Rainy weather could give Ukrainian military a boost in Donbas region
Catherine Garcia, Night editor – April 14, 2022
Ukrainian troops on a muddy road in the Donbas region. Wolfgang Schwan/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
In Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, days of rain have soaked the ground, and this could give the Ukrainian military a leg up ahead of a planned Russian offensive, a senior Pentagon official said.
“The fact that the ground is softer will make it harder for [Russian forces] to do anything off of paved highways,” the official told Agence France-Presse. The rain is expected to last for several more days, and coincides with Russia seemingly concentrating its war efforts in eastern Ukraine.
Another senior defense official told reporters on Thursday that Russia has been moving artillery units and helicopters into the northern part of Donbas, and “they’re doing the things that we believe they believe they need to do to set the proper conditions for a renewed ground offensive.”
Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, and weather conditions affected troops in the northern part of the country; because the ground was not frozen hard enough, Russian tanks had to move in convoys on paved roads, making it easier for Ukrainian forces to use Javelin anti-tank systems against them.
Powerful explosions heard in Kyiv after Russian warship sinks
Pavel Polityuk and Oleksandr Kozkukhar – April 14, 2022
KYIV/LVIV, Ukraine (Reuters) -Powerful explosions were heard in Kyiv on Friday and fighting raged in the east after Ukraine claimed responsibility for the sinking of the Russian navy’s Black Sea flagship in what would be one of the heaviest blows of the war.
The explosions appeared to be among the most significant in Ukraine’s capital region since Russian troops pulled back from the area earlier this month in preparation for battles in the south and east.
Ukraine said it hit the Moskva missile cruiser with a Neptune anti-ship missile. The Soviet-era ship sank on Thursday as it was being towed to port following a fire and explosions, Russia’s defence ministry said.
Over 500 crew were evacuated, the ministry said, without acknowledging an attack.
The ship’s loss comes as Russia’s navy continues its bombardment of Ukrainian cities on the Black Sea nearly 50 days after it invaded the country to root out what it calls far-right nationalists.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy paid homage to all “those who halted the progress of the endless convoys of Russian military equipment … Those who showed that Russian ships can go … down to the bottom.”
There were no immediate reports of damage following the explosions reported in Kyiv, Kherson in the south, the eastern city of Kharkiv and the town of Ivano-Frankivsk in the west.
Ukraine’s armed forces said Russian attacks on the towns of Popasna and Rubizhne, both north of the port city of Mariupol, had been repulsed and a number of tanks and other armoured vehicles had been destroyed. Reuters was not able to verify the reports.
MOSKVA
Whatever the cause of the Moskva’s loss, it is a setback for Russia and a major boost for Ukraine’s defenders.
Russia’s navy has fired cruise missiles into Ukraine and its Black Sea activities are crucial to supporting land operations in the south and east, where it is battling to seize full control of Mariupol.
The United States said it did not have enough information to determine whether the Moskva was hit by a missile.
“(But) certainly, the way this unfolded, it’s a big blow to Russia,” national security adviser Jake Sullivan said.
Russia launched what it calls its “special military operation” to invade Ukraine on Feb. 24, in part to dissuade Kyiv and other former Eastern Bloc countries from joining NATO.
But in more setbacks for Moscow, Finland, which shares a long border with Russia, and nearby Sweden are now considering joining the U.S.-led military alliance.
Moscow warned NATO on Thursday that if Sweden and Finland join, Russia would deploy nuclear weapons and hypersonic missiles in a Russian enclave in the heart of Europe.
CIA Director William Burns said the threat of Russia potentially using nuclear weapons in Ukraine could not be taken lightly, but the agency had not seen much evidence reinforcing that concern.
BATTLE FOR MARIUPOL
Kyiv and its allies say Russia has launched an unprovoked war that has seen more than 4.6 million people flee abroad and killed or wounded thousands.
Russia said on Wednesday that more than 1,000 Ukrainian marines from one of the units still holding out in Mariupol had surrendered. Ukrainian officials did not comment.
If taken, Mariupol would be the first major city to fall to Russian forces since they invaded, allowing Moscow to reinforce a land corridor between separatist-held eastern Donbas areas and the Crimea region it seized and annexed in 2014.
Ukraine said tens of thousands of people were believed to have been killed in Mariupol, where efforts were under way to evacuate civilians.
Russia’s defence ministry said late on Thursday that 815 people had been evacuated from the city over the past 24 hours. Ukraine said that figure was 289.
(Additional reporting by Reuters bureaux; Writing by Rami Ayyub and Stephen Coates; Editing by Cynthia Osterman and Raju Gopalakrishnan)
Russia warns of nuclear, hypersonic deployment if Sweden and Finland join NATO
Guy Faulconbridge – April 14, 2022
Deputy Chairman of Russia’s Security Council Dmitry Medvedev attends a meeting with members of the Security Council in Moscow
LONDON (Reuters) – One of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s closest allies warned NATO on Thursday that if Sweden and Finland joined the U.S.-led military alliance then Russia would deploy nuclear weapons and hypersonic missiles in an exclave in the heart of Europe.
