The widow of the late dissident Alexey Navalny said that Russian President Vladimir Putin is engaging in “satanism” by refusing to release her husband’s body.

“No true Christian could ever do what Putin is now doing with a body of Alexey,” Yulia Navalnaya said in video posted to social media. “It’s satanism.”

The video, titled “Putin’s fake faith,” was published nine days after Navalny’s death. Orthodox Christian death rites require that the deceased be buried three days after death and mourned for at a funeral service after nine days.

Navalny’s family and allies have accused Putin of having the 47-year-old killed and then holding his body to both hide his cause of death and out of fear that his funeral would draw large crowds.

“Murder wasn’t enough for Putin. Now his body is being held hostage,” Navalnaya said. “You mock the remains of the dead. Nothing more demonic can be imagined. You are breaking every law, both human and God’s.”

The Kremlin denied having anything to do with Navalny’s death.

Navalny, Putin’s most prominent political opponent, died on February 16 behind bars in a penal colony above the Arctic circle. The Russian prison service said he “felt unwell after a walk” and “almost immediately” lost consciousness.

He had been sentenced to 19 years in prison in August after being found guilty of creating an extremist community and other crimes, adding to the 11-and-a-half years to which he had previously been sentenced. Navalny had dismissed the charges against him as politically motivated.

His death came just weeks before Russia’s presidential election scheduled for March 17, at which Putin is expected to sweep to a fifth term in office, extending his rule until at least 2030.

With Navalny’s wife and team exiled from Russia, the duty of collecting his body and planning a funeral has fallen to his mother, Lyudmila Navalnaya. The elder Navalnaya has been in Salekhard, the Siberian town where Navalny’s body is being kept in a morgue, shortly after her son’s death.

On Tuesday Navalny’s team released a video in which Navalnaya was filmed outside the prison colony where Navalny was held pleading with Putin to release the body. She said later that was allowed to see her son, but that investigators had threatened to let her son’s body “decompose” unless she agreed to their demand that he be buried in secret.

Navalny’s spokeswoman said on Friday that Navalnaya was given an ultimatum to agree to a secret funeral or see her son buried in the Arctic penal colony where he died.

In her video published Saturday, Yulia Navalnaya held Putin responsible for the Russian state’s decision to hold Navalny’s body and said his actions cut against his carefully crafted image as a devout Orthodox Christian protecting both the faith and the state from the infiltration of Western values.

Putin, who has built a powerful symbolic and political alliance with the Russian Orthodox Church, has long attacked Western liberalism and accused the West of “pure satanism” in a September 2022 speech.

“Putin pretends to be a VERY religious man. He kisses icons and touches the relics of Saint Nicholas,” Navalnaya said. “Faith is not about kissing an icon. Faith is about goodness, about mercy, about salvation.”

Scientists working in the Amazon rainforest have discovered a new species of snake, rumored to be the biggest in the world.

A team from the University of Queensland traveled to the Ecuadorian Amazon to search for the previously undocumented northern green anaconda (Eunectes akayima), following an invitation from the Waorani people to observe anacondas “rumoured to be the largest in existence,” according to the scientists.

The team joined the hunters on a 10-day expedition to the Bameno region of Baihuaeri Waorani Territory, before paddling down the river system to “find several anacondas lurking in the shallows, lying in wait for prey,” Professor Bryan Fry, a biologist from the University of Queensland, who led the team, said in a statement.

Anacondas are giant, non-venomous constricting snakes found in or near water in warm parts of South America.

“The size of these magnificent creatures was incredible – one female anaconda we encountered measured an astounding 6.3 metres (20.7 feet) long,” Fry said of the team’s discovery, which was made while filming for National Geographic’s upcoming series “Pole to Pole with Will Smith.”

The team also said they had heard anecdotal evidence that snakes of 7.5 meters (24.6 feet) and 500 kilograms (1,100 pounds) had been sighted in the area.

Green anacondas are the world’s heaviest snakes, according to the UK’s Natural History Museum, which noted that the heaviest individual ever recorded weighed 227 kilograms (500 pounds). It measured 8.43 meters long (27.7 feet) and 1.11 meters (3.6 feet) wide.
While another species, the reticulated python, tends to be longer – often reaching more than 6.25 meters (20.5 feet) in length – it is lighter.

But experts studying the creatures discovered that the newly identified northern green anaconda species diverged from the southern green anaconda almost 10 million years ago, and they differ genetically by 5.5%.

