Putin is ‘doubling down’ with new offensive by Russia’s flagging army because he can’t afford to lose, CIA director says
Joshua Zitser – May 8, 2022
Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks during the Council of Lawmakers at the Tauride Palace, on April 27, 2022, in Saint Petersburg, Russia.Contributor/Getty Images Putin is ‘doubling down’ with new offensive by Russia’s flagging army because he can’t afford to lose, CIA director says
Putin is convinced that “doubling down” will help Russia turn the tide in Ukraine, CIA director William Burns said.
Putin may redouble his efforts because he “doesn’t believe he can afford to lose,” Burns said, per CBS News.
Russia has failed to make ground in the Donbas region, and reports say military morale is low.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is set to redouble his efforts in Ukraine despite his army’s flagging offensive, CIA director William Burns said on Saturday, per CBS News.
“I think he’s convinced right now that doubling down still will enable him to make progress,” Burns said at the Financial Times’ Weekend Festival, CBS News reported.
The Russian leader is in “a frame of mind in which he doesn’t believe he can afford to lose,” Burns continued, according to CBS News.
Putin has already “staked a lot” on the second phase of the Ukrainian offensive, Burns added, which has seen Russia refocus its military efforts on the south and east of Ukraine.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is now concentrated primarily in the Donbas region. After 10 weeks, Russian troops have still failed to take control of any major cities.
Ukrainian resistance is stiff, with analysts telling BBC News that Ukraine’s military operation is turning into a successful counter-offensive.
Putin’s “biggest mistake” throughout the invasion, Burns said, was to “underestimate the Ukrainians.”
The Russian leader is now trying “to adapt some of the lessons from the failures of the first phase,” Burns said, per CBS News.
There are reports that he intends to formally declare all-out war on Ukraine, which Russia has so far referred to as a “special military operation.” Other reports indicate that Putin might introduce general mobilization.
“We don’t see, as an intelligence community, practical evidence at this point of Russian planning for deployment or even potential use of tactical nuclear weapons,” Burns said, per CBS News. He added, however, that “we can’t take lightly those possibilities.”
Russian attacks on rail system fail to paralyze ‘lifeline of Ukraine’
Jonathan Landay – May 8, 2022
A view shows a railway bridge over the Irpin river destroyed by heavy shelling in IrpinEvacuees arrive in LvivUkrainian evacuees arrive in Khmelnytskyi
FASTIV, Ukraine (Reuters) – A salvo of missiles brought the Kremlin’s war on Ukraine to Fastiv, a quiet town abounding with flowering cherry trees and set in sweeping farmland hundreds of kilometres from the front lines.
The strike on April 28, which injured two people, hit an electrical substation that feeds power to a confluence of railway lines that forms a key hub of networks linking central Europe, Russia, and Asia.
The damage quickly was repaired, said Ukrainian officials, and a Reuters visit last week revealed no lingering impact. Trains plied between Kyiv and the southern port of Odesa, disgorging passengers into the station at Fastiv, a town of 45,000 people 75 km (45 miles) south of the capital.
Officials said the attack was part of an escalating Russian assault on infrastructure, aimed in part at paralyzing rail deliveries of Western-supplied arms and also reinforcements sustaining Ukrainian forces fighting in the east and south.
So far, Moscow’s effort has failed, making state-owned Ukrainian Railways a leading symbol of the country’s resilience.
“The longest delay we’ve had has been less than an hour,” said Oleksandr Kamyshin, 37, a former investment banker who keeps the trains running as the CEO of the railways, Ukraine’s largest employer.
“They haven’t hit a single military train.”
The Russian defense ministry has said Ukrainian facilities powering the railways have been targeted by missile strikes because trains are used to deliver foreign arms to Ukrainian forces.
The rail system is being hit not just because it is critical to military supplies, Ukrainian officials said.
Moscow’s “goal is to destroy critical infrastructure as much as possible for military, economic and social reasons,” Deputy Infrastructure Minister Yuri Vaskov said in an interview.
With Russian warships blockading Black Sea ports, downed bridges and checkpoints obstructing roadways, and a fuel crunch snarling trucking, Ukraine’s 22,000 km (14,000 miles) of track are the main lifeline of the struggling economy and a passage to the outside world.
