Category: Ukraine War

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)

Reuters

Russia gives up key northeast towns as Ukrainian forces advance

Max Hunder and Vitalii Hnidyi – September 10, 2022

KYIV/HRAKOVE, Ukraine (Reuters) -Moscow abandoned its main bastion in northeastern Ukraine on Saturday, in a sudden collapse of one of the war’s principal front lines after Ukrainian forces made a rapid advance.

The swift fall of Izium in Kharkiv province was Moscow’s worst defeat since its troops were forced back from the capital Kyiv in March. Ukraine hailed it as a turning point in the 6-month-old war, with thousands of Russian soldiers leaving behind ammunition stockpiles and equipment as they fled.

Russian forces used Izium as the logistics base for one of their main campaigns – a months-long assault from the north on the adjacent Donbas region comprised of Donetsk and Luhansk.

The state-run TASS news agency quoted Russia’s defence ministry as saying it had ordered troops to leave the vicinity and reinforce operations elsewhere in Donetsk.

The head of Russia’s administration in Kharkiv told residents to evacuate the province and flee to Russia to “save lives,” TASS reported. Witnesses described traffic jams of cars with people leaving Russian-held territory.

If the reported gains are held, it would be a serious blow for Russia, which Western intelligence services say has suffered huge casualties. It would also be a big boost for Ukraine, which is keen to show Western nations supplying it with weapons it deserves their continued support.

There is pressure on Kyiv to demonstrate progress before winter sets in, amid threats by Russian President Vladimir Putin to halt all energy shipments to Europe if Brussels goes ahead with a proposal to cap the price of Russian oil exports.

Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said in Kyiv that Ukrainian forces had demonstrated they were capable of defeating the Russian army with the weapons given to them.

“And so I reiterate: the more weapons we receive, the faster we will win, and the faster this war will end,” he said.

In his nightly video address on Saturday, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Ukraine’s armed forces had recovered around 2,000 square kilometres (770 square miles) of territory since its counter-offensive was launched earlier this month.

“The Russian army is claiming the title of fastest army in the world … keep running!” Andriy Yermak, Zelenskiy’s chief of staff, wrote on Twitter.

Ukrainian officials stopped short of confirming they had recaptured Izium, but Yermak earlier posted a photo of troops on its outskirts and tweeted an emoji of grapes. The city’s name means “raisin.”

The Russian withdrawal announcement came hours after Ukrainian troops captured the city of Kupiansk farther north, the sole railway hub supplying Russia’s entire front line across northeastern Ukraine. Ukrainian officials posted photos early on Saturday of their troops raising the country’s blue-and-yellow flag in front of Kupiansk’s city hall.

That left thousands of Russian troops abruptly cut off from supplies along a front that has seen some of the most intense battles of the war.

Igor Girkin, a former commander of pro-Russian forces in eastern Ukraine, called the Russian pullback “a major defeat” in remarks on Telegram.

MECHANISED ASSAULT

Ukraine has for weeks been talking up a big counteroffensive in the south, which also is under way though details are sparse.

Russia still occupies extensive territory in the Donbas and in the south near the Crimean Peninsula it seized in 2014.

Days ago, Kyiv’s forces burst through the front line in the northeast and have since recaptured dozens of towns and villages in a swift mechanised assault, surging forward dozens of kilometres (miles) a day.

Ukraine’s deputy defence minister, Hanna Malyar, sounded a cautionary note, urging people not to report prematurely that towns have been “taken” just because Ukrainian troops were sighted. Troops entered Balakliia a few days ago, she said, but it was only on Saturday that Ukraine established control in the city.

In Hrakove, one of dozens of villages recaptured in the Ukrainian advance, Reuters saw burnt-out vehicles bearing the “Z” symbol of Russia’s invasion. Boxes of ammunition were scattered along with rubbish at positions the Russians had abandoned in evident haste.

“Hello everyone, we are from Russia,” was spray-painted on a wall. Three bodies lay in white body bags in a yard.

The regional chief of police, Volodymyr Tymoshenko, said Ukrainian police moved in the previous day, and checked the identities of local residents who had lived under Russian occupation since the invasion’s second day.

“The first function is to provide help that they need. The next job is to document the crimes committed by Russian invaders on the territories which they temporarily occupied,” he said.

‘FIGHTING IS GETTING CLOSER’

A witness in Valuyki, a town in Russia’s Belgorod region near the border with Ukraine, told Reuters she saw families from Kupiansk eating and sleeping in their cars along roads.