“It’s quite significant – to put it in perspective, humans differ from chimpanzees by only about 2 per cent,” Fry said. The findings are described in the journal MDPI Diversity.

The team then set out to compare the genetics of the green anaconda with other specimens elsewhere to assess them as an indicator species for the health of ecosystems, and warned that the Amazon is facing numerous threats.

“Deforestation of the Amazon basin from agricultural expansion has resulted in an estimated 20-31 per cent habitat loss, which may impact up to 40 per cent of its forests by 2050,” Fry said.

Habitat degradation, forest fires, drought and climate change threaten rare species like the anacondas, which exist in such rare ecosystems, he added.

February’s full moon, known as the snow moon, is set to peak on Saturday, shining bright around the world in the night sky.

The moon will be at its most full at 7:30 a.m. ET Saturday, according to EarthSky, but to the human eye, the moon will appear full for a couple of days, so the best time to view it will be the nights before and after its peak.

While called the snow moon — a nickname inspired by the heavy snowfall typically seen in February in parts of the United States, according to the Farmers’ Almanac — the golden orb will look almost like any ordinary full moon. But this moon will be a micromoon, meaning it might look slightly smaller than usual.

“It’s just a little bit farther away from Earth than (the moon) typically is,” said Rachel Klima, a planetary geologist and lunar expert with Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.

“It’s about 10% smaller. So it may look a little bit smaller. But a lot of the time, when people see a really huge moon, it’s usually because it’s low on the horizon, rather than because of the actual distance of it,” Klima said. “(The micromoon) won’t be super, super tiny. It’ll just be a little bit smaller than your average full moon that you look up at.”

The full moon phase occurs when the moon, Earth and the sun are in alignment, in that order. February’s full moon will occur when the moon is at its farthest point from Earth in its elliptical orbit, known as the apogee, Klima said. The micromoon will also be dimmer than the moon typically looks by about 30%, according to EarthSky, allowing for slightly better visibility of nearby celestial objects, without the average luminous interference.

This year, the snow moon will be seen shining next to constellation Leo’s brightest star, Regulus. Near the moon’s peak, on the night of February 23, the star will be seen just below the orb, according to EarthSky.

You obviously don’t need any special equipment to enjoy moon-gazing, but binoculars can be a good tool for those looking to see its features and craters clearly, Klima said. While full moons are best observed in clear skies, even in slightly cloudy weather the moon will occasionally peek through the clouds, she added.

Lunar exploration

On Thursday, the Odysseus lunar lander successfully soft-landed near the moon’s south pole, accomplishing a feat that had not been attempted by any vehicle launched from the United States since the Apollo program ended more than five decades ago. Intuitive Machines’ IM-1 mission also marked the first commercial spacecraft to soft-land on the moon amid a renewed international dash for the lunar surface.

“The nice thing to kind of dream about when you look up at the moon right now is how much renewed activity there is internationally,” Klima said. “We’re basically opening up a new era of lunar exploration. … As these different companies start to land on the moon, we’re going to be able to learn much, much more and really have this whole new world — economic world and scientific world — opened up to us.”

More full moons this year

Of the 12 full moons in 2024, February’s full moon is the only micromoon of the year, while the September and October lunar events will be considered supermoons, according to EarthSky.

Definitions of a supermoon can vary, but the term generally denotes a full moon that is closer to Earth than normal and thus appears larger and brighter in the night sky. Some astronomers say the phenomenon occurs when the moon is within 90% of perigee — its closest approach to Earth in orbit.

Here are the remaining full moons of 2024:

Solar and lunar eclipses

Multiple eclipses will occur in 2024, including two types of lunar eclipses and two types of solar eclipses, according to the Old Farmer’s Almanac.

The most highly anticipated of these events is the total solar eclipse on April 8, which will be visible in parts of Mexico, the United States and Canada. A total solar eclipse occurs when the moon passes between Earth and the sun, completely blocking the sun’s face.

Those within the path of totality, or locations where the moon’s shadow will completely cover the sun, will see a total solar eclipse. People outside the path of totality will still be able to see a partial solar eclipse in which the moon only obscures part of the sun’s face.

A total solar eclipse won’t be visible across the contiguous United States again until August 2044.

An annular solar eclipse will occur on October 2 over parts of South America. This type of eclipse is similar to a total solar eclipse, except the moon is at the farthest point in its orbit from Earth, so it can’t completely block the sun. Instead, annular solar eclipses create a “ring of fire” in the sky as the sun’s fiery light surrounds the moon’s shadow.

