Train stations in Ukraine targeted after US officials’ visit
Monique Beals – April 25, 2022
Russian forces attacked multiple railway stations in Ukraine, according to multiple reports on Monday.
Five stations were struck, according to a statement from Oleksandr Kamyshin, who chairs Ukraine’s state railway company, Ukrzaliznytsia.
“Russian troops continue to systematically destroy railway infrastructure,” Kamyshin said, according to CNN. “This morning, within one hour, five railway stations in central and western Ukraine were struck.”
Meanwhile, Maksym Kozytskyy, who leads Lviv’s regional military administration, detailed an attack on Monday that took place in western Ukraine around 8.30 a.m, the Guardian reported.
“Today, on April 25 at about 08:30 am, as the result of a missile attack, an explosion occurred at a substation of the Krasne railway station,” he said in a statement obtained by CNN.
“Units of the State Emergency Service are working on the site and extinguishing the fire,” Kozytskyy added.
Ukrainian trains have become a vital part of the war effort. The country’s rail system is one of the largest in the world and has been carrying not only evacuating civilians out of the country but also bringing essential supplies in, according to CNN
Earlier this month, a Russian rocket attack killed over 30 people and injured more than 100 others at a train station as people attempted to flee the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk.
“Not having the strength and courage to confront us on the battlefield, they are cynically destroying the civilian population. This is evil that knows no bounds. And if it is not punished it will never stop,” Zelensky said at the time of that attack.
The attacks come just one day after Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv, marking the highest-level U.S. officials to travel to Ukraine.
Heavy weaponry pours into Ukraine as commanders become more desperate
Christopher Miller and Paul McLeary – April 25, 2022
Efrem Lukatsky/AP Phot
Western countries are rushing heavy weaponry to Ukraine as the war enters what promises to be a deadly, and potentially protracted, new phase.
Those deliveries are coming amid increasingly desperate pleas from Ukrainian battlefield commanders as they endure withering Russian artillery and rocket fire that could last weeks or months.
Over the past two weeks, the Biden administration began shipping out $1.2 billion worth of howitzers, around 200,000 artillery rounds, armored vehicles, counter-battery radars and experimental new armed drones capable of flying into targets. The deliveries are a significant advance from the small arms and Javelin anti-tank armor shipments that dominated the first eight weeks of fighting, and which helped stave off Russian thrusts toward the capital of Kyiv in the early days of the invasion.
On Friday, France and Canada unveiled new plans to send long-range artillery systems for the first time, and the U.K. is looking to backfill heavy armor to Poland as Warsaw contemplates sending Polish tanks to Ukraine.
On Sunday, during a surprise trip to Kyiv by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, the U.S. announced more than $300 million in foreign military financing to allow Ukraine to purchase more sophisticated weapons, along with an additional $165 million for ammunition.
The rapid shift in aid reflects the recognition that the new fight will likely be dominated by artillery barrages and tank battles as infantry units square off over the flat fields of eastern Ukraine. But getting these new weapons to the front quickly will prove critical in the coming days.
As the war changes its character, a wave of Russian steel has been taking aim at Ukrainian units holding the line north of the besieged city of Mariupol, where a few hundred troops continue to make a last desperate stand on the grounds of the Azovstal steel plant.
Eighty miles north of the city, First Lt. Ivan Skuratovsky, serving in the 25th Airborne Brigade, told POLITICO that help needs to come immediately.
“The situation is very bad, [Russian forces] are using scorched- earth tactics,” the 31-year-old married father of two said via text. “They simply destroy everything with artillery, shelling day and night,” he said via text.
He fears that if reinforcements in the form of manpower and heavy weaponry — particularly air support — don’t arrive in the next few days, his troops could find themselves in the same position as those in Mariupol.
Skuratovsky described his soldiers’ situation as “very desperate.”
“I don’t know how much strength we will have,” he said, adding that the troops under his command around the city of Avdiivka, near Donetsk, have gone without rest since the start of the war. At least 13 of them have been wounded in recent weeks, he said, and they are running dangerously low on ammunition, reduced to rationing bullets.
The day before, he told POLITICO his soldiers were being bombarded with Russian howitzers, mortars and multiple-launch rocket systems “at the same time.” Just hours earlier, he said, they had been attacked by two Su-25 warplanes, “and our day became hell.”
Skuratovsky had a message for the United States and other NATO countries: “I would like to tell them that grenade launchers are good, but against airstrikes and heavy artillery we will not be able to hold out for long. People can no longer endure daily bombardments. We need air support now. We need drones.”
