The impact of President Donald Trump’s attempt to financially choke Moscow’s war machine by imposing sanctions on Russian oil firms was instant; not on the battlefield in Ukraine, but in the offices of oil traders in India and China,

It is increasingly difficult for Putin to finance his war. Every Euro we deny Russia is one it cannot spend on war."

In the city of Kherson, in southern Ukraine, small drones routinely target ordinary people by dropping hand grenades, and record video documenting their attacks, a U.N. commission reported.

Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region is central to the Kremlin’s political and military priorities; its importance -- economic, cultural, historic -- stretches back decades, if not centuries. Why the fixation?

Trump wants Russia and Ukraine to freeze the war on the current battlelines, with Moscow holding a huge swathe of eastern Ukraine.

Russia’s population has fallen from 147.6 million in 1990 — the year before the USSR collapsed — to 146.1 million this year, according to Russia’s Federal Statistics Service. Since the 2014 illegal annexation of Crimea, it has included the peninsula's population of about 2 million, as well as births and deaths there, in its data.