Month: April 2022

Ukrayinska Pravda

Odesa Military Administration: Russia strikes bridge in attempt to cut off part of Odesa Region

Kateryna Tyshchenko – April 26, 2022

ukrpravda@gmail.com (Ukrayinska Pravda) April 26, 2022

Maksym Marchenko, Head of the Odesa Regional Military Administration, believes that the Russian strike that damaged the bridge over a Dnister estuary in Zatoka, Odesa Region, was an attempt to cut off part of the region and create tension amid recent events in the unrecognised Transnistria. Source: Maksym Marchenko, Telegram video address According to Marchenko: “Today the enemy deployed three missiles to carry out an attack on the Region. One of them hit the bridge over the Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi estuary, another fell nearby, and another fell into the water. Thank God, there are no victims. The enemy’s actions are an attempt to cut off part of the Odesa Region and create tension amid the recent events in Transnistria.” Details: Marchenko asked listeners not to buy into any Russian provocations and to refrain from reacting to Russia’s attempts to intimidate residents of the Odesa region with such terrorist acts. He also said that the damaged railway line is currently being repaired. Traffic across the bridge has resumed, but only one lane is operating in both directions. Context: On Tuesday, 26 April, Russian troops launched a missile strike on the Odesa Region, damaging a bridge across the Dniester estuary in Zatoka. It was later reopened for reverse travel.

Reuters

Russia’s “victory” in Mariupol turns city’s dreams to rubble

Alessandra Prentice and Natalia Zinets – April 26, 2022

KYIV (Reuters) – In the years prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the port city of Mariupol was undergoing a makeover.

More than $600 million was spent on new roads, a children’s hospital and parks to modernise the mainly Russian-speaking city as part of a campaign to show the benefits of life in West-leaning Ukraine following Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014.

“We lived well, happily,” said Maria Danylova, 24, who moved into a new apartment in the city last August after she married.

Like most of her family she works for steel giant Metinvest, which has invested over $2 billion into its two huge Mariupol plants since 2014.

“It was a free developing city, which provided everything we wanted,” she said, recalling weekend strolls with her parents on the restored seafront.

Now after two months of bombardment, the city is in ruins and makeshift graves line its streets.

Street after street is a landscape of bombed-out apartment blocks, blackened by smoke. Destroyed military vehicles lie in the rubble. Thousands of people are believed to have died.

Mariupol is a strategic prize for Russia, reinforcing its access to the annexed Crimea peninsula via territory held by pro-Russian separatists.

But the intensity of the siege has damaged nearly half of the industrial city beyond repair, according to the local authorities.

The fighting also stopped work at the city’s vast steel works, one of which remains the last redoubt for encircled Ukrainian troops.

“Everything that was invested (into Mariupol) has been destroyed,” Infrastructure Minister Oleksander Kubrakov told Reuters.

LIKE CENTRE OF EUROPE

Fringed by smoke stacks, the steel town on the Sea of Azov was once synonymous with post-Soviet industrial decline and pollution.

Its fortunes shifted in 2014 with the outbreak of fighting with Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine. Briefly controlled by the rebels, Mariupol was recaptured by Ukrainian forces, making it the largest city in the eastern Donbas region under Kyiv’s control.

More than 100,000 people fled nearby separatist-held territories to make a new life in Mariupol and local authorities launched the plan to revamp the city.

Metinvest modernised its two plants, Azovstal and Ilyich Steel. In 2020, it completed an emissions-cutting project there that it said was one of the largest environmental projects in Ukraine’s history.

“Over the past seven years we have managed to create this showcase of a revived Ukrainian Donbas,” Vadym Boichenko, who became mayor in 2015, told Reuters.

Boichenko spoke proudly about new roads, improved public transport, parks and other urban regeneration projects.

“Young people were in these parks, with coffee, with guitars – like in the centre of Europe, just hanging out on the grass.”

INVASION AND DESTRUCTION

In the early hours of Feb. 24, a column of Russian tanks and military vehicles was seen heading towards Mariupol and blasts rang out in its outskirts. The invasion – which Russia calls a “special military operation” – had begun and the city was about to become a battleground.

Residents fled or moved to basement shelters to escape the bombardment that soon cut off all utilities. Metinvest suspended operations.

On March 9, bombs hit the maternity wing of a children’s hospital that had been renovated under the reconstruction plan. The blast killed at least three people and tore off part of the facade.

“We only just opened,” Boichenko said.

Danylova was sheltering in the corridor of her parents’ apartment on March 13 when a shell hit the floor above. They moved down to her apartment on the floor below, but a few hours later another shockwave from a nearby strike blew out the windows of her living room and knocked the door off its hinges.

Danylova and her husband started sleeping in the freezing corridor of the apartment block, crammed on the floor with their dog and her parents.

Soon Russian forces moved into their district.

“From our windows they were shooting at neighbouring buildings. They drove five tanks under our building and started firing from there,” said Danylova, who eventually escaped the city with her family on March 24.

Russia denies targeting civilians and civilian buildings.

Weeks of fighting and aerial raids destroyed historic landmarks, including Azov Shipyard, the city’s oldest business, founded in 1886, according to the city council.

In mid-March, a direct strike reduced most of the Soviet-built Donetsk Regional Drama Theatre to rubble, burying hundreds of civilians who had been sheltering underneath, according to the Ukrainian authorities. Reuters has not been able to verify the estimated death toll.

