Author: John Hanno

Business Insider

Ukraine now has more tanks on the ground than Russia does, US defense official says

Sophia Ankel – April 22, 2022

• Western allies are sending heavier weaponry to Ukraine as Russia launches a new offensive.
• A US defense official told The Washington Post that Ukraine now has more tanks than Russia does.
• Russia is still feeling the losses it sustained earlier in the conflict, UK intelligence said.

Ukraine now has more tanks on the ground than Russia does, a senior US defense official told The Washington Post.

“Right now, the Ukrainians have more tanks in Ukraine than the Russians do … and they certainly have the purview to use them,” the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told The Post.

Insider was unable to independently verify this claim, and it is unclear exactly how many tanks both Russia and Ukraine have eight weeks into the war.

But the report comes as Western nations pledged to dispatch more heavy weaponry to Ukraine to help it defend itself against a renewed Russian offensive in the eastern Donbas region.

On Thursday, President Joe Biden announced an additional $800 million military aid package that will equip Ukraine with heavy artillery, howitzers, and tactical drones. The first such package, announced on April 13, included hundreds of armored vehicles and Mi-17 helicopters.

Earlier this month, a Pentagon official told The New York Times that the US will help with the transfer of Soviet-made tanks to the Donbas. The official declined to say how many tanks would be sent, or from which countries they would come.

European countries have also said they will provide heavy-duty weapons to Ukraine, including tanks.

In total, Ukraine’s allies have sent more than $3 billion in military aid since Russia’s invasion on February 24, the BBC reported.

On top of this, Russian troops are still losing military equipment.

Ukraine’s armed forces said Friday that Russian troops had lost more than 800 tanks and more than 2,000 combat armored machines since the start of its invasion on February 24.

An intelligence briefing published by the British Ministry of Defence on Friday said that “despite Russia’s renewed focus [in Donbas], they are still suffering from losses sustained earlier in the conflict.”

“In order to try and reconstitute their depleted forces, they have resorted to transiting inoperable equipment back to Russia for repair,” the briefing said.

Ukrainian President Zelenskyy has been asking allies for months to send over weapons. In a speech on Tuesday, he said Ukraine would have already beaten Russia if it had been given more war supplies.

UN rights chief sees ‘horror story’ of violations in Ukraine

April 22, 2022

FILE – Michelle Bachelet, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, speaks to the media about the Tigray region of Ethiopia during a press conference at the European headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, Nov. 3, 2021. The United Nations’ human rights office on Friday, April 21, 2022 set out what it said is growing evidence of war crimes since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, declaring that international humanitarian law appears to have been “tossed aside.” Michelle Bachelet said that “our work to date has detailed a horror story of violations perpetrated against civilians.”(Martial Trezzini/Keystone via AP, File)

BERLIN (AP) — The United Nations’ human rights office on Friday pointed to what it said is growing evidence of war crimes since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, declaring that humanitarian law appears to have been “tossed aside.”

Michelle Bachelet, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, said that “our work to date has detailed a horror story of violations perpetrated against civilians.”

Her office’s mission in Ukraine so far has verified 5,264 civilian casualties, including 2,345 deaths, since the war began on Feb. 24. It said that 92.3% of those were recorded in Ukrainian government-controlled territory. The office uses strict methodology and has long acknowledged that its confirmed figures are far short of the real numbers.

“The actual numbers are going to be much higher” as more details emerge from places such as Mariupol where there is intense fighting, Bachelet said.

“Over these eight weeks, international humanitarian law has not merely been ignored but seemingly tossed aside,” she added.

Her office said in a statement that “Russian armed forces have indiscriminately shelled and bombed populated areas, killing civilians and wrecking hospitals, schools and other civilian infrastructure — actions that may amount to war crimes.” It added that the U.N. mission also has “documented what appears to be the use of weapons with indiscriminate effects, causing civilian casualties and damage to civilian objects, by Ukrainian armed forces in the east of the country.”

Bachelet said that “the scale of summary executions of civilians in areas previously occupied by Russian forces” is emerging.

On April 9, U.N. human rights officers visiting Bucha documented the unlawful killing, including by summary execution, of some 50 civilians, her office said. The U.N. mission has received more than 300 allegations of killings of civilians in previously occupied towns in the Kyiv, Chernihiv, Kharkiv and Sumy regions.

Russian officials have denied that their soldiers killed any civilians in Bucha and other towns around Kyiv from which they retreated three weeks ago, and accused Ukraine of staging the atrocities.

The U.N. rights office said its mission also has recorded 114 attacks on medical facilities “although the actual figure is likely to be considerably higher.”

“We estimate that at least 3,000 civilians have died because they couldn’t get medical care and because of the stress on their health amid the hostilities,” Bachelet said. “This includes being forced by Russian armed forces to stay in basements or not being allowed to leave their homes for days or weeks.”

The U.N. mission so far has received 75 allegations of sexual violence against women, men, girls and boys by Russian soldiers, most in the Kyiv region. The human rights office said detention of civilians “has become a widespread practice” in areas controlled by Russian forces and affiliated groups, with 155 such cases reported so far.

It said it also received information about “alleged arbitrary and incommunicado detentions” by Ukrainian forces or people aligned with them. And it pointed to videos put out by both sides apparently showing the intimidation, interrogation, torture or killing of prisoners of war.

