COVER STORY This issue: OLGA Rudenko. Giving the world a window into war. The Staff of the Kyiv Independent knew war was coming. They had spent long days in February reporting on an invasion that high-level sources had told them was imminent. Editor in chief Olga Rudenko and the other senior editors had consulted with the outlet’s two dozen or so staff members to make sure each had an evacuation plan and had withdrawn cash so they could keep operating if the banks closed. They had handed over passwords and instructions to contacts in North America on how to keep their website online in case their internet was knocked out…To understand the world we live in, read TIME.

As casualties mount and the war nears a critical moment, two weeks in the presidential compound show how the Ukrainian leader has changed. The nights are the hardest, when he lies there on his cot, the whine of the air-raid sirens in his ears and his phone still buzzing beside him. Its screen makes his face look like a ghost in the dark, his eyes scanning messages he didn’t have a chance to read during the day. Some from his wife and kids, many from his advisers, a few from his troops, surrounded in their bunkers, asking him again and again for more weapons to break the Russian siege…

A melting North Pole could destroy a way of life while also bringing wealth to Alaskan communities. The city of Nome, on Alaska’s Bering Sea coast, has long been the home of adventurers, chancers, and the fiercely independent who would rather live off the land than do their shopping at Walmart. Originally a Native Inupiat settlement that was taken over by miners in the 1899 gold rush, it is perhaps best known as the end point of the celebrated Iditarod dogsled race, which is run every March in commemoration of an epic effort to deliver essential medical supplies during a 1925 diphtheria outbreak when bad weather prevented airplane access…