“I was at the market today and saw a lot of people from Kupiansk. They say half of the city was taken by the Ukrainian army and Russia is retreating … the fighting is getting closer,” the witness said.

Belgorod governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said officials were giving food and medical aid to people queuing at a crossing into Russia. Senator Andrey Turchak, from the pro-Kremlin United Russia party, reported more than 400 vehicles at the frontier.

Russian rocket fire hit Kharkiv city on Saturday evening, killing at least one person and damaging several homes, part of a surge in shelling since Kyiv’s counter-offensive, Ukrainian officials said.

Reuters could not independently confirm the battlefield accounts.

“The advance is enormous. There are sporadic battles, but mostly the occupiers are fleeing,” Luhansk regional governor Serhiy Gaidai told Ukrainian television on Saturday.

(Reporting by Reuters reporters; Writing by Peter Graff, Andrew Heavens and Doina Chiacu; Editing by Cynthia Osterman and Daniel Wallis)

Daily Beast

Moscow Officials Urge Putin to GTFO: ‘Everything Went Wrong’

Allison Quinn – September 10, 2022

More and more Russian officials are urging Vladimir Putin to get the hell out of the Kremlin as Moscow suffered another series of humiliating defeats in Ukraine this weekend.

Just one day after several municipal deputies in Putin’s hometown of St. Petersburg called on the State Duma to try the Russian leader for treason, their colleagues in Moscow joined in and demanded he step down because his views are “hopelessly outdated.”

The open letter to Putin from municipal deputies in the Russian capital’s Lomonosovsky district started out by seemingly trying to let him down gently, telling him he had “good reforms” in his first term and part of his second.

But then, “everything went wrong,” the deputies said.

“The rhetoric that you and your subordinates use has been riddled with intolerance and aggression for a long time, which in the end effectively threw our country back into the Cold War era. Russia has again begun to be feared and hated, we are once again threatening the whole world with nuclear weapons,” the letter read.

“We ask you to relieve yourself of your post due to the fact that your views and your governance model are hopelessly outdated and hinder the development of Russia and its human potential,” the deputies said in closing.

Though they made no mention of the war against Ukraine, their plea came as Putin’s deranged “special military operation” next door took a spectacular nosedive, with thousands of Russian forces fleeing as Ukraine’s military launched a series of surprise counter-offensives and reclaimed nearly 400 square miles of territory in a matter of days.

Putin Insists His War Against Ukraine Is Doing Great Things for Russia

Even as Russian defense officials sought to play down the mass surrender as nothing more than a strategic maneuver, it was clearly not perceived that way even by many of Putin’s most loyal cronies.

The same Russian propagandists who’d spent the first six months of the war thumping their chests about a supposedly “inevitable victory” suddenly changed their tune. Margarita Simonyan, the editor-in-chief of RT who’d repeatedly called for Moscow to mercilessly obliterate Ukraine, suddenly posted a sentimental screed on Twitter calling for unity between the two nations.

“In this situation, the best picture of the future is the overall picture of the past. Our shared past, recent. When everyone was together, when there was Victory Day, when there was a parade, when both Russian and Ukrainian were taught,” she wrote, waxing nostalgic over a time when “wonderful songs were sung both in one language and the other.”

Even the pro-Kremlin Telegram channels run by Russian military bloggers had a dramatic change of tune as Ukraine claimed new wins Saturday: They began to openly blast military leadership—and Putin personally—for the embarrassing failures.

“Stalin, as much of a vampire as he was, never stooped to this and said how we lost nothing and there are no problems,” wrote one pro-Kremlin blogger. “For him, those who cowardly run away and ‘withdraw troops’ were the alarmists.”

Fortune

‘We realized that there’s no way we can return’: Russia’s best and brightest are leaving the country in record numbers. 6 young Russians explain why they left

Yvonne Lau – August 20, 2022

Three months ago, Sonya, a 25-year-old who works at a major mobile gaming company and moonlights as a tutor, made one of the toughest decisions of her life: She left Russia.

She had an old but cozy communal apartment with her boyfriend and two other roommates in Moscow’s city center, a tight-knit group of friends, and spent several days a week taking classes at a local dance academy—her lifelong passion.

“It’s my home. My family, friends are there. My whole life. How can you possibly abandon all these things?” she told Fortune.

But like countless other young educated Russians, Sonya, who asked that only her first name be used, packed her bags and fled the country after Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24.