Reuters

Russia renews Mariupol attack, missiles hit Odesa, Ukraine says

Pavel Polityuk and Natalia Zinets – April 22, 2022

KYIV (Reuters) -Russia resumed its assault on the last Ukrainian defenders holed up in a giant steel works in Mariupol on Saturday, days after Moscow declared victory in the southern city and said its forces did not need to take the plant.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the country’s army was not ready to try to break through the siege of the port city. But he said America’s top diplomat, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin would visit Kyiv on Sunday and discuss the types of weapons Ukraine needs to battle the Russian invasion.

“As soon as we have (more weapons), as soon as there are enough of them, believe me, we will immediately retake this or that territory, which is temporarily occupied,” Zelenskiy told an evening news conference in the Kyiv metro.

U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration has not confirmed any travel plans for Blinken and Austin. The State Department and Pentagon declined comment.

The attack on Mariupol, the biggest battle of the conflict, has raged for weeks as Russia seeks to capture a city seen as vital to its attempts to link the eastern Donbas region with Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula Moscow seized in 2014.

Moscow-backed separatists have held territory in the Donbas region for years.

In the Black Sea port city of Odesa, at least eight people were killed, Zelenskiy said. Two missiles struck a military facility and two residential buildings and two more were destroyed on Saturday, the Ukrainian armed forces said.

The death toll could not be independently verified. The last big strike on or near Odesa was in early April.

‘MISSILE TERROR’

Zelenskiy said Russia had already fired most of its missile arsenal at Ukraine.

“Of course, they still have missiles left. Of course, they can still continue the missile terror against our people,” he said in a video address later on Saturday.

“But what they have already done is a powerful enough argument for the world to finally recognize Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism and the Russian army as a terrorist organization,” he said.

Russia has denied targeting civilians in its “special military operation” that began on Feb. 24.

The Russian defence ministry said it used high-precision missiles to destroy a logistics terminal in Odesa containing weapons supplied by the United States and European nations.

It also said Russian forces had killed up to 200 Ukrainian troops and destroyed more than 30 vehicles on Saturday.

Russian General Rustam Minnekayev on Friday said Moscow wanted control of the whole of southern Ukraine, comments Ukraine said indicated Russia had wider goals than its declared aim of demilitarising and “denazifying” the country. Kyiv and the West call the invasion an unjustified war of aggression.

Russian forces have besieged and bombarded Mariupol for weeks, leaving in ruins a city usually home to more than 400,000 people. A new attempt to evacuate civilians failed on Saturday, an aide to Mariupol’s mayor said.

Russia’s defence ministry on Friday said Mariupol’s last fighters had been “securely blockaded” at the steel plant. On Thursday, President Vladimir Putin had declared the city “liberated,” declaring that troops would not storm Azovstal.

Oleksiy Arestovych, a political adviser to Zelenskiy, said Ukrainian troops in the steel complex were holding out and attempting counterattacks. More than 1,000 civilians are also in the plant, according to Ukrainian authorities.

‘I WANT TO SEE THE SUN’

The Azov battalion, a nationalist militia prominent in the defence of Mariupol, released a video it said showed women and children sheltering in the complex. Reuters could not independently verify where or when the video was shot.

One woman holding a young child said food was running out, while an unnamed boy in the video said he was desperate to get out after two months in the bunker.

“I want to see the sun because in here it’s dim, not like outside. When our houses are rebuilt we can live in peace. Let Ukraine win because Ukraine is our native home,” he said.

Ukraine estimates tens of thousands of civilians have been killed in Mariupol and says 100,000 civilians are still there. The United Nations and Red Cross say the civilian toll is at least in the thousands.

Russia’s current offensive is focused on the Donbas, which includes the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

Luhansk Governor Serhiy Gaidai said Ukrainian forces were pulling back to preserve their units in the face of an intensifying barrage on all cities in the region.

Ukrainian forces fighting in Luhansk and Donetsk said in a Facebook post they had repelled 12 Russian attacks on Saturday, destroying four tanks and 16 other armoured vehicles as well as five artillery systems.

Reuters could not independently verify that statement.

Three people were killed and seven were wounded by Russian shelling in the eastern region of Kharkiv on Saturday, the region’s governor said.

The governor of a Russian border region said on Saturday that Ukraine had shelled a crossing point on Russia’s territory, causing a fire but no casualties. It was not immediately possible to confirm details or assess responsibility.

Russia said it had shot down a Ukrainian fighter jet and destroyed three Ukrainian helicopters at an airfield in Kharkiv.

There was no immediate comment from Ukraine on the Russian assertion. The Ukrainian military said on Saturday it had destroyed 177 Russian aircraft and 154 helicopters since the start of the war. Reuters could not verify the figures.

(Additional reporting by Maria Starkova, Natalia Zinets, Alessandra Prentice and other Reuters journalists; Writing by Angus McDowall, Emma Thomasson and Patricia Zengerle, Editing by William Mallard, Frances Kerry, Timothy Heritage, Paul Simao and Daniel Wallis)

Associated Press

Ukraine: Russians shift elite units to the new battleground

By David Keyton and Yesica Fisch – April 22, 2022

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia shifted a dozen crack military units from the shattered port of Mariupol to eastern Ukraine and pounded away at cities across the region, Ukrainian authorities said Friday, as the two sides hurtled toward what could be an epic battle for control of the country’s industrial heartland.

