Category: Ukraine War

Daily Beast

‘The Time Has Come’: Top Putin Official Admits Ugly Truth About War

Shannon Vavra – September 21, 2022

Vladimir Putin’s defense minister sent a clear message to the people of Russia on Wednesday: Their country is at war not just with Ukraine, but with the entirety of the West.

“I cannot but emphasize the fact that today, we are at war not so much with Ukraine and the Ukrainian army as with the collective West,” Sergei Shoigu said in a televised speech, according to TASS.

“At this point, we are really at war with the collective West, with NATO,” Shoigu added.

Shoigu’s warning comes as Putin announces that Russia will be running a “partial mobilization” to better tackle the war in Ukraine, days after a series of resounding defeats on the battlefield in Ukraine as Ukrainian forces have run successful counteroffensives in the south and northeast. In a speech announcing the move Wednesday morning, Putin suggested that the West had been considering using nuclear weapons against Russia and threatened nuclear weapons use in return—without providing any evidence of the West’s supposed threats.

“To those who allow themselves such statements regarding Russia, I want to remind you that our country also has various means of destruction,” Putin said. “It’s not a bluff.”

Russia Implodes After Putin Summons 300,000 to Die for Him

“When the territorial integrity of our country is threatened, to protect Russia and our people, we will certainly use all the means at our disposal,” Putin added.

Shoigu’s rhetoric melds well with the Kremlin line about the war in Ukraine; Russia has consistently sought to blame the West for provoking Russia.

President Joe Biden lambasted Putin in a speech before the United Nations General Assembly Wednesday in an attempt to remind global leaders that although Moscow’s narrative is that the United States and NATO pushed Russia into invading Ukraine, Putin chose to invade Ukraine unprovoked.

“Putin claims he had to act because Russia was threatened,” Biden said. “But no one threatened Russia. No one other than Russia sought conflict.”

Shoigu on Wednesday boasted about just how well the war is going for Russia. He sought to couch the idea that 300,000 Russian reservists are participating in the “partial mobilization” due to that success—regardless of the fact that since the early days of the war Russian troops have failed to achieve key objectives, including failing to capture Kyiv and needing to downsize their goals several times.

“We’re killing, killing, and killing, and that time has come: We’re at war with the collective West,” Shoigu said.

The move may not be all Putin and Shoigu are cracking it up to be. The flurry of action in Russia—from Russia’s Duma announcing increased penalties for desertion or evading conscription alongside the announcement of a partial mobilization and nuclear threats—is a dead giveaway that Putin’s plans in Ukraine are not going well, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Wednesday.

In a curious effort to convince Russians that the war is going well, Shoigu suggested that only approximately 6,000 Russian troops have perished in the war, but insisted that more troops would be necessary to come out victorious.

The reality is far worse. The Pentagon has estimated, as recently as August, that somewhere between 70,000 and 80,000 Russian troops have been wounded or killed.

Daily Beast

Team Putin Threatens Maniacal Response to Bitter War Losses

Julia Davis – September 15, 2022

The humiliating defeats of Russia’s Armed Forces in Ukraine are prompting the Kremlin’s mouthpieces to propose increasingly violent tactics. Lobbying for a “scorched earth” policy on state television, Russian pundits and expert guests have been openly comparing the Ukrainian battleground to Chechnya, Syria, and even the infamous Beslan school massacre, where Russian special forces killed many hostages along with their terrorist captors.

Appearing on Wednesday’s broadcast of the state TV show 60 Minutes, military expert Igor Korotchenko said: “This is a new reality, which is why we should be acting quickly, harshly and uncompromisingly. First of all, we need to scale up our strikes against critical infrastructure in such a way that one region after the next, one district after another, Ukraine is plunged into darkness… By December, 20 million residents of Ukraine should flee to the West, to the European Union. This is our goal and the task we should accomplish.”

Korotchenko proposed: “Perhaps we should openly declare: ‘Leave. Zelensky is turning this territory into a real hell. No one knows what will happen here next. Twenty million, go to Europe.’ After that, we sink region after region into darkness. This is our enemy nation, the modern Third Reich, and we should act accordingly.”

Similar proposals permeated Russian airwaves, with experts arguing that the rules of the civilized world prohibiting war crimes are merely recommendations, compliance with which is optional. On Monday, appearing on The Evening With Vladimir Solovyov, Andrey Sidorov, deputy dean of world politics at the Moscow State University, explained why those international conventions are irrelevant: “The rules of war, according to international conventions, are of an advisory nature: not to strike [certain objects], if possible. But it’s no longer possible.”

Appearing on the show The Meeting Place on Monday, Bogdan Bezpalko, member of the Council for Interethnic Relations under the President of the Russian Federation, argued: “As far as what needs to be done, as I previously said, we need to strike the infrastructure—which can’t be separated into military and civilian. If all of Ukraine is plunged into cold and darkness, if they have no fuel, reserve armies won’t help them and no one will be able to deliver equipment or ammunition… These strikes should go on for two, three, five or six months in a row, leaving not one gas station intact.”

Kremlin TV Airs Call for Russia to Admit ‘Serious Defeat’

Konstantin Zatulin, deputy chairman of the committee of the State Duma for the CIS, said on 60 Minutes: “This military operation—or this war—is entering another phase… The idea that we could achieve a victory with little blood or one massive strike is now in the past… Last week, there was a widespread message—everywhere, except for our television— that this is no time to celebrate, while we’re experiencing difficulties and failures at the battlefront, while we’re retreating… We are pondering what they will do. We need to overcome that… because victory is our only option.”

