Category: Ukraine War

John Hanno, tarbabys.com – April 8, 2022

Again and Again, Ukraine’s soldiers for Democracy and independence have defeated and also exposed Putin’s vaunted military machine as an undisciplined collection of disillusioned conscripts, terrorists, murderers, rapists, looters and soulless examples of a pseudo militaristic, malevolent failed state.

Their failures in the north and west going mano a mano against Ukraine’s courageous and resourceful seasoned soldiers and army volunteers defending the capital of Kiev, forced them to retreat to Belarus to reconstitute battered and depleted units, hoping to move them East to the Donbas region, in a desperate attempt to placate Putin’s bruised ego and preserve his precarious decades long reign of terror.

The civilized connected world sees the daily carnage and misery wrought on Ukraine’s civilian population, the destruction of once beautiful cities and the futility of Putin’s marauding, barbaric army.

But because of Putin’s all powerful state run media and clamp down on independent news, Russia’s military blunders and failures, troop desertions and true body counts never reach the Russian nightly news. Consequently, Putin’s approval ratings have improved by almost 20 points, to 83% since he ordered his Generals to slash and burn everyone and everything in the path of Putin’s march to historic infamy or within range of Russia’s guided rockets and missiles.

Can we really believe these polls? If you lived in Moscow or St. Petersburg, what would you say if someone asked if you supported Czar Vlad and his holy war? Of course I do, yes indeed? No speekie Russian? Fines and prison terms in a Siberian gulag are to be avoided at all costs.

I’m guessing the Russian’s who are successfully inculcated by the Kremlin state run department of propaganda or chose not to be informed by anything or anyone, even their own connected family and friends, is similar to the hordes of American’s stupefied by our own far right media, trump reality channel, or the Fox News Alternative truth apparatus. Hell, the same percentage of republi-cons believe trump won the 2020 election.

It’s clear that Putin and a large segment of his army have no boundaries and obey no international laws or norms. The threat of appearing before a war crimes tribunal won’t sway them from engaging in the worst conduct imaginable. Ethnic cleansing, purification, pacification, de-nazification and other Kremlin niceties, are their excuses and justifications for Genocide.

President Zelensky and the world have witnessed the human carnage recently uncovered when the Russians vacated the suburbs of Kiev and are dreading what they will find in Mariuapol and other cities under siege.

The Russian missile fired at the Kramatorsk train station carried a cluster bomb that killed 57 people, including 5 children and injured more than 100. What kind of monsters target desperate women and children, and terrified old and disabled people waiting for the train that will take them away from a war zone?

Our National Security Council, some in the Biden Administration and in NATO are worried that if you beat Putin too badly, he might do something irrational like using chemical or nuclear weapons. Do you think for one minute that Putin is worried about beating the people of Ukraine, or the EU or NATO or the U.S. too badly. He’s proved in Afghanistan, in Chechnya, in Georgia, in Syria and now in Ukraine again that his barbarism is boundless. Monster is too tame a word for Vlad the Not Great and the Butcher of Syria General he just tasked with pulverizing Ukraine into submission, and preferably before Putin’s May 9th Festivus.

Gen. Alexander Dvornikov, known as the “Butcher of Syria,” has been tapped to lead Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Erik Romanenko/TASS via ZUMA Press

The U.S. must step up to the existential threat to world peace and prosperity. Just like trump and his criminal enterprises, including most of the republi-cons in congress, Putin plays by no set of rules. The U.S. and NATO must bend their own rules a bit if they’re going to stop the Neo Soviet Empire from turning the entire Baltic region into Putin’s Autocratic Kleptocracy.

The first thing is to stop broadcasting military plans and intentions. Speculating about how to bring those MiG-29 fighter jets from Slovakia to Ukraine should never have been discussed in public.

The best defense is to use the element of surprise and an unpredictable offense to defeat this diabolical opponent. If that means supplying offensive weapons the Russians wouldn’t or couldn’t anticipate, or scraping together an imposing “unofficial” fleet of fighter jets and bombers, with the Ukrainian flag blazoned on their tail fins, capable of enforcing a no fly zone, then that’s what the world must do.

And delivering ASAP, anti ship guided missiles to Southern Ukraine would help defend Ukraine’s sea ports of Odessa and Mariupol from Russia’s Black Sea Fleet and stop Putin’s plans of attempting to land lock and hinder Ukraine’s ability to import and export food, military armaments and manufactured goods.

Already, predictions abound about how many 10’s of millions will suffer starvation when Russia and Ukraine’s food production is curtailed. 400 million people depend on them for their food. Together, Russia and Ukraine produce 12% of the worlds food calories.

There is no second chance or plan B that could work this time. For every missile or rocket launched by Russia into Eastern and Southern Ukraine, 3 or 4 must be returned. For each and every tank, rocket launcher and personnel carrier redirected into Eastern Ukraine for this new assault, the U.S., NATO and others must supply a half dozen Javilin anti-tank missiles. The only thing Putin will understand is an overwhelming force. This is not the time to pussyfoot.

Yahoo! Finance

Defeating Putin — now — is an economic imperative

Rick Newman, Senior Columnist – April 20, 2022

He might secretly be the world’s richest person, but Russian President Vladimir Putin is also the world’s greatest value destroyer.

