1700 Ukrainian soldiers leave Azovstal, Zelensky opens up about heroic pilots who helped them survive for so long

The New Voice of Ukraine

1700 Ukrainian soldiers leave Azovstal, Zelensky opens up about heroic pilots who helped them survive for so long

May 20, 2022

A Ukrainian serviceman pictured on the ruins of Azovstal steel mill in Mariupol
A Ukrainian serviceman pictured on the ruins of Azovstal steel mill in Mariupol

8.44 p.m: Ukrainian defenders at Azovstal managed to last that long thanks to the heroic sacrifice of Ukrainian pilots, who were secretly delivering food and water to the besieged still mill, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an interview with Ukrainian media.

“Unfortunately, a very large number of our pilots died. Absolutely heroic people who knew how difficult it was to fly to Azovstal and bring them medicine, food, and water,” Zelensky said.

The President said that there were no air corridors to the Azovstal plant due to the strong Russian air defense systems in the area.

“Helicopter pilots for many weeks were flying there, knowing that 90% do not return… Imagine what these people did. They flew there to give food, water, and weapons to Azovstal defenders and took away the wounded. We lost many pilots. They are absolutely heroic, “Zelensky stressed.

7.12 p.m: Ukrainian partisans set up a Ukrainian flag over the railway station in Kherson.

“The Ukrainian guerrilla movement does not sleep even in the temporarily occupied cities: the Ukrainian flag flies over the Kherson railway station. Because Kherson is Ukraine. That’s how it was, is, and will be,” Ukrzaliznytsia state railway operator said in a statement.

7 p.m: Ukrainian sappers have finished demining all the main roads in Kyiv Oblast, Ukrainian President’s Office deputy head Kyrylo Tymoshenko has reported.

He also said that the government has returned road lightning.  Overall 1,016 settlements have already been liberated in Kyiv Oblast, and humanitarian headquarters are working there.

6.11 p.m: Russians bombed a newly reconstructed House of Culture in Lozova, a city in Kharkiv Oblast, leaving at least 7 people wounded, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an Instagram post.

“Seven victims, including an 11-year-old child,” Zelensky said.  “The occupiers identified culture, education, and humanity as their enemies. What is in the minds of people who choose such targets? Absolute evil, absolute stupidity.”

5.29 p.m: Ukrainian government has ordered Mariupol defenders to stop the defense of Azovstal, Azov regiment commander Denys Prokopenko has said in a video statement. 

“The top military leadership has ordered us to save the life and health of the garrison’s defenders. For that, we must stop the city’s defenses,” Prokopenko said.

Despite heavy fighting, circular defense, and lack of supplies, Ukrainian defenders emphasized three important conditions for them to surrender to the Russians: civilians, wounded soldiers, and dead soldiers must be evacuated and get medical treatment.

2.17 p.m: Russians shelled a school in Severodonetsk, a city in Luhansk Oblast, killing at least three people, local governor Serhiy Hayday said.

According to him, the occupiers struck the school with artillery. More than 200 people with children were in the school shelter at the time.  Three adults died.

The man of the Russian invasion of Ukraine as of May 20 <span class="copyright">Ukraine War Map</span>
The man of the Russian invasion of Ukraine as of May 20 Ukraine War Map

2.01 p.m: Rubizhe, a city in Luhansk Oblast has become another Mariupol, Luhansk governor Serhiy Hayday said, meaning Rubizhne was also almost destroyed by the Russians before they have managed to take it under control.

“Rubizhne has shared the fate of Mariupol. The industrial city is completely destroyed, there are no surviving buildings, and it is impossible to restore many houses. There are cemeteries in the courtyards,” Hayday said.

1.47 p.m: Russians have been blocking Ukrainian civilians, who have been trying to evacuate from the occupied territory,  Kherson governor Hennadiy Lahuta told Interfax Ukraine news agency.

For the fifth day in a row, the occupiers are blocking an evacuation column heading from Berislav and  Davydiv Brid towards Kryvyi Rih, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast,” Lahuta said. “This is the only way for people can leave the occupied territory.”

According to Lahuta, the occupiers “did not give any humanitarian” green “corridor for the import of food or medicine and, most importantly, for evacuation of orphanages, boarding schools, evacuation of the elderly, sick people.

The governor said that the Russians have artificially created a difficult situation with the provision of food to the people of the region. The food they import from the temporarily occupied Crimea is in short supply, and they do not allow Ukrainian volunteers to enter the occupied part of Kherson Oblast.

A map shows the Ukrainian counteroffensive in Kharkiv Oblast. Russian-controlled territories are in red <span class="copyright">Ukraine war map</span>
A map shows the Ukrainian counteroffensive in Kharkiv Oblast. Russian-controlled territories are in red Ukraine war map

Morning Digest

In his late-night address to the Ukrainian people, President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Ukrainian forces continue to advance in Kharkiv Oblast. Russian forces have been trying to counterattack in Kharkiv Oblast, trying to return control over their previous positions, shelling mostly civilian infrastructure, Ukraine’s Army General Staff has reported.

The situation in Donbas remains very tough for the Ukrainian army. “It is like hell there,” Zelensky said, that some 12 Ukrainian soldiers died in the past day alone in Donbas.

Russian continue offense on Severodonetsk, a city in Luhansk Oblast. 13 civilians were killed and more than 60 buildings were destroyed during the last 24 hours, Luhansk governor Serhiy Haidai has said in a statement. However, the occupiers have failed to storm the city and had to retreat bearing losses.

