The Tarbabys Blog

Reuters

Russian general killed in eastern Ukraine, Russian state media reporter says

June 5, 2022

LONDON (Reuters) – A Russian general was killed in eastern Ukraine, a Russian state media journalist said on Sunday, adding to the string of high-ranking military casualties sustained by Moscow.

The report, published on the Telegram messaging app by state television reporter Alexander Sladkov, did not say precisely when and where Major General Roman Kutuzov was killed.

There was no immediate comment from the Russian defence ministry.

Russian forces have intensified attacks to capture Sievierodonetsk, a key city in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region that Moscow is targeting after failing to take the capital Kyiv early in the war.

Russia already classifies military deaths as state secrets even in times of peace and has not updated its official casualty figures in Ukraine since March 25, when it said that 1,351 Russian soldiers had been killed since the start of its military campaign on Feb. 24.

Russia says it is carrying out “special military operation” designed to demilitarise Ukraine and rid it of nationalists threatening the Russian-speaking population. Ukraine and Western countries dismiss Russia’s claims as a pretext to invade.

Britain’s defence ministry said on Monday that Russia appeared to have suffered significant losses amongst mid- and junior-ranking officers in Ukraine.

(Reporting by Reuters; editing by Guy Faulconbridge and Nick Zieminski)

Associated Press

As Ukraine loses troops, how long can it keep up the fight?

John Leicester and Hanna Arhirova – June 4, 2022

ZHYTOMYR, Ukraine (AP) — As soon as they had finished burying a veteran colonel killed by Russian shelling, the cemetery workers readied the next hole. Inevitably, given how quickly death is felling Ukrainian troops on the front lines, the empty grave won’t stay that way for long.

Col. Oleksandr Makhachek left behind a widow, Elena, and their daughters Olena and Myroslava-Oleksandra. In the first 100 days of war, his grave was the 40th dug in the military cemetery in Zhytomyr, 90 miles (140 kilometers) west of the capital, Kyiv.

He was killed May 30 in the Luhansk region of eastern Ukraine where the fighting is raging. Nearby, the burial notice on the also freshly dug grave of Viacheslav Dvornitskyi says he died May 27. Other graves also showed soldiers killed within days of each other — on May 10, 9th, 7th and 5th. And this is just one cemetery, in just one of Ukraine’s cities, towns and villages laying soldiers to rest.

Related video: Ukraine’s President Zelensky visits wounded soldiers

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said this week that Ukraine is now losing 60 to 100 soldiers each day in combat. By way of comparison, just short of 50 American soldiers died per day on average in 1968 during the Vietnam War’s deadliest year for U.S. forces.

Among the comrades-in-arms who paid respects to the 49-year-old Makhachek at his funeral on Friday was Gen. Viktor Muzhenko, the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ chief of general staff until 2019. He warned that losses could worsen.

“This is one of the critical moments in the war, but it is not the peak,” Muzhenko told The Associated Press. “This is the most significant conflict in Europe since World War II. That explains why the losses are so great. In order to reduce losses, Ukraine now needs powerful weapons that match or even surpass Russian weaponry. This would enable Ukraine to respond in kind.”

Concentrations of Russian artillery are causing many of the casualties in the eastern regions that Moscow has focused on since its initial invasion launched Feb. 24 failed to take Kyiv.

Retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, the former commanding general of U.S. Army forces in Europe, described the Russian strategy as a “medieval attrition approach” and said that until Ukraine gets promised deliveries of U.S., British and other weapons to destroy and disrupt Russian batteries, “these kinds of casualties are going to continue.”

“This battlefield is so much more lethal than what we all became accustomed to over the 20 years of Iraq and Afghanistan, where we didn’t have numbers like this,” he said in an AP phone interview.

“That level of attrition would include leaders, sergeants,” he added. “They are a lot of the brunt of casualties because they are the more exposed, constantly moving around trying to do things.”

Makhachek, a military engineer, led a detachment that laid minefields and other defenses, said Col. Ruslan Shutov, who attended the funeral of his friend of more than 30 years.

“Once the shelling began, he and a group hid in a shelter. There were four people in his group, and he told them to hide in the dugout. He hid in another. Unfortunately, an artillery shell hit the dugout where he was hiding.”

Ukraine had about 250,000 men and women in uniform before the war and was in the process of adding another 100,000. The government hasn’t said how many have died in more than 14 weeks of fighting.

Nobody really knows the number of Ukrainian civilians who have been killed or how many combatants have died on either side. Claims of casualties by government officials — who may sometimes exaggerate or lowball their figures for public relations reasons — are all but impossible to verify.

