Business Insider

Filmmaker who documented Russia’s propaganda says Trump ‘fits neatly’ into Moscow’s narrative as the only US leader who ‘wasn’t trying to destroy the Russian way of life’

Cheryl Teh – March 23, 2022

• The filmmaker Maxim Pozdorovkin said Donald Trump fit “neatly” into an anti-West Kremlin narrative.
• He said Trump was portrayed as the only US leader not “trying to destroy the Russian way of life.”
• He described Russia as “fully and artfully” waging an information war for the past decade.

A filmmaker who has extensively documented Russian propaganda said this week that of all the US leaders, former President Donald Trump fit “neatly” into the Kremlin’s anti-West narrative.

In an interview with The Washington Post, Maxim Pozdorovkin — whose award-winning documentary “Our New President” follows Trump’s election in 2016 as depicted by Russia’s state-linked media — gave his take on Moscow’s long-standing propaganda campaign against the US and the West.

Pozdorovkin told The Post that in the decade leading up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Russians had been fed the same message “over and over” by President Vladimir Putin’s government that the West was constantly attempting to “stifle and destroy” their society. He said Trump “fits neatly” in Moscow’s propaganda efforts because he could be portrayed as the “one American leader who wasn’t trying to destroy the Russian way of life.”

In the context of that narrative, Pozdorovkin said, the domestic backlash that Trump faced in the US — no matter the real reason — could be framed as being fueled by anti-Russia interests.

“It’s been an information war — a totally one-sided information war — and it has been waged so fully and artfully that it’s made a lot of what’s happening now preemptively possible,” he told the outlet.

“The Russian media has been totally shadowboxing for years; no one was fighting back,” he said later in the interview. “But that doesn’t really matter. If you ingrain this message of victimhood so completely, what it does is when there’s any kind of Putin aggressive action, as there is now, a lot of people in Russia don’t see it as aggressive.

“They just see it as standing up for their way of life.”

Trump and Putin met five times during Trump’s presidency, though details of these meetings were handled secretively, as The New York Times reported in 2019. Trump’s dealings with Russia and apparent openness toward Russian help during his 2016 presidential campaign attracted wide scrutiny during much of his presidency.

Amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Trump has made several statements about Putin and Russia.

Most recently, Trump said if he were still president, he would send nuclear submarines to go “up and down” Russia’s coast to pressure Putin. He has also suggested in a speech to Republican donors that the US put Chinese flags on its fighter jets to “bomb the shit out of Russia.”

Soon before the invasion, Trump praised Putin’s justification for sending his forces into Ukraine, calling the Russian leader “savvy,” “smart,” and a “genius.”

Associated Press

US finds Russian troops have committed war crimes in Ukraine

Matthew Lee – March 23, 2022

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration on Wednesday made a formal determination that Russian troops have committed war crimes in Ukraine and said it would work with others to prosecute offenders, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said.

“Today, I can announce that, based on information currently available, the U.S. government assesses that members of Russia’s forces have committed war crimes in Ukraine,” Blinken said in a statement released as he was traveling to Brussels with President Joe Biden for an emergency summit of NATO leaders.

The assessment was based on a “careful review” of public and intelligence sources since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine last month, he said.

America’s top diplomat said the United States would share that information with allies, partners and international institutions tasked with investigating allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

“We’ve seen numerous credible reports of indiscriminate attacks and attacks deliberately targeting civilians, as well as other atrocities. Russia’s forces have destroyed apartment buildings, schools, hospitals, critical infrastructure, civilian vehicles, shopping centers, and ambulances, leaving thousands of innocent civilians killed or wounded,” Blinken said said.

He cited attacks on the civilian population in the besieged city of Mariupol and elsewhere.

Neither Russia nor the U.S. recognizes the authority of the International Criminal Court at The Hague, presenting obvious difficulties for seeking accountability for war crimes committed in Ukraine.

The U.S. could still assist a prosecution before the court, which earlier opened an investigation into atrocities committed in Ukraine, by helping to gather evidence against Russian forces in Ukraine, using some of the vast abilities it has deployed to track and monitor what has been happening in the conflict.

The U.S. could also provide support and backing to a commission of inquiry established by the U.N. Human Rights Council.

Business Insider

Satellite photos show flooding around Kyiv, protecting the capital from Russian advances in a possible instance of ‘hydraulic warfare’

Marianne Guenot – March 23, 2022

• A river basin to the northwest of Kyiv has been flooded.
• It’s unclear whether this was intentional, but it could be a move to block Russian troops.
• If the troops were unable to cross the river, they wouldn’t be able to capture Kyiv from the West, per CNN.

Satellite images show flooding in the Irpin River basin northwest of Kyiv.

It is unclear what caused the flooding, but this could be a strategic move by Ukraine to block the advance of Russian troops on the capital, analysts have said. The basin borders a large reservoir.