Trains have evacuated millions of civilians fleeing to safer parts of the country or abroad.
They have begun running small grain shipments to neighboring counties to circumvent Russia’s maritime blockade. Ukraine was the world’s fourth largest grain exporter in the 2020/21 season and exports disrupted by the war have interrupted global food chains and helped fuel worldwide inflation.
Internally, trains are distributing humanitarian aid and other cargoes. They enabled the restart of the AcelorMittal steel plant, in Kryvyi Rih, by bringing workers in and product out, said Kamyshin. They carry civilian casualties in hospital cars staffed by Doctors Without Borders.
Since Russia invaded on Feb. 24, he said, trains have distributed more than 140,000 tonnes of food and will have carried some 1 million kilos of mail for the state postal service by mid-May.
Russian attacks on some of the 1,000 stations have killed scores of civilians, including dozens killed in an attack in April in the station in the eastern city of Kramatorsk.
That has not deterred passengers.
Daily ridership has reached as many as 200,000 passengers, Kamyshin said in an interview on Saturday as he rode a train across a bridge that had been repaired after being badly damaged during Russia’s failed advance on Kyiv from the suburb of Irpin.
Nor have the railway’s 230,000 personnel stayed home even though 122 have been killed and 155 others wounded on the job and in their houses, said Kamyshin.
Moscow denies striking civilian targets in what it calls a “special military operation” to disarm Ukraine and rid it of what it calls anti-Russian nationalism fomented by the West. Ukraine and the West say Russia launched an unprovoked war of aggression.
Reuters was not able to independently verify the assertions of Kamyshin and other Ukrainian officials about their successes keeping the railways going in wartime.
UKRAINE’S ‘LIFELIFE‘
Helena Muskrivska, 56, the Irpin station master, said she worked for the first four days of the Russian assault, helping evacuate some 1,000 people and relaying local developments by landline to Kyiv. She took documents and equipment home when it became too dangerous.
“I was here when the Russians came into the station. I didn’t want to see them face to face,” said Muskrivska.
A group of current and former U.S. and European railway executives formed the International Support Ukraine Rail Task Force in March to raise money for protective gear, first aid kits and financial aid for railway staff.
“There’s a lot of fundraising efforts everywhere for Ukraine, but none of it goes to the railroad,” said Jolene Molitoris, a former U.S. Federal Railroad Administration chief who chairs the group. “It is the lifeline of the country.”
The group also aims to fund purchases of heavy machinery, rails and other equipment sought by the railways.
Kamyshin said he is racing against the Russian attacks, deploying teams of workers and dispatchers around the clock to fix tracks and reroute trains. “It’s all about hours, not about days.”
He and top aides constantly move, taking trains to inspect damage and repairs around Ukraine, he said, adding: “Once they break it, we fix it”.
Kamyshin said his top priority is redirecting grain exports from Ukraine’s southern ports to Poland, Romania, and the Baltic states to help revive the economy. He said Russia would remain a threat even after what he called its inevitable defeat.
“This crazy neighbor will stay with us,” he said. “No one knows when they will come again.”
(Additional reporting by Pavel Polityuk; Editing by Frances Kerry)
Russia blows up bridges to slow Ukraine counter attacks: “Massive bombardments”
CBS News – May 7, 2022
Ukraine hoped to evacuate more civilians from a besieged Mariupol steel plant on Saturday as Russian forces unleased new bombardments across the country ahead of Victory Day festivities in Moscow.
The Azovstal steel mill is the last pocket of Ukrainian resistance in the devastated port city and its fate has taken on a symbolic value in the broader battle unleashed by Russia’s invasion.
Ukraine’s defense minister said Russian forces had resumed their assault on the site, despite earlier talk of a truce to allow trapped civilians to flee the complex.
Vice Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said rescuers would try to evacuate more civilians on Saturday.
Ukrainian forces have launched a counter-offensive of their own.
According to the defense ministry, Russian forces were forced to demolish three road bridges near Tsyrkuny and Ruski Tyshky outside Kharkiv, to slow the Ukrainian advance.
