Chechen Leader’s Brutal Fighters Are Getting Killed in Ukraine ‘Every Day’
Allison Quinn – May 5, 2022
Chechen troops in Ukraine loyal to Ramzan Kadyrov have claimed a reputation for being the most brutal in Putin’s war, but a new report says they’re actually suffering major losses and going to great lengths to cover them up.
According to an investigation by Russia’s independent news outlet IStories, the official figure of 13 Chechen soldiers killed in Ukraine is a major undercount; a source in the Chechen Health Ministry tells the outlet the true death toll of the so-called Kadyrovtsy at least matches that of the Dagestani troops killed in Ukraine, which totals 123.
A source involved in sending the bodies of Chechen fighters back home told IStories the Chechen battalions are incurring injuries and deaths every single day.
One would never know that from looking at the social media chronicles of Kadyrov, who has sought to cultivate an image of Chechen troops as both fearsome fighters and compassionate rescuers, with images and videos shared to Telegram and the social networking site VK that often seem blatantly staged, showing troops being greeted with open arms by elderly villagers and firing weapons at invisible targets.
Kadyrov’s troops have also been accused of some of the most heinous war crimes in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, with many survivors of the Bucha massacre identifying the soldiers who indiscriminately murdered and tortured civilians as members of Chechen battalions.
But the PR campaign by Kadyrov has at times backfired in spectacular fashion, such as when the strongman leader appeared in a video in mid-March purportedly being briefed by his men in a basement in the Kyiv region, only for Ukrainian journalists to use phone data to prove that he was actually in Belarus, followed by even the Kremlin and a source in the Chechen government confirming he was not, in fact, in Kyiv. Or the now notorious photo of Kadyrov supposedly on his knees praying in Ukraine—in front of a gas station owned by a company with no presence in the country.
Ukraine’s Security Service said at the time that the “clown and coward” Kadyrov was just trying to scare Ukrainian troops by suggesting he had come to join the war.
Behind the scenes, Kadyrov’s image campaign is said to have masked his own dysfunction, such as when he reportedly threw a hissyfit over Russia’s decision to retreat from Kyiv. When Russia’s Defense Ministry decided mid-March to pull troops back from the region after an unsuccessful bid to seize the capital, Kadyrov lashed out, fuming that his men were too prestigious to be moved to Mariupol, according to IStories. He is said to have butted heads with both the leadership of Russia’s Defense Ministry and the National Guard, getting back at them by ordering his men return to Chechnya to get some “rest,” sources told the news outlet.
And in his latest attempt to flaunt Chechen military prowess on social media, Kadyrov proudly declared Thursday that his men had “liberated” the village of Svetlichnoye in the Luhansk region—a village that had already been under the control of Russian proxies in the Luhansk People’s Republic since 2014.
Dozens more civilians rescued from Ukrainian steel plant
Elena Becatoros and Jon Gambrell – May 5, 2022
ZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine (AP) — Dozens more civilians were rescued Friday from the tunnels under the besieged steel mill where Ukrainian fighters in Mariupol have been making their last stand to prevent Moscow’s complete takeover of the strategically important port city.
Russian and Ukrainian officials said 50 people were evacuated from the Azovstal plant and handed over to representatives of the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross. The Russian military said the group included 11 children.
Russian officials and Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said evacuation efforts would continue Saturday. The latest evacuees were in addition to roughly 500 other civilians who got out of the plant and city in recent days.
The fight for the last Ukrainian stronghold in a city reduced to ruins by the Russian onslaught appeared increasingly desperate amid growing speculation that President Vladimir Putin wants to finish the battle for Mariupol so he can present a triumph to the Russian people in time for Monday’s Victory Day, the biggest patriotic holiday on the Russian calendar.
As the holiday commemorating the Soviet Union’s World War II victory over Nazi Germany approached, cities across Ukraine prepared for an expected increase in Russian attacks, and officials urged residents to heed air raid warnings.
“These symbolic dates are to the Russian aggressor like red to a bull,” said Ukraine’s first deputy interior minister, Yevhen Yenin. “While the entire civilized world remembers the victims of terrible wars on these days, the Russian Federation wants parades and is preparing to dance over bones in Mariupol.”
By Russia’s most recent estimate, roughly 2,000 Ukrainian fighters are holed up in the vast maze of tunnels and bunkers beneath the Azovstal steelworks, and they have repeatedly refused to surrender. Ukrainian officials said before Friday’s evacuations that a few hundred civilians were also trapped there, and fears for their safety have increased as the battle has grown fiercer in recent days.
Kateryna Prokopenko, whose husband, Denys Prokopenko, commands the Azov Regiment troops inside the plant, issued a desperate plea to also spare the fighters. She said they would be willing to go to a third country to wait out the war but would never surrender to Russia because that would mean “filtration camps, prison, torture and death.”
If nothing is done to save her husband and his men, they will “stand to the end without surrender,” she told The Associated Press on Friday.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said “influential states” are involved in efforts to rescue the soldiers, although he did not mention any by name.
“We are also working on diplomatic options to save our troops who are still at Azovstal,” he said in his nightly video address.
U.N. officials have been tight-lipped about the civilian evacuation efforts, but it seemed likely that the latest evacuees would be taken to Zaporizhzhia, a Ukrainian-controlled city about 140 miles (230 kilometers) northwest of Mariupol where others who escaped the port city were brought.
Some of the plant’s previous evacuees spoke to the AP about the horrors of being surrounded by death in the moldy, underground bunker with little food and water, poor medical care and diminishing hope. Some said they felt guilty for leaving others behind.
“People literally rot like our jackets did,” said 31-year-old Serhii Kuzmenko, who fled with his wife, 8-year-old daughter and four others from their bunker, where 30 others were left behind. “They need our help badly. We need to get them out.”
Fighters defending the plant said Friday on the Telegram messaging app that Russian troops had fired on an evacuation vehicle on the plant’s grounds. They said the car was moving toward civilians when it was hit by shelling, and that one soldier was killed and six were wounded.
Moscow did not immediately acknowledge renewed fighting there Friday.