At the same time, Ukrainian forces repelled 14 attacks in Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts. Eight tanks, 14 units of combat armored vehicles, and six units of enemy vehicles were destroyed. Air defense units shot down one Orlan-10 UAV, according to the General Staff of the Armed Forces. Russian forces tried to cut the Bakhmut highway in Donetsk Oblast but failed and had to retreat. Ukrainian forces destroyed more than 40 occupiers on the eastern front during the past day, Ukrainian Operative Command East has reported.

Overall, the Ukrainian army has already eliminated 28,700 Russian soldiers since the start of the full-scale invasion.

The evacuation of Ukrainian defenders from Azovstal, the steel mill that used to be the last Ukrainian stronghold in Mariupol for more than 80 days, remains the top focus.

Zelensky has also said he has been doing everything possible to return Ukrainian defenders of Azovstal home safe.

“I am doing my best to keep the most influential international forces informed and, as far as possible, involved in rescuing our military,” Zelensky said.

Read also: Russia shells Sumy Oblast, US Senate passes $40 billion Ukraine Aid Package

UK Defence Intelligence has reported some 1700 Ukrainian soldiers have already left Azovstal over the past day, but it is unknown how many of them are still left at the factory.

In an evening video statement on May 19 Sviatoslav Palamar, the deputy commander of the Azov Regiment, said that the commanders of the Ukrainian forces are still staying in the factory.  “The operation continues, I can’t reveal any details. Hope to see you soon,” Palamar said.

War critics in Russia, facing continuing crackdown, turn to craftier, coded protests

Los Angeles Times

War critics in Russia, facing continuing crackdown, turn to craftier, coded protests

Markus Ziener – May 20, 2022

A few weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine, Moscow resident Vera Bashmakova took a public stand, displaying a message on her car that was impossible to miss. The letters were so large that they covered the entire rear window of her orange 2014 Lada Granta. They read: Nyet Voyne, No War. A three-letter word followed by a five-letter word.

“I put the stickers there because I was outraged about the war in Ukraine,” the 38-year-old biologist says. “I believe that war cannot be a solution to any problem, it can only create new ones.”

A few days later, when Bashmakova was taking her 4-year-old daughter Taisia to kindergarten in a western district of the capital, her car was stopped by police. What followed was a fine of 30,000 rubles, about $450, for demeaning the armed forces of the Russian Federation.

Bashmakova is one of thousands of Russians who have paid a price for speaking their minds about the nearly three-month invasion. Depending on what is considered the severity of the offense, sanctions have ranged from fines to sentences of five days in jail to years in prison.

“People are definitely afraid,” says Alexandra Arkhipova, an anthropologist with a Moscow-based institute. This, however, does not mean that criticism has subsided. While boisterous public demonstrations have largely halted, protests have often moved to less plain and direct forms.

One means is placing asterisks on a sheet of paper and holding it up, three asterisks for the Russian word “no,” five asterisks for “war,” arranged one below the other. No words, no letters, only symbols — however, the meaning is easily decoded by any passer-by.

Sometimes the symbolism refers to the Soviet Union era, now gone for more than three decades. Whenever a Soviet leader died, state television broadcast the Tchaikovsky ballet “Swan Lake.” Today, the symbols of “Swan Lake” — dancing ballerinas arranged in a row — can be found spray-painted on walls.

“The symbolism is clear and self-explanatory,” says Arkhipova. It expresses the desire to have a change of guards in today’s Kremlin.

“The goals of this guerrilla war is to break the information blockade and to get other Russians out of their comfort zone,” she says.

Coded protest can be subtle, ironic or bordering on the absurd. One flier pinned on a Moscow lamppost read: “A dog is lost! It ran away after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Its name is Future. Your kids will not have Future if you will not fight against the war right now. Thousands of Ukrainian kids have already lost their future. There will be a reward.”

Another codeword is the term Grus 200, or Cargo 200. It can be found scrawled on billboards or other public advertisements. Grus 200 refers to the transportation of body bags of fallen Russian troops home from the battlefield. It is military jargon that came into use during the Russian war in Afghanistan in the 1980s. It also has become a euphemism for irreversible losses in conflict.

Thousands of Russian soldiers been killed in Ukraine, yet in Russia’s big cities, this reality has not fully hit home. According to the Ukrainian secret service, most of the deceased are from remote areas in Siberia, the south or the far east. Written on walls in Moscow and St. Petersburg, Grus 200 is meant to amplify war deaths among residents of in the major cities.

Protesting remains dangerous, even when coded. Police are catching up with the creativity of protesters, at times arresting people holding up blank white sheet of paper. They often have help from others.

“We also see a big wave of denunciations,” Arkhipova says. “This seems to be directly related to Russian propaganda, which labels internal critics as enemies of Russia.”

That goes back to statements by Russian President Vladimir Putin himself, who in mid-March called for a “natural and necessary self-detoxification of society.”

“Russians will always be able to distinguish true patriots from scum and traitors and will simply spit them out like an insect in their mouth, spit them onto the pavement,” Putin said during a virtual meeting with regional leaders.

Last month, the case of an English teacher from Korsakov, a small town on the Pacific island of Sakhalin, made waves. Marina Dubrova, 57, showed high school students a YouTube video in which children chanted in Russian and Ukrainian about a “world without war.” When asked afterward by some of her students what she thought about war, she replied, “I think war is a mistake.”