It could be an example of “hydraulic warfare” from Ukraine to block the advancing Russian troops targeting the city’s northwest, analysts previously told the Washington Post. If the Russian forces cannot cross the Irpin river, they will not be able to take Kyiv from the west, according to CNN.

According to the UK’s defense intelligence, Russian troops have driven towards Kyiv from the north, west, and east since the war began on February 24. Capturing Kyiv is seen as Russia’s primary goal in its invasion of Ukraine, but it has struggled to make headway facing fierce resistance from Ukrainian forces.

Ukraine said Tuesday that it had recaptured Makariv, a town west of Kyiv, the Associated Press said, further blunting Russia’s ambition to launch an assault on the city from the northwest.

Ukraine’s ambassador to the US said on February 26 that Russian forces had destroyed a dam in the water reservoir North of Kyiv. However, it is unclear whether that event is connected to the flooding, per The Washington Post.

Reuters

German minister says further Strela missiles are on way to Ukraine

March 23, 2022

BERLIN (Reuters) – German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said on Wednesday that after delays in deliveries, further supplies of Strela missiles, which had been in the inventories of the former Communist East German army, were on the way to Ukraine.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine prompted Germany to stage a historic reversal of its policy of not sending weapons to conflict zones, but the Ukrainian government has been frustrated by delays.

“I can clearly say that further Strela deliveries are on the way,” Baerbock told the Bundestag lower house of parliament.

“We are one of the biggest weapons suppliers in this situation, it doesn’t make us proud but it’s what we must do to help Ukraine,” she added.

She also said that a first flight carrying Ukrainian refugees from Moldova to Germany would take place on Friday or Saturday.

(Reporting by Miranda Murray and Madeline Chambers)

Daily Beast

Russian Crew of Mystery ‘Putin Yacht’ Just Vanished Overnight in Tuscany

Barbie Latza Nadeau – March 23, 2022

ROME—For the last two weeks, Russian oligarch watchers have had their eyes on the Scheherazade mega yacht docked in the posh Marina di Carrara in northern Tuscany. There are growing suspicions that the $700 million, six-deck super-luxurious vessel—with its two helicopter pads, various swimming pools, his-and-hers beauty salons and gold fixtures that would make Donald Trump jealous—belongs to Vladimir Putin.

Until two days ago, its Russian crew, led by British captain Guy Bennett Pearce, whose mother told the Daily Telegraph her son would “never work for a murderer,” didn’t leave the ship. But The Daily Beast has learned that all that changed this week when the Russian crew disappeared overnight, replaced by an entirely British set, who, despite Brexit constraints that would require work visas, seem to have descended out of nowhere.

The crew change caught the attention of Italy’s General Confederation of Labor, which confirmed to The Daily Beast that the Russians are gone. “Yes, they were all Russians until a few days ago,” Paolo Gozzani, secretary of the confederation, told The Daily Beast. “Today the crew is made up entirely of English. We are monitoring the situation inside the shipyards but not because I care whether it is Putin’s or not: I am worried about the repercussions that a seizure, or a freezing of assets, could have on the shipyard workers.”

Italian financial police, who have already confiscated millions of dollars worth of yachts, villas, and bank accounts tied to sanctions against Russia, are working to untangle reams of documents that may or may not link the ship to Putin. Marianna Ferrante, spokesperson for the Italian Sea Group that manages the port, says the ship arrived about a year ago to be refitted. She says it does not belong to Putin—at least not directly.

But Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny says it does. His research team published a video they say proves the yacht belongs to Vladimir Putin, a sentiment shared by U.S. intelligence officials after The New York Times reported alleged ties to the Russian president.

The area where the Scheherazade—named after a key female character in Middle Eastern tale One Thousand and One Nights—is as close to Little Russia as anywhere in Italy. The port is lined with designer shops and a magnet for Russian tourists who flock to Forte dei Marmi resort, which hosts around 500 Russian “regulars” each summer, according to the local tourist board, which says most have cancelled for the upcoming season. In 2010, the residents petitioned to stop Russians from pushing out the locals, but in the end, the Russian Ruble won out and most of the port workers speak enough Russian to accommodate the numerous Russian yachts that are docked there most of the long Italian summers. The port authority said all the Russian yachts disappeared months before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. All but the Scheherazade, which is currently the only vessel in Italian waters without a distinct owner, according to the Italian Financial police.

Francesco De Pasquale, the mayor of Carrara, has grown weary of the interest in the mega ship. He and the leaders of the Italian Sea Group have issued a joint statement denying Putin is the owner. “According to the documentation available to the company and following what emerged from the checks carried out by the competent authorities, the 140-meter yacht Scheherazade, currently under construction for maintenance activities, is not attributable to the property of Russian President Vladimir Putin,” says the statement, also sent to The Daily Beast.