Caught in a pincer
The lieutenant’s pleas match those of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who has for weeks demanded that Western countries step up their support as this new phase of the Russian war gets underway. The calls come as the Kremlin struggles to switch tactics from small unit attacks in the north in favor of devastating artillery barrages aimed at flattening towns and Ukrainian positions, unconcerned with — or perhaps purposefully looking for — civilian casualties.
The message is getting through to Western leaders, albeit slowly.
Ukrainian officials have been calling for heavy weapons and jet fighters since the Feb. 24 Russian invasion, but the Kremlin’s decision to pull its troops from around the capital of Kyiv and make one concerted push in the east and south has clearly caught the attention of Western powers.
Russian forces appear to be positioning for a pincer movement launched from the north and south that would trap at least 30,000 Ukrainian troops in the east, and possibly cut them off from resupply. As of now, weapons and aid are getting through, but as this new, more destructive phase of the Russian assault begins, counter attacking from a distance will likely be key to Ukrainian success.
Artillery has been a critical piece in the Ukrainian resistance thus far in the war, and volunteer units have effectively used commercial and homemade drones to spot Russian positions and walk in accurate artillery strikes on armored columns.
Along with the howitzers and armored vehicles, the U.S. is also sending a new capability. The new package includes 121 Phoenix Ghost drones that can fly for six hours, including at night, spotting Russian positions before being flown into a target where an embedded warhead will detonate. The drones have only been developed and built over the past several months, and the Ukrainian troops about to fly them will be the first ever to put them to use on the battlefield.
“Loitering munitions can be a significant advantage though, and the Ukrainians have proven themselves to be pretty adaptable and creative. They could make a real difference,” Rob Lee, a military analyst and a senior fellow in the Foreign Policy Research Institute’s Eurasia Program, told POLITICO.
Skuratovsky said his soldiers, who have just one quadcopter drone at their position that can be rigged to drop a small grenade, would benefit greatly from receiving the Ghost drones, which would allow them to strike Russian artillery targeting them.
On Friday, France announced it was supplying several Caesar self-propelled howitzers to Ukraine and is now training 40 Ukrainian soldiers in France on how to use the powerful guns mounted on the back of a six-wheeled truck.
The Caesar, which the French have used in Afghanistan and have sold to NATO allies, has a range of 24 to 34 miles, giving Ukrainian forces the ability to lob accurate fire at significant distances. “We stand with the Ukrainian people,” the French defense ministry said in a statement on Friday.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson also suggested Friday that his government is considering a deal that would send British tanks to Poland, if Warsaw decides to send some of its Soviet-era T-72 tanks to Ukraine. Poland would be following the lead of the Czech Republic, which recently supplied some of its own T-72s, which the Ukrainians know how to operate.
The Kremlin has repeatedly threatened to hit the convoys of trucks coming across the Polish border full of weapons, which now include — or are about to include — much larger cargo loads, including cannons, large armored vehicles, and spare parts for Ukrainian MiG fighter planes. Western officials have long been cagey about these shipments, but so far the deliveries have arrived intact, allowing Kyiv to resupply troops along the line of contact.
A senior U.S. Defense Department official estimated this week that “the Ukrainians have more tanks in Ukraine than the Russians do,” given the huge losses Russian armor have taken as a result of Ukrainian artillery and shoulder-fired anti-armor attacks.
The Mariupol resistance
That aid will be welcome, but it may be too late for the Ukrainian troops who have fought for weeks in brutal house-to-house combat in Mariupol, where 11 Russian battalion tactical groups — units of several hundred soldiers backed by tanks, rocket artillery and armed infantry vehicles — have been tied down cornering a fierce resistance.
Maj. Serhiy Volyna, commander of the Ukrainian forces in Mariupol, huddled inside the besieged steel plant, delivered a blunt video message last week about the prospects for his men. Speaking directly into the camera, he delivered a desperate plea for heavy weapons from the West to keep the strategic city from falling to Russia.
“Enemy forces are 10 times bigger than ours,” Volyna said in a video he shared with POLITICO and other media and later posted to his Facebook page. “We are probably facing our last days, if not hours.”
Volyna and his troops of the 36th Separate Marine Brigade have endured two months of fighting and are now stuck inside the underground tunnels and bunkers of the sprawling plant with hundreds of wounded fighters and more than 1,000 desperate civilians. He said if weapons don’t come, then an emergency airlift will be necessary to keep those people from being killed.