The conversation was recorded on a smartphone. “Eventually this recording ended up with the police,” Dubrova later told Siberia Realities, a media platform of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

The next day, she was summoned by the school principal to his office, where he told her not to politicize the students. Just a few days later, police officers came to the school with a complaint against Dubrova — for allegedly “discrediting” the Russian military. The Korsakov City Court sentenced the teacher to a fine of 30,000 rubles. Teachers in Russian provinces earn on average between 15,000 and 20,000 rubles a month.

The Russian judicial apparatus has a wide range of offenses that result in fines or prison, some of them put into place after the war began. According to OVD-Info, an independent Russian human rights media project fighting political persecution, nearly 15,500 Russians have been detained since the war began. A new provision in the Criminal Code makes it a crime to call for the end the war or to disseminate information about the war that does not toe the official line.

According to Arkhipova, at least seven citizens have been jailed for spreading information about massacres by Russian soldiers in the Ukrainian cities of Bucha and Mariupol. Other criminal offenses include shouting slogans against the government, posting negative articles on social media or spray painting graffiti.

“There is a clear message being sent with all of this: You can get in trouble for anything. So don’t get involved in politics,” Arkhipova says. This is a clear breach of a tacit pact in society that has existed in recent years, she said. As long as a citizen does not interfere, the state grants a reasonably decent life. “But with the war, that pact was destroyed.”

Bashmakova, who was clear and direct in her protest, would not admit defeat so easily. When she was fined, she challenged the verdict. “I appealed because I believe that the inscription ‘No War’ does not discredit the armed forces of the Russian Federation in any way.” This week, however, the court rejected the appeal. If she still does not pay, the 30,000 rubles will be automatically deducted from her bank account.

Ziener is a special correspondent.

Russian troops are turning eastern Ukraine into ‘hell’ — and it’s helping them advance

NBC News

Russian troops are turning eastern Ukraine into ‘hell’ — and it’s helping them advance

Yuliya Talmazan – May 20, 2022

Russian troops are turning eastern Ukraine into ‘hell’ — and it’s helping them advance

Russian forces are showing signs of progress on the battlefield in eastern Ukraine after months of painful setbacks and struggles for their invasion.

The changes, if enduring, could shift the momentum in the grinding battle for the region, which Ukraine’s leader has warned is being turned into “hell” as Russia ramps up the pressure.

In the last 24 hours, Russian forces have managed to break through Ukrainian defenses west of the strategic town of Popasna in the region’s Luhansk province, capturing several villages while also pushing south, said Michael A. Horowitz, a geopolitical and security analyst, and head of intelligence at Le Beck consultancy.

“This is the first time in weeks that they are actually able to pierce through Ukrainian defenses, which is notable in itself,” Horowitz said, noting that Russian forces have generally only managed to advance in a very “incremental” manner, taking one village at a time.

But beyond that, the location of this advance is also important, he said, with the Russian forces now closer to encircling and cutting off the key city of Severodonetsk, the last major city under Ukrainian control in the Luhansk province — something they have been attempting to do for weeks, Horowitz said.

LPR Russia Ukraine Military Operation (Alexander Galperin / Sputnik via AP)
LPR Russia Ukraine Military Operation (Alexander Galperin / Sputnik via AP)

The province of Luhansk, together with neighboring Donetsk, forms the industrial Donbas region that has become the key focus of the Kremlin’s war offensive after it failed to capture the capital Kyiv and recently was pushed back from its positions around Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, in the northeast.

Russia has failed to make much progress in the Donbas for weeks, and seemingly further scaled back its ambitions after originally intending to take full control of the region. But the offensive does now seem to be bearing fruit, with Russian troops advancing behind intense bombardment.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his overnight address that the Russians were “trying to ramp up pressure” in the Donbas, which they had “completely destroyed.”

“It’s hell there,” he said. “And it is not an exaggeration.”

Ukraine’s military similarly reported in its Friday morning update that Moscow’s troops had “intensified offensive and assault operations to improve the tactical situation” in the Donetsk direction, using mortars, artillery, multiple-rocket launchers and aircraft.

War Situation in Donetsk, Ukraine - 19 May 2022 (Alex Chan Tsz Yuk / Sipa via AP)
War Situation in Donetsk, Ukraine – 19 May 2022 (Alex Chan Tsz Yuk / Sipa via AP)

It’s in Luhansk that there were clearer signs of Russian progress, however. The military and regional governor Serhiy Haidai both said that invading troops were “conducting an offensive operation in the areas around” Lysychansk and Severodonetsk, two key cities in the Luhansk province.

The Ukrainian military also said that Russian forces were “trying to improve the tactical position of their units near Volodymyrivka,” Horowitz noted. That town is around 9 miles west of Popasna, he said, suggesting Russian forces did breach through some of the Ukrainian defenses gathered around the strategic location.

The Institute for the Study of War, a U.S.-based military think tank, similarly said in its most recent assessment that “Russian forces are intensifying operations to advance north and west of Popasna in preparation for an offensive toward Severodonetsk.”

In what appeared to be a reference to these advances, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoihu said Friday that the “liberation of the Luhansk People’s Republic is nearing completion” and that Russian forces were expanding their control over the Donbas.

