Category: Ukraine War

Los Angeles Times

U.N. removes Russia from human rights panel after reported atrocities in Ukraine

Patrick J. McDonnell, Laura King – April 7, 2022

As Ukraine braced for a redoubled Russian offensive in the east and unearthed fresh evidence of atrocities outside its capital of Kyiv, the United Nations General Assembly sharply rebuked Moscow on Thursday by suspending it from the world body’s 47-member Human Rights Council.

The resolution to suspend Russia, spearheaded by the U.S., received 93 votes in favor, with 24 against and 58 abstentions. It needed a two-thirds majority of the “yes” or “no” votes cast.

Before the vote, the representatives of Ukraine and Russia had a brief but bitter exchange. The Ukrainian U.N. envoy, Sergiy Kyslytsya, said suspending Russia was a “duty” on the part of the world community in response to the atrocities that witnesses and independent journalists have uncovered around Kyiv in recent days. Russia denounced the measure as U.S.-inspired “human rights colonialism.”

At almost the same time, the U.S. Senate unanimously voted to revoke Russia’s preferential trade status, which would permit the imposition of higher tariffs, and in a separate vote affirmed the Biden administration’s ban on the import of Russian oil and gas.

Ukraine, meanwhile, appealed urgently for more Western weaponry and harsher punitive economic steps against Moscow.

In an overnight address as the war entered its seventh week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the latest U.S. and British sanctions did not do enough to deprive Russian President Vladimir Putin of energy revenues that fund his war machine.

Failure to cut off that crucial source of money, Zelensky said, would be seen by Moscow as “permission to start a new bloody wave” in the eastern Donbas region, where Western officials say Russia is trying to rebuild and regroup its forces after a failed bid to seize the Ukrainian capital.

Days after a Russian pullback from areas around Kyiv revealed a corpse-strewn landscape of destruction, investigative teams and Ukrainian troops pressed ahead Thursday with their bleak fieldwork. In Borodyanka, north of the capital, recovery workers sifted through the rubble of collapsed buildings in what had been the town center, and tallied up bodies found in a mass grave.

Zelensky, speaking Thursday to the Greek parliament, called on the West to “bring Russia to justice” for what he has described as war crimes.

Outrage over the apparent execution-style killings of civilians in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha galvanized the bid to remove Russia from the Geneva-based Human Rights Council.

Russia has denied that its troops committed atrocities, but Ukraine and Western governments say there is well-documented evidence of war crimes in Bucha and elsewhere. Multiple news organizations, sometimes using satellite imagery, have debunked Russian claims that photos and video of corpses left lying in the streets — some with bound hands and shot point-blank — were staged.

In Brussels, European allies worked Thursday on parallel military and diplomatic tracks aimed at supporting Ukraine. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization urged member states to consider providing a broader range of armaments, as the European Union weighed stringent new sanctions against Moscow, including a ban on Russian coal imports.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, arriving at NATO headquarters for ministerial talks that include Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, said his agenda was a simple one.

“It’s weapons, weapons and weapons,” Kuleba said, adding: “The more weapons we get, and the sooner they arrive in Ukraine, the more human lives will be saved.”

The alliance’s chief, Jens Stoltenberg, reiterated that NATO ground forces would not join in the fight, lest the West be dragged into a direct battle with Russia that the White House has said could be “World War III.”

But Stoltenberg cited an increasingly blurred line as to whether arms provided by NATO member states need be defensive only. So far, the U.S. and its NATO partners have balked at providing Ukraine with aircraft and tanks, both of which Kyiv has repeatedly requested.

“Ukraine is fighting a defensive war, so this distinction between offensive and defensive weapons doesn’t actually have any real meaning,” said the NATO chief.

On the sidelines of the NATO gathering, Russia came in for excoriation from representatives of the Group of 7 advanced economies.

“Haunting images of civilian deaths, victims of torture, and apparent executions, as well as reports of sexual violence and destruction of civilian infrastructure, show the true face of Russia’s brutal war of aggression against Ukraine and its people,” said a joint statement from the G-7 foreign ministers.

Despite Zelensky’s repeated appeals for broad sanctions targeting Russian energy revenues, allied responses have diverged somewhat.

The United States has banned Russian oil imports, but Europe — much more dependent on Russian oil and natural gas — has not followed suit. EU officials have left open the door to considering such a measure, but not right away.

Even the coal import ban under consideration by the EU might not take effect for some months, diplomats said.

The bloc also faces internal obstacles as it seeks to forge a common policy on Russian energy purchases. Newly reelected Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said Wednesday he would be willing to pay for his country’s natural gas purchases in rubles, although the EU as a whole has firmly rebuffed Putin’s demand to do so.

On Thursday, Ukraine’s foreign ministry said it considered Hungary’s position on ruble payments, which would help prop up Russia’s currency, to be “unfriendly.”

As the war drags on, Western defense officials have said a full-scale confrontation in Ukraine’s industrial east could be weeks away. Moscow’s attention appears increasingly focused on preparations for that assault.

