The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance of 32 member states—30 European and 2 North American. Established in the aftermath of World War II, the organization implements the North Atlantic Treaty, signed in Washington, D.C., on 4 April 1949. NATO is a collective security system: its independent member states agree to defend each other against attacks by third parties. During the Cold War, NATO operated as a check on the threat posed by the Soviet Union. The alliance remained in place after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact, and has been involved in military operations in the Balkans, the Middle East, South Asia and Africa. The organization's motto is animus in consulendo liber. The organization's strategic concepts include deterrence.
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin is a Russian politician and former intelligence officer who is the president of Russia. Putin has held continuous positions as president or prime minister since 1999: as prime minister from 1999 to 2000 and from 2008 to 2012, and as president from 2000 to 2008 and since 2012. He is the longest-serving Russian or Soviet leader since Joseph Stalin.
A government-in-exile (GiE) is a political group that claims to be the legitimate government of a sovereign state or semi-sovereign state, but is unable to exercise legal power and instead resides in a foreign country. Governments in exile usually plan to one day return to their native country and regain formal power. A government in exile differs from a rump state in the sense that the latter controls at least part of its former territory. For example, during World War I, nearly all of Belgium was occupied by Germany, but Belgium and its allies held on to a small slice in the country's west. A government in exile, in contrast, has lost all its territory. However, in practice the difference might be minor; in the above example, the Belgian government at Sainte-Adresse was located in French territory and acted as a government in exile for most practical purposes.
John Job Crew Bradfield was an Australian engineer best known as the chief proponent of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, of which he oversaw both the design and construction. He worked for the New South Wales Department of Public Works from 1891 to 1933. He was the first recipient of an engineering doctorate from the University of Sydney, in 1924. Other notable projects with which he was associated include the Cataract Dam, the Burrinjuck Dam, and Brisbane's Story Bridge. The Harbour Bridge formed only one component of the City Circle, Bradfield's grand scheme for the railways of central Sydney, a modified version of which was completed after his death. He was also the designer of an unbuilt irrigation project known as the Bradfield Scheme, which proposed that remote areas of western Queensland and north-eastern South Australia could be made fertile by the diversion of rivers from North Queensland.
The M777 howitzer is a towed 155 mm artillery piece in the howitzer class. It is used by the ground forces of Australia, Canada, Colombia, India, Saudi Arabia, Ukraine, and the United States. It was first used in combat during the War in Afghanistan.
Vladislav Yuryevich Surkov is a Russian politician and businessman. He was First Deputy Chief of the Russian Presidential Administration from 1999 to 2011, during which time he was often viewed as the main ideologist of the Kremlin who proposed and implemented the concept of sovereign democracy in Russia. From December 2011 until May 2013, Surkov served as the Russian Federation's Deputy Prime Minister. After his resignation, Surkov returned to the Presidential Executive Office and became a personal adviser of Vladimir Putin on relationships with Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Ukraine. He was removed from this duty by presidential order in February 2020.
Kharkiv, also known as Kharkov, is the second-largest city in Ukraine. Located in the northeast of the country, it is the largest city of the historic region of Sloboda Ukraine. Kharkiv is the administrative centre of Kharkiv Oblast and of the surrounding Kharkiv Raion. It has a population of 1,421,125.
Petro Oleksiiovych Poroshenko is a Ukrainian oligarch and politician who served as the fifth president of Ukraine from 2014 to 2019.
The European Union and Georgia have maintained relations since 1992, following an agreement between the former European Community and the newly independent Georgia. In 2006, a five-year "Action Plan" of rapprochement was implemented in the context of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP). In 2009, relations between the two were further upgraded under the auspices of Eastern Partnership. In 2016, a comprehensive Association Agreement between the EU and Georgia went into force, providing Georgian citizens with visa-free travel to the EU, as well as access to some sectors of the European Single Market. Following Brexit, most of the existing EU-Georgia agreements applicable to the United Kingdom were renegotiated and agreed upon in 2019 bilaterally with the United Kingdom.
Christina Alexandra Freeland is a Canadian politician serving as the tenth and current deputy prime minister of Canada since 2019 and the minister of finance since 2020. A member of the Liberal Party, Freeland represents the Toronto riding of University—Rosedale in the House of Commons. She was first appointed to Cabinet following the 2015 federal election.
VK is a Russian online social media and social networking service based in Saint Petersburg. VK is available in multiple languages but it is predominantly used by Russian speakers. VK users can message each other publicly or privately, edit these messages, create groups, public pages, and events; share and tag images, audio, and video; and play browser-based games.
Ihor Valeriyovych Kolomoyskyi is a Ukrainian-born Israeli–Cypriot billionaire businessman, once considered the leading oligarch in Ukraine.
The Russo-Ukrainian War is an ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine, which began in February 2014. Following Ukraine's Revolution of Dignity, Russia occupied and annexed Crimea from Ukraine and supported pro-Russian separatists fighting the Ukrainian military in the Donbas war. The first eight years of conflict also included naval incidents, cyberwarfare, and heightened political tensions. In February 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine and began occupying more of the country.
Denis Vladimirovich Pushilin is a Russian politician who is serving as the Head of the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) since 2018. He holds the position in acting capacity ever since the Russian annexation of the DPR in 2022.
The Armed Forces of Ukraine are the military forces of Ukraine. All military and security forces, including the Armed Forces, are under the command of the President of Ukraine and subject to oversight by a permanent Verkhovna Rada parliamentary commission. They trace their lineage to 1917, while the modern armed forces were formed after Ukrainian independence in 1991. As of 2024, it is the sixth largest and one of the best-funded armed forces in the world. The Ukrainian Armed Forces also operates one of the largest and most diverse drone fleet in the world. The Ukrainian Armed Forces is one of the most battle-hardened armed forces in the world.
The Azov Assault Brigade is a formation of the National Guard of Ukraine formerly based in Mariupol, in the coastal region of the Sea of Azov, from which it derives its name. It was founded in May 2014 as the Azov Battalion, a self-funded volunteer militia under the command of Andriy Biletsky, to fight Russian-backed forces in the Donbas War. It was formally incorporated into the National Guard on 11 November 2014, and redesignated Special Operations Detachment "Azov", also known as the Azov Regiment. In February 2023, the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs announced that Azov was to be expanded as a brigade of the new Offensive Guard.
Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (MH17/MAS17) was a scheduled passenger flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur that was shot down by Russian-controlled forces on 17 July 2014, while flying over eastern Ukraine. All 283 passengers and 15 crew were killed. Contact with the aircraft, a Boeing 777-200ER, was lost when it was about 50 kilometres from the Ukraine–Russia border, and wreckage from the aircraft fell near Hrabove in Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine, 40 km from the border. The shoot-down occurred during the war in Donbas over territory controlled by Russian separatist forces.
Antonina Grigorivna Dvoryanets was a Ukrainian hydraulic engineer and political activist. She began her career as an hydraulic engineer at a collective farm in Hornostaipil from 1972 to 1983 and then worked as a senior project group engineer at the Chernobyl Department of Drainage Systems between 1983 and 1987. Dvoryanets worked as a liquidator, clearing the consequences of the Chernobyl disaster at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in 1986. She later worked variously at the Land Reclamation and Water Management, Kyiv, then at the Chornobilvodeksploatsiya in Kyiv and the Chernobyl Special Plant until her retirement in 2014. As an activist, Dvoryanets took part in the Ukraine without Kuchma mass protest, the Orange Revolution and the Euromaidan. She was posthumously conferred the title of Hero of Ukraine with the Order of the Gold Star and a street in Brovary was named for her.