Meanwhile, Russia reported that one serviceman was killed and 27 others were left missing after the fire on board the warship Moskva, which sank a week ago following what the Ukrainians boasted was a missile attack. Moscow previously reported everyone aboard had been rescued.

The Russian Defense Ministry did not acknowledge an attack on the ship. It continued to say a fire broke out after ammunition detonated, without explaining how that happened. The loss of the guided missile cruiser — the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea fleet — was a humiliating setback for Moscow.

In Mariupol, reduced largely to smoking rubble by weeks of bombardment, Russian state TV showed the flag of the pro-Moscow Donetsk separatists raised on what it said was the city’s highest point, its TV tower. It also showed what it said was the main building at Mariupol’s besieged Azovstal steel plant in flames.

The Kremlin has thrown over 100,000 troops and mercenaries from Syria and Libya into the fight in Ukraine and is deploying more forces in the country every day, said Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council.

“We have a difficult situation, but our army is defending our state,” he said.

Numerous cities and villages came under bombardment in the Donbas — the industrial region in the east that the Kremlin has declared the new, main theater of war — as well as in the Kharkiv region just to the west, and in the south, authorities said.

Russian forces pummeled an estimated 2,000 Ukrainian fighters holed up inside the sprawling Azovstal plant, the last known pocket of resistance in the strategic southern port city, the mayor’s office reported.

“Every day they drop several bombs on Azovstal,” said Petro Andryushchenko, an adviser to Mariupol’s mayor. “Fighting, shelling, bombing do not stop.”

A day earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared victory in the battle for Mariupol despite the steel-mill holdouts. He ordered his forces not to storm the plant to finish off the defenders but to seal it off instead in an apparent bid to force them to surrender.

Mariupol has taken on outsize importance in the war. Capturing it would deprive the Ukrainians of a vital port and complete a land corridor between Russia and the Crimean Peninsula, which Putin seized from Ukraine in 2014.

It would also allow Putin to throw more of his forces into the potentially climactic battle for the Donbas and its coal mines, factories and other industries, or what the Kremlin has now declared to be its main objective.

Danilov reported that some 12 to 14 of Russia’s elite military units have, in fact, left Mariupol and begun moving to the east to take part in the fighting there.

“It will now be difficult for our forces, because our guys in Mariupol were taking (those units) on themselves. It is their courage and feat,” he said.

Danilov also said Kyiv managed to deliver weapons via helicopter at great risk under cover of night to the Mariupol steelworks, which have been bombarded for weeks.

Putin said Russia gave Ukrainian forces inside the plant the option to surrender, with guarantees to keep them alive, and offered “decent treatment and medical care,” according to an account of a phone call with European Council President Charles Michel, provided by the Kremlin.

“But the Kyiv regime does not allow them to take this opportunity,” Putin charged.

More than 100,000 people — down from a prewar population of about 430,000 — are believed trapped in Mariupol with little food, water or heat, and over 20,000 civilians have been killed in the nearly two-month siege, according to Ukrainian authorities.

Most attempts to evacuate civilians from the city have failed because of what the Ukrainians said was continued Russian shelling.

Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said no humanitarian corridors for civilian evacuations would be open in Ukraine on Friday because it was too dangerous. She urged civilians to “be patient” and “hang in there.”

Days into the Russian offensive to take the east, the campaign has yet to become a full-out assault, with military analysts saying Moscow’s forces are still ramping up and have not achieved any major breakthroughs in the Donbas or gained any significant ground.

But shelling attacks killed three civilians in a small town and two villages Friday in the Donetsk region, which is part of the Donbas, the regional governor, Pavlo Kyrylenko, posted on a messaging app. Kyrylenko said the Russians opened fire on at least 20 of the region’s settlements.

In other developments, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said talks between the two countries have “ground to a halt” because Moscow hasn’t received a response from Kyiv to its latest proposals, the details of which have not been released.

Putin’s lead negotiator at the talks, Vladimir Medinsky, said he held several lengthy conversations Friday with the head of the Ukrainian delegation. He gave no details.

Also, Rustam Minnekayev, a senior Russian military official, publicly outlined Russian war aims that appeared to be wider than what the Kremlin has stated in recent weeks. He said Russia’s forces aim to take full control of not just eastern Ukraine but southern too.

He said such a move would open the way to the nation of Moldova, where Russia backs the breakaway region of Transnistria. Moldovan officials are warily watching Putin’s actions in Ukraine.

In his nightly video address, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned: “The Russian invasion of Ukraine was assumed to be just the beginning; further, they want to grab other countries.”

Zelenskyy adviser Mykhailo Podolyak added that Russia “was always lying to everyone and that, in fact from the very beginning, it wanted stupidly to steal some of Ukraine’s territory to secure an outlet to Transnistria.”

Satellite photos released Friday by Maxar Technologies revealed what appeared to be a second mass grave site excavated recently near Mariupol. The site at a cemetery in the town of Vynohradne has several newly dug parallel trenches measuring about 40 meters (131 feet) long, Maxar said in a statement.

A day earlier, Maxar made public satellite photos of what appeared to be rows upon rows of more than 200 freshly dug mass graves next to a cemetery in the town of Manhush, outside Mariupol. That prompted Ukrainian accusations that the Russians are trying to conceal the slaughter of civilians in the city.