“Take us to the territory of a third country,” he pleaded to Western nations. On Thursday, Ukrainian efforts to get Russia to open a “green corridor” and allow the encircled troops and civilians to escape safely fell apart. And Russian President Vladimir Putin told his defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, to blockade the Azovstal plant “so that even a fly can’t get out.”
Keeping that much infantry and armor locked in place inside the city has slowed Russian Gen. Aleksandr Dvornikov’s planned advance in the east. But with the Kremlin now declaring the Mariupol fight a victory, those troops will likely be redirected to push on Ukrainian positions holding the line west and north of the city.
A British intelligence assessment released Friday says that Putin’s decision to blockade the Azovstal steel plant instead of taking it “likely indicates a desire to contain Ukrainian resistance in Mariupol and free up Russian forces to be deployed elsewhere in eastern Ukraine. A full ground assault by Russia on the plant would likely incur significant Russian casualties, further decreasing their overall combat effectiveness.”
A new frontline fight
It’s not clear what the new rounds of heavy weapons heading to Ukraine will have on the fight, or how the Kremlin will react to bigger, more deadly aid flowing in from NATO countries.
“Once again [we are] witnessing that Putin is ready to use military force in order to obtain his geopolitical goals,” one Western diplomat told POLITICO on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive issues.
After months of warning of devastating sanctions if Russian troops crossed the border in Ukraine, allied countries are working to understand where Putin’s ambitions end now that he doesn’t appear to respond to deterrent threats. “Unfortunately, we are in a situation today where a military attack against the NATO countries is not impossible anymore,” the diplomat said.
After weeks of denials that U.S. troops were actively training Ukrainian forces on the new weapons they’ve been receiving, officials have been more upfront about the efforts. A senior DoD official said Wednesday that American service members had begun training outside the country with more than 50 Ukrainian troops on 155mm howitzer artillery systems the Biden administration was providing as part of a recent aid package worth $800 million.
What the West is able to send to Ukraine and how quickly it gets there is likely to be a major factor in whether Ukraine’s motivated and agile military forces are able to free their trapped troops from the strategic city of Mariupol and keep Russian soldiers at bay elsewhere across an increasingly hot eastern front line.
That front snakes its way through a battleground as big as New Jersey, and has become the focus of Moscow’s attentions.
On April 18, Zelenskyy, his military chiefs and regional authorities announced that Russian forces had begun the operation in the east after amassing thousands more troops in the area. The next day, Moscow confirmed it had launched its new offensive operation.
“Another phase of this operation is starting now,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said, using Moscow’s preferred term to describe its invasion of Ukraine.
Two weeks ago, Ukrainian forces armed with anti-tank American Javelin missiles and British NLAWs surprised the world when they forced a Russian retreat in the battle for Kyiv. The Kremlin’s announcement that it would pull back tens of thousands of troops from northern Kyiv and Chernihiv regions to refocus efforts on the Donbas marked a shift in the campaign’s strategic direction, and precipitated the Western effort to supply heavy artillery and spare parts for Ukrainian MiG fighter planes.
But if the Ukrainians had the upper hand in fights that unfolded in densely populated suburbs of the capital, the Russian army — with its deep supply of heavy guns that can be fired at a distance and self-propelled artillery that can move easily and more freely over wide-open fields — has an early advantage in the eastern steppe.
The Donbas region presents a dilemma, however. While open in many places, it is also heavily populated, meaning the Russians will still have to fight through urban terrain akin to that in the north, where Ukrainian forces drove them back with heavy losses.
“I expect Russia will have some success but it will probably be slow and costly. As long as Ukraine doesn’t allow a large chunk of its troops to be encircled, I don’t think Russia can achieve any kind of strategic gains,” Lee said.
Russian victories are starting to mount in these early days of the new operation.
Serhiy Haidai, the governor of the Luhansk region, said Ukrainian forces were forced to pull out of a town near the regional capital of Severodonetsk after weeks of intense Russian bombardments. Haidai pleaded with civilians living closest to the fighting in and around the towns of Popasna and Kreminna to leave, warning them that “Russians are killing everyone who is against them on the spot.”
Olena Symonenko, an aide in Zelenskyy’s administration, said in a television news broadcast on April 21 that 42 towns and villages had been captured by Russian forces during the new offensive.