Host Olga Skabeeva cautioned: “Don’t scare our people prematurely, as I understand you’re talking about the possibility of mobilization.” Even the most gung-ho propagandists admit that the Russian society would be deeply unsettled at the thought of total military mobilization, and that the country’s economy is not currently equipped for such a step. The only alternative proposed by the state TV’s talking heads is inflicting utter devastation upon Ukraine.

Professor Alexei Fenenko, leading research fellow at the Institute of International Security Studies, attempted to lay the blame for Russia’s increasing brutality upon the United States. With images of the city of Mosul in ruins playing on the screen, Fenenko claimed: “After February 24, they waited for us to do this to key cities in Ukraine. Then they would have said, ‘Yes, those guys are strong.’” Without a hint of self-awareness, Skabeeva noted that the bodies of the dead were left on the streets of Mosul, to decay in plain sight. Fenenko noted that this gesture was meant as a message to other enemies.

Neither Skabeeva nor Fenenko made any mention of the horrific scenes in Ukraine that unfolded in recent months, when the retreating Russian troops left multiple corpses of Ukrainian civilians on the streets of Bucha, and scores of massacred civilians in other towns and cities.

Fenenko argued that in order to be respected by the United States, Russia has to reduce much of Ukraine to rubble. He said that America respects only those who can inflict devastating damage upon their adversaries: “Either you can do this to your enemies, or else you’re a nobody. If you can’t do it, you’re a coward and a loser.”

Associated Press

‘Torment of hell:’ Ukraine medic describes Russian torture

Ellen Knickmeyer – September 15, 2022

• US Ukraine Hero MedicUkrainian medic Yuliia Paievska, known to Ukrainians by the nickname Taira, speaks during an appearance before U.S. lawmakers on the Helsinki Commission, Thursday, Sept. 15, 2022 on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib)

WASHINGTON (AP) — A volunteer Ukrainian medic detained in Ukraine’s besieged port city of Mariupol told U.S. lawmakers Thursday of comforting fellow detainees as many died during her three months of captivity, cradling and consoling them as best she could, as male, female and child prisoners succumbed to Russian torture and untreated wounds.

Ukrainian Yuliia Paievska, who was captured by pro-Russian forces in Mariupol in March and held at shifting locations in Russian-allied territory in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, spoke to lawmakers with the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, better known as the Helsinki Commission, a government agency created in part to promote international compliance with human rights.

Her accounts Thursday were her most detailed publicly of her treatment in captivity, in what Ukrainians and international rights groups say are widespread detentions of both Ukrainian noncombatants and fighters by Russia’s forces.

Known to Ukrainians by the nickname Taira, Paievska and her care of Mariupol’s wounded during the nearly seven-month Russian invasion of Ukraine received global attention after her bodycam footage was provided to The Associated Press.

“Do you know why we do this to you?” a Russian asked Paievska as he tortured her, she recounted to the commission. She told the panel her answer to him: “Because you can.”

Searing descriptions of the suffering of detainees poured out. A 7-year-old boy died in her lap because she had none of the medical gear she needed to treat him, she said.

Torture sessions usually launched with their captors forcing the Ukrainian prisoners to remove their clothes, before the Russians set to bloodying and tormenting the detainees, she said.

The result was some “prisoners in cells screaming for weeks, and then dying from the torture without any medical help,” she said. “Then in this torment of hell, the only things they feel before death is abuse and additional beating.”

She continued, recounting the toll among the imprisoned Ukrainians. “My friend whose eyes I closed before his body cooled down. Another friend. And another. Another.”

Paievska said she was taken into custody after being stopped in a routine document check. She had been one of thousands of Ukrainians believed to have been taken prisoner by Russian forces. Mariupol’s mayor said that 10,000 people from his city alone disappeared during what was the monthslong Russian siege of that city. It fell to Russians in April, with the city all but destroyed by Russian bombardment, and with countless dead.

The Geneva Conventions single out medics, both military and civilian, for protection “in all circumstance.” Sen. Ben Cardin, a Maryland Democrat and co-chair of the Helsinki Commission underscored that the conditions she described for civilian and military detainees violated international law.

Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., called Russian President Vladimir Putin a war criminal.

“It is critical that the world hear the stories of those who endured the worst under captivity,” Wilson said. “Evidence is essential to prosecution of war crimes.”

Before she was captured, Paievska had recorded more than 256 gigabytes of harrowing bodycam footage showing her team’s efforts to save the wounded in the cut-off city. She got the footage to Associated Press journalists, the last international team in Mariupol, on a tiny data card.

The journalists fled the city on March 15 with the card embedded inside a tampon, carrying it through 15 Russian checkpoints. The next day, Paievska was taken by pro-Russia forces. Lawmakers played the AP’s video of her footage Thursday.

She emerged on June 17, thin and haggard, her athlete’s body more than 10 kilograms (22 pounds) lighter from lack of nourishment and activity. She said the AP report that showed her caring for Russian and Ukrainian soldiers alike, along with civilians of Mariupol, was critical to her release, in a prisoner exchange.

Paievska previously had declined to speak in detail to journalists about conditions in detention, only describing it broadly as hell. She swallowed heavily at times Thursday while testifying.

Ukraine’s government says it has documented nearly 34,000 Russian war crimes since the war began in February. The International Criminal Court and 14 European Union member nations also have launched investigations.

The United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine says it has documented that prisoners of war in Russian custody have suffered torture and ill-treatment, as well as insufficient food, water healthcare and sanitation.