Western analysts estimate far higher Russian military casualties, in the many thousands. Still, as Ukraine’s losses mount, the grim mathematics of war require that it find replacements. With a population of 43 million, it has manpower.

“The problem is recruiting, training and getting them on the front line,” said retired U.S. Marine Col. Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

“If the war is now moving into a long-term attrition struggle, then you have to build systems to get replacements,” he said. “This has been a difficult moment for every army in combat.”

Muzhenko, the Ukrainian general, said Zelenskyy’s admission of high casualties would further galvanize Ukrainian morale and that more Western weaponry would help turn the tide.

“The more Ukrainians know about what is happening at the front, the more the will to resist will grow,” he said. “Yes, the losses are significant. But with the help of our allies, we can minimize and reduce them and move on to successful offensives. This will require powerful weapons.”

Yuras Karmanau contributed to this report from Lviv.

Ukrayinska Pravda

Frightened occupation authorities transfer Pion self propelled guns to Kherson Oblast Pivden (South) Operational Command

Olha Hlushchenko – June 4, 2022

Russian occupation authorities in Kherson Oblast are afraid of the resistance put up by the local residents and have brought in four Pion-type self-propelled heavy artillery guns.

Source: Pivden [South] Operational Command on Facebook

Quote: “The occupiers are afraid of the resistance which is growing among the local population in Kherson Oblast.

Every day, new flags, motivational statements, and missives to the occupiers appear in the administrative centre of the oblast [the city of Kherson – ed.], and leaflets are being distributed.

The leaders of the occupation government are moving around with large numbers of security personnel, wearing body armor and in armored vehicles. They fear for their lives.

Politico

U.S. general calls on West to send fighter jets to Ukraine ‘as soon as possible’

Lara Seligman – June 3, 2022

The commanding general of the California National Guard is calling on U.S. and other Western officials to explore sending fighter jets to Ukraine “as soon as possible,” rekindling a longstanding request by Kyiv.

In a statement to POLITICO on Friday, Maj. Gen. David Baldwin, California National Guard adjutant general, also said sending Soviet-era MiG fighters in the near term is the best “immediate solution.”

“MiGs are the best immediate solution to support the Ukrainians, but U.S. or western fighters are options that should be explored as soon as possible,” Baldwin said.

The comments come a day after Baldwin told reporters that U.S. military officials are working with Ukrainian counterparts on Kyiv’s request to Western nations for fighter aircraft to help repel the Russian invasion.

Although a three-way deal to send U.S. F-16s to Poland if Warsaw provided MiGs to Ukraine fell apart in March, Guard officials are still “steering them” toward the Soviet-era planes in the near term.

“There is a lot of goodness in them going to MiGs because they are already trained in that, but if they are going to use Western-type aircraft, it’s a discussion about numbers and types and capabilities of aircraft that may be available,” Baldwin said.

Members of the California National Guard have a longstanding relationship with the Ukrainian military. Guardsmen have been training with their Ukrainian counterparts in Eastern Europe under a state partnership since the 1990s. Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February, Guard members have also been helping to craft Kyiv’s requests to the Pentagon for weapons to use against Russian forces, Baldwin said.

In response to questions from POLITICO after the Thursday news conference, Lt. Col. Brandon Hill, a spokesperson for the California National Guard, stressed that a final decision about providing U.S.-made fighters to Kyiv would be up to the White House and the Pentagon. But he noted that, even before the conflict started, the intent was always for Ukraine to become “NATO-interoperable,” including giving them the opportunity to operate Western fighters.

California Guard members, particularly the pilots, are communicating with Ukrainian soldiers and airmen on a daily basis to share tactics and ideas, Baldwin noted.

“At our one-star generals, down to our colonels and some of our senior NCOs, they engage with Ukrainian leaders, the Ukrainian defense attaché and others, to help them refine their requests in terms of types of weapons systems are asking for and providing them information of things that might be available at the more tactical level,” Baldwin said Thursday. “The current one that we are working through is, ‘what’s the right fighter aircraft for them?’”

While “we are steering them toward those MiGs first,” there is also an “over-the-horizon” discussion of what aircraft will be needed in the future, Baldwin said.

“In the midterm, over the course of the next six months to the year and then the long term: What’s in the realm of possibility for systems that would be effective, available and affordable for them?” he said.

NATO members Bulgaria, Poland and Slovakia all operate the MiG-29, but their limited inventories are on the way out. Slovakia will replace its Soviet-era jets with U.S. F-16s in 2024, and the U.S. approved the sale of several F-16s to Bulgaria in April. Poland meanwhile signed a deal in 2020 for 32 F-35s, and Polish leaders have recently said they’re interested in adding to that number as soon as possible.