Russia took control of the rest of Mariupol after bombarding it for two months. Ahead of Victory Day, municipal workers and volunteers cleaned up what remains of the city, which had a prewar population of more than 400,000. Perhaps 100,000 civilians remain there with scarce supplies of food, water electricity and heat. Bulldozers scooped up debris, and people swept streets against a backdrop of hollowed-out buildings. Russian flags were hoisted.
The fall of Mariupol would deprive Ukraine of a vital port. It would also allow Russia to establish a land corridor to the Crimean Peninsula, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014, and free some Russian troops to fight elsewhere in the Donbas, the eastern industrial region that the Kremlin says is now its chief objective. Its capture also holds symbolic value since the city has been the scene of some of the worst suffering of the war and a surprisingly fierce resistance.
While they pounded away at the plant, Russian forces struggled to make significant gains elsewhere, 10 weeks into a devastating war that has killed thousands of people, forced millions to flee the country and flattened large swaths of cities.
Ukrainian officials said the risk of massive shelling increased ahead of Victory Day. Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said authorities would reinforce street patrols in the capital. A curfew was going into effect in Ukraine’s southern Odesa region, which was the target of two missile attacks Friday.
The Ukrainian military’s general staff said Friday that its forces repelled 11 attacks in the Donbas region and destroyed tanks and armored vehicles, further frustrating Putin’s ambitions after his abortive attempt to seize Kyiv. Russia made no acknowledgement of the losses.
The Ukrainian army also said it made progress in the northeastern Kharkiv region, recapturing five villages and part of a sixth. Meanwhile, one person was reported dead and three more were wounded Friday as a result of Russian shelling in Lyman, a city in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region.
In other developments Friday:
— A Ukrainian army brigade said it used an American Switchblade “suicide” drone against Russian forces in what was likely Ukraine’s first recorded use of such weapon in combat.
— U.S. President Joe Biden authorized the shipment of another $150 million in military assistance for Ukraine for artillery rounds and radar systems. Biden said the latest spending means his administration has “nearly exhausted” what Congress authorized for Ukraine in March. He called on lawmakers to swiftly approve a more than $33 billion spending package that will last through September.
— The Ukrainian governor of the eastern Luhansk region said residents of the city of Kreminna were being terrorized by Russian troops trying to cross the Seversky Donets River. Serhiy Haidai accused Russian troops of checking phones and “forcibly disappearing Ukrainian patriots.” His statements could not be immediately verified.
— Haidia also said more than 15,000 people remain in Severodonetsk, a city in the Luhansk region that’s seen as a key Russian target. He said he believes most residents wish to remain even though “entire blocks of houses are on fire.”
— The small village of Nekhoteevk, in Russia’s southern Belgorod region bordering Ukraine, was being evacuated due to shelling from Ukrainian territory, according to the regional governor, Vyacheslav Gladkov. His claims could not be immediately verified.
Gambrell reported from Lviv, Ukraine. Associated Press journalists Trisha Thomas in Rome, Yesica Fisch in Zaporizhzhia, Inna Varenytsia and David Keyton in Kyiv, Yuras Karmanau in Lviv, Mstyslav Chernov in Kharkiv, Lolita C. Baldor in Washington and AP staff around the world contributed to this report.
Russia parades tanks and missiles on streets of Moscow ahead of Victory Day celebration
Kate Buck – May 5, 2022
Russian service members walk as military vehicles drive along a street during a rehearsal for the Victory Day military parade in Moscow. (Reuters)
Russia is in the midst of rehearsals for their Victory Day parade, showing off their arsenal of missiles, tanks and military prowess as their attempted invasion of Ukraine continues.
They also claim to have destroyed thousands of pieces of Russian equipment, including planes, tanks, cruise missiles and even warships.
In Moscow, Putin’s forces are showing off what else they have at their disposal in its annual military show of strength, with thousands preparing to march carrying hammer and sickle flags in reminder of the past of the Soviet Union.
A child holds a flag as Russian service members drive a tank along a street. (Reuters)Russian service members drive tanks along a street during a rehearsal for the Victory Day military parade in Moscow. (Reuters)
The skies are also set to become part of the stage for the ceremony, with fighter jets forming a “Z” formation – the symbol painted on the vehicles involved in the Ukraine invasion.
The Russian air force will use eight MiG-29 jets to form the symbol that is now synonymous with the war.
The rehearsal also saw the Ilyushin Il-80 take to the skies – a modified passenger jet which has become known as Putin’s “doomsday plane” as it would be where he would take control if nuclear war was to break out.
Some Western officials have warned that the parade could see Putin make a major announcement concerning Ukraine – potentially using it to declare a global war on Nazis and mass mobilize his people.
Last week, the UK defence secretary warned that Russia could used the Victory Day parade to increase the threat of Nazism in an attempt to mass mobilise his people. (Getty)There had been rumours that Russia might use the day to declare an official war on Ukraine. (Getty)
UK defence secretary Ben Wallace said last week: “He is probably going to declare on May Day that ‘we are now at war with the world’s Nazis and we need to mass mobilise the Russian people’.
“Putin, having failed in nearly all objectives, may seek to consolidate what he’s got… and just be a sort of cancerous growth within the country.”
There had been rumours that Russia might use the day to declare an official war on Ukraine – though the Kremlin has denied these reports, saying there is “no chance” they will use the day for that purpose and branding it “nonsense”.
What is the Victory Day parade?
Victory Day is a public holiday for Russians to remember those who were killed during the Second World War.
Troops parade across Moscow’s Red Square to mark the Soviet Union’s role in the victory over Nazi Germany in 1945 and the Kremlin also shows off its military arsenal, including intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Last year, over 12,000 troops took part and more than 190 pieces of military hardware including more than 80 military aircraft were displayed for all to see.
Putin usually oversees the pomp of the traditional march from an area packed with war veterans.
Russian jet fighters fly over the Kremlin in the ‘Z’ formation – a symbol now synonmyous with the war. (Getty)The Ilyushin IL-80 – known as Vladimir Putin’s ‘doomsday plane’ – is seen flying in rehersals. (Getty)Russian fighter jets mark the Russian flag in the sky. (Getty)
This year’s parade comes at a time when Russia has seen its troops repelled from significant parts of Ukraine following an invasion that is widely believed to be going badly for Moscow.