Russia has not responded to the allegations. Both the United Nations and the international Red Cross say they have been denied access to prisoners.

Paievska, who said she suffered headaches during her detention as the result of a concussion from an earlier explosion, told lawmakers she asked her captors to let her call her husband, to let him know what had happened to her.

“They said, ‘You have seen too many American movies. There will be no phone call,’” she recounted.

Her tormentors during her detention would sometimes urge her to kill herself, she said.

“I said, ‘No. I will see what happens tomorrow,”’ she said.

Lori Hinnant contributed to this report from Paris.

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

Insider

The army Putin spent 2 decades building has been largely destroyed in Ukraine, and Russia’s ‘strategic defeat’ could threaten his regime

John Haltiwanger – September 14, 2022

• Russia’s military will have to be rebuilt as a result of the war in Ukraine, experts say.
• The war has “dramatically” altered perceptions of Russia’s military strength, one expert told Insider.
• Putin’s regime could also now be in jeopardy, as it faces rare examples of dissent.

Over the roughly two decades that Russian President Vladimir Putin has been in power, he’s dedicated a lot of time and money to building up and modernizing Russia’s military. In the process, Putin garnered a reputation as a force to be reckoned with and was widely viewed as one of the most powerful leaders in the world.

But the war in Ukraine has decimated the Russian military that Putin spent years building, while raising questions about his grip on power, Russia experts and military analysts told Insider.

“Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been a strategic defeat. So far the Kremlin has not been able to achieve its strategic level objectives and it has incurred significant costs. Russia’s military is going to have to be rebuilt,” George Barros, a military analyst with the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), told Insider.

“The conventional ground army ground force that the Kremlin has spent the last two decades on creating — seeking to create a modern military — that force has been just largely degraded and in a large part destroyed in the past six months of war in Ukraine,” Barros added. “It’s very true to say that the conventional Russian ground force has taken a significant beating in Ukraine. It will have to be rebuilt.”

Though it’s difficult to confirm death tolls with the fighting ongoing, US military estimates last month put Russian casualties as high as 80,000. Among the dead have been senior officers, including generals.

Barros said that it will likely take “a generation to recreate” the Russian officer corps, which is “definitely going to have a long-term strategic impact on the net assessment for Russia’s conventional military.”

And though Putin has so far avoided declaring a general mobilization to make up for significant troop losses in Ukraine, the Russian leader in August ordered the military to increase its ranks by 137,000 starting in 2023, an ambitious goal seen by some as unachievable and one of many signs that the Russian military is being hollowed out by the war in Ukraine.

A recent intelligence update from the British defense ministry said that the elite 1st Guards Tank Army and other Western Military District units have suffered heavy casualties, indicating that “Russia’s conventional force designed to counter NATO is severely weakened.” The ministry added that “it will likely take years for Russia to rebuild this capability.”

The Russian military has also seen the damage, destruction, and abandonment of astonishing amounts of equipment in Ukraine. It is estimated to have lost thousands of armored vehicles since the war began in late February. These losses have forced the Russian military to resort to pulling obsolete, Soviet-era equipment, such as T-62 tanks, out of storage.

‘Not nearly as powerful as we thought’

Russia’s military has generally been ranked as the second most powerful in the world — surpassed only by the US.

But Russia’s disastrous performance in the Ukraine war is “going to change the assessment of Russia’s military strength dramatically,” Robert Orttung, a professor of international affairs at George Washington University whose research focuses on Russia and Ukraine, told Insider.

The Russian military is “not nearly as powerful as we thought it was,” he said.

A few years ago, Russia appeared to be winning the war in Syria and “Russian strategy seemed to be outsmarting Western strategy in the Middle East,” Orttung said, and it provided a major boost to Moscow’s propaganda about its military strength.

“A lot of their ability to make their propaganda effective was based on their actual battlefield prowess, which seemed to be quite strong in place like Syria,” Orttung said. “Now, basically unable to achieve their goals, unable to show that there’s integration between the guys fighting on the ground, the air force, and the other units — it’s definitely going to knock them down. The fact that they haven’t been winning in the field is going to make their propaganda much less effective.”

Before the invasion began, Russia was expected to conquer Kyiv in a matter of days. But Ukrainian forces, with the help of Western-supplied military equipment, put up a far stiffer resistance than Moscow anticipated. Russia’s forces failed to take the Ukrainian capital and instead turned their attention to the eastern Donbas region. Though a war had raged in that region between Kremlin-backed rebels and Ukrainian forces since 2014 — the same year that Russia invaded Ukraine and annexed Crimea — Russia only made gradual progress in its campaign to take over the Donbas.

Ukraine launched a counteroffensive in recent days, pushing the Russian forces into retreat and retaking an astonishing amount of territory in the country’s south and east. The Ukrainian government said its forces have recaptured around 3,000 square miles in September so far.

‘Wouldn’t write off Putin now’

Between devastating troop losses and Russia’s forces now being on the run, Putin is in an increasingly precarious position.

“Strength is the only source of Putin’s legitimacy,” Abbas Gallyamov, a former speechwriter for Putin, told the New York Times. “And in a situation in which it turns out that he has no strength, his legitimacy will start dropping toward zero.” Gallyamov told the Times that if Ukrainian forces “continue to destroy the Russian army as actively as they are now,” then it could “accelerate” calls from elites for Putin’s successor to be chosen.

Some Russia watchers now believe Putin’s regime is in jeopardy. Michael McFaul, a former US ambassador to Russia, on Wednesday tweeted, “Putin overreached in Ukraine. It’s the beginning of the end for Putinism in Russia.”