According to British intelligence, Ukrainian forces equipped with high-end weaponry by the western allies, have been able to destroy at least one of Russia’s most advanced tanks, the T-90M.
On Monday, Moscow and President Vladimir Putin will celebrate the World War II Soviet victory over Nazi Germany with a traditional Victory Day parade.
Russia’s campaign in Ukraine has run into tough resistance — and provoked Kyiv’s western allies into slapping massive economic sanctions on the Russian economy and Putin’s inner circle.
An aerial view shows Ukrainian UAV Bayraktar hitting Russian landing craft vessel with missiles, at Zmiinyi (Snake) Island, Ukraine, in this still image from a handout video released by Press service of Ukrainian Ground Forces on May 7, 2022. / Credit: UKRAINIAN GROUND FORCES via Reuters
But with Victory Day fast approaching, Ukrainian officials fear more intense missile and artillery bombardments and renewed assaults as Moscow scrambles for symbolic wins.
The Ukrainian rescue service said a missile hit a technical college in Kostiantynivka, in the eastern region of Donetsk, causing a fire and at least two deaths.
Donetsk regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said there had been “massive bombardments” along the frontline. Strikes were also reported in the north of Ukraine near the city of Kharkiv and in the southern city of Mikoleyev, a key Russian target.
“War of attrition”
As CBS News’ senior foreign affairs correspondent and “Face the Nation” moderator Margaret Brennan reported, the “war of attrition” has begun in Ukraine, as Russian forces make a grinding push using heavy artillery shelling in the south and east of the country alongside deep strikes further west into Ukraine in an attempt to disrupt logistical supply lines used by the West. Predicting when the Russian offensive will end is very complicated, a European official in Washington told reporters.
In the long term, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s objective is to capture the broader Donbas region, where Ukrainians and Russians have been fighting since 2014, as well as the land bridge linking mainland Ukraine to Russian-occupied Crimea. However, Russian forces — pushing from the east, south, and from the north area of Izium, in eastern Ukraine, while using heavy artillery shelling — have still not made much progress on the ground, the European official said.
“The conflict in Ukraine is taking a heavy toll on some of Russia’s most capable units and most advanced capabilities,” U.K. Defense Intelligence said.
“It will take considerable time and expense for Russia to reconstitute its armed forces following this conflict,” it said, warning sanctions on advanced components would make it harder for Russia to re-arm.
The west, meanwhile, is stepping up arms deliveries to Ukraine’s defenders.
US President Joe Biden on Friday announced another package of military assistance worth $150 million, including counter-artillery radars used for detecting the source of enemy fire.
This brings the total value of US weaponry sent to Ukraine since the Russian invasion began to $3.8 billion.
Biden had urged Congress to approve a further $33 billion package, including $20 billion in military aid, “to strengthen Ukraine on the battlefield and at the negotiating table.”
The G7 leaders, including Biden, and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky are to meet in videoconference on Sunday to discuss Western support for Kyiv.
“There will be no return to the past”
On Friday, Zelensky said “diplomatic options” were also under way to rescue Ukrainian soldiers from the Mariupol steelworks, as civilian evacuations continued.
The Russian defence ministry said 50 people were evacuated from the site, including 11 children.
It added they were handed over to the UN and Red Cross, which are assisting in the operation, and that the “humanitarian operation” would continue on Saturday.
About 200 civilians, including children, are thought to be trapped in the tunnels and bunkers beneath Azovstal, along with Ukrainian soldiers making their last stand.
Russia announced a day-time ceasefire at the plant for three days starting Thursday but the Ukrainian army said Russian “assault operations” had continued by ground and air.
Ukraine’s Azov battalion, leading the defense at Azovstal, said one Ukrainian fighter had been killed and six wounded when Russian forces opened fire during an attempt to evacuate people by car.
Since failing to take Kyiv early on in the war, Russia has refocused its offensive on the south and east of Ukraine.
Taking full control of Mariupol would allow Moscow to create a land bridge between the Crimean peninsula, which it annexed in 2014, and separatist, pro-Russian regions in the east.