The International Monetary Fund estimates that Putin’s barbaric invasion of Ukraine will lower world economic growth by eight-tenths of a percentage point this year and two-tenths next year. That might not sound like a lot, but given the size of the world economy, it amounts to about $935 billion in lost output, roughly equivalent to zeroing out the entire economy of Turkey or the Netherlands. The toll could easily top $1 trillion if the war drags on or escalates.

This is the destruction caused by one man demanding the ruination of a large, peaceful and productive country. It’s not an unstoppable virus, a complex financial contagion or an unforeseen natural disaster. The cost of Putin’s fanaticism is obviously acute in Ukraine, which is suffering thousands of deaths and hundreds of billions of dollars of damage to civilian infrastructure. But Putin’s war is raising the cost of fuel, grain and other vital products literally everywhere. It will cost lives and lower living standards in dozens of nations nowhere near the battlefields.

Financial markets have adjusted to Putin’s mayhem, which is both good and bad. It’s good because a resilient global economy lumbers forward. Sanctions on Russia have forced workarounds in the markets for oil, natural gas, and other Russian minerals and products that are now in limited supply or wholly unavailable. Five million Ukrainian refugees in Europe and elsewhere — many displaced by Putin deliberately — are straining relief systems. The risk of a broader war between Putin and the NATO alliance is real and terrifying. Yet markets are patching themselves up and a Putin recession seems unlikely.

It’s bad because functional markets may relegate Russia’s violent crusade to background noise and blunt the urgency for all nations that seek prosperity to defeat Putin, now. The United States and many nations in Europe and elsewhere have hit Russia with tough sanctions that will hinder its military power, over time. But those sanctions could go further, and they haven’t mainly because some European leaders feel they can’t shut off Russian energy imports without damaging their own economies too much. Some Western nations also fear that giving Ukraine advanced weaponry, such as tanks and fighter jets, might lead Putin to strike back directly at the donor countries.

Yet the West is now at a point where it can bear the risk and cost of confronting Putin, or face him down later at multiples of the present cost.

The time is ripe to beat Putin

There may never be a better opportunity to defang Putin. Russian forces spectacularly failed to capture Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and impose a puppet government. They retreated from central Ukraine in disarray, exposing vast holes in a military looted from top to bottom, like the entire Russian economy. Old, neglected equipment broke down routinely. Undisciplined troops employed lazy tactics. Broken supply lines left units short of food and fuel. Intercepted phone calls revealed panicked Russian conscripts desperate to escape and, in some cases, refusing to fight. In southern Ukraine, coastal defense troops sank the Russian navy’s Black Sea flagship, the Moskva, destroying a $750 million fighting platform with two missiles costing perhaps a couple million dollars. Putin’s military may be more vulnerable than at any time during his two-decade rule.

Despite that, Russian forces now seem to be launching a new campaign to carve off as much of eastern and southern Ukraine as they can get. At some point, Putin may seek a “peace” settlement that leaves Russia in control of whatever territory it can take and keep.

There can be no peace with Putin. The Ukraine invasion is at least Putin’s fourth attempt in 15 years to take neighboring territory with force and kluge together some remnants of the old USSR. Putin’s territorial gains to date would seal off Ukraine’s access to ports on the Sea of Azov, and he probably aims to capture Ukraine’s Black Sea coastline as well, leaving it no seaports to the outside world. If Putin could accomplish that, he would have military force on the border of tiny Moldova, where he also has territorial ambitions. Moldova isn’t a NATO member, but it borders Romania, which is.

Russian missile strikes deep into western Ukraine, just miles from the border with NATO-member Poland, show Putin is willing to cut it close and risk an errant attack on a NATO member, which would oblige the alliance to respond. Nobody should assume Putin would stop in Ukraine, if the war ends with Russian territorial gains. He’d continue to claw for turf and military advantage. China’s communist rulers, meanwhile, are watching closely, to see if democratic powers have the mettle and attention span to stop the sort of aggression they may someday attempt in Taiwan or other parts of Asia.

The Western goal at this point should be a complete Ukrainian victory, with all Russian forces out of the country. Leave Putin in power in Russia; regime change is a reckless goal. NATO shouldn’t send troops, but Western nations should supply everything short of that and maximize the economic pressure on Russia, to end Putin’s medieval adventurism once and for all.

On April 19, a Stanford University working group published a list of several dozen specific recommendations for cutting off the cash Putin uses to fund his military. The ultimate goal should be a complete ban on Russian oil, coal and natural gas products, Russia’s main source of capital. Since that would be difficult for some nations to do quickly, interim measures could include tariffs on Russian energy products that would force Russia to cut the underlying price to remain competitive, reducing the proceeds going back to Russia. Importing nations could also require energy payments be held in escrow accounts until the Ukraine war ends. The Stanford group also calls for designating Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism, which would trigger other types of sanctions.

As for military aid, Eliot Cohen of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies argues that the United States should boost the value of materiel support for Ukraine from several billion dollars to tens of billions, and include heavy weapons that could be decisive on the battlefield, such as tanks and artillery. The Biden administration is moving in that direction, but Cohen, writing in the Atlantic, says the pivot is too slow, given that “decisive action is urgently required to tip the balance between a costly success and a calamity.”

The fastest way to help Ukrainian forces is with more Soviet-style equipment they already know how to use. Most of this would have to come from eastern and central European nations such as Poland, Lithuania and the Czech Republic, which are already sending some such weapons. The U.S. role is to facilitate delivery and help these nations backfill donated equipment with newer systems, covertly if necessary. Western defense contractors surely won’t object.