On April 21, nearly two months into the siege, Russia declared victory in Mariupol although remaining Ukrainian forces held out in a vast underground complex below Azovstal.

“Ninety percent of the city’s infrastructure is destroyed one way or another,” the mayor said in an interview the same day, citing photographic evidence gathered by his team.

Metinvest told Reuters the full scale of damage to its assets from Russian bombing was still being assessed.

It also warned of potential environmental risks if bombs hit oil, chemicals, sludge storage dams or coal stockpiles.

The city previously accounted for over one third of Ukraine’s metallurgical production capacity.

“We are outraged that Mariupol, a city that was so prosperous until recently, has been turned into ruins. We are worried about every person who cannot be reached,” Metinvest said.

Danylova is now working in Dnipro region, helping other Metinvest evacuees.

(Additional reporting by Pavel Polityuk; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

Associated Press

U.N. chief, Putin agree to allow evacuations from besieged Mariupol

April 26, 2022

UNITED NATIONS — U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and Russian President Vladimir Putin met one-on-one Tuesday for the first time since Russia invaded Ukraine, and the United Nations said they agreed on arranging evacuations from a besieged steel plant in the battered city of Mariupol.

U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said the Russian leader and U.N. chief discussed “proposals for humanitarian assistance and evacuation of civilians from conflict zones, namely in relation to the situation in Mariupol.”

They also agreed in principle, he said, that the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross should be involved in the evacuation of civilians from the Azovstal steel complex where Ukrainian defenders in the southeastern city are making a dogged stand.

Discussions will be held with the U.N. humanitarian office and the Russian Defense Ministry on the evacuation, Dujarric said.

During the meeting, which the U.N. said lasted nearly two hours, Putin and Guterres sat at opposite ends of a long white table in a room with gold curtains bordered in red. No one else was at the table.

Guterres criticized Russia’s military action in Ukraine as a flagrant violation of its neighbor’s territorial integrity and urged Russia to allow the evacuation of civilians trapped at the steel mill.

Putin responded by claiming that Russian troops have offered humanitarian corridors to civilians holed up at the plant. But, he said, the Ukrainian defenders of the plant were using civilians as shields and not allowing them to leave.

The sprawling Azovstal site has been almost completely destroyed by Russian attacks, but it is the last pocket of organized Ukrainian resistance in Mariupol. An estimated 2,000 soldiers and 1,000 civilians are said to be holed up in fortified positions underneath the wrecked structures.

In an interview with The Associated Press on Monday ahead of Guterres’ visit, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba noted the failure of other foreign officials who visited Moscow to achieve results, and he urged the U.N. chief to press Russia for an evacuation of Mariupol. “This is really something that the U.N. is capable to do,” Kuleba said.

Guterres flew to Rzeszow, Poland, from Moscow late Tuesday and was met by Polish President Andrzej Duda. He is to go to Kyiv for meetings Thursday with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Kuleba, and his meeting with Putin is expected to top the agenda.

Many analysts have low expectations for Guterres’ diplomatic foray into the Ukraine war. But U.N. deputy spokesman Farhan Haq was unusually optimistic Monday ahead of the Moscow meetings, telling reporters Guterres “thinks there is an opportunity now” and “will make the most” of his time on the ground talking to the leaders and see what can be achieved.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, Guterres has accused the Russians of violating the U.N. Charter, which calls for peaceful settlement of disputes.

He also has repeatedly called for a cessation of hostilities, most recently appealing unsuccessfully last Tuesday for a four-day “humanitarian pause” leading up to the Orthodox Easter holiday on Sunday.

The U.N. crisis coordinator in Ukraine, Amin Awad, followed up Sunday by calling for an immediate halt to fighting in Mariupol to allow an estimated 100,000 trapped civilians to evacuate.

Guterres said at a news conference after meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov earlier Tuesday that safe and effective humanitarian corridors are urgently needed to evacuate civilians and deliver aid.

To deal with “the crisis within a crisis in Mariupol,” he proposed coordination between the U.N., Red Cross, and Ukrainian and Russian forces to enable the evacuation of civilians who want to leave “both inside and outside the Azovstal plant and in the city, in any direction they choose, and to deliver the humanitarian aid required.”

The U.N. chief also proposed establishing a Humanitarian Contact Group comprising Russia, Ukraine and the United Nations “to look for opportunities for the opening of safe corridors, with local cessations of hostilities, and to guarantee that they are actually effective.”

Dujarric made no mention of a broader evacuation of civilians from Mariupol or Guterres’ Humanitarian Contact Group, but getting civilians out of the steel plant would be an important step.

On Saturday, a Ukrainian military unit released a video reportedly taken two days earlier in which women and children holed up underground in the plant, some for as long as two months, said they longed to see the sun.

The Conversation

Going underground: Ukraine’s subterranean fighters highlight the benefit — and long history — of tunnels in warfare

Paul J. Springer, Professor of Comparative Military Studies, Air University

April 26, 2022

Faced with the prospect of sending Russian troops into subterranean combat, Vladimir Putin demurred. “There is no need to climb into these catacombs and crawl underground,” he told his defense minister on April 21, 2022, ordering him to cancel a planned storming of a steel plant in the besieged Ukrainian port city of Mariupol.