Meanwhile, a penumbral lunar eclipse will be visible to many across Europe, North and East Asia, Australia, Africa, North America and South America between March 24 and 25.

A lunar eclipse, which causes the moon to look dark or dimmed, occurs when the sun, Earth and moon align so that the moon passes into Earth’s shadow. A penumbral lunar eclipse is more subtle and happens when the moon moves through the outer shadow, or penumbra, of Earth.

A partial lunar eclipse, in which Earth moves between the sun and the full moon without being perfectly aligned, will appear over Europe and much of Asia, Africa, North America and South America between September 17 and 18.

Check Time and Date’s website to see when each of these eclipses will appear.

Meteor showers of 2024

Sky-gazers can look forward to a multitude of meteor showers this year, according to the American Meteor Society. Here are the dates when meteor events are expected to peak this year.

Scientists working in the Amazon rainforest have discovered a new species of snake, rumored to be the biggest in the world.

A team from the University of Queensland traveled to the Ecuadorian Amazon to search for the previously undocumented northern green anaconda (Eunectes akayima), following an invitation from the Waorani people to observe anacondas “rumoured to be the largest in existence,” according to the scientists.

The team joined the hunters on a 10-day expedition to the Bameno region of Baihuaeri Waorani Territory, before paddling down the river system to “find several anacondas lurking in the shallows, lying in wait for prey,” Professor Bryan Fry, a biologist from the University of Queensland, who led the team, said in a statement.

Anacondas are giant, non-venomous constricting snakes found in or near water in warm parts of South America.

“The size of these magnificent creatures was incredible – one female anaconda we encountered measured an astounding 6.3 metres (20.7 feet) long,” Fry said of the team’s discovery, which was made while filming for National Geographic’s upcoming series “Pole to Pole with Will Smith.”

The team also said they had heard anecdotal evidence that snakes of 7.5 meters (24.6 feet) and 500 kilograms (1,100 pounds) had been sighted in the area.

Green anacondas are the world’s heaviest snakes, according to the UK’s Natural History Museum, which noted that the heaviest individual ever recorded weighed 227 kilograms (500 pounds). It measured 8.43 meters long (27.7 feet) and 1.11 meters (3.6 feet) wide.
While another species, the reticulated python, tends to be longer – often reaching more than 6.25 meters (20.5 feet) in length – it is lighter.

But experts studying the creatures discovered that the newly identified northern green anaconda species diverged from the southern green anaconda almost 10 million years ago, and they differ genetically by 5.5%.

“It’s quite significant – to put it in perspective, humans differ from chimpanzees by only about 2 per cent,” Fry said. The findings are described in the journal MDPI Diversity.

The team then set out to compare the genetics of the green anaconda with other specimens elsewhere to assess them as an indicator species for the health of ecosystems, and warned that the Amazon is facing numerous threats.

“Deforestation of the Amazon basin from agricultural expansion has resulted in an estimated 20-31 per cent habitat loss, which may impact up to 40 per cent of its forests by 2050,” Fry said.

Habitat degradation, forest fires, drought and climate change threaten rare species like the anacondas, which exist in such rare ecosystems, he added.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said his country had opened a new phase with Sweden during a joint press conference with Swedish counterpart Ulf Kristersson on Friday as Budapest prepares to ratify Stockholm’s long-delayed NATO bid.

Hungary is the last member of the military alliance to approve Sweden’s application to join NATO, which it made in May 2022 after Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine.

Orban, who said last week that the Hungarian Parliament would vote on ratification on Monday, met with Kristersson on Friday and announced at the press conference that Hungary had bought four fighter jets from Sweden.

The Gripen fighter jets would expand Hungary’s fleet, Orban said, “thereby significantly increasing our military capabilities and further strengthening our ability to play a role abroad.”

The Hungarian Parliament will convene on Monday to decide on the matter, thus closing one phase and opening another, he said.

“Being members together in NATO we [will be] able to reconstruct the full trust towards each other,” Orban added later.

Sweden and Finland applied for NATO membership in 2022 and Finland joined NATO in April 2023 – doubling the alliance’s border with Russia. But Sweden’s bid was mired in challenges.

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan objected to Sweden’s accession, accusing Swedish officials of being too lenient on militant groups, including the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

Sweden has since tightened its anti-terror legislation and pledged closer cooperation with Turkey on security concerns.