“This confirms again that the occupiers arrange the collection, burial and cremation of dead residents in every district of the city,” Andryushchenko said on the Telegram messaging app.

The Ukrainians estimated that the graves seen in the photos released on Thursday could hold 9,000 bodies.

The Kremlin did not respond to the satellite pictures.

The U.N. Human Rights office again condemned the Russian invasion.

“Over these eight weeks, international humanitarian law has not merely been ignored but seemingly tossed aside,” U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said.

___

Fisch reported from Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine. Associated Press journalists Mstyslav Chernov and Felipe Dana in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Yuras Karmanau in Lviv, Inna Varenytsia in Kviv and Robert Burns and Aamer Madhani in Washington contributed to this report, as did other AP staff members around the world.

CNBC News

How Ukraine’s mud became a secret weapon in its defense against Russia

Holly Ellyatt – April 21, 2022

• When Russia invaded Ukraine in February, its military commanders were widely seen to have discounted one very unconventional but effective weapon in Ukraine’s arsenal.
• The timing of Russia’s invasion, which began on Feb. 24, coincided with what is known locally as the “muddy road season,” or “Rasputitsa” in Russian.
• Mud can make Ukraine’s terrain and unpaved roads virtually unpassable.

A member of the Ukrainian Territorial Defense Forces stands on a damaged Russian tank on the outskirts of Nova Basan village in Ukraine on April 01, 2022. Russia’s invasion on Feb. 24 coincided with what’s known locally as the “muddy road season,” or “Rasputitsa” in Russian.Anadolu Agency | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images

When Russia invaded Ukraine in February, its military commanders were widely seen to have discounted one very unconventional but effective “weapon” in Ukraine’s arsenal: its infamous muddy season.

The timing of Russia’s invasion, which began on Feb. 24, coincided with what is known locally as the “muddy road season,” or “Rasputitsa” in Russian. It’s a phenomenon that takes place twice a year, first in spring — when the winter freeze subsides and the country’s terrain and unpaved roads become virtually unpassable as they turn to mud — and then in the fall, when there can be heavy rain.

The mud is seen by military experts to have helped to slow Russia’s advance in parts of the country, particularly the north. Images and video circulating online have shown Russian tanks, trucks and other armored vehicles stuck and abandoned on muddy roads or fields in Ukraine.

That’s prompted some disbelief among Russia analysts and military experts, who said Russia’s military commanders should have been better prepared for conditions on the ground, and able to avoid the quagmire caused by Ukraine’s muddy spring terrain.

It’s a phenomenon familiar in the history books: Napoleon Bonaparte’s invasion of Russia in 1812 was famously slowed by the mud, as were Hitler’s armies, which invaded the then-Soviet Union in 1941 and encountered the same logistical problems posed by the mud and inhospitable terrain that Russian troops have faced in the last few weeks.

A photo taken in the spring of 1942 of German army vehicles on muddy terrain in Ukraine, then a part of the Soviet Union.Ullstein Bild | Ullstein Bild | Getty Images

Russia’s military should’ve known better what conditions their forces would face, experts said.

“Ukrainian mud and what is known in Russian as ‘rasputitsa’ is the period after the winter where you get impassable roads … this has been known about for hundreds of years, literally Napoleon had this problem. So yes, it is a tactical feature that is advantageous for the Ukrainians and it was particularly important in the north where it is a lot more wooded,” Maximilian Hess, fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, told CNBC.

It was initially believed that Russia would achieve a quick victory in Ukraine. But the country faced strong resistance from Ukrainian forces, which Western allies have helped to equip with weaponry.

Prior to the invasion, Russia had amassed over 100,000 troops along its border with Ukraine and had carried out military drills with its ally Belarus, which lies to the north of Ukraine. But Moscow had insisted repeatedly that it had no plans to invade.

Russian and Belarusian armed forces conduct joint military drills on Feb. 12, 2022. Despite such military exercises ahead of the invasion, military analysts have said the first phase of the war showed a lack of planning, preparedness and tactical skill among Russia’s military command and soldiers, many of whom are conscripts.Anadolu Agency | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images

Despite the military exercises ahead of the invasion, military analysts have said the first phase of the war — which has seen Russia gain ground in the south and east of the country but fail to make strides in the north, with its forces now pulled back and concentrating on eastern Ukraine — showed a lack of planning, preparedness and tactical skill among its military command and soldiers, many of whom are conscripts.

Hess said just Russia’s inability to deal with Ukraine’s muddy season “shows real issues with the professionalism of the military.”

“It raises real questions for me … the Russians have been doing these [military] drills and practicing this foreign invasion for almost a decade now and they still didn’t think, or didn’t have enough coordination, to put the right units in the right places, and to move in the right way to best deal with something [the mud] that has literally been known to be a problem for 300 years.”

U.S. intelligence suggested that Russia had wished to invade Ukraine earlier in the year but had postponed its offensive at the behest of China so it would not overshadow the Beijing Winter Olympics that ended on Feb. 20.

Ukrainian soldiers examine a seized Russian tank at a woodland in Irpin, Ukraine, on April 01, 2022.Anadolu Agency | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images

Sam Cranny-Evans, a research analyst at the U.K. defense think tank RUSI, told CNBC that most of Russia’s military vehicles would have been able to cope with the mud in Ukraine, but problems had arisen from multiple vehicles using the same tracks, a foreseeable problem for any military commander with a basic understanding of “terramechanics” — or “the interaction of soil with off road vehicles.”