Every path involves risk. If Europe and the United States put everything they have into ejecting Russian forces from Ukraine, Putin could lash out with chemical or biological attacks or even a nuclear strike of some kind. But if he succeeds even partially in Ukraine, he could do the same thing later, when he’s closer to NATO borders. Tighter limits on Russian energy imports would be tough on European nations such as Germany and Italy that can’t readily replace the energy. But better to do it on their own terms now, than to let Putin dictate the terms later. Nobody wants to bear the cost of Putin’s war, but there will always be another Putin war and the cost will only go up.

Time

A Foreign Fighter on What It Was Like on Ukraine’s Front Line

Lisa Abend – April 20, 2022

Povilas Adomas Limontas, a 24-year-old bartender from Kaunas, Lithuania, on March. 3. He signed up to join the International Legion of Defense of Ukraine. Credit – Tadas Kazakevicius for TIME

TIME first met Povilas Limontas outside the Ukrainian embassy in Vilnius, Lithuania a week after Russia invaded Ukraine. The bartender, then 24, had left his home in Kaunas, and taken the train that morning so that he could register as a volunteer fighter. An orphan who had spent two years in the Lithuanian army military experience and a strong sense of moral duty, he had felt that “it would be selfish” not to go.

Even with registration papers in hand, it took him a while to figure out how exactly to get Ukraine; in the end, he traveled with a fellow Lithuanian who was running humanitarian aid to the country, and returning with refugees. He tried and failed twice to cross the border. One attempt turned out to be a blessing in disguise: had he not been turned away, Limontas would have been at the international training center outside Lviv when Russia bombed it on March 13, killing 35. After he was finally admitted to the country in mid-March, he eventually made his way to Kyiv along with some fellow volunteers from the Czech Republic and Sweden. There, as a unit, they were assigned to support the Territorial Defense Forces. Over the coming month, they would see about two weeks of combat, and witnessed the atrocities in Bucha after it was liberated.

His assignment over, Limontas arrived back at his home in Kaunas, Lithuania on April 7. He is debating whether to return to Ukraine. Limontas spoke to TIME’s Lisa Abend on April 17.

We spent about four days at the central military base where we were given our weapons–an AK47. There was training for people who were green, but we weren’t, so we told them to give us some targets and 10 or 20 shots to warm up with so we could get familiar with the gun. And that was it; we were good to go. One thing that I liked was that no one asked, “Why are you here?” Everyone understood that I was there to fight against evil.

We saw our first action about two weeks after arriving in Ukraine. We were bodyguards for someone important who was visiting the front and the two of us with the most experience went to the front in Irpin [a city northwest of Kyiv]. That was intense. In Kyiv there had been alarms whenever the rockets were coming. There were long periods with no sirens, and when they came, you still had time to go to a shelter, hide, smoke a cigarette. But in Irpin, there was no silence, there was no 20 seconds in between the siren and the explosion. It was just bombs coming all the time from right and left—and dangerously close, about 400 meters from where we were.

Read More: Meet the Foreign Volunteers Risking Their Lives to Defend Ukraine—and Europe

I went on a couple more of those bodyguard missions. During the third one, we had our first firefight. This was in Irpin, in the forest, and the enemy was about 200 meters away; they were trying to ambush the Ukrainians. We came in as reinforcements, and fired a bit, but after a little while, we had to run, because one thing I had learned in Lithuania is that if you’re in a firefight with Russians, you only have 10 minutes before they send in artillery. The fight lasted five or 10 minutes, but in my head it felt like five seconds.

Later, we spent nine days on a second frontline, defending a village near the river outside Kyiv. We were told that the village needed support, and that we were there to relieve some of the units already in place. As soon as we got there—in the first 10 seconds after we exited our vehicles—we were shelled. We fell down on our faces. The explosions were 200 meters, 100 meters away from us, and they just kept coming. It was right when we arrived, so there’s a good possibility we were targeted.

My best buddy was a Czech guy, and at first the two of us joked that it would be nice if we were still alive on the third day, because we were getting shelled so much that first night. Then, after a while, we were just hoping for one more day. We basically didn’t sleep the first night because every two hours we had to guide other guys to the positions in the trenches, and every time we got 50 meters from our shelter there’d be a whistle, we’d get down, and boom. I think I almost died four or five times just the first night. I got a little bit of shrapnel in the back of my helmet. It’s a small piece but that’s all it takes.

My closest brush with death came on the fourth or fifth day. We did shifts, filling in the gaps for territorial defense fighters. At about 8 a.m., I had finished my shift and was walking back to the shelter alone, which wasn’t very bright of me. I heard a whistle, but it wasn’t the normal kind of whistle, where it’s likely that you’ll live. This was a whistle that was very close, like a kettle boiling on maximum heat. My legs just collapsed, and I hit the ground and covered my neck. It exploded maybe 10 meters away; there was a house there and it was completely destroyed. Only one brick wall was left, and that is what saved me. If the artillery had hit on the left side instead of the right, I’d be gone.

Before I left Lithuania, I had said that if a rocket was wasted on me instead of children, I would take that deal. Well, it wasn’t one or two rockets. Hundreds were wasted on me in those 9 days. And I lived, so it turned out to be a good deal.

On the seventh day, the Ukrainians told us they were retaking the city of Stoyanka, close to Bucha, and they needed our support. They gave me a grenade launcher because I had been trained during my time in the Lithuanian army to use it. I don’t actually know how they managed to get one, but it was like getting a Christmas present.