Regional officials have urged residents in parts of the country’s east to join the 11 million Ukrainians — nearly a quarter of the population — who have abandoned their homes for safe havens in the western part of the country or in other European nations such as Poland and Moldova. Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said Thursday that Russian forces had agreed to 10 humanitarian corridors for the evacuation of civilians in three eastern areas.

Russian forces are staging continuous air and artillery strikes along the “line of control” between areas held by Ukraine and by Russia-backed separatists, a British military defense assessment said Thursday. At the same time, Russia is hitting infrastructure targets in Ukraine’s interior, with the likely aim of degrading defenders’ resupply capabilities, it said.

But some of Moscow’s early failures in the war — spoiling Putin’s apparent hope that Ukraine would be quickly subdued — might be repeated. Russian forces “are likely to continue facing morale issues and shortages of supplies and personnel,” according to the British assessment.

In Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that an infusion of Western weaponry would “not contribute to the success” of Russian-Ukrainian negotiations aimed at halting the fighting. Those talks have yielded little progress, and Thursday brought an exchange of public barbs between the two sides.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said a new Ukrainian draft proposal contained unacceptable elements. Ukrainian negotiator Mykhailo Podolyak dismissed Lavrov’s statements as “propagandistic,” intended to divert attention from the atrocity allegations against Russia.

McDonnell reported from Kyiv and King from Budapest, Hungary.

Business Insider

Germany intercepted conversations of Russian soldiers discussing Bucha killings, contradicting Kremlin claims of a hoax, report says

Sophia Ankel – April 7, 2022

• Russian troops talked about killing civilians in Bucha over the radio, Der Spiegel found.
• The radio transmissions were obtained by German intelligence and presented in parliament Wednesday.
• They contradict Russian claims that the atrocities found in the Ukrainian town were staged.

Germany intercepted radio transmissions of Russian soldiers discussing the killings of civilians in the town of Bucha, contradicting Russian propaganda claims of a hoax, according to a report by Der Spiegel.

The radio transmissions were obtained by the Bundesnachrichtendienst, Germany’s foreign intelligence service, and presented to parliament on Wednesday, Der Spiegel reported.

In one of the recordings, a Russian soldier could be heard describing how he shot someone off their bicycle, Der Spiegel reported.

It is unclear what day the radio messages were sent and where the Russian troops were at the time.

Footage and images of people killed, with some on the street, in Bucha emerged earlier this week after Russian forces left the town.

On Tuesday, The New York Times published independently verified aerial footage that shows a Russian armored vehicle shooting at a civilian on a bicycle in Bucha. It is unclear whether the person in the video was the same as the one referred to in the radio messages.

The audio recordings also suggest that the Russian mercenary military, the Wagner Group, played a key role in the atrocities in Bucha, Der Spiegel reported.

It is not entirely clear who runs or finances the Wagner Group, but the US and European Union have linked Yevgeny Prigozhin, an oligarch and ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, to the organization.

The group has been tied to Russian separatists in the pro-Kremlin Donbas region since 2014, as well as accused of committing war crimes and human-rights abuses in Syria in 2015.

Western intelligence said last month that as many as 1,000 of the group’s mercenaries were being deployed to eastern Ukraine.

Russia has denied responsibility for the atrocities in Bucha, claiming without evidence that the footage coming out of Bucha is staged or otherwise manipulated.

On Tuesday, the Russian state-run news agency RIA Novosti ran an opinion column that speculated the killings were a ploy by Western nations to impose further sanctions on Russia.

This timeline undermines Russia’s claim that the Bucha killings were a Ukrainian hoax.

The Ministry of Defense of Ukraine tweeted the Spiegel report on Thursday, writing: “Radio intercepts by the German Intelligence, show that the massacre of civilians in Bucha was not accidental or actions of rogue soldiers.”

Fox News

A Different Kind of Bloodbath

Amy Kellogg – April 7, 2022

Their digging up of dirt earned them the label “undesirable organization.” This suggests they are exposing uncomfortable truths. It means their investigative team is now working in exile. Roman Badanin, editor of the journal “Proekt” has a contract at Stanford University for the year. There are worse places to find yourself stuck far from home. But Badanin can’t go home, or he says, he’ll get thrown in jail. Between obligations at Stanford and working on exposes about the Russian government, he says he is “crowdfunding” like crazy to keep his scattered team of reporters afloat.

“Proekt’s latest investigation found that Russian President Putin is possibly quite sick–at least quite concerned about his health and perhaps pre-occupied with aging. A detail from the report that jumps out is that a thyroid cancer specialist allegedly made 35 trips to see the Russian president, spending 166 days with him, over a recent four-year period. And this doctor is not the only one traveling to Putin’s retreats away from the Kremlin and during periods when he has mysteriously been out of public view for relatively lengthy periods.

