the Soviet Gulag (by Memorial) and in such classic works as Hope Against Hope and Hope Abandoned by writer Nadezhda Mandelstam, the wife of poet Osip Mandelstam.

    Biographies of Stalin include two by Robert Tucker (Stalin as Revolutionary and Stalin in Power) and two by Stephen Kotkin (Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928 and Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929-1941).

    Simon Sebag Montefiore and Robert Service are also biographers of Stalin whose works should be read. Service also wrote Lenin: A Biography, A History of Modern Russia: From Tsarism to the Twenty-First Century and The End of the Cold War: 1985-1991. William Taubman wrote biographies of Nikita Khrushchev and Mikhail Gorbachev. Dmitri Volkogonov, a former Soviet colonel who became a notable Russian historian, writes short, compelling portraits of the USSR’s leaders in Autopsy of an Empire: The Seven Leaders Who Built the Soviet Regime.

    Ukraine: An excellent history of Ukraine accessible to Western readers is The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine by Serhii Plokhy. Another well-written book on Ukraine is Anna Reid’s Borderland: A Journey Through the History of Ukraine, where, like Plokhy, she details tragic events in Ukraine that include Russian suppression of its culture, language and aspirations, Stalin’s famine, the Holocaust, World War II and Chornobyl, followed by its vote for independence and Russian interference and aggression in the years after that vote. Robert Conquest’s Harvest of Sorrow and Anne Applebaum’s Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine provide comprehensive examinations of the Soviet-created famines that caused the deaths of millions of Ukrainians.

    Yale Professor Timothy Snyder’s book Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin describes how Ukrainians (and others) suffered before and during World War II: “In the middle of Europe in the middle of the twentieth century, the Nazi and Soviet regimes murdered some 14 million people. . . . This is a history of political mass murder.” He separates these 14 million from the casualties caused by military conflict. (Snyder has made his course lectures on Ukraine available free online.) In The Devils’ Alliance: Hitler’s Pact with Stalin, 1939-1941, Roger Moorhouse rejects “the Kremlin’s postwar exculpatory line that Stalin was merely buying time by signing the pact.”

    For a longer frame of reference on Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014, there is The Crimean War: A History by Orlando Figes, who writes, “As for the Tsar, Nicholas I, the man more than anyone responsible for the Crimean War, he was partly driven by inflated pride and arrogance, a result of having been tsar for 27 years, partly by his sense of how a great power such as Russia should behave towards its weaker neighbors, and partly by a gross miscalculation about how the other powers would respond to his actions.” Readers will find parallels to the present.

    Journalist Tim Judah (In Wartime: Stories from Ukraine) writes, “For too long Ukraine, the second-largest country in Europe after Russia, was one of the continent’s most under-reported places.” That is no longer the case.

    Books about Ukraine’s post-Soviet period make clear that Russia’s war against Ukraine started in 2014, not in February 2022, as many in Western countries may think. In A Loss: The Story of a Dead Soldier Told by His Sister, Olesya Khromeychuk tells a heartbreaking story about her brother. He died fighting in the Donbas for the Ukrainian Armed Forces in 2017. The book reminds us how many lives a war can damage.

    Ukrainian journalist Stanislav Aseyev, author of In Isolation: Dispatches from Occupied Donbas, writes about the “underground torture chambers in Donetsk” where he found himself: “It was here, in prison, that I witnessed dozens of lives broken . . . but also the power of human will in situations that seemed entirely hopeless.”

    Ukraine vs. Darkness: Undiplomatic Thoughts by Olexander Scherba, a Ukrainian diplomat and former ambassador to Austria, is a prescient analysis of Russia’s intentions toward Ukraine written before the large-scale February 2022 invasion.

    Ukrainian writer Andrey Kurkov wrote Ukraine Diary: Dispatches from Kiev to describe the protests that started in 2013 and their aftermath. In The Fight of Our Lives: My Time with Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s Battle for Democracy, and What It Means for the World, Julia Mendel, the former press secretary to Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, writes about the early days of the war and fills in biographical details about her former boss.