In those regions, separatists said they had removed Ukrainian and English language traffic signs for Mariupol and replaced them with Russian ones.
Locals want to see proof that “Russia has come back here forever,” said Denis Pushilin, head of the breakaway region of Donetsk.
In neighboring Lugansk, Ukrainian officials said on Friday that Russian forces had almost encircled Severodonetsk — the easternmost city still held by Kyiv — and are trying to storm it.
Kherson in the south remains the only significant city Russia has managed to capture since the war began.
A senior official from the Russian parliament visiting the city on Friday also emphasized that Russia would remain in southern Ukraine “forever”.
“There should be no doubt about this. There will be no return to the past,” Andrey Turchak said.
As European countries have sought to clamp down on Russian assets overseas, Italian authorities impounded a mega yacht as speculation swirled it might even belong to the Russian president.
“Scheherazade” is worth an estimated $700 million. Financial police have been able to “establish significant economic and business links” between the owner and “eminent people in the Russian government”.
Researchers at the anti-corruption foundation of Russian dissident Alexei Navalny have linked the yacht to Putin.
Russia is playing whack-a-mole as it repeatedly blocks niche parts of the internet spreading information about Ukraine, including a pet grooming site, a scary story blog, and a sudoku site
Isobel Asher Hamilton – May 8, 2022
Even the most fringe part of the internet are being targeted by Russia.Rachel Mendelson/Insider
Russia has cracked down on messaging about the Ukraine war that contradicts its state propaganda.
Research found Russia blocked 300 fringe websites hosting identical blocks of text about the war.
These websites included a pet grooming site, a scary story blog, and a website for a tattoo parlor.
Russia is sweeping incredibly obscure parts of the internet in its efforts to stop its citizens from viewing information about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, new research suggests.
Data collected by digital rights and privacy group Top10VPN and shared with Insider showed Russia is blocking hundreds of small websites. These include a pet grooming site, a short horror story blog, and a tattoo parlor’s website.
The blocking of these niche sites shows how the Russian state is cracking down on even the most fringe parts of the internet to control information about the war.
Top10VPN found many of the niche sites blocked by Russia contained the same chunk of Russian-language text attempting to inform readers about the war in Ukraine.
Samuel Woodhams, a researcher at Top10VPN, told Insider he had found roughly 300 sites that contained the same text about the war. He found they had been blocked by Russia by searching a publicly available list of blocked websites from Russia’s Prosecutor General’s Office.
The pet grooming site, the horror story blog, and the website for the tattoo parlor all contained the same text.
It begins: “Russia has attacked Ukraine! We, Ukrainians, hope that you already know about this. For the sake of your children and any hope of light at the end of this hell — please finish reading our letter,” per an automated translation provided to Insider by Woodhams.
Woodhams said often the text was stashed away in hard-to-find resource pages on these websites.
It goes on to directly contradict Russian state propaganda, including Putin’s statement that Russia is “denazifying” Ukraine.
“While it’s unclear who is responsible for disseminating this message, it’s evident that efforts are being made to reach Russian citizens and bypass [Russia’s] vast censorship apparatus,” Woodhams told Insider.
“Although these obscure websites are unlikely to have a huge reach, there’s strength in numbers and with so many domains affected it’s likely some will have evaded Russia’s censorship apparatus,” he said.
Woodhams found other blocked websites, including a sudoku website, which also carried information about the war in Ukraine.
Sites are blocked alluding to the conflict in other ways too. “Sports websites for example are often blocked for interviewing a footballer who speaks out about the conflict,” said Woodhams.
On April 24 Russia also blocked Chess.com, which had publicly stated its condemnation of the invasion of Ukraine on February 26.
Chess.com said in a statement that its apps continued to function even though its website was blocked.
“We happily encourage our Russian members to continue accessing our site using our apps or any of the many outstanding VPN services that are so essential in Russia,” it said.
Following the invasion, Ukrainians and activists found ingenious ways of bypassing Russian internet censorship.
Some posted Google reviews of restaurants and locations containing messages about Ukraine, leading to Google blocking Russian such reviews in early March.
Ukrainian ad professionals formed a volunteer group to target Russian internet users with ads debunking misinformation about the invasion, Insider’s Lara O’Reilly reported in March.