While Putin’s back-up plan – to form a seal around trapped Ukrainian forces and wait it out – is no less brutal and there are reports that Russians may still have mounted an offensive on the site, Putin’s hesitancy to send his forces into a sprawling network of tunnels under the complex hints at a truth in warfare: Tunnels can be an effective tool in resisting an oppressor.

Indeed since the war began in February, reports have emerged of Ukrainian defenders using underground tunnel networks in efforts to deny Russian invaders control of major cities, as well as to provide sanctuary for civilians.

As an expert in military history and theory, I know there is sound thinking behind using tunnels as both a defensive and offensive tactic. Such networks allow small units to move undetected by aerial sensors and emerge in unexpected locations to launch surprise attacks and then essentially disappear. For an invader who does not possess a thorough map of the subterranean passages, this can present a nightmare scenario, leading to massive personnel losses, plummeting morale and an inability to finish the conquest of their urban objective – all factors that may have factored in Putin’s decision not to send troops underground in Mariupol.

A history of military tunneling from ancient roots

The use of tunnels and underground chambers in times of conflict is nothing new.

The use of tunnels has been a common aspect of warfare for millennia. Ancient besieging forces used tunneling operations as a means to weaken otherwise well-fortified positions. This typically required engineers to construct long passages under walls or other obstacles. Collapsing the tunnel weakened the fortification. If well-timed, an assault conducted in the immediate aftermath of the breach might lead to a successful storming of the defended position.

One of the earliest examples of this technique is depicted on Assyrian carvings that are thousands of years old. While some attackers climb ladders to storm the walls of an Egyptian city, others can be seen digging at the foundations of the walls.

Roman armies relied heavily upon sophisticated engineering techniques such as putting arches into the tunnels they built during sieges. Roman defenders also perfected the art of digging counter-tunnels to intercept those used by attackers before they presented a threat. Upon penetrating an enemy tunnel, they flooded it with caustic smoke to drive out the enemy or launched a surprise attack upon unsuspecting miners.

The success of tunneling under fortifications led European engineers in the Middle Ages to design ways to thwart the tactic. They built castles on bedrock foundations, making any attempt to dig beneath them much slower, and surrounded walls with moats so that tunnels would need to be far deeper.

Although tunneling remained an important aspect of sieges through the 13th century, it was eventually replaced by the introduction of gunpowder artillery – which proved a more effective way to breach fortifications.

However, by the mid-19th century, advances in mining and tunnel construction led to a resurgence in subterranean approaches to warfare.

During the Crimean War in the 1850s, British and French attackers attempted to tunnel under Russian fortifications at the Battle of Sevastopol. Ten years later, Ulysses S. Grant authorized an attempt to tunnel under Confederate defenses at the siege of Petersburg, Virginia. In both cases, large caches of gunpowder were placed in chambers created by tunneling under key positions and detonated in coordination with an infantry assault.

Tunneling in the age of airpower

With warfare increasingly relying on aircraft in the 20th century, military strategists again turned to tunnels – undetectable from the skies and protected from falling bombs.

In World War I, tunneling was attempted as a means to launch surprise attacks on the Western Front, potentially bypassing the other side’s system of trenches and remaining undetected by aerial observers. In particular, the Ypres salient in war-ravaged Belgium was the site of hundreds of tunnels dug by British and German miners, and the horrifying stories of combat under the earth provide one of the most terrifying vignettes of that awful war.

During World War II, Japanese troops in occupied areas in the Pacific constructed extensive tunnel networks to make their forces virtually immune to aerial attack and naval bombardment from Allied forces. During amphibious assaults in places such as the Philippines and Iwo Jima, American and Allied forces had to contend with a warren of Japanese tunnel networks. Eventually they resorted to using high explosives to collapse tunnel entrances, trapping thousands of Japanese troops inside.

The Viet Cong tunnel networks, particularly in the vicinity of Saigon, were an essential part of their guerrilla strategy and remain a popular tourist stop today. Some of the tunnels were large enough to house hospital and barracks facilities and strong enough to withstand anything short of nuclear bombardment.

The tunnels not only protected Vietnamese fighters from overwhelming American airpower, they also facilitated hit-and-run style attacks. Specialized “tunnel rats,” American soldiers who ventured into the tunnels armed only with a knife and pistol, became adept at navigating the tunnel networks. But they could not be trained in sufficient numbers to negate the value of the tunnel systems.

Tunnels for terrorism

In the 21st century, tunnels have been used to facilitate the activities of terror organizations. During the American-led invasion of Afghanistan, military operatives soon discovered that al-Qaida had fortified a series of tunnel networks connecting naturally occurring caves in the Tora Bora region.

Not only did they hide the movement of troops and supplies, they proved impervious to virtually every weapon in the U.S.-led coalition’s arsenal. The complexes included air filtration systems to prevent chemical contamination, as well as massive storerooms and sophisticated communications gear allowing al-Qaida leadership to maintain control over their followers.

And tunneling activity in and around Gaza continues to provide a tool for Hamas to get fighters into Israeli territory, while at the same time allowing Palestinians to circumvent Israel’s blockade of Gaza’s borders.