Finland, which shares a 1,300-km (810-mile) border with Russia, and Sweden are considering joining the NATO alliance. Finland will decide in the next few weeks, Prime Minister Sanna Marin said on Wednesday.
Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, said that should Sweden and Finland join NATO then Russia would have to strengthen its land, naval and air forces in the Baltic Sea.
Medvedev also explicitly raised the nuclear threat by saying that there could be no more talk of a “nuclear free” Baltic – where Russia has its Kaliningrad exclave sandwiched between Poland and Lithuania.
“There can be no more talk of any nuclear–free status for the Baltic – the balance must be restored,” said Medvedev, who was Russian president from 2008 to 2012.
Medvedev said he hoped Finland and Sweden would see sense. If not, he said, they would have to live with nuclear weapons and hypersonic missiles close to home.
Russia has the world’s biggest arsenal of nuclear warheads and along with China and the United States is one of the global leaders in hypersonic missile technology.
Lithuania said Russia’s threats were nothing new and that Moscow had deployed nuclear weapons to Kaliningrad long before the war in Ukraine. NATO did not immediately respond to Russia’s warning.
Still, the possible accession of Finland and Sweden into NATO – founded in 1949 to provide Western security against the Soviet Union – would be one of the biggest strategic consequences of the war in Ukraine.
Finland gained independence from Russia in 1917 and fought two wars against it during World War Two during which it lost some territory. On Thursday, Finland announced a military exercise in Western Finland with the participation of Britain, the United States, Latvia and Estonia.
Sweden has not fought a war for 200 years. Foreign policy has focused on supporting democracy and nuclear disarmament.
KALININGRAD
Kaliningrad, formerly the port of Koenigsberg, capital of East Prussia, lies less than 1,400 km from London and Paris and 500 km from Berlin.
Russia said in 2018 it had deployed Iskander missiles to Kaliningrad, which was captured by the Red Army in April 1945 and ceded to the Soviet Union at the Potsdam conference.
The Iskander, known as SS-26 Stone by NATO, is a short-range tactical ballistic missile system that can carry nuclear warheads. Its official range is 500 km but some Western military sources suspect it may be much greater.
“No sane person wants higher prices and higher taxes, increased tensions along borders, Iskanders, hypersonics and ships with nuclear weapons literally at arm’s length from their own home,” Medvedev said.
“Let’s hope that the common sense of our northern neighbours will win.”
While Putin is Russia’s paramount leader, Medvedev’s comments reflect Kremlin thinking and he is a senior member of the security council – one of Putin’s main chambers for decision making on strategic issues.
Lithuanian Defence Minister Arvydas Anusauskas said Russia had deployed nuclear weapons in Kaliningrad even before the war.
“Nuclear weapons have always been kept in Kaliningrad … the international community, the countries in the region, are perfectly aware of this,” Anusauskas was quoted as saying by BNS. “They use it as a threat.”
Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine has killed thousands of people, displaced millions and raised fears of a wider confrontation between Russia and the United States – by far the world’s two biggest nuclear powers.
Putin says the “special military operation” in Ukraine is necessary because the United States was using Ukraine to threaten Russia and Moscow had to defend against the persecution of Russian-speaking people.
Ukraine says it is fighting an imperial-style land grab and that Putin’s claims of genocide are nonsense. U.S. President Joe Biden says Putin is a war criminal and a dictator.
Putin says the conflict in Ukraine as part of a much broader confrontation with the United States which he says is trying to enforce its hegemony even as its dominance over the international order declines.
(Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge; Editing by Hugh Lawson and Nick Macfie)
Russia tries to scare Finland and Sweden away from NATO by threatening to deploy nukes in the Baltics, which it’s already done
John Haltiwanger – April 14, 2022
Russian President Vladimir Putin visits Kaliningrad Stadium in Kaliningrad, Russia July 20, 2018.Alexei Nikolsky/Reuters Russia tries to scare Finland and Sweden away from NATO by threatening to deploy nukes in the Baltics, which it’s already done
Russia threatened to deploy nukes to the Baltics if Finland and Sweden join NATO.
Lithuania scoffed at the threat, as Russia is already assessed to have nuclear assets in the region.
Experts said it was an “empty threat” from Russia.
Russia on Thursday threatened to deploy nuclear weapons to the Baltics if Finland and Sweden join NATO, despite the fact it’s already assessed to have such assets in the region.
“If Sweden and Finland join NATO, the length of the land borders of the alliance with the Russian Federation will more than double. Naturally, these boundaries will have to be strengthened,” Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, said on Telegram.
