Circle the area on this map
A. Kyiv was the capital of the Kyivan Rus, the first East Slavic state from the late 9th century until the mid-13th century. It included much of what is now Ukraine, Belarus, and European Russia. The first mention of Moscow dates to the mid-12th century, when it was a remote, minor town of the Kyivan Rus.
D. Ukraine has signed deals with Norway, Germany, and the Netherlands, facing Russia in Europe, along with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, threatened by Iran in the Persian Gulf. Last week, drone builders demonstrated Ukrainian weapons in Japan as they sought partners to build weapons for Asian nations worried about China’s military power.
B. “If I want, I'll take Kyiv in two weeks," Putin told a European Union official after Russian troops first entered Ukrainian territory in 2014. Russia reportedly planned to defeat Ukraine and capture or kill its government within ten days of its full-scale invasion on Feb. 24, 2020.
A. As many as 325,000 Russian soldiers and 140,000 Ukrainian soldiers had died in the war as of the end of 2025, according to a January estimate by the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank. In May, Britain’s largest spy agency said that almost 500,000 Russian soldiers had been killed in the war.