Soviet tunnels and Ukraine

Many of the tunnels being utilized today in Ukrainian efforts to defend the country were built in the Cold War-era, when the United States routinely engaged in overflights of Soviet territory.

To counteract the significant air and satellite advantage held by the United States and NATO, the Soviet military dug underground passages under major population centers.

These subterranean systems offered a certain amount of shelter for the civilian population in the event of a nuclear attack and allowed for the movement of military forces unobserved by the ever-present eyes in the sky.

These same tunnels serve to connect much of the industrial infrastructure in Mariupol today – and have become a major asset for the outnumbered Ukrainian forces.

Other Ukrainian cities have similar systems, some dating back centuries. For example, Odesa, another key Black Sea port, has a catacomb network stretching over 2,500 kilometers. It began as part of a limestone mining effort – and to date, there is no documented map of the full extent of the tunnels.

In the event of a Russian assault on Odesa, the local knowledge of the underground passages might prove to be an extremely valuable asset for the defenders. The fact that more than 1,000 entrances to the catacombs have been identified should surely give Russian attackers pause before commencing any attack upon the city – just as the tunnels under a steelworks in Mariupol forced Putin to rethinks plans to storm the facility.

NBC News

U.S. intel helped Ukraine protect air defenses, shoot down Russian plane carrying hundreds of troops

Ken Dilanian, Courtney Kube, Carol E. Lee and Dan De Luce

April 26, 2022

As Russia launched its invasion, the U.S. gave Ukrainian forces detailed intelligence about exactly when and where Russian missiles and bombs were intended to strike, prompting Ukraine to move air defenses and aircraft out of harm’s way, current and former U.S. officials told NBC News.

That near real-time intelligence-sharing also paved the way for Ukraine to shoot down a Russian transport plane carrying hundreds of troops in the early days of the war, the officials say, helping repel a Russian assault on a key airport near Kyiv.

It was part of what American officials call a massive and unprecedented intelligence-sharing operation with a non-NATO partner that they say has played a crucial role in Ukraine’s success to date against the larger and better-equipped Russian military.

The details about the air defenses and the transport plane, which have not previously been reported, underscore why, two months into the war, officials assess that intelligence from U.S. spy agencies and the Pentagon has been an important factor in helping Ukraine thwart Russia’s effort to seize most of the country.

“From the get-go, we leaned pretty heavily forward in sharing both strategic and actionable intelligence with Ukraine,” a U.S. official briefed on the matter told NBC News. “It’s been impactful both at a tactical and strategic level. There are examples where you could tell a pretty clear story that this made a major difference.”

In a statement, a spokesperson for the White House National Security Council said, “We are regularly providing detailed, timely intelligence to the Ukrainians on the battlefield to help them defend their country against Russian aggression and will continue to do so.”

NBC News is withholding some specific details that the network confirmed about the intelligence sharing at the request of U.S. military and intelligence officials, who say reporting on it could help the Russians shut down important sources of information.

“There has been a lot of real-time intelligence shared in terms of things that could be used for specific targeting of Russian forces,” said a former senior intelligence official familiar with the situation. The information includes commercial satellite images “but also a lot of other intelligence about, for example, where certain types of Russian units are active.”

Ukraine continues to move air defenses and aircraft nearly every day with the help of American intelligence, which is one reason Russia has not been able to establish air dominance. In some cases, Ukraine moved the targeted air defense systems or planes just in time, the officials said.

“The Russian military has literally been cratering empty fields where air defenses were once set up,” one U.S. official said. “It has had an enormous impact on the Russian military’s ability on the ground.”

While U.S.-Ukrainian cooperation had been building since Russia seized Crimea in 2014, the Biden administration shifted into high gear in the weeks before the Russian invasion, when a U.S. military team visited to assess the state of Ukraine’s air defenses. The Americans provided Ukraine with detailed advice about how to disperse their air defense systems, a move that U.S. officials say helped Ukraine prevent Russia from seizing control of the skies.

Once the invasion got underway, lawyers in the U.S. defense and intelligence bureaucracy imposed guidance that in some cases limited the sharing of targeting information that could enable lethal Ukrainian strikes against Russians. But as Russia’s aggression has deepened, and under pressure from Congress, all of those impediments have been removed, officials say.

Earlier this month, for example, the director of National Intelligence withdrew and replaced a memo that prohibited intelligence sharing for the purposes of regaining captured territory or aiding Ukrainian strikes in Crimea or the Donbas, officials said. NBC News was first to report on the expanded sharing.

Intel has helped Ukraine defend, and also attack

Even before the change, the U.S. had provided Ukraine with timely information enabling it to better target Russian forces.

Ukrainian forces have used specific coordinates shared by the U.S. to direct fire on Russian positions and aircraft, current and former officials tell NBC News.

Those early shoot-downs helped thwart the Russian air assault operation designed to take Hostomel Airport near Kyiv, which would have allowed the Russians to flood troops and equipment to the region around the capital. The Russians eventually took the airport for a time, but never had enough control to fly in massive amounts of equipment. That failure had a significant impact on the battle for Kyiv, U.S. officials say.

The CIA is also devoting significant resources, current and former officials say, to gathering intelligence with the aim of protecting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, whom the Russians want to kill. The agency is consulting with the Ukrainians on “how best to move him around, making sure that he’s not co-located with his entire chain of command, things like that,” a U.S. official said.