This comes as Moscow is likely to reinforce its forces in the Donbas once it fully secures the southern port city of Mariupol, the U.K. defense ministry said Friday, after months being tied up by the last pocket of Ukraine’s resistance in the city.

But while the Russian advances are notable, experts said it’s too early to talk about any changing of the tide in the battle for the Donbas.

“It’s about whether it can be sustained and consolidated and pushed on forward from,” said Phillips O’Brien, professor of strategic studies at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.

All in all, it’s a sign of a hugely stripped-down offense, which went from trying to take a big area of the Donbas at the start to basically just snipping off the tip of the Ukrainian position, O’Brien said.

“On the other hand,” he added, “you could say that at least the Russians have shown the ability to, for the first time in a while down there, have the strength to push forward.”

The Do-or-Die Battle That Putin Could Actually Win

Daily Beast

The Do-or-Die Battle That Putin Could Actually Win

Tom Mutch – May 20, 2022

Tom Mutch
Tom Mutch

LYSYCHANSK, Ukraine​​—The last road into the Ukrainian city of Luhansk was in flames. A huge bonfire raged on a parking space where a group of civilian and military vehicles had parked just minutes before. Anton, our military driver, pushed the accelerator to the floor as we drove past at around 140 kilometers an hour. As we zip down the road, three Ukrainian tanks roll the other way straight to the front line.

The tiny sliver of Luhansk Oblast still under Ukrainian control is now the center of the increasingly vicious war that is entering its fourth month. On all other fronts, such as Kyiv and Kharkiv, Ukraine has enjoyed a stream of crushing victories, relieving its two main cities from the hell of Russian shelling. But here in the Donbas, Russia’s grinding advance continues. The scaling-down of Russia’s war aims from a takeover of all Ukraine to an encirclement of Ukraine’s troops in this region is little comfort to the men and women who defend the front lines.

In the distance, plumes of smoke were rising from a series of artillery strikes on Ukrainian critical infrastructure in the area. “The Russians do in here just what they did in Mariupol… they just destroy the city block by block with artillery,” a tall, fair-haired Ukrainian major who goes by the nom de guerre ‘Spartak’ told The Daily Beast on a recent visit to the embattled urban sprawl. The 23-year-old from the western city of Lviv is now the deputy commander of a battalion that has been fighting on the front lines against Russia’s remorseless assault on the Donbas region of Eastern Ukraine. Soldiers usually avoid giving last names for operational security purposes.

As artillery thundered all around us, another one of the soldiers—a major called Roman—told us that “today is noticeably quiet here, because the Russian troops have taken Rubizhne near Severodonetsk and are now trying to reposition their forces. When they have done that, they will start again.”

It did not sound quiet to us. The constant boom of GRAD rocket launchers and howitzers filled the sky, and the impacts were close enough to shake the earth. Roman pulled out a map on his phone to show us the positions of the Russian forces. He was exhausted from three months of combat on this front, and is pessimistic about Ukrainian prospects in Luhansk. “If our situation doesn’t improve, we could be encircled here.”

<div class="inline-image__caption"> <p>Roman, a Ukrainian soldier who has been fighting on the frontlines against Russia’s remorseless assault on the <a href=
Roman, a Ukrainian soldier who has been fighting on the frontlines against Russia’s remorseless assault on the Donbas region.Tom Mutch

Like the rest of Vladimir Putin’s war, this offensive is not going entirely according to plan. In one of the biggest military blunders of the invasion, Russians forces recently tried to throw a pontoon bridge over the Siversky Donets river near Bilhorivka and encircle Ukrainian troops from behind. Ukrainian spotters picked them out and artillery pulverized them, destroying dozens of armored vehicles and killing up to 450 troops. Despite this, Russians continue to make slow and grueling, but very real, gains.

Roman is skeptical that relief is on its way. “It is my understanding that our goal here is to take the fire on us as much as possible to liberate Kharkiv, the Kherson direction,” he says with a sigh. “So, naturally we need to hold out here for some time.” A common complaint from commanders here is that they have no answer to Russia’s overwhelming artillery barrages, which could completely level a town and leave soldiers nowhere to take defensive positions. Western-supplied artillery is reaching the battlefield, but much slower than the Ukrainians would like.

There is no electricity and or running water, so they drink from a well and use head torches and candles for light. More crucially in an information war, there is no access to the outside world. Russian radio continually broadcasts propaganda about Russian advances throughout the country. At one point, Tatiana Malorezka, a resident, stopped and asked us: “What is going on? The Russians say they have captured Severodonetsk?!” When we reassure her that the Ukrainians still hold the city, her relief is palpable. “My nerves just can’t take it anymore, you know? I don’t want the Russians to be here!”

Tatiana said she could live under almost any circumstances without power or running water as long as it was under the Ukrainian flag. “I can never live under Russian occupation,” she told us. “It is the only thing that would make me leave.” She handed us three numbers of family members who have fled to western Ukraine. “Please call them and tell them that I and the rest of the family are OK,” she pleaded. One of the numbers was for her son, who is in the army and is fighting on the front line. She hasn’t been able to contact him and has no way to know if he is dead or alive.

Back in Slovyansk, we talk to Andrii, a soldier who is more upbeat about Ukraine’s chances in the region. “I think we will recapture Rubizhne soon,” he says. “They want to flank from Kharkiv to Luhansk and they want to go down south through Luhansk and those cities. I heard information from our intelligence agencies that the Russians are all demoralized. You must understand the reason. They are fighting only for money and the stupid idea that they are ‘liberators.’ They are not fucking liberators. We are fighting for our people and our land and that is why we will win.”