Russia relocates anti-aircraft missile forces to the north of Crimea – “Skhemi”
Olena Roshchina – May 8, 2022
A satellite has recorded the relocation of military equipment, in particular, the Russian army’s anti-aircraft missile forces, to the north of occupied Crimea – to the village of Filativka, located near the Kherson region.
Details: The Russian military has deployed equipment in two sections of the village of Filativka. In May, the amount of military equipment increased at one of these sites, according to a satellite image from Planet Labs taken on 6 May, which is in the possession of “Skhemi.”
According to a military expert who analysed the image at the request of journalists, in addition to the barracks, there is also a fuel and lubricant depot in this area.
The image also shows about two hundred armoured combat vehicles of various types, as well as trucks and command vehicles.
Separately, large-scale equipment appeared in the image, which, according to the expert, may be anti-aircraft and missile mobile complexes.
“Going by its appearance, this could be one of three types of anti-aircraft missile systems, namely: a ‘Smerch’ multiple launch rocket system, a S-300 anti-aircraft system or an ‘Iskander’ operational-tactical missile system,” the military expert said.
Such equipment can be used to shell the positions of the Ukrainian military.
Another satellite image of this area for 27 April showed much less equipment.
In another part of Filativka, where there is also military equipment, its quantity has hardly changed. As of the end of April and beginning of May, the area is dominated by military trucks and various types of armoured combat vehicles.
Barracks housing Russian border guards have been located in the village of Filativka since 2018.
On 3 May, “Skhemi” reported that the Russians were relocating military equipment to the eastern borders of Ukraine – to the Kharkiv and Luhansk regions. The Russian military has deployed a significant amount of equipment to the Belgorod region.
In the last week, the Russian army has been launching more missile attacks on Ukraine, and air-raid alerts have been activated several times a day, often across the entire territory of the state.
Azov Regiment believes Russian troops should have been stopped on Crimeas border
Kateryna Tyshchenko – May 8, 2022
Denys Prokopenko, Commander of the Azov Regiment, believes that Ukrainian forces should have more actively attempted to stop Russian troops as they advanced from the Russian-occupied Crimea near Henichesk [a port city on the Sea of Azov in the Kherson Oblast]. According to Prokopenko, this would have changed the trajectory of the fight for Mariupol.
Source: Denys Prokopenko, interview with Ukrainska Pravda
Quote from Prokopenko: “If the forces located there [at the Crimea-Ukraine border] held the defense firmer, did everything they could to resist the enemy’s advance, didn’t just let the enemy troops enter the [Ukrainian] cities, everything would have been different now.
The thing is, the enemy should have been destroyed at the neck of land connecting Crimea with the rest of Ukraine, near Henichesk. The enemy’s manoeuvring capacity would have been limited there and would only have had one way to advance. Given the terrain, the enemy would have been bottlenecked.
From the tactical point of view, that was the location that would have been the most conducive to inflicting damage on the enemy troops, in order to hinder their advance and destroy them. The enemy troops should have been destroyed there, during their advance from Crimea. And for some reason, this just wasn’t done.”
Details: Prokopenko believes that the siege of Mariupol could have been avoided.
Quote from Prokopenko: “If Henichesk, Melitopol, and Berdiansk, and other cities [on the Russians’ route from Crimea to Mariupol] held their defence and fought the enemy as steadfastly [as Mariupol’s defenders], it would have taken the enemy much longer than 4 days to get from Crimea to Mariupol.
Since this is not how it happened, we found ourselves surrounded. Because in reality the enemy covered quite a substantial distance without meeting much resistance. Russian troops marched from Crimea without any significant fights on their way and found themselves on the western outskirts of Mariupol.”
More details: The Azov Regiment Commander also said that the actions of the 36th Marine Brigade “are difficult to make sense of.”
“First, 1 battalion surrendered, as early as 4 April. As a result, we lost the only connection we had between Azov and the 36th Brigade. Then unexpectedly the commander of the 36th Brigade decided, without warning anyone, to just break through in a direction that wasn’t agreed ahead of time, and that’s how he lost lots of his people. Likewise, many people were just left to their own devices and ended up as Russian prisoners…These uncoordinated actions suddenly undertaken by the 36th Brigade had catastrophic consequences, which we can no longer reverse,” Prokopenko noted.