“I would say where we are at is revolutionary in terms of what we have been able to do,” Army Lt. Gen. Scott Berrier, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told Congress last month in describing the sharing of information and intelligence between the U.S. and Ukraine.

CIA Director William Burns told Congress last month that when he met with Zelenskyy in Kiev in January, “We shared with him intelligence we had at the time about some of the most graphic and concerning details of Russian planning about Kyiv as well and we’ve continued to do that every day since then.”

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said last month that the U.S. has shared “a significant amount of detailed timely intelligence on Russia’s plans and activities with the Ukrainian government to help Ukrainians defend themselves,” adding that the material “includes information that should help them inform and develop their military response to Russia’s invasion, that’s what’s happening — or has been happening.”

The U.S. military and the CIA began seeking to deepen their relationships with Ukrainian counterparts after Russia seized Crimea in 2014. The CIA first helped Ukrainian services root out Russian spies, the former senior official said, and then provided training and guidance. The U.S. military also trained Ukrainian soldiers.

“There has been a very robust relationship between U.S. intel agencies and the Ukrainians for the last eight years,” the official said, adding that by the time Russia invaded two months ago, the U.S. trusted Ukraine enough to provide details of Russian troops’ deployment, attack routes and real-time targeting information.

“The foreknowledge we had of Russian plans and intentions shows that our intelligence was very solid on the overall situation,” said John McLaughlin, a former acting CIA director who now teaches at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. “So just logically, if we so earnestly want them to win as we have publicly said, it only follows that we’d be giving them the results of intelligence. It would be along the lines of, ‘Here’s what we know — it doesn’t matter how we know it.’”

One Western intelligence official noted that it’s not only the intelligence that has proven decisive — it’s the performance of the Ukrainians in using it. The source said Ukrainians have fought the Russians with agility and courage, and when they have received actionable intelligence, they have moved with astonishing speed.

McLaughlin said the Ukrainians have made clever use of so-called open-source intelligence — commercial satellite imagery and intercepts of Russians talking openly on unencrypted radios.

“The fact that there is so much open source [intelligence] available means that those collecting classified intelligence can focus on the things that are really hard and not publicly available.”

As the Ukrainian government sees it, intelligence sharing has improved, a source familiar with the government’s view told NBC News. That’s as far as he would go.

“It’s gotten better,” he said.

Defense News

How one US intelligence agency is supporting Ukraine

Nathan Strout – April 25, 2022

DENVER – The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which collects, analyzes and distributes satellite imagery in support of U.S. national security, is monitoring events in Ukraine and sharing intelligence with partner nations engaged in joint missions, its director said.

“We’ve been able to be a key part of the how the West has helped Ukraine prevent Russia from overrunning Kiev, and installing a puppet government subservient to Russian control,” said Vice Adm. Robert Sharp said at the GEOINT Conference in Denver April 25. “Today, on the 61st day of the war, Ukraine is bravely and impressively fighting on. Partnerships are critical to the ongoing success.”

The agency is engaged in supporting partners with geospatial intelligence, or GEOINT, throughout the conflict. The NGA is also sharing commercial imagery and encouraging U.S. companies to assist NATO.

“As far as what U.S. imagery companies are providing to assist NATO and the West in this situation, is NGA OK with all that, even encouraging it? Absolutely. Heck yeah! No restrictions,” said Sharp in prepared remarks. “Publicly available imagery of Ukraine is now providing unprecedented public insight that until recently would’ve been only available through government agencies and officials. And it’s helping a democratic country fight for its survival, and preserve its independence. We support and applaud those efforts 100 percent.”- ADVERTISEMENT -https://s.yimg.com/rq/darla/4-10-1/html/r-sf-flx.html

Sharp said that many of the ways the NGA is providing support is classified, but he shared one example of how the agency is taking action.

In March, the agency sent personnel to the U.S. European Command Area of Operations to train some military partners on the Aerial Reconnaissance Tactical Edge Mapping Imagery System, or ARTEMIS. ARTEMIS is a small unmanned system used to provide overhead imagery when conditions are not ideal for satellite collection, explained Sharp.

“Due to this initiative, we now have military forces in Europe who can use ARTEMIS for high-resolution imagery, creating their own GEOINT at the tactical edge that can be easily shared at the unclassified level with international partners, and with no restrictions,” he said.

Business Insider

Russian forces attacked 5 railway stations in Ukraine after Blinken, Lloyd visit: official

Natalie Musumeci – April 25, 2022

Russian forces attacked five train stations in Ukraine on Monday, resulting in casualties, Ukraine’s state railway company said.

“Russian troops continue to systematically destroy railway infrastructure,” said Oleksandr Kamyshin, the CEO of Ukrainian Railways.

The reported strikes come after the highest-level American visit to the Ukrainian capital since Russia launched its war.

Russian forces attacked five railway stations in Ukraine on Monday, resulting in casualties just hours after the highest-level American visit to the Ukrainian capital since Russia launched its war against the eastern European country, the state railway company said.

Oleksandr Kamyshin, the CEO of Ukrainian Railways, said in a statement posted on the Telegram app that the train stations “came under fire” in central and western Ukraine within the span of one hour on Monday morning.

“Russian troops continue to systematically destroy railway infrastructure,” Kamyshin said.