When we were headed to Stoyanka, we knew there was a good chance we wouldn’t make it back home. So before we left, my Czech friend gave me a piece of paper with a phone number and said, “This is the phone number of my girlfriend. If I fall, you’ll have to call her.” I went numb for a second because I thought those kinds of moments only existed in movies. I responded by telling him that if I fell, he had to send the latest video of me to my friends. Then we just nodded to each other and went to work.

Read More: Ukrainians Are Speaking Up About Rape as a War Crime to Ensure the World Holds Russia Accountable

We expected huge resistance there, but it was nothing. So we helped clear the streets, working with the special police who were clearing houses and basements. The operation took maybe 10 hours, but at the end, the Ukrainians had taken the city. And then a few days later they posted that they had re-taken all of the Kyiv region.

The Ukrainians have so much spirit. Just looking at them gives you strength. They are not afraid, they share everything, they joke around, but also they are very sharp and willing to fight anywhere anytime. It’s impossible to win against a country like that.

When I think about the Ukrainian volunteers who joined the fight after the invasion started, the two words that come to mind are “stupid brave.” Ukrainians are stupid brave. Give them a gun and they will go fight. That can be good and bad, but it’s better to be motivated to fight without skill, than to have skill and be afraid to fight.

As for me, I wasn’t afraid. I didn’t feel anything while I was there. I didn’t let myself be guided by emotions. At one point we went to Bucha as protection for some journalists who were following Ukrainian soldiers as they collected the bodies. Literally everything that hadn’t been nailed down was stolen—they stole the ATMs, and cash registers from supermarkets. There was shattered glass everywhere, shrapnel from the artillery, animals shot. We went into a kindergarten complex that the Russians had used as a command post, and we went into the basement where they shot and executed people. The walls were red with blood. My boots stuck to the floor because the blood hadn’t dried yet.

Read More: A Visit to the Crime Scene Russian Troops Left Behind at a Summer Camp in Bucha

I didn’t have any emotion. I left all my feelings at home basically. But now that I’m back home, I feel like they’re catching up with me, these new feelings that I don’t know how to deal with. I’ve had a hard time understanding what happened. Because it doesn’t matter how strong you are. Your mind is not used to seeing violence like that.

Now that I’m back in Lithuania my mission is to go on every radio, talk show, newspaper possible. People get used to things like this and I need to remind them that the war is not over, and people still need support—in food, ammunition, and medicine. Five euros is still a donation and 5 euros can feed people like me for 5 days.

I don’t think my time in Ukraine changed my perspective on the world or on life. But I know that I didn’t come back the same as I left. What stands out in my mind is after we retook Stoyanka, when we went back to the village. I had been carrying 40 kilos of gear, and it was really hot and we had drunk all of our water. We hadn’t slept in 30 hours. We got back to the village, and slept and the next day, when we woke up, the frontline had moved very far away. The artillery couldn’t reach us. We were standing outside, smoking cigarettes, and there were no whistles, they were just gone. It was the first time in seven or eight days that it was safe to stand outside. It felt like we had made a difference and that my trip wasn’t for nothing. That was a very, very nice feeling.

We did our mission, and we defended the village. But I don’t consider it a victory. There had been 200 or 250 houses in that town, and there was nothing left. Maybe if you replaced the windows and the roof, you could live in a few of them. All the others were destroyed; I mean, there were only two bricks left. So we won, but at a huge price.

About 20 hours after the frontline had moved, the elderly people who lived in the village came back. There was this one old woman who was standing in front of her house, which looked like it had been cut down the middle—one whole side was completely blown off. She just let out this huge sigh. And then she went to her garden and started digging. I guess everyone has their own coping mechanism.

As told to Lisa Abend

Reuters

EU’s Michel tells Ukrainians during Kyiv visit: ‘History will not forget’

Sergiy Karazy – April 20, 2022

European Council President Michel visits Borodianka

KYIV (Reuters) -European Council President Charles Michel pledged European solidarity with Ukraine during a surprise visit to Kyiv on Wednesday and said justice must be done for alleged Russian war crimes.

Michel, the head of the European Council, which represents the European Union’s 27 member states, visited the town of Borodianka northwest of Kyiv before holding talks with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in the capital.

Ukraine suspects that Russian troops carried out atrocities in Borodianka and Bucha, another town near the capital. Moscow denies targeting civilians and has described the allegations as fabricated by Kyiv to justify more sanctions against it.

“There are no words … to explain what I feel. These are atrocities, these are war crimes. It must be punished. It will be punished,” Michel told a joint news conference with Zelenskiy in Kyiv.

He said separately on Twitter: “History will not forget the war crimes that have been committed here. … There can be no peace without justice.”

Michel’s trip followed visits this month to Kyiv by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell and European Parliament President Roberta Metsola.

“You are not alone,” Michel said, praising the courage of the Ukrainian people. “We are with you and will do everything which is possible to support you and to make sure that Ukraine will win the war.”

ZELENSKIY SEEKS OIL AND GAS EMBARGO

Michel said the EU had already provided Ukraine with 1.5 billion euros ($1.63 billion) of military equipment as well as imposing sanctions on Russia, but would look for more ways to respond to Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion.

“I am convinced … that sooner or later we will target oil and gas,” he said, without giving details.

EU states have been divided over whether to impose an embargo on Russian oil or gas, with Germany among countries that are heavily dependent on energy imports from Russia.