In recent weeks, Russian soldiers have mounted a fresh offensive on the south east of the country, trying to take control of the Donbas.
There have been reports that Russian forces are planning on staging their own Victory Day parade in the southern city of Mariupol which has been largely taken over by Russian forces.
Watch: Downed Russian helicopter pulled from Kyiv reservoirScroll back up to restore default view.
The Ukrainian Military Intelligence (GUR) said in a statement published on Telegram that the city “will become the centre of celebrations”.
“The main avenues of the city are [being] urgently cleaned, the debris and the bodies of the dead removed, as well as the ammunition which did not explode,” it added.
The GUR described the parade as part of a “large-scale propaganda campaign” which will attempt to influence the 120,000 people who have remained in the destroyed city, which has been under siege for the best part of two months.
Russian fighting destroys, damages nearly 400 hospitals, medical centres-Zelenskiy
Alessandra Prentice and Natalia Zinets – May 5, 2022
Destroyed trams are seen in a depot in MariupolSmoke rises above an oil storage in DonetskA local resident walks past destroyed houses in MariupolLocal residents take a rest as they carry bottles of water after receiving humanitarian aid in MariupolService members of pro-Russian troops are seen at a fighting position in Mariupol
ZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine (Reuters) – Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has devastated hundreds of hospitals and other medical institutions and left doctors without drugs to tackle cancer or the ability to perform surgery, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said.
Zelenskiy said many places lacked even basic antibiotics in eastern and southern Ukraine, the main battlefields.
“If you consider just medical infrastructure, as of today Russian troops have destroyed or damaged nearly 400 healthcare institutions: hospitals, maternity wards, outpatient clinics,” Zelenskiy said in a video address to a medical charity group on Thursday.
In areas occupied by Russian forces the situation was catastrophic, he said.
“This amounts to a complete lack of medication for cancer patients. It means extreme difficulties or a complete lack of insulin for diabetes. It is impossible to carry out surgery. It even means, quite simply, a lack of antibiotics.”
In one of the most widely denounced acts of the war, a maternity hospital was all but destroyed on March 9 in the besieged port city of Mariupol. Russia alleged pictures of the attack were staged and said the site had been used by armed Ukrainian groups.
The Kremlin says it targets only military or strategic sites and does not target civilians. Ukraine daily reports civilian casualties from Russian shelling and fighting, and accuses Russia of war crimes. Russia denies the allegations.
Pavlo Kyrylenko, governor of Donetsk region, said 25 people had been injured in intense shelling in the town of Kramatorsk, site of a railway station bombing last month in which more than 50 died. He said a total of 32 residential buildings had been damaged in the shelling.
Reuters could not immediately verify battlefield reports by Russia and Ukraine.
Russia calls its actions in Ukraine a “special operation” to disarm Ukraine and protect it from fascists. Ukraine and the West say the fascist allegation is baseless and that the war is an unprovoked act of aggression. More than 5 million Ukrainians have fled abroad since the start of the invasion.
Russia has turned its heaviest firepower on Ukraine’s east and south, after failing to take the capital Kyiv. The new front is aimed at limiting Ukraine’s access to the Black Sea, vital for its grain and metal exports, and linking Russian-controlled territory in the east to Crimea, seized by Moscow in 2014.
‘BLOODY’ BATTLE FOR MARIUPOL
In the port city of Mariupol an estimated 200 civilians, along with Ukrainian resistance fighters, are trapped undergound in the Azovstal steel plant with little food or water.
The steel works was rocked by heavy explosions on Thursday as Russian forces fought for control of Ukraine’s last stronghold and the United Nations rushed to evacuate civilians.
President Vladimir Putin said Russia was prepared to provide safe passage for the civilians but reiterated calls for Ukrainian forces inside to disarm.
Putin declared victory over Mariupol on April 21 and ordered his forces to seal off the Soviet-era plant but not venture inside its underground tunnel network.
Ukraine’s stubborn defence of Azovstal has underlined Russia’s failure to take major cities in a 10-week-old war that has united Western powers in arming Kyiv and punishing Moscow with sanctions.
Clinging on desperately, Ukrainian fighters have reported fierce battles with Russian troops in Azovstal.
A Ukrainian fighter who said he was holed up in Azovstal accused Russian forces of breaching the plant’s defences for a third day despite an earlier pledge by Moscow to pause military activity to permit civilian evacuations.
“Heavy, bloody fighting is going on,” said Captain Sviatoslav Palamar of Ukraine’s Azov Regiment. “Yet again, the Russians have not kept the promise of a ceasefire.” Reuters could not independently verify his account or location.
The Kremlin denies Ukrainian allegations that Russian troops stormed the plant in recent days.
Aerial footage of the plant, released Thursday by Ukraine’s Azov Regiment, showed three explosions striking different parts of the vast complex, which was engulfed in heavy, dark smoke.
Reuters verified the footage location by matching buildings with satellite imagery, but was unable to determine when the video was filmed.
Russia’s military promised to pause its activity for the next two days to allow civilians to leave. The Kremlin said humanitarian corridors from the plant were in place.
Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said on Thursday that people would be evacuated from Mariupol on Friday at 1200 local time (0900 GMT).
MORE SANCTIONS LOOM
Sweeping sanctions from Washington and European allies have hobbled Russia’s $1.8 trillion economy, while billions of dollars worth of military aid has helped Ukraine frustrate the invasion.
European Union countries are “almost there” in agreeing the bloc’s proposed new package of sanctions against Russia, including an oil embargo, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said.
The Kremlin said Russia was weighing responses to the EU plan.
Ukrainian officials have warned that Russia might step up its offensive before May 9, when Moscow commemorates the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany in World War Two.
(Reporting by Ronald Popeski and Reuters bureaus; Writing by Michael Perry; Editing by Stephen Coates)
What’s happening inside the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol?