The CEO said that there were casualties, but he did not specify how many people were injured or killed.

“There are casualties, we are finding out the details. I will keep you informed,” he said, adding that at least 16 passenger trains “will be halted.”

Lviv, Ukraine, regional governor Maksym Kozytsky said in a Facebook post that an “explosion” occurred at around 8:30 a.m. at the train station in the southwest region of Krasne “as a result of a missile strike.”

“Structural units of the State Emergency Service are working at the scene, the fire is still being extinguished,” Kozytsky said in the post. “There is no information about the victims as of this hour.”

Additionally, Kozytsky said that Ukraine’s armed forces “destroyed” one missile in the Lviv region.

“The missiles flew to the west of Ukraine from the south-eastern direction, which the [R]ussian occupiers fired from a strategic aircraft, probably Tu-95,” Kozytsky said.

The reported railway attacks come after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin met with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv on Sunday.

Blinken and Austin flew from the US to Poland and from there traveled to Kyiv by train.

During Russian President Vladimir Putin’s nearly nine-week war with Ukraine, Russian troops have surrounded and shelled several cities across the country, hitting multiple civilian targets, including a maternity hospital and an art school.

Earlier this month, some 50 evacuating civilians were killed and another nearly 100 were injured in a Russian rocket attack at the Kramatorsk train station in eastern Ukraine, local officials have said.

The Hill

Train stations in Ukraine targeted after US officials’ visit

Monique Beals – April 25, 2022

Russian forces attacked multiple railway stations in Ukraine, according to multiple reports on Monday.

Five stations were struck, according to a statement from Oleksandr Kamyshin, who chairs Ukraine’s state railway company, Ukrzaliznytsia.

“Russian troops continue to systematically destroy railway infrastructure,” Kamyshin said, according to CNN. “This morning, within one hour, five railway stations in central and western Ukraine were struck.”

Meanwhile, Maksym Kozytskyy, who leads Lviv’s regional military administration, detailed an attack on Monday that took place in western Ukraine around  8.30 a.m, the Guardian reported.

“Today, on April 25 at about 08:30 am, as the result of a missile attack, an explosion occurred at a substation of the Krasne railway station,” he said in a statement obtained by CNN.

“Units of the State Emergency Service are working on the site and extinguishing the fire,” Kozytskyy added.

Ukrainian trains have become a vital part of the war effort. The country’s rail system is one of the largest in the world and has been carrying not only evacuating civilians out of the country but also bringing essential supplies in, according to CNN

Earlier this month, a Russian rocket attack killed over 30 people and injured more than 100 others at a train station as people attempted to flee the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk.

“Not having the strength and courage to confront us on the battlefield, they are cynically destroying the civilian population. This is evil that knows no bounds. And if it is not punished it will never stop,” Zelensky said at the time of that attack.

The attacks come just one day after Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv, marking the highest-level U.S. officials to travel to Ukraine.

Politico

Heavy weaponry pours into Ukraine as commanders become more desperate

Christopher Miller and Paul McLeary – April 25, 2022

Western countries are rushing heavy weaponry to Ukraine as the war enters what promises to be a deadly, and potentially protracted, new phase.

Those deliveries are coming amid increasingly desperate pleas from Ukrainian battlefield commanders as they endure withering Russian artillery and rocket fire that could last weeks or months.

Over the past two weeks, the Biden administration began shipping out $1.2 billion worth of howitzers, around 200,000 artillery rounds, armored vehicles, counter-battery radars and experimental new armed drones capable of flying into targets. The deliveries are a significant advance from the small arms and Javelin anti-tank armor shipments that dominated the first eight weeks of fighting, and which helped stave off Russian thrusts toward the capital of Kyiv in the early days of the invasion.

On Friday, France and Canada unveiled new plans to send long-range artillery systems for the first time, and the U.K. is looking to backfill heavy armor to Poland as Warsaw contemplates sending Polish tanks to Ukraine.

On Sunday, during a surprise trip to Kyiv by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, the U.S. announced more than $300 million in foreign military financing to allow Ukraine to purchase more sophisticated weapons, along with an additional $165 million for ammunition.

The rapid shift in aid reflects the recognition that the new fight will likely be dominated by artillery barrages and tank battles as infantry units square off over the flat fields of eastern Ukraine. But getting these new weapons to the front quickly will prove critical in the coming days.

As the war changes its character, a wave of Russian steel has been taking aim at Ukrainian units holding the line north of the besieged city of Mariupol, where a few hundred troops continue to make a last desperate stand on the grounds of the Azovstal steel plant.

Eighty miles north of the city, First Lt. Ivan Skuratovsky, serving in the 25th Airborne Brigade, told POLITICO that help needs to come immediately.

“The situation is very bad, [Russian forces] are using scorched- earth tactics,” the 31-year-old married father of two said via text. “They simply destroy everything with artillery, shelling day and night,” he said via text.

He fears that if reinforcements in the form of manpower and heavy weaponry — particularly air support — don’t arrive in the next few days, his troops could find themselves in the same position as those in Mariupol.

Skuratovsky described his soldiers’ situation as “very desperate.”

“I don’t know how much strength we will have,” he said, adding that the troops under his command around the city of Avdiivka, near Donetsk, have gone without rest since the start of the war. At least 13 of them have been wounded in recent weeks, he said, and they are running dangerously low on ammunition, reduced to rationing bullets.