Local Russian lawmakers are calling for Putin to be removed from power over Ukraine, taking the potentially fatal risk of openly criticizing a leader with a reputation for ruthlessly squashing dissent. Even the Kremlin’s propagandists on Russian state media are struggling to continue offering positive assessments of how the war is going.

“You’re starting to see rumblings — both on TV and at the local grassroots level — of discontent with his leadership and a realization that the war is not going in Russia’s favor,” Orttung said. Taken together, Orttung said these developments “raise question marks about [Putin’s] image among the people and his ability to exert that image of competence.”

Despite such challenges, and the damage done to perceptions of Russia’s strength, Orttung is not convinced that this is the end for Putin.

“I wouldn’t write off Putin now,” he said. “A lot of people, including me, have been predicting he’s going to leave power or his demise is imminent. But he does have a lot of strengths — the main strength being that he’s eliminated any possible, reputable alternative to him.”

“It’s not clear who would replace him and all the people around him — they depend on him being in power for their own power. They have a stake in him staying there. And he survived more than 22 years fighting in a quite difficult environment, which is the Russian political scene,” Orttung added, underscoring that “most of the elites think that they’re probably better off with Putin there.”

Daily Beast

Surrender Fever Sweeps Through Putin’s Troops After Russian Collapse in North

Philippe Naughton – September 12, 2022

Picture this: You’re a Russian soldier, stuck in Kherson, waiting for a Ukrainian assault. Your supply route across the Dnipro River has been cut off by rocket attacks. Your ammunition dumps keep getting blown up. And you’ve watched thousands of your colleagues flee the battleground after a stunning Ukrainian offensive in the northeast of the country.

You could stay and fight—but why risk your life for a war that’s not even officially a war? Or you could take President Volodymyr Zelensky at his word when he promises that all Russian soldiers who surrender will be treated with respect, in accordance with the Geneva Conventions.

A Ukrainian Armed Forces spokeswoman, Natalia Humeniuk, reported Monday that a number of “separate” Russian units around the southern city of Kherson had begun suing for peace and were “trying to negotiate with the Ukrainians on surrender and transfer under the auspices of international law.”

With morale seemingly at rock-bottom in Vladimir Putin’s exhausted, hollowed-out army, her claim was entirely credible. The question is how many Russian troops in the Kherson pocket might follow suit and what happens to Putin’s war if his forces in Kherson melt away or give up like those in Kharkiv and the Donetsk region. Could the experts who predicted a long and grinding war over the coming winter, and beyond, be proven wrong?

The Kharkiv offensive, which has seen Ukrainian forces recapture thousands of square kilometers of territory in just a few days, has been a stunning success. Ukrainian forces are said to have reclaimed a further 20 settlements on Monday as Russian forces desert ever greater swaths of occupied land and flee back across the border. Soon Ukraine, whose forces have already reached the Russian border at some points, will be threatening areas held by Russia since Putin’s first invasion of the Donbas in 2014.

Once again, as when they foiled the original advance on Kyiv in February and March, Ukrainian commanders have made fools of the Russians. The Guardian newspaper reported over the weekend on how the long-rumored Kherson offensive, and the way it was repeatedly foreshadowed by Ukrainian officials, had been a “big special disinformation operation” designed to lure the Russians into reinforcing positions around Kherson. Once that had happened, Ukraine unleashed its newly acquired HIMARs rockets on the bridges across the Dnipro, cutting off the Kherson grouping from reinforcements and supplies.

That Kherson would be top of the list for a counteroffensive was entirely believable. It is the biggest city and only provincial capital captured by the Russians in six months of war. For the Russians, it was the gateway to the port of Odessa, the city the Russians most craved. For the Ukrainians, control of Kherson would open the path to Crimea.

Ukraine’s Southern Command confirmed the start of the Kherson offensive on Aug. 29, but urged people not to report on or speculate about its progress for reasons of “operational security.” For the first time, journalists were banned from the front lines.

But while the Kherson offensive was not quite a complete “feint”—fighting did pick up pace—the real action was about to unfold hundreds of kilometers away, where a well-armed, well-trained Ukrainian force launched a surprise assault on poorly defended Russian lines, capturing key strategic towns such as Balakliya, Kupiansk, and Izium over the space of a few days. Hundreds of Russians were killed and thousands reportedly captured in the assault.

The Washington Post reported Monday on how Russian forces were stealing cars and bicycles to make their escape, after having first stolen civilian clothes to fool Ukrainian drone squads.

“They just dropped rifles on the ground,” said Olena Matvienko, in Zaliznychnye, a village outside Kharkiv captured by the Russians in the opening days of the war but from which they fled in panic after the Ukrainian offensive.

“They came into our houses to take clothes so the drones wouldn’t see them in uniforms. They took our bicycles. Two of them pointed guns at my ex-husband until he handed them his car keys,” Matvienko said.

The Russian collapse has thrown Putin’s TV propagandists and warmongers into chaos, uncertain who should take the blame, and Putin himself refuses to acknowledge the crisis.

“The special military operation continues and will continue until the objectives that were originally set are achieve,” his spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said Monday.

USA Today

‘Situation more difficult by the hour’: Ukrainian forces break through to Russian border. Live updates.

John Bacon, USA TODAY – September 12, 2022

The Ukraine military’s stunning offensive gained momentum Monday, reclaiming several more northeastern villages and forcing the retreat of overwhelmed Russian troops from the region.