Peter Weber, Senior editor – May 5, 2022
Azovstal. Illustrated | REUTERS, iStock
More than 100 Ukrainian civilians have been evacuated from the sprawling Azovstal iron and steel plant in Russian-occupied Mariupol, and about 200 are still awaiting rescue from the complex, including some 20 children. The evacuations, after weeks encircled by Russian forces and bombarded with Russian shells and missiles, were negotiated with mediation from the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross.
The first evacuees reaching relative safety “carried with them fresh accounts of survival and terror” from beneath the wreckage of the Azovstal steel works and the ruined port city of Mariupol, The New York Times reports. What is happening inside the massive iron and steel plant?
What is the Azovstal steel plant?
The Azovstal Iron and Steel Works opened in 1933, when Joseph Stalin led the Soviet Union, then was rebuilt after World War II into a sprawling plant covering four square miles. Before Russia’s invasion earlier this year, it produced 4.3 million tons of steel a year. “It is a labyrinth of rail systems, workshops, blast furnaces, and warehouses, with many of the buildings made of thick concrete and designed to withstand high temperatures,” the Times reports. Underground is a network of tunnels and bunkers.
“It goes six stories down and it’s about the size of Vilnius,” Lithuania’s capital, military analyst ret. Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling said on CNN. “It’s a huge underground city with a lot of ability to attack the aggressors.” It is where the remaining Ukrainian troops defending Mariupol are making their last stand.
How many Ukrainian troops are inside the plant?
There are about 2,000 Ukrainian defenders at the plant, mostly with the 36th Marine Brigade and the controversial Azov Battalion, but also police officers, border guards, and anyone else willing to fight. “Some of them guard the territory, some of them prevent attempted attacks, some of them are responsible for a ceasefire, some of them help to clear the rubble under shelling,” explained Svyatoslav Palamar, deputy commander of the Azov Battalion.
An estimated 500 troops are wounded at the plant, and Russia bombed the field hospital in late April, holed-up troops showed on social media. Russian shelling has reduced most of the above-ground buildings to rubble, the Times demonstrated in juxtaposed video taken before the invasion and in mid-April.
Why are civilians holed up there?
The steel plant’s warren of tunnels and bunkers was designed to transport equipment between buildings, not for military use, according to Metinvest, the steel and mining conglomerate that owns Azovstal. But steelworkers started sheltering underground in 2014, when Russian-backed separatists tried to seize Mariupol.
“Ever since the first invasion, we’ve kept the bunkers in good order and supplied with food and water,” enough to house and feed 4,000 people for three weeks, said Galina Yatsura, a Metinvest spokeswoman. More than 2,000 civilians had been staying at the plant since the early days of the invasion, about 60 days before the evacuations started, many of them family members of employees, two employees tell the Times. Ukraine estimates that about 20,000 civilians who stayed in Mariupol were killed in Russia’s scorched-earth battle for control.
How bad are conditions inside the plant?
Bad, according to troops trapped inside and the civilians who have managed to escape. Food, drinkable water, and ammunition are all scarce, and areas of the plant smell like decomposing bodies. “We didn’t see the sun for so long,” Natalia Usmanova, 37, told reporters in Bezimenne after being evacuated Sunday. “I feared that the bunker would not withstand it — I had terrible fear.”
Usmanova said she joked with her husband on the bus that they won’t have to go to the bathroom in the dark, in plastic bags anymore. But “you just can’t imagine what we have been through — the terror,” she added. “I lived there, worked there all my life, but what we saw there was just terrible.”
“The citizens who left the city say that hell exists and it’s in Mariupol,” Mayor Vadym Boychenko told BBC News. But, he added at a press conference Friday, “if Mariupol is hell, Azovstal is worse.”
Are things any better in the rest of Mariupol?
Not much. Residents who escaped from around the ruined city after it was captured by the Russians survived on sometimes-expired rations handed out early every morning by the occupiers, psychologist Yelena Gibert told reporters, but only after they were forced to listen to the national anthems of Russia and the self-proclaimed separatist Donetsk People’s Republic. There is widespread “hopelessness and despair” in Mariupol, she said, and residents were “starting to talk of suicide because they’re stuck in this situation.”
“They’ve begun to at least remove the trash, which is good,” said evacuee Anastasiya Dembitskaya. “The bodies and the trash and the wires that were lying everywhere.”
Why does Russia want to capture the plant so badly?
Russia needs control of Mariupol to secure a land corridor from Crimea to the Donbas and Russian territory, and the Azovstal complex is the last pocket of Ukrainian resistance. The plant also has its own port facilities on the Sea of Azov.
The Russians “really simply do not care” about “the devastation that’s taking place” at the steel plant, ret. Maj. Gen. James “Spider” Marks told CNN. “Their objective is to wear down the morale of the Ukrainian people and to create a wasteland. Putin has no desire to leave Ukraine and he has no desire to try to rebuild it. This produces for him, in addition, a desired ‘buffer zone.'”
If the remaining Ukrainian troops aren’t given safe passage out, “Russia just levels completely from the face of the earth everything that’s left at the factory,” which “won’t be easy, because one way or another we’ll defend to the last fighter,” Mykhailo Vershynin, head of the Donetsk regional patrol police, tells The Washington Post. “There will be losses for Russia,” and “we’ll be destroyed. … It’s that kind of story.”
Why didn’t the Ukrainian troops flee when they had the chance?
The 36th Marine Brigade and Azov Battalion tied down a dozen or more Russian battalion tactical groups that would have otherwise fought elsewhere in Ukraine. “The defenders of Mariupol will go down in Ukrainian history for their courage and sacrifice,” Hertling says.
Ukraine’s New Heavy Artillery Will Cause Russia a World of Pain
Kyle Mizokami – May 5, 2022
Photo credit: Future Publishing – Getty Images
Ukrainian military forces have credited their artillery with making the biggest dent in the war with Russia.
The Western coalition supplying Ukraine with weapons is now shipping NATO-standard heavy artillery into the theater to bolster Ukrainian field artillery units.
The shift to NATO equipment will also make a whole slew of smart artillery shells available that will make Kyiv’s artillery deadlier than ever before.