Orban, considered to be the European Union leader closest to Russian President Vladimir Putin, initially indicated he was not opposed to Sweden joining the bloc, before working to stall it. Katalin Cseh, a Hungarian Member of the European Parliament, said last year that Orban’s blocking of Sweden’s bid was “quite simply, another favor to Vladimir Putin.”

But, after Turkey approved Sweden’s bid, Orban appeared to finally greenlight Sweden’s NATO bid, saying in January that he had invited Kristersson to visit Hungary to negotiate the terms of Sweden’s accession.

February’s full moon, known as the snow moon, is set to peak on Saturday, shining bright around the world in the night sky.

The moon will be at its most full at 7:30 a.m. ET Saturday, according to EarthSky, but to the human eye, the moon will appear full for a couple of days, so the best time to view it will be the nights before and after its peak.

While called the snow moon — a nickname inspired by the heavy snowfall typically seen in February in parts of the United States, according to the Farmers’ Almanac — the golden orb will look almost like any ordinary full moon. But this moon will be a micromoon, meaning it might look slightly smaller than usual.

“It’s just a little bit farther away from Earth than (the moon) typically is,” said Rachel Klima, a planetary geologist and lunar expert with Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.

“It’s about 10% smaller. So it may look a little bit smaller. But a lot of the time, when people see a really huge moon, it’s usually because it’s low on the horizon, rather than because of the actual distance of it,” Klima said. “(The micromoon) won’t be super, super tiny. It’ll just be a little bit smaller than your average full moon that you look up at.”

The full moon phase occurs when the moon, Earth and the sun are in alignment, in that order. February’s full moon will occur when the moon is at its farthest point from Earth in its elliptical orbit, known as the apogee, Klima said. The micromoon will also be dimmer than the moon typically looks by about 30%, according to EarthSky, allowing for slightly better visibility of nearby celestial objects, without the average luminous interference.

This year, the snow moon will be seen shining next to constellation Leo’s brightest star, Regulus. Near the moon’s peak, on the night of February 23, the star will be seen just below the orb, according to EarthSky.

You obviously don’t need any special equipment to enjoy moon-gazing, but binoculars can be a good tool for those looking to see its features and craters clearly, Klima said. While full moons are best observed in clear skies, even in slightly cloudy weather the moon will occasionally peek through the clouds, she added.

Lunar exploration

On Thursday, the Odysseus lunar lander successfully soft-landed near the moon’s south pole, accomplishing a feat that had not been attempted by any vehicle launched from the United States since the Apollo program ended more than five decades ago. Intuitive Machines’ IM-1 mission also marked the first commercial spacecraft to soft-land on the moon amid a renewed international dash for the lunar surface.

“The nice thing to kind of dream about when you look up at the moon right now is how much renewed activity there is internationally,” Klima said. “We’re basically opening up a new era of lunar exploration. … As these different companies start to land on the moon, we’re going to be able to learn much, much more and really have this whole new world — economic world and scientific world — opened up to us.”

More full moons this year

Of the 12 full moons in 2024, February’s full moon is the only micromoon of the year, while the September and October lunar events will be considered supermoons, according to EarthSky.

Definitions of a supermoon can vary, but the term generally denotes a full moon that is closer to Earth than normal and thus appears larger and brighter in the night sky. Some astronomers say the phenomenon occurs when the moon is within 90% of perigee — its closest approach to Earth in orbit.

Here are the remaining full moons of 2024:

Solar and lunar eclipses

Multiple eclipses will occur in 2024, including two types of lunar eclipses and two types of solar eclipses, according to the Old Farmer’s Almanac.

The most highly anticipated of these events is the total solar eclipse on April 8, which will be visible in parts of Mexico, the United States and Canada. A total solar eclipse occurs when the moon passes between Earth and the sun, completely blocking the sun’s face.

Those within the path of totality, or locations where the moon’s shadow will completely cover the sun, will see a total solar eclipse. People outside the path of totality will still be able to see a partial solar eclipse in which the moon only obscures part of the sun’s face.

A total solar eclipse won’t be visible across the contiguous United States again until August 2044.

An annular solar eclipse will occur on October 2 over parts of South America. This type of eclipse is similar to a total solar eclipse, except the moon is at the farthest point in its orbit from Earth, so it can’t completely block the sun. Instead, annular solar eclipses create a “ring of fire” in the sky as the sun’s fiery light surrounds the moon’s shadow.

Meanwhile, a penumbral lunar eclipse will be visible to many across Europe, North and East Asia, Australia, Africa, North America and South America between March 24 and 25.