Zelenskiy welcomed the “political signal” Michel had sent by visiting Borodianka, but urged Brussels to strengthen sanctions pressure on Russia and called for a “complete energy embargo including imports of oil and gas.”

He welcomed a sixth package of sanctions being prepared by the EU, but added: “Oil should be part of the sixth package. Without it this package will be empty, will not be powerful enough.”

Zelenskiy said he and Michel had also discussed answers that Ukraine has provided to a questionnaire on compliance with EU criteria which is considered a starting point for Ukraine in its drive for EU membership.

($1 = 0.9223 euros)

(Reporting by Kyiv newsroom; Additional reporting by John Chalmers in Brussels; Writing by Timothy Heritage; Editing by Leslie Adler)

The Week

Pentagon says Ukraine’s military has received ‘additional aircraft’ from unidentified ally

Peter Weber, Senior editor – April 20, 2022

Ukraine is getting a lot of weapons and defensive equipment from Western allies, including military helicopters from the U.S. in the Biden administration’s latest $800 million aid package, but fixed-wing fighter jets have been a heavier lift. The U.S. rejected an offer from Poland to transfer Polish MiG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine, but Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said Tuesday that Ukraine’s military has gotten new aircraft from somewhere.

The Ukrainians “right now have available to them more fixed-wing fighter aircraft than they did two weeks ago,” Kirby said. “And that’s not by accident, that’s because other nations who have experience with those kinds of aircraft have been able to help them get more aircraft up and running.” The U.S. has helped provide Ukraine with airplane parts, “but we have not transported whole aircraft,” he added.

When a reporter asked how many new aircraft Ukraine has received, Kirby said that “without getting into what other nations are providing,” Ukraine has has been “able to increase” its “aircraft fleet size, I think I’d leave it at that.”

The U.S. has been flying in shipments of weapons and defensive materiel on a daily basis for weeks, a senior Pentagon official said Tuesday. “Another one just arrived yesterday and in the next 24 hours we expect they’ll be more than half a dozen, probably more like seven flights coming from the United States.” And “none of these shipments sit around very long before being off loaded off of aircraft and on loaded appropriately in ground transportation to get them into Ukraine,” the official added.

With the U.S. and its allies providing Ukraine a munitions lifeline, Russia is likely to start targeting routes used to move the materiel through Ukraine to the front lines, a Pentagon official said. Even if the Russians did successfully strike bridges, roads, and railway routes used to get the arms to Ukrainian fighters, the official added, there are too many shipments coming in for that to have much effect.

CNN

Ukraine’s Air Force has added about 20 more operational aircraft after influx of spare parts, senior US defense official says

By Oren Liebermann, CNN – April 20, 2022

(CNN)The Ukrainian Air Force has added about 20 more operational aircraft to its fleet because of an influx of spare parts, according to a senior US defense official.Though the official wouldn’t specify which country had provided the aircraft parts, the official said Wednesday that the US and other countries had worked “to get them the parts they need to get them in the air.”

The flow of spare parts has allowed Ukraine to expand its fleet of operational military aircraft, despite Russia’s ongoing invasion. The country has more aircraft now than it did three weeks ago, the official said.

A day earlier, Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said Ukraine had received additional fighter aircraft to add to its numbers.

But on Wednesday, the senior defense official walked that back, saying Ukraine had not received more aircraft but had in fact received aircraft parts to make more of its existing aircraft functional.

Still, the official intimated that at least one country was considering sending Ukraine more aircraft.

“I was given to understand that an offer made by another country had actually been effected,” the official said. “That offer has not been effected, so I was ahead of where things actually were.” It is not known which country has made such an offer.

The US has committed to sending Ukraine 16 Mi-17 helicopters, but the administration has declined to get involved in a transfer of MiG-29s from another country to Ukraine via the United States.

Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky has repeatedly asked other countries for Soviet-era MiG-29 Fulcrum fighter jets, which Ukrainian pilots already know how to fly.

Zelensky has asked other Eastern European countries with the fourth-generation airframes to send them to Ukraine, but no country has yet agreed to do so.

On Wednesday, the official Twitter account of Ukraine’s Air Force said, “Ukraine did not receive new aircraft from partners! With the assistance of the US Government, @KpsZSU received spare parts and components for the restoration and repair of the fleet of aircraft in the Armed Forces, which will allow to put into service more equipment.”

Ukraine’s Air Force has been part of its aerial defense network, which also includes S-300 surface-to-air missiles and portable anti-aircraft missiles. The combination of platforms has prevented Russia from establishing air superiority over Ukraine and controlling the skies.

Despite the constant bombardment from Russian missiles and artillery, as well as the strikes on military bases, Ukraine’s Air Force has remained largely intact, though it has suffered some losses.

In early March, about two weeks into the war, the defense official said Ukraine has 56 fighter aircraft, which composed about 80% of its fixed-wing fighters. But the Ukrainians weren’t using their aircraft much, flying only five to 10 missions per day, the official said.

Even now, with more operational aircraft, the Ukrainian Air Force is still flying a very limited number of daily sorties, another defense official said.

Yahoo! News

Mariupol official warns of ‘last days’ as Russia demands Ukrainian troops surrender

Niamh Cavanagh, Producer April 20, 2022

LONDON — Ukraine’s port city of Mariupol is facing its “last days, if not hours,” a commander in the besieged city revealed this week as Russian forces gave Ukrainian soldiers until noon on Wednesday to surrender — a deadline the Ukrainians let expire.