A Russian-installed official in the Kharkiv region said Ukrainian forces outnumbered Russian troops by 8-to-1 and had broken through to the Russian border. Vitaly Ganchev told the state-owned Rossiya-24 television channel on Monday “the situation is becoming more difficult by the hour.”

Kyiv’s sudden surge comes after months of little movement, save Russia’s small gains in the Donbas region. The encouraging counteroffensive has lifted morale and prompted criticism within Russia of President Vladimir Putin’s so-called “special military operation.”

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy marked 200 days since the war began by lauding the efforts of his military.

“The world is impressed. The enemy is panicking,” Zelenskyy said. “Ukraine is proud of you, believes in you, prays for you, and is waiting for you.”

Important developments:

►The Ukrainian military said its troops had freed more than 20 settlements in 24 hours – the British Defense Ministry said Kyiv’s forces have captured territory at least the size of greater London in recent days.

►The head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency said Monday that Ukraine and Russia appeared interested in creating a security protection zone around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant and that talks were underway.

Dissent against Russian ‘impossible’ war strategy seeps into media

Ramzan Kadyrov, the Moscow-backed leader of the Russian region of Chechnya, and Boris Nadezhdin, a former parliament member, were among prominent Russians to publicly criticize the war strategy.

“Mistakes were made,” Kadyrov said in a Telegram post. He said that if a change in strategy was not made soon “I will be forced to turn to the leadership of the Ministry of Defense, the leadership of the country to explain to them the situation that is really happening on the ground.”

Nadezhdin told NTV that Putin aides who convinced the president the military would be fast and effective got it wrong.

“We’re now at the point where we have to understand that it’s absolutely impossible to defeat Ukraine using these resources and colonial war methods,” Nadezhdin said.

Liberated city of Izyum in ruins

Ukraine forces, reclaiming the city of Izyum in Kharkiv province, said more than 1,000 residents had been killed by Russian shelling. About 80% of the infrastructure had been destroyed in the city that was home to 45,000 residents before the war began. Less than 10,000 remain, City Council member Maxim Strelnikov said.

“As throughout the occupied territory, the Russians committed war crimes and tried to cover them up.

Institute for the Study of War: Ukraine ‘routing’ Russian forces

The Washington-based Institute for the Study of War issued an assessment Monday saying the Ukrainian counteroffensive in Kharkiv was “routing Russian forces and collapsing Russia’s northern Donbas axis.” Russian forces are not conducting a controlled withdrawal but rather “hurriedly fleeing” southeastern Kharkiv Oblast to escape encirclement around Izyum.

“Ukrainian forces have penetrated Russian lines to a depth of up to (45 miles) in some places and captured over 1,150 square miles of territory in the past five days since Sept. 6 – more territory than Russian forces have captured in all their operations since April,” the assessment says.

Ukraine claims to make gains in Donbas

Russia military officials have repeatedly said that forces have been moved away from Kharkiv and other cities to support its effort to control the eastern, industrial Donbas region that it claims has been its goal all along. But now Ukrainian officials say they are making gains in the two Donbas provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk as well. Serhii Haidai, head of the Luhansk military administration, said in a Telegram post that the city of Lyman in Donetsk had been liberated by Ukrainian forces and that now “it is our turn.”

“I want to let locals know that liberation is close,” he said. “If you hear sounds of combat, remain in shelters. We cannot name settlements but locals will understand.”

Russian leader of Crimea threatens pro-Ukrainian protesters

Sergey Aksenov, Russia-appointed leader of occupied Crimea, said organizers and participants in pro-Ukraine rallies will “be held accountable.” He complained that videos from public events in Crimea show residents chanting pro-Ukrainian slogans and singing nationalist songs. That could lead to prosecution and dismissal from jobs, he said in Telegram post. He suggested they leave Crimea voluntarily.

“It would be rational and logical for those who support the Ukrainian regime to leave for the country they love so much,” he wrote.

Russian official: ‘Total surrender’ of Ukraine forces might be demanded

A former president and prime minister of Russia on Monday dismissed reports of Ukrainian gains and warned the Kremlin might ultimately demand “total surrender” of the Kyiv regime. Dmitry Medvedev, now deputy head of his nation’s Security Council, alluded to Zelenskyy’s refusal to conduct a dialogue “with those who put forward ultimatums.”

“The current ‘ultimatums’ are a warm-up for kids, a preview of demands to be made in the future,” Medvedev said. “He (Zelenskyy) knows them: the total surrender of the Kiev regime on Russia’s terms.”

Natural gas prices in Europe reach 7-week low

European natural gas prices fell to their lowest level in seven weeks on Monday. ICE Dutch TTF gas futures for October, the European benchmark, were down 7.3% to about about $195 per megawatt hour. That’s down more than 40% from the all-time high of around $350 less than three weeks ago.

Analysts credited Europe’s efforts to stock up ahead of winter, proposed caps on Russian gas prices and a more positive outlook on the war in Ukraine.

Kremlin spokesman vague on Putin’s confidence in military

Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov, asked whether the country’s military leadership continues to enjoy Putin’s supports, said only that “the special military operation continues and will continue until all the goals that were initially set are achieved.” Peskov declined to comment on reports that the commander of the Western Military District had been fired, saying that was an issue for Russia’s Defense Ministry.

Russian Defense Ministry announced Sunday that the “regrouping” of Russian troops in the Kharkiv region to step up efforts in the Donetsk.

The New York Times

As Russians Retreat, Putin Is Criticized by Hawks Who Trumpeted His War

Anton Troianovski – September 11, 2022

As Russian forces hastily retreated in northeastern Ukraine on Saturday in one of their most embarrassing setbacks of the war, President Vladimir Putin was at a park in Moscow, presiding over the grand opening of a Ferris wheel.