The day before, he told POLITICO his soldiers were being bombarded with Russian howitzers, mortars and multiple-launch rocket systems “at the same time.” Just hours earlier, he said, they had been attacked by two Su-25 warplanes, “and our day became hell.”

Skuratovsky had a message for the United States and other NATO countries: “I would like to tell them that grenade launchers are good, but against airstrikes and heavy artillery we will not be able to hold out for long. People can no longer endure daily bombardments. We need air support now. We need drones.”

Caught in a pincer

The lieutenant’s pleas match those of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who has for weeks demanded that Western countries step up their support as this new phase of the Russian war gets underway. The calls come as the Kremlin struggles to switch tactics from small unit attacks in the north in favor of devastating artillery barrages aimed at flattening towns and Ukrainian positions, unconcerned with — or perhaps purposefully looking for — civilian casualties.

The message is getting through to Western leaders, albeit slowly.

Ukrainian officials have been calling for heavy weapons and jet fighters since the Feb. 24 Russian invasion, but the Kremlin’s decision to pull its troops from around the capital of Kyiv and make one concerted push in the east and south has clearly caught the attention of Western powers.

Russian forces appear to be positioning for a pincer movement launched from the north and south that would trap at least 30,000 Ukrainian troops in the east, and possibly cut them off from resupply. As of now, weapons and aid are getting through, but as this new, more destructive phase of the Russian assault begins, counter attacking from a distance will likely be key to Ukrainian success.

Artillery has been a critical piece in the Ukrainian resistance thus far in the war, and volunteer units have effectively used commercial and homemade drones to spot Russian positions and walk in accurate artillery strikes on armored columns.

Along with the howitzers and armored vehicles, the U.S. is also sending a new capability. The new package includes 121 Phoenix Ghost drones that can fly for six hours, including at night, spotting Russian positions before being flown into a target where an embedded warhead will detonate. The drones have only been developed and built over the past several months, and the Ukrainian troops about to fly them will be the first ever to put them to use on the battlefield.

“Loitering munitions can be a significant advantage though, and the Ukrainians have proven themselves to be pretty adaptable and creative. They could make a real difference,” Rob Lee, a military analyst and a senior fellow in the Foreign Policy Research Institute’s Eurasia Program, told POLITICO.

Skuratovsky said his soldiers, who have just one quadcopter drone at their position that can be rigged to drop a small grenade, would benefit greatly from receiving the Ghost drones, which would allow them to strike Russian artillery targeting them.

On Friday, France announced it was supplying several Caesar self-propelled howitzers to Ukraine and is now training 40 Ukrainian soldiers in France on how to use the powerful guns mounted on the back of a six-wheeled truck.

The Caesar, which the French have used in Afghanistan and have sold to NATO allies, has a range of 24 to 34 miles, giving Ukrainian forces the ability to lob accurate fire at significant distances. “We stand with the Ukrainian people,” the French defense ministry said in a statement on Friday.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson also suggested Friday that his government is considering a deal that would send British tanks to Poland, if Warsaw decides to send some of its Soviet-era T-72 tanks to Ukraine. Poland would be following the lead of the Czech Republic, which recently supplied some of its own T-72s, which the Ukrainians know how to operate.

The Kremlin has repeatedly threatened to hit the convoys of trucks coming across the Polish border full of weapons, which now include — or are about to include — much larger cargo loads, including cannons, large armored vehicles, and spare parts for Ukrainian MiG fighter planes. Western officials have long been cagey about these shipments, but so far the deliveries have arrived intact, allowing Kyiv to resupply troops along the line of contact.

A senior U.S. Defense Department official estimated this week that “the Ukrainians have more tanks in Ukraine than the Russians do,” given the huge losses Russian armor have taken as a result of Ukrainian artillery and shoulder-fired anti-armor attacks.

The Mariupol resistance

That aid will be welcome, but it may be too late for the Ukrainian troops who have fought for weeks in brutal house-to-house combat in Mariupol, where 11 Russian battalion tactical groups — units of several hundred soldiers backed by tanks, rocket artillery and armed infantry vehicles — have been tied down cornering a fierce resistance.

Maj. Serhiy Volyna, commander of the Ukrainian forces in Mariupol, huddled inside the besieged steel plant, delivered a blunt video message last week about the prospects for his men. Speaking directly into the camera, he delivered a desperate plea for heavy weapons from the West to keep the strategic city from falling to Russia.

“Enemy forces are 10 times bigger than ours,” Volyna said in a video he shared with POLITICO and other media and later posted to his Facebook page. “We are probably facing our last days, if not hours.”

Volyna and his troops of the 36th Separate Marine Brigade have endured two months of fighting and are now stuck inside the underground tunnels and bunkers of the sprawling plant with hundreds of wounded fighters and more than 1,000 desperate civilians. He said if weapons don’t come, then an emergency airlift will be necessary to keep those people from being killed.

“Take us to the territory of a third country,” he pleaded to Western nations. On Thursday, Ukrainian efforts to get Russia to open a “green corridor” and allow the encircled troops and civilians to escape safely fell apart. And Russian President Vladimir Putin told his defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, to blockade the Azovstal plant “so that even a fly can’t get out.”