“Russian propaganda creates the image of a 100 percent healthy sport-addicted president. And all of a sudden we discovered that he’s literally encircled by doctors,” Roman Badanin told Fox News. “In total, we have 60 doctors who traveled with him on different occasions every time, for example, when he travels to Sochi (Putin’s preferred Black Sea resort) they travel. On the same route, on the same dates. So again, after the investigation was published, we received some, of course unofficial, confirmation that at least we were right in saying that Putin is really worried about his health.” Badanin and colleagues went about their investigation by finding contracts of these doctors who are affiliated with a public hospital and matching some of their travels to those of Putin–for example, when he went to his Sochi retreat. The contracts would show these doctors to be staying in a hotel near Putin’s place. Rather surprisingly the paper trail is public. Tracking movement this way had them employing a similar technique to what opposition leader Alexei Navalny and the Bellingcat investigative unit used to track down Navalny’s stalkers and poisoners.

Among the other doctors apparently in the president’s orbit–an expert in resuscitation, someone who has reportedly penned a manual about dealing with acute illnesses, injuries and poisonings, and also neurologists. Badanin says the thyroid cancer specialist’s alleged relationship with Putin does not necessarily mean the president has cancer, or that cancer. The only thing certain is that the particular doctor, Yevgeny Selivanov, got his PhD in thyroid cancer according to Badanin. He may focus on other areas now. There have long been rumors about Putin’s health. Each time he disappears from sight, tongues wag. His suddenly smooth faced appearance sparked speculation about botox use some years back. Recent puffiness, some say, suggests he is on heavy medication and that has led to all sorts of theories about what could be ailing him.

Another angle of the “Proekt” story is Putin’s supposed fascination with alternative medicine. “Sometime during his second term, Putin decided to live forever and to rule forever, because one day he realized that his health is the priority number one. Among other things, he tried untraditional medicine,” Badanin said. “We found that he was really interested in so-called blood baths done in the Altai region. They take baths with the boiled blood of the deer actually. And we know for sure Putin at least once tried these baths.” Badanin said he spoke to someone who did the same treatment on the same day. And he explained the blood is drained from the young, soft, sprouting antlers of deer.

There have clearly been a few sport injuries along the way and Badanin says Putin suffers from back problems as a result. But the Kremlin will attest to the Russian President’s good health. And will no doubt dismiss the deer blood baths as the fakest of fake news. It is hard to imagine someone who sits so far away from visitors at his now famous long table plunking himself in a tub of animal blood. But Badanin insists he’s got the scoop on good sourcing and apparently much of the Russian elite, starting with the Defense Minister, Sergei Shoigu, have taken the plunge.

Badanin does admit that in the context of the past, Putin on the eve of turning 70, has outdone those who came before him. “He’s way healthier than all the predecessors of him, including Yeltsin, who resigned at the same age, or Brezhnev, who was almost ousted at the same age, and Andropov even died when he was 70,” Badanin says. “But again, he’s ruling for 23 years. I believe that this time affected him a lot. It’s not an easy task to run such a huge country for 23 years. And of course, I believe he has a lot of psychological and health issues.”

HuffPost

UK Officials Say Russian Troops Are Running Low On Supplies, Morale

Kate Nicholson – April 7, 2022

Russian troops are struggling with supply lines and ebbing morale, according to the latest assessment of the Ukrainian war from British intelligence.

In a Twitter post shared Thursday morning, the ministry of defense explained how the Russians have shifted their lines of attack.

It wrote: “Progressing offensive operations in eastern Ukraine is the main focus of Russian military forces.

“Russian artillery and air strikes continue along the Donbas line of control.”

The Donbas region is in eastern Ukraine, and encapsulates Donetsk and Luhansk — areas partially occupied by pro-Russian rebels since the annexation of Crimea back in 2014.

This renewed focus on the east comes after troops withdrew from the Kyiv region — leading to the discovery of the Bucha massacre.

Russian invasion of Ukraine (Photo: PA GraphicsPress Association Images)

The U.K. officials also pointed out that Russian forces are trying to impact Ukrainian supplies.

“Russian strikes against infrastructure targets within the Ukrainian interior are likely intended to degrade the ability of the Ukrainian military to resupply and increase pressure on the Ukrainian government.”

However, the intelligence suggests that actually it is the Russians who are facing supply shortages – along with a lack of morale among its dwindling workforce.

The ministry of defense tweeted: “Despite refocusing forces and logistics capabilities to support operations in the Donbas, Russian forces are likely to continue facing morale issues and shortages of supplies and personnel.”

Russian losses are certainly high. At the end of last month, NATO estimated that up to 40,000 soldiers had been killed, wounded, captured or missing in action. This number is expected to have increased in April as Ukrainians managed to push the Russians out of various cities, including Kyiv and Kharkiv.

Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby went even further than the ministry of defense, and expressed his belief that the Ukrainian troops can win the war this week.

He told reporters on Wednesday: “Mr Putin has achieved exactly zero of his objectives inside Ukraine.

“He didn’t take Kyiv. He didn’t topple the government. He didn’t remove Ukraine as a nation state.

