Ukrainian troops have battled Russian-backed separatist forces in the east in a conflict Kyiv estimates has killed 14,000 people since 2014.

The 57-year-old former banker was arrested in June 2020, as was his 31-year-old son who was rounded up on tax evasion charges.

Baku said Shusha, Azerbaijan's "cultural capital" and a historic mountainside city known for producing writers and scholars, and the crown jewel recovered by Azerbaijan after the years of Armenian occupation, came under attack.

President Sandu says her resounding victory in the parliamentary vote means an end to the "rule of bandits"

Though an armistice is largely holding, border disputes remain common, and a final peace between Azerbaijan and Armenia is elusive.

From the very beginning, Ukraine’s post-Soviet nation-building journey has been defined by competition between rival narratives that have sought to place the country within Russia itself. Conversely, the Western world has never quite managed to make up its mind about Ukraine and has generally adopted a cautious approach.

In this personal story, Aybaniz Ismayilova describes her hometown of Minjivan in the Zangelan region of Azerbaijan – a town now cheering its de-occupation, yet a deeply wounded one destroyed during 27 years of occupation.

Havard-educated Sandu won last year’s presidential election by a landslide against Socialist Igor Dodon – widely viewed as Russia’s man in the country sandwiched between Ukraine and Romania.

While Russian and Soviet leaders generally gave the nod to the ethnic differences with other nations with very different ethnicities, languages or religions in their midst, this did not extend to Ukrainians.