Over 3.8 million Russians left from January to March this year, according to the Federal Security Services’ own estimates. Some left for work or travel reasons, but many also left because of Russia’s war on Ukraine. Other estimates put the number of people who left because of the war at 300,000 to 3.8 million. The exact number is still unknown. A recent survey from non-governmental organization OK Russians says that the average age of Russians who left the country after Feb. 24 is 32 years old, while 80% of them have a higher education degree.

And as the war approaches its six month anniversary, the country is experiencing a second wave of outward migration, as individuals and families who needed more time to wrap up their lives are now leaving. And although the estimates vary widely, this year’s mass exodus from the country is comparable to the initial emigration out of Russia when the Soviet Union collapsed and 1.2 million Russians left in 1992 and 1993. Russia’s current, large-scale brain drain of young, skilled and educated citizens, could decimate sectors from journalism, to academia, and technology, experts say.

Sonya was part of the second exodus. In March, she bought tickets for the cheapest flight out, which was $650—only slightly less than her monthly salary of $750—and left in May. She said she realized early on that life in Russia was untenable, because of “the war… more horrid details about the situation in Ukraine were being revealed. The government, the system. Inhumane [and] anti-democratic laws. A ruined economy.”

“Everyday we were, and still are, going through an uncontrollable stream of shame and anger,” she says.

For a better future

Almost overnight, Putin’s war on Ukraine turned Russia into a global pariah and plunged the economy into chaos.

International leaders condemned Putin’s actions, and Western nations hit the country with unprecedented sanctions, including cutting it off from SWIFT, the international payments system.

Since February, over 1,000 global companies have curbed their operations in Russia, curtailing job opportunities and access to goods and services for Russians. Inflation soared to nearly 18%, while real wages plunged 7.2% in April.

In the first quarter of this year, the number of Russians living below the poverty line surged to 20.9 million—14.3% of the population, compared to 12.4 million in the last quarter of 2021, an increase of nearly 67%, according to Russia’s government statistics agency, which attributes the rise in poverty to inflation. Former Putin aide Andrei Illarionov told the BBC in April that this number could double or triple as the war continues.

As a result, young people in Russia envision an uncertain and unstable life ahead due to the war. They’re more opposed to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine than other demographics groups because they don’t want war, nor to be isolated from the rest of the world, according to surveys and experts.

“They feel more acutely than other groups that the war has deprived them of a future,” Kseniya Kirillova, an analyst for think tank Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), told Fortune.

Last June, 23-year-old Roman Pastukhov left his hometown of Blagoveshchensk, a small Russian city where China is a 5-minute pontoon ride away. He knew he had to leave Russia to obtain a widely-recognized post-graduate degree, and had received a scholarship to study environmental science and technology in Japan.

Russia’s social, political, and economic problems, which have piled up over the years, made living in Russia an unattractive prospect, Pastukhov told Fortune. “A mid-range job won’t get you anywhere,” he said, citing low salaries, high inflation, and an unstable ruble.

Pastukhov and his wife Anastasiia, had planned to return to Russia to see family and figure out the next chapter of their lives. But Putin’s war reinforced that living there would only bring financial instability and repression. After Feb. 24, Pastukhov lost access to his investment accounts, due to western sanctions on Russian banks.

He says at first, he was mostly upset and terrified for his friends in Ukraine. Now, he’s shocked at how well state propaganda is influencing Russians.

“We realized that there’s no way we can return to Russia anytime soon. Once we get in, we might not be able to get out. Staying outside seems to be the safest option for now,” Pastukhov says.

‘The creative class that I know has already left Russia’

For over a decade, 32-year-old digital artist Grishanti Holon—a professional pseudonym— participated in radical art groups, including the infamous anti-government collective Voina, and hung up anti-Putin posters.

Despite his activism, the government recognized his talent and awarded him with the title of “Talent of Russia” in 2019. But he says life under Putin’s regime had by then become unlivable because free creative and political expression was impossible.

By December 2021, the “atmosphere became so tense” that he left Moscow for Bali with his partner and professional team, Holon told Fortune. He believes if he had tried to do it after the war started, he would not be able to.

“I’m more than sure I would’ve been detained and imprisoned,” he says. After the war began, he halted a digital NFT project in partnership with Russian state bank Sberbank mid-launch, as he didn’t want to support the country’s war effort, even indirectly.

Now, the “vast majority of the creative class that I know has already left Russia. [Our community] in Bali alone is several hundred people,” Holon says.