As Western countries ship increasingly heavy arms to a beleaguered Ukraine, one of the most important transfers so far is an arsenal’s worth of field howitzers. Unlike the Ukrainian army’s existing big guns, these artillery pieces come in NATO calibers and are the key to unlocking the West’s precision-guided artillery technology. The tech, which includes GPS-guided artillery shells and tank-hunting munitions, could make Ukraine’s cannon-cockers exponentially more powerful.
Ukraine’s army has halted Russia’s advance into the country, and in some cases—like northwest of Kyiv—even sent the Russian Ground Forces scurrying back across the border. The Ukrainians have relied heavily on field artillery to hold off Russia’s invasion and consider it their most effective weapon. A recent study from the United Kingdom-based Royal United Services Institute cites a Ukrainian military official as saying “anti-tank missiles slowed the Russians down, but what killed them was our artillery. That was what broke their units.”
The Ukrainian Ground Forces have a considerable number of artillery, both traditional tube and rocket artillery. The total includes 2S3 Akatsiya 152-millimeter and 2S1 122-millimeter Gvozdika self-propelled howitzers; 122-millimeter BM-21 Grad truck-mounted multiple launch rocket systems; and D-20 152-millimeter and D-30 122-millimeter towed artillery pieces. Although theoretically numerous, the pieces are almost all old, produced by the Soviet Union before its collapse in 1991. The guns are also produced in Soviet-era calibers, which a dwindling number of countries (including Russia and Ukraine) continue to operate.
NATO forces, on the other hand, use standardized 155-millimeter artillery shells. Those three millimeters make a world of a difference, rendering Western and Soviet-derived shells incompatible with one another. But now, as the West grows bolder in sending advanced weapons, Ukraine is set to receive more than 100 155-millimeter artillery pieces. The United States is slated to send 90 M777 towed howitzers, the current towed artillery piece in use by the U.S. Army and Marine Corps; Australia is sending six M777s, and Canada is sending four. The Netherlands has promised six Pz2000 155-millimeter self-propelled howitzers, while France will send between 10 and 12 CAESAR truck-mounted 155s.
These howitzers have powerful implications for Ukraine’s hitting power. Ukraine’s current artillery pieces are at least three decades old, have fairly short ranges, and with the exception of Ukraine’s Kvitnyk laser-guided artillery shells, are unable to take advantage of the last four decades of technological progress and innovation. All of the donated pieces, by contrast, were developed and fielded long after Ukraine’s entire artillery fleet was already built. The Soviet-era 2S3 Akatsiya self-propelled howitzer has a range of 10.5 miles and can fire up to three 152-millimeter rounds per minute. By comparison, the French CAESAR self-propelled howitzer has a range of nearly 25 miles and can fire up to six rounds per minute.
Photo credit: GENYA SAVILOV – Getty Images
Ukraine will almost certainly get Western precision-guided rounds as part of the package. The American-developed M982 and M982A1 Excalibur artillery shells can home in on a set of GPS coordinates, and unlike artillery of the past, can hit a target with the first round. Excalibur is so precise, the U.S. Army claims, it will hit within two meters of the target “regardless of range.” This level of accuracy will allow Ukrainian artillerymen to hit more targets faster and without so-called “collateral damage” to civilians still living in combat areas.
Photo credit: U.S. Army
Excalibur will allow Ukrainian forces to take out enemy forces quickly and more efficiently than ever before—a major asset for a defending force that might find itself outnumbered. A Bayraktar-type drone, for example, could act as a spotter for an Excalibur-armed artillery unit, locating dozens of enemy targets in a single sortie and sending back GPS coordinates for nearby artillerymen to service. Excalibur could take out stationary enemy vehicles one at a time, or even rain down a curtain of well-placed explosive shells along a trench line of enemy troops. A target that might take one battery of six howitzers to destroy might well just take one Excalibur-armed howitzer to destroy.
Photo credit: AFP Contributor – Getty Images
Another round likely winging its way to Ukraine is the UK/French BONUS artillery shell. BONUS was developed for one thing and one thing only: to kill tanks and other armored vehicles. BONUS, once fired from the muzzle of a howitzer, flies downrange and ejects two smart submunitions. The two submunitions use a multispectral sensor package to detect enemy armor across an area of up to 32,000 meters. Once an enemy tank or armored vehicle is detected, the submunition fires a self-forging warhead that lances down through the top of the vehicle, penetrating the thin armor and destroying it.
BAE Systems, which is in the process of supplying BONUS to the U.S. Army, says one shell will on average take out one target. Imagine a Russian tank company of ten tanks advancing across an open Ukrainian field. A nearby battery of six M777 howitzers responds to the attack, firing six BONUS at the column. The Russian tank company could lose up to six tanks in a single salvo, instantly rendering the company combat ineffective. BONUS would be devastating against Russian artillery units in firing positions, seeking out and destroying howitzers, ammunition carriers, and headquarters vehicles alike.
Photo credit: U.S. Marine Corps/DVIDS
The United States and its allies believe Ukraine can win, as Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said late last month. The new generation of field artillery on its way to Ukraine, as well as an equally new generation of smart shells, will go a long way toward victory for Kyiv. Russia has faced serious setbacks in its “special military operation,” many of its own making, but the hurt inflicted by Ukraine’s new artillery could cause the Russian Army a whole different level of pain.
Ukraine’s deputy defense minister on how Western arms supplies are safeguarded from Russian interference
May 4, 2022
M777 howitzers being prepared for transportation from the United States to Ukraine, April 22, 2022
She also noted that information on the volume, pace and types of supplies of Western weapons to Ukraine – in particular through the newly approved lend lease program – is classified.
“I can only say that behind this is a huge amount of work done by our Ministry of Defense together with the ministers of Western countries,” Malyar said. “Today, our Commander-in-Chief is in direct contact with the commanders-in-chief of other countries regarding the use of these weapons, our current needs, and training – and this is very important.”
The deputy defense minister said that the Ukrainian side is trying to talk as little as possible about the agreements and supplies, because since the first days of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine the Russians have managed to disrupt several shipments of arms.