Keeping that much infantry and armor locked in place inside the city has slowed Russian Gen. Aleksandr Dvornikov’s planned advance in the east. But with the Kremlin now declaring the Mariupol fight a victory, those troops will likely be redirected to push on Ukrainian positions holding the line west and north of the city.

A British intelligence assessment released Friday says that Putin’s decision to blockade the Azovstal steel plant instead of taking it “likely indicates a desire to contain Ukrainian resistance in Mariupol and free up Russian forces to be deployed elsewhere in eastern Ukraine. A full ground assault by Russia on the plant would likely incur significant Russian casualties, further decreasing their overall combat effectiveness.”

A new frontline fight

It’s not clear what the new rounds of heavy weapons heading to Ukraine will have on the fight, or how the Kremlin will react to bigger, more deadly aid flowing in from NATO countries.

“Once again [we are] witnessing that Putin is ready to use military force in order to obtain his geopolitical goals,” one Western diplomat told POLITICO on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive issues.

After months of warning of devastating sanctions if Russian troops crossed the border in Ukraine, allied countries are working to understand where Putin’s ambitions end now that he doesn’t appear to respond to deterrent threats. “Unfortunately, we are in a situation today where a military attack against the NATO countries is not impossible anymore,” the diplomat said.

Russian military leaders have already hinted that they intend to seize territory that would create a land bridge to Transnistria and potentially put Moldova at risk. President Joe Biden has promised to defend every inch of NATO territory, but increasingly it seems the first front in that war is inside Ukraine.

After weeks of denials that U.S. troops were actively training Ukrainian forces on the new weapons they’ve been receiving, officials have been more upfront about the efforts. A senior DoD official said Wednesday that American service members had begun training outside the country with more than 50 Ukrainian troops on 155mm howitzer artillery systems the Biden administration was providing as part of a recent aid package worth $800 million.

What the West is able to send to Ukraine and how quickly it gets there is likely to be a major factor in whether Ukraine’s motivated and agile military forces are able to free their trapped troops from the strategic city of Mariupol and keep Russian soldiers at bay elsewhere across an increasingly hot eastern front line.

That front snakes its way through a battleground as big as New Jersey, and has become the focus of Moscow’s attentions.

On April 18, Zelenskyy, his military chiefs and regional authorities announced that Russian forces had begun the operation in the east after amassing thousands more troops in the area. The next day, Moscow confirmed it had launched its new offensive operation.

“Another phase of this operation is starting now,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said, using Moscow’s preferred term to describe its invasion of Ukraine.

Two weeks ago, Ukrainian forces armed with anti-tank American Javelin missiles and British NLAWs surprised the world when they forced a Russian retreat in the battle for Kyiv. The Kremlin’s announcement that it would pull back tens of thousands of troops from northern Kyiv and Chernihiv regions to refocus efforts on the Donbas marked a shift in the campaign’s strategic direction, and precipitated the Western effort to supply heavy artillery and spare parts for Ukrainian MiG fighter planes.

But if the Ukrainians had the upper hand in fights that unfolded in densely populated suburbs of the capital, the Russian army — with its deep supply of heavy guns that can be fired at a distance and self-propelled artillery that can move easily and more freely over wide-open fields — has an early advantage in the eastern steppe.

The Donbas region presents a dilemma, however. While open in many places, it is also heavily populated, meaning the Russians will still have to fight through urban terrain akin to that in the north, where Ukrainian forces drove them back with heavy losses.

“I expect Russia will have some success but it will probably be slow and costly. As long as Ukraine doesn’t allow a large chunk of its troops to be encircled, I don’t think Russia can achieve any kind of strategic gains,” Lee said.

Russian victories are starting to mount in these early days of the new operation.

Serhiy Haidai, the governor of the Luhansk region, said Ukrainian forces were forced to pull out of a town near the regional capital of Severodonetsk after weeks of intense Russian bombardments. Haidai pleaded with civilians living closest to the fighting in and around the towns of Popasna and Kreminna to leave, warning them that “Russians are killing everyone who is against them on the spot.”

Olena Symonenko, an aide in Zelenskyy’s administration, said in a television news broadcast on April 21 that 42 towns and villages had been captured by Russian forces during the new offensive.

Russian forces have also managed to take territory near the town of Izyum, which connects to the strategic cities of Slovyansk and Kramatorsk via highway. Terrified residents have fled those cities in recent days following a rocket attack on the Kramatorsk railway station that killed 59 people, including seven children, in one of the deadliest Russian strikes of the past two months.

But Ukraine’s modern army, including the forces that kept the Russians from encircling and seizing Kyiv, was shaped by the eight years of war in the Donbas and years of intensive training with NATO troops across Europe.

So while they might lack the advantages of concealment and surprise they had in close-quarter urban settings in the north, they continue fighting on their home turf, in positions fortified for over nearly a decade, and in a place where they cut their teeth.

Speaking to a Ukrainian member of parliament from inside the Azovstal factory on Sunday, Volyna said he and his troops were in a dire situation but they remained hopeful they might find a way out. He also expressed confidence in their ability to endure Russia’s attacks.

“It’s really difficult to defend yourself with a machine gun against bombers and cruise missiles, assault groups and dozens of tanks,” he said. “But we do it, one way or another.”