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.
The range of anti-Russian measures taken by countries around the world since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is virtually unprecedented and hearkens back to the darkest days of the Cold War.
They’ve assumed many forms but broadly include economic sanctions, military support for Ukraine and boycotts of Russian exports. Other forms of resistance, undertaken primarily by nonstate actors, focus more on Russian culture – its music, literature and arts – with the country’s conductors dismissed from European concert halls and pieces by Tchaikovsky excised from set lists.
Yet there is no single country, international organization or command center directing these efforts.
This hasn’t stopped Russian President Vladimir Putin from arguing precisely that.
In a March 25, 2022, speech to Russia’s leading cultural figures, Putin asserted that all of these actions – whether military, economic or cultural – amount to a single, concentrated plan by the West to “cancel” Russia and “everything connected with Russia,” including its “thousand-year history” and its “people.”
The sweeping, uncompromising nature of his rhetoric may sound hyperbolic and even absurd to Western ears; however, in Russia that is not necessarily the case. Many people there seem to accept Putin’s premise, not just because it seems to fit present circumstances, but because the idea of the nation surrounded by its enemies has deep historical roots.
In my book “Russia: The Story of War,” I explore how Russia has long imagined itself as a fortress, isolated in the world and subject to perpetual threats.
When offense becomes defense
For centuries, Russia has often been derided as overly, if not pathologically, paranoid: always suspicious of outsiders while harboring plans of conquest.
Though it would be difficult to deny that the country has been guilty of aggression and has sometimes invaded neighbors – Ukraine being but the latest example – Russians often prefer to highlight another aspect of its history, equally undeniable: It has been the target of foreign invasion for centuries.
From the Mongols in the 13th century, to the Crimean Tatars, Poles and Swedes in the 16th through 18th centuries, to La Grande Armée of Napoleon in the 19th century and Hitler’s Wehrmacht in the 20th, Russia has routinely found itself fending off attacks from foreigners. These chapters of Russia’s past make it easy to paint an image of a country routinely battered and victimized.
Isolationism took on a different but related form in the 20th century: Before the end of World War II, Soviet Russia was the only country in the world professing a belief in Marxism and, for this reason, was a pariah in the eyes of most other countries.
The expanse of Soviet control over other nations after the war, therefore, could be seen as a defensive maneuver – a hedge against future invaders.
An island of Christianity
Russia’s rendering of itself as a geopolitical fortress coincided with the development of its identity as a bastion of Christianity.
In the 16th century under Ivan “the Terrible,” the ruling elite of Muscovy, as the land of Russia was known then, propagated the idea of it being the Third Rome: the God-ordained, sole home of true Christianity.
The two previous capitals of Christianity – the Rome of the Vatican and the Rome of Constantinople as the capital of the Byzantine Empire – could no longer aspire to such status. After all, the first was under control of schismatics – as Orthodox Christians would view Catholics – while the second had been occupied by the Ottoman Turks since the city’s fall in 1453. That left Russia as the only place where a pure form of Christianity could reside.
At that time, no other Orthodox Christians were free of foreign rule. This undergirded the belief that the Russian land was exceptional and, as such, always set it at odds with its neighbors such as the Poles, the Turks and the Balts, who, generally speaking, were of a different faith.
The idea of Russia as an island of true Christianity, however, really gained traction in the 19th century as nationalists sought to define what made their nation and people different from – and, by implication, superior to – others. Prominent figures such as Fyodor Dostoevsky propagated this idea in his writings, as did Apollon Maikov, a famous poet who likened Russia to a besieged monastery, beset by enemies on all sides and only able to rely on itself.
That Russia at the same time was subject to foreign invasions, most notably by Napoleon, served to link the two ideas: Russia was a special place, and for that reason, others on the outside have sought to destroy the country, its culture and its religion through any means necessary.
Victory in defeat
With the invasion of Ukraine, Putin and other Russian leaders have fully embraced this image of Russia once more.
The nation faces an “organized, disciplined attack against everything Russian,” declared Mikhail Shvydkoi, an official in the Ministry of Culture. Putin has even gone as far as to claim that boycotts against Russian literature are the equivalent of book burnings by Nazis in the 1930s.