“They are experienced ‘KGBists’, they have their own agents everywhere and they work quite subtly, at the level of Western middle-level officials, and political parties loyal to them in the parliaments of different countries,” Malyar said.
“Western governments do not support Russia, but if there is one person in the chain integrated into Russian relations, this can already be a problem.”
“If transit takes place through several countries, they are trying to slow it down, or render it impossible at all. Because the transit of weapons is a very specific thing that requires both permits at the highest level and special protocols,” said the Ukrainian official.
Malyar also added that the Russians are trying to concoct “articles and clips about our humanitarian aid allegedly disappearing or not being unloaded as it should be.”
“Of course, we have logistical problems, we can’t avoid problems altogether. But if you hear that some weapons do not reach the front, these are mere fabrications, because these weapons simply cannot fall into the wrong hands, as we have a clear system of monitoring and control of logistics with our partners,” Malyar said.
She said the system had been put in place together with the United States since the first day of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and Washington cannot provide the next batch of weapons if it does not have a clear and complete understanding of what happened to the previous one.
“We have no complaints or questions from the State Department or the U.S. Congress in this regard,” Malyar said.
“Ideas of corruption with Western weapons are emerging in pseudo-expert circles and among people far from the military who are unaware of the fact that you can’t just sell American Javelins on the market.”
Russia pounds Ukraine, targeting supply of Western arms
Jon Gambrell, Cara Anna, The Associated Press – May 4, 2022
LVIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian forces pounded targets across Ukraine, taking aim at supply lines for foreign weapons in the west and intensifying an offensive in the east, as the European Union moved Wednesday to further punish Moscow for the war with a proposed ban on oil imports.
The Russian military said Wednesday it used sea- and air-launched precision guided missiles to destroy electric power facilities at five railway stations across Ukraine, while artillery and aircraft also struck troop strongholds and fuel and ammunition depots.
The defense minister repeated that Russian forces have blocked off a steel mill in Mariupol from which scores of civilians were evacuated over the weekend. Another official denied they were storming the plant, as its defenders said a day earlier.
Ukrainian authorities, meanwhile, said attacks in the eastern Donbas region left 21 civilians dead.
The flurry of attacks over the past day comes as Russia prepares to celebrate Victory Day on May 9, marking the Soviet Union’s defeat of Nazi Germany. This year the world is watching for whether Russian President Vladimir Putin will use the occasion to declare a limited victory — or expand what he calls a “special military operation” to a wider war.
A declaration of all-out war would allow Putin to introduce martial law and mobilize reservists to replace what Western officials say have been significant troop losses.
This satellite image taken by Planet Labs PBC shows smoke rising at the Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol, Ukraine, Wednesday, May 4, 2022. Russian forces began storming the bombed-out steel mill in Mariupol on Tuesday, May 3, 2022. The renewed push to take the mill came after scores of civilians were evacuated from the plant’s underground tunnels after enduring weeks of shelling. (Planet Labs PBC via AP)
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Wednesday dismissed the speculation as “untrue” and “nonsense.”
As areas across Ukraine came under renewed attack, Belarus, which Russia used as a staging ground for its invasion, announced military drills. The Defense Ministry in Minsk said the exercises that began Wednesday don’t threaten any neighbors but a top Ukrainian official the country will be ready to act if Belarus joins the fighting.
While the Russian attacks were across a wide swath of Ukraine, some were concentrated in and around Lviv, the western city close to the Polish border that has been a gateway for NATO-supplied weapons.
Explosions were heard late Tuesday in the city, which has seen only sporadic attacks during the war and has become a haven for civilians fleeing the fighting elsewhere. The mayor said the strikes damaged three power substations, knocking out electricity in parts of the city and disrupting the water supply. Two people were wounded.
The attacks on rail infrastructure were meant to disrupt the delivery of Western weapons, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said, while his boss, Minister Sergei Shoigu, told top military brass that the West was “stuffing Ukraine with weapons.”
Western weaponry pouring into Ukraine helped its forces blunt Russia’s initial offensive and seems certain to play a central role in the battle for the Donbas, which Moscow now says is its focus following its failure to take Kyiv in the early weeks of the war.
Ukraine has urged the West to ramp up the supply of weapons ahead of that potentially decisive battle. Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany, which had been slow at first to help arm Ukraine, said Wednesday his government is considering supplying Ukraine with howitzers, in addition to Gepard anti-aircraft guns and other equipment it has already agreed to send.
A Ukrainian army soldier stands guard at the war-damaged Irpinsky Lipky residential complex following the visit of United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on April 28, 2022, in Irpin, Ukraine. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)
The governor of the eastern Donetsk region, which lies in the Donbas, said Russian attacks left 21 dead on Tuesday, the highest number of known fatalities since April 8, when a missile attack on the railway station in Kramatorsk killed at least 59 people.
Russia has deployed a significant number of troops in the region and appears to be trying to advance in the north, as they try to cut Ukrainian forces off, according to an assessment from the British Defense Ministry. However, Moscow’s push has been slow as Ukrainian fighters dig in and use long-range weapons to target the Russians.
In addition to supplying weapons to Ukraine, Europe and the United States have sought to punish Moscow with sanctions. The EU’s top official called on the 27-nation bloc on Wednesday to ban Russian oil imports.
“We will make sure that we phase out Russian oil in an orderly fashion, in a way that allows us and our partners to secure alternative supply routes and minimizes the impact on global markets,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France.
The proposals need unanimous approval from EU countries and are likely to be the subject of fierce debate. Hungary and Slovakia have already said they won’t take part in any oil sanctions, but von der Leyen didn’t elaborate on whether they would receive an exemption, which appears likely.
Von der Leyen also proposed that Sberbank, Russia’s largest bank, and two other major banks be disconnected from the SWIFT international banking payment system.
On Tuesday, in one of the most crucial battles of the war, Ukrainian fighters said Russian forces began storming the bombed-out steel mill in Mariupol, the last pocket of resistance in the city. But Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Wednesday that was not true.
“There is no assault. We see that there are cases of escalation due to the fact that the militants take up the firing positions. These attempts are being suppressed very quickly,” Peskov said.