“It’s very important for people to be able to relax with friends and family,” Putin intoned.

The split-screen contrast was stunning, even for some of Putin’s loudest backers. And it underscored a growing rift between the Kremlin and the invasion’s most fervent cheerleaders. For the cheerleaders, Russia’s retreat appeared to confirm their worst fears: that senior Russian officials were so concerned with maintaining a business-as-usual atmosphere back home that they had failed to commit the necessary equipment and personnel to fight a long war against a determined enemy.

“You’re throwing a billion-ruble party,” one pro-Russian blogger wrote in a widely circulated post Saturday, referring to the Putin-led celebrations in Moscow commemorating the 875th anniversary of the city’s founding. “What is wrong with you? Not at the time of such a horrible failure.”

Even as Moscow celebrated, he wrote, the Russian army was fighting without enough night vision goggles, flack jackets, first-aid kits or drones. A few hundred miles away, Ukrainian forces retook the Russian military stronghold of Izium, continuing their rapid advance across the northeast and igniting a dramatic new phase in the war.

The outrage from Russian hawks Saturday showed that even as Putin had succeeded in eliminating just about all of the liberal and pro-democracy opposition in Russia’s domestic politics, he still faced the risk of discontent from the conservative end of the political spectrum. For the moment, there was little indication that these hawks would turn on Putin as a result of Ukraine’s seemingly successful counteroffensive, but analysts said that their increasing readiness to criticize the military leadership publicly pointed to simmering discontent within the Russian elite.

“Most of these people are in shock and did not think that this could happen,” Dmitri Kuznets, who analyzes the war for the Russian-language news outlet Meduza, said in a phone interview. “Most of them are, I think, genuinely angry.”

The Kremlin, as usual, tried to minimize the setbacks. The defense ministry described the retreat as a decision “to regroup” its troops, even though the ministry said a day earlier that it was moving to reinforce its defensive positions in the region. Authorities in Moscow carried on with their festive weekend, with fireworks and state television showing hundreds lined up to ride the new, 460-foot-tall Ferris wheel.

But online, Russia’s failures were in plain sight — underscoring the startling role that pro-Russian military bloggers on the social network Telegram have played in shaping the narrative of the war. While the Kremlin controls the television airwaves in Russia and has blocked access to Instagram and Facebook, Telegram remains freely accessible and is filled with posts and videos from supporters and opponents of the war alike.

The widely followed pro-war bloggers — some embedded with Russian troops near the front line — amplify the Kremlin’s false message that Russia is fighting “Nazis” and refer to Ukrainians in derogatory and dehumanizing ways. But they are also divulging far more detailed — and, analysts say, accurate — information about the battlefield than the Russian Defense Ministry is, which they say is underestimating the enemy and withholding bad news from the public.

One of the bloggers, Yuri Podolyaka, who is from Ukraine but moved to Сrimea following its annexation in 2014, told his 2.3 million Telegram followers Friday that if the military continued play down its battlefield setbacks, Russians would “cease to trust the Ministry of Defense and soon the government as a whole.”

It was the bloggers who first rang alarm bells publicly about a possible Ukrainian counteroffensive in the country’s northeast.

On Aug. 30, a Kremlin spokesperson held his regular conference call with journalists and repeated his mantra: The invasion of Ukraine was going “in accordance with the plans.”

The same day, several Russian bloggers were reporting on social media that something was very much not going according to plan. Ukraine was building up forces for a counterattack near the town of Balakliya, they said, and Russia did not appear in position to defend against it.

“Hello, hello, anybody home?” one asked. “Are we ready to fend off an attack in this direction?”

Days later, it became apparent that the answer was no. Ukrainian forces overran Russia’s thin defenses in Balakliya and other nearby towns in northeastern Ukraine. By this weekend, some analysts estimated that the territory retaken by Ukraine amounted to about 1,000 square miles, a potential turning point in what had become a war of attrition this summer.

“It’s time to punish the commanders who allowed these kinds of things,” Maksim Fomin, a pro-Russian blogger from eastern Ukraine, said in a video published Friday, claiming that Russian forces did not even try to resist as Ukraine’s military swept forward this week.

Some of the bloggers are embedded with military units and work for state-run or pro-Kremlin media outlets, preparing reports for television while providing more detail on their Telegram accounts. Others appear to operate more independently, relying on personal connections for access near the front line and adding their bank details to their Telegram posts to solicit donations.

Kuznets, a former Russian war correspondent himself, said that Russian military officials appeared to tolerate the presence of war bloggers despite their occasional criticism, in part because they agreed with the bloggers’ hawkish, imperialist views. And the bloggers play a crucial role in spreading the pro-Russian message on social media, where their audience includes both Russians and Ukrainians.

Among some bloggers, the anger over the Russian military’s mistakes reached a fever pitch Saturday. One called Russia’s retreat a “catastrophe,” while others said that it had left the residents who collaborated with Russian forces at the mercy of Ukrainian troops — potentially undermining the credibility of the occupying authorities all across the territory that Russia still holds.

And while the Kremlin still maintains that the invasion is merely a “special military operation,” several bloggers insisted Saturday that Russia was, in fact, fighting a full-fledged war — not just against Ukraine, but against a united West that is backing Kyiv.

The stunned fury reflects how some analysts believe many in the Russian elite view the war: a campaign rife with incompetence, conducted on the cheap, that can only be won if Putin mobilizes the nation onto a war footing and declares a draft.

