Category: Ukraine War

Business Insider

Zelenskyy says an EU politician told him to show proof that what’s happened in Ukraine ‘was not staged’

Sarah Al-Arshani – April 9, 2022

• Zelenskyy said the worst conversation he’s had since the war started was with an EU politician.
• Zelenskyy told BILD the politician who he did not name asked him to prove the war was not staged.
• “He basically said: Show us proof that all this was not staged. That your people really died.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the worst conversation he’s had since the war in Ukraine started was with a European Union politician that asked him if the war was staged.

“There was a bad situation with a leading EU politician. I don’t want to talk about it. He basically said: Show us proof that all this was not staged. That your people really died,” Zelenskyy said in an interview with BILD reporter Paul Ronzheimer on Friday.

Zelenskyy refused to name the politician or when exactly this conversation happened, but his remarks come after a number of atrocities across Ukraine.

On Friday, two Russian rockets hit a train station in Kramatorsk, Donetsk, killing at least 50 people and injuring 100 others. Pavlo Kyrylenko, the governor of the Donetsk region, which is a part of the Donbas region, said five of those killed were children.

Zelenskyy told Ronzheimer that he doesn’t think Russian President Vladimir Putin “understands at all what is happening.”

“I’m sure he has no clue what is actually happening. He has given his order but does not know just how many people die every day and what is happening in reality. How many people, how many children die, how many buildings are destroyed, are burnt to the ground,” Zelenskyy said. “He doesn’t know about all this and he doesn’t want to know. He just needs a result.”

The attack in Kramatorsk followed news that the bodies of hundreds of civilians were found in the Ukrainian suburb of Bucha.

Zelenskyy told Ronzheimer that there’s more destruction yet to be found.

“Some towns were destroyed completely. Some towns simply don’t exist anymore – no more buildings, no more people. I do not know what we will find there,” he said.

BILD is owned by Axel Springer, Insider’s parent company.

Business Insider

Zelenskyy warns of war in Donbas like ‘the world has not seen in hundreds of years’ as Russia masses troops for a new offensive on the eastern front

Joshua Zitser – April 9, 2022

• Zelenskyy warned on Friday of a “big war” in Donbas like “the world has not seen in hundreds of years.”
• Russian forces are regrouping for a new eastern offensive after failing to conquer Kyiv.
• Speaking to BILD, owned by Axel Springer, Insider’s parent company, Zelenskyy said Ukraine will defend the country “until the end.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Friday warned of fighting in Donbas that could result in the biggest war in centuries.

Speaking to the German newspaper BILD, owned by Axel Springer, Insider’s parent company, Zelenskyy predicted intense fighting in the coming days.

“It could be a big war in Donbas — like the world has not seen in hundreds of years,” he told BILD reporter Paul Ronzheimer.

“We will go on defending our country until the end,” the Ukrainian president continued.

This chilling forecast echoes what Ukraine’s foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba told NATO members on Thursday.

“The battle for Donbas will remind you of the second world war,” Kuleba said.

He used this warning to immediately call on Western allies to provide more heavy weaponry, including air defense systems, artillery, armored vehicles, and jets.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s forces are regrouping for a new eastern offensive on the Donbas region after failing to capture Kyiv.

President Zelenskyy was speaking in the aftermath of a Russian rocket attack that hit a train station in eastern Ukraine that was packed with people who had fled their homes. More than 50 people were killed.

The attack took place Friday morning in Kramatorsk, a town in Donetsk, an oblast that is also home to pro-Russian separatist forces. Donetsk is part of the Donbas region.

Donbas incorporates Luhansk and Donetsk, which runs from outside Mariupol in the south to the northern border.

Even before the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, Ukraine had fought Russian-backed separatists in the region since 2014.

Nato Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said on Wednesday they were “expecting a major offensive” in Donbas imminently.

Stoltenberg told reporters that a battle could last for “weeks, but also months, and possible also for years.”

The US is giving intel to Ukraine for operation in Donbas in advance of the battle, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said on Thursday.