“A lot of their vehicles would be fine moving through mud, providing that they didn’t repeatedly drive through the same track,” he said.

“But I would argue that other things have limited their maneuver more in terms of their reliance on railheads and roads for their logistics,” he said, adding that the size of Ukraine also posed an extra challenge to Russia’s war machine, particularly for units farther away from Russia, such as those in northern Ukraine.

Many of these units have since beaten a tactical retreat to focus on eastern and southern regions, where the second phase of the war is currently playing out in the Donbas and along the Black Sea.

Another Russian army tank recaptured by the Ukrainian army Borodyanka city near Kyiv, Ukraine, in early April.Nurphoto | Nurphoto | Getty Images

The New York Times

He Was a Penniless Donor to the Far Right. He Was Also a Russian Spy.

Andrew Higgins – April 21, 2022

KOSICE, Slovakia — He lived with his sick mother and never had a regular job. He had no obvious source of income and, according to his uncle, even signed up for welfare benefits as a caregiver deserving of state support.

But Bohus Garbar, down on his luck and in his early 50s, still managed to donate thousands of euros to Kremlin-friendly, far-right political parties in Slovakia. He also worked for free as a contributor to an anti-establishment website notorious for recycling Russian propaganda.

Family and friends are mystified.

“He definitely wasn’t in a state where he could support any political party,” said Garbar’s uncle, Bohuslav Garbar, a retired computer programmer in the family’s hometown of Kosice, 50 miles from Slovakia’s eastern border with Ukraine.- ADVERTISEMENT -https://s.yimg.com/rq/darla/4-10-1/html/r-sf-flx.html

A Slovak security service surveillance video, made public in early March, provides at least the start of an explanation: It shows his nephew receiving instructions and two 500-euro bills, a small part of what officials say were tens of thousands of euros in payments, from a Russian military intelligence officer masquerading as a diplomat at Moscow’s embassy in Bratislava, the Slovak capital.

“I told Moscow that you are such a good boy,” the Russian spy, Sergei Solomasov, can be heard telling his Slovak recruit before explaining that Moscow would like Bohus Garbar to act as a “hunter” on the prowl for people of influence willing to cooperate with Russia.

For years, European intelligence agencies have sounded the alarm over the clandestine activities of Russian spies, while regarding with suspicion those who cheerlead for Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin. Moscow routinely dismissed this as paranoid “Russophobia,” its catchall response to nearly all foreign criticism.

The invasion of Ukraine, accompanied by a barrage of transparent lies, however, has vindicated the darkest Western suspicions and accelerated efforts to uproot hidden networks of spies and their recruits.

Slovakia, a small Slavic nation with a strongly pro-Western government but also large reserves of genuine, homegrown sympathy for Russia, shows in microcosm how the Kremlin has sought to win influence and sow discord on Europe’s formerly communist eastern fringe by leveraging spies, paid helpers, far-right nationalists and disinformation-spouting media.

“We always suspected this was happening, but now we have a smoking gun,” said Daniel Milo, director of a Slovakian Interior Ministry unit responsible for monitoring and countering disinformation. “This is a clear example of how the Russians operate.”

Garbar, he added, “is just the tip of the iceberg. We don’t know yet how many other Garbars are out there running around.”

The video of Garbar’s rendezvous with Solomasov, the Russian spy, was recorded last year by Slovakia’s military intelligence agency as part of a long investigation. Solomasov was expelled early last month, among more than 30 Russian diplomats recently sent home from Bratislava, as well as scores more from other European capitals.

Garbar, arrested and charged with espionage and bribe-taking, has been released from detention pending his trial. The former vice-rector of Slovakia’s military academy was also charged with betraying his country to Russia for money.

Officials say both have confessed and are now cooperating with investigators.

“They are talking and talking and talking, and this has to make the Russian network in Slovakia very nervous,” Slovakian Defense Minister Jaroslav Nad said.

Russia has not commented on Garbar’s liaison with Russian military intelligence, but it called the expulsion of Solomasov “groundless.”

Russia’s push for influence, officials say, kicked into high gear after its 2014 annexation of Crimea and initial invasion of eastern Ukraine, generating a flood of Russian disinformation in Slovakia and across the region. Friendly outlets routinely portray Russia as a champion of peace and lodestar of Christian values, while casting NATO as a warmongering menace.

Helping this push in Slovakia and neighboring countries was Alexander Usovsky, a freelance Russian nationalist agitator who received funding from Konstantin Malofeev, a wealthy private businessman in Moscow whom the U.S. Treasury on Wednesday named as the leader of a “malign influence network” working to undermine sanctions.

Usovsky set up the East European Cultural Initiative in Bratislava and various websites across East and Central Europe to rally support for Russia and its seizure of Crimea. His privately funded ventures, unlike Garbar’s operations, gave the Russian state plausible deniability but fizzled when money from Malofeev ran out.

In a survey released last year by Globsec, a Bratislava research group, more than half of those surveyed in Slovakia said they viewed Putin positively, compared with 12% in neighboring Poland and 13% in Lithuania.

If an unlikely enabler, Garber proved a valuable conduit who donated large sums of money to nationalist parties enamored with Moscow. One beneficiary was ultranationalist politician Marian Kotleba, who was given a six-month suspended jail sentence this month and stripped of his seat in Parliament for using Nazi-themed symbols.