“I am sure that they reflect the opinion of their sources and the people they know and work with,” Kuznets said. “I think the biggest group among these people believes that it is necessary to fight harder and carry out a mobilization.”

Both Western and Russian analysts said that Putin would need a draft to sharply expand the size of his invading force. But he appears determined to resist such a measure, which could shatter the passivity with which much of the Russian public has treated the war. In August, 48% of Russians told the independent pollster Levada that they were paying little or no attention to the events in Ukraine.

As a result, analysts say, Putin faces no good options. Escalating a war whose domestic support may turn out to be superficial could stir domestic unrest, while continuing retreats on the battlefield could spur a backlash from hawks who have bought into the Kremlin narrative that Russia is fighting “Nazis” for its very survival.

Ever since Russia retreated in April from its attempt to capture Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, the Kremlin’s goals in the war have been unclear, disorienting Putin’s supporters, said Rob Lee, a military analyst at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.

“The Ukrainians’ war effort is obvious, it’s understandable, whereas on the Russian side, it was always a question of: What is Russia doing?” Lee said in a phone interview. “The goals aren’t clear, and how they achieve those goals isn’t clear. If you’re fighting a war and you’re not sure what the ultimate goal is, you’re going to be quite frustrated about that.”

Yahoo! News

Ukraine’s stunning counteroffensive in Kharkiv and Donbas

Michael Weiss and James Rushton – September 10, 2022

Ukraine’s stunning counteroffensive in Kharkiv is the type of military action that will be written about and analyzed for decades, maybe centuries.

With rapid speed, the defenders have cut through Russian-occupied positions over the past four days, recapturing as many as 2,500 square kilometers of terrain, according to the Washington-based think tank the Institute for the Study of War, an area roughly equivalent to the combined area of the cities of New York and Los Angeles. Ukraine has also claimed to have killed upward of 1,000 Russian soldiers in as many days, although that figure cannot be independently verified.

But both Russian and Ukrainian sources are in rare agreement about a number of developments.

Both acknowledge that the Russian occupiers have fled Izyum, a strategically important city that the Russian army had been using as its headquarters for operations in the area for months. Ukrainian troops have been visually confirmed to be in the center of Kupyansk, another city in Kharkiv, and Russian forces are said to be retreating from the third of it that they still hold. Kupyansk is a key railway hub and a strategically important location for the Russian army, at the intersection of several railway lines. Unlike NATO nations, Russia’s logistical model is based mainly on moving materiel by train, with motorized transport responsible only for a small distance, at the end of the journey.

The town of Balakliya has also been completely liberated, according to Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense, which posted a video of Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi, the commander of Ukrainian Land Forces, standing in the center of the town as soldiers raise Ukraine’s gold-and-blue flag. Other videos show emotional Ukrainian residents greeting their army in Balakliya.

Igor Konashenkov, the spokesman for Russia’s Ministry of Defense, confirmed Russian troops’ withdrawal from Balakliya and Izyum, describing what certainly looks like a rout as a decision to “regroup in order to boost efforts in the Donetsk area.”

Ukraine’s campaign has, remarkably, pressed beyond Kharkiv into occupied Donbas.

Denis Pushilin, the head of the Russian proxy known as the Donetsk People’s Republic, recorded a video of himself fleeing the fighting by car and admitting that the situation around the city of Lyman in Donetsk was “difficult.” There are also unconfirmed reports of fighting around Lysychansk, a city in Luhansk that Russia captured at the beginning of July after weeks of heavy shelling. Ukrainian forces have advanced to the outskirts of Lysychansk, according to the oblast’s governor, Serhiy Haidai.

Taken as a whole, Ukraine’s offensive has decisively shown that it has the manpower, resolve and weapons to prosecute the next phase of a war that many analysts and politicians warned would devolve into a prolonged stalemate or war of attrition. And it comes at a time when Russia has threatened to “freeze” Europe by cutting off gas supplies for the coming winter, as cracks in European Union unity on sanctions have apparently widened. On Sept. 8, the United States announced another security package for Ukraine worth $675 million, much of it ammunition for weapons platforms that have already been provided, including the M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS).

Ukraine spent months telegraphing its intent to mount a major counteroffensive in the southern region of Kherson. That campaign got underway on Aug. 29, and has made consistent but unspectacular progress. The Kharkiv operation, however, was totally unannounced — not even hinted at. “Basically, the Russians thinned all their troops out to protect Kherson,” said Dr. Mike Martin, a visiting fellow in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London. “The Ukrainians spotted this, fixed the Russians in Kherson, and kept a reserve that they used to strike through the Russian line east of Kharkiv, and then managed to capture their two main logistics hubs supplying the Russian effort in the northeast and east of the country.”

As a result, Russian frontlines are now collapsing. One video taken somewhere in Kharkiv and posted to Twitter shows retreating Russian soldiers riding on top of a T-72 tank as it runs into an advance party of Ukrainian special forces. The tank immediately starts shedding soldiers before it finally skids around a sharp bend and careens into a tree.

Pro-Russian Telegram channels, which in the past have resorted to denial or rationalization to account for Russian losses, are through coping. They are now in a state of panic or full of violent recriminations for what they see as the Kremlin’s incompetence, if not treachery. Ultranationalists are demanding a mobilization and a declaration of martial law in Russia. Some have even called for nuclear strikes on Western Ukraine to force a capitulation.

