Anna Conkling

Anna Conkling is a New York journalist based in Berlin. Her work focuses around finding unique angles about the war in Ukraine that highlight the people who have been caught in the war. She is a contributor to The Daily Beast and Noosphere, and has written for The Sunday Times, The Telegraph, Rolling Stone, Men's Health, and Teen Vogue. 

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...
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...
Atmos •

The Women Documenting Russia's Ecocide Crimes - Atmos

The attack on the Kakhovka Dam in June 2023 came as a shock to Ukrainians, who had been plagued by a brutal war for over a year. Located in southern Ukraine, the dam had long been thought to withstand almost anything—only to crumble under the weight of relentless Russian bombardments. As the dam’s reservoir drained in the days that followed, unstoppable floods consumed residential buildings, destroyed ecosystems, displaced thousands, and killed dozens of people.  Today, the attack is deemed the...
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...
The Daily Beast •

Frontline Ukrainians Fear New Aid From U.S. Will Be a Disaster

KHARKIV, Ukraine—After months of infighting on Capitol Hill, President Joe Biden has finally been able to sign off on a huge new $61 billion military aid bill for Ukraine. Delays to the bill, which got bogged down in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, were widely blamed for impacting Kyiv’s ability to defend itself from Russian advances. After its passage last week, some members of the House waved Ukrainian flags while others cheered in celebration that Ukraine will soon receive...
The Daily Beast •

Popular Psychics Predict How the War in Ukraine Will End

KOSTIANTYNIVKA, Ukraine—In a large bedroom in eastern Ukraine, a woman in her eighties wearing a fluffy pink bathrobe hunches over a table by her bed. The room is filled with icons of the Virgin Mary, Jesus Christ, and Saint Nicholas, figures she believes protect her against evil curses and the dangers of the war. The woman fixes her stare at the table, which she has filled with playing cards, ranging from the ten of clubs to the queen of hearts. She looks at me and says, “You need to leave Ukra...
The Daily Beast •

Terrifying Poison Threat Makes Ukraine Soldiers’ Lives Hell

KUPYANSK, Ukraine—Ukrainian troops in Kupyansk are running low on ammunition and weapons as they fight to remain in control of a city that doesn’t even want to be saved from the Russians. In this eastern town, soldiers say that they are afraid that pro-Russian civilian collaborators might help to poison, bomb, or otherwise kill them because they believe that life under Vladimir Putin’s occupation would be better than living in a free Ukraine.Located in the eastern Kharkiv region, Kupyansk was on...
The Daily Beast •

I Was Used as a Propaganda Tool by Russia

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
The Daily Beast •

Kids in Occupied Ukraine Forced to Join Russian War Effort

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
The Daily Beast •

Ukrainians Invent Homemade War Machine to Gun Down Russians

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
The Daily Beast •

Russian Home Invaders ‘Stole’ the Lives of These Families

Residents of occupied regions of Ukraine expected the worst when Russian soldiers seized control of their towns. While those who could flee left in the early days of the war, many homes and properties sat empty, waiting for the day that the owners could return to the lives they had left. But they had not planned for Russian soldiers to use their homes as military bases—or auction off their land to the highest bidder in Vladimir Putin’s home country. While Ukraine’s fight to reclaim territory r
The Daily Beast •

Deadly Surprises From Putin Lurk Under These Family Homes

KHARKIV, Ukraine—Massive mine removal operations are underway in Ukraine as the country tries to repair some of the damage from the Russian occupation nearly one-and-a-half years into the war. While Ukrainian officials de-mine entire towns and industrial buildings, some residents have been left with no choice but to clear shrapnel and bombs from their land, risking their lives in the process. As of June 2023, a recorded 540,000 items of unexploded ordnance have been cleared from Ukraine, accor
The Daily Beast •

Ukrainians Under Siege Are Turning to OnlyFans

Darina Lebedeva lost her job the day before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. She was only 18 and felt hopeless about securing a new job with a decent salary while her country was under attack by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Until Feb. 24, 2022, she had worked remotely for a retail website. Like countless other jobs in Ukraine, the work vanished as soon as the first shots of the war were fired. She had roughly $3,000 in her bank account, which would last her only five months. “The war took ev
The Daily Beast •

Putin’s War Has Caused a Huge Plastic Surgery Boom in Ukraine

KYIV—Ukrainian surgeons are performing a strenuous new wartime medical procedure: providing facial reconstruction surgery for people injured in Russian attacks. They are teaching themselves to perform medical services they never expected to do, racing against time to decide what can and cannot be saved, working through screams from patients and air raid sirens, and struggling to afford critically needed supplies. One miscalculation might cause irreversible damage. “We never expected such a war
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