But the port also conceded that if the Scheherazade were to be seized, it would be disastrous for the port’s 400 workers who have already invested hundreds of hours and materials in the mega yacht refit. “Inside the yard, 400 direct workers and another 200 work in the related industries,” union leader Gazzoni says. “If the yacht, which has been carrying out refitting operations for weeks now, were seized it would be a disaster, an immense impact on the work of the workers; the seizure would freeze a huge area of ​​the construction site, who knows for how long, and would prevent new work from coming in.”

The New York Times

As Russia Stalls in Ukraine, Dissent Brews Over Putin’s Leadership

Anton Troianovski and Michael Schwirtz – March 23, 2022

In January, the head of a group of serving and retired Russian military officers declared that invading Ukraine would be “pointless and extremely dangerous.” It would kill thousands, he said, make Russians and Ukrainians enemies for life, risk a war with NATO and threaten “the existence of Russia itself as a state.”

To many Russians, that seemed like a far-fetched scenario, since few imagined that an invasion of Ukraine was really possible. But two months later, as Russia’s advance stalls in Ukraine, the prophecy looms large. Reached by phone this week, the retired general who authored the declaration, Leonid Ivashov, said he stood by it, although he could not speak freely given Russia’s wartime censorship: “I do not disavow what I said.”

In Russia, the slow going and the heavy toll of President Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine are setting off questions about his military’s planning capability, his confidence in his top spies and loyal defense minister, and the quality of the intelligence that reaches him. It also shows the pitfalls of Putin’s top-down governance, in which officials and military officers have little leeway to make their own decisions and adapt to developments in real time.

The failures of Putin’s campaign are apparent in the striking number of senior military commanders believed to have been killed in the fighting. Ukraine says it has killed at least six Russian generals, while Russia acknowledges one of their deaths, along with that of the deputy commander of its Black Sea fleet. U.S. officials say they cannot confirm the number of Russian troop deaths, but that Russia’s invasion plan appears to have been stymied by bad intelligence.

The lack of progress is so apparent that a blame game has begun among some Russian supporters of the war — even as Russian propaganda claims that the slog is a consequence of the military’s care to avoid harming civilians. Igor Girkin, a former colonel in Russia’s FSB intelligence agency and the former “defense minister” of Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine, said in a video interview posted online on Monday that Russia had made a “catastrophically incorrect assessment” of Ukraine’s forces.

“The enemy was underestimated in every aspect,” Girkin said.

The Russian forces’ poor performance has also surprised analysts, who predicted at the start of the war that Russia’s massive, technologically advanced military would make short work of Ukraine. Putin himself seems to have counted on his troops quickly seizing major cities, including the capital, Kyiv, decapitating the government and installing a puppet regime under the Kremlin’s control.

“Take power into your own hands,” Putin urged Ukrainian soldiers on the second day of the invasion, apparently hoping Ukraine would go down without a fight.

Instead, Ukraine fought back. Nearly a month has passed, and Russian troops appear bogged down in the face of relentless attacks from a much weaker, though far more maneuverable, Ukrainian military.

“There was probably the hope that they wouldn’t resist so intensely,” Yevgeny Buzhinsky, ​​a retired lieutenant general and a regular Russian state television commentator, said of Ukraine’s forces. “They were expected to be more reasonable.”

As if responding to criticism, Putin has said repeatedly in his public comments about the war that it is going “according to plan.”

“We can definitively say that nothing is going to plan,” countered Pavel Luzin, a Russian military analyst. “It has been decades since the Soviet and Russian armies have seen such great losses in such a short period of time.”

Russia last announced its combat losses three weeks ago — 498 deaths as of March 2. U.S. officials now say that a conservative estimate puts the Russian military death toll at 7,000. Russia says it lost a total of 11,000 service members in nearly a decade of fighting in Chechnya.

The failures in Ukraine have started to create fissures within Russian leadership, according to Andrei Soldatov, an author and expert on Russia’s military and security services. The top Russian intelligence official in charge of overseeing the recruitment of spies and diversionary operations in Ukraine has been put under house arrest along with his deputy, Soldatov said. Even Russia’s defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, who vacations with Putin and has been spoken of as a potential presidential successor, has suffered a loss of standing, according to Soldatov’s sources.

“It looks like everybody is on edge,” Soldatov said.

Soldatov’s claims could not be independently verified, and some independent experts have challenged them. But Shoigu has not been shown meeting with Putin in person since Feb. 27, when he and his top military commander, Gen. Valery Gerasimov, sat at the end of a long table as Putin, on the opposite end, ordered them to place Russia’s nuclear forces at a higher level of readiness.

“The war has shown that the army fights poorly,” Luzin, the Russian military analyst, said. “The defense minister is responsible for this.”