A lunar eclipse, which causes the moon to look dark or dimmed, occurs when the sun, Earth and moon align so that the moon passes into Earth’s shadow. A penumbral lunar eclipse is more subtle and happens when the moon moves through the outer shadow, or penumbra, of Earth.

A partial lunar eclipse, in which Earth moves between the sun and the full moon without being perfectly aligned, will appear over Europe and much of Asia, Africa, North America and South America between September 17 and 18.

Check Time and Date’s website to see when each of these eclipses will appear.

Meteor showers of 2024

Sky-gazers can look forward to a multitude of meteor showers this year, according to the American Meteor Society. Here are the dates when meteor events are expected to peak this year.

If one man’s story encompassed all two years of Ukraine’s war you might expect it to have ended abruptly long ago.

Yet Oleksandr, 38, is somehow alive, burdened with lessons from a fight he did not predict.

His prosthetic eye twinkles, damaged from the siege of the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, one of the more savage battles of the invasion’s first three months. He exudes gratitude in each breath, having survived the threat of hanging or firing squad while held as a prisoner of war by Russia for more than four months in 2022.

He is fond of punctuating his story with the phrases, “I am no politician” and, “it is in our hands” – perhaps a reflection of how the Western aid that kept Ukraine in the fight for the last two years now partially looks in doubt.

“Of course, the situation at the front is related to the supply of ammunition and related to personnel,” he said. The Russians are “well zombified… [they] win in number… They take land with numbers and drive them forward. We take it with intelligence and tactics. People… just get tired and that’s it. It will be difficult, but we will try.”

Two years into the war, Ukraine is almost back where it was at the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, digging deep and pleading for Western help. Two expectations from early February 2022 were never realized: that Russia’s superior military would storm through Kyiv in days, and that Western support would be chaotic and fractured.

Yet both ideas are less alien as the war edges into its third year. And Oleksandr’s extraordinary personal sacrifice and loss of friends, and that of many more like him, has bought Ukraine time, but no obvious path to peace.

‘Russian roulette’

When the war began, Oleksandr had already served four years in Ukraine’s armed forces and was near Vodiane, Mariupol, where Russian proxies had waged trench warfare for nearly a decade. Like many, he did not fully believe Western intelligence predictions of a full-scale Russian invasion, or the lack of faith in Ukraine’s military.

“We underestimated our strength – as if someone was deliberately putting a stick in our wheels. But our guys were ready. Those were some of the strongest men I know and have known.”

He had a friend help send his wife and son to Denmark, after hearing reports of the abuse and killing of military families. And slowly, Russian forces pushed the Ukrainians back towards Mariupol’s Azovstal steel plant. The 80-day siege of the plant, where 2,600 troops and civilians endured a constant Russian barrage, became a global symbol of Ukrainian resilience. On May 17, Ukrainian troops began surrendering. Oleksandr said 45 of his colleagues became captives and 400 died there.

Oleksandr said he felt “panic” when he surrendered. “[It’s] a feeling of powerlessness, especially when they take away your weapon. It’s like you’re standing naked.”

There was no guarantee of survival. “It was a Russian roulette. No one there was sure of anything. Moreover, this is a country that… doesn’t keep its word. There had to be a catch, and there was: many people died in captivity. It’s its own type of survival.”

They were held in Olenivka, in occupied Donbas, where Russian-backed proxies had threatened execution by firing squad or hanging. “They basically told me the choice was either hanging or shooting. What difference does it make how you die?”

Those lost haunted him in captivity and still do. “There are many flashbacks, but mostly, my boys are constantly before my eyes. When you look at your friends, your boys who are wounded, you want to help them, but you can’t. Or when you want to feed them, but there is nothing to eat. This is the worst moment.”

More than four months of the daily Russian anthem and boiled cabbage or porridge left him alive but broken. Then, suddenly, they were told they would be moved.

“We didn’t know that we were being released,” he said. “They simply gathered 10 of us there, loaded us into trucks, took us to the airfield at night and put us on a plane. Our eyes were duct taped, no one saw anything. They just took us out and that’s it. You are in Ukraine.”

Multiple Ukrainian soldiers captured in the Azovstal siege, and on other front lines in Ukraine, were exchanged in prisoner swaps with Russia during the last two years.

An image of Oleksandr with colleagues on his release shows him gaunt and drained, a fraction of the rotund, hearty barrel he is now. His left eye is clearly missing in the image, now replaced with a prosthetic, twinkling slightly. He underwent rehabilitation and returned to the front lines around the southern counteroffensive, to train new recruits.