Russia’s military bloggers, meanwhile, are clear-eyed about what has transpired in less than a week — and unusually deferential to the enemy. As a British military strategist, Sir Lawrence Freedman, has noted, “At times, it can seem as if the bloggers (in sharp contrast to the propagandists) are talking up the Ukrainians to make their own troops look less bad.”

It is difficult to know where the Russians will decide to make their stand, given that they seem to have little in the way of an operational or strategic reserve and that the Ukrainians have broken through all their pre-prepared lines of defense. More critically, Western-supplied weaponry, particularly the HIMARS, has been pounding Russian ammunition and fuel depots and supply lines around Kharkiv, making any future effort to recapture lost land far more arduous. The Ukrainians have even been pushing up the HIMARS’ bigger, more heavily armored cousin, the M270 MLRS (Multiple Launch Rocket System), to positions close to the frontline, as the Ukrainian advance brings new targets into range.

The rapid withdrawal from the north and northeast at such short notice is likely to cause the Russians problems in other areas of occupied Ukraine. Russian propaganda is being torn down all across Kharkiv and collaborators are forming long queues to leave the area and enter Belgorod, the Russian oblast on the other side of the border.

Even Russian state journalists have taken notice of the evisceration. “Well, brothers and sisters. Have you become depressed? Have you screamed? Have you argued? Have you lost heart?” Andrey Medvedev, a television reporter, posted to Telegram.

“I understand, I agree, it’s been a very difficult day.”

Reuters

Russian nationalists rage after stunning setback in Ukraine

September 11, 2022

LONDON (Reuters) – Russian nationalists called angrily on Sunday for President Vladimir Putin to make immediate changes to ensure ultimate victory in the Ukraine war, a day after Moscow was forced to abandon its main bastion in northeastern Ukraine.

The swift fall of Izium in Kharkiv province was Russia’s worst military defeat since its troops were forced back from the Ukrainian capital Kyiv in March.

As Russian forces abandoned town after town on Saturday, Putin was opening Europe’s largest ferris wheel in a Moscow park, while fireworks lit up the sky over Red Square to celebrate the city’s founding in 1147.

In an 11-minute-long voice message posted to the Telegram messaging app, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, a Putin ally whose troops have been at the forefront of the campaign in Ukraine, dismissed the loss of Izium, a critical supply hub.

But he conceded the campaign was not going to plan.

“If today or tomorrow changes are not made in the conduct of the special military operation, I will be forced to go to the country’s leadership to explain to them the situation on the ground,” said Kadyrov.

Moscow’s almost total silence on the defeat – or any explanation for what had taken place in northeastern Ukraine – provoked significant anger among some pro-war commentators and Russian nationalists on social media.

As the defeats unfolded, the Russian defence ministry on Friday posted video footage of what it said were troops being sent to the Kharkiv region.

On Sunday the defence ministry said Russian forces had struck Ukrainian positions in the region with airborne troops, missiles and artillery.

MOSCOW IS SILENT

Neither Putin, who is Russia’s supreme commander-in-chief of the armed forces, nor Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu had publicly commented on the defeat as of midday on Sunday.

“We take pride in Moscow, and love this city with its majestic antiquity and its modern and dynamic pace of life, the charm of its cosy parks, lanes and streets and abundance of business and cultural events,” Putin told Muscovites, according to a Kremlin transcript of his congratulatory message.

Putin, who has described his shock on being told as a KGB spy in East Germany that “Moscow is silent” as the Berlin Wall crumbled, said those who had fallen in the Ukraine operation had given their lives for Russia.

The defence ministry did not respond to a request for comment.

“They’re taking the piss,” wrote one prominent, pro-war military blogger on Telegram, who posts under the name of Rybar.

“Now is not the time to shut up and say nothing … this seriously hurts the cause.”

On Saturday the ministry announced a “regrouping” that would move troops away from Kharkiv to focus on the Donetsk region further in Ukraine’s east – a statement that drew further anger from many Russian military bloggers.

Some of the pro-Kremlin war correspondents and former and current servicemen who have amassed large followings on Telegram accused the ministry of minimising the defeat.

DEFEAT?

Igor Girkin, a nationalist militant and former FSB officer who helped launch a 2014 war in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, compared the collapse of one of the conflict’s principal front lines to the 1905 Battle of Mukden – a catastrophic defeat in the Russo-Japanese war which triggered Russia’s 1905 Revolution.

Ukraine has hailed its rapid advance, which saw thousands of Russian soldiers flee, leaving behind ammunition stockpiles and equipment, as a turning point in the 6-month-old war.

Girkin, who has been unsparing in his criticisms of the country’s top brass, dubbing defence minister Shoigu “the cardboard marshal”, has said repeatedly that Russia will be defeated in Ukraine if it doesn’t declare a nationwide mobilisation.

Nationalist anger at military failure is potentially a far greater problem for the Kremlin than pro-Western liberal criticism of Putin: opinion polls continue to show broad support for what Moscow calls the “special military operation”.

As the capital celebrated Moscow Day with street parties and concerts on Saturday, rumblings of disquiet even spread to Russia’s ordinarily subservient parliament.

Sergei Mironov, leader of the nominally opposition but Putin-loyal Just Russia party, said on Twitter that a firework display in honour of the holiday should be cancelled, in view of the military situation.

One message reposted on Telegram by the prominent war correspondent Semyon Pegov referred to the celebrations in Moscow as “blasphemous” and the refusal of Russian authorities to embark on full-scale war as “schizophrenic”.

“Either Russia will become itself through the birth of a new political elite … or it will cease to exist,” it read.

(Editing by Guy Faulconbridge and Catherine Evans)