Tatiana Usmanova burst into tears when Andrey Pivovarov, her husband, called her and said he had been included in the Russian prisoner exchange.Ms Usmanova was at her home in Moscow, where she has lived throughout her husband’s last three years serving in a Russian penal colony. When she heard the news, she immediately booked flights to Turkey and then to Germany, chasing after her husband as he was transported to freedom.Mr Pivovarov, 42, is the head of the Russian opposition group Open Russia,...

AS THE WAR in Ukraine rages on, the effects are omnipresent in the country. Even in the capital city of Kyiv, considered one of the “safe spots,” rockets zoom past buildings and drones are visible overhead. Yet Ukraine’s top athletes remain hell-bent on competing in this summer’s Olympic Games in Paris—the nation’s first Olympics since the February 2022 Russian invasion. In the months leading up to the event, Men’s Health reports on the ground to find out how—amid so much uncertainty and adversi...

Volodymyr the machine gunner slowly traces a halo around his head and shoulders with a 40-pound plate. He's alone in the small, dimly lit gym, save for pop music playing in the backgroundAs a Ukrainian soldier, he's been near death and watched friends die on the frontlines ever since Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a “special military operation” in Ukraine and launched a full-scale attack on Feb. 22, 2022. But today, the 39-year-old isn't fighting. He's strengthening his arms and back...

A white neon sign and gold string lights draw in passers-by on the edge of a war zone. Down a set of stairs and past a small entryway with wall of a mirrors lies the Slot Games casino.It is dimly lit, windowless and has an open floor plan and the lights of more than 20 slot machines and an electronic roulette table glint glinting off the mirror tiles on the ceiling.Here about twenty men aged 30 to 50 sit silent and alone, three of them at slot machines marked “VIP” — for guests who visit and los...

The firefighters were exhausted after spending three hours taming an inferno at a publishing house attacked by Russian missiles. They were covered in ash, soot, and blood from the bodies they had hauled from the flames. And they were not expecting much of a rest.It was Thursday in Kharkiv. For almost a fortnight Russia had been piling pressure on the citizens of Ukraine’s second city, mounting a rapid offensive through the surrounding countryside while maintaining a daily bombardment of the city...

The soldiers had spent almost a fortnight digging trenches day and night to deter Russian forces from crossing the border north of Kharkiv, but at about two o’clock on Friday morning the enemy came crashing through. Russia’s new assault on Ukraine’s second city had begun.“It was silent at first, and then it was hell,” said platoon commander Nikita a few hours later, speaking from his mother’s home in Kharkiv. “We held the artillery. That’s it. We stood watching it all.”For the next 12 hours, he...

Kherson was the first major city to fall to Russian forces in the days after President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine began. Few people had time to flee before the city fell to the Russians, including members of Kherson’s government, who remained trapped under occupation with a target on their backs.Now, Kherson is once again a frontline town where attacks happen most days. With no new aid from the U.S. and a low supply of weapons, the authorities who remain fear the return of fighting on...

The sound of bombs pounding Kharkiv was the first thing Polina Chub heard on the day Russia invaded Ukraine.It was February 24, 2022, and Chub, then 16, was asleep in her bed. There had been rumors that Russia would invade, but like many Ukrainians, Chub had not taken them too seriously. At first she thought the roaring sound outside her bedroom window was fireworks, but soon realized the war had actually begun. Chub hid under the covers and covered her ears while thinking, No, this is not happe...

KYIV—A Russian soldier was pointing a gun at her head from behind the television camera. The film crew had come from one of Moscow’s state-owned TV stations and Olena Yahupova had no choice but to tell them exactly what they wanted to hear. The footage of Yahupova saying that she was an extremist who had helped the Ukrainian military try to fight the occupation of her town, Kamianka Dniprovska, was broadcast across Russia by RIA Novosti as supposed proof of the nefarious means of the Ukrainian

Russia’s military is recruiting children and teens in occupied territories of Ukraine into its Young Army program. This seeks to brainwash, militarize, and even force them into contributing to the Russian war effort against their own country, according to non-governmental organizations monitoring the group’s activities. Through social media posts and sources on the ground in occupied regions, the NGOs have tracked the formation of the militarized children’s program, which they fear is intended

KUPIANSK, Ukraine—In an old garage workshop outside Kupiansk, a unit of soldiers is turning to the past in their search for weapons to fight off Russian soldiers. One inventive unit is modernizing old Soviet-era KS 19 anti-aircraft guns and turning the antiquated machines into fast-moving weapons of destruction that can be used to target dozens of Russian soldiers at a time. With an ingenious act of improvisation and some commercially available tech, they are turning the Kremlin’s history agains

As the dancers make their way to rehearsal, air-raid sirens blare throughout Kharkiv. When the city first came under siege, the alarms would have sent them rushing to the nearest underground shelter, where they'd wait out the shelling. Now, more than 500 days later, the dancers have learned to ignore the sirens. The wails have become part of their soundtrack as they prepare for showtime in Ukraine's easternmost major city, only 15 miles from the Russian border. By mid-afternoon, nine women have

Anatoly Isichenko’s farm was one of the first to fall. By March 2022, less than a week into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, enemy troops had reached Husarivka in Kharkiv Oblast and seized the 68-year-old Ukrainian’s land. Isichenko watched in horror as his once-prosperous business turned into a military base—a foothold where enemy forces carried out attacks against Ukrainian troops and civilians fighting for liberation. Isichenko’s dairy farm, which once employed up to 240 local civilians, now loo

On March 17, the International Criminal Court announced an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Children’s Rights Commissioner Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova. The court deemed that Putin and Lvova-Belova are “allegedly responsible for the war crime of unlawful deportation of population (children) and that of unlawful transfer of population (children) from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation (under articles 8(2)(a)(vii) and 8(2)(b)(viii) of the Rome Statute),” a...

BERLIN, Germany—The mother of Veronika Trubitsyna, 13, and Anastasiia Trubitsyna, 15, died one hour before Russian police forced the sisters to pack their few belongings and move into a nearby orphanage. Without any legal guardians in Russia, they were told they would become wards of the state. For nine months, the sisters were trapped in a system that sought to feed them pro-war propaganda and encourage them to become Russian citizens. Now out of Russia’s grasp, Veronika spoke with The Daily B

VELYKA NOVOSILKA—Residents who have remained in the small village of Velyka Novosilka in the Donetsk Oblast of Ukraine are living in an underground commune and refusing to leave, despite pleas from the police. The village was once home to around 4,700 Ukrainians, according to Olya Semibratova, one of the volunteers who regularly deliver aid to the communes. But Russia’s attacks have turned it into a ghost town, where the remaining 304 citizens risk death by setting foot outside. In the early da

Air raid sirens blare throughout Kyiv two days before the one-year mark of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The threat is unclear, but social media apps suggest that missiles might be launched in the direction of Kyiv. At the Anacosma Clinic, Dr. Taras Baranov pays little attention to the possible attacks; he is in the middle of performing a blepharoplasty surgery. In Kyiv, women are turning a beauty practice into an act of defiance and feminine resilience. They are having plastic surgery work