After winning election as a regional governor in 2013, Kotleba put up a banner outside his office: “Yankees go home! STOP NATO!”

Official records show that Garbar donated 10,000 euros (about $10,850) to Kotleba’s xenophobic party before parliamentary elections in 2016, making him its second biggest donor. Kotleba’s campaign slogans for that election included “For Slavic brotherhood, against a war with Russia!” In 2018, Garbar donated a further 4,500 euros (about $4,880) to one of Kotleba’s pro-Russian partner parties.

Investigators have also examined Garbar’s work as an unpaid contributor and translator for Hlavne Spravy, or Main News. Slovak authorities shut down the website, which calls itself a “conservative daily,” in early March for unspecified “harmful activity,” shortly after the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

It still operates, in a reduced form, on Facebook, which Victor Breiner, an adviser to the Slovak defense minister, described as “the main arena now for Kremlin propaganda.”

In the weeks before Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine, Main News often echoed Kremlin talking points, mocking U.S. warnings of a coming attack on Ukraine as “hysteria without end” and instead blaming NATO for rising tensions.

Robert Sopko, founder and editor of Main News, which he runs from his apartment in Kosice, scorned the security service video — first published by a rival and liberal-leaning media outlet, Dennik N — as a “spy parody” and said he knew nothing of his unpaid helper’s paid work for Russian military intelligence. “We were all very surprised by it, everybody who knows him,” he said.

Sopko said he set up Main News after attending an anti-abortion protest in 2012 that mainstream media outlets all ignored. Without alternative news sources, he decided, “our opinions, the Christian-conservative view, will be pushed out from the public space completely.” Russia, he added, “is more normal” than the liberal West.

He denied taking money himself from Russia other than what he said were payments of around 600 euros (about $650) to cover the cost of ads that the Russian Embassy had placed on his site.

Sopko contended that Main News was not overly pro-Russian, although he conceded that “maybe we rooted a little bit more for Russia” to counter what he called “American propaganda” published elsewhere. He also acknowledged that his staff had for four years included Yevgeny Palcev, a Russian resident of Slovakia with ties to state media in Moscow, who wrote fiercely pro-Kremlin articles for the website under a pseudonym.

They parted ways in 2018. “We liked Russia but not like that. Not that much,” Sopko recalled.

He said he had known Garbar for 30 years and insisted that his old friend only wrote occasional articles about China. Officials say otherwise. “He was very much involved in writing about lots of things other than China” and spreading “classic Russia propaganda narratives,” said Nad, Slovakia’s defense minister.

Miroslava Sawiris, an expert on disinformation and adviser to the Slovak government’s Security Council, said the Main News website was “quite sophisticated and did not just spew nonsense.” She said “openly pro-Kremlin” stories accounted for around 20% of the content but achieved unusual reach and influence because of the site’s popularity.

In recent years, as the far right surged in Europe, Main News became what Matej Kandrik, director of the Strategic Policy Institute, a Slovak research group, described as “the hegemon” in the “media family of alternative news and conspiracy theories.”

It was particularly influential, for example, in stoking fierce opposition early this year to a proposed defense pact between Slovakia and the United States. The pact, which was finally approved by the Slovak Parliament shortly before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, “activated all the pro-Russian players” in a “massive anti-America reaction,” said Michal Trnka, the chief executive of Gerulata Technologies, a Bratislava company focused on data analysis.

Like many other Russia-friendly media outlets, Main News was thrown off balance by Putin’s onslaught against Ukraine and struggled for several days to explain it. Sopko said he and his staff had decided that Russia should be criticized just as “we criticized America’s imperialist wars,” but by then their site was shut down.

In the video of his meeting with the Russian spy, Garbar explains that finding useful people to work for Moscow could be difficult because those who support Russia tend to be marginal types with no real influence or access to information.

“There are many people who are pro-Russian, but they are irrelevant,” Garbar warned Solomasov. “They’d give you nothing.”

Garbar’s uncle said he was mystified that his nephew, who was always fascinated by American culture, particularly heavy metal bands like Metallica, would ever get entangled with Russia. “This whole Russian thing is very strange. He must have gotten into some sort of environment where something happened,” he said.

Sawiris, the government expert on disinformation, said she did not know what had happened to Garbar but worries that “there is no limit to the impact propaganda can have on the human mind, as we now see in Russia.” Since Russia invaded Ukraine, she added, “the curtain has fallen and lots of things have become obvious.”

Reuters

Russian general says Moscow aims to control all of southern Ukraine

Pavel Polityuk – April 21, 2022

KYIV/MARIUPOL (Reuters) -Moscow wants to take full control over southern Ukraine, a Russian general said on Friday, a statement Ukraine said gave the lie to Russia’s previous assertions that it had no territorial ambitions.

Rustam Minnekayev, deputy commander of Russia’s central military district, was quoted by Russian state news agencies as saying full control over southern Ukraine would give it access to a breakaway, Russian-occupied part of Moldova in the west.

That would cut off Ukraine’s entire coastline and mean pushing hundreds of miles west beyond current lines, past the major Ukrainian cities of Mykolaiv and Odesa.

Moscow says it is conducting a “special military operation” to demilitarise Ukraine and liberate its population from people it calls dangerous nationalists. Ukraine and its Western allies call Russia’s invasion an unjustified war of aggression.