Ukraine’s deputy prime minister Iryna Vereshchuk has encouraged Ukrainians living in the east to escape while they still can. She said civilians “will come under fire” if they do not flee.

Independent

Ninth Russian colonel killed in Ukraine as Putin’s invasion continues to blunder

Colin Drury – April 9, 2022

A ninth Russian colonel has been killed in Ukraine as Vladimir Putin’s losses continue to pile up since launching his invasion in February.

Colonel Alexander Bespalov – who led the 59th Guards Tank Regiment – was given a funeral in the central city of Ozersk on Friday.

No details have been given about his death after it was revealed in a now-deleted post on a local messaging board – but the commander’s demise follows the killing of eight other senior officers in the conflict.

Ukraine estimates that a further 19,000 rank and file Russian soldiers have been slain, although NATO puts the figure at somewhere between 7,000 and 15,000. ADVERTISEMENThttps://s.yimg.com/rq/darla/4-10-1/html/r-sf-flx.html

For context, the Soviet Union lost just five generals and 15,000 soldiers during ten years of fighting in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

A picture of Bespalov showed he was a highly decorated officer, with two rows of medals emblazoned on his chest.

Tributes were shared following the now-deleted announcement of his funeral on ‘Overheard Novogorny’ – an online forum based in the Ozersk area.

One, purporting to be from the colonel’s sister Tatyana Karsakova said: “It is impossible to put into words what pain you feel when you lose a close and dear person. Dear brother, you will always be alive in our hearts.”

A fellow officer said: “I did not know and did not meet a more worthy person who had the right to call himself an officer than my first commander Alexander Bespalov, who became my friend.”

The colonel is the ninth commander to perish in what experts say is a brutal indictment of Moscow’s blundering invasion.

Several of the nine are thought to have been picked off after moving closer to the front line in a bid to shore up failing morale among soldiers finding themselves met with far deadlier resistance than they had been warned to expect.

Ukraine’s ability to target such commanders, meanwhile, is said to be because the invading army has been forced to use unencrypted communication channels, effectively exposing their locations to western intelligence.

Speaking about the attackers sheer losses, Oleksiy Arestovych, adviser to the head of Ukraine’s presidential administration, said on Friday that the country had tried to return the bodies of 3,000 regular troops to Russia early on in the war but Moscow had refused.

He told the Washington Post: “They said, ‘We don’t believe in such quantities. We don’t have this number. We’re not ready to accept them.”

Ukraine’s Ministry of Internal Affairs has since set up a website and Telegram channel for Russians to search photos of the dead and prisoners of war.

The Telegraph

‘Our boys do not want this war’: The grieving widows of Russian soldiers speak out against Putin

James Kilner – April 9, 2022

Vladimir Putin may insist that his invasion of Ukraine is going to plan but thousands of Russian women disagree.

These are the grieving mothers of dead Russian soldiers, the bereaved sisters and the weeping widows.

“This is not our war, we did not start it. This is the authorities’ war,” Anastasia Banschikova told the Telegraph in a telephone interview from Orenburg, central Russia. where she lives with her three-year-old daughter.

“I am so afraid right now. I understand that our boys there do not want this war,” she said. “They thought they were going on regular exercises but ended up in a meat grinder.”

“I want it to just end it as soon as possible, peacefully, with as few casualties as possible.”

Hers is the story of a young romance in central Russia that has been shattered by Putin’s war, of a family torn apart.

Mrs Banschikova decided to speak out after she was told in a gruff phone call by a Russian army officer that her 21-year-old husband, Viktor, had been killed while fighting in Ukraine.

And Mrs Banschikova is not alone. Despite the Kremlin propaganda, which has tried to block out evidence of high casualties, across Russia there are growing signs that thousands of wives and mothers share her fear and anger.

In an intercepted telephone conversation released by Ukrainian intelligence this week, a Russian mother begged her soldier son to lay down his rifle and come home.

