Impossible to return to the liberated villages of Kharkiv Region: there are many mines and trip wires; fatalities reported
Valentyna Romanenko – May 9, 2022
Police urge people not to return to their houses in the liberated settlements of Kharkiv Region: it is extremely dangerous.
Source: Serhii Bolvinov, Head of the Investigative Department of the National Police in Kharkiv Region, on Facebook
Details: In recent days, the Armed Forces of Ukraine have liberated a number of settlements in the Kharkiv region. Many residents of these places have a clear desire to return home. For the time being, this is extremely dangerous, says Bolvinov.
First, because of the continuation of hostilities and the close proximity to the front line, and second, because of the huge number of unexploded ordnance and mines left behind by the fleeing army of invaders.
Quote: “Unfortunately, yesterday during demining under the bridge in the village of Tsyrkuny, the bodies of two civilian women were found, who were blown up by a trip wire.
For your own safety, do not return to the liberated settlements! Please spread this information to those who intend to do so. First we liberate, then demine and after that, return.”
Ukraine calls for moves to unblock ports and prevent global food crisis
Pavel Polityuk – May 9, 2022
An agricultural worker drives a tractor spreading fertilizers to a field of winter wheat in Kiev region
KYIV (Reuters) – Ukraine’s president said on Monday that trade at the country’s ports was at a standstill and urged the international community to take immediate steps to end a Russian blockade to allow wheat shipments and prevent a global food crisis.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy made the comments after speaking to European Council President Charles Michel, who was visiting Odesa – the major Black Sea port for exporting agricultural products where missiles struck tourist sites and destroyed buildings on Monday.
“For the first time in decades and decades, in Odesa there is no regular movement of the merchant fleet, there is no routine port work. This has probably never happened in Odesa since World War Two,” Zelenskiy said in a video address.
“And this is a blow not only to Ukraine. Without our agricultural exports, dozens of countries in different parts of the world are already on the brink of food shortages. And over time, the situation can become, frankly, frightening.”
Ukraine was the world’s fourth-largest exporter of maize (corn) in the 2020/21 season and the No.6 wheat exporter, according to International Grains Council data. But nearly 25 million tonnes of grains are now stuck in Ukraine, a U.N. food agency official said on Friday.
“Immediate measures must be taken to unblock Ukrainian ports for wheat exports,” Zelenskiy said earlier on his Telegram messaging channel.
He did not specify what measures he was seeking. NATO countries including the United States have ruled out armed intervention for fear of triggering a wider war.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who visited Kyiv on Sunday, said his country would help Ukraine work out options on how to export stored grain.
SILOS OF BLOCKED GRAIN
Michel, who chairs summits of the European Union’s national leaders, wrote on Twitter that he had seen silos full of grain, wheat and corn in Odesa that was ready for export but blocked.
“This badly needed food is stranded because of the Russian war and blockade of Black Sea ports. Causing dramatic consequences for vulnerable countries. We need a global response,” he wrote.
Russia’s blockade of Ukrainian ports since the invasion on Feb. 24 has added to volatility in international financial markets, sending commodity prices higher.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said last week the problem of food security cannot be solved without restoring Ukrainian production to the world market.
Ukrainian agriculture officials say the exportable surplus is around 12 million tonnes, and agriculture analysts have said Ukraine’s stocks are so high that there will not be enough room to store the new harvest when it comes.
Ukraine has sown about 7 million hectares of spring crops this year, or 25-30% less than a year earlier, Agriculture Minister Mykola Solskyi said on Monday.
He said Ukraine had exported 1.090 million tonnes of grain in April, but that the sowing was not of the same quality as last year and the sowing area for corn was smaller.
Moscow says its “special operation” in Ukraine is designed to disarm and denazify its smaller neighbour. Ukraine and the West say this is a false pretext for an unprovoked war of aggression by Russia.
(Addition reporting by Max Hunder in Kyiv and Ronald Popeski in Winnipeg; Editing by Timothy Heritage and Himani Sarkar)
Russia admits it faces economic collapse over Putin’s war
Louis Ashworth – May 9, 2022
Russia economy war Ukraine sanctions oil energy Kremlin Putin – REUTERS/Shamil Zhumatov
Russia’s economy has plunged into its worst crisis for almost three decades as the country is battered by Western sanctions, a leaked copy of the Kremlin’s own forecasts shows.
The Russian finance ministry is predicting a 12pc collapse in GDP this year, the biggest contraction since 1994 when it was shifting towards capitalism under Boris Yeltsin, the first post-Soviet president.
A collapse would wipe out around a decade of economic growth.
The leak will pile pressure on Vladimir Putin, who on Monday presided over a scaled-down version of Russia’s annual Victory Day parade marking the end of the Second World War in Europe.
