Anna Conkling

Anna Conkling is an independent foreign correspondent covering war and conflict, human rights violations, and climate change. Her work primarily focuses on Russia's war in Ukraine and has been featured in Business Insider, France24, Foreign Policy, Scripps News, The Daily Beast, The Sunday Times, and The Telegraph. Additionally, she is the Ukraine correspondent for Noosphere App, a journalism platform that connects subscribers directly to independent journalists covering the U.S and foreign news. She has also reported from Armenia, Greece, and Lebanon.

Esquire •

Inside the Kyiv High School Where Ukrainian Teenagers Prepare for War: "Who Will Liberate Our Land If Not Us?"

At 6:30am, the school day at Ivan Bohun High School in Kyiv begins. Students at the boarding school for boys and girls aged 15 to 17 wake up, make their beds, brush their teeth. At 7am, they go for a 20-minute run, followed by their first breakfast; they pour into a large cafeteria and eat eggs and toast quietly. At 8:20am, they stand in a line for roll-call, ready for their first lessons of the day. Ivan Bohun is a regular high school in some ways, with regular subjects, but the children are al...
Men's Health •

Inside the Ukrainian Frontline Sauna That’s Become a ‘Ray of Light’ for Exhausted Soldiers

Three servicemen sit shirtless around a wooden picnic table in the side room of a Catholic church in Sloviansk, a city in eastern Ukraine. Their faces are red and their bodies are covered in sweat as they pass around a large blue bottle of water. The men are sitting in their underwear with a large white towel wrapped around them. They've just emerged from the church’s small sauna and are now taking a break before venturing back into the 90-degree heat. These men are among the few soldiers who kn...
The Daily Beast •

Furious Frontline Ukrainians Call Out Trump’s Cowardly Retreat From Putin

Air raid sirens blare in Zolochiv, a small town in the Kharkiv region, where dozens of destroyed buildings line the streets that few civilians walk along. The alarms were not the first that day, and they would not be the last. Zolochiv is just 10 miles away from the nearest front lines but holds no strategic military value. Still, it is pummeled almost daily, and this air alert warned residents to seek cover immediately as a Russian Molniya drone flew over the town. Some residents sat outdoors...
Business Insider •

Inside the horrifying business of returning Ukraine's dead soldiers

In the back room of a morgue on the outskirts of Kyiv, the stench of rotten flesh hangs heavy in the air, its source a large white bag lying on a metal table. The mortician opens it, and inside is a smaller black bag containing a pair of mud-covered military boots, a mummified body, and a skull. This is all that is left of a Ukrainian soldier returned from captivity in Russia. Now begins the grueling work of finding out who he was. Since Russia's all-out invasion of Ukraine began three and a ha...
More to Her Story •

Olena Yahupova Survived Russian Torture and Rape. Now She’s Taking Her Case to the World. — More to Her Story

Eight months into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, on October 6, 2022, Russian soldiers appeared at Olena Yahupova’s door and took her to a nearby police station for questioning. She suspected that her neighbors had told the soldiers that her husband was in Ukraine’s military and that she was sending him to Russian military positions and activity in Kamianka Dniprovska. In reality, Yahupova had little contact with her husband, often not hearing from him for weeks at a time. She had no idea if he wa...
The Village Voice •

Russia’s Destruction of Ukraine’s Environment has National and International – and Personal – Consequences - The Village Voice

The rolling hills of the Carpathian Mountains, crisp autumn mornings at Ukraine’s national parks, wild horses grazing on grass surrounded by a picturesque natural landscape — these were the subjects of nature photographer Denys Kryvyi’s pictures, before Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. For more than a decade, Kryvyi’s passion for photography took him to the most secluded parts of his country, seemingly a world away from the geopolitical turmoil that would engulf the nation after Russia’s...
British GQ •

“At least we’re going to die beautiful.” Inside the barbershops on Ukraine's front line

The gentle hum of hair dryers and the blare of techno music fills Kozir barbershop on a busy Wednesday afternoon. Outside, air raid sirens have just begun to bellow through the streets of Kramatorsk, a city just 23 kilometres from the front lines in eastern Ukraine, but inside, no one pays heed to the warnings. The stylists here have grown accustomed to the thunder-like roar of incoming missiles, and the men in their chairs are all off-duty soldiers who are stationed in nearby positions.In Ukrai...
The Telegraph •

Ukraine fires British Storm Shadow missiles into Russia for first time

3:04PM Analysis: Use of Storm Shadow puts Britain in Putin’s sights When British-made Storm Shadow missiles slammed into Russia just after lunch today, a Rubicon was crossed.This was the moment the Kremlin had been warning against for months.The message, from Vladimir Putin, has been simple, consistent, direct. He warned that if British missiles were fired at Russia, Britain would shift from being an ally of Ukra...
The Telegraph •

Russia threatens to strike Kyiv with ‘massive’ new missile

Russia is threatening to strike Kyiv with a “massive” new missile in revenge for the use of Western weapons against its territory.Vladimir Putin’s armed forces are preparing to fire RS-26 intercontinental ballistic missiles at the Ukrainian capital, local media reported.Western nations including the United States shut their embassies on Thursday in anticipation of a large-scale air strike. The joint closure, also involving Italy, Spain and Greece, marked the gravest expression of concern from fo...
The Telegraph •

North Korean flag drives fear through Ukraine’s exhausted front-line troops

The Red-Blue Five-Pointed Star Flag of North Korea is not something typically found amid the shell-craters and blasted trenches of eastern Ukraine, but a picture of it flying alongside the Russian tricolour has driven fear into the hearts of men and women hardened by months of savage fighting.Allegedly taken at a slag heap near the embattled city of Pokrovsk, the single blurry photo could indicate that Ukrainian soldiers and civilians in the area are about to face an onslaught of thousands of tr...
The Telegraph •

How Ukrainian geeks are making gullible Russians pay for the war with a dating scam

A group of Ukrainian scammers called the Monetary Army is using fake dating profiles to defraud Russian men out of thousands of pounds, with some of the profits funnelling into Kyiv’s war effort.Alongside the dating profiles, the scammers use illegitimate websites and cryptocurrency transactions in a business that allows them to get rich quickly while avenging themselves on Moscow’s citizens.The Monetary Army was born in 2020, when young Ukrainian tech-workers took advantage of surging dating ap...
Men's Health •

Ukraine Goes for Gold: What It's Like to Train During War

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...
Men's Journal •

On Breaks From War, Ukrainian Soldiers Seek Relief in a Surprising Place

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...
The Sunday Times •

Ukrainian troops have a secret battle: to stop themselves gambling

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 Daily Beast •

One Huge Change Now Could Help Ukraine Defeat Putin

ZOLOCHIV, Ukraine—The thud of bombs and the roar of air raid sirens pierce the air in Zolochiv, a desolate village in Kharkiv region. The village holds no strategic value for Russia, but its proximity to the border just 12 miles away means Zolochiv has little or no warning of fresh attacks, and casualties and deaths are frequent. Terror runs high among civilians. Three years into the war, residents of Zolochiv feel that Kyiv’s military must boost the village’s defenses by attacking weapons, lau...
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