This coy evocation of Nazi criminality not only resurrects World War II as a reference point for today, but it also aligns with Putin’s principal justification for launching his invasion over a month ago: the alleged embrace of Nazism by the Ukrainian government and subsequent “genocide” of Russian-speaking Ukrainians. The charges, needless to say, are absurd, and this motivating narrative for war has quickly fallen apart.
So Putin has turned to a more stable and, as events have shown, more viable myth to justify his actions: “Fortress Russia.”
The advantages in arguing this line are manifold. It deftly molds to the situation now at hand. Western sanctions, in seeking to isolate Russia, can also perversely confirm the country’s mythical view of itself as a special place that outsiders seek to destroy.
By this reasoning, the sanctions merely reflect the West’s continuing antagonism against Russia dating back centuries. That the invasion set these sanctions in motion can be swept under the rug.
It also paints Russia as once again defending itself against outside aggression and thereby flips the role of it being the villain in the conflict with Ukraine. It enforces the idea of Russia as the perpetual victim, always the underdog in the face of history’s injustices and inequities. Moreover, it preserves the perception of Russia as an island of goodness and beneficence in a hostile world.
The emphasis of this new narrative should not be dismissed in the West as just another propaganda ploy. As the war has turned more into a stalemate, this line, as seen in Putin’s speech of March 25, 2022, has gained more traction.
In fact, while many in Russia have opposed the invasion and some have left the country because of it, recent internal polling suggests that support for Putin has crystallized precisely around this image of him as leader on the nation’s ramparts defending their vital interests. If this trend continues, then – at least in terms of self-image and self-esteem – the nation might have found a satisfactory ending no matter what outcome might come from the war.
For the “Fortress Russia” myth will always have the country land on its feet – even in defeat.
In Kyiv, Blinken and Austin announce aid, diplomatic surge
Matthew Lee – April 24, 2022
Secretary of State Antony Blinken boards a plane for departure, Saturday, April 23, 2022, at Andrews Air Force Base, Md. The Biden administration has unveiled new U.S. military assistance and a diplomatic surge for Ukraine as Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin made a secrecy-shrouded visit to the capital of Kyiv. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, Pool)
NEAR THE POLISH-UKRAINIAN BORDER (AP) — The United States announced new military assistance for Ukraine and a renewed diplomatic push in the war-ravaged nation as President Joe Biden’s secretary of state and Pentagon chief completed a secrecy-shrouded trip to Kyiv.
In the highest-level American visit to the capital since Russia invaded in late February, top envoy Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told Ukraine’s president, Volodomyr Zelenskyy, and his advisers that the U.S. would provide more than $300 million in foreign military financing and had approved a $165 million sale of ammunition.
They also said Biden would soon announce his nominee to be ambassador to Ukraine and that American diplomats who left Ukraine before the war would start returning to the country this coming week. The U.S. Embassy in Kyiv will remain closed for the moment.
Zelenskyy had announced Saturday that he would meet with the U.S. officials in Kyiv on Sunday, but the Biden administration refused to confirm that and declined to discuss details of a possible visit even though planning had been underway for more than a week.
Journalists who traveled with Austin and Blinken to Poland were barred from reporting on the trip until it was over, were not allowed to accompany them on their overland journey into Ukraine, and were prohibited from specifying where in southeast Poland they waited for the Cabinet members to return. Officials at the State Department and the Pentagon cited security concerns.
Austin and Blinken announced a total of $713 million in foreign military financing for Ukraine and 15 allied and partner countries; some $322 million is earmarked for Kyiv. The remainder will be split among NATO members and other nations that have provided Ukraine with critical military supplies since the war with Russia began, officials said.
Such financing is different from previous U.S. military assistance for Ukraine. It is not a donation of drawn-down U.S. Defense Department stockpiles, but rather cash that countries can use to purchase supplies that they might need.
The new money, along with the sale of $165 million in non-U.S. made ammunition that is compatible with Soviet-era weapons the Ukrainians use, brings the total amount of American military assistance to Ukraine to $3.7 billion since the invasion, officials said.