The battlefield deaths of senior Russian commanders also reflect poorly on the Kremlin’s war planning. Capt. Andrei Paliy, the deputy commander of Russia’s Black Sea fleet, died in combat over the port city of Mariupol, Russian officials said Sunday.

After Maj. Gen. Andrei Sukhovetsky, the deputy commander of the 41st Combined Arms Army, was killed four days into the war, the city of Novorossiysk, where he was previously based, issued a statement remembering him as “a faithful comrade, a valiant warrior, a wise commander and a selfless defender of the Fatherland.”

“Epaulets give no protection to terrorists,” Ukraine’s military intelligence service said in its statement announcing Sukhovetsky’s death.

There was also Maj. Gen. Oleg Mityayev, among the Russian military’s most seasoned commanders. He had led Russia’s largest foreign military base in Tajikistan and was second in command of Russia’s forces in Syria. When Putin ordered his troops to invade Ukraine, Mityayev was tapped to lead the storied 150th Motorized Rifle Division, whose soldiers helped take the Reichstag building in Berlin precipitating Nazi Germany’s defeat in 1945.

According to Kyiv, he lasted less than three weeks in Ukraine. After he was killed in battle, either Russian forces left his body behind, or it was captured by the far-right Azov Battalion, which posted a photo of the bloody corpse on Telegram with the caption, “Glory to Ukraine.”

Russian officials have not confirmed his death — or those of another four generals that Ukraine claims to have killed. But even accounting for the fog of war, experts say that Russia has suffered a damaging death toll among its military leaders on the ground in Ukraine, which could soon erode Russia’s military effectiveness.

The deaths reflect operational security failures as well as the challenges of the Russian military’s top-heavy command structure in the face of a much nimbler Ukrainian fighting force.

“In modern warfare, you don’t have a lot of generals getting knocked off,” said Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, the former commander of the U.S. Army in Europe. “But this is a very lethal battlefield.”

Gen. Joseph L. Votel, the former commander of U.S. Central Command, said that the deaths could reflect Russia’s challenges on the ground — and reports that some Russian units did not understand the mission at hand and had even abandoned equipment. As a result, he said, military leaders appeared to be operating closer to the front to “supervise and keep their troops in the fight, by personal example or intimidation.”

“Continuing to lose senior leaders is not good,” he said in an email. “Eventually, loss of leadership affects morale, fighting prowess and effectiveness.”

For Russia’s generals, part of the problem is that many of them have spent recent decades fighting a different type of war. In Chechnya at the beginning of the 2000s, Russia succeeded in pacifying a separatist uprising in a small territory by resorting to scorched-earth decimation of entire cities. More recently in Syria, Russia’s operations have been driven by airstrikes against a population that lacks sophisticated weapons or even a regular army.

Ukraine, while far weaker militarily, has been learning from its eight-year war against Russian-backed separatist forces in the country’s east — a similar war, in miniature, to the one being fought now. Ukraine has its own air force, which remains largely intact, and modern anti-aircraft systems. As convoys of Russian armor have lumbered along Ukrainian highways, Ukrainian forces have deployed drones and highly maneuverable infantry units to devastating effect, leaving abandoned and burning vehicles.

Throughout Ukraine, Russian forces have now largely stalled. But analysts caution that the military setbacks will not deter Putin — who has cast the war at home as an existential one for Russia, and is increasingly signaling to the Russian public to prepare for a long fight.

The question is whether heavy losses and the pain of Western sanctions could force Putin to accept some kind of compromise to end the war — and whether President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine would be prepared to offer concessions to satisfy him. On Tuesday, Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesperson, played down any hopes of an imminent cease-fire, describing talks with Ukraine as going “much more slowly and less substantively than we would like.”

“The Russian leadership can’t lose,” said Andrei Kortunov, director-general of the Russian International Affairs Council, a research organization close to the Russian government. “No matter what, they will need to end this whole story with some kind of victory.”

Business Insider

Russian generals are dying in Ukraine partly because they are struggling to get conscripts to follow orders, report says

Tom Porter – March 22, 2022

• Ukraine says it’s killed at least five Russian generals, an unusually high total for senior officers.
• A European diplomat told Foreign Policy that poor communications were leaving commanders exposed.
• Russia is sustaining high overall casualties in its invasion of Ukraine.

Russian generals are moving into advanced positions leaving them exposed to attacks because they’re struggling to get their orders through to conscripts, a European official told Foreign Policy magazine.

Ukrainian officials have said Ukrainian forces have killed at least five Russian generals so far. Such a toll is unusually high for such senior officers.

On Saturday, Ukraine said its forces had killed Lt. Gen. Andrei Mordvichev when they struck an airfield near Kherson, one of the few Ukrainian cities Russia has managed to occupy.