Academics, activists and tech workers are also leaving in droves. Around 10% of Russia’s tech workforce has left—or is planning to leave—the country, the Russian Association for Electronic Communications told Russia’s Parliament in May.

Elena, a 31-year-old freelancer who creates content on YouTube, shared her story with Fortune in March, when she fled Moscow for Istanbul. Her elderly parents ask when she will return, but she says she has no plans to do so because the “news and ideas coming from the Russian government terrifies me,” she told Fortune.

She’s now learned basic Turkish and opened an account with a European digital bank. She says her friends have settled in Brazil and South Korea.

“Educated people who understand the real situation are leaving the country; selling their houses, making different documents, and learning foreign languages,” she says.

In January 2021, 36-year-old Andrey Gusev, the product head for blockchain and gaming firm Sabai Ecoverse, left Zelenograd, a small city outside of Moscow, for Phuket for better career opportunities. He has no plans to return.

“Seventy percent of my friends, who were in intellectual spheres…like IT, science and engineering, have left or are actively looking for ways to leave Russia,” he told Fortune.

Another tech worker, Alexander Salomatov, founder of metaverse and crypto consulting firm Soulmate Consulting, left Moscow for Bali in January of this year. He wanted to develop tech projects with a global team and user base, which seemed difficult to do in Russia. But it was the war that reinforced his belief that “now is not the best time” to live in Russia and traditional allies like Belarus and Kazakhstan.

“I can’t image what [good] is going to happen in Russia… if all of the most talented, energetic, and enterprising people have left their homeland,” Holon says.

Lost human capital

The mass flight of human capital—tech workers, academics, journalists, and anti-war activists—could decimate certain sectors and hurt a Russian economy that’s already reeling and largely cut off from international trade and business.

The country has now lost its “most valuable human resources,” Michael Reynolds, director of Russian, East European, and Eurasian studies at Princeton University, told Fortune. “Young, educated, talented, and entrepreneurial Russians who, with their education and skills, would have become leaders in the Russian economy and helped drive its growth,” he says.

Some Russians will continue to contribute to their home economy through remote work, and can act as a sanctions buffer by setting up import-export operations in countries like Turkey, Armenia, and India. But the “bulk of this talent will be lost,” Reynolds says.

The Russian economy isn’t simply going to collapse because of the exodus, experts say. The supply of talented and skilled workers remaining in Russia—approximately only 30% of Russians hold a passport that lets them travel abroad—is “sufficient to keep the economy afloat,” Margarita Zavadskaya, a social science senior research fellow at the University of Helsinki’s Finnish Centre for Russian and East European Studies, told Fortune. 

“But those who would replace [emigres] are likely to be less [skilled] on average and will… be more politically compliant,” she says. Some young Russians who stayed behind, like poet and teacher Katya V., who told her story to Fortune in March, says that she and her friends who remained in Russia did so to support their families and to protest from within. “I don’t want to give up everything here for [the government] to enjoy [ruling] without any resistance,” she says.

Still, the bottom line is that the Russian economy is losing competent and competitive [workers],” Zavadskaya says.

Putin has sought to portray the brain drain from the country as a positive, saying Russians who left the country and those who hold pro-western views as “traitors” who seek to destroy Russia.

“The problem is that… their [slave] mentality is there, not here, with our people. I am convinced that a natural and necessary self-detoxification of society like this will strengthen our country,” Putin said earlier this year.

But the government is showing signs that it might not let go of expats so easily.

Russian human rights organization Perviy Otdel (First Department) reported in May that FSB agents have started asking the relatives of those who have fled the country to ask them to return.

And Russia’s prospects for rebuilding and reaccumulating its lost human capital will ultimately be difficult in the short-term and with Putin still in power.

“Russia’s economic revival is only possible if the devastating war [ends], and the existing political regime collapses,” Zavadskaya says.

Russia would need to promise economic and political stability to attract Russians to return, Reynolds says. But as he notes, “there is no prospect of stability now.”

Daily Beast

How Putin Is Pushing His Army Bosses Through a ‘Meat Grinder’ of Death

Shannon Vavra – August 10, 2022

Russia has now lost at least 100 senior officers since it invaded Ukraine earlier this year, according to some tallies. It’s a devastating milestone for Moscow—and just the latest indication that Vladimir Putin’s war effort in Ukraine is wavering.