Russia has been hammered by heavy sanctions following the invasion of Ukraine, which are about to be ratcheted up further as Brussels discusses a ban on oil from the country.
It has left the Kremlin teetering on the edge of a default after it last week narrowly avoided a failure to pay foreign debts for the first time since the Bolshevik revolution a century ago.
The Kremlin has yet to issue a public economic outlook, but the finance ministry’s figures – seen by Bloomberg – are more pessimistic than the central bank’s forecasts of a contraction between 8pc and 10pc this year.
The International Monetary Fund expects an 8.5pc decline. The dire figures emerged as Mr Putin appeared at a Victory Day parade in Moscow.
The president did not use a speech to formally declare war against Ukraine or announce a larger-scale mobilisation, continuing to refer to the conflict as a “special operation”.
Krishna Guha, an analyst at Evercore, said Mr Putin “is wary of risking domestic support for the war through mass conscription”.
Meanwhile, European officials are locked in talks over how to press ahead with a mooted buying ban on Russian oil and gas.
The European Commission is reportedly mulling offering more money to landlocked eastern European countries to build support for a ban, which is facing stiff opposition from Hungary.
Britain and the UShave already vowed to ditch Russian oil, and European countries are also seeking to wean themselves off gas supplies from Moscow. Russia’s central bank has repeatedly slashed interest rates in recent weeks after raising them at the onset of conflict.
The cuts, aimed at driving spending, came despite a surge in inflation to 17.7pc.
Speaking in late April, governor Elvira Nabiullina warned of a severe recession, soaring prices and severe disruption to Russia’s labour market. She said the Russian economy would likely then remain stagnant in 2023.
Official figures showed Russia’s economy grew by 3.7pc in the first quarter, but Ms Nabiullina said this was a temporary boost driven by people stocking up on the goods.
Russia’s economy shrank by 3pc during 2020, the first year of the pandemic, and 7.8pc in 2009 amid the global financial crisis. Business surveys suggest activity is continuing to contract as sanctions cause demand to dry up.
Bosses are increasingly pessimistic about the conditions they face as they whittle down work backlogs amid falling orders.
Companies are firing staff and trying to cut costs as they grapple with soaring cost inflation, according to the latest purchasing managers’ index data from S&P Global.
Several of the world’s biggest shipping companies are boycotting Russia, piling further inflationary and supply pressure on the country.
Survey data tracked by Goldman Sachs suggests Russian economic activity is stabilising at about 10pc below pre-invasion levels.
“Overall, mid-term developments will depend on how effectively Russia can substitute imports and redirect (energy) exports,” said analyst Clemens Grafe.
“Russia will likely struggle to replace the precision weaponry it has already expended,” the UK MoD noted, adding that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine revealed shortcomings in the ability of Russian forces to conduct precision strikes at scale.
“Russia has subjected Ukraine’s towns and cities to intense and indiscriminate bombardments with little or no regard for civilian casualties,” the UK Defence Ministry concluded.
Let’s not make same mistakes as past once Ukraine-Russia conflict ends-Macron
May 9, 2022
Closing event of EU’s Conference on the Future of Europe, in Strasbourg
PARIS (Reuters) – Europe must learn from its past mistakes and make sure no side is humiliated when Russia and Ukraine negotiate for peace, France’s president said after describing Vladimir Putin’s World War Two anniversary speech as “intimidation” and “warlike”.
Addressing massed ranks of service personnel on Red Square on the 77th anniversary of victory over Nazi Germany, Putin on Monday condemned what he called external threats to weaken and divide Russia.
Speaking to reporters in the European Parliament, Emmanuel Macron said the May 9 anniversary was marked by two different faces.
On the one hand, Putin had sought to “show force, intimidation” and deliver a “resolutely warlike speech”, while on the other the EU was working on deepening a peaceful project led by the people, Macron said.-
“I believe that this project of peace, of stability, of prosperity … (we) must continue to make it more democratic, more united, more sovereign,” he said.
However, he warned that while Europe was now helping Ukraine, there would come a point when Moscow and Kyiv would sue for peace and at that point neither side should be humiliated or excluded as had happened to Germany in 1918.
“We must have this standard because we know that the coming weeks and months will be very difficult,” Macron said, adding that the 27-nation European Union would continue to impose new sanctions on Russia.
(Reporting by John Irish; Editing by Ingrid Melander)
Hackers replaced Russian TV schedules during Putin’s ‘Victory Day’ parade with an anti-war message saying the blood of Ukrainians is on Russians’ hands
Mia Jankowicz – May 9, 2022
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday during Victory Day celebrations in Moscow’s Red Square.Mikhail Metzel/Sputnik/Kremlin Pool Photo via AP Photo
Russian smart-TV schedules were hacked on Monday with an anti-war message, the BBC reported.