“And, he’s really only taken control of a small number of population centers and even those weren’t the ones he was really going after.”

He pointed out even Mariupol has not been taken – “the proof is literally in the outcomes you are seeing every day.”

Yet, a previous update from the Ministry of Defense, posted on Wednesday, explained that Ukrainians are still suffering, significantly, despite their various successes.

For instance, Mariupol, the coastal city in the east of Ukraine, is now under siege as the Russians attempt to cut off their links to the outside world.

“The humanitarian situation in the city [of Mariupol] is worsening,” officials explained.

“Most of the 160,000 remaining residents have no light, communication, medicine, heat or water.

“Russian forces have prevented humanitarian access, likely to pressure defenders to surrender.”

The New York Times

Russia Is Recruiting Mercenaries and Syrians to Ukraine, Western Officials Say

Eric Schmitt, Julian E. Barnes and Helene Cooper – April 7, 2022

WASHINGTON — As Russian troops retreat from northern Ukraine and focus operations on the country’s east and south, the Kremlin is struggling to scrape together enough combat-ready reinforcements to conduct a new phase of the war, according to American and other Western military and intelligence officials.

Moscow initially sent 75% of its main ground combat forces into the war in February, Pentagon officials said. But much of that army of more than 150,000 troops is now a spent force, after suffering logistics problems, flagging morale and devastating casualties inflicted by stiffer-than-expected Ukrainian resistance, military and intelligence officials say.

There are relatively few fresh Russian troops to fill the breach. Russia has withdrawn the forces — as many as 40,000 soldiers — it had arrayed around Kyiv and Chernihiv, two cities in the north, to rearm and resupply in Russia and neighboring Belarus before most likely repositioning them in eastern Ukraine in the next few weeks, U.S. officials say.

The Kremlin is also rushing to the east a mix of Russian mercenaries, Syrian fighters, new conscripts and regular Russian army troops from Georgia and easternmost Russia.

Whether this weakened but still very lethal Russian force can overcome its blunders of the first six weeks of combat and accomplish a narrower set of war aims in a smaller swath of the country remains an open question, senior U.S. officials and analysts said.

“Russia still has forces available to outnumber Ukraine’s, and Russia is now concentrating its military power on fewer lines of attack, but this does not mean that Russia will succeed in the east,” Jake Sullivan, President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, said Monday.

“The next stage of this conflict may very well be protracted,” Sullivan said. He added that Russia would probably send “tens of thousands of soldiers to the front line in Ukraine’s east,” and continue to rain rockets, missiles and mortars on Kyiv, Odesa, Kharkiv, Lviv and other cities.

U.S. officials have based their assessments on satellite imagery, electronic intercepts, Ukrainian battlefield reports and other information, and those intelligence estimates have been backed up by independent analysts examining commercially available information.

Earlier U.S. intelligence assessments of the Russian government’s intent to attack Ukraine proved accurate, although some lawmakers said spy agencies overestimated the Russian military’s ability to advance quickly.

As the invasion faltered, U.S. and European officials have highlighted the Russian military’s errors and logistical problems, although they have cautioned that Moscow’s ability to regroup should not be underestimated.

The Ukrainian military has managed to reclaim territory around Kyiv and Chernihiv, attacking the Russians as they retreat; thwarted a ground attack against Odesa in the south and held on in Mariupol, the battered and besieged city on the Black Sea. Ukraine is now receiving T-72 battle tanks, infantry fighting vehicles and other heavy weapons — in addition to Javelin antitank and Stinger anti-aircraft missiles — from the West.

Anticipating this next major phase of the war in the east, the Pentagon announced late Tuesday that it was sending $100 million worth of Javelin anti-tank missiles — roughly several hundred missiles from Pentagon stocks — to Ukraine, where the weapon has been very effective in destroying Russian tanks and other armored vehicles.

U.S. and European officials believe that the Russian military’s shift in focus is aimed at correcting some of the mistakes that have led to its failure to overcome a Ukrainian army that is far stronger and savvier than Moscow initially assessed.

But the officials said it remained to be seen how effective Russia would be in building up its forces to renew its attack. And there are early signs that pulling Russian troops and mercenaries from Georgia, Syria and Libya could complicate the Kremlin’s priorities in those countries.

Some officials say Russia will try to go in with more heavy artillery. By focusing its forces in smaller geographic area, and moving them closer to supply routes into Russia, Western intelligence officials said, Russia hopes to avoid the logistics problems its troops suffered in their failed attack on Kyiv.

Other European intelligence officials predicted it would take Russian forces one to two weeks to regroup and refocus before they could press a major offensive in eastern Ukraine, where Russian-backed separatists have been fighting for eight years. Western officials said that President Vladimir Putin of Russia was desperate for some kind of win by May 9, when Russia traditionally celebrates the end of World War II with a big Victory Day parade in Red Square.

“What we are seeing now is that the Kremlin is trying to achieve some kind of success on the ground to pretend there is a victory for its domestic audience by the 9th of May,” said Mikk Marran, the director general of the Estonian Foreign Intelligence Service.