Ukrainian officials estimate that there are still thousands of civilians living in the Severodonetsk and Lysychansk urban areas in Luhansk Oblast. They mostly live underground in shelters and bunkers. On the outskirts of a school in Lysychansk is a building that the residents have converted into a shelter. What is most striking is the number of young people who have remained behind there—there are at least a dozen ranging from infants to older teenagers.

<div class="inline-image__caption"> <p>A blown out classroom in the school where the bunker is located.</p> </div> <div class="inline-image__credit"> Tom Mutch </div>
A blown out classroom in the school where the bunker is located.Tom Mutch

Today, they say, there has been less shelling than before, and the residents have ventured outside. Sixteen-year-old Daniil, who was doing an apprenticeship to be a car mechanic before the war, says that they have barely left the basement in a month due to the shelling that has hit almost every building in Lysychansk—including their own. Upstairs, one of the parents shows us three rooms in the school. On the table of one of them are two massive shards of a rocket. The rooms almost look normal, but part of the roof is missing, and the supply closet is a wreck covered in rubble.

As we leave, we take three women who have decided to evacuate to the relative safety of Lysychansk in our car with us. One is 19-year-old Valeria, who was a university student in Kharkiv when the war broke out. Rather than fleeing the region altogether, she wants to go straight to her grandmother in Lysychansk to look after her. “My parents died when I was young, and she is all I have left,” Valeria says.

<div class="inline-image__caption"> <p>Valeria and her grandmother</p> </div> <div class="inline-image__credit"> Tom Mutch </div>
Valeria and her grandmotherTom Mutch

When we ask her what she thinks of the war, she says that she “does not understand how this could happen. Why couldn’t the men… just sit down and figure out a way to avoid the war?” Our translator Oleksiy replies, “and how do you expect to be able to sit down with people who just want to kill us and get rid of Ukraine completely?”

At that moment, we hear a huge crack as shelling rains down on the city we just left, and Valeria stares silently out the window.

‘Our Commander Is Leaving With Us’: Putin’s Troops Openly Plot to Ditch ‘Stupid’ War

Daily Beast

‘Our Commander Is Leaving With Us’: Putin’s Troops Openly Plot to Ditch ‘Stupid’ War

Allison Quinn – May 19, 2022

Reuters
Reuters

Russian soldiers are apparently so sick of Vladimir Putin’s “stupid” war in Ukraine that they are now openly plotting with their own commanders to go AWOL.

The Ukrainian Defense Ministry’s Main Intelligence Directorate released a recording on Thursday that is said to show precisely that happening, with a soldier heard in a purportedly intercepted phone call detailing the plan.

The soldier, identified by Ukrainian intelligence as one of many men “mobilized” by authorities in occupied Donetsk, complains that he and others in his battalion are so under-equipped that even the Chechen forces fighting alongside them mock them as “meat.”

“Everyone who is here … I’m telling you … everyone is planning to take off on the 26th,” the purported soldier says.

“Isn’t that stupid?” says the other man, apparently a relative back home.

“Isn’t it stupid that we’re here?” the unnamed soldier shoots back.

He goes on to explain that the troops have decided to abscond “on the basis of the fact that they put us on the front with absolutely nothing.”

Russia Uses Ukraine’s Azovstal POWs in Demented New Propaganda Plot

“I want to tell you even more,” he says, adding that a “battalion commander is leaving with us and even a staff colonel.”

“They don’t provide us with any [equipment],” he says, adding that the rifles given to snipers are “from 1945.”

Other units “look at them and go, ‘Holy shit, what would you need those for?’ They laugh at us. You know what they call us? Blessed. We ask, ‘Why blessed?’ They say because we are walking around with no equipment, no helmets, without anything. … The Chechens call us meat.”

“It’s not desertion, because we shouldn’t be on this territory… We crossed the border as 200s,” he says, using a Russian military term for those killed in battle. “We’re not actually here. So if they say I’m a deserter, fuck off, I’m not here. Prove otherwise.”

Other Russian soldiers are said to have taken equally drastic measures to get themselves out of the war. Ukrainian intelligence has released several recordings in recent days that purportedly show Russian soldiers resorting to injuring themselves in an effort to get pulled from the war.

On Thursday, Ukraine’s Security Service released another recording said to reveal that trend. In the purportedly intercepted call between two Russian soldiers, one of the men tells his friend that fighting is getting more and more intense by the day, and despite daily fatalities, the military leadership is not providing backup.

“Take someone else’s weapon, a Ukrainian one, and shoot yourself in the legs,” his friend advises.

Russian corpses and munitions litter Kharkiv’s suburbs weeks after troops pushed out

NBC News

Russian corpses and munitions litter Kharkiv’s suburbs weeks after troops pushed out

Mo Abbas, Matt Bradley and Yelyzaveta Kovtun – May 19, 2022

MALAYA ROHAN, Ukraine — When the wind blows a certain way, the unmistakable stench of death wafts over the ruins of Christina Suslova’s house.

That’s because the body of a Russian soldier is rotting in a basement next door. He was apparently killed during a string of Ukrainian military offensives in recent weeks that have pushed Moscow’s forces away from Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city.