Yet he said he also went back into combat around Urozhaine, one of the most bloody advances of the summer campaign, aided by NATO planning, which hoped to break through towards the coastline around Mariupol. It failed, and the inability of Kyiv’s forces to make significant gains despite billions of dollars of Western aid ultimately led to doubts about its application amongst its allies, and the departure of the military chief, and architect of the offensive, Valery Zaluzhny.

Next steps

What lessons Ukraine learned from its losses and missed opportunity are not yet apparent. Yet combat has taught Oleksandr to value fear, and pass that lesson on to recruits.

“I’m not an iron man, I’m scared too,” he said. “It’s good to have fear in you. You just need to master your fear. If you don’t… it will swallow you up. There were periods [before captivity] when I stopped being afraid, and it was bad. And I put myself in danger.”

He added: “I don’t pity the recruits. Pity is a bad quality. You just have to do your job. And explain to them that they shouldn’t feel sorry for themselves. People just don’t understand what they are capable of.”

He said he forbade his recruits to dwell on the negative, quoting the bible.

Now in Kherson – invaded, occupied, liberated and under assault again, it’s a ghostly city whose path seems to mirror Oleksandr’s.

Oleksandr said he is involved in the bold, perhaps foolhardy, dash to the left bank of the Dnipro River, in a bid to forge a new line of attack on the occupied peninsula of Crimea, first taken in 2014. Ukraine’s gambit, questioned by some Western tacticians and criticized by serving troops, has yet to lead to a notable advance.

It became the latest claim of success by Russia on Tuesday, when its defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, told president Vladimir Putin their forces had cleared Ukraine from the riverbank. Kyiv released a drone video as part of its fervent denial, showing the same Russian troops who planted a flag over the flattened hamlet, fleeing the scene.

Oleksandr refuses to discuss the operation. Yet the likely futility of the foothold Kyiv established in Kherson, is a bleak footnote, one that leads him to echo many Ukrainian troops: their fight is not a choice taken over an easy and peaceful negotiated settlement. A loss spells possible death or internment for the families of soldiers.

“Yes, this is a difficult freedom, I don’t argue,” he said, as shelling reverberated around the liberated yet bombarded city. “But I don’t want to lose it.”

“I don’t want to bend over for some senile idiot,” he said of Putin.

Agonizing decisions await Kyiv: whether to lower mobilization age from 27; which next besieged city to withdraw from; when, if ever, to consider negotiations with the Kremlin; who to give the dwindling ammunitions to. There is no imminent end to Oleksandr’s fight ahead, just the hope he won’t pass it to his son.

“I have hope he will never be part of this war,” Oleksandr said. “So we need to learn from our mistakes.” His son is 7 years old.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said his country had opened a new phase with Sweden during a joint press conference with Swedish counterpart Ulf Kristersson on Friday as Budapest prepares to ratify Stockholm’s long-delayed NATO bid.

Hungary is the last member of the military alliance to approve Sweden’s application to join NATO, which it made in May 2022 after Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine.

Orban, who said last week that the Hungarian Parliament would vote on ratification on Monday, met with Kristersson on Friday and announced at the press conference that Hungary had bought four fighter jets from Sweden.

The Gripen fighter jets would expand Hungary’s fleet, Orban said, “thereby significantly increasing our military capabilities and further strengthening our ability to play a role abroad.”

The Hungarian Parliament will convene on Monday to decide on the matter, thus closing one phase and opening another, he said.

“Being members together in NATO we [will be] able to reconstruct the full trust towards each other,” Orban added later.

Sweden and Finland applied for NATO membership in 2022 and Finland joined NATO in April 2023 – doubling the alliance’s border with Russia. But Sweden’s bid was mired in challenges.

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan objected to Sweden’s accession, accusing Swedish officials of being too lenient on militant groups, including the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

Sweden has since tightened its anti-terror legislation and pledged closer cooperation with Turkey on security concerns.

Orban, considered to be the European Union leader closest to Russian President Vladimir Putin, initially indicated he was not opposed to Sweden joining the bloc, before working to stall it. Katalin Cseh, a Hungarian Member of the European Parliament, said last year that Orban’s blocking of Sweden’s bid was “quite simply, another favor to Vladimir Putin.”

But, after Turkey approved Sweden’s bid, Orban appeared to finally greenlight Sweden’s NATO bid, saying in January that he had invited Kristersson to visit Hungary to negotiate the terms of Sweden’s accession.