The message highlighted Russian aggression against Ukraine, countering Kremlin propaganda.
The hack came the day Putin spoke at his country’s Victory Day military celebrations.
Russian television schedules were hacked to display an anti-war message as the country celebrated a national military festival on Monday, BBC Monitoring reported.
On-screen program descriptions were replaced with the hackers’ text when viewed on smart TVs, the outlet reported.
According to the BBC’s translation, the message read: “On your hands is the blood of thousands of Ukrainians and their hundreds of murdered children. TV and the authorities are lying. No to war.”
Major channels such as Russia-1, Channel One, and NTV-Plus were changed, the BBC reported.
Francis Scarr of BBC Monitoring — the branch of the BBC that follows mass media worldwide — tweeted a short video of a screen showing the TV schedules, on which every program showed the same description.
The hack came during Russia’s Victory Day celebrations, a national holiday and military parade overseen by President Vladimir Putin, which was being televised in Russia. The annual event celebrates the Soviet Union’s victory alongside Allied forces over Nazi Germany in 1945.
International observers previously speculated that Putin would use the event to further propagandize or toughen his stance around his invasion of Ukraine. But his Monday speech ended without the expected declaration of mass mobilization or war against Ukraine.
Putin’s justification at the outset of the February 24 invasion was that he was launching a “special operation” to “denazify” the country. His aggression is viewed by NATO and other Western countries as a war.
But under a near blackout of independent media and social-media platforms, most Russian viewers can access only Kremlin-controlled messaging about the conflict, Insider’s Connor Perrett reported.
It is unclear who was behind the alteration of the schedules on Monday, but the hacker group Anonymous retweeted Scarr’s tweet with the message “Good morning Moscow” within hours of the hack.
Russia ‘can’t make more’ tanks because of this key sanction, Biden official says
Ben Werschkul, Senior Producer and Writer – May 9, 2022
The West has hit Russia with a range of economic sanctions including a promise this weekend from the G-7 nations to reduce their dependence on the country’s oil. But one type of sanction, so-called “export controls,” has attracted less attention than other high-profile penalties like seizing oligarchs’ yachts.
Export controls ban companies from sending crucial products like semiconductors to Russia with the goal of gradually starving its economy. But a top Biden administration official told Yahoo Finance on Monday that certain export controls may hurt Vladimir Putin’s army in the immediate future.
“Because of the export controls we’ve already put in place, Russia’s top two manufacturers of tanks are no longer in business,” Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Wally Adeyemo said Monday. “Russia today has far fewer tanks than they had going into this invasion, and they can’t make more because of the action that we’re taking with sanctions.”
The White House says the controls have left Russia’s two major tank plants — the Uralvagonzavod Corporation and Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant — idle due to a lack of foreign components. And observers noticed fewer tanks than normal at the annual military parade on Moscow’s Red Square on Monday.
A child stands on a destroyed Russian tank, amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, near Makariv, Kyiv region. (REUTERS/Mikhail Palinchak)
On Sunday, the White House announced additional export controls on items like wood products, industrial engines, bulldozers, and more to “further limit Russia’s access to items and revenue that could support its military capabilities.”
The EU moved in tandem with new controls on items like chemicals.
A senior administration official told reporters over the weekend that export control efforts had begun on specialized products like microchips and now “we’re broadening into industrial products that have a similar effect, we think, on Putin’s ability to prosecute his war ambitions.”
As Adeyemo told Yahoo Finance on Monday, the goal is to “reduce the resources to Russia in order to make sure they have less resources to fight their war on Ukraine.”
Adewale “Wally” Adeyemo is the Deputy Secretary of the Treasury. (Greg Nash/Pool via REUTERS)
The Export Administration Regulations (EAR) as laid out in U.S. government documents apply not just to items produced in the U.S. but also claims “foreign-produced items located outside the United States are subject to the EAR when they are a ‘direct product’ of” industries like U.S. technology, software, or manufacturing.”
Putin did not want to display his aircraft at the parade
Roman Petrenko – May 9, 2022
The flying display part of the parade in Moscow has been cancelled allegedly due to the weather.
Source: Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov, quoted by the Kremlin media
Details: On the morning of 9 May, before the start of the [annual military Victory Day] parade, it became known that there will be no flying display in Moscow this year.
It is interesting that in recent years the Kremlin has spent billions to disperse clouds over the Russian capital to hold the flying display part of the parade.
On 6 May, the Russian Defense Ministry said the parade would feature supersonic fighters, Tu-160 strategic bombers and, for the first time since 2010, a Doomsday IL-80 command aircraft capable of carrying Russia’s top leadership in the event of a nuclear war.