On Sunday, Russian officials said a senior naval commander, Andrei Paly, had been killed by Ukrainian forces near the besieged city of Mariupol.

A European diplomat briefed on intelligence reports told Foreign Policy that a failure of Russian communications systems was leaving generals exposed to interception and targeted strikes.

The diplomat also said that difficulties in getting conscripted troops to follow orders were making them take positions close to the front.

The Russian military is using conscripts alongside its regular military in the invasion of Ukraine, despite having promised that it would not. Experts have said conscripted troops are often poorly trained and have low morale.

“They’re struggling on the front line to get their orders through,” the European diplomat said. “They’re having to go to the front line to make things happen, which is putting them at much greater risk than you would normally see.”

The diplomat said that about 20% of Russia’s top commanders in Ukraine had been killed in the conflict, reducing its military effectiveness and stalling its advance.

The theory corroborates a report published Monday by Insider’s Christopher Woody.

The report cited a US official as saying Russian generals were at inherently greater risk than their US counterparts because of a Russian command structure that gives lower-ranking officers less autonomy and demands closer involvement of generals.

US officials believe that about 7,000 Russian troops have been killed in the fighting so far. On Monday, a Russian tabloid reported, citing the country’s defense ministry, that the death toll was higher than 9,000, but it subsequently retracted the claim.

Yahoo! News

Putin’s invasion has killed over 120 children, Ukraine says

Kate Buck – March 23, 2022

Ukraine has claimed that 121 children have been killed during the course of the Russian invasion, amid reports thousands have been kidnapped and taken across the border.

Since Vladimir Putin’s forces entered Ukraine on 24 February, a further 167 children have been wounded, the office of the prosecutor general said on Wednesday.

The figures have not been able to be independently verified.

Ukraine also claimed on Tuesday that 2,389 children had been “kidnapped” by Russia and transported across the border from the eastern oblasts of Donetsk and Luhansk.

The US Embassy in Kyiv cited the Ukrainian foreign ministry, tweeting: “This is not assistance. It is kidnapping.

The ministry called it a “gross violation of international law”.

The claims of kidnapping also cannot be independently verified as the area has been besieged by the invading forces for over two weeks.

In the southern city of Mariupol, more than 100,000 people are believed to be trapped inside the bombard city with no access to food, water, power or heat.

Authorities in Mariupol said several thousand of its residents had been forcibly deported to Russia.

Read more: US Embassy accuses Russia of kidnapping children amid reports it’s deporting thousands of Ukrainians by force

Intense Russian air strikes have turned Mariupol into the “ashes of a dead land”, the city council said on Tuesday, as street fighting and bombardments raged in the port city.

Both civilians and Ukrainian troops were coming under Russian fire, said regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko.

Russian forces and Russian-backed separatist units had taken about half of the port city, normally home to around 400,000 people, Russia’s RIA news agency said, citing a separatist leader.

Watch: Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko says he cries ‘every day’ at destruction Putin has causedScroll back up to restore default view.

But in an early morning address, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy held out hope for negotiations, which have yielded little since the invasion began.

“It’s very difficult, sometimes confrontational,” he said. “But step by step we are moving forward.”

Putin’s incursion into Ukraine has forced more than 3.5 million to flee, brought the unprecedented isolation of Russia’s economy, and raised fears of wider conflict in the West unthought-of for decades.

Mariupol has become the focus of the war that erupted when Putin sent his troops over the border on what he calls a “special military operation” to demilitarise Ukraine and replace its pro-Western leadership.

Russia has maintained only military targets are being hit as Putin’s forces carry out a “special military operation” – but footage from the scenes of the attacks tell of a different reality.

A nursery in Okhtyrka, 70 miles from Kharkiv, was destroyed when it was bombed on 25 February, just over 24 hours into the invasion.

Six people died after the Sonechko Nursery and Kindergarten was targeted, including seven-year-old Alisa Hlans and her grandfather, who is said to have been killed in front of her as he tried to rescue the youngster.

Amnesty International claimed the attack was from cluster bombs which were released in the residential area.

In Kyiv a fourth-grade student from Kyiv called Polina, who is thought to be either nine or 10, and her parents, were killed when the car they were in was shot at by Russian troops in Kyiv.

On 9 March, Russia sparked further international condemnation when a children’s and maternity hospital in Mariupol was bombed.

Pictures and video from the scene showed heavily pregnant women being pulled from the rubble, covered in injuries.

A six-year-old girl and two adults were reported dead in the immediate aftermath of the attack, which Russia claimed was “fake news”, claiming it was a viable military target.

Another woman caught up in the bombing, who was pictured being carried away on a stretcher, was subsequently reported dead five days later alongside her newborn baby.