Russian forces have also managed to take territory near the town of Izyum, which connects to the strategic cities of Slovyansk and Kramatorsk via highway. Terrified residents have fled those cities in recent days following a rocket attack on the Kramatorsk railway station that killed 59 people, including seven children, in one of the deadliest Russian strikes of the past two months.
But Ukraine’s modern army, including the forces that kept the Russians from encircling and seizing Kyiv, was shaped by the eight years of war in the Donbas and years of intensive training with NATO troops across Europe.
So while they might lack the advantages of concealment and surprise they had in close-quarter urban settings in the north, they continue fighting on their home turf, in positions fortified for over nearly a decade, and in a place where they cut their teeth.
Speaking to a Ukrainian member of parliament from inside the Azovstal factory on Sunday, Volyna said he and his troops were in a dire situation but they remained hopeful they might find a way out. He also expressed confidence in their ability to endure Russia’s attacks.
“It’s really difficult to defend yourself with a machine gun against bombers and cruise missiles, assault groups and dozens of tanks,” he said. “But we do it, one way or another.”
‘The race is on’: Britain moves to get heavy artillery to Ukraine
Andrew Chuter – April 25, 2022
Stuart Franklin
LONDON — Britain’s defence secretary says allies must move quickly to supply Ukraine with heavy artillery capable of at least matching Russia.
“The race is on to equip Ukraine with the same long-range capability that Russia has so they are not outranged and indeed pinned down,” Ben Wallace told Parliamentarians April 25.
“The next three weeks are key,” he added. “Ukraine needs more long-range artillery and ammunition, and both Russian and NATO caliber types to accompany them. It also seeks anti-ship missiles to counter Russian ships that are able to bombard Ukrainian cities.”
Analysts, including the International Institute for Strategic Studies think tank here, have for some time acknowledged Russia has a distinct advantage in artillery capabilities.
Wallace denied weekend media reports claiming the government was sending British Army AS90 tracked 155mm howitzers, but did say consideration was being given to dispatching Army 105mm towed light guns to Ukraine.
Responding to questions from lawmakers, Wallace said the main artillery effort initially centered on procuring Russian equipment, but now has extended to highly mobile Western 155mm weapons.
“We first and foremost started with sourcing around the world 152mm Soviet caliber [weapons] so [Ukraine] can keep going with that and, in parallel, exploring with a number of other nations either 105mm, our main lightweight guns, and the 155mm in more mobile versions than the big armored AS90,” he said.
“One of the things this modern battlefield is showing is you had better move quickly once you have fired your guns because you can be found very quickly by pretty cheap off-the-shelf UAVs,” Wallace added.
Canada, France and the U.S. have all agreed recently to arm the Ukrainians with modern towed or truck-mounted howitzer artillery systems.
The Ukrainian defense ministry said Monday it was already receiving 155mm cannons from the U.S. and other partners, and the Financial Times reported the Ukrainians as saying the weapons would “fundamentally” change the course of the war.
Wallace’s howitzer remarks may have some impact at home, as the British are in the early stages of a competition to replace the aging AS90 in a program known as the Mobile Fires Platform.
The competition is likely to put tracked vehicles like Hanwha’s K9A2 , already purchased by Poland, against wheeled rivals like the Boxer 8×8 RCH 155mm weapon.
One industry executive here said an early lesson for the British from Ukraine is that it might be preferable to have a mixed wheeled and tracked fleet to cover a range of terrain and mobility requirements .
Aside from efforts to improve artillery firepower, Wallace detailed the extent of British military supplies to the Ukraine. Included in the list are 5361 NLAW anti-tank missiles — 1,000 delivered last week alone, 200 Javelin missiles, armored logistics vehicles, night vision goggles and anti-air missiles. The British said they had also sourced anti-ship weapons, anti-structure munitions and loitering munitions.
Wallace said the Treasury has agreed to foot the bill to replace weapons sent to the Ukraine, and rebuilding weapons stocks for the British military is already underway.
UPDATE 1-EU, India to set up council to broaden ties amid Ukraine war
April 25, 2022
BRUSSELS/NEW DELHI, April 25 (Reuters) – The European Union (EU) and India agreed on Monday to set up a trade and technology council to step up cooperation between them, the two sides said in a joint statement as the EU chief met government officials in New Delhi.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is on a two-day visit to India’s capital, part of Western efforts to encourage New Delhi to reduce ties to Russia, its main weapons supplier, following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
India has refrained from explicitly condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, while calling for an immediate end to violence. Moscow calls its actions in Ukraine a “special military operation”.