    Russian and Ukrainian Literature: Russian authors have contributed to the world’s culture even though Russian and Soviet leaders have killed, nearly killed and censored many of the country’s greatest writers.

    Soviet authorities killed Isaac Babel (born in Odesa), tormented Boris Pasternak for publishing Doctor Zhivago abroad and winning the Nobel Prize for Literature, prevented Mikhail Bulgakov from publishing his best novel (Master and Margarita) during his lifetime, and the list could go on. Fyodor Dostoevsky survived a Russian prison camp, and Alexander Solzhenitsyn lived through the Soviet Gulag. Leo Tolstoy was fortunate not to die during the Crimean War.

    Among the best-known works of Russian writers are Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky, Anna Karenina and War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, the plays and short stories of Anton Chekhov, Alexander Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin, Mikhail Lermontov’s A Hero of Our Time, Ivan Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons, Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We (a precursor to Orwell’s 1984). See also the works of Soviet writer Vladimir Voinovich.

    Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, of course, wrote other well-known novels and short stories. Turgenev’s A Sportsman’s Notebook is credited with influencing Tsar Alexander II’s decision to end serfdom in Russia. Turgenev was arrested and spent some time in prison.

    Modern-day Russian writer Sergei Lebedev has written stories, such as about the poisoning of regime opponents, that hit close to home. Another contemporary Russian writer, Vladimir Sorokin, author of Day of the Oprichnik, lives in exile due to his opposition to Russia’s war in Ukraine.

    Russia ruled over Ukraine and suppressed the Ukrainian language. As a result, writers such as Nikolai Gogol typically wrote in Russian, even though he was born in Ukraine. He moved to Petersburg as a young man and wrote short stories set in Russia and Ukraine. His most well-known novel is Dead Souls.

    Taras Shevchenko (1814-1861) is Ukraine’s most famous poet. He wrote in Ukrainian and is credited with promoting Ukrainian culture, although Russian authorities suppressed his writings. There are several books available that translate his works. Contemporary Ukrainian writers include Andrey Kurkov (Grey Bees), Oksana Zabuzhko (Fieldwork in Ukrainian Sex), Serhiy Zhadan (Voroshilovgrad) and others.

    This list of books about Russia and Ukraine is not comprehensive, but a good place to start.

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    Stuart Anderson, Senior Contributor

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  • Alaska Structures is Prepositioning Housing, Dining, and Medical Facilities in Poland

    Alaska Structures is Prepositioning Housing, Dining, and Medical Facilities in Poland

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    Press Release
    –

    May 10, 2022


    KIRKLAND, Wash., May 10, 2022 (Newswire.com)
    –
    Alaska Structures® (Alaska) is prepositioning a 625-person housing facility and a 650-person dining facility in Poland. A 50-bed medical facility from BLU-MED Response Systems (BLU-MED, a division of Alaska Structures) is also included. Scheduled to be delivered in mid-June, the shipment is intended to provide modular housing and medical facilities for troops or conflict-affected families in Eastern Europe.

    Though the Russian-Ukrainian War has been ongoing since February 2014, the illegal invasion of Russian troops on February 24, 2022, marked a steep escalation and has resulted in the largest refugee crisis in Europe since World War II. According to the Ukraine Internal Displacement Report issued by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), more than 7.1 million Ukrainians are internally displaced. UNHCR reports that more than 5.7 million Ukrainians have fled to neighboring countries and beyond. 90% of those that have had to flee their country are women and children.

    The UNHCR recently updated the needs and requirements outlined in the Ukraine Regional Response Plan (RRP) until December 2022. The revised report estimates that 8.7 million Ukrainians being internally displaced by the end of the year. Shabia Mantoo, a UNHCR spokesperson, stated at a press conference in Geneva, “UNHCR and partners are seeking US$1.85 billion to support a projected 8.3 million refugees in neighboring countries, namely Hungary, the Republic of Moldova, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia, as well as other countries in the region, including Belarus, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic.”