Prokopenko added that nearly 1,000 Marines ended up as Russian prisoners of war.
Earlier: On 8 May, Illia Samoilenko, an intelligence officer, said that Volodymyr Baraniuk, commander of the 36th Marine Brigade, decided to flee the besieged Mariupol with his personnel, tanks, and ammunition.
Russian media have already shared footage of Baraniuk in captivity.
Russia-Ukraine war live updates: War taking ‘heavy toll’ on Russian forces, U.K. says, Azovstal evacuations go on
NBC News – May 7, 2022
The war in Ukraine is taking a “heavy toll” on some of Russia’s most capable units and most advanced capabilities, an intelligence briefing from Britain’s defense ministry said Saturday, as rescuers sought to evacuate more civilians from a steel mill in Mariupol.
At least one T-90M, Russia’s most advanced tank, has been destroyed in the fighting, the ministry tweeted in a regular bulletin.
It came as Ukrainian fighters holed up in the Azovstal steel plant make their last stand to prevent Moscow’s complete takeover of Mariupol, a strategically important port-city.
Dozens of people were evacuated from the sprawling site on Friday and handed over to representatives of the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross, Russian and Ukrainian officials said. They added that evacuation efforts would continue into the weekend.
Meanwhile, President Joe Biden is expected to attend a virtual meeting of the Group of Seven world leaders Sunday with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as a guest, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Friday.
Klitschko announces new air defence systems in Kyiv
Denys Karlovskyi – May 7, 2022
Kyiv Mayor Vitaliy Klitschko has hinted that more modern air defense systems will soon be deployed in the capital to protect residents from air attacks by the Russian occupiers.
Klitschko’s quote: “Unfortunately, we are still worried about the constant reports of air threats – rocket strikes.
I ask everyone to follow the regulations, go down to the bomb shelters and do not ignore these rules, because at any moment any house in our city, unfortunately, can still be fired on.
We hope that in the coming days there will be additional air defence at the Western, NATO standard, which will protect our airspace more. “
Details: The mayor of the capital is convinced that small and medium-sized businesses will resume their work in full within a month, if the shelling and security situation in the Kyiv region remains relatively calm.
According to him, the military is monitoring the situation at the borders and in the region.
Klitschko emphasised that the motivation and plans of the military leadership of Kyiv will not allow the Russian occupiers to carry out another successful offensive.
Background:
In the same interview, Klitschko said that after 9 May, residents who left the capital may gradually come back to the city.
[The local authorities] have decided to leave the curfew on 8 and 9 May the same as in the previous hours: from 10 pm to 5 am.
On the outskirts of Kyiv, especially in the north-western districts, there is a danger of mines and unexploded ordnance.
The US government is considering returning embassy diplomatic staff to Kyiv by the end of May. Before that, Great Britain, France, Sweden, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Turkey and about a dozen other countries will have returned their diplomats to the capital.
‘I Simply Refuse’: Wiretaps Catch Putin’s Troops Breaking Own Tanks in Sabotage Scheme
Shannon Vavra – May 6, 2022
Russian fighters have been sharing tips with one another about how to deliberately damage their own equipment and hamper Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war plans in Ukraine, according to recordings of alleged Russian troops’ phone calls that the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) intercepted.
In one regiment, one Russian soldier allegedly said they’ve been pouring sand into the tanks’ fuel systems to clog them up.
“I don’t follow stupid orders, I simply refuse,” one fighter can be heard telling a comrade. “The motherf*cker sent me to tanks, motherf*cking piece of shit. I f*cked it up and that’s it.”
When the fellow Russian soldier on the other end of the line heard the unit wasn’t punished for the insubordination, he indicated he might repeat the tactic later in his own unit.
Another Russian fighter shared with a family member that he and his comrades deliberately damaged their tank—the last one left in their regiment—to interfere with an attack plan, as well, according to another intercept the SBU shared.