“They looted, they destroyed everything. Look inside, there’s nothing,” Suslova, 16, said, standing outside her wrecked home in the village of Malaya Rohan, some 13 miles east of central Kharkiv.

Ukrainians living in and around the city are only now beginning to count the cost of the destruction wrought by weeks of Russian shelling and occupation.

Malaya Rohan still looks — and smells — like a war zone, despite being liberated from occupation several weeks ago.

Malaya Rohan after Russian occupation and battles with Ukrainian forces to reclaim the village. (Mo Abbas  / NBC News)
Malaya Rohan after Russian occupation and battles with Ukrainian forces to reclaim the village. (Mo Abbas / NBC News)

A crate of Russian munitions  in Suslova’s front yard appeared to be the only thing not smashed or broken. Villagers said there were other Russian corpses in the area.

A stray dog trotted by with a bone, the origins of which were unclear.

A few doors down from Suslova’s house, Sergey Ous, a security guard, and his family painstakingly sifted through the rubble of their home, clearing the debris brick by brick. A flattened car sat atop the wreckage, possibly crushed and pushed aside by a Russian tank.

“I’m in shock. It took me eight years to build this house, and I’ve only lived in it for two years,” Ous, 45, said.

Sergey Ous, at right, stands outside his heavily damaged home in the village of Malaya Rohan, near Kharkiv. (Mo Abbas / NBC News)
Sergey Ous, at right, stands outside his heavily damaged home in the village of Malaya Rohan, near Kharkiv. (Mo Abbas / NBC News)

In a perverse approximation of suburbia, armored vehicles sat in the driveways of some the houses down the street, the well-appointed homes apparently used by Russian troops as a base.

It’s hard to tell what damage was caused by Russian occupation and what was caused by Ukrainian shelling to end it.

Villagers blame the Russians.

“We didn’t ask them to come. We didn’t know they’d do such things. We didn’t want them here,” said Suslova’s grandmother Viktorivna Vasylyeva, 56, gesticulating angrily.

Erratic tank tracks and collision damage to vehicles and buildings may point to a desperate Russian scramble to escape. Their turrets blown off, the tanks’ gutted shells now dot the village.

A downed Russian helicopter, its “Z” marking still visible on the tail piece, lies in a field near Ludmila Terekh’s home. The 79-year-old grandmother said she blamed Russians occupying the house next to hers for attracting the shelling that caved in her roof.

“We were brothers and neighbors before, we fought in the Second World War together. I don’t know why they came,” Vasylyeva said, crying and motioning with her hands wildly.

“I worked all my life for that house and all my family lived there — my kids, my grandkids. Now I don’t know what to do,” she added.

Low-flying Ukrainian military helicopters buzzed by her home, making multiple passes.

A downed Russian helicopter in a field in the village of Malaya Rohan, near Kharkiv. (Mo Abbas / NBC News)
A downed Russian helicopter in a field in the village of Malaya Rohan, near Kharkiv. (Mo Abbas / NBC News)

The dull thud and crunch of Russian shelling could still be heard in the distance, but now Moscow’s troops are too far from central Kharkiv to easily threaten the city.

Their retreat came too late for Kira Seroshtan, 15, who was lying in a hospital bed in Kharkiv Regional Hospital.

She had been walking with two friends in a Kharkiv park on April 15 before seeing a white flash.

“I turned to look at my friends. One was wounded in the chest and the other got shrapnel in the eye and in the head. I started to scream for help,” Seroshtan said.

The friend with the head injuries was killed while the other friend survived. Shrapnel tore through Kira’s abdomen and legs.

She lifted her hospital blanket to reveal ugly green stitching across her body where shrapnel had been removed and where she had had a colostomy operation.

Despite the life-changing injuries, Seroshtan was still smiling and cheerful.

Kira Seroshtan holds a piece of metal removed from her body after she was struck by shrapnel following Russian shelling of Kharkiv. (Mo Abbas / NBC News)
Kira Seroshtan holds a piece of metal removed from her body after she was struck by shrapnel following Russian shelling of Kharkiv. (Mo Abbas / NBC News)

“Now I’ve been here one month, I realize I can’t postpone things, I can’t wait. It’s now a new phase of my life,” she said.

“I’m alive and it’s a miracle.”

She took out a piece of gauze from a drawer by her bed and carefully unwrapped a piece of the metal that had been removed from her body.

“I’ll keep it with me, and every year on April 15 I’ll take it out and look at it,” Seroshtan said.

“That day will be like my second birthday.”

Pentagon says Russia’s attempts to hit Western weapons flowing into Ukraine having ‘no impact’

The Week

Pentagon says Russia’s attempts to hit Western weapons flowing into Ukraine having ‘no impact’

Peter Weber, Senior editor – May 5, 2022

Ukraine electrical substation hit by Russian strike
Ukraine electrical substation hit by Russian strike Omar Marques/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Russia is concentrating most of its military efforts in Ukraine on trying to capture territory in the east and south of the country, but it continues to strike cities and towns across Ukraine. And on Tuesday and Wednesday those strikes targeted electrical substations, railroad facilities, and other infrastructure in western and central Ukraine.

The Russian Defense Ministry said the attacks on the rail infrastructure are meant to disrupt the delivery of Western weapons — Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu griped that the U.S. and its allies are “stuffing Ukraine with weapons.” A senior Pentagon official said Wednesday that despite Russia’s efforts, “there’s been no impact to our ability to continue flows into Ukraine. We’ve seen no indications that any of this Western aid has been impeded or even struck.”