    While the response from people in other countries to share their homes and take in refugees has been extraordinary, the reality of when those displaced families can return to Ukraine is unknown. Countries like Germany have fast-tracked plans to identify and convert empty buildings for accommodating refugees, including unused airport terminals and hotels. Intending to welcome 200,000 Ukrainian refugees; Ireland’s Minister for Housing, Darragh O’Brien, is proposing a range of temporary facilities to be built, including medical facilities, modular housing, education, and childcare facilities while permanent solutions are built.

    The modular accommodations, dining facility, and mobile medical facility being delivered to Poland are a “leaning forward” strategy to quickly respond to requests from relief and aid organizations, governments, and military forces needing rapidly deployable shelter solutions. Facilities en route to Poland are packed in reusable containers for low-cube and rapid transport.

    625-Person Housing Facility Specifications

    • (60) Alaska Military Shelters can provide housing for 625 people on single beds or 1,250 people on bunk beds.
      • (48) 20-feet wide by 32.5-feet long shelters
      • (12) 20-feet wide by 39-feet long shelters
    • Each housing shelter comes with Alaska ECU™ (environmental control unit), sub-flooring, energy-efficient LED lights, and internal electrical kits (1P/220V/50Hz).
    • (10) External power distribution systems (3P/400V/50Hz)

    650-Person Dining Facility Specifications

    • (2) 40-feet wide by 100-feet long Alaska Dining Shelters.
    • Each dining shelter comes with (8) Alaska ECUs™, an interlocking flooring system, LED high bay lights, and internal electrical kits (3P/220-400V/50Hz).
    • External power distribution systems (3P/400V/50Hz).

    50-Bed Medical Facility Specifications

    • (3) 20-feet wide by 32.5-feet long medical shelters.
    • (3) 20-feet wide by 39-feet long medical shelters.
    • Each medical shelter comes with an Alaska ECU™, sub-flooring, fluorescent lights, and internal electrical kits (1P/220V/50Hz).
    • (1) Entry vestibule with bump thru door.
    • (50) Ward beds.
    • (1) External power distribution system (3P/400V/50Hz).

    About Alaska Structures

    Alaska Structures® (Alaska) is the world’s fastest and largest supplier of military shelter systems. We engineer and manufacture “Berry Compliant” military shelters and support systems in the United States. Our integrated approach allows us to provide the highest quality military shelters without relying on third parties. Alaska Military Shelters are used to support operational readiness across a wide range of enduring and expeditionary strategies with Forward Operating Sites (FOS), Mobile Field Hospitals (MFH), maintenance facilities, military aircraft hangars, Tactical Operations Centers (TOC), and shelters for humanitarian and disaster relief (HADR). 

    To date, Alaska Structures has delivered 65,000+ shelter systems and 22,000+ Alaska ECUs™ to more than 85 countries worldwide. No other shelter company comes close to matching our level of experience or expertise.

    For more information about rapidly deployable shelter systems from Alaska Structures, please visit: www.aks.com  

    About BLU-MED Response Systems

    BLU-MED Response Systems® (BLU-MED), a division of Alaska Structures, is the World’s Leader in Deployable Medical Facilities™. Our portable medical shelters and field hospitals enable governments (all levels), hospitals, emergency management, and medical response agencies to rapidly respond to any disaster …when and where needed™.

    From 2020 to 2021, more than 650 negative pressure isolation facilities for COVID-19 were deployed in the U.S., Canada, South America, Africa, the Middle East, and the Far East.

    BLU-MED medical facilities ensure a safe, clean environment for advanced-level healthcare in any climate for extended periods of time. Our scalable, self-contained, and temperature-controlled medical shelters are used for a wide range of services. BLU-MED offers customized supply and equipment packages.

    For more information about medical shelters from BLU-MED, please visit: www.blu-med.com 

    For purchasing and delivery options of the facilities being sent to Poland and all press, please contact:

    Gerrit Boyle

    Alaska Structures, Inc.