“We have one tank left in the regiment,” he said. “In short, we broke our tank ourselves in the morning so as not to go.”
Throughout the invasion, Russian battle plans haven’t gone the way Putin has wanted them to, leaving Putin frustrated and on edge, according to a senior U.S. defense official. One of his major goals was to capture the capital, Kyiv, and install a pro-Putin puppet government. But his troops faltered outside of the capital for days and had countless logistics problems, and in particular had troubles with the fueling, according to the defense official.
And while some U.S. officials have said for weeks that it’s at times been unclear if Russia’s military’s failings are due to lack of planning or just poor execution of plans, the intercepted calls suggest in some cases the answer is much simpler. The troops themselves are disobeying orders and sabotaging the war effort on purpose.
A mainstay of the war has been images of Russians abandoning their equipment and weapons. Russian military morale has been low from the beginning of the invasion, and it’s not getting any better; Russian troops have begun posting on social media begging for donations to the war effort, showing a side-by-side comparison between their dismal first-aid kits and the Ukrainians.
The Russian war effort isn’t only being hampered from the inside. Inspired by the Russians’ intercepted phone calls, Ukraine’s government encouraged other Russian troops to disobey orders and refuse to attack, echoing earlier calls to surrender and abandon the war path.
“The SBU welcomes this practice,” the SBU said in a statement Friday. “But even it can be improved—just ‘give up’ and leave the war in Ukraine!”
Ukrainians have been putting up a stiff resistance from day one of the war, surprising Putin along the way, according to the Pentagon.
The Pentagon, too, has been providing key intelligence that has helped the Ukrainians target key Russian assets, including the Russian warship the Moskva, which sank in the Black Sea after Ukrainians hit it in a missile strike in April, according to The Washington Post.
Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby has acknowledged the intelligence-sharing effort but said the U.S. had no part in the targeting.
Russia narrows in on Black Sea and strikes Odesa, Moldova remains ‘vigilant’ as turmoil escalates
Caitlin McFall – May 7, 2022
Russia appears to be making good on its attempts to gain “full control” over not only eastern Ukraine but its southern regions along the Black Sea as explosions hit the city of Odesa and neighboring Moldova Saturday.
Six missiles targeted the port city according to Ukraine’s southern military command.
Spokesperson Natalia Humeniuk confirmed that four rockets struck a furniture factory in a residential area, while two other strikes hit a previously damaged runway strip, first reported Reuters.
It remains unclear if any causalities have been confirmed.
Russian forces also reportedly hit an energy company in the southern city of Mykolaiv with 20 workers on-site at the time of the attack, though no causalities have been reported.
Explosions were confirmed in the Moldovan breakaway region of Transnistria Saturday after two drones were reported to be flying over military units in the village of Voronkove – roughly five miles from the Ukrainian border.
Moldovan President Maya Sandu said officials continue to assess that “Moldova is safe, but we remain vigilant.”
“The government’s priority is to preserve peace, life and security of citizens,” she said during a press conference with Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda, according to local news outlets.
Late last month Russia said that the second phase of its military operation in Ukraine would not only focus on the Russian-backed breakaway regions in the eastern Donbas, but would also target Ukraine’s southern regions and potentially neighboring Moldova.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has vowed to continue fighting and NATO allies have increased their support for not only Kyiv but nations that border the war-torn country.
Despite international ire over the illegal invasion and mounting allegations of gross human rights abuses, a Moscow official doubled down on the Kremlin’s determination to take Ukrainian territory Friday.
Speaking from a visit to the occupied region of Kherson, a Russian lawmaker said Russia would remain in southern Ukraine “forever,” reported a Moscow-based media outlet.
“Russia is here forever. There should be no doubt about this. There will be no return to the past,” an official by the name of Andrey Turchak reportedly said. “We will live together, develop this rich region, rich in historical heritage, rich in the people who live here.”
Ukrainian officials have been sounding the alarm that Russia will look to annex the southern region of Kherson and recent reporting has suggested they have blocked all Ukrainians from evacuating the area.
Men of fighting age have been rounded up and detained in filtration camps where officials believe they will then be conscripted into the Russian military or used for hard labor.