“Vova, no. Yulia also said that she was fine but yesterday they came and told her that her husband had been killed. Kristina’s husband had also been killed,” the woman implored. “And our neighbour was also killed. There is no one left.”

According to the Kremlin’s last estimate, just under 1,400 soldiers have died since Putin ordered his forces to invade on February 24. Ukrainian estimates have put Russian dead at ten times that, while the US has said that it is somewhere in between.

But for Putin, the truth is far less important than the Kremlin’s version of reality and he has deployed both his propaganda machine to insist that the “special operation” is going to plan and also his police force to crack down on any dissent.

Criticism of the war can mean being arrested. Thousands of liberal-minded Russians have fled the country and the Kremlin’s hardcore propaganda campaign has brainwashed most of the rest of the population.

Genuine outpourings of support for the war are a common sight in Russia, with the ‘Z’ insignia of the main battle group plastered across cities, and heavy sanctions imposed by the West on Russia used to galvanise support for the Kremlin.

And yet, the Kremlin knows it has an Achilles heel.

In the 1980s, it was the rage of the mothers of dead Soviet soldiers sent back in bodybags from Afghanistan that turned public support against the USSR’s war. After a decade of war, this anger led to a Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989 and also the fatal undermining of then-leader Mikhail Gorbachev. He was ousted from power only two years later.

Putin is all too aware of the danger that angry women could do to his war effort and is prepared to counter them, according to a Russian analyst based in Moscow who declined to be named.

“Putin was around during the Chechen and the Afghan war. He has seen how powerful their voices are,” he said. “But, although they are important, they don’t have much of a voice at the moment. The clamour of the propaganda covers them up and the Soviet women’s groups have been subsumed into the ministry of defence.”

From Orenburg, Mrs Banschikova said that her future looked bleak. Her days are filled with caring for her three-year-old daughter and now also supporting other new Russian widows.

“My husband’s best friend died yesterday. His daughter was a month old yesterday too but he never got to see her,” she said.

Mrs Banschikova’s voice didn’t falter during the telephone conversation – and she didn’t cry. But her deep sadness was clear.

On her profile on the Russian social media page VK, she has updated her status. It now reads: “Has died.”

The Telegraph

Exclusive: Full-scale Nato military force to defend borders

Edward Malnick – April 9, 2022

Nato is drawing up plans to deploy a full-scale military force on its border in an effort to combat future Russian aggression following the invasion of Ukraine, the alliance’s secretary general has revealed.

In an interview with The ­Telegraph, Jens Stoltenberg said Nato was “in the midst of a very fundamental transformation” that will reflect “the long-term consequences” of Vladimir Putin’s actions.

As part of a major “reset”, the relatively small “tripwire” presence on the alliance’s eastern flank will be replaced with sufficient forces to repel an attempted invasion of member states such as Estonia and Latvia. Options for the reset are being developed by Nato military commanders.

The disclosure came as Boris Johnson made an unexpected visit to Kyiv to hold talks with Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president. The Prime Minister used the visit, which was planned in secrecy, to announce that Britain was sending anti-ship missiles and 120 armoured vehicles in the latest batch of military assistance.

On Saturday night, Mr Johnson said: “Ukraine has defied the odds and pushed back Russian forces from the gates of Kyiv, achieving the greatest feat of arms of the 21st century.”

In a joint television appearance with Mr Zelensky, he added: “I think that the Ukrainians have shown the courage of a lion, and you Volodymyr have given the roar of that lion.

“Having been here in Kyiv for just a few hours, I have no doubt at all that an independent sovereign Ukraine will rise again thanks above all to the heroism, the courage of the people of Ukraine.”

Only half a dozen Downing Street staff are understood to have known about Mr Johnson’s visit before the Ukrainian embassy tweeted a picture of the Prime Minister holding talks with Mr Zelensky – such was the level of secrecy adopted for security reasons.

Mr Stoltenberg urged other countries to emulate Britain’s support for Ukraine, as he signalled agreement with Mr Zelensky’s view that nations such as Germany were making a false distinction between “defensive” weapons they were willing to supply to Kyiv, and “offensive” weapons that they see as a red line.

