The bitter conflict in Ukraine has cost thousands of lives, but the Russian government has continuously denied sending its soldiers to the frontlines, despite accusations to the contrary from NATO and Western officials.

Since August 2014, a small but steady stream of coffins began arriving in villages across Russia, containing the maimed bodies of soldiers killed in “unknown circumstances.” Some would be buried hastily at night or in secret funerals, their graves zealously guarded from prying outsiders. Journalists investigating the deaths have reported being threatened with intimidation and attacks.

In cases that the Kremlin could not so easily ignore, the dead or injured have been hailed as “volunteers” who entered Ukraine on leave from the army — heroes who fought unofficially for the freedom of their Russian-speaking brethren.

VICE News travels to Russia to investigate the mysterious deaths of dozens — possibly hundreds — of active-duty Russian servicemen who are believed to have been killed in Ukraine. Accounts gathered from soldiers’ families, human rights workers, and government officials cast doubt on the Kremlin narrative, revealing the unacknowledged sacrifices borne by Russia’s ghost army.

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Read "'It Is a Government Crime': The Coffins of Russia's Ghost Soldiers in Ukraine Are Coming Home” - http://bit.ly/1aIUxax

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Earlier this month, the US dropped a weapon known as the Mother of All Bombs (MOAB) in a remote corner of eastern Afghanistan.
It was used to target IS militants, but it has been difficult to assess what impact it really had. The BBC's Auliya Atrafi was one of the first reporters to be given access to the area.
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Black Tulip is a Ukrainian organisation that has been working for more than a decade to find and identify bodies of missing soldiers from the First and Second World Wars. Its work is now focused on finding the hundreds of missing Ukrainian servicemen from the current conflict in the east of Ukraine.
With the consent of the authorities in rebel-held territory, the group is able to cross the frontline and travel to sites where it believes soldiers might have gone missing. So far Black Tulip has found and identified 613 bodies of dead soldiers. It says that between 300 and 1,500 are still missing. However Black Tulip says its valuable work, which helps the relatives of the fallen grieve, might have to stop because of a lack of funding. Film produced by Will Vernon and Tom Burridge and shot and edited by Stuart Antrobus.

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Last summer, the group known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) swept from Syria into northern Iraq, routing Iraqi security forces and seizing the city of Mosul. Soon afterward, the group declared the establishment of a dubious "caliphate" in the area it controls and rebranded itself the Islamic State. With Iraq's army weakened and radical militants advancing on Baghdad, the country's Iran-backed Shia militias — which have their own history of sectarian abuses — fought back, halting the Islamic State's progress.

The militias have successfully combated Islamic State fighters on the ground with the assistance of air strikes from a US-led military coalition. But their growing influence within Iraq's government amid accusations that they have harmed Sunnis in areas that they control has led many to fear that the militias threaten the country's fragile sectarian and political balance.

VICE News traveled to Iraq in December to witness firsthand how Shia militias are taking the fight to the Islamic State, and to document the fallout of their controversial rise to power.

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Russian President Vladimir Putin paid a visit to a Moscow hospital, Monday where children injured in the war in eastern Ukraine are receiving treatment. The Russian head of state met with the young patients on International Children's Day. The patients are receiving specialist medical care at the Emergency Children’s Surgery and Traumatology Research Institute in the Russian capital.

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The Russian-backed offensive by the separatist Donetsk People's Republic (DNR) against the Ukrainian military has now entered its third week, and has claimed the lives of at least 341 soldiers and civilians in the region since the start of the year.

While the strategically important town of Debaltseve remains the focus of the DNR's assault, heavy and unrelenting clashes are still taking place in the village of Pisky, located just a few miles west of Donetsk airport.

The village lies in ruins after months of constant shelling, which has forced almost all of the civilians to flee. VICE News traveled to Pisky to meet the soldiers and volunteers defending the village from daily DNR attacks.

Watch: Trying to Flee Debaltseve: Russian Roulette (Dispatch 90) - http://bit.ly/18ReV8A

Read "Separatist Leader Proclaims Mobilization of 100,000 Fighters as Another Ukraine Peace Process Fails" - http://bit.ly/1u2EzQV

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RTD and Miguel Francis Santiago, the author of “Crimea for Dummies”, go to Donetsk where the bloody conflict between the Ukrainian army and the anti-government forces is in full swing. With contradictory information coming from the region, witnessing the situation first-hand is the only way to find out what’s really happening there. They visit the city’s devastated airport and go to the Donbass Opera that also serves as a bomb shelter for locals. On their way, they talk to anti-government fighters to learn why they took up arms, as well as common citizens who are trying to go on with their lives and preserve a sense of normality in these dire circumstances.

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As Iraqi government forces launch an operation to drive Islamic State (IS) out of Anbar province neighbours across the region are growing increasingly nervous. There are fears that Jordan could be the jihadists' next target so it has been redoubling its efforts to confront the extremist threat both on its borders and inside the country. Frank Gardner has been to the Jordan-Iraq border and was granted exclusive access inside a prison to meet a reformed IS convict.

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This week, the United States delivered a shipment 10 Humvees to the Ukrainian government — the first installment of a $75 million aid package of non-lethal equipment that is meant to assist the fight against Russia-backed rebels in the country's east.

But despite the overwhelming adoption of a resolution in the US House of Representatives urging President Barack Obama to provide Ukraine with lethal arms, his administration has yet to send such materiel. Debate on this issue centers on whether outfitting the country with lethal aid will serve only to escalate the conflict and trigger a regional arms race between the government and eastern separatists. A question that has received less attention is whether Ukraine's army is even capable of effectively using the weapons it wants.

VICE News correspondent Simon Ostrovsky visited rebel-held areas and the capital of Kiev to explore whether it would be wise for the US to arm Ukraine's poorly trained military with advanced weaponry.

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Watch "Volunteer Soldiers Fighting in Ukraine: Russian Roulette (Dispatch 102)” - http://bit.ly/1MRlJjd

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BBC's Natalia Antelava travels to eastern Ukraine and speaks to a mix of Ukrainians living on the Russian border about the ongoing crisis.

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Eight hundred American and NATO soldiers, attack helicopters and tank busters are deployed in a military exercise of extraordinary complexity in Poland, preparing for trench warfare against an army with a level of sophistication the U.S. military hasn't seen in decades. Special correspondent Ryan Chilcote reports on the most recent of the tit-for-tat exercises between NATO and Russia.

On June 3, forces of the Donetsk People's Republic (DNR) attacked the Ukrainian-controlled town of Marinka, around half a mile west of the rebel stronghold of Donetsk. The assault came three months after the signing of the second ceasefire, agreed in Minsk between the DNR and the Ukrainian government after the collapse of the first truce in early January.

This ceasefire though, much like the first, failed to bring an end to the fighting. The attack on Marinka was the first large-scale assault on a Ukrainian-held town since February, and led many to believe a feared DNR summer offensive had begun. The assault failed, however, after the Ukrainian forces swiftly counter-attacked and forced the DNR to retreat — with both sides blaming each other for the escalation.

In this extra scene from 'Ukraine's Failed Ceasefire,' VICE News met DNR soldiers in the trenches and talked to Ukrainian forces to find out more about the attack on Marinka.

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