“There’s no indication at all that there’s a Russian impediment to the flow” of U.S. arms to Ukraine, the Pentagon official said. “Our focus is on getting it to them. Their focus is on getting it into the fight and using it. And that’s happening.” Ukraine has 81 of 90 promised U.S. howitzers, and “we know that they are using some of those howitzers in the fight,” the official said, “but I think I’m just going to demur” on the specific number.

The flow of weapons into Ukraine “continues every single day,” and they “are getting into Ukrainian hands,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said later Wednesday. “We’re not going to talk about the ways in which materials getting inside Ukraine,” but “there are lots of ways to do that” and “those ways change over time.”

Ukraine and Russia both rely on the rail systems to transport military personnel and supplies, the Pentagon official said, but the Russian strikes on critical infrastructure out west have had “no appreciable impact” on Ukraine’s ability to replenish its forces. Overall, Russia’s “ability to target with precision has been less than advertised throughout this entire war,” Kirby added. “They are not good at precision strikes.”

Russia’s strikes on “non-military targets” also show its “willingness to target civilian infrastructure in an attempt to weaken Ukrainian resolve” and damage its economy, Britain’s Ministry of Defense said. These missile strikes on our cities “will get proper answers,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky vowed Wednesday night. “Both legal and quite practical — on the battlefield.”

A clip showing Putin twitching his foot set off new speculation after claims he is seriously ill

Insider

A clip showing Putin twitching his foot set off new speculation after claims he is seriously ill

Tom Porter – May 17, 2022

Putin
Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, and Tajik President Emomali Rahmon at the Kremlin on May 16, 2022.Mikhail Klimentyev, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP
  • Video showing Vladimir Putin twitching his foot set off new speculation about his health.
  • The secretive leader’s condition is under scrutiny after Ukraine claimed he is seriously ill.
  • Some believe illness could make him more reckless in the war in Ukraine and confronting the West.

A clip showing Vladimir Putin twitching his leg in a meeting in Moscow with Tajikistan President Emomali Rahmon set off a new flurry of online speculation about the Russian president’s health Monday.

In the meeting, where the leaders discussed security issues in central Asia, Putin appears to jerk his foot several times. MailOnline published a version of the video:

The evidence is slight, but was seized upon amid tensions with the West over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and conjectures over Putin’s physical and mental health. Clips from recent meetings where Putin was seen gripping a table or awkwardly moving his leg have also fuelled speculation that he may be seriously ill.

Experts have weighed in with more credible information, with former British spy Christopher Steele on Sunday claiming that Russian sources had informed him that Putin was fatally ill.

A Ukrainian intelligence chief in an interview with Sky News over the weekend also claimed that Putin is in “very bad psychological and physical condition and he is very sick”, and rejected the suggestion he was making the claims as part of Ukraine’s information war with Russia.

A Russian oligarch also said, in a recently-released secret recording, that he had been informed by Kremlin sources that Putin had blood cancer.

No evidence has emerged to substantiate these claims.

From action man, to rumors of failing health
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin rides a horse during his vacation outside the town of Kyzyl in Southern Siberia on August 3, 2009.
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin rides a horse during his vacation outside the town of Kyzyl in Southern Siberia on August 3, 2009.Alexsey Druginyn/AFP via Getty Images

In his first decade in power, Putin sought to portray himself as a vigorous action man, riding a horse bare-chested, piloting a light aircraft, and vanquishing opponents on the hockey pitch in propaganda stunts.

But the Russian leader, who is approaching 70, now casts a very different figure in his public appearances.

Putin holds meetings with foreign leaders across a vast table, and has appeared bloated and agitated when pictured with top Kremlin officials and allies.

Respected Russian investigative outlet Proekt, in a recent article detailed Putin’s health problem during his presidency.

It claimed the Kremlin closely controls what footage is released of Putin to cover any abnormalities and obscure times that he is absent from public life for medical treatment. It said he suffers back problems, and may have been treated for thyroid illness.

In recent weeks, there has been speculation that Putin’s jerky movements and bloated appearance indicate he may have Parkinson’s, though experts on the disease expressed skepticism towards that claim in comments to German broadcaster Deutsche Welle.

Mark Galeotti, one of the UK’s leading experts on Russia’s security services, in a recent article for The Spectator cautioned against some of the wilder speculation about Putin’s health, that he said was indicative of wishful thinking.

“The idea of Putin succumbing to some malady is, like that other topic of over-heated speculation, the palace coup, often a hope for some quick, magic answer to the West’s problems,” he wrote.

“Yet beware magical thinking. The prevailing medical opinions appear to be that whatever Putin may have, it is not likely to lead to imminent death or incapacitation. It may well be that he is ill enough to be more reckless and less concerned about the long-term risks, but not so ill to quickly be out of the picture.”

Hundreds of Ukrainians defending Azovstal plant surrender to uncertain fate

Reuters

UPDATE 4-Hundreds of Ukrainians defending Azovstal plant surrender to uncertain fate

May 17, 2022

* Reuters witness: seven buses carry out fighters

* Some not wounded – Reuters witness

* Azov regiment fighters surrender at Azovstal

* Unclear what will happen to the fighters (Adds arrival at prison in Olenivka, criminal investigation)

MARIUPOL, Ukraine, May 17 (Reuters) – Hundreds of Ukrainian fighters surrendered to an uncertain fate on Tuesday after weeks holed up in the bunkers and tunnels below Mariupol’s Azovstal steel works as the most devastating siege of Russia’s war in Ukraine drew to a close.