Associated Press

Russia-Ukraine war: Key things to know about the conflict

March 23, 2022

• A woman sits on a bench and a Ukrainian serviceman guards the area during a press conference by Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko and his brother, former heavyweight boxing world champion Wladimir Klitschko, in Kyiv, Ukraine. From a public park in the city, Klitschko said 264 civilians had so far died from Russian bombardment on the capital, including four children. As he spoke to reporters, explosions and loud gunfire echoed across the city. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)
• Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko, right, stands next to his brother, former heavyweight boxing world champion Wladimir Klitschko, during a press conference, in Kyiv, Ukraine. From a public park in the city, Mayor Klitschko, said 264 civilians had so far died from Russian bombardment on the capital, including four children. As he spoke to reporters, explosions and loud gunfire echoed across the city. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)
• Neighbours carry pieces of broken window from apartments damaged by shelling, in Kyiv, Ukraine. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
• A Ukrainian firefighter sprays water inside a house destroyed by shelling, in Kyiv, Ukraine. The Kyiv city administration says Russian forces shelled the Ukrainian capital overnight and early Wednesday morning, in the districts of Sviatoshynskyi and Shevchenkivskyi, damaging buildings. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)
• President Joe Biden, escorted by Colonel Matthew Jones, Commander, 89th Airlift Wing, walks to board Air Force One at Andrews Air Force Base, Md.. Biden is traveling to Europe to meet with World counterparts on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
• New bulletproof vests are displayed in an artists co-living studio space that is used as a bomb shelter and a place to help the Territorial Defense Units, in Kyiv, Ukraine. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
• Men work on the construction of plates for bulletproof vests in an artists co-living studio space that is used as a bomb shelter and a place to help the Territorial Defense Units, in Kyiv, Ukraine. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
• Muralist Arti exercises inside an artists’ co-living studio space that is used as a bomb shelter and a place to help the Territorial Defense Units, in Kyiv, Ukraine. (AP Photo/ (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
• 
• The tail of a rocket sticks out in a memorial for the thousands of Polish officers killed in 1940 by Soviet secret police in the Katyn massacre, in Kharkiv, Ukraine. (AP Photo/Andrew Marienko)

One month into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, fire rained down on a shopping mall and high-rise buildings in Kyiv, as the outnumbered Ukrainian military waged intense battles to defend the capital and other key cities from falling under Russian control.

A barrage of strikes on cities have wreaked destruction across Ukraine over the past four weeks, but Russian forces appeared stalled outside major cities in the face of fiercer-than-expected Ukrainian resistance. NATO estimated on Wednesday that 7,000 to 15,000 Russian soldiers have been killed since the war started Feb. 24.

On Wednesday, the U.S. made a formal determination that Russian troops have committed war crimes in Ukraine, as some of the millions who have fled continue to recount tales of horror. As one woman told The Associated Press: “People are being killed day and night.”

Here are some key things to know about the conflict:

WHAT IS HAPPENING ON THE GROUND?

The capital of Kyiv is still under fire. A barrage of shelling rocked the city on Wednesday, with rockets slamming into a shopping mall and high-rise buildings in the districts of Sviatoshynskyi and Shevchenkivskyi.

Destruction was extensive and fires from the shelling injured four residents, city officials said.

From a public park in Kyiv, mayor Vitali Klitschko said Russian bombardment had so far killed 264 civilians in the capital, including four children. As he spoke to reporters, explosions and loud gunfire echoed across the city.

Wednesday’s shelling claimed the life of another journalist. The independent Russian news outlet The Insider said Russian journalist Oksana Baulina was killed in a Kyiv neighborhood.

Russian forces were also bombing the ancient city of Chernihiv in northern Ukraine, the governor said Wednesday, destroying a bridge that had been critical for evacuations and aid deliveries.

WHAT IS HAPPENING IN MARIUPOL?

Mariupol, a strategic port city on the Sea of Azov, has become a vivid symbol of the war’s savage destruction.

Some 100,000 of Mariupol’s prewar population of 430,000 remain trapped in the city, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said. They are subject to relentless Russian bombardment from the sea and skies, and struggling to survive without heat, food or clean water.

Zelenskyy accused the Russians of seizing a humanitarian convoy that was trying to get food and supplies to residents. Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said 11 bus drivers and four rescue workers were being held captive.

Zelenskyy said what’s happening in Mariupol is “inhumane.”

WHAT HAS THE AP DIRECTLY WITNESSED OR CONFIRMED?

Firefighters sprayed water on a smoldering residential building that was demolished by Russian shelling in western Kyiv early Wednesday. As the sound of fighting rumbled in the distance, fire service spokesperson Svitlana Vologda told the AP that the fire was the largest since the war began, in terms of requests for firefighters to respond.

Kyiv was shaken by a constant barrage of shelling Wednesday and plumes of black smoke rose from the western outskirts of the city. At dusk, air raid sirens wailed over the capital as attacks continued.