Putin would like to consolidate control of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of eastern Ukraine, and establish a land bridge to the Crimean Peninsula by early May, a senior Western intelligence official said.

Russia has already moved air assets to the east in preparation for the renewed attack on the heart of the Ukrainian military, and has increased aerial bombardment in that area in recent days, a European diplomat and other officials said.

“It’s a particularly dangerous scenario for the Ukrainians now, at least on paper,” said Alexander Vindman, an expert on Ukraine who became the chief witness in President Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial. “In reality, the Russians haven’t performed superbly well. Whether they could actually bring to bear their armor, their infantry, their artillery and air power in a concerted way to destroy larger Ukrainian formations is yet to be seen.”

Russian troops have been fighting in groups of a few hundred soldiers, rather than in the bigger and more effective formations of thousands of soldiers used in the past.

“We haven’t seen any indication that they have the ability to adapt,” said Mick Mulroy, a former senior Pentagon official and retired CIA officer.

The number of Russian losses in the war so far remains unknown, although Western intelligence agencies estimate 7,000 to 10,000 killed and 20,000 to 30,000 wounded. Thousands more have been captured or are missing in action.

The Russian military, the Western and European officials said, has learned at least one major lesson from its failures: the need to concentrate forces, rather than spread them out.

But Moscow is trying to find additional forces, according to intelligence officials.

Russia’s best forces, its two airborne divisions and the First Guards Tank army, have suffered significant casualties and an erosion of combat power, and the military has scoured its army looking for reinforcements.

The British Defense Ministry and the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington think tank that analyzes the Ukraine war, both reported Tuesday that the Russian troops withdrawing from Kyiv and Chernihiv would not be fit for redeployment soon.

“The Russians have no ability to rebuild their destroyed vehicles and weapon systems because of foreign components, which they can no longer get,” said Maj. Gen. Michael S. Repass, a former commander of U.S. Special Operations forces in Europe who has been involved with Ukrainian defense matters since 2016.

Russian forces arriving from Abkhazia and South Ossetia, two secessionist statelets that broke away from Georgia during the 1990s and then expanded in 2008, have been conducting peacekeeping duties and are not combat ready, Repass said.

Russia’s problems finding additional troops are in large measure why it has invited Syrian fighters, Chechens and Russian mercenaries to serve as reinforcements. But these additional forces number in the hundreds, not thousands, European intelligence officials said.

The Chechen force, one of the European intelligence officials said, is “clearly used to sow fear.” The Chechen units are not better fighters and have suffered high losses. But they have been used in urban combat situations and for “the dirtiest kind of work,” the official said.

Russian mercenaries with combat experience in Syria and Libya are gearing up to assume an increasingly active role in a phase of the war that Moscow now says is its top priority: fighting in the country’s east.

The number of mercenaries deployed to Ukraine from the Wagner Group, a private military force with ties to Putin, is expected to more than triple to at least 1,000 from the early days of the invasion, a senior U.S. official said.

Wagner is also relocating artillery, air defenses and radar that it had used in Libya to Ukraine, the official said.

Moving mercenaries will “backfire because these are units that can’t be incorporated into the regular army, and we know that they are brutal violators of human rights which will only turn Ukrainian and world opinion further against Russia,” said Evelyn N. Farkas, the top Pentagon official for Russia and Ukraine during the Obama administration.

Hundreds of Syrian fighters could also be heading to Ukraine, in what would effectively return a favor to Moscow for its helping President Bashar Assad crush rebels in an 11-year civil war.

A contingent of at least 300 Syrian soldiers has already arrived in Russia for training, but it was unclear if or when they would be sent to Ukraine, officials said.

“They are bringing in fighters known for brutality in the hopes of breaking the Ukrainian will to fight,” said Kori Schake, the director of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. But, she added, any military gains there for Russia will depend on the willingness of the foreign fighters to fight.

“One of the difficult things about putting together a coalition of disparate interests is that it can be hard to make them an effective fighting force,” she said.

Finally, Putin recently signed a decree calling up 134,000 conscripts. It will take months to train the recruits, although Moscow could opt to rush them straight to the front lines with little or no instruction, officials said.

“Russia is short on troops and is looking to get manpower where they can,” said Michael Kofman, the director of Russian studies at CNA, a research institute in Arlington, Virginia. “They are not well placed for a prolonged war against Ukraine.”

CBS News

Zelenskyy says situation in Borodyanka is much worse than in Bucha

Holly Williams – April 7, 2022

Following outrage over horrific images of civilians killed in the city of Bucha, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the situation in neighboring Borodyanka is even worse. Investigators say they found 26 bodies amongst the rubble in Borodyanka on Thursday.

Vadim Shandrenko is among those looking for the remains of friends and family. His friend, Volodymyr, was at home inside a now collapsed apartment building when it was hit by Russian airstrikes. Shandrenko told CBS News the Russian soldiers wouldn’t let him search.