“They stopped hiding it,” Ukraine’s defence ministry said on Twitter. Russia had “acknowledged that the goal of the ‘second phase’ of the war is not victory over the mythical Nazis, but simply the occupation of eastern and southern Ukraine. Imperialism as it is.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov declined to comment when asked if Russia had expanded the goals of its operation and how Moscow saw the political future of southern Ukraine.

A senior EU official said the next couple of weeks were likely to be decisive.

“This is not a fairy tale with an imminent happy ending. I think we are likely to see a very significant increase in the intensity of Russian military attacks in the east, I think we are likely to see an intensification of Russian military attacks along the coast,” the official told reporters.

Ukraine’s general staff said Russian forces had increased attacks all along the frontline in the east and were trying to mount an offensive in the Kharkiv region, north of their main target, the Donbas.

Russia’s defence ministry said its forces had captured a large arms depot in the Kharkiv region. It also reported hitting dozens of targets in the Donetsk and Kharkiv regions on Friday.

In Kharkiv city, Russian shellfire hit the main Barabashovo market. Ambulance services said there had been casualties but no details were available yet. A wedding hall and a residential building were also struck.

WAR CRIMES

In Geneva, the United Nations human rights office said there was growing evidence of Russian war crimes in Ukraine, including indiscriminate shelling and summary executions. It said Ukraine also appeared to have used weapons with indiscriminate effects.

Russia denies targeting civilians and says, without evidence, that signs of atrocities committed by its soldiers were faked. Ukraine has previously said it will punish any soldiers found to have committed war crimes. The government did not respond immediately to the U.N. human rights office remarks.

Russia said on Thursday it had won the war’s biggest fight – the battle for Mariupol, the main port of the Donbas, after a nearly two-month siege.

President Vladimir Putin said the army would not try to root out thousands of Ukrainian troops still holed up in a huge steel works there but would barricade them inside. On Friday Russia’s defence ministry said they remained “securely blockaded”.

Washington dismissed Russia’s announcement.

“We still assess that Mariupol is contested, that it hasn’t been taken by the Russians and that there’s still an active Ukrainian resistance,” Pentagon press secretary John Kirby told CNN.

In a Russian-held section of the city, the guns had largely fallen silent and dazed-looking residents ventured out into streets on Thursday to a background of charred apartment blocks and wrecked cars. Some carried suitcases.

Volunteers in white hazmat suits and masks roved the ruins, collecting bodies from inside apartments and loading them on to a truck marked with the letter “Z”, symbol of Russia’s invasion.

Maxar, a commercial satellite company, said images from space showed freshly dug mass graves on the city’s outskirts.

Ukraine estimates tens of thousands of civilians have died in the city during Russia’s bombardment and siege and says 100,000 civilians are still there and need full evacuation.

Relatives of Mariupol residents feared the worst. Sofia Telehina said her grandmother had cried constantly when they last spoke by phone and said everything was bombed to pieces. “Since then I’ve not been able to reach her.”

‘DEMOLISHING EVERYTHING’

In Zaporizhzhia, where 79 Mariupol residents arrived in the first convoy of buses permitted by Russia to leave for other parts of Ukraine, Valentyna Andrushenko held back tears as she recalled the ordeal under siege.

“They (Russians) were bombing us from day one. They are demolishing everything,” she said of the city.

Moscow says it has taken 140,000 Mariupol residents to Russia. Kyiv says many of these were forcibly deported in what would be a war crime.

In a late-night address, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Russia was doing all it could “to talk about at least some victories” after failing to capture the capital Kyiv.

“They can only postpone the inevitable – the time when the invaders will have to leave our territory, including from Mariupol, a city that continues to resist Russia regardless of what the occupiers say,” Zelenskiy said.

Minnekayev, the Russian general, said Russian speakers were oppressed in Transdnistria, a Russian-occupied breakaway part of Moldova on Ukraine’s southwestern border. Moldova and Western leaders say that is untrue.

Moscow gave the same justification for its 2014 annexation of Crimea and backing of separatists in Donbas. Ukraine says it fears Moscow might try to organise fake independence votes in southern areas as it did in the east and Crimea.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will visit Moscow on Tuesday to discuss urgently bringing peace to Ukraine, a spokesperson said, adding that Guterres might also visit Kyiv.

(Reporting by Pavel Polityuk in Kyiv, Reuters journalists in Mariupol, Issam Abdallah in Zaporizhzhia, Oleksandr Lapshyn in KharkivWriting by Peter Graff and Philippa Fletcher; Editing by Angus MacSwan and Gareth Jones)

Reuters

Putin calls off plan to storm Mariupol plant, opts for blockade instead

April 21, 2022

(Reuters) -President Vladimir Putin called off plans for the Russian military to storm the sprawling Azovstal steel plant in the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol and said on Thursday he wanted Ukrainian forces there to be hermetically sealed in instead.

The full capture of Mariupol, which has been besieged by Russian forces for weeks, is a central part of Moscow’s plans to cut Ukraine off from the Sea of Azov and forge a land bridge connecting Russian-annexed Crimea to Russia.

Ramzan Kadyrov, the leader of Russia’s Chechnya region whose forces have been fighting in Mariupol, had suggested that the vast Azovstal facility, which covers more than 11 square kilometres (4.25 square miles), would be stormed after Ukrainian forces holed up inside ignored Russian offers to surrender.