He also revealed that the threat from China would be enshrined into Nato’s “strategic concept”, its formal strategy document, for the first time, as Beijing and Moscow appeared to be “working more and more closely together”.

Amid pressure by some Conservative MPs and ministers for increased defence spending in the UK, Mr Stoltenberg said that he would “welcome” more military expenditure from Britain. But his focus was on ensuring other Nato allies met the alliance’s minimum requirement of 2 per cent expenditure as a share of their GDP.

Setting out plans for the “reset” of Nato, Mr Stoltenberg pointed out that it now already had 40,000 troops under its direct command in the eastern part of the alliance – nearly 10 times the number it had a few months before the invasion.

But he added: “What we see now is a new reality, a new normal for European security. Therefore, we have now asked our military commanders to provide options for what we call a reset, a longer-term adaptation of Nato. I expect that Nato leaders will make decisions on this when they meet in Madrid at the Nato summit in June.”

Before Feb 24, Nato’s presence on its eastern border with Russia amounted to a so-called “tripwire” force, which was intended to signal the alliance’s intent to defend itself from an attack.

In the event of an attack on countries such as Latvia and Estonia, which border Russia, reinforcements would have been called in from across the alliance. But now Nato is preparing to have a presence on its eastern flank of a scale that could itself defend the alliance against a Russian attack.

Last month Britain said it would double its troops in Eastern Europe and send a new deployment to Bulgaria, when Nato leaders agreed to further strengthen the alliance’s eastern flank against Russian aggression. But Mr Stoltenberg’s remarks reveal that the alliance is preparing to go further still.

Appearing to reject the claim by some countries that “offensive” weapons should not be provided to Ukraine for fear of provoking Russia, Mr Stoltenberg said: “Everything Ukraine does with different types of weapons is defensive, it is about defending themselves against the atrocities, against the invasion, against a brutal use of military force against their own country.”

As well as the additional military ­support for Ukraine, Mr. Johnson said the UK would guarantee an additional $500 million (£385 million) in World Bank lending to the country, taking Britain’s total loan guarantee to $1 billion.

USA Today

They survived Russian occupation. Now they grapple with the trauma – and an uncertain future.

Chris Kenning and Grace Hauck, USA Today – April 9, 2022

In a village outside Kyiv, Mariia Bilous stood a few feet away from a Russian soldier as he held a gun to her boyfriend’s head. It was mid-March, and Russian forces had occupied Andriivka, where she and her boyfriend fled after the war began, she said.

That night, soldiers had burst into the home where they slept and demanded to know if they were hiding phones or sharing military movements.

“The realization came to me that we could die and that these could be the last minutes of life,” said Bilous, 18, recounting the tense hours before the soldiers finally left in an interview with USA TODAY through WhatsApp. Bilous’ boyfriend, Pavlo Rybchenko, confirmed the account.

After Russian forces pulled back from outside Kyiv this week, grisly scenes of dead civilians sparked global outrage. Investigators and journalists have begun documenting the atrocities and interviewing witnesses. Now, some survivors are speaking out about their harrowing experiences and grappling with uncertain futures.

ATROCITIES NEAR KYIV: Will it be a tipping point in the war?

Some were trickling back to devastated towns such as Bucha, according to reports. Others were settling in new countries.

Bilous, a pastry cook, plans to return to Kyiv despite the continued uncertainty, she said Friday from the Zhytomyr Oblast region, where she and her boyfriend fled not long after their night of interrogation.

Tatyana Bespalchuk, 54, never left her home of Irpin, to the west of Kyiv. She, her husband and five others survived Russian occupation for 31 days in the cold, dark basement of their 10-story apartment building, which she said was hit by eight artillery shells.

Originally from Donetsk in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine near the border with Russia, Bespalchuk said she fled to the Kyiv region in 2014 when fighting broke out with pro-Russian separatists. Bespalchuk said her daughter survived bombings in Donetsk but suffered severe panic attacks and died of a heart attack two years later. She was 31.