“There can be no more talk of any nuclear-free status for the Baltic — the balance must be restored,” Medvedev, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, said.
Lithuanian Defence Minister Arvydas Anusauskas responded by saying the Russian threat is “quite strange” given Russia currently has nuclear weapons in Kaliningrad, a Russian exclave on the Baltic sea, per Reuters. Kaliningrad is located between Lithuania and Poland, both NATO members.
“The current Russian threats look quite strange, when we know that, even without the present security situation, they keep the weapon 100 km from Lithuania’s border,”
“Nuclear weapons have always been kept in Kaliningrad…the international community, the countries in the region, are perfectly aware of this…They use it as a threat,” he added.
The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) in 2018 published satellite images that it said showed “a major renovation of what appears to be an active nuclear weapons storage site in the Kaliningrad region, about 50 kilometers from the Polish border.”
Carl Bildt, former prime minister of Sweden, in a tweet said Medvedev’s warning was a “fairly empty threat” given the apparent presence of Russian nukes in Kaliningrad.
Hans Kristensen, the director of the nuclear information project at FAS, also downplayed Medvedev’s nuclear threat and challenged the Russian politician’s suggestion that a “balance” would need to be restored if Finland and Sweden joined NATO.
“What balance? Even if Finland/Sweden join, there will be no nukes in east Europe,” Kristensen tweeted on Thursday. “This is a good reminder that Russia uses nukes to compensate for what it sees as inferior conventional capabilities. Ukraine flop and NATO expansion will likely reinforce that.”
Russia’s war in Ukraine has pushed Finland and Sweden closer than ever to joining NATO. The leaders of both countries on Wednesday signaled a decision on whether to pursue membership in the alliance could be made in the near future.
Op-Ed: As the world questions globalization, China will become the big loser
Minxin Pei – April 14, 2022
China has been the world’s largest exporter, shipping $3.3 trillion in goods last year. (Eric Risberg / Associated Press)
Russia’s unprovoked war against Ukraine has accelerated the division of the world into two blocs, one comprising the world’s democracies, and the other its autocracies. This has exposed the risks inherent in economic interdependence among countries with clashing ideologies and security interests. And although the coming deglobalization process will leave everyone worse off, China stands to lose the most.
Of course, China was headed toward at least a partial decoupling with the United States well before Russia invaded Ukraine. And it has been seeking to ensure that this process happens on its terms, by reducing its dependence on U.S. markets and technology. To that end, in 2020 China unveiled its so-called dual-circulation strategy, which aims to foster domestic demand and technological self-sufficiency.
And yet, last year, China was still the world’s largest exporter, shipping $3.3 trillion in goods to the rest of the world, with the U.S. its leading export market. In fact, overall trade with the U.S. grew by more than 20% in 2021, as total Chinese trade reached a new high. Trade with the European Union also grew, reaching $828 billion, even as disagreements over human rights torpedoed a controversial EU-China investment agreement.
That agreement had been born of the belief that Europe would maintain strategic neutrality in the Sino-American cold war in order to reap the economic benefits of engagement with China. But if human rights concerns were enough to convince the European Parliament not to ratify the deal, Russia’s war against Ukraine — in which China has tacitly supported Russia, and which has pushed the U.S. and the EU closer together — seems likely to drive the EU toward a broader economic decoupling from China.
One cannot blame Western democracies or their autocratic adversaries for prioritizing security over economic welfare. But they must brace for the economic consequences. And a middle-income autocracy like China will bear a far larger cost than rich democracies like the U.S. and its European allies.
For starters, China will suffer from reduced access to major Western markets. In 2021, Chinese merchandise exports to the U.S., the EU, and Japan — accounting for 38% of total exports — amounted to nearly $1.3 trillion. If China’s access to these three markets is halved over the next decade — a likely scenario — the country will need other markets to absorb roughly 20% of its exports, worth some $600 billion (based on 2021 trade data).
Here, China appears to have no good options. China’s dual-circulation strategy indicates that not even its leaders expect other external markets to pick up the slack left by the U.S. and its allies. And China’s apparent belief that domestic demand can offset this loss also seems farfetched.
High debt, rapid population aging, and an imploding real-estate sector will continue to hamper GDP growth, while sharp income inequality, soaring housing costs, and inadequate social protections will constrain consumer demand. The closure of factories producing goods for export, and the associated job losses, will exacerbate these challenges further. A significant share of China’s infrastructure — especially energy and transportation networks — will be underused or even become redundant.
Aside from facing shrinking export markets, China will lose access to the technologies it needs to build a knowledge economy. U.S. sanctions have already crippled telecom giant Huawei and prevented SMIC, a semiconductor manufacturer, from getting its hands on the most advanced technologies. If the U.S. persuades the EU and Japan to revive the Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls (CoCom) to choke off technology flows to China — a prospect made more likely by the Ukraine war — China will have little chance of winning the technology race with the U.S.