If one man’s story encompassed all two years of Ukraine’s war you might expect it to have ended abruptly long ago.

Yet Oleksandr, 38, is somehow alive, burdened with lessons from a fight he did not predict.

His prosthetic eye twinkles, damaged from the siege of the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, one of the more savage battles of the invasion’s first three months. He exudes gratitude in each breath, having survived the threat of hanging or firing squad while held as a prisoner of war by Russia for more than four months in 2022.

He is fond of punctuating his story with the phrases, “I am no politician” and, “it is in our hands” – perhaps a reflection of how the Western aid that kept Ukraine in the fight for the last two years now partially looks in doubt.

“Of course, the situation at the front is related to the supply of ammunition and related to personnel,” he said. The Russians are “well zombified… [they] win in number… They take land with numbers and drive them forward. We take it with intelligence and tactics. People… just get tired and that’s it. It will be difficult, but we will try.”

Two years into the war, Ukraine is almost back where it was at the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, digging deep and pleading for Western help. Two expectations from early February 2022 were never realized: that Russia’s superior military would storm through Kyiv in days, and that Western support would be chaotic and fractured.

Yet both ideas are less alien as the war edges into its third year. And Oleksandr’s extraordinary personal sacrifice and loss of friends, and that of many more like him, has bought Ukraine time, but no obvious path to peace.

‘Russian roulette’

When the war began, Oleksandr had already served four years in Ukraine’s armed forces and was near Vodiane, Mariupol, where Russian proxies had waged trench warfare for nearly a decade. Like many, he did not fully believe Western intelligence predictions of a full-scale Russian invasion, or the lack of faith in Ukraine’s military.

“We underestimated our strength – as if someone was deliberately putting a stick in our wheels. But our guys were ready. Those were some of the strongest men I know and have known.”

He had a friend help send his wife and son to Denmark, after hearing reports of the abuse and killing of military families. And slowly, Russian forces pushed the Ukrainians back towards Mariupol’s Azovstal steel plant. The 80-day siege of the plant, where 2,600 troops and civilians endured a constant Russian barrage, became a global symbol of Ukrainian resilience. On May 17, Ukrainian troops began surrendering. Oleksandr said 45 of his colleagues became captives and 400 died there.

Oleksandr said he felt “panic” when he surrendered. “[It’s] a feeling of powerlessness, especially when they take away your weapon. It’s like you’re standing naked.”

There was no guarantee of survival. “It was a Russian roulette. No one there was sure of anything. Moreover, this is a country that… doesn’t keep its word. There had to be a catch, and there was: many people died in captivity. It’s its own type of survival.”

They were held in Olenivka, in occupied Donbas, where Russian-backed proxies had threatened execution by firing squad or hanging. “They basically told me the choice was either hanging or shooting. What difference does it make how you die?”

Those lost haunted him in captivity and still do. “There are many flashbacks, but mostly, my boys are constantly before my eyes. When you look at your friends, your boys who are wounded, you want to help them, but you can’t. Or when you want to feed them, but there is nothing to eat. This is the worst moment.”

More than four months of the daily Russian anthem and boiled cabbage or porridge left him alive but broken. Then, suddenly, they were told they would be moved.

“We didn’t know that we were being released,” he said. “They simply gathered 10 of us there, loaded us into trucks, took us to the airfield at night and put us on a plane. Our eyes were duct taped, no one saw anything. They just took us out and that’s it. You are in Ukraine.”

Multiple Ukrainian soldiers captured in the Azovstal siege, and on other front lines in Ukraine, were exchanged in prisoner swaps with Russia during the last two years.

An image of Oleksandr with colleagues on his release shows him gaunt and drained, a fraction of the rotund, hearty barrel he is now. His left eye is clearly missing in the image, now replaced with a prosthetic, twinkling slightly. He underwent rehabilitation and returned to the front lines around the southern counteroffensive, to train new recruits.

Yet he said he also went back into combat around Urozhaine, one of the most bloody advances of the summer campaign, aided by NATO planning, which hoped to break through towards the coastline around Mariupol. It failed, and the inability of Kyiv’s forces to make significant gains despite billions of dollars of Western aid ultimately led to doubts about its application amongst its allies, and the departure of the military chief, and architect of the offensive, Valery Zaluzhny.

Next steps

What lessons Ukraine learned from its losses and missed opportunity are not yet apparent. Yet combat has taught Oleksandr to value fear, and pass that lesson on to recruits.