Shoigu, the defense minister, said that fighters at the Azovstal mill have been “securely blocked” inside, while Russian forces continue to demand their surrender — something they have repeatedly refused to do.
Over the weekend, however, scores of civilians were successfully evacuated from the plant’s underground tunnels after enduring weeks of shelling.
It is unclear how many Ukrainian fighters are still inside, but the Russians put the number at about 2,000 in recent weeks, and 500 were reported to be wounded. A few hundred civilians also remained there, said Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk.
Officials have expressed hope more people could yet be evacuated. No new rescues from the plant have been announced, but Vereshchuk said Wednesday authorities plan to continue efforts to evacuate civilians from Mariupol and nearby areas if the security situation allows it.
Thanks to the evacuation effort over the weekend, 101 people — including women, the elderly, and 17 children, the youngest 6 months old — emerged from the bunkers under the steelworks to “see the daylight after two months,” said Osnat Lubrani, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Ukraine.
One evacuee said she went to sleep at the plant every night afraid she wouldn’t wake up.
“You can’t imagine how scary it is when you sit in the bomb shelter, in a damp and wet basement, and it is bouncing and shaking,” 54-year-old Elina Tsybulchenko said upon arriving in the Ukrainian-controlled city of Zaporizhzhia, about 140 miles (230 kilometers) northwest of Mariupol.
Mariupol — and the plant in particular — has come to symbolize the human misery inflicted by the war. The Russians’ two-month siege of the strategic port has trapped civilians with little or no food, water, medicine or heat, as Moscow’s forces pounded the city into rubble.
The city’s fall would deprive Ukraine of a vital port, allow Russia to establish a land corridor to the Crimean Peninsula, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014, and free up troops for fighting elsewhere in the Donbas.
‘They Deceived Us at Every Step’: Troops Say Russia’s War Is in Shambles
Allison Quinn – May 4, 2022
Troops sent into Ukraine to back up Russian forces say they had no choice but to leave because Russian military was in shambles and “they deceived us at every step.”
Soldiers from the breakaway state of South Ossetia—speaking to South Ossetian leader Anatoly Bibilov at a meeting publicized by the independent news outlet MediaZona—rattled off a list of complaints about faulty equipment, lack of leadership and intel, and brainless tactics.
South Ossetia, which relies heavily on military and financial aid from Russia, sent troops to Ukraine in late March to “defend Russia.” Ukrainian military officials said at the time that some 150 South Ossetian troops were joining forces with Russia, but Tskhinvali never gave any official figures.
Many of the soldiers are said to be part of Russian military units based in South Ossetia; Moscow and Tskhinvali struck a deal in 2017 to partially incorporate their armed forces.
But reports soon surfaced of many of them refusing to take part in the fight, vowing not to become “cannon fodder.”
“Nobody got scared here, it’s just that they deceived us at every step,” one of the soldiers told Bibilov of their decision to abandon the fight.
“Of the 11 days [that we were there,] I wouldn’t even wish on an enemy what happened there. All the equipment didn’t work, I’m telling you straight… There was no command staff,” another soldier told the South Ossetian leader.
Out of 10 tanks, the first soldier said, only three fired. “The artillery mortar for the mortar-gunners didn’t work, the legs were all crooked,” he said.
Watch:Ukrainian Military Says It Is Striking Russian-Held Positions Near Izyum
Ukrainian Military Says It Is Striking Russian-Held Positions Near Izyum
Drone footage released by the Ukrainian military on May 3 shows explosions and smoldering vehicles, which it said was the aftermath of artillery attacks on Russian positions near frontlines close to Izyum.While Russian forces have been unable to capture the city of Kharkiv, they have punched south and east. Russian forces control Izyum, and have fought to expand control in nearby Donbas and Luhansk Oblasts. Frontlines in the area are close to Izyum, in Kharkiv Oblast, and Rubizhne, in Luhansk Oblast, according to a May 2 assessment published by the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War.
This video, published by the Ukrainian military on May 3, shows the aftermath of what it said were artillery attacks on Russian positions. Storyful confirmed that the drone footage was taken above the town of Oleksandrivka, located just inside Donetsk Oblast, roughly 15 miles (24.1 km) from Izyum. The exact date of filming has not been confirmed. Credit: Ukrainian Military via Storyful
“There was no command. And if the officers didn’t know what to do, what is the sergeant doing there?” another soldier was quoted saying.
He said “99 percent of the equipment” in another unit didn’t even work, but when the troops warned the senior in command that their vehicles didn’t work and their guns “did not fire,” he shrugged it off and said to just “go like that.”
In another case, troops complained of their commander “disappearing” every time fighting started.
“He was afraid of his own men. He made himself a security team out of a few of the guys. The commander refused to come out and talk to his own guys and was saying that he’d be beaten,” one soldier said.
Eventually, “some guys from spetsnaz [special forces]” really did beat him and left his “face all bloody,” he said.
They said the Russian troops never had backup plans, or escape routes. Another soldier said one of his wounded comrades in Russian-occupied Donetsk was getting no medical care.
“He says that the first day they bandaged him, but there’s still shrapnel inside him. He says his hand is very swollen, and nobody is doing anything, the doctors aren’t even coming to see him. He’s been there for five days, and the doctors are only asking him for money,” he said.
After hearing the soldiers paint a picture of such utter dysfunction, Bibilov asked the men directly if they believe Russia will lose the war.
One soldier spoke up: “Yes, we believe they will lose.”
Putin hopes to gain in eastern Ukraine and parts of the Black Sea coastline. If successful, he could claim he met an initial objective of securing the Donbas area contested by Ukrainians and Russian-backed separatists since 2014.
If Russia exhausts Ukrainian defenses there, Putin might force Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to the negotiating table, giving Russia time to rebuild its military for a renewed push on the rest of the country.
Through $1.6 billion in military aid announced last month and visits to Ukraine last week by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, the United States is trying to help block that option.
Calling the next few weeks pivotal, a senior Defense Department official said Russia will “have some real decisions to make” if its new offensive doesn’t succeed.
What happens in the next month, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, could determine security conditions in Europe for a generation.