Zelenskyy had urged the Americans not to come empty-handed. U.S. officials said they believed the new assistance would satisfy at least some of the Ukrainians’ urgent pleas for more help. New artillery, including howitzers, continues to be delivered at a rapid pace to Ukraine’s military, which is being trained on its use in neighboring countries, the officials said.
On the diplomatic front, Blinken told Zelenskyy that Biden will announce his nomination of veteran diplomat Bridget Brink to be the next U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. A career foreign service officer, Brink has served since 2019 as ambassador to Slovakia. She previously held assignments in Serbia, Cyprus, Georgia and Uzbekistan as well as with the White House National Security Council. The post requires confirmation by the U.S. Senate.
Blinken also told Ukraine’s foreign minister that the small staff from the now-shuttered U.S. Embassy in Kyiv, which has relocated to Poland from temporary offices in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, would begin making day trips to Lviv in the coming days. Officials said the U.S. had accelerated its review of security conditions in the capital and that the State Department will reopen the embassy there as soon as the situation allows.
Biden has accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of genocide for the destruction and death wrought on Ukraine. Just on Thursday, Biden said he would provide a new package of $800 million in military aid to Ukraine that included heavy artillery and drones.
Congress approved $6.5 billion for military assistance last month as part of $13.6 billion in spending for Ukraine and allies in response to the Russian invasion.
From Poland, Blinken plans to return to Washington while Austin will head to Ramstein, Germany, for a meeting Tuesday of NATO defense ministers and other donor countries.
That discussion will look at battlefield updates from the ground, additional security assistance for Ukraine and longer-term defense needs in Europe, including how to step up military production to fill gaps caused by the war in Ukraine, officials said. More than 20 nations are expected to send representatives to the meeting.
The Ukrainian officials participating were Zelenskyy, Foreign Affairs Minister Dmytro Kuleba, Defense Minister Olexiy Reznikov, Ambassador Oskana Markarova, presidential administration head Andriy Yermak, chief of defense Valerii Zaluzhnyi, and Andrii Sybiya of Zelenskyy’s office.
Representing the United States in addition to Blinken and Austin were State Department deputy chief of staff Tom Sullivan, senior military assistant Lt. Gen. Randy George and Deputy Assistant Defense Secretary Laura Cooper.
‘It was killing me’: Ukrainian mother says her son was forcibly deported to Russia
Yuliya Talmazan – April 24, 2022
‘It was killing me’: Ukrainian mother says her son was forcibly deported to Russia Alexei AlexandrovYuri Dimesh and Natalia Dimesh (Courtesy Yuri Dimesh) Courtesy Yuri DimeshA building damaged during fighting in Mariupol (Alexei Alexandrov / AP) Alexei Alexandrov
Natalia Demish escaped the horrors of besieged Mariupol last month.
But while she is now in relative safety in the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro, she was cut off from her 21-year-old son, Yuri, by the ongoing fighting when she fled.
Demish, 40, says Yuri has now been forcibly deported to Russia, and she worries that he will be forced to fight against his own country.
Hers is just one story, but it adds to Kyiv’s accusations that while Russia has been assaulting Ukraine from the air and the ground, it has also been forcibly deporting large numbers of the country’s civilians. If true, these accusations could constitute a war crime under international law.
Kyiv accuses Russia of blocking efforts to send humanitarian aid to Mariupol, or buses to evacuate civilians to Ukrainian-controlled territory. The city has been under siege for nearly two months, and thousands have been killed, according to local officials. Remaining residents have been left with virtually no food, water or electricity.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Thursday that more than 140,000 Mariupol residents had been evacuated through humanitarian corridors — temporary demilitarized zones — in the past month.
Demish, an accountant before the war, said she had spent 34 days hiding in a basement in Mariupol with her husband, his two daughters and his parents. After resorting to melting snow to make drinking water, they finally had had enough and took their chance to escape to the central city of Zaporizhzhia in a convoy of cars on March 29.
But Yuri, who was living with her former-husband in a neighborhood badly damaged by shelling, was cut off from her at the time, with no phone or internet connection. So Demish left without him, believing she had no other choice if she was to survive, and no way to reach her son.
Later that day, she finally heard from Yuri.