The United States is the only other country that has a technical agreement with the EU similar to the one signed Monday with India.
“Both sides agreed that rapid changes in the geopolitical environment highlight the need for joint in-depth strategic engagement,” the EU-India statement said.
“The Trade and Technology Council will provide the political steer and the necessary structure to operationalise political decisions, coordinate technical work, and report to the political level to ensure implementation and follow-up in areas that are important for the sustainable progress of European and Indian economies.”
Von der Leyen’s visit comes days after British Prime Minister Boris met his Indian counterpart, Narendra Modi, and agreed to increase bilateral defence and business cooperation.
The EU chief is expected to offer to increase sales of European military equipment to India and relaunch talks on a free trade deal when she meets Modi. She has already met Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar.
“Discussed taking forward the #IndiaEU partnership,” Jaishankar said on Twitter. “Also exchanged views on the economic and political implications of the Ukraine conflict.” (Reporting by Jan Strupczewski and Krishna N. Das; Editing by Edmund Klamann)
Blinken on Ukraine war: ‘Russia has already failed’
Sarakshi Rai – April 25, 2022
Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters in Poland on Monday that “when it comes to Russia’s war aims, Russia is failing” and Ukraine is succeeding.
Blinken said that the Kremlin’s main objective was to “subjugate Ukraine” and to take away its sovereignty and its independence. He asserted that the country has failed to achieve those goals.
He added that Russia “sought to assert the power of its military and its economy” but said that international observers “of course are seeing just the opposite.”
Blinken, along with Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, shared their remarks while in Poland after a visit to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv.
Blinken further took a stab at Putin’s leadership and said the world is seeing “a military that is dramatically underperforming; an economy, as a result of sanctions, as a result of a mass exodus from Russia, that is in shambles.”
The secretary also said Russia had failed to divide the West and NATO, instead drawing members closer in unity against Russia. Countries outside NATO such as Sweden and Finland now seem likely to become members.
While Blinken said that how the war will unfold is unclear, he added that “we do know that a sovereign, independent Ukraine will be around a lot longer than Vladimir Putin is on the scene.”
Blinken also told reporters that President Biden will nominate Bridget Brink, currently the U.S. ambassador to Slovakia, to be the next U.S. ambassador to Ukraine.
Russia targeting Western weapons shipments in Ukraine as Donbas assault begins
Paul McLeary and Lara Seligman – April 25, 2022
Vadim Ghirda/AP Photo
Russia is making good on promises to attack U.S. and allied weapons shipment points and fuel depots in Ukraine, launching rockets at five railway facilities used to funnel critical supplies into the country on Monday.
The attacks across western and central Ukraine targeting supply lines and infrastructure come as billions worth of heavy artillery systems, tanks and armored vehicles begin arriving to help Ukraine face off against what is expected to be a full-scale Russian assault in Donbas.
On Monday, the U.S. secretaries of State and Defense huddled with top Ukrainian officials in Kyiv, where they pledged hundreds of millions more in military aid for the coming fight.
“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,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters in Poland Monday. “It had already lost a lot of military capability and a lot of its troops, quite frankly, and we want to see them not have the capability to very quickly reproduce that capability.”
Over the past two weeks, the Pentagon has picked up the pace of its deliveries to the battlefield, rushing in more than $1 billion worth of heavy weaponry and other aid by sea and by air. On Thursday, President Joe Biden approved another $800 million weapons package, including 72 155mm howitzers. By Saturday, those howitzers were already showing up in the country, Austin said Monday.
“That is unimaginable speed,” he said.
Since August 2021, DoD has given Ukraine enough artillery to equip five battalions for potential use in the Donbas, Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said last week. The U.S. military has also begun training several dozen Ukrainian fighters on the new equipment outside of Ukraine, he said.
But in this new phase of the conflict, protecting critical supply lines will be key, experts and former officials say.
“The fight for Donbas will be won or lost primarily on logistics: weapons, equipment and ammunition,” said Mick Mulroy, a former top Pentagon official and retired CIA paramilitary officer and Marine. “There have to be uninterrupted supply lines from the U.S. and NATO.”
Those supply lines have been threatened by Russia since it invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, but until now Moscow hasn’t explicitly acknowledged it acted on these warnings.
Both Russia and Ukraine are rushing to marshal resources and materiel in the Donbas region in Ukraine’s east, and western officials are pushing their governments to provide additional aid to Kyiv for the coming fight.
