World

President Putin has accused the West of engaging in “nuclear blackmail” and warned he has “lots of weapons to reply” as he called up 300,000 more troops to the Ukraine war. In a rare address to the nation, he said he wasn’t bluffing and would use “all the means available to us” if Russian territory

We waited at a checkpoint near the Ukrainian’s defensive line for the southern counter-offensive. We had permission to be there, but the soldiers were unhappy, and all those permissions had to be rechecked. The Ukrainian government and military have imposed an almost complete blackout of information on the southern counter-attack that has the Russian-held city

A Ukrainian man has alleged he was tied up, beaten and shocked with an electric charge during Russia’s occupation of his village. But instead of Russian soldiers abusing him directly, Andrii Matiazh, 46, alleged it was local Ukrainian policemen who had switched allegiance. “Someone tortured me,” he said, speaking at his home in Volokhivka, which

The remains of two children are among 146 bodies exhumed at a mass burial site close to the city of Izyum in eastern Ukraine, according to an official. Many of the victims are civilians, with some feared to have been tortured while enduring a violent death, authorities said on Monday. The mass burial site containing

A Russian singer has denounced Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine and asked to be placed on her country’s foreign agents list in solidarity with her husband. Alla Pugacheva’s husband, singer and TV presenter Maxim Galkin, was added to the foreign agents register on Friday by Russia’s justice ministry. His criticism of Russia for sending troops

Taiwan has been rocked by a powerful earthquake which toppled a three-storey building, stranded around 400 tourists on a mountainside and knocked part of a passenger train off its tracks. Footage shows the moment the 6.8 magnitude quake also caused the ceiling of a sports centre to collapse while people were playing badminton. People are

A powerful  typhoon bearing down on southern japan has seen the region battered by gales and torrential rain leading to blackouts, major transport disruption and the evacuation of thousands of people. Weather forecasters have warned of strong winds and high waves “like never experienced before”, with the threat of rivers overflowing and landslides. Typhoon Nanmadol,

Thrown back by the rapid Ukrainian offensive in the Kharkiv region east of Ukraine, the Russians were going to have to dig in somewhere. And now we can begin to see where. They are certainly making a stand at Svatove, east of the Oskil River. This is really important to them because Svatove controls the

Rows of crosses lined the woodland, enveloped by the unmistakable smell of death. Each makeshift wooden marker jutted out of a mound of earth where a body was buried. Some displayed the names of the deceased, but the majority just bore numbers because the identity was unknown. Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible

Vladimir Putin says Russia will do everything it can to bring the Ukraine war to an end “as soon as possible”, despite the direction of the conflict swinging against his military in recent days. Russian troops have been routed in parts of the north east with thousands of square kilometres of territory liberated by defence

A mass burial site containing around 440 graves has been found in the Ukrainian city of Izyum after it was liberated from Russian control, a top police officer has told Sky News. Serhii Bolvinov, the chief police investigator for Kharkiv region, said all the bodies would be exhumed and taken away for forensic examination as

A leaked video appears to show a close ally of President Vladimir Putin offering pardons to Russian prisoners if they fight in Ukraine – but warning they will be shot dead if they desert when they get there. In the footage, a man who is believed to be Yevgeny Prigozhin, the reported head of the

The Ukrainian soldier stooped over an ammunition box and picked up what looked like a giant, metal cork. ”Russian landmine,” he said. He walked to another discarded crate inside a large warehouse. “This is a mortar,” the serviceman, 39, said, holding up the deadly weapon, which was the shape of a stretched, grey-coloured balloon. The haul

A coalition of right wing parties have claimed victory in the Swedish elections, ousting the centre left bloc from power. Jimmie Akesson, who leads the nationalist and anti-immigration Sweden Democrats, said his party would be “a constructive and driving force” in rebuilding safety in the country, adding it was “time to put Sweden first”. The

A scrum of desperation surged around the Ukrainian relief truck in a town that was liberated from Russian control just days earlier. “Please give me an aid parcel son, I have a walking stick,” said one tiny, old woman, crushed up against the back of the vehicle as others tried to grab for help over

Ukraine’s military has a chance of removing Russian troops from all the territory they have claimed since February, a senior military analyst has told Sky News. Professor Michael Clarke said such a development would be a “huge victory” – adding that while recent gains in Kharkiv are important, retaking Kherson in the south would be

Ukrainian forces have retaken 6,000 square kilometres of their homeland – 3,000 of them in the past six days alone, it has been reported. And in his nightly address to his nation, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the “advance of our forces” was still continuing. His claims appear to be supported by renowned think tank, the

The Russian troops suddenly started shouting wildly and running around, before scrambling into their tanks and fleeing the tiny village in eastern Ukraine, one resident said. The chaotic scenes in Zaliznychne took place the day before a small group of Ukrainian troops appeared. “They asked me where the Russians had lived and where they hid

The far-right Sweden Democrats appear to be close to causing a huge upset in the country’s neck-and-neck election cliffhanger. The populist anti-immigration party, which emerged from the neo-Nazi movement in the late 1980s, has increased its polling at each of the past nine elections, and on Sunday looked to have gained 21% of this year’s

Russian attacks on critical infrastructure have left Kharkiv with a “total” power blackout, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said, after reports of “significant gains” by his forces in a regional counteroffensive. Donetsk has also lost all power, the president tweeted, while Zaporizhzhia, Dnipropetrovsk and Sumy regions are struggling with partial blackouts. The governor of Kharkiv,