“I’m not an iron man, I’m scared too,” he said. “It’s good to have fear in you. You just need to master your fear. If you don’t… it will swallow you up. There were periods [before captivity] when I stopped being afraid, and it was bad. And I put myself in danger.”

He added: “I don’t pity the recruits. Pity is a bad quality. You just have to do your job. And explain to them that they shouldn’t feel sorry for themselves. People just don’t understand what they are capable of.”

He said he forbade his recruits to dwell on the negative, quoting the bible.

Now in Kherson – invaded, occupied, liberated and under assault again, it’s a ghostly city whose path seems to mirror Oleksandr’s.

Oleksandr said he is involved in the bold, perhaps foolhardy, dash to the left bank of the Dnipro River, in a bid to forge a new line of attack on the occupied peninsula of Crimea, first taken in 2014. Ukraine’s gambit, questioned by some Western tacticians and criticized by serving troops, has yet to lead to a notable advance.

It became the latest claim of success by Russia on Tuesday, when its defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, told president Vladimir Putin their forces had cleared Ukraine from the riverbank. Kyiv released a drone video as part of its fervent denial, showing the same Russian troops who planted a flag over the flattened hamlet, fleeing the scene.

Oleksandr refuses to discuss the operation. Yet the likely futility of the foothold Kyiv established in Kherson, is a bleak footnote, one that leads him to echo many Ukrainian troops: their fight is not a choice taken over an easy and peaceful negotiated settlement. A loss spells possible death or internment for the families of soldiers.

“Yes, this is a difficult freedom, I don’t argue,” he said, as shelling reverberated around the liberated yet bombarded city. “But I don’t want to lose it.”

“I don’t want to bend over for some senile idiot,” he said of Putin.

Agonizing decisions await Kyiv: whether to lower mobilization age from 27; which next besieged city to withdraw from; when, if ever, to consider negotiations with the Kremlin; who to give the dwindling ammunitions to. There is no imminent end to Oleksandr’s fight ahead, just the hope he won’t pass it to his son.

“I have hope he will never be part of this war,” Oleksandr said. “So we need to learn from our mistakes.” His son is 7 years old.

The Odysseus lunar lander is sideways on the moon, Intuitive Machines, the company that built the vehicle, said during a news conference Friday.

The revelation comes after Intuitive Machines had initially described Odysseus as “upright” in an update posted to the social media platform X just after the historic mission made its touchdown on the lunar surface Thursday. But the company’s CEO, Steve Altemus, said data later showed that the spacecraft was likely tilted on its side after having caught one of its feet on a lunar rock.

“We think it came down (moving) about 6 miles an hour this way, and about 2 miles an hour (horizontally along the surface) and caught foot in the surface, and in the lander has tipped like this,” Altemus said, using a small model of the lander to demonstrate the suspected issue during a news briefing.

Altemus said only one piece of Odysseus’ cargo is on the side of the spacecraft that’s facing down toward the lunar surface: A piece of art that was sent to the moon by one of Intuitive Machines’ commercial customers.

The CEO also emphasized that the spacecraft remained in stable condition, with its solar panels catching sunlight and fully charging its batteries. Already, some experimental technology payloads from NASA have been put to the test, checking off some key mission objectives.

‘A punch in the stomach’

Notably, Intuitive Machines realized prior to descent that Odysseus had a faulty piece of navigation equipment. And the company opted to bypass the broken pieces and use an experimental NASA instrument that happened to be on board: The Navigation Doppler Radar, or NDL, developed at NASA’s Langley Research Center.

Altemus said initially learning of the issue was “like a punch in the stomach — that we were going to lose the mission.”

The company’s engineers had to essentially operate as hackers, figuring out a way to patch in data from NASA’s NDL — which was intended to be on a simple demo flight — in the hopes it could save the mission.

The hack ultimately worked, and the spacecraft made it to the lunar surface in operational condition. No other US spacecraft has soft-landed on the moon since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972, and no commercial spacecraft before Odysseus had ever accomplished such a feat.

The space agency and Intuitive Machines are still working to figure out whether Odysseus can achieve all of its science objectives, according to Joel Kearns, the deputy associate administrator for exploration in NASA’s Science Mission Directorate.

“We are doing an assessment to see: Are there any measurements still to come from any of the NASA supplied payloads that most likely can’t take place particularly because of this new orientation?” Kearns said.

The spacecraft is experiencing some issues — which Intuitive Machines executives said were close to being resolved — that involve the speed and consistency with which they can gather data from Odysseus.