Ukraine is taking in “a lot of new Western new equipment, maybe more than the Russians have been capable of moving into the country themselves, so the imbalance in equipment that we saw in the early phases of the war is starting to equalize,” said Dmitry Gorenburg, a Russia specialist at nonprofit research institute CNA. But moving tanks and large artillery pieces over the Polish border without attracting Russian attention is more complex than moving truckloads of smaller Javelin and Stinger missiles, which dominated the donations in the early days of the war.
Striking those new, larger shipments, if they come by both rail and road, could prove difficult for Russia over the long run, however. Russia’s pilots remain wary of testing Ukraine’s air defenses and the Kremlin will likely need to start conserving some of its long-range precision weapons.
“[Russia’s] stockpiles aren’t necessarily large” when it comes to weapons such as Kalibr and Iskander precision missiles, Gorenburg said. “They are using them up, and they don’t want to use them all because that would weaken their ability to fight NATO” in the near future.
And so far, Russia has not been effective at disrupting the supply lines, primarily because its military is “not very good at dynamic targeting” — in other words, hitting a moving object rather than a stationary target such as a building, Mulroy said.
The fighting in the coming days and weeks will likely be different from the small-unit clashes seen in the opening weeks of the war, when Ukrainian anti-armor munitions blunted Russian attacks around the capital of Kyiv in close-in urban fighting.
The war in Donbas has already seen longer-range artillery engagements, and the 90 howitzers supplied by the U.S., alongside newly arrived Canadian howitzers and French Caesar mobile 155mm cannon systems on the way will give Ukrainian forces the ability to match — if not outdistance — Russia’s long-range capabilities.
Adding to the inflow of armor, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki confirmed Monday that his country had sent T-72 tanks to Ukraine, following the lead of the Czech Republic, which has sent its own Soviet-era tanks in recent weeks.
While the Russian long-range strikes into western Ukraine are expanding the zone of conflict, Ukrainian helicopters last month also conducted a risky operation into Russia, targeting an oil depot over the border in Belgorod. On Sunday night, several explosions rocked two oil facilities, one commercial and one military, in the Russian city of Bryansk close to the Ukrainian border. Those explosions came after a string of unexplained fires at Russian military research facilities over the past week.
As the fight for Donbas gathers strength, British intelligence assesses that Russia has made minor advances in Ukraine’s east in recent days, and “without sufficient logistical and combat support enablers in place, Russia has yet to achieve a significant breakthrough” U.K. defense attaché Mick Smeath said in a statement Monday.
Britain will also send Ukraine a small number of Stormer armored vehicles fitted with launchers for anti-air missiles, defense chief Ben Wallace announced Monday. This is in addition to a shipment of Challenger 2 tanks that Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced Friday.
Since the conflict began, Russia has lost about 15,000 personnel, over 2,000 armored vehicles, and more than 60 helicopters and fighter jets, according to U.K. Ministry of Defence estimates, Wallace said. Over 25 percent of the battalion tactical groups Russian committed to the fight have been “rendered not combat effective,” he added.
“Russia has so far failed in nearly every one of its objectives,” Wallace said. “These next three weeks are key.”
“Russia is trying to dredge up anti-ship and AA missiles from the sunken Moskva, along with classified documents and military equipment,” Bild’s message said.
Given the size of Moskva (the ship was 187 meters long), the ancient 110-year-old Commune will probably not be able to salvage the cruiser whole.
On April 13, Ukraine’s Navy hit the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, missile cruiser Moskva, with two Ukrainian-made Neptune anti-ship missiles, fired from a coastal battery. Russia later confirmed the ship has sunk after its ammunition detonated.
‘We are capable of winning,’ says Ukrainian parliament member
Kelly Livingston – April 24, 2022, 10:34 AM
As the people of Ukraine continue to defend against a Russian onslaught, Yevheniia Kravchuk, a member of the Ukrainian parliament, says the nation is still looking for three main things from the United States: heavy weapons, sanctions on Russia and financial aid.
“We are capable of winning and we are capable of kicking Russians out.”
“We need more weapons… Because right now Russians are putting artillery, tanks, everything they have, and also they bombed civilians to terrorize the whole country,” Kravchuk told “This Week” Co-Anchor Martha Raddatz. “As long as we’re getting more than we burn every day, we are capable of winning and we’re capable of kicking Russians out because that’s the way how to end this — to end this war.”