Locals told CBS News the Russians also blew up a bridge as they retreated from the city.

In the nearby village of Termakhivka, locals told CBS News that Russian soldiers looted everything from clothing and silverware to refrigerators and washing machines.

Mykola Oleksienko, the head of the village, said the Russians raided the village’s clinic, leaving it wrecked.

Termakhivka is about 30 miles from the Chernobyl nuclear site, where Russian troops have also pulled out. Ukraine says the Russians dug trenches in one of the most contaminated parts of the exclusion zone, exposing themselves to significant doses of radiation.

A Kremlin spokesman admitted Thursday that Russia has lost a significant number of troops in Ukraine, calling it a “huge tragedy,” but did not say how many had been killed.

Barrons – Commentary: Economy & Policy

This Isn’t a New Cold War. It’s Worse.

By Brian P. Klein – April 7, 2022

Brian P. Klein is the founder of RidgePoint Global, a strategic advisory firm, and a former U.S. diplomat.

Europe is once again the victim of war. Terrible images from the Ukrainian town Bucha show just how far Moscow is willing to go to instill fear and reclaim the ghost of a failed empire. 

All this raises the specter of a new Cold War, pitting rival nuclear powers against each other in clearly defined, diametrically opposed camps. But the situation is far more complicated and dangerous. The world is instead shattering into regional and ideological blocs that have little reference to the Iron Curtain and the global competition of capitalism versus communism. 

The fight is now between empire builders who seek to overthrow the nation-state system, and those who want to defend it. 

Putin aims to redraw the map of Europe. If he destroys Ukraine as an independent country, then every border would be up for grabs where similarly-minded dictators seek to expand their illiberal power. 

President Joe Biden has framed Russia’s invasion and other global threats as “a battle between the utility of democracies in the 21st century and autocracies.” This doesn’t fully capture the scope of the fragmentation. Democratically elected presidents such as Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro and India’s Narendra Modi refused to condemn Putin’s invasion. Autocratic regimes including Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan voted in the UN General Assembly to condemn Russia’s actions.

Nuclear-armed countries have so far avoided direct confrontation, but Putin is testing these informal restraints. He appears ready to challenge Europe and the U.S. with the use of chemical, biological, or even tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine. The lack of clear red lines that have kept the peace for so long makes this situation even more dangerous. 

As Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in recent testimony to the House Armed Services Committee, “we are entering a world that is becoming more unstable and the potential for significant international conflict between great powers is increasing, not decreasing.” U.S. foreign policy needs to appeal to countries focusing on the freedoms that the nation state-system supports, versus the alternative—subjugation to empire builders. 

Putin’s rhetoric has its obvious weaknesses, couched in the absurdist claims of “denazifying” Ukraine. That doesn’t resonate with the vast majority of Europeans. He has become a cultural supremacist with no unifying call-to-arms that would attract others to his cause. 

Even where Putin finds a friendly ear, as with Hungary’s Russian-friendly leader Viktor Orban, his message carries only so far. Hungarians remember Soviet tanks overrunning their country in 1956. 

Russia’s only main supporter has been China, but this relationship has little echo of the closeness of the Cold War. Putin and Xi Jinping agreed to a “friendship without limits” just before the invasion. It will hold so long as it remains useful to Beijing. 

There are already signs of strain. China’s state media has mirrored Russian propaganda, blaming the U.S. for the conflict and claiming the Bucha massacre was staged. China also voted against stripping Russia of its Human Rights Council seat at U.N. today. And yet, China abstained rather than voting against an earlier U.N. resolution condemning Putin’s invasion. Its unwavering support for Putin’s rhetoric has also changed slightly. “The reports and pictures of the deaths of civilians in the town of Bucha are very disturbing,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian acknowledged Wednesday.  

The price of international isolation increases substantially for China the longer and more obscene Putin’s war becomes. These ties will likely fray if China’s already weakening economy is materially threatened by sanctions for its support of Putin. Chinese state-owned refiners, for example, have stopped pursuing new Russian oil contracts.  

Other countries are unlikely to ally themselves exclusively with a Russia-China bloc as both have expansionist plans that, if fully realized, would aim to control subservient client states. India, which remained stoutly nonaligned throughout the Cold War, refused to join this loose alliance despite March visits from Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi. 

Much of Asia is also wary of Beijing’s intent to expand its influence throughout the region and is unlikely to follow its lead on Russia. Traditionally neutral Singapore has not only condemned Putin’s invasion, but also imposed financial and trade sanctions. Communist Vietnam and a democratic Philippines are loosely aligned to counter China’s militarization and self-proclaimed sovereignty over the South China Sea. Japan has taken the lead in organizing a meeting of both foreign and defense ministers from India and the Philippines to counter China’s naval expansion. 

Stopping Putin’s attempt to eliminate Ukraine says to other empire builders around the world that violating the rules-based, nation-state system has severe consequences. 

There is no stalemate, with spheres of influence behind Iron Curtains marking a new Cold War. Extremists want to throw the world into more chaos and violence, something that the free world can’t let happen.