The third key cost of deglobalization for China is harder to measure, but it may well turn out to be the highest: the loss of efficiency gains from dynamic competition. Products made and sold in China are of a far higher quality today than they were two decades ago, largely because Chinese companies must compete with their Western rivals. But if they are insulated from such pressure, they will not face pressure to produce higher-quality products at lower cost. This will hamper innovation and hurt consumers.
All of these costs might be bearable if economic decoupling actually made China more secure. And, at first, it might seem to be doing just that, with China reducing its vulnerability to the kinds of economic and financial weapons that the West has deployed against Russia. But as China’s economic might declines, so will its position on the global stage and the Communist Party’s status at home.
Seven decades ago, Mao Zedong embraced economic self-reliance and foreign-policy militancy, which turned China into an impoverished pariah state. This history should be a stark warning to President Xi Jinping. If he allows Russia, China’s “no limits” strategic partner, to divide the world with its war on Ukraine, it is China that will pay the heaviest price.
Minxin Pei is a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College.
The cycle of war in Ukraine’s south: drones, bombs, silence, death
Nabih Bulos – April 13, 2022
With an overcast sky offering a break from the ever-watchful eyes of Russian drones and the artillery barrages that often follow, a young Ukrainian soldier joined his squad for a bit of fresh air on the patio of what had been a cultural center.
“When it’s good weather the Russians can correct their targeting with the drones,” said Nesquik, a 26-year-old with the smooth face of a boy whose nickname comes from a chocolate drink. “Today, they’re just shooting where they think the targets are — they have artillery to spare.”
The thud of explosions rumbled somewhere in the distance.
You hear little else in Posad Pokrovske, a farming hamlet in southern Ukraine transformed into a tableau of destruction: Houses with gap-toothed roofs or entire wings gutted by artillery. A starving pig trotting down a crater-riddled street searching for food. The side of the village school slashed open by a blast, spilling concrete blocks and schoolbooks into the playground. And silence.
Fighting in Posad Pokrovske, Ukraine, destroyed the village school. (Nabih Bulos / Los Angeles Times)
In the almost seven weeks since Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his forces to invade, Ukrainian troops have pushed back the front line in the south from the edge of Mykolaiv, a vital port nearly 70 miles northeast of the Black Sea city of Odesa, to the southeast toward Kherson, the first and — so far — only major city occupied by the Russians.
That drew the fight out of the dense urban areas and onto the plains astride the M14 highway, leaving wheat fields littered with the spent tubes of Smerch cluster rockets and antitank weapons. Farming villages with birch-lined streets and quaint cottages became sites of clashes of men and armor.
Posad Pokrovske, which lies almost exactly equidistant between Mykolaiv and Kherson, is the last point under Ukrainian control. Russian troops are less than a mile away on the village edge, but they were inside until March 13, when Nesquik’s group, which had mobilized from Odesa and was tasked with liberating a string of villages in the area, entered Posad Pokrovske and surprised them.
A man with a dog searches a building hit by Russian rockets in the southern Ukraine village of Zelenyi Hai. (Bulent Kilic / AFP-Getty Images)
“They didn’t expect to see us here, but when they did, they came at us with technicals, tanks, artillery, infantry,” he said, nodding at a row of half-destroyed buildings down the street.
“Most of the damage you see is from that day.”
Since then, the fight in the village has become a game of hide-and-seek-then-kill, each side struggling to find an opening and drive the other back. But with Moscow reorienting its forces to focus on Ukraine’s Donbas region, the battle is set to change again: Rather than aiming for Odesa, Russian troops are hunkering down to secure their rear while they push toward the east in what may become the bloodiest campaign of the war.
A vegetable warehouse burns after an artillery barrage in the village of Shevchenkove, Ukraine. (Nabih Bulos / Los Angeles Times)
“They’re not attacking. Instead, we’re seeing the Russians now build defenses, and we’re trying not to let them do this,” Nesquik said. “They understand that with the Dnieper River behind them in Kherson, they have nowhere to go. If they’re pushed out, they won’t be able to come back.”
Such is the hope of a young man with a gun and a country to save. Skirmishes have been replaced by artillery duels between the two sides, slowly denuding life from the territory one barrage at a time.
Posad Pokrovske once had some 2,300 residents; none remain. Over in Shevchenkove, a sleepy village four miles up the road toward Mykolaiv, more than two-thirds of the people have disappeared, said Father Pavlo, the priest presiding over St. John Church. That figure feels like a large underestimate.
With gilt-framed portraits of Jesus, Mary and St. Joseph looking down on him, Father Pavlo, a soft-spoken man in his late 40s with blue eyes and a pony tail, sighed and gave a wry smile when asked about the state of his parish.
“We have five different denominations in the village. This is an Orthodox church, but right now, we’re like a big family,” he said.