Last week, President Joe Biden announced another $800 million to aid Ukrainian military efforts in the Donbas region and said he will send a supplemental budget request to Congress to keep supporting the nation. The new aid includes artillery weapons, anti-air missiles and helicopters.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen also announced Thursday the department would provide an additional $500 million in financial aid.
Kravchuk, a member of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s party in the nation’s parliament, said it’s important that the U.S. provide the offensive weapons “because it’s sort of a green light to other countries in Europe, for example, to give these weapons as well.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin said last week that Russia had taken the eastern city of Mariupol, a claim Ukrainians have pushed back on with 2,000 Ukrainian soldiers holed up in a steel plant as they continue to fight.
There have also been reports of 120,000 civilians still trapped in the besieged city.
Last week, just four buses and a few private vehicles were able to escape the city — the first to leave in about two weeks.
“Is there any chance for [a] humanitarian corridor at this point?” Raddatz asked.
“Yesterday Russians did not let the humanitarian corridor to work,” Kravchuk said. “Hundreds of people were gathered at one point to go out of Mariupol and Russian soldiers just came and said no, we’re not allowing this to happen.”
She said Russian soldiers are making “forcible deportations” out of Ukraine to Vladivostok, a Russian city thousands of miles away.
“They’re trying to make forcible deportations to Russian territory from Mariupol…It’s sort of something that can’t be happening in the 21st century," Ukrainian Parliament member Yevheniia Kravchuk tells @MarthaRaddatz. https://t.co/Ilk5doBFrVpic.twitter.com/DGIeHJ8eIi
“And we do not know how to bring them back to Ukraine. They have pulled these people from Mariupol — they are put to filtration camps,” Kravchuk said. “It’s sort of something that can’t be happening in the 21st Century. And we really hope that maybe with help of other Western leaders, other leaders of similar worlds, we will be able to take out the kids and women who are still in the basements of this factory and inside of Mariupol.”
Zelenskyy has announced that U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin will arrive in Kyiv on Sunday to discuss the logistics of providing more military assistance. U.S. officials have yet to confirm the visit.
Asked by Raddatz about the significance of that visit, Kravchuk called it “a really, really symbolical and powerful signal to Russia that Ukraine will not be left alone with this war.”
As Mariupol is destroyed, NATO must make it clear to Putin that he will not win.
WesleyK. Clark – April 24, 2022
On the Good Friday of the Ukrainian Orthodox Easter, the heroic Ukrainian defenders of the besieged city of Mariupol, named for the Virgin Mary, have defeated eight weeks of repeated Russian attempts to seize and clear the city.
They have braved incredible hardship, fierce bombardment and repeated assaults. They have fought for their nationhood, their families, their lives and their future, as the city around them was destroyed.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has now decided to declare “victory,” and leave the thousands of defenders and 100,000 civilians to be isolated and starved. This ongoing battle for the city carries enormous significance both for Ukraine and the West.
Russia is sending a message to the West
If the city were to fall, Russia would have full control of the Ukrainian seacoast from Rostov in the east along the shores of the Sea of Azov and then on to the outskirts of Odesa. This would clear the path for easier logistics support for Russian forces in the south and further degrade Ukrainian efforts to defend Odesa.
Smoke rises from a plant in Mariupol after a Russian attack.
The brave Ukrainian resistance cannot be maintained indefinitely in the absence of food, water and replenishment of ammunition, so the clock is ticking. Meanwhile, a substantial number of Russian forces are being freed up to move north, reinforcing Russian efforts to encircle and annihilate Ukrainian forces holding back the main Russian effort in Donbas.
The implications of the battle of Mariupol for both Russia and Ukraine are operationally significant, and for Ukraine the battle and 100,000 innocent lives hang in the balance.
At the strategic level, Russia is also sending a message to Ukraine and the West: Whatever the problems in the north around Kyiv, Russia will use the means necessary, and suffer the losses required, to attain its objectives in Ukraine. A city of more than 400,000 has been deliberately erased through heavy and indiscriminate use of firepower and total disregard of international law and humanitarian conventions.
The theater damaged during fighting in Mariupol in April 2022.
Here are some larger efforts that failed thus far to stop the war and save the city: United Nations General Assembly votes to condemn Russia, multiple investigations of potential Russian war crimes, and heavy and escalating economic sanctions on Russia.
Not even Russia’s initial failures around Kyiv, poor Russian morale in some units, Russian intelligence failures, visits by Western leaders to Kyiv and appeals to Putin himself have persuaded the Russian leader to negotiate an end the conflict and release his nation’s grip on Mariupol.