Even if Putin continues to be thwarted in his attempt to take over Ukraine, the war could settle into a long-term, low-level conflict as Russian troops remain in parts of the country. Their presence would be a destabilizing force as Russia prepares for a new opportunity.
That’s something the United States hopes to head off.
“We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine,” Austin said last week when asked how he would define success in Ukraine.
The funding is intended to meet the needs of the Ukrainian military “during the crucial weeks and months ahead,” Biden said, as well as begin a transition to longer-term security assistance to help Ukraine deter and defend against Russian aggression.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on April 7, 2022.
Could Putin turn Ukraine into another ‘frozen conflict’?
Dmitri Alperovitch, the Russian-born American chairman of Silverado Policy Accelerator, a public policy nonprofit, said the focus in Ukraine’s south and east is the last major offensive Russia’s military can undertake for a while.
This phase of the war, Alperovitch said in an online salon organized by the Defense Priorities think tank, is likely to end “one way or another” in the next four to five weeks.
If Russia’s military can enlarge its holdings in Donbas and connect the area to Crimea, creating a strategic corridor between the Crimean Peninsula and Russian positions in eastern Ukraine, that could allow Putin to claim a victory he can sell to the Russian public, said Charles Kupchan, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and professor of international affairs at Georgetown University.
“The death and destruction that’s taken place in Ukraine, the atrocities, the dislocation of millions of families, all of this makes it less and less likely that this war will end with a formal settlement,” he said. “It’s hard for me to imagine that Zelenskyy’s room for a political maneuver and Putin’s room for political maneuver overlap.”
A man carrying a little girl arrives with other families to board a train as they flee the eastern city of Kramatorsk in the Donbas region of Ukraine on April 4.
The result might be a years-long territorial dispute with low-level military conflict, as has happened in other areas of interest to Russia.
“Historically speaking, these wars in the Russian periphery end with frozen conflicts,” Kupchan said. “Russian troops have a tendency to show up and not go home.”
After fighting a war with Georgia in 2008, Russia recognized the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent. It maintains a military presence there and provides financial support.
Putin uses frozen conflicts in former Soviet republics to upset their development and prevent them from aligning with the West, according to experts.
Before Russia invaded Ukraine in February – aiming to topple the capital of Kyiv – Russian and proxy forces held about 35% of the territory in the Donetsk and Luhansk areas of Donbas, according to Steven Pifer, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine and a William Perry Fellow at Stanford University.
Taking over all of Donbas might be Putin’s new endgame, Pifer said, but Russia’s ability to do so is debatable.
“There’s still a significant portion of the Ukrainian military in that territory,” he said.
Ukrainian soldiers are set to defend the city of Severodonetsk in the Donbas region from Russian invaders April 7.
‘You can’t reform an army in a matter of a couple of weeks’
The Washington-based Institute for the Study of War said in an analysis April 18 that Russian forces may gain ground in the east through the heavy concentration of firepower and the size of their forces. Russia is unlikely to be dramatically more successful than major offensives around Kyiv, according to the analysis, because the military probably hasn’t fixed its underlying problems – poor coordination, the inability to conduct cross-country operations and low morale.
“You can’t reform an army in a matter of a couple of weeks,” retired Army Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO, said last week on ABC’s “This Week With George Stephanopoulos.”
The United States increased its military assistance to include the type of weapons needed to fight back in eastern Ukraine, where artillery and armored vehicles are likely to play a central role.
The Ukrainians’ greatest need is for long-range guns and rockets that can reach deep into Russian lines. The terrain in eastern Ukraine is more open than that of the north where forests helped defenders ambush and thrash Russian convoys.
“The open flatlands provide some advantage to the Russian army,” said Garret Martin, an expert on trans-Atlantic relations at American University, “but it exposes them as well.”
The increased stakes are part of what’s driving the urgent mission to supply the Ukrainian army with long-range artillery weapons, according to a senior Defense Department official.
Biden announced on April 21 an $800 million military aid package that includes 72 howitzer artillery cannons. That came days after a separate $800 million batch of weapons included 18 howitzers.
With 90 cannons, the Ukrainian army can outfit about five artillery battalions.
U.S. troops have begun training Ukrainians on how to fire them, a process that takes about a week, according to a second senior defense official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
A Ukrainian multiple rocket launcher BM-21 “Grad” shells Russian troops’ position, near Lugansk, in the Donbas region, on April 10, 2022.
The howitzers have a range of about 15 miles or longer, depending on the type of shell they fire. The aid package included 144,000 rounds of artillery ammunition.
By extending the amount of training for Ukrainians, the administration signals that the war may go on for weeks or months, according to an assessment by Mark Cancian, a senior adviser with the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
The Russians have a great deal of combat power inside Ukraine despite losing about 25% of those forces since the invasion began Feb. 24, according to the Pentagon.
Is Putin interested in an off-ramp to the war in Ukraine?
The Russian military learned from its mistakes around Kyiv and appears to have focused on supplying its troops in the east with the fuel and ammunition they need to fight, according to a senior defense official.
As both sides refocused their firepower, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres met last month with Putin in Moscow and Zelenskyy in Kyiv. While Guterres was in Ukraine Thursday, a Russian missile struck Kyiv, an attack Zelenskyy said was an attempt to “humiliate” the United Nations.
Putin doesn’t appear to be looking for a way out of the conflict despite his major miscalculation on how events would unfold, experts said.
“I don’t see an off-ramp. I don’t think Putin is interested in an off-ramp,” said Angela Stent, a senior adviser to the Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies and author of “Putin’s World: Russia Against the West and With the Rest.”
Rather than a way out, Putin is “desperately looking for a big victory so Russia can dictate the terms of the negotiations,” said Zia Haque, director of the Baker Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies and assistant professor of peace and conflict studies at Juniata College.
“Putin feels like this is going to be his survival,” Haque said. “He strongly feels that he cannot lose the war. He cannot afford to lose it.”
Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said last week that the only way to end the war is a full withdrawal of Russian troops.
“I think that this war should be finished,” Shmyhal said on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” “when we clean our territories from Russian occupants.”
Scroll back up to restore default view.
