Russia-Ukraine updates: Putin says war was ‘unleashed’ on Russia
The Russian president delivered his annual Victory Day speech.
More than a year after Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of neighboring Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, the countries are fighting for control of areas in eastern and southern Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's forces are readying a spring counteroffensive, but Putin appears to be preparing for a long and bloody war.
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Latest headlines:
Ukrainian drone injures 3 inside Russia
Three people were injured in an explosion in the Kireevsky district of the Tula region on Sunday, Yekaterina Makarova, press secretary of the region's Ministry of Health, told Interfax.
Russian authorities and law enforcement agencies said a Ukrainian drone with ammunition caused the explosion in the town far from the two countries' border.
Kireevsk is about 180 miles from the border with Ukraine and 110 miles south of Moscow.
The Russian state-run news agency Tass reported authorities identified the drone as a Ukrainian Tu-141. The Latvia-based Russian news outlet Meduza reported that the blast left a crater about 50 feet in diameter and 16 feet deep.
-ABC News' Anastasia Bagaeva
Russia says Slovakia handing over fighter jets unfriendly step, violation of international obligations
Russia called Slovakia's transfer of MiG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine an unfriendly step and a step aimed at destroying bilateral relations.
"We are talking about another gross violation by the Slovak side of its international obligations to re-export Russian-made weapons and military equipment," Russia's Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation said in a statement.
"We regard these actions of Slovakia as an unfriendly act against the Russian Federation, aimed at destroying bilateral relations," the FSMTC said.
-ABC News' Will Gretsky
Ukraine says Russia's Bakhmut assault loses steam, counterstrike coming soon
Ukrainian troops, on the defensive for four months, will launch a long-awaited counterassault "very soon" now that Russia's huge winter offensive is losing steam without taking Bakhmut, Ukraine's top ground forces commander Colonel-General Oleksandr Syrskyi said Thursday.
"The aggressor does not give up hope of taking Bakhmut at any cost, despite the losses in manpower and equipment," Syrskyi said.
Adding, "Without sparing anything, they lose considerable strength and exhale. Very soon we will take advantage of this opportunity, as we once did near Kyiv, Kharkiv, Balaklia and Kupyansk."
-ABC News' Will Gretsky
Slovakia hands over 4 fighter jets to Ukraine
Slovakia has handed over four MiG-29 fighter jets to the Ukrainian Armed Forces, according to Slovakian Defense Minister Jaro Nad.
The remaining aircrafts promised to Ukraine will be handed over in the following weeks, Nad said.
In response to the news, Russia accused NATO and the EU of continuing to escalate the conflict in Ukraine and seeking to prolong it.
"The Russian Federation considers the transfer of four fighter jets by Slovakia to Ukraine a destructive step that runs counter to the EU's rhetoric about seeking peaceful solutions," Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko said in a statement.
Adding, "The Russian Federation will measure its reaction with the specific military activities of NATO on the territory of Finland."
-ABC News' Will Gretsky
How the Russia-Ukraine conflict became a cultural war
In the basement of the Syayvo bookstore in Ukraine's capital, hundreds of Russian language books stand piled, waiting to be pulped.
The books -- ranging from everything between the classics of Russian literature to works translated into Russian and Soviet-era textbooks -- have been donated by Ukrainians who have turned away from Russian culture to embrace their own since the invasion last year.
They are set to be recycled and turned into Ukrainian language texts or other products, with all profits going to support the war effort, Nadia Kibenko, the 32-year-old store worker who is handling the books, told ABC News. They have recycled 75 tons -- around 150,000 volumes -- since last July, she said. As a child, Kibenko grew up in a Ukrainian speaking household but, more often than not, only had the choice to read in Russian.
"We do not burn books," Kibenko told ABC News during a recent interview in Kyiv. "We just give them second life."
The cultural battleground is not just symbolic. Witnesses from the Russian occupied territories say that, in schools, Ukrainian language books were thrown out and replaced by Russian ones as new curricula taught Putin's view that Ukrainians and Russians are "one people."
A report published in December by PEN America, a New York-based literary and human rights organization, said that "culture was on the frontlines" and Putin "seeks not only to control Ukrainian territory, but to erase Ukrainian culture and identity."
-ABC News' Guy Davies