He said he and his father had walked to the city of Novoazovsk, some 25 miles east, after their building was fired on and Russian troops told them they had to head there if they wanted to stay alive, according to Demish. Novoazovsk has been under the control of Russian-backed separatists, who have been fighting Ukrainian forces in the country’s east since 2014.
After that, Demish had no communication with her son, an engineering student, for days. Then on April 4, Yuri sent her a message (seen by NBC News) via the Viber messaging app, which is widely used in Ukraine, in which he said: “We are forcibly going to Russia today.”
When she finally reached her son on the phone the same day, Demish said, he told her that they were put on a train and told they would be taken to Russia, but were not given the final destination.
Demish said she told him to run away and jump from the train.
“But he said, Mom, all the windows are shut. It’s not an option,” Yuri said.
“Not knowing where my son was, it was killing me,” Demish, speaking in Russian, told NBC News in a phone call from the city of Dnipro, in central Ukraine, where she moved after escaping to Zaporizhia.
After going silent again for more than a week, Yuri finally called his mother on April 15 to say that after three days on the train, they made it to the village of Semyonovka in Russia’s Nizhegorodsky Oblast or district, some 675 miles northeast of Mariupol.
He told her that he and other evacuees were being lodged in wooden houses surrounded by a forest, and that Russian volunteers were helping them by providing food and medicine.
But he said his phone had been searched and he was questioned about his family in Ukraine, and about any friends in the Ukrainian army.
They were allowed to move around the region, Yuri told his mother, but not outside it because they had been processed as refugees. Her son has his travel papers with him, and Demish said she was desperately looking for any way to get him out of Russia, potentially through neighboring countries like Georgia or Turkey.
Demish said that the last contact she had with Yuri was on Monday, when he told her on the phone that he was doing OK, but that they had been shown propaganda videos alleging that Ukraine as a nation was an “artificial concept” — a line that has been touted by Russian President Vladimir Putin for years and was used as one of the pretexts for Russia invading Ukraine in February.
“He said they told them that Ukraine never existed as a country, and that it’s part of Russia,” Demish said. “When he objected and said history can’t be rewritten, he said two men approached him and he was questioned for two hours.”
They also questioned why he wrote to his mom that he was forcibly sent to Russia, Demish said. He said he was never asked if he wanted to go to Ukraine instead, she added. “He was told that he would be recruited into the army in Ukraine if he did, and he would become cannon fodder, but he was now in Russia, a great country.”
NBC News could not independently verify what happened with Demish’s son in Russia.
Last month, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said reports that Ukrainian citizens had been forcibly taken from Mariupol to Russia were not true, though he said that the Russian military does help civilians leave the city.
Earlier this month, Michael Carpenter, the U.S. ambassador to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, said a fact-finding mission found evidence of forced deportation of Ukrainian civilians to Russia.
Carpenter said he could not confirm numbers or details of what’s happening with these deportees in Russia, but that it was “something that is going to require thorough investigation and follow-up because it’s just beyond the pale of not just civilized behavior, but beyond the pale of all behavior that we would consider normal.”
NBC News reached out to Russia’s Defense Ministry about forcible deportations to Russia from Ukraine, but received no response.
As much as Demish resents her son’s plight, she said she was also aware that he could have died in Mariupol had he stayed. “In the city, there is no heat, electricity or water. All stores are looted. It’s impossible to survive there,” she said. “I think people were ready to go anywhere just to be warm and have food.”
Her biggest concern is that her son could be forced to fight against his own country.
“I am worried that they will take our Ukrainian men, put Russian uniforms on them, get them into a bus and take them to Ukraine,” she said. “I am afraid there will be brainwashing and they will force them to take up arms and they will say, if you want to free up the city, go fight.”
But she hopes to get Yuri out of Russia soon and see him again, and that they can all return to Mariupol one day.
“I really want to come back,” she said, with sadness in her voice. “But only after it’s liberated. I don’t want to live under the Russian flag.”
‘They were trying to escape’: Ukrainian man says he saw Russian forces shooting civilians
Mo Abbas, Matt Bradley andYelyzaveta Kovtun – April 24, 2022
‘They were trying to escape’: Ukrainian man says he saw Russian forces shooting civilians
Mo Abbas
HAVRONSHCHYNA, Ukraine — Driving past nondescript fields in the countryside near Kyiv, it’s easy to miss a small family car abandoned by the side of the road.