Thousands of civilians and Ukrainian troops are sheltered in a steel plant, the last remaining stronghold of the city. However, the building is surrounded by Russian forces, leaving the people inside with no access to “normal” supplies of food and water, an adviser for the city’s mayor said.

“The enemy is outnumbering us 10 to 1,” Serhiy Volyna, a commander from the 36th Separate Marine Brigade, wrote on Facebook on Wednesday. “We appeal and plead to all world leaders to help us. We ask them to use the procedure of extraction and take us to the territory of a third-party state.”

In recent days, Russian forces have intensified their push in the Donbas region, claiming the city of Kreminna in a new offensive to take eastern Ukraine. Russia has been trying to take full control of Mariupol since Feb. 24, when it launched its invasion. Taking control of Donbas would mean Russia would have a southern land corridor to the annexed Crimean Peninsula, which has been occupied by Kremlin forces since 2014.

According to Reuters, thousands of Russian troops, backed by artillery, are attempting to advance in what has been coined the “Battle of Donbas.” Moscow intends to seize the two eastern provinces that had already been claimed on behalf of separatists.

On Tuesday, the Azovstal steel plant, believed to be the last major pocket of resistance in Mariupol, was a target of Russian airstrikes. Footage released from Mariupol’s City Council appeared to show the aftermath of a strike on the devastated plant. This led to Ukrainian troops accusing enemy forces of bombing a hospital that was sheltering 300 people — including wounded soldiers and children. The deputy commander of the Azov regiment alleged that Kremlin-led forces had dropped bombs on the steel plant where the “improvised” hospital was.

Ukraine hopes to evacuate some 6,000 civilians from Mariupol on Wednesday, the city’s mayor, Vadym Boichenko, said. He said 90 buses were waiting to depart from the devastated city but cautioned that a safe-corridor agreement with Russia was not yet final. “We plan to send buses to Mariupol, but for now it is only a preliminary agreement,” Boichenko said on Ukrainian television. “We have managed to get a preliminary agreement on a humanitarian corridor for women, children and elderly persons,” Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk wrote on Telegram.

Russia has blocked previous safety passages in and out of Mariupol, including one that the International Committee of the Red Cross requested at the end of March. In his address, Boichenko added that at least 100,000 civilians remain in Mariupol and that tens of thousands have been killed. The Kremlin has denied intentionally targeting civilians.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a video on Tuesday that the situation in Mariupol remained severe. “The Russian army is blocking any efforts to organize humanitarian corridors and save our people,” he alleged in his nightly address. Meanwhile, according to Russian state TV, about 120 civilians living next to the steel plant left via humanitarian corridors. This report has not been independently verified.

Business Insider

As a new, uglier phase of fighting in Ukraine begins, Western countries are rushing to give Kyiv bigger, better weapons

Christopher Woody – April 20, 2022

• Russia renewed its attack on Ukraine this week, focusing on eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region.
• The offensive comes as Western countries supply more and heavier weaponry to Ukrainian forces.
• A European official said “the envelope” of what countries are willing to give Ukraine “has grown considerably.”

Russia began a new phase of its attack on Ukraine on Monday, focusing on eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region.

The renewed fighting comes as Western countries are providing more and heavier weaponry to Ukraine, arming it for what may be months of intense clashes involving tanks and long-range weapons in the region’s flatter, more open terrain.

The US announced its latest package of security assistance to Ukraine on April 13, providing $800 million worth of equipment —including hundreds of armored vehicles and more Mi-17 helicopters — and weapons, such as unmanned coastal defense vessels, counter-artillery and air-defense radars, and more Switchblade drones.

The package also contained 18 155mm howitzers and 40,000 artillery rounds, which were provided for the first time in light of “the kind of fighting that the Ukrainians” expect in the “more confined geographic area” around Donbas, chief Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said on April 13.

The Ukrainians “specifically asked” for “artillery support,” Kirby said, and this week US troops began training Ukrainians on the howitzers, which differ from the 152mm howitzers used by Ukraine’s military.

After the weeklong training, those Ukrainians will return home and train more of their countrymen, a senior US defense official said Wednesday.

Throughout April, other European countries have said they would provide additional heavy-duty weapons — including tanks, sophisticated air-defense missiles, and coastal defense systems — reflecting an increasing willingness to provide Ukraine with such armaments after two months of defending against Russian attacks.

Ukrainians have “proven that they’re willing to fight and they’re able to,” said Jim Townsend, an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, “but I think what’s really behind this latest push is the type of warfare that they’re going to be dealing with now in the east is different than what they’ve been facing in the Kyiv area.”

‘The envelope’

The US has provided roughly $2.6 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since Russia’s attack began on February 24. The UK has also provided nearly a billion dollars’ worth of financial and military aid since the war started.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky thanked British Prime Minister Boris Johnson for the UK’s “decisive and significant support” during Johnson’s April 9 visit to Kyiv, where Johnson announced additional assistance, including 120 armored vehicles and “new anti-ship missile systems.” The UK has already provided thousands of anti-armor and anti-aircraft missiles.

In the days before Johnson’s trip, the Czech Republic sent tanks, multiple rocket launchers, howitzers, and infantry fighting vehicles, and Slovakia donated its S-300 system, becoming the first to provide that kind of long-range anti-aircraft weapon. More recently, the Netherlands said it would send “heavier materiel” to Ukraine, “including armoured vehicles.”