Around him were stacked boxes of rice, muesli, cookies, crackers and black pouches of something called “Coconutty Curry.” By way of explanation, he pointed at the boxes, saying that the church had become in effect a community assistance center.
“We started collecting donations from friends, from the Mykolaiv government. We have people with their cars delivering assistance, evacuating people,” he said. Those with houses still intact were hosting those whose homes had been damaged in the fighting, he added.
“We also try to help the injured, or take the dead.”
There had been no lack of both in recent days. A few hours earlier on Monday, a shell injured one man, and the evening before an artillery round killed another resident. Two were killed the day before that. Earlier in the war, the head of the local council was killed, local media reported, and the mayor was kidnapped by the Russians last month when he went to deliver aid to other villages. He’s thought to be held somewhere in Crimea. Then four days ago, a barrage snapped through some of the power lines, knocking out electricity and forcing whoever remained here to rely on generators.
Those events had joined a lengthening litany of afflictions and mourning for the dead. Asked about those who still remained, Father Pavlo’s eyes turned a shiny red and his lips quivered. He turned and walked away. He looked at a painting of one of the saints until he regained his composure.
“For 10 years I’ve tried to build the church,” he said. “It’s hard, of course. Now I’m happy when people leave to a safe area. I’m upset if someone returns because it’s too dangerous.”
Those still here, he said, “have no choice but to stay,” immobilized either because of ill health, old age or taking care of someone.
One of those in the last category was Natalya Steblina, 41, a surprisingly jovial woman who stayed with her 82-year-old mother, two grandsons, a dog and a cat.
“Yes, I’m afraid, but what can I do? I hope it will be OK. I don’t want to leave. My grandsons, my mom, none of them want to leave. So we help each other,” she said. The cat rubbed against her leg (she wore shorts despite the cold) as explosions thundered somewhere over the horizon.
“When they want, they do that,” she said, cocking her ear at the sound of the barrage.
“Day, night, any time.”
Yet even in the relative safety of Mykolaiv, some 12 miles to the northeast, there is still fear. An industrial yet elegant ship-building hub on the confluence of two rivers, the city has regained some of its daily rhythms.
The weekend saw brisk pedestrian traffic on its avenues and riverfront boulevards, with people enjoying a sunny day and shrugging off the morbid thoughts of the first weeks of war. Many crowded into liquor stores (they only open on weekends) to load up. But night brought the familiar drumbeat of explosions once again, including a blast that sent windows across the city rattling and pushed Vitaliy Kim, Mykolaiv’s pugnacious regional governor, to issue a video the next day reassuring residents.
A Ukrainian soldier in the southern village of Zelenyi Hai, between Kherson and Mykolaiv. (Bulent Kilic / AFP-Getty Images)
Meanwhile, for any who believe Mykolaiv is clear of danger, the wreckage of the regional administration building — the entire middle section was clawed out by a Russian ballistic missile late last month, killing 38 people, authorities say — stands as a powerful counterargument.
Mykolaiv Mayor Oleksandr Senkevich visited the site this week, squinting in the sun as he gazed at the pancaked floors and an air-conditioning unit suspended from a wire somehow still attached to the building’s roof.
“When people ask me if it’s safe to stay, I tell them 10 civilians died last week and more than 40 were injured. If that sounds safe to you, then stay. But I think you should leave, so we can fight more easily,” Senkevich said, adding that hundreds were being shuttled to the border with Moldova every day.
A onetime IT entrepreneur turned politician, Senkevich had traded his suit for gray tactical pants, a fleece sweatshirt and a short-nozzled AK-47SU equipped with a silencer and flash suppressor. It was a switch he had done in the run-up to the invasion, but he kept it on because he didn’t see a respite coming.
“We need to be prepared for any kind of situation, especially when we see the Russian troops are now regrouping,” he said.
“People even sometimes forget that there’s war. I would say that people feel too comfortable.”
Former Russian lawmaker fighting for Ukraine says he thinks Putin’s days are numbered because ‘no dictator can survive after losing the war’
Sophia Ankel – April 14, 2022
Ilya Ponomarev.Valentyn Ogirenko
A Russian politician who was ousted in 2016 is fighting alongside Ukrainian forces.
Ilya Ponomarev told CNN Wednesday that he believed Putin’s days in power were numbered.
He called Putin a dictator and said he was confident Ukrainian forces “will prevail.”
A former Russian lawmaker fighting for Ukraine told CNN Wednesday he believed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s days were numbered because “no dictator can survive after losing the war.”
Ilya Ponomarev has been living in Kyiv, Ukraine, since 2016 after he was ousted by the Russian parliament. After the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, the former politician took up arms and joined the Ukrainian forces.
Speaking from Kyiv, Ponomarev told CNN he decided to fight alongside Ukrainian troops because he wanted “to defend humanity and Europe.” His role in the forces was unclear.