In Irpin, Bespalchuk and her husband rented a home for several years and finally purchased their own apartment in 2018, she said. When war broke out, her husband refused to leave, and she stayed with him.

“We had nowhere to go,” Bespalchuk told USA TODAY in a series of WhatsApp exchanges Friday, sharing photos and videos of her damaged building. “I don’t know how we survived. Every day was hard as hell.”

Bespalchuk said the small group passed their days in the basement by sitting, standing, lying down, eating and praying. With temperatures below freezing outside, they dressed in several layers of clothing and gathered blankets to cover their heads and capture the warmth of their breath, she said.

“When there was a little calm, we went out into the street, but we didn’t go far from the basement in order to have time to run at the next shelling,” she said.

Bespalchuk said her group emerged from the basement March 30. The apartment is still without water, electricity and gas, so they cook on a grill in the yard, she said.

“We will restore everything and continue to live,” Bespalchuk said.

Russian forces killed hundreds of civilians in occupied towns and villages in the Kyiv area, Ukrainian officials said this week. The Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office on Friday said about 67 bodies were buried in a mass grave near a church in Bucha. In nearby Borodyanka, 26 bodies were found Thursday, the office said.

Russia has denied responsibility for civilian deaths in those areas and elsewhere, including at a train station in Kramatorsk, where a missile strike on Friday killed at least 50 people and injured more than 100, Ukrainian officials said.

But as investigators and officials began to take stock this week of the death and destruction in areas surrounding Ukraine’s capital, many residents are trying to figure out what comes next.

Diana Guloz, 34, a language teacher from Kyiv, is dealing with the heavy emotional weight of her experience, she said.

Pregnant and living alone while her husband was working in Germany, Guloz first went to a friend’s house in Hostomel but left because it didn’t have electricity and water.

She then went to stay in Bucha: “Nobody thought they would come here at first,” she told USA TODAY via various messaging services.

She was staying with friends when fighting between Russian tanks and Ukrainian forces began Feb. 27. The roof of the residence fell several times as the area was devastated by deafening fighting that lasted for hours, she said.

“We waited in the basement. Waited and prayed,” she said. “I was afraid they could come in the basement, to shoot us or leave a hand grenade.”

‘IT IS A HELL’: Ukrainians begin grim work of investigating ‘absolute horror’ near Kyiv

After the battle, she moved to another apartment complex. In the following weeks, she said some neighbors were shot by soldiers as they were trying to leave the city.

Soldiers would sometimes shoot at the windows of the complex. When a man was killed on the seventh floor of an apartment, people wouldn’t bury him because they were too afraid to go outside, she said.

Some in town lacked electricity and gas, Guloz said. She was often scared of being raped because of hearing reports of it elsewhere. Local officials told her evacuation was too dangerous.

“Every day, I only prayed and asked the Lord to help me or kill me,” she said. “It was terrible and psychologically very difficult.”

On March 10, she secured a place on a bus with other parents with children, who finally “had a chance to be evacuated from the hell,” she said.

She’s now in Stralsund, Germany, closer to where her husband works in Hamburg. Her first child – a son who she will name Olexandr – is due in early May. Her parents are joining her too, after fleeing another area that was bombed.

She often cries when she thinks of what she’s gone through and said she’s working with a psychologist to deal with the trauma. She worries about her brother, who is in the military reserves in Ukraine, and friends and family.

“Honestly I didn’t want to leave Ukraine, but I had to do it. To save my baby son,” she said.

Bilous said she wants a return to normal life.

“I hope our victory is getting close,” she said. “I pray for that.”

Daily Beast

Russian Troops Brag They Bombed Fleeing Families at Train Station

Barbie Latza Nadeau – April 8, 2022

A few minutes before it became clear that women, children and elderly people were among the at least 39 dead and nearly 100 known to be injured when a missile struck the Kramatorsk train station in eastern Ukraine, Russian soldiers were bragging about the hit on Telegram.

