On the lighter side...
An excerpt:
The last time Marina Karpa spoke to her husband was when he called her on his mobile from a battlefield in east Ukraine on July 29 last year.
A member of the country’s special forces, Captain Taras Ivanovich, 26, had been sent on a secret mission deep into territory controlled by Russian-backed separatists to rescue the pilot of a Ukrainian SU-25 jet fighter shot down near the town of Snizhne.
His unit of 19 elite soldiers was ambushed and came under heavy enemy fire.
“I’ve been shot in the stomach. I’m bleeding . . . I think I’m going to die. I love you so much,” Taras muttered into his mobile phone, a gun-battle raging in the background. Then the line went dead.
From RFE/RL's News Desk:
A U.S. naval officer says Russian military vessels and aircraft have been spotted in the Black Sea near an area where NATO plans to hold a military exercise.
Rear Admiral Brad Williamson the said the Russian navy acted in line with international rules.
"They have their plans, we have ours," Williamson said without disclosing further details.
He was speaking on March 8 to the Bulgarian BTA news agency aboard a U.S. cruiser docked in the Bulgarian Black Sea port of Varna.
The United States is due to take part in the exercise on March 9 alongside NATO partners Bulgaria, Romania, and Turkey amid tensions between the West and Russia over the Ukraine conflict.