“No dictator can survive after losing the war,” Ponomarev said of Putin, adding that the Russian leader “has no way how he can win the war.”
“Putin will try to claim a certain victory — an imaginary victory — on May 9. I am absolutely certain about this, but the reality is that he is losing the war,” he added. “I think that the Ukrainian army and the Ukrainian people will not stop before Ukrainian territory will be free”
You can watch the full interview here:
Former member of Russian Parliament Ilya Ponomarev talks to CNN's @jaketapper about why he is fighting on the front lines with Ukrainian forces. pic.twitter.com/I6dnGuD4pl
May 9, otherwise known as Victory Day, is a major holiday in Russia that commemorates the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945 and is usually marked with a huge military parade in front of the Kremlin.
The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said last month that Russian troops were being told the war must end on May 9.
Western officials say Putin will want to have control of the Donbass and other eastern regions of Ukraine by that date, according to CNN.
Ponomarev, who has opposed Putin in the past, was a member of the Russian parliament from 2007 to 2016, Reuters reported. In 2014, he became the only member of the parliament to vote against annexing Crimea.
Sen. Steve Daines of Montana, who shared photos of the trip, and Rep. Victoria Spartz of Indiana visited the Kyiv suburbs and mass graves in nearby Bucha. Daines said the world needed to see what Russian President Vladimir Putin had done.
“There is indisputable evidence of Putin’s war crimes everywhere—the images of shallow mass graves filled with civilians, women and children are heart wrenching,” Daines said in a statement. “America and the world need to know about Putin’s atrocities against the innocent people of Ukraine now, not after time has passed and the aftermath of evil and bloodshed have been cleaned up.”
The bodies of 410 civilians were removed from Bucha and other suburbs in the aftermath of Russia’s destruction, Ukraine’s prosecutor-general, Iryna Venediktova, said this month.
Daines said he was invited to meet with Ukrainian officials in Kyiv and Bucha after he met with leaders in NATO countries bordering Ukraine. Late last month, he joined a bipartisan congressional delegation that visited Poland and Germany.
Spartz, the first Ukrainian-born member of Congress, recently sent a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken urging the Biden administration to redeploy U.S. diplomats to Lviv to help with coordination in Ukraine.
“We must be engaged to stop this atrocity and bring back peace and order to the European content,” she wrote.
State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters at a briefing Thursday that the agency is “constantly evaluating and re-evaluating the safety and the security situation,” saying the goal is to re-establish a U.S. diplomatic presence as soon as it is “safe and practical” to do so.
He argued that the lack of U.S. diplomatic presence on the ground “has in no way hampered our ability to coordinate and to consult with our Ukrainian partners.”
Ukrainian defenders in Mariupol are tying up a ‘significant’ amount of Russian forces that are needed elsewhere for Putin’s invasion, UK says
Jake Epstein – April 14, 2022
A Ukrainian serviceman guards his position in Mariupol, Ukraine, Saturday, March 12, 2022.
Ukraine’s defense of Mariupol is bogging down ‘significant’ numbers of Russian troops and equipment.
Besieged Mariupol has remained in Ukrainian control, despite weeks of widespread shelling.
According to UK intelligence, Putin’s forces will need more troops to continue the invasion.
Ukrainian defenders in besieged Mariupol are tying up a “significant” amount of Russian troops and equipment that will soon be needed elsewhere, UK intelligence said on Thursday.
Russian forces are preparing for a renewed offensive in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, the UK’s Ministry of Defense tweeted, and will need a large number of troops to do so.
But President Vladimir Putin’s troops may be limited by the ongoing campaign to capture Mariupol, which has remained under Ukrainian control despite constant bombardment by Russian forces.
The strategic southern port city has been surrounded for weeks by the Russian military, which has launched a devastating bombing campaign against the city. Russia has targeted civilian areas, including schools, shelters, theaters, and hospitals.
Earlier this week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said “tens of thousands” of Ukrainian civilians could be dead in Mariupol.
Western and NATO officials have said Russian troops repositioned away from the country’s northern region to focus on the Donbas after failing to capture the capital city Kyiv.
UK intelligence said Russia is trying to concentrate its forces ahead of the offensive and using “widespread” shelling tactics, adding that the upcoming military campaign would require “significant force levels.”
“It could be a big war in Donbas — like the world has not seen in hundreds of years,” Zelenskyy warned.
Ukraine warned residents of the region to evacuate ahead of the upcoming offensive. Last week, dozens were killed in a Russian rocket strike on a train station in Kramatorsk as civilians tried to flee the area.