But the vehicle — riddled with bullet holes, strewn with baby clothes and spattered with human remains — is a microcosm of the horror that has befallen Ukraine.
It’s also an example of the heroism that has allowed it to endure.
“It was chaos. I couldn’t feel anything. I was numb. Some people were trying to hide in my house. I was trying to pick up wounded people,” said Yuriy Patsan, 42, a mechanic, in describing the incident on March 15 that ended with the car being stranded outside his house on the edge of this small village of about 1,000 residents around 30 miles west of the capital, Kyiv.
The vehicle is now one more piece of a giant puzzle for investigators gathering evidence of alleged war crimes committed by Russian forces, a charge they deny. Moscow has also repeatedly denied that it is targeting Ukrainian civilians.
Patsan said Russian troops who had been occupying Havronshchyna had agreed to allow civilians to leave in a convoy.
He said he and his wife had packed their car and were ready to join the end of the column of vehicles as it passed by.
“They were trying to escape. Men, women and children. And the Russian vehicles came up behind them and started to shoot,” he said.
He added that none of the vehicles were driving erratically and he had no idea why the Russians opened fire.
“People were running away, and they were being shot at. I saw an old man get shot. I fled to my house. Then slowly I came back and saw the bodies,” Patsan said.
He added that when he approached the Volkswagen hatchback outside his home, he could see it had a piece of white cloth attached to it to mark it as a civilian vehicle.
A child’s bottle in the back of a destroyed car, left after Russian forces allegedly opened fire on the vehicle in Havronshchyna. (Mo Abbas / NBC News)
He could also see a woman bent over a toddler trying to protect it in the backseat, and an older woman and a teenager in the car, he said. They were all dead.
A male driver had lost an eye, fingers and a lot of blood and was barely alive, he said, adding that he got him out of the car and took him into his home.
As Russian patrols, guns cocked, scoured the area near his house, Patsan said he waited for opportunities to drag the bodies from the car and bury them in a shallow grave in his yard.
He made a makeshift cross, he said.“It’s tradition. Everybody deserves respect,” he added.
Over the next two weeks Patsan said he and his wife cared for the man, Alexander, as best he could, rallying the surrounding village for help. He identified the man only by his first name out of concern for his privacy and safety.
Other villagers brought what medicines and food they had, and Patsan said he called medics over the phone for advice on how to treat his patient.
“I treated him like a brother. Hugging him all the time, giving support,” he said.
Alexander did not speak much about the incident, Patsan said. But he said he came to understand that the teen in the car was Alexander’s son, and the mother and child were not related to him.
The older woman was not related to anyone else in the car and the toddler was too disfigured to know its gender, he added.
NBC News saw that the vehicle was still outside Patsan’s house on April 14, just over a month after the attack occurred. A baby bottle and baby shoes were still in the car, as well as a notebook with a shopping list for staples like milk, eggs and butter.
Police had stuck numbers next to the bullet holes on the car as part of their investigation and the bodies had been moved from the shallow grave.
Alexander had been taken to a hospital and Patsan said he was getting better.
“God was maybe guiding me. It was a miracle he survived,” Patsan said.
There are still faint blood stains on the carpet and on the pillow where he treated Alexander.
Patsan said he was fine but still needed time to process what had happened. No matter how much he washes or airs out his house, he still picks up the scent of gunfire and gore, he said.
“I can still smell it. All the time. I smell it,” he said, before picking up and stroking a kitten that was the only occupant of the ill-fated car that had emerged unscathed and which he had since adopted.
A damaged car is left by the roadside in the town of Havronshchyna. (Mo Abbas / NBC News)
The car outside his house is just one of many found in the suburbs around Kyiv after Russian forces withdrew this month.
A short drive away are what locals have dubbed “car cemeteries,” where piles of twisted and shot up vehicles — both civilian and military — have been collected.
Each civilian car appears to have a tragic story. Some contain school books and children’s clothes. Others walkers, medicines and bedpans. One contained a dead pet cat, another a human jawbone.