Guest commentaries like this one are written by authors outside the Barron’s and MarketWatch newsroom. They reflect the perspective and opinions of the authors. Submit commentary proposals and other feedback to ideas@barrons.com.

Military.com

Milley Says Ukrainians Using Land Mines ‘Effectively,’ Reopening Debate About Controversial Weapons

Rebecca Kheel – April 7, 2022

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley argued Thursday that land mines have been critical for Ukrainian forces’ success against Russian armored vehicles.

Milley’s comments at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing come as the Biden administration is reviewing the U.S. land mine policy after former President Donald Trump expanded the U.S. military’s use of the controversial weapons in 2020.

“Land mines are being effectively used by the Ukrainian forces to shape the avenues of approach by Russian armored forces, which puts them into engagement areas and makes them vulnerable to the 60,000 anti-tank weapons systems that we’re providing to the Ukrainians,” Milley said. “That’s one of the reasons why you see column after column of Russian vehicles that are destroyed.”

Read Next: How ‘Sugar Daddy Deals’ and a ‘Black Book’ Deny Service Members Justice.

U.S. forces have fallen victim to land mines in the past, including those made in the United States. About 90% of the mines and booby traps used against U.S. troops in the Vietnam War were U.S.-made or built by enemy forces using captured American parts, according to Army research reported on by The New York Times.

More than 160 countries have signed onto a 1997 treaty banning the use, stockpiling, production and transfer of anti-personnel land mines. The United States is not one of them, nor is Russia.

Land mines have long been decried by human rights organizations because they are often left behind after a conflict, indiscriminately killing and maiming civilians who stumble upon them long after a war has ended.

A watchdog organization called Landmine Monitor estimates at least 7,073 people were killed or injured by land mines in 2020 alone.

Russia has also been accused of employing land mines in its attacks against civilians during the Ukraine war, including its newly developed POM-3 that uses sensors to detect when someone walks nearby rather than the traditional way to trip a land mine of stepping on it.

In 2014, then-President Barack Obama issued an executive order intended to reduce civilian harm that prohibited the U.S. military from using land mines anywhere other than the Korean peninsula. That particular use — protecting South Korea from an invasion by the north — has long been the top reason cited by military planners for their objection to signing on to a land mine ban.

But in January 2020, Trump rescinded Obama’s order, arguing the restriction could place service members at “a severe disadvantage during a conflict against our adversaries.”

During the presidential campaign, then-candidate Joe Biden vowed to “promptly” reverse Trump’s move. But more than a year into his presidency, Biden’s administration is still reviewing the policy.

In his comments Thursday, Milley called land mines an “important” weapon to help “shape enemy operations.”

But he also nodded to the concerns about their harm to civilians, saying the United States is working to develop land mines that could deactivate themselves at the end of a war.

“The reason we’re developing a newer one is so they time out and they don’t present harm after the conclusion of hostilities,” Milley said. “And they would self-detonate or self-destroy or become inert at the end of hostilities.”

Reuters

Prospect of Finland, Sweden joining NATO discussed at NATO meeting -U.S. official

Daphne Psaledakis – April 7, 2022

BRUSSELS (Reuters) -The prospect of Finland and Sweden joining NATO was part of the discussion between foreign ministers from the military alliance in Brussels this week, a senior U.S. State Department official said on Thursday.

“Obviously this is going to be those countries’ choices to make,” said the official, briefing reporters on the condition of anonymity.

“The alliance’s open door remains open and there was discussion about that potential candidacy,” the official said.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which it says aims among other things to degrade Ukraine’s military potential and prevent it becoming a bridgehead for a NATO attack, has prompted the two Nordic countries to consider joining the U.S.-led alliance.

Since the invasion began on Feb. 24 public opinion polls commissioned by Finnish media outlets have shown a swift U-turn with the majority of Finns now favoring joining NATO.

Finnish foreign minister Pekka Haavisto told reporters earlier that Finland will clarify next steps in the coming weeks regarding a possible decision to seek NATO membership.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov has said that if Finland and Sweden joined NATO then Russia would have to “rebalance the situation” with its own measures.

(Reporting by Daphne Psaledakis; Writing by Humeyra Pamuk; Editing by Franklin Paul and Grant McCool)

CNN

Drones, phones and satellite technology are exposing the truth about Russia’s war in Ukraine in near real-time

Nic Robertson, CNN – April 7, 2022

(CNN) Russia’s lies may be catching up with it faster than it ever imagined.

The war in Ukraine is defying President Vladimir Putin’s expectations at every turn, not only with Russia’s failure to capture Kyiv as planned but with the war crimes his soldiers are alleged to have committed in Bucha, a city close the capital, exposed for the world to see.

Throughout history, wars have been won by forces turning new technologies to their advantage. The 1415 victory of English King Henry V over the French at the Battle of Agincourt came courtesy of his archers and their newly developed longbows, raining arrows over a range the French could not match.