    International: +1-907-344-1565

    Toll-Free (U.S. and Canada): +1-888-370-1800

    gb@aks.com

    ###

    Source: Alaska Structures

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  • Alaska Structures Releases Open Letter: In Solidarity With Ukraine

    Alaska Structures Releases Open Letter: In Solidarity With Ukraine

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    Press Release
    –

    Mar 1, 2022


    KIRKLAND, Wash., March 1, 2022 (Newswire.com)
    –
    The following is an open letter from Alaska Structures, Inc.

    At Alaska Structures, our thoughts and prayers are with the brave men and women in Ukraine fighting for democracy and the sovereignty of their country, and those fleeing the unprovoked military attack from Russia.

    Russian War on Ukraine – Neighboring Countries Brace for Potential Conflict and Ukrainian Refugee Crisis

    With Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Europe and Allied Forces are on high alert should the conflict escalate into neighboring countries. During a recent press conference, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg stated, “NATO will continue to take all necessary measures to protect and defend all Allies, including by reinforcing the eastern part of the Alliance.”

    After Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014 and following the 2016 Warsaw Summit, NATO established four multinational battlegroups in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland. Led by the United States, the UK, Canada, and Germany, the combat-ready battlegroups strengthened NATO’s deterrence and defense in eastern and southeastern Europe. Despite efforts to pursue diplomacy, the Russian War on Ukraine has prompted the consideration of enhancing defense capabilities with additional NATO battlegroups to deter further Russian territorial aggression, including acts of aggression against NATO members bordering Russia. Should additional battlegroups be needed to strengthen force protection and improve deterrence, NATO and Allied Forces will need rapidly deployable military shelters to quickly establish military base camps and forward operating sites (F.O.S.).

    A Ukrainian Refugee Crisis in the Making

    Fierce and creative Ukrainian resistance has slowed invading Russian forces. Should the conflict intensify, and the invasion overtakes Kyiv and other large cities, the displacement of hundreds of thousands to millions of Ukrainians could quickly overwhelm borders and existing immigrant facilities in neighboring countries. According to Romania’s interior minister, Lucian Bode, “We are currently analyzing how many refugee camps we can install in a relatively short time: 10, 12, 24 hours.” The makings for a migrant crisis not seen since World War II exist.

    Poland, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, and Moldova have agreed to receive and accommodate Ukrainian citizens fleeing Russia’s attack. With the possibility of long-term displacement, Ukrainians will need temporary housing capable of withstanding the cold winter weather, food, clothing, as well as education and healthcare services while seeking resettlement. To avoid a Ukrainian refugee crisis, the U.N. Refugee Agency is asking the international community for $190 million in humanitarian assistance to help meet the needs of 1.8 million people, as outlined in the 2022 Humanitarian Response Plan for Ukraine.

    Military Shelters Created an “Instant City” during the Afghanistan Humanitarian Crisis in 2021

    There are lessons from recent refugee emergencies that apply here. In response to the Afghanistan Humanitarian Crisis, in less than one week’s time, a flight line at Germany’s Ramstein Air Base was transformed into an “instant city” capable of housing up to 12,000 Afghanistan evacuees at a time. Ramstein Air Base is the headquarters for the U.S. Air Force in Europe and NATO’s Allied Air Command. 

    More than 350 military shelters from Alaska Structures were allocated from War Reserve Material (WRM) stocks and used as the U.S. European Command’s (EUCOM) primary evacuation hub for Operation Allies Refuge, supporting the largest and most complex humanitarian evacuations in history. The “instant city” provided families from Afghanistan with temporary housing, food, water, clothing, hygiene facilities, medical tents, worship areas, and screening facilities before they could be transported and resettled to other locations.

    Contact

    Gerrit Boyle

    Alaska Structures, Inc.

    International: +1-907-344-1565

    Toll-Free (U.S. and Canada): +1-888-370-1800

    gb@aks.com 

    Source: Alaska Structures, Inc.

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