In the past two days alone, three senior Russian officers were reported dead: Lt. Colonel Nikolay Gorban, a commander from the Foreign Security Service (FSB) special forces; army aviation commander Colonel Vasily Kleshchenko; and Colonel Vitaly Tsikul of Russia’s 90th Tank Division—reportedly the 100th Russian senior officer to die in the war.

While exact tallies of Russian casualties can be difficult to pin down, a British intelligence analysis released this week found that at least 10 Russian generals have died on the battlefield since February.

But it’s not just deaths that are decimating Russia’s forces. Russia has been chipping away at its leadership ranks just by firing them outright, too. General-Colonel Aleksandr Chayko, the former commander of the Eastern Military District, was dismissed in May, according to British intelligence. Russia has likely replaced General-Colonel Aleksandr Zhuravlev with General-Lieutenant Vladimir Kochetkov to head up the Western Military District. General Aleksandr Dvornikov, who was heading up the operation in Ukraine, has also reportedly been dismissed.

The series of killings and firings could be an indication that Russia’s forces are still, nearly six months into the war, mismanaged from the inside out, according to Glen Howard, the president of the Jamestown Foundation.

Another General Killed as Russian Leak Admits ‘Big Shot Fucking Command’ Was Obliterated

“I see a lot of that was just kind of their own negligence and sloppy generalship,” said Howard, who previously worked in the U.S. Embassy in Moscow.

The series of dismissals likely represents Moscow trying to find an approach that works for the war in Ukraine—but the continued hemorrhaging means President Putin probably just hasn’t figured it out yet.

“Putin is definitely adopting a strategy trying to find a fighting general that will succeed,” Howard said. “And luckily for us, he hasn’t found one yet.”

Russia’s military has struggled from the outset of the war to achieve key objectives. Russian troops failed to seize Kyiv, the capital, in the early days of the war, faltering instead outside of the capital due to a series of logistics failures. Putin had plans to install a Moscow-backed regime in Ukraine and take over the entire country, neither of which have come to pass. And troops have been abandoning and sabotaging equipment, according to reports from Ukrainian intelligence.

Putin’s trial-and-error approach has been prominent throughout the war, in part because Ukrainian forces have been so resistant to the invasion, applying pressure on the Russian forces so much that they have to adapt their plans to meet Ukraine’s fight, according to the Pentagon.

“They have made some incremental gains in the east, although not very much in the last couple weeks, but that has come at extraordinary cost to the Russian military because of how well the Ukrainian military has performed and all the assistance that the Ukrainian military has gotten,” Colin Kahl, Biden’s undersecretary of defense for policy said in a Monday briefing. “And I think now, conditions in the east have essentially stabilized and the focus is really shifting to the south, and in part, that’s because the Ukrainians are starting to put some pressure down south and the Russians have been forced to redeploy their forces down there.”

All of that second-rate work is seeping into leadership circles, too; Russia’s military’s failures in the war have likely led to a series of dismissals of Russian leadership, according to British intelligence.

“The poor performance of Russia’s armed forces during its invasion of Ukraine has been costly for Russia’s military leadership, highly likely resulting in the dismissal of at least six Russian commanders since the start of hostilities in February 2022,” the intelligence report noted.

All of these losses are making Russia’s fighting force progressively less impressive, which could mean Russia is in for a grueling fight ahead.

“The war is taking a toll on them,” Howard said. “We faced their ‘A team,’ and now they don’t have any more reserved. The best of their best? We faced them and defeated them. Now we’re facing the ‘B Team.’ And so as they fight the ‘B team,’ they’re now moving into the ‘C Team.’ The quality level is just deteriorating.”

The diminished status of Russia’s forces will be welcome news for Ukrainians and Western nations, including the United States, as they continue to provide key military aid to Ukraine. In a war of attrition, with both sides intent on outlasting the other, both militaries are focused on grinding down the other military until they throw in the towel.

The significant losses Russia is suffering could place an increasing amount of pressure on Putin to either call it quits in Ukraine, or lean into kicking off a greater mobilization. So far, Putin has only admitted domestically that Russia is waging a “special military operation” in Ukraine, not an all-out war, and has been unwilling to kick off a larger mobilization.

And although the Russian forces have tried to recoup from their early failures in the war with a series of regroupings and change in approach, troops and leadership are still bearing some of the costs.

Russia has sustained between 70,000 and 80,000 casualties since February, according to a Department of Defense assessment shared Monday.

The Tricks Putin Is Cooking Up in His Mysterious War ‘Pause’

It’s “pretty remarkable considering that the Russians have achieved none of Vladimir Putin’s objectives at the beginning of the war,” Kahl said of the dwindling numbers.