A Visit to the Crime Scene Russian Troops Left Behind at a Summer Camp in Bucha
Simon Shuster/Bucha, Ukraine – April 13, 2022
A crane lifts a corpse from a mass grave in Bucha; authorities say more than 400 civilians were murdered Credit – Rodrigo Abd—AP
Something terrible happened in the basement of the children’s summer camp in Bucha. The steps leading down to its unlocked door were lousy with trash from Russian army rations: dried macaroni, empty juice boxes, tins of meat. Standing at the bottom of the stairwell, Volodymyr Roslik, the camp groundskeeper, looked up and raised an eyebrow at me, as if to offer one more chance to reconsider going in.
The airless tunnel behind that door resembled a series of torture chambers divided by concrete walls. There was a room that appeared to be used for executions at the front, its walls pocked with bullet holes. In the next room stood two chairs, an empty jug and a wooden plank. In another the Russians had brought in two metal bedsprings and leaned them against the wall. To Ukrainian investigators, the tableaus suggested that prisoners were tortured here: tied to the bedsprings and interrogated; strapped to the plank and waterboarded.
“The signs of torture were also on the bodies,” says Taras Shapravskyi, the deputy mayor of Bucha. Five dead men in civilian clothes were found in that chamber, he told me. “They had burns, bruises, lacerations.” It was dark when the groundskeeper took me there the following week and shined a flashlight in the room where they had lain. Two trails of dried blood ran down a wall into the dirt, next to a fleece hat that appeared to have a bullet hole.
Dead bodies found in the basement of a children’s summer campAnastasia Vlasova—Getty Images
The Russian forces withdrew in the first days of April from this commuter town 15 miles outside the Ukrainian capital. Before the invasion, Bucha was well known in Kyiv as a place to get away, to drop kids off at the summer camp for a couple of weeks or take them to a ropes course called the Crazy Squirrel. Now Bucha is a byword for war crimes, like Srebrenica or My Lai. Scores of bodies littered the streets when the Russians left. A mass grave still occupies the churchyard. Shops and homes lie vacant, pillaged and burned. More than 400 civilians were found dead here, according to local authorities, nearly all with fatal gunshot wounds. “These were not the victims of shelling or aerial bombardment,” says Mikhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. “These were intentional killings, close up and systematic.”
Inside the summer camp for children ages 7 to 16, the Russians set up a garrison from which to terrorize the town, shooting at civilian passersby and bringing prisoners down into the basement. Local officials and witnesses to the violence told me the occupying force displayed a total lack of military discipline. Empty liquor bottles lay among snipers’ nests dug beside a playground. Dirty mattresses and cigarette butts littered an administrative building, which was strewn with an odd trove of loot apparently taken from local homes: an old boom box, costume jewelry, a leather briefcase, none of it valuable enough for the occupiers to carry as they fled. In one room, the Russians left a pile of hair shorn off with clippers. On the floor of another sat two lumps of human excrement. “This was no army,” says Roslik, the camp groundskeeper. “This was a horde.”
Mourners at a mass grave found at the Church of St. Andrew and Pyervozvannoho All Saints in Bucha, April 4Natalie Keyssar
The scenes of depravity they left behind have changed the course of the war in Ukraine. The Russian army’s crimes, described in both Kyiv and Washington as a campaign resembling genocide, have hardened the will of Western governments to arm Ukraine and narrowed the space for a negotiated peace. Leaders from across Europe have come through Bucha to see the devastation for themselves. They emerged voicing new pledges of support for Zelensky, promising more than a billion dollars in military aid from the European Union alone.
“You stand here today and see what happened,” Zelensky told reporters on a visit to Bucha April 4, days after the Russians withdrew. “We know that thousands of people have been killed and tortured,” he added, “with extremities cut off, women raped, children killed.” Less than a week later, at least 50 more Ukrainians—nearly all of them women, children and the -elderly—were slain in a rocket attack against a train station in Kramatorsk, where they had gone to flee the country’s eastern regions, the focus of the war’s next phase.
David Arakhamia, the lead Ukrainian negotiator in talks with Moscow, says Bucha made it difficult to face the envoys of Russian President Vladimir Putin. “We wanted to stop the process altogether,” he told me. “We wanted revenge, not diplomacy.” But Zelensky urged the team to carry on, “even if there is only a 1% chance of peace after Bucha,” says the negotiator, who has continued holding talks with the Russians almost every day.
At the same time, investigators have fanned out across the country to document apparent Russian war crimes. A team of experts from France has come to help Ukraine gather documentation for an international tribunal. “The evidence is mounting,” U.S. President Joe Biden told reporters on April 12. “I called it genocide because it’s become clearer and clearer that Putin is just trying to wipe out even the idea of being Ukrainian.”
Moscow knows how bad this is. The Foreign Ministry in Moscow has accused Ukraine of “staging” the massacre to make the Russian forces look bad. Putin called Bucha a “fake.” His propaganda channels offered theories to undermine the grim reality with doubt. They suggested that crisis actors had posed as corpses in videos of Bucha. They claimed that “foreign mercenaries” came to town and killed people after the Russians withdrew.
