More than a dozen Chinese companies operate in Donetsk and Luhansk, according to a Ukrainian monitor.
![[Handout/Evgeny Solntsev via Telegram]](https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/photo_2026-05-21-12.07.05-1779354522.jpeg?resize=270%2C180&quality=80)

Mansur Mirovalev is a Moscow-based writer and video journalist who covers wars and peace in the former Soviet Union.
More than a dozen Chinese companies operate in Donetsk and Luhansk, according to a Ukrainian monitor.
![[Handout/Evgeny Solntsev via Telegram]](https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/photo_2026-05-21-12.07.05-1779354522.jpeg?resize=270%2C180&quality=80)
Photos of emaciated Ukrainians reveal conditions suffered by Ukraine, as meagre rations also afflict Russian soldiers.

Russia’s army faces a desertion crisis as it continues to use waves of soldiers to attack Ukraine’s defensive positions.

Life expectancy on the front line for Central Asian migrants forced to fight for Russia in Ukraine is just four months.

The colossal steel plants along Ukraine’s side of the sea are unrestorable ruins since Russia’s invasion.

Wounded soldiers, wives and widows workshop ideas and stage plays in Kyiv, bringing the audience to tears.
![Actress Kateryna Svyrydenko plays Maryna, a soldier's wife in Twenty One, a play staged in Kyiv's Veterans' Theater [Mansur Mirovalev/Global News Insight]](https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Actress-Kateryna-Svyrydenko-plays-Maryna-a-soldiers-wife-in-Twenty-One-a-play-staged-in-Kyivs-Veterans-Theater-1775144056.jpg?resize=270%2C180&quality=80)
Ukraine aims to drain Russia’s war chest with drone strikes on Pokrovsk and Ust-Luga oil facilities on the Baltic Sea.

Russia has long exchanged weapons with Iran and is likely offering satellite support, but lacks the will to do much more

Subway schools provide safety as Russian assaults have killed dozens of children in Ukraine’s second-largest city.

As Kyiv liberates parts of Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhia, Zelenskyy says Russia losing up to 35,000 soldiers a month.