Russian forces pummelled Mariupol, a major port on the Sea of Azov between Russia and Crimea, with artillery for weeks. After the urban warfare that followed, the city is a wasteland.

Civilians and Ukrainian fighters had hunkered down in Azovstal, a vast Soviet-era plant founded under Josef Stalin and designed with a maze of bunkers and tunnels to withstand nuclear attack.

Russia’s defence ministry said 265 fighters had surrendered, including 51 who were seriously wounded and would be treated at Novoazovsk in the Russian-backed breakaway Donetsk region.

Five buses took wounded fighters there early on Tuesday, and in the evening a Reuters witness saw seven more, escorted by armoured vehicles. They brought other Azovstal fighters to a newly reopened prison in Olenivka near the regional capital Donetsk.

The occupants were not visibly wounded. One bore a prominent tattoo on his neck featuring a Ukrainian national trident symbol.

Ukraine’s military command had said in the early hours that it was ending the mission to defend the plant, led by the Azov Regiment, which had previously insisted it would not surrender and appealed to Kyiv to organise an extraction.

“Because Mariupol drew in the Russian Federation’s forces for 82 days, the operation to seize the east and south (of Ukraine) was held up. It changed the course of the war,” Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said.

It was unclear what would happen to the fighters.

Moscow has depicted the Azov Regiment as one of the main perpetrators of the alleged radical anti-Russian nationalism or even Nazism from which it says it needs to protect Ukraine’s Russian-speakers.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said President Vladimir Putin had guaranteed that the fighters who surrendered would be treated “in accordance with international standards”.

ACCUSATIONS

Ukrainian Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Malyar said in a video that “an exchange procedure will take place for their return home”.

But Vyacheslav Volodin, speaker of the State Duma, Russia’s lower house, said: “Nazi criminals should not be exchanged.”

The TASS news agency said Russian federal investigators would question the soldiers as part of a probe into what Moscow calls “Ukrainian regime crimes”.

And Russian deputy ambassador to the United Nations Dmitry Polyansky said there had been no deal, tweeting: “I didn’t know English has so many ways to express a single message: the #Azovnazis have unconditionally surrendered.”

Civilians evacuated earlier had spoken of desperate conditions in the bunkers, and some fighters had endured horrific battle injuries with minimal medical assistance.

The Azov Regiment was formed in 2014 as an extreme right-wing volunteer militia to fight Russian-backed separatists who had taken control of parts of the Donbas – the largely Russian-speaking industrial heartland of eastern Ukraine where Russia says it wants to end Ukrainian rule.

The regiment denies being fascist, racist or neo-Nazi, and Ukraine says it has been reformed away from its radical nationalist origins to be integrated into the National Guard.

Kyiv also denies that Russian speakers have been persecuted in Ukraine, and says the allegation that it has a fascist agenda, repeated daily on Russian media, is a baseless pretext for a Russian war of aggression.

Russia’s Prosecutor General’s office asked the Supreme Court to class the regiment as a “terrorist organisation”, Interfax news agency reported, citing the Ministry of Justice website.

Lawmaker Leonid Slutsky, one of Russia’s negotiators in talks with Ukraine, called the evacuated combatants “animals in human form” and said they should receive the death penalty.

“They do not deserve to live after the monstrous crimes against humanity that they have committed and that are committed continuously against our prisoners,” he said.

(Reporting by Reuters; Writing by Guy Faulconbridge and Kevin Liffey; editing by Grant McCool)

Terror-stricken Russians anticipate the delivery of foreign arms to the Armed Forces of Ukraine

Ukrayinska Pravda

Terror-stricken Russians anticipate the delivery of foreign arms to the Armed Forces of Ukraine – conversation intercepted by the Security Service of Ukraine

Iryna Balachuk – May 17, 2022

The Security Service of Ukraine has published another intercepted conversation between Russian soldiers. In that conversation, the aggressors express their envy that Ukrainians have Bayraktars (medium-altitude long-range unmanned combat aerial vehicles), and they are terror-stricken at the prospect of the delivery of foreign weapons to the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

Source: Security Service of Ukraine on Telegram

Quote from a Russian soldier fighting in Zaporizhzhia: “I wish we had the f*cking drones, like their Bayraktars. The situation would be f*cking awesome. They [Bayraktars] don’t work in the daytime, they work at night. The birds take off, get our coordinates and we’re f*cked.”

Details: He [the Russian soldier] himself ridicules talk about Russia’s “glory”, since Russia “itself stirred up this special operation” but didn’t arm its soldiers properly. At present, according to the aggressor, they [Russian soldiers] are forced to beg for everything from their sponsors – farmers and children collect money for quadcopters (drones with four rotors) for Russian soldiers.

The invaders are also following with alarm news of new deliveries of foreign weapons for the Armed Forces of Ukraine. They are particularly frightened by reports that “the Poles have delivered 2,000 – or 200 – tanks to Ukraine.”

The Security Service of Ukraine has pointed out that Ukraine has news of “new guns and lend-lease”, so that the aggressors will have “a lot of discoveries – not only in the news but also on the battlefield.”