The messages to the West should be clear. First, the outcome in Ukraine will be determined largely by “the facts on the ground.” Modulating Western military assistance to suit Putin flirts with strategic failure. Ukraine must be given the armaments necessary not only to resist but actually to defeat the Russian invasion, or there will be more Mariupols.
Second, despite escalating sanctions, time is not always on the side of Ukraine and the West – Putin has shown a Stalinesque capacity to shrug off defeats and disloyalty, while Ukraine’s fierce spirit of resistance is under daily assault. Russian losses around Kyiv have not prevented Putin from throwing more forces into the battles in Donbas.
Russia’s war industries are far more robust, particularly with the prospect of covert Chinese support, than Ukraine’s and are operating from sanctuary, while Russia is tightening down Ukraine’s lifelines to the West.
And as the West has escalated sanctions, with increasing difficulty, Putin has ramped up his threats against the West. These threats have deterred the West from providing Ukraine sufficient, timely military support to compel Russia to negotiate.
In fact, Western worries and warnings about Putin’s red lines – and the possibility that he will escalate to the use of nuclear weapons – have fed into Putin’s sophisticated psychological campaign against NATO and the United States, rather than rallying opposition to Russia and Putin’s aims.
Third, the West’s ambivalence in responding to Russian threats is weakening American credibility on a global scale, as leaders in the Middle East, Asia and Africa hedge their bets on the outcome of the struggle in Ukraine, refusing to assist and support the United States.
Never forget that Putin’s initial, announced aims went beyond Ukraine to roll back NATO membership for Eastern Europe, and by doing so set the conditions for NATO’s eventual collapse. And with that would go seven decades of American leadership in Europe – weakening our ability to manage peacefully the ascent of China.
NATO’s self-imposed red lines against support to Ukraine contradict almost 30 years of NATO leadership in providing regional stability to Europe. This is eroding confidence in NATO itself – and the world sees this.
Make no mistake: The West is not yet winning against Putin’s attack on NATO and the rules-based international order.
The destruction of Mariupol was not inevitable. With adequate armor and artillery, Ukraine could have attacked and broken the siege; with more air power, Ukraine could have blown apart and run off the besieging Russian forces; with more detailed and timely U.S.-provided intelligence, Ukraine could have used its relatively meager military resources more effectively.
Russian military vehicles near Mariupol, Ukraine, on April 18, 2022.
The overriding lesson is that Western policy, led by the United States, must be more proactive than reactionary, and more grounded in shorter-term military than in longer-term economic measures.
If we seek the surest and most rapid end to this tragic struggle at the negotiating table, now is the time to tell Putin, “You will not win,” and to provide Ukraine the means to relieve the siege of Mariupol and make Putin’s military defeat in Ukraine a reality.
Retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark is a former NATO Supreme Allied Commander, Europe and a Senior Fellow at the UCLA Burkle Center.
A superyacht’s crew prepared fresh lobster for its wealthy owner every day despite not knowing if he was on board, worker says
Zahra Tayeb – April 24, 2022
A superyacht worker wrote about their 20-year career in The Times of London.
They said one superyacht owner enjoyed dining on fresh lobster whenever he was on board.
His crew prepared the dish every day despite not knowing if he was on board, the worker said.
An anonymous worker who spent 20 years in the superyacht industry has recounted eyebrow-raising tales to The Times of London.
Among other things, they described how one wealthy yacht owner liked to eat fresh lobster whenever he was on board. However, his crew were never given any advance warning of when he would show up, so they prepared it every day, just in case, the worker said.
One superyacht was covered entirely in emerald-green snakeskin, while the bar stools aboard another vessel belonging to late Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis were made from whale foreskin, the worker told The Times.
Tales of life aboard superyachts, particularly wealthy Russians’ vessels, have emerged in recent weeks amid the war with Ukraine. Western sanctions on Russia have in part targeted wealthy Russians and their luxury assets, including their yachts and private jets.
Many superyachts have ostentatious designs due to their owners’ lavish tastes. Recently, a superyacht craftsman told the Financial Times that his wealthy Russian clients requested interior designs with rare tropical wood and expensive leathers.
A superyacht captain who worked at sea for 15 years told The Guardian that wealthy Russians used to make their employees aboard take lie-detector tests to prove they’d kept information about the ship secret. The captain said prospective employees had to sign non-disclosure agreements to secure interviews for jobs on board.