The three-way deal between Poland, the U.S. and Ukraine fell apart in March when the U.S. said it would not support the transfer.

“We do not support the transfer of the fighters to the Ukrainian air force at this time and have no desire to see them in our custody either,” John Kirby told reporters at the time, after Poland offered to hand over the MiGs to the U.S. for eventual transfer to Ukraine. The Pentagon and the U.S. intelligence community had assessed the warplanes wouldn’t materially improve Ukraine’s ability to fend off Russia, but instead could draw NATO directly into the conflict, Kirby added.

There were also logistical issues involved in getting fighter jets over the border into Ukraine, and with flying the planes from a NATO country into a war zone.

But in recent days, the U.S. and other Western nations have begun supplying Ukraine with more advanced weapons. The U.S. will send the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System and guided rockets that can strike targets up to 48 miles away, President Joe Biden announced this week, while the U.K. is also seeking approval to send advanced rocket systems.

Meanwhile, Reuters reported that the Biden administration also plans to sell Kyiv four MQ-1C Gray Eagle drones that can be armed with Hellfire missiles.

Officials debated sending the HIMARS for weeks over concerns that sending advanced, longer-range rockets could provoke Vladimir Putin into escalating the conflict. Ultimately, they decided to send shorter-range munitions, and said they had received assurances that Kyiv would not use them to strike targets in Russia.

“America’s goal is straightforward: We want to see a democratic, independent, sovereign and prosperous Ukraine with the means to deter and defend itself against further aggression,” Biden wrote in a New York Times oped announcing the move. “We do not seek a war between NATO and Russia.”

Paul McLeary contributed to this report.

Ukrayinska Pravda

In Mariupol, Russians execute and torture officials who refused to cooperate – the mayor

Alona Mazurenko – June 3, 2022

In the Mariupol district, occupiers are imprisoning and shooting Ukrainian volunteers and officials who have refused to cooperate with collaborators and the occupying authorities.

Source: Mariupol City Council, quoting Mayor Vadym Boichenko, Interfax-Ukraine

Quote: The “fake court of the DPR” [self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic] sentenced the head of one of the Azov villages to 10 years in prison.

At least one civil servant was executed by firing squad.

Dozens of volunteers are also being held in the Olenivka prison. In March-April, they helped evacuate Mariupol residents and tried to deliver food and water to the besieged city.

A Ukrainian judge is also awaiting the verdict from the fake republic. There are reports of her being tortured.”

Details: At a press conference on 3 June, Boichenko said that the occupiers were imposing “sentences” on those who were taken prisoner and refused to work with the occupiers.

According to him, the minimum term of such imprisonment is 10 years.

The mayor of Mariupol added that “thousands of Mariupol residents and people from the region” are in the [newly] established prisons in the occupied territory of Donetsk Oblast.

According to Boichenko, the captured people are being held in terrible conditions: “This is a 2 by 3 (meters – ed.) cell, and 10-15 men or women are being held in it. They are allowed to go to the toilet once a day; they are given something resembling food once a day and they are given water.”

THe New Voice of Ukraine

Russia engaging is medieval warfare, says US OSCE envoy

June 3, 2022

Russia’s war against Ukraine – the main events on June 3

“15 weeks of cruelty, 15 weeks of bestiality, 15 weeks of violence, with so many reports of casualties, forced deportations, rape, filtration camps and destruction … it (is) difficult to comprehend the scale of the slaughter perpetrated by the Russian Federation,” said Carpenter.

“After 15 weeks, the terror that Russia is deliberately using against Ukraine’s civilian population has no end in sight.”

Read also: 70 more dead bodies found in Mariupol at Oktyabr factory

Carpenter described Russian tactics as medieval: Moscow uses destruction to force local populations to abandon their homes and flee, thereby making it easier to occupy barren lands.

He added that looting and pillaging of Ukrainian resources by the Russians are similarly hallmarks of barbaric approaches to warfare.

Read also: 100 days of full-scale Russian invasion in numbers

“Sadistic bestiality and the ‘filtering’ process could have a goal,” the official said.

“Especially if this goal is to eradicate the very concept of Ukrainian statehood in regions under Russian occupation, in order to absorb these parts of Ukraine more easily.”

NBC News

After 100 days of war, Ukraine is more resolved than ever to take its land back from Russia

Lauren Egan – June 3, 2022

KHARKIV, Ukraine — As Russia’s invasion grinds into its 100th day with no clear end in sight, Ukrainians seem more determined than ever to take back every lost inch of their battered land.