A satellite image of a mass grave in Bucha, Ukraine. The war in Ukraine may see another historic first, with technology cutting through the fog of war, exposing the aggressors’ lies and accelerating efforts to bring about their defeat.

Satellite images of murdered civilians that match videos, recorded weeks later, of bodies at the roadside are providing compelling evidence of Russian war crimes, convincing Western leaders to ramp up sanctions on Russia and accelerate weapons supplies for Ukraine.

How this will affect the final outcome of the war is unclear. But what is evident at a time when Ukraine is urgently seeking any additional leverage as Russian forces regroup for a new offensive, is that Russia’s actions in Bucha are strengthening Ukraine’s hand.

While battlefield satellite imagery has been available to governments for decades and was instrumental in pinpointing war crimes during the Bosnian civil war in the 1990s — notably locating a mass grave of many of the 7,000 Bosnian Muslims slaughtered in the town of Srebrenica in 1995 — it has never been so immediately available in the public domain as now.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, speaking to the United Nations Security Council on April 5, 2022

Putin and his battlefield commanders appear not to care or not to have grasped the fact that orders and actions now leave an indelible record beyond their control that could come back to haunt them.

They will be aware that in many past conflicts — even as recent as the Syrian civil war — leaders like Bashar al Assad escaped conviction and have even been rehabilitated, despite vast troves of incriminating documents spirited from government offices and police stations.

But this is not the only lesson to which Putin should pay attention. Following the bloody breakup of Yugoslavia and the Bosnian civil war, the war crimes tribunal in the Hague used political and military leaders’ own words to help convict them.

When the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) put Bosnian Serb President Radovan Karadzic on trial, it had video of him looking over Sarajevo, condemning the civilians below to artillery and mortar fire.A woman walks next to a destroyed Russian armor vehicle in Bucha on April 5.

His military partner in war crimes there, General Ratko Mladic, also saw his words come back to help convict him, as video showed him on the outskirts of Srebrenica directing the filtering of civilians, many of whom would shortly be slaughtered by his soldiers, following his orders.

That type of link may be harder to pin on Putin, but his 20-page thesis published last summer on why Ukraine is not a country, and his TV comments on why Russia should invade, will, if previous war crime courts are a precedent, count against him as author and director of the war.

If Putin were to come to trial, his unravelling may turn out to have begun with his inability to understand his army’s weaknesses and Ukraine’s strengths. Failure to fulfil his first major objective, the capture of Kyiv, forced his troops to retreat, leaving their tide of terror exposed.

Top US general: Potential for ‘significant international conflict’ is increasing

They did what they have done so many times before, in Syria, in Chechnya, in Georgia: committed awful abuses. And Putin and his officials did what they have done so many time before: lied to cover their crimes.

Russian defense officials claimed photos and videos that emerged on April 2, showing murdered civilians — shot in the head, some with their hands and legs bound — were fake, saying their troops left before the killings occurred. “The troops left the city on March 30,” the defense ministry said in a statement. ” Where was the footage for four days? Their absence only confirms the fake.

“They were very clear about the date. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, one of Putin’s most seasoned spin masters, doubled down on the clumsy cover-up, insisting “Russian forces left the Bucha town area as early as the 30th of March.

But publicly available satellite images from space-tech company Maxar, taken March 18 while Russian troops were in control, showed the civilians lying dead at the road side in exactly the same locations as Ukrainian forces discovered them when they re-entered the town in early April. And drone video shot before March 10 showed a cyclist being shot and killed by Russian troops. Ukrainian forces found his body weeks later, exactly where he fell.

In the months prior to Russia’s invasion and the days since Maxar’s images appeared, tracking Russian forces and their destruction, the public’s understanding of the battlefield has been revolutionized. Coupled with the near-ubiquitous use of smartphone cameras, geolocation technology and sophisticated drones, Putin faces the possible reckoning he escaped in previous conflicts.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wants more cameras, and wider access, to let the public see for themselves: “This is what we are interested in, maximum access for journalists, maximum cooperation with international institutions, enrolment of the International Criminal Court, complete truth and full accountability,” he said in a video address on Monday.

Ukraine’s Zelensky questions UN Security Council’s mandate in speech on alleged Russian atrocities

Ukraine’s enigmatic leader has realized it’s not just high-tech, tank-busting weapons like Javelins and NLAWs, or surface-to-air missiles like Stingers and Starstreaks, that could turn the tide in the war. It’s truth, and the tools — satellites, drones and smartphones — to deliver it.

Unparalleled in any modern war, technology could hand the underdog this surprising advantage, undermining the lies of an oversized aggressor. Zelensky was at pains for the United Nations to understand this when he spoke to them Tuesday: “It is 2022 now. We have conclusive evidence. There are satellite images. And we can conduct full and transparent investigations.” Like Henry V in 1415, Zelensky knows an advantage when he sees it. While satellite imagery may not be as game-changing as a six-foot yew branch and a length of hemp string, if he can use it cleverly, he may force Putin to talks much sooner than the Russian President would like.