In the seaside city of Odesa, fondly known as the Pearl of the Black Sea, street musicians played under cloudless skies as people fled.

Odesa has so far been spared the worst of Russia’s onslaughts, but a major attack on Ukraine’s biggest port city seems inevitable. Anxiety is growing. The streets are stacked with sandbags and barricades. Tearful families waved goodbye to loved ones at the train station.

“I can’t understand what has happened,” said Igor Topsi, a musician.

WHAT ARE UKRAINIAN REFUGEES SAYING?

Some of the more than 3.5 million people who have fled Ukraine have shared nightmarish stories of death, destruction and the painful separation from loved ones.

Natalia Savchenko, 37, arrived in Medyka, Poland, on Wednesday and said the situation in the eastern city of Kharkiv is “terrible.” She said there is no electricity or water, and children are not being given medicine or food.

“People are being killed day and night. They are shooting with everything they have,” she said.

At the train station in Przemysl, Poland, Kateryna Mytkevich said her family was trapped in Chernihiv for three weeks and hoped the war would pass them by — but then “bombs began to fall.”

“Our children are dying. My son had to stay in Chernihiv, I could only take my daughter with me. It hurts a lot.” said Mytkevich, 39.

Volodymr Fedorovych, 77, also fled Chernihiv, saying: “There was nothing, there wasn’t even bread.” He said bread was brought in every three days, and on one day, he walked away from the bread line to get some tea when a bomb fell without warning.

“Sixteen people died and 47 were taken by ambulance, some of them without arms and legs. Horrible. There were one hundred people in that queue,” he said. Ukrainian officials have said that 10 people were killed in a bombing of a bread line last week.

HAS RUSSIA COMMITTED WAR CRIMES?

According to the United States, yes.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the U.S. made the formal determination after a “careful review” of public and intelligence sources.

Blinken said there have been numerous credible reports of indiscriminate attacks and attacks deliberately targeting civilians. He said Russian forces have destroyed apartment buildings, schools, hospitals, shopping centers, and ambulances “leaving thousands of innocent civilians killed or wounded.”

Blinken said the U.S. would work with others to prosecute offenders. The International Criminal Court at The Hague is already investigating.

The announcement comes as U.S. President Joe Biden headed to Brussels, where he is expected to roll out new sanctions against Russia and coordinate more military assistance for Ukraine. Biden described the possibility that Russia could use chemical weapons in Ukraine as a “real threat” and said it’s an issue that world leaders will discuss at the NATO summit.

WHAT IS RUSSIA’S MILITARY PLANNING?

A senior U.S. defense official said Wednesday that Russian ground forces appear to be setting up defensive positions about 15 to 20 kilometers (9 to 12 miles) outside Kyiv, as they continue to make little to no progress toward the city’s center.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss military assessments, said it appears Russian forces are no longer trying to advance into Kyiv and are instead turning priorities to the Donbas region, in what could be an effort to prevent Ukrainian troops from moving west to defend other cities.

In an ominous sign that Moscow might consider using nuclear weapons, a senior Russian official said the country’s nuclear arsenal would help deter the West from intervening in Ukraine.

Dmitry Rogozin, the head of the state aerospace corporation, Roscosmos, said in televised remarks that Russia “is capable of physically destroying any aggressor or any aggressor group within minutes at any distance,” He said Moscow’s nuclear stockpiles include tactical nuclear weapons, designed for use on battlefields, and far more powerful nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles. Roscosmos oversees missile-building facilities.

Rogozin, known for his bluster, did not make clear what actions would be seen as interfering.

— Associated Press writer Lolita C. Baldor in Washington contributed to this report.

HOW MANY RUSSIAN AND UKRAINIAN TROOPS HAVE DIED?

An exact figure has been hard to pinpoint, as official numbers have not been regularly released by either country.

NATO estimated Wednesday that 7,000 to 15,000 Russian soldiers have been killed — the alliance’s first public estimate on Russian casualties since the war began. The official spoke on condition of anonymity under ground rules set by NATO.

Back on March 2, Russia said nearly 500 soldiers had been killed and almost 1,600 wounded.

The most recent figure for Ukraine’s military losses came from Zelenskyy on March 12, when he said that about 1,300 Ukrainian servicemen had been killed.

— Associated Press writer Robert Burns in Washington contributed to this report.

Follow the AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

Yahoo! News

Kremlin lashes out at Poland for siding with Ukraine

Alexander Nazaryan, Senior W. H. Correspondent – March 22, 2022

In a blistering social media post, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, now a top Kremlin security adviser, lashed out at Poland for its support of Ukraine, reviving and escalating decades-long tensions between Moscow and Warsaw.

Poland’s surprisingly spirited defense of Ukraine would prove “expensive and pointless,” Medvedev predicted, ominously adding that he was confident that Warsaw would “make the right choice” and embrace Russia again.