On April 8, a European official said “the envelope” of military assistance that countries were willing to give Ukraine “has grown considerably over the last few weeks.”

“We were clearly very quickly in a different place once the Ukrainians were able to hold off the first few days, and I think since then we’ve had a bit more time to really think about this and to think slightly further ahead,” the European official told reporters in Washington, DC.

Other countries still limit what they will provide and are wary of discussing it out of concern for Russia’s reaction.

France’s top military officer said in March that it was important “to remain as unobtrusive as possible” and not to “overplay” support for Ukraine.

Germany’s foreign minister said Wednesday that Berlin had provided anti-armor and anti-aircraft missiles but had “never spoken” about it publicly “so these deliveries could happen quickly.” (Berlin initially refused to send any arms to Ukraine and still declines to send heavy weapons.)

“Some of the nations who are contributing are pretty coy about it,” the European official said, “because they’re worried about retribution.”

Moscow has said it considers providing aid to be involvement in the war, but Kirby said Tuesday that US officials have seen “no indications” that aid shipments “have been hit or deterred” by the Russians.

‘Better and pricklier’

Kirby has said US-provided assistance, much of it from US stockpiles, is arriving “incredibly fast,” often within days of authorization. US officials say those packages are devised in coordination with Ukrainian officials.

National security advisor Jake Sullivan said last week that he and Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Ukrainian defense leaders went “item-by-item through their list” while developing the latest package and that President Joe Biden had “an extremely positive conversation” with Zelenskyy about what was included.

The US has stopped short of providing some weaponry, such as combat aircraft, and other forms of support, such as a no-fly zone over Ukraine.

That approach has been called prudent in light of the risk of escalation, but Ukrainians and other European officials have called for more.

If Ukraine had gotten “access to all the weapons we need,” Zelenskyy said Tuesday, “we would have already ended this war.”

Another security assistance package similar to the most recent one is reportedly being developed, and that aid should keep flowing, according to Townsend, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense for European and NATO policy.

“They’ll need a lot more ammunition, for instance. They’ll need more artillery, more tanks,” Townsend told Insider, saying the looming fight would be a “war of attrition.”

“When it’s a battle of attrition, they’re going to run out of things,” Townsend said, “so they’ll need to be resupplied quite a bit.”

The European official, speaking on April 8, said discussions about security assistance still focus on what Ukraine needs to “fight tonight” but are also looking at “how we might support Ukraine in rebuilding and modernizing its armed forces to make them even better and pricklier than they’d been in the past.”

Ukraine needs “continued supply of all kinds of equipment,” Ukraine’s ambassador to the US, Oksana Markarova, said Monday. “We always say we need more because the enemy is so much bigger and because the enemy is so brutal and the enemy doesn’t stop, but we are very grateful, very grateful for all the support.”

The New York Times

Ukraine War Divides Orthodox Faithful

Neil MacFarquhar and Sophia Kishkovsky – April 19, 2022

In a small parish in northern Italy affiliated with the Russian Orthodox Church, the mostly Ukrainian worshippers — information technology specialists, migrant factory laborers, nurses and cleaners — decided to repudiate the full-throated support for the war in Ukraine from Patriarch Kirill of Moscow.

The Moscow Patriarch had repeatedly bestowed blessings on the Russian military, giving a historical golden icon of the Virgin Mary to a senior commander, for example, and casting the war as a holy struggle to protect Russia from what he called Western scourges such as gay pride parades. He has been a vocal supporter of Russian President Vladimir Putin, with the church receiving vast financial resources in return.

“We saw that the Moscow Patriarchate was not engaged in theology, it was simply interested in supporting the ideology of the state,” said Archpriest Volodymyr Melnichuk of the Church of the Elevation of the Cross in Udine, Italy, “In essence, the patriarch betrayed his Ukrainian flock.”

So on March 31, the Ukrainian cleric wrote a letter severing all ties to the Moscow Patriarchate.

With the Eastern Orthodox Easter approaching this Sunday, similar tensions are rippling through the church’s more than 200 million faithful, concentrated in eastern and southern Europe. Around the world, the war is dividing national churches, parishes and even families as they reassess relations with Patriarch Kirill and the Russian Orthodox Church.

In the United States, some believers are switching churches. In France, Orthodox seminary students petitioned their bishop to break with the Moscow Patriarchate. In the Netherlands, the police had to intervene at a Rotterdam church after parishioners came to blows over the war.

The Ukraine war has pitted combatants under the Moscow Patriarch against one another and has placed Ukrainian worshippers in an especially untenable position. By tradition, Orthodox worshippers pray for their patriarch at all services.

“How can you accept prayers for the patriarch who is blessing the soldiers trying to kill your son?” said Andreas Loudaros, editor of Orthodoxia.info, an Athens, Greece-based website that covers church affairs.

Doctrinal disputes and intrigues within the Eastern Orthodox Church often spool out over decades, if not centuries. But with remarkable speed, the war has widened schisms long kept below the surface.

Unlike the Roman Catholic Church, with its single, uncontested leader, each of the 15 Orthodox branches enjoys significant sovereignty. Heated debates have erupted within the Eastern Orthodox Church in numerous countries about whether to openly ostracize Patriarch Kirill and Russia.