But the barbarity was too blatant, and witnessed by too many people. The local government estimates that around 3,700 people remained in the town during the occupation. Their stories of looting, torture, rape, and murder are consistent with the evidence emerging from the ground.
Gala and her daughter Veronika hid at home throughout the occupation in Bucha. Gala, with blue hair, said that the soldiers would come into her home twice a day threatening to kill them and terrorizing the neighborhood.Natalie Keyssar
Before the invasion, life in Bucha centered around the Church of St. Andrew, whose golden domes reach upward from a hill near city hall. The parish priest, Father Andriy Halavin, was officiating a funeral on the second day of the invasion, Feb. 25, as a battle raged for control of an airport just north of town. Explosions and helicopters ripped through the air, close enough to drown out his sermon at the graveside.
The battle went on for several days. The Russians needed that airport to land an invading force outside the capital, and the Ukrainians put up a ferocious fight, shelling the runways and blowing up a bridge to block the advance of Russian tanks into Kyiv. “All of this was happening over our heads—the flames, the booms,” Halavin recalls.
Control of Bucha changed hands at least twice before the Russians managed to seize the town in the first week of March. The battle had cost them dearly, and it left them angry. More than a dozen burned-out Russian tanks and personnel carriers stood in the streets. As the Russians dug in, they set up artillery positions in a local school and moved into the dormitories at the children’s summer camp.
Halavin considered keeping his church open as a sanctuary for locals. But he says he changed his mind after the Russian troops began going house to house, kicking in doors and dragging entire families into the streets. At one point the church itself came under fire, leaving deep gashes in the walls. “The soldiers were shooting at anything that moved. Men, women, children,” Halavin told me. “To cross the street was to stare death in the eyes.”
The priest stashed away his robes and did his best to stay out of sight. A few times during the monthlong occupation, he snuck back into the church to pray and fetch some candles for his home. By the second week, the smell of death in parts of Bucha became hard to bear. The morgue was full, and it was too dangerous to take bodies to the cemetery. Many victims were left in the road or covered with just enough soil to keep the dogs away.
A local coroner then asked Halavin to help organize a burial in the churchyard. The priest consented. On March 10, they dug a trench and waited for a truck to come from the morgue with a few dozen bodies. “There was no way to have a ceremony or any sermons at the grave,” he says. “It was all done quickly, with a few hurried prayers.”
Children’s toys and bicycles lie inside a damaged apartment building in Bucha on April 3Natalie Keyssar
The trench was still there, in the church’s shadow, when the congregation gathered for Sunday mass on April 10, their first since the end of the occupation. Most of the bodies had already been exhumed and sent to the morgue for identification and a proper burial. A long plastic sheet was draped over those who remained in the pit, to keep the crows at bay.
Olha Ivanitska, an elderly parishioner, saw two of her friends as she limped into the church’s vestibule. She embraced them and touched their cheeks with her hands. “You’re still alive,” she said. “We’re still alive.”
They knew they were lucky. As they emerged from their homes, from their basements and bunkers, the people of Bucha often found their friends missing or dead, their streets full of wrecked military vehicles, their neighbors’ homes shelled into rubble.
Some residents set out to assess the damage and rebuild. Leonid Chernenko, a janitor at School No. 3, came back to work on April 10 to check what the Russians had stolen. “All the computers are gone,” he told me while fumbling with the keys to the boiler room. That was the least of the problems. Sappers had not had time to check the school for booby traps and mines. More than a hundred empty boxes of Russian artillery shells lay in the schoolyard among empty beer bottles and army rations. Most of the windows had been shattered.
Around the school, many of the victims of the Bucha massacre still lie in temporary graves. One of them is at the edge of the children’s summer camp. Igor Kasenok, who lives across the street, told me he dug that grave one day in March. The man inside it had made the mistake of approaching the Russians on foot, Kasenok said. The soldiers shot him and left him there.
Kasenok found the body in the street the next day, when he went to fetch some firewood for the stove in his basement, a cluttered warren he had shared during the occupation with more than 30 of his neighbors and many of their pets. Kasenok gave the dead man the dignity of a burial, fashioning a cross out of some boards. “They could have shot me too for that,” he said while showing me the plot.
A mass grave in Bucha on April 9Sergei Supinsky—AFP/Getty Images
As we spoke, Kasenok’s wife came out, trailed by a pair of cats. We began to talk about their grandchildren. All three of them live around Luhansk, in a part of Ukraine the Russians took in early March. Kasenok and his wife haven’t heard from them since.
The urge to reassure the couple made me stammer, and the only thing that came to mind was the summer camp across the street. I suggested that maybe one day, after Bucha rebuilds, the kids could come visit and play over there. “Better to raze the place,” Kasenok answered. “It’s a place of killing now.”