On the same day, 6 May, meteorologistsalready knew that it would rain on 9 May and “would need to actively influence the weather.”
It is not known whether the Kremlin is saving the money on not dispersing the clouds or is simply not ready for the flying display.
Pentagon: Russian military continues to struggle with poor morale, refusal to obey orders
May 9, 2022
Russian forces have not made any ignificant progress in Moscow’s new offensive in eastern Ukraine, a situation partly due to poor morale and some troops “refusing to obey orders,” a senior U.S. defense official said Monday.
“We still see anecdotal reports of poor morale of troops, indeed officers, refusing to obey orders and move and not really sound command and control from a leadership perspective,” the official told reporters.
The official later said “midgrade officers at various levels, even up to the battalion level” either have refused to obey orders “or are not obeying them with the same measure of alacrity that you would expect an officer to obey.”
Russian forces have struggled to make major gains in the Donbas region of Ukraine since beginning a new offensive in the area last month.
Still, Moscow continues to send operational battalion tactical groups (BTGs) into Ukraine, with 97 such groups in the country, up from 92 late last month, according to the official. Each BTG typically consists of about 700 to 800 soldiers.
“It’s not unusual for them to move a BTG or two out of the Donbas back into Russia for refit or resupply and then move them back in. That’s normal,” the official said.
However, Russia has added about five BTGs to Ukraine in a little more than a week, all sent to either the east or the south of Ukraine, they added.
Russian soldiers stuffed a Ukrainian man’s body in his car trunk with a weight-sensitive mine that detonated when Ukrainian soldiers moved it, Politico reports
Azmi Haroun – May 9, 2022
Russian soldiers stuffed a Ukrainian man’s body in his car trunk with a weight-sensitive mine that detonated when Ukrainian soldiers moved it, Politico reportsPeople seen digging graves in Bucha, Ukraine, on April 5, 2022.REUTERS/Zohra Bensemra
Russian soldiers booby-trapped a Ukrainian man’s dead body in his own car trunk, according to Politico.
His wife discovered his body and later brought Ukrainian troops to help move him, fearing a trap.
When they tried to pull him from the trunk with a rope, the car “exploded in a ball of flames.”
Russian soldiers killed a Ukrainian army volunteer on the outskirts of Kyiv and left his dead body in his car trunk fitted with a mine that later exploded when Ukrainian forces attempted to move him, according to Politico.
Lyudmyla Kyrpach, the soldier’s widow, told Politico that she and her husband Oleksandr “did everything together.”
Kyrpach told the outlet that the day after the invasion began in late February, Oleksandr, a mechanic, organized volunteer fighters in his village of Kalynivka, near Kyiv.
By March 1, days after Russian troops had encroached on their village, Oleksandr’s friends set out driving to see if they could source more intel about Russian troop movements up close. She told Politico’s Christopher Miller that after they failed to return, he set out to find them.
“He said he would be right back,” Lyudmyla told Politico. Oleksandr never returned, and unable to sleep, Lyudmyla set out the following day with her friends to find him.
She noticed his sedan on the road, with the keys in the ignition but no passengers in the car, she told Politico.
Lyudmyla’s friend noticed that the trunk was riddled with bullets, per the report, and they opened the trunk to find Oleksandr’s dead body. Her friend pulled her away from the car in fear that the trunk could be booby-trapped, she explained to the outlet.
By March 4 they returned to the scene with Ukrainian soldiers.
According to the report, the soldiers tied ropes to his limbs and moved far from the car to pull slowly and see if the car was rigged. As soon as they pulled, the “car exploded in a ball of flames.” Russian soldiers had placed weight-triggered mine under Oleksandr, Lyudmyla told Politico.
“Lyudmyla picked up the pieces of the man she had spent decades with and placed them in a box,” Politico reported. Later, she buried him in the garden where they used to plant vegetables together.
In April, the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs had stated that Russia’s attacks on civilians extended beyond artillery attacks, with officials saying they uncovered booby traps scattered throughout cities including Kyiv and Mariupol.
“The Russian Federation is in war not only with the Ukrainian Armed Forces but also fights against the civilian population of Ukraine, grossly violating the Law of war,” the statement said.“While retreating Russia’s military personnel is massively setting up booby-traps, banned by the international law, even on food facilities, private housing, and human corpses.”
Last month, Ukrainian authorities unearthed a mass grave in Bucha, near Kyiv, claiming that Russian soldiers killed and buried at least 360 Ukrainians in a 45-foot-long trench. Journalists who visited Bucha after Russian troops pulled out also reported bodies of civilians in their homes, on the street, and in the suburb’s glass factory.