The Moscow Patriarchate has sought to anoint itself the true seat of Orthodoxy ever since Constantinople, now Istanbul, fell to Islamic invaders in 1453. So Moscow has been at loggerheads for centuries with the ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople, always the spiritual leader of the church. But, the testy relations between Kirill and the current ecumenical patriarch, Bartholomew, burst into the open over the war.

“He should not have identified so much with President Putin and even called Russia’s war against Ukraine ‘sacred,’” the patriarch recently told a group of students.

“It is damaging to the prestige of the whole of Orthodoxy because Orthodoxy doesn’t support war, violence, terrorism,” Bartholomew said in an interview in Istanbul.

Ukraine has been a particular source of antagonism between the two hierarchs. In 2019, Bartholomew granted independence, called “autocephaly,” to a previously unsanctioned church in Ukraine, which had been subordinate to Moscow since 1686.

Afterward, the Russian church severed contacts with Bartholomew. More than half of Ukraine’s parishes rejected the decision and stayed under Moscow’s jurisdiction.

Of the 45 dioceses in Ukraine, encompassing nearly 20,000 parishes, about 22 have stopped mentioning Patriarch Kirill during prayers, said Sergei Chapnin, a Russian religious scholar and frequent church critic.

That is the first step toward breaking with Moscow, though still far from a formal rupture. But the dispute makes it difficult for many Ukrainian bishops to switch allegiances now.

Some faithful in Ukraine question the silence of the bishops, wondering aloud whether they are fans of Putin, have been bribed or blackmailed to stay quiet, or are hedging their bets lest Moscow prevails in the war.

Archpriest Andriy Pinchuk, 44, the former mayor of a small agricultural village just south of the central city of Dnipro, said the hesitancy dismays many parish priests. Russian troops have destroyed countless churches.

“We are ashamed to look into the eyes of regular Ukrainians, we are ashamed of the horrible aggressive words that Patriarch Kirill is saying constantly, we are ashamed of the Ukrainian bishops who put their heads in the sand and fear a rupture with the Moscow Patriarch,” said Pinchuk. Ukrainians constitute a significant part of the Moscow Patriarch’s flock, so losing them would be a blow.

Pinchuk is the author of a petition signed by about 400 Ukrainian clerics asking church hierarchs to declare as heresy Kirill’s support for the Kremlin’s Russkii Mir or “Russian World,” project, which among other things has tried to extend church influence outside Russia as a foreign policy tool.

“The future of any church in Ukraine will not be linked to Moscow unless it wins this war,” said Christophe D’Aloisio, a visiting professor of Eastern Christian and Ecumenical Studies at the University of Louvain in Belgium and an Orthodox parish priest, who signed a declaration in March against the “Russian World” project by more than 1,300 Orthodox scholars and theologians. “But it is the wrong moment to position yourself for or against.”

Patriarch Kirill of Moscow has provoked widespread anger with a series of sermons and speeches, including saying that the country is battling the Antichrist, and urged Russians to rally around the government. Kirill has avoided condemning widely documented attacks on civilians, many of whom are his parishioners. Most national churches have not condemned Kirill.

One possible reason emerges on the website of the Foundation for the Support of Christian Culture and Heritage, which is funded by Rosatom, the Russian state nuclear energy corporation. It lists church projects financed around the world in Bulgaria, Georgia, Poland, Serbia and the United States, among others.

Numerous recipients have not denounced the war. “When you get money from Moscow, it is not easy to be critical,” said D’Aloisio.

About 300 priests, mostly inside Russia, signed a petition against the war. Three Lithuanian priests who were outspoken critics were just fired.

In the United States, some adherents expressed anger that although the two main American branches of Russian origin, the Orthodox Church in America and the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, had condemned the fighting and worked to help refugees, they avoided criticizing Patriarch Kirill directly.

An influx of converts in recent years, drawn by Putin portraying himself as a bulwark against the West’s moral collapse, has intensified the wrangling.

“It has torn the church apart in some ways,” said the Very Rev. Dr. John Jillions, a retired associate professor of religion and a former parish priest in Bridgeport, Connecticut. “I think that they are too hesitant, they need to come out much more forcefully that they are against Putin’s aggression and Patriarch Kirill’s apparent support.”

Many people are questioning why St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary in Yonkers, New York, accepted a $250,000 donation from the Russian state religious foundation to name a chair in biblical studies after Kirill, suggesting that the money be returned or spent on Ukrainian refugees.

The Very Rev. Dr. Chad Hatfield, president of the seminary, said that the donation was received before the invasion and was under review, and that the Orthodox Church of America had condemned the war.

Archpriest Victor Potapov in Washington, D.C., speaking for the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, called it wrong to single out Russia for blame, and said the church was offering fervent prayers for the war to end.

Some parishioners are switching churches over the issue. “This is not my church, I cannot go to a church headed by a patriarch who is supporting war,” said Lena Zezulin. She left her church, St. Seraphim’s Russian Orthodox Church in Sea Cliff, Long Island, New York, where she was baptized. She cannot persuade her mother, aged 90, to quit.

By all accounts, a serious cleavage in the church appears inevitable, but the course of the war will determine its depth and the scar tissue left behind.

On Palm Sunday, sitting in the courtyard of an Orthodox church frequented by Ukrainians in Istanbul, Nadiia Kliuieva reeled off the terrible legacy from a conflict sanctified by Kirill, including children killed, women raped and the pain of Ukrainians everywhere.

“I don’t know what kind of Ukrainian you would have to be to keep an association with the Moscow Patriarchate,” she said. “I think many people have opened their eyes.”