But Putin, in a Kremlin meeting with Sergei Shoigu, his defense minister, gave the order to call off the plan to storm it, saying it was better to save the lives of Russian soldiers and officers and to sit back and wait while Ukrainian forces ran out of supplies.

“I consider the proposed storming of the industrial zone unnecessary,” Putin told Shoigu in a televised meeting at the Kremlin. “I order you to cancel it.

There is no need to climb into these catacombs and crawl underground through these industrial facilities,” he told Shoigu.

“Block off this industrial area so that a fly cannot not pass through.”

Putin called on the remaining Ukrainian fighters in Azovstal to lay down their arms, saying Russia would treat them with respect and provide medical assistance to those injured.

Shoigu had earlier told Putin that more than 2,000 Ukrainian fighters were still holed up in the plant and that it might take three or four days to take control of the facility.

Shoigu told Putin that Mariupol had symbolic importance for Russia because it was what he called the de facto headquarters of the far-right nationalist Azov battalion which Moscow has promised to destroy.

The Azovstal iron and steel works, one of Europe’s biggest metallurgical plants, lies in an industrial area that looks out to the Sea of Azov. It houses a multitude of buildings, blast furnaces and rail tracks and has extensive underground facilities too.

‘THEY ARE HEROES’

Putin congratulated his defence minister for what he called the successful military operation to “liberate Mariupol” and asked him to pass on his thanks to Russian troops.

“I want them all to know: in our minds, in the minds of all of Russia, they are heroes,” Putin said.

Russia is due to celebrate its annual victory day holiday on May 9, when it commemorates the World War Two Soviet victory over Nazi Germany and is likely to hold up the full capture of Mariupol when it happens as proof that it is making gains in Ukraine despite heavy losses.

Shoigu told Putin that Russia had killed more than 4,000 Ukrainian troops in its campaign to take Mariupol and that 1,478 had given themselves up. He said Russia had evacuated 142,711 civilians from the city too.

Putin asked Shoigu for his ministry to come up with new proposals on supporting Russian troops fighting in Ukraine.

“We need to think about additional support measures, and in some cases, about perpetuating the memory of our comrades who showed heroism and sacrificed their lives for the peaceful life of our people in Donbas (eastern Ukraine) and to ensure the peaceful life and existence of Russia itself, the peaceful existence of our country,” Putin said.

Russia sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24 in what it called a special military operation to degrade its southern neighbour’s military capabilities and root out people it called dangerous nationalists.

Ukrainian forces have mounted stiff resistance and the West has imposed sweeping sanctions on Moscow in an effort to force it to withdraw its forces.

(Reporting by Reuters)

Business Insider

Ukrainian commander of Mariupol’s last stronghold tells Insider that his forces ‘won’t lay down our weapons’ in face of Russian siege

Mattathias Schwartz and Michael Fedynsky – April 21, 2022

The commander of the last Ukrainian forces defending the port city of Mariupol, speaking early this morning from the steel plant under siege by Russian troops, told Insider that he and his soldiers will not surrender.

“We’re not even considering that possibility,” Major Serhiy Volyna said in an interview conducted via WhatsApp, speaking in calm, measured tones with the voices of his troops audible in the background. “We won’t lay down our weapons.”

Hours later, Russian President Vladimir Putin called off an assault on the Azovstal steel plant, where hundreds of Ukrainian troops have taken refuge in a network of underground bunkers built by the Soviet Union, saying such a move was “impractical.” In a televised meeting, Putin called on the Ukrainians inside the plant to lay down their arms, insisting that Russia would guarantee them “their lives and dignified treatment.”

But Volyna, citing Ukrainian soldiers who were killed by Russian-backed forces in 2014 while waving the white flag in the town of Illovaisk, said he did not believe Putin’s assurances. In fact, he told Insider, Russian forces continued to bombard the steel plant even after Putin declared that he had “canceled” the assault.

“The shelling has lessened a bit, but it continues,” Volyna said. “We’re fighting to our last strength. The enemy has an advantage in equipment, supplies, personnel, weapons, the ability to maneuver, artillery, sea and air — literally everything.”

Volyna, who has fought in Mariupol since Russia’s invasion in February, told Insider that “hundreds” of civilians are huddled with his forces inside the plant, including women and children. Many, he said, are wounded and need medical attention. With Russia now blockading the plant, those inside are being forced to choose between starvation and surrender to forces that have already engaged in the documented killing of unarmed civilians. Russia has made numerous failed attempts to capture the fortified plant, using troops, artillery, and air strikes.

There are talks between Russia and Ukraine to coordinate the evacuation of civilians from Mariupol, but similar plans elsewhere have failed. Volyna said the civilians inside the steel plant are skeptical of the plan, having seen Russian forces attack residential buildings and a maternity ward.

“They don’t trust the Russians and don’t trust the green corridors,” he said, referring to pathways established for evacuations. What is needed, Volyna said, was an extraction supervised by the international community.

“It is possible to give life to the soldiers and civilians who have been under full siege for 56 days,” he said. “We are waiting for help, and so we are forced to turn to the world.”

Mattathias Schwartz is a senior correspondent at Insider.

Michael Fedynsky is a former Fulbright student in Kyiv who now works in international development. He is based in Washington D.C.