Medvedev is a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin and served a four-year placeholder presidency when Putin was facing term limits. Medvedev went on to serve as Putin’s prime minister and is now deputy chairman of the Kremlin’s security council. Putin is the chairman.

In Monday’s post on the Telegram social network, Medvedev lamented that “the interests of Polish citizens have been sacrificed to Russophobia” by “talentless politicians and their puppeteers” in the United States. He branded Polish leaders — two of whom, Jaroslaw Kaczynski and Mateusz Morawiecki, traveled to besieged Kyiv last week with other Eastern European leaders to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky — “political imbeciles” who were spreading “vulgar” propaganda about Russia.

Most observers see propaganda emanating primarily from Russia’s tightly controlled media outlets, which have mostly portrayed the unprovoked invasion of Ukraine as a justified operation of limited scope.

Inna Sovsun, a member of the Ukrainian Parliament and a leader of the liberal Holos (“Voice”) party, branded Medvedev’s musings “psychotic” on Twitter, adding that the “rhetoric is so similar to what we were hearing about” Ukraine in the months leading up to last month’s invasion, which has shattered the post-Cold War order in Eastern Europe.

“This is a direct assault on Poland,” Sovsun wrote.

Medvedev’s anger appears to stem from the Kremlin’s disappointment with Warsaw, where a socially conservative, nationalist government may have been seen as sympathetic to Putin as he launched the invasion of Ukraine. Like so much else about the war, that would appear a grave miscalculation on Moscow’s part.

Poland has taken in more than 2 million Ukrainian refugees, in a show of solidarity that would have been unthinkable only a few years ago. Not only that, but the country’s suddenly emboldened leaders have proposed transferring fighter jets to Ukraine — a proposal that caught U.S. diplomats and military leaders by surprise — and starting an international peacekeeping force to beat back the stalled Russian invasion. Perhaps most worrisome for Moscow, Poland has become a key hub for the transfer of military supplies to Ukraine, including powerful antitank and antiair weapons that have thus far stymied the Russian assault.

“I never thought we had this in us,” a Polish student told the New York Times of these developments. “Nobody knew we could be mobilized like this.”

Those same developments angered a Kremlin that is finding few allies in its purported effort to “de-Nazify” Ukraine, whose president is Jewish and had family perish in the Holocaust. To the contrary, nations that had rebelled from Russian influence see little reason to help an effort that could, in the future, turn against them.

After all, Putin has been clear that he feels Russia needs to reestablish itself as a regional superpower. Last year he published a 5,000-word article titled “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians,” which portrayed Ukraine as an artificial construct due to its long history with Russia. He could arguably apply the same revisionist logic to justify conquering other ex-Soviet bloc, Slavic nations — like Poland — even at the cost of triggering a broader European conflict.

Poland’s defiance has nevertheless clearly pained elites in the Kremlin. “Sooner or later they will understand that hatred of Russia does not strengthen the society, does not contribute to prosperity and peace,” Medvedev wrote in his embittered Telegram post, one of his first on a network that is widely used in Russia and Ukraine.

Much as Putin has throughout the war with Ukraine, Medvedev engaged in revisionist history that rendered Russia as both hero and victim. He noted that it was the Red Army that expelled Adolf Hitler from Poland, but he ignored the fact that Hitler and Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin agreed to split Poland ahead of the Nazi invasion. In 1940, Soviet security services murdered more than 20,000 Polish officers and intellectuals in what came to be known as the Katyn Massacre.

Later, after World War II, Poland suffered from decades of repression under Soviet rule. As in Ukraine, the lack of geographic distance made autonomy nearly impossible to exercise, though the Solidarity movement of the 1980s proved among the most potent antiauthoritarian forces to challenge the Kremlin.

Ukraine experienced similar depredations at the hands of Russia, both before and after World War II. But in its recent attempts to reclaim influence over Eastern Europe, the Kremlin has mounted a campaign of falsehoods and grievances that recalls Soviet propaganda in its overweening inaccuracies.

“History is now being redrawn, monuments are being demolished,” Medvedev lamented on Telegram.

Poland neighbors Ukraine but — unlike Ukraine — is a member of NATO. If Putin were to attack Poland, NATO’s collective defense clause would necessitate a military response from much of Europe and the United States. Given how poorly the Ukrainian invasion has gone for Russia, such an attack doesn’t seem likely — but the Kremlin’s bluster is disconcerting all the same.

“We should take this seriously,” Ukraine expert Alina Polyakova, head of the Center for European Policy Analysis, said of Medvedev’s provocative post.

President Biden, who has vowed to defend “every inch” of NATO territory with the U.S. military, is set to visit Poland on Friday after meeting with European leaders in Brussels.