Ukrainians voice hope, and some apprehension, that next month’s legislative polls won’t undercut the staggering flow of U.S. weapons and security aid that Washington has authorized since the start of President Vladimir Putin’s Feb. 24 invasion.

At least 14 regions are targeted as Putin suffers humiliating defeats on the battlefield and looks to retaliate for the bombing of a bridge connecting Russia to Crimea.

The criticism marks the clearest indication yet of turmoil within Russia’s leadership over the stewardship of a war that has gone disastrously wrong for Moscow.

Russian troops abandoned a key Ukrainian city so rapidly that they left the bodies of their comrades in the streets.

In their latest breakthrough, Ukrainian forces penetrated Moscow’s defenses in the strategic southern Kherson region, one of the four areas in Ukraine that Russia is trying to grab and desperately defend.

An investigation by The Associated Press and the PBS series “Frontline” has documented a sophisticated Russian-run smuggling operation that has used falsified manifests and seaborne subterfuge to steal Ukrainian grain worth at least $530 million.

A team of experts commissioned by the U.N.’s top human rights body to look into rights violations in Ukraine says its initial investigation has turned up evidence of war crimes following Russia’s invasion.