The missile struck the main evacuation center in the area and seemed to herald the beginning of an intensified offensive that Russia warned was coming.

Minutes later, the messages, which included claims to have successfully obliterated “a crowd of Ukrainian militants at the Kramatorsk railway station,” were edited or disappeared altogether, according to several accounts by journalists in the region.

Journalists who had visited the train station in recent days documented hundreds of people crowded onto platforms waiting to evacuate. The local governor said there were as many as 4,000 people waiting to evacuate when rockets struck the building. A Russian Defense spokesperson denied the attack, calling it a “provocation” instead.

Ukrainian military officials posted photos of the aftermath on Telegram, which showed mangled corpses and suitcases on the tracks. “The ‘Rashists’ knew very well where they were aiming and what they wanted,” regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko told Reuters, referring to a nickname for Russian fascists. “They wanted to sow panic and fear, they wanted to take as many civilians as possible.”

Tetiana Ihnatchenko, spokesperson for the Donetsk regional administration, told CNN that the Russian military knew the station would be full of civilians. “[Evacuations] have been going on since February 26, and the Russians knew that thousands of people are there every day,” she said. “I believe that’s what they were counting on.”

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky called the act another atrocity. “The inhuman Russians are not changing their methods,” he said, according to the Associated Press. “Without the strength or courage to stand up to us on the battlefield, they are cynically destroying the civilian population. This is an evil without limits. And if it is not punished, then it will never stop.”

Russia also hit at least two residential houses in the once-picturesque port city of Odesa on Friday. It is unclear if there are any victims in that attack.

And north of Kyiv, Zelensky warned that the razed city of Borodianka is “significantly more dreadful” thank Bucha, where Russian troops are blamed for grisly executions and indiscriminate shelling of civilians. At least 300 people are known to have died there.

Business Insider

US charges Russian oligarch who called the war on Ukraine a ‘holy war’ against ‘pagans’ with violating sanctions — the first indictment of its kind since the invasion began

Hannah Towey – April 8, 2022

• On Wednesday, the US charged Russian oligarch Konstantin Malofeyev with sanctions evasion.
• He was sanctioned in 2014 for “threatening Ukraine” and financially supporting Moscow-backed separatists.
• The US alleges the oligarch conspired with an ex-Fox News director to illegally transfer $10 million.

The US Justice department charged Russian oligarch Konstantin Malofeyev on Wednesday with sanctions evasion — the first indictment of its kind since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The FBI’s investigation of Malofeyev goes back several years, and concludes as some experts argue that sanctioning Russian oligarchs is a “PR exercise” that is “largely symbolic.”

Malofeyev, the founder of pro-Putin Russian television channel Tsargrad, was sanctioned by the US in 2014 over allegations he was “threatening Ukraine” and financially supporting a Moscow-backed separatist group. If arrested, he faces a maximum of 20 years in prison.

He is accused of conspiring with ex-Fox News director Jack Hanick to illegally transfer a $10 million US investment from a Texas-based bank to an associate in Greece. Hanick, who previously worked at Fox News for 15 years and allegedly helped launch the Tsargrad media group, was also charged with sanctions evasion last month.

“Kremlin-linked Russian oligarch Konstantin Malofeyev played a leading role in supporting Russia’s 2014 invasion of eastern Ukraine, continues to run a pro-Putin propaganda network, and recently described Russia’s 2022 military invasion of Ukraine as a ‘holy war,'” Michael J. Driscoll, the assistant director of the FBI’s New York field office, said in a DOJ press release.

The oligarch, who remains at large and is believed to be in Russia, said on state TV that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a “holy war” against “satanists” and “pagans,” the BBC’s Francis Scarr tweeted last week. The US does not have an extradition treaty with Russia.

Hanick, however, currently faces extradition from the United Kingdom to the United States, where he would be tried in New York City, according to the DOJ. Contact information for Hanick’s attorney could not immediately be found.