From officials in Kyiv to residents in Kharkiv, the message is clear: The country will not accept concessions of territory in order to reach a peace agreement with its invading neighbor.

In conversations with people around the Kharkiv region, just miles from the Russian border, many expressed frustration and anger at recent suggestions that their country should consider giving up some territory currently under occupation in order to achieve a cease-fire agreement that might avert a bloody war of attrition that could drag on for another 100 days — or longer.

The Kremlin’s forces are advancing in the east and now control 20 percent of Ukrainian territory, according to President Volodomyr Zelenskyy, while his Western allies have shown signs of wavering in their support.

Yet, Ukrainian public opinion illustrates just how challenging it could be to reach an acceptable diplomatic resolution with Russia.

“Of course, we want peace, but we also want our territories back,” said Anna Ockmanko, 57, whose house in a small village outside of Kharkiv was destroyed when the Russian forces invaded. “If not, then what are we suffering for?”

Olena Ruban, 53, said that conceding territory in exchange for peace “should not even be a discussion.”

“We will fight to the end. I will pick up a gun and fight myself if I need to,” she said, as she worked to clean up her house that was damaged when Russian forces occupied the region. Ukrainian troops pushed them out last month in a successful counterattack outside the country’s second-largest city of Kharkiv.

“I understand even more clearly now that compromise is not an option,” she said. “We still believe in victory.”

As the death toll increases, oil prices skyrocket and fears mount of a global food shortage, some Western officials have recently suggested that Ukraine should consider giving up land to Russia in exchange for peace.

Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said Kyiv should accept ceding territory to bring an end to the invasion, while Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi called for a cease-fire in Ukraine “as soon as possible.” The New York Times’ editorial board argued in a recent piece that Ukraine would have to confront “painful territorial decisions.”

Ukrainian officials have slammed the idea.

Zelenskyy compared the suggestion to the 1938 Munich Pact — a failed European attempt to appease Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler by giving up territory in Czechoslovakia.

In a video address posted online, Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to Zelenskyy, said that “no one is going to trade a gram of our sovereignty or a millimeter of our territory.”

“Our children are dying, soldiers are being blown apart by shells, and they tell us to sacrifice territory. Get lost. It’s never going to happen,” he said.

Since the war started Feb. 24, Ukrainian forces have successfully pushed Russia out of territory around the capital city of Kyiv, as well as Kharkiv in the northeast. But Russia controls the strategically important cities of Kherson and Mariupol in the south, and is gaining ground in the eastern provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk, which together make up the Donbas region. Moscow may not be far off creating a much-desired land corridor to Crimea, which it invaded and annexed in 2014.

Zelenskyy has acknowledged that the war will only end through a diplomatic solution rather than a military victory. In a television address last month, he said the war “will be bloody, there will be fighting, but it will only definitively end through diplomacy.”

But peace negotiations have stalled, and Ukrainian public opinion could continue to harden as new allegations of Russian atrocities are uncovered.

A recent poll from the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology found that 82 percent of Ukrainian adults believe that “no territorial concessions should be allowed” in order to reach a peace agreement, compared to 10 percent who thought some territorial concessions should be made.

“Russia wants to establish control of all of Ukraine, and Ukrainians do not want this,” said Anton Grushetskyi, the deputy director of the institute. “When some politicians, experts in the West try to put pressure on Ukraine in this very complicated situation to concede some territory, they should understand that’s just not the real intentions of the population.”

The Kremlin seems determined to exert long-term control over areas it has seized, but Zelenskyy has said that any peace agreement would require Russia pulling back to its pre-invasion positions.

Some Ukrainians say that’s not enough.

Olena, 59, who asked not to use her last name out of fear that Russian troops could identify her son who is serving in the Ukrainian military, said that Russia’s brief occupation of her town changed how she felt about Crimea and other parts of the country’s east that have been under the control of Russian-backed separatists since 2014. Any peace agreement should include those territories, she said.

“We think about the people who’ve been living under occupation for eight years. We’re crying for them,” she said. “I feel guilty that we didn’t do more earlier on, but now having lived under occupation for just one month, I understand so much better now what they are going through — the exhaustion, the fear.”

Serhii, 55, who also asked not to use his last name out of concern that Russian troops could return to the region and identify him, said that Ukrainians were clear eyed about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s plan “to conquer all of Ukraine.”

“The only option is to get everything back,” he said. “But we also need to accept that it might not happen soon.”