That’s a significant jump from other U.S. government assessments in recent weeks. Just last month, CIA Director Bill Burns said the Russians had suffered about 60,000 casualties.

“The meat grinder continues,” Howard said. “There’s still a large number of people getting killed.”

And although dismissals and death are wrecking Putin’s forces, it doesn’t necessarily spell the end of the war or a Russian loss. According to the Department of Defense’s assessment, as of Monday, it’s not possible to say “with a high degree of certainty” at this stage how long Russia can sustain these levels of losses.

“A lot of it would depend, I think, on the political decisions that Vladimir Putin will make ultimately about whether he can continue to recruit and send additional forces to the front, whether he was at some point… willing to engage in national mobilization or some other effort,” Kahl said.

And already this week Putin has faced some embarrassing news. Explosions tore through a Russian air base on Tuesday in Crimea, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014. A Ukrainian military official claimed responsibility for the damage, suggesting that a long-range Ukrainian weapons system was used to launch the attack, according to The New York Times.

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Russia has endured 80,000 casualties, US official says; oligarch’s $90 million plane may be seized: Aug. 8 recap

John Bacon, Tom Vanden Brook, Jorge L. Ortiz – August 10, 2022

The Russian military has suffered as many as 80,000 dead and wounded since its invasion of Ukraine, Colin Kahl, U.S. undersecretary of defense for policy, said Monday.

He called it an “extraordinary cost” inflicted by Ukrainian forces fighting for stakes that “are existential for them.” The figure is nearly twice the 42,340 Russian casualties estimated by the Ukrainian military, which does not report on its own combat losses. Neither does the Kremlin.

Russia has not achieved the objectives President Vladimir Putin’s intended when the invasion began Feb. 24, Kahl said.

“His overall objective was to overrun the entire country, to engage in regime change in Kyiv, to snuff out Ukraine as an independent sovereign and independent nation,” Kahl said. “None of that has happened.”

Russia also appears have lost as many as 4,000 armored vehicles, including tanks, Kahl said. Ukrainian officials peg that number at 4,070 armored vehicles and 1,811 tanks.

Pentagon officials had been reluctant to quantify casualties on both sides of the war, citing unclear estimates. By comparison, in 20 years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq, about 50,000 U.S. troops were wounded and more than 5,200 were killed.

Latest developments:

►The Ukraine military said Monday that it destroyed a Russian ammunition depot in the Kharkiv region and shot down a cruise missile near Odesa.

►Daniil Medvedev, Liudmila Samsonova and Daria Kasatkina, three Russian tennis players who were banned from competing at Wimbledon because of the war in Ukraine, won tournaments over the weekend that serve as U.S. Open tune-ups. “We are all very angry about the situation,” Samsonova said of the Wimbledon ban.

US to seize oligarch’s $90 million jet

Federal officials targeting Russian oligarchs are preparing to seize a jet they say is owned via a chain of shell companies and relatives by billionaire Andrei Skoch.

A New York-based federal judge has signed a seizure warrant for the Airbus A319-100, a model typically used to carry more than 130 passengers in commercial service. Federal prosecutors say the $90 million jet is sitting at an airport in Kazakhstan. The United States and Kazakhstan have a treaty requiring each country to honor the other’s warrants and other law enforcement actions. Federal officials said they believe Skoch is also the owner of the $156 million yacht Madame Gu and the yacht’s helicopter, both of which also have been targeted for possible seizure.

President Joe Biden has created and deployed a team of federal prosecutors and other experts to seize the assets of Russian oligarchs as part of efforts to punish Russian President Vladimir Putin and his allies for the invasion of Ukraine.

While federal officials routinely conduct this kind of work, Biden’s Task Force KleptoCapture has gotten new resources and additional staffing to help and has already seized yachts it says are owned by oligarchs. Biden has proposed selling off the seized property to help fund Ukrainian reconstruction and defense efforts.

“A seizure like this, that’s step No. 1 in a process that ultimately ends in forfeiture,” said Stefan D. Cassella, a former top federal asset forfeiture prosecutor. “The biggest hurdle is proving that the particular airplane is owned by this particular person.”

– Trevor Hughes

US sends $1 billion more in security aid to Ukraine

The Biden administration will send another $1 billion in ammunition, weapons and vehicles to Ukraine, the Pentagon announced Monday.

The latest military aid package includes ammunition for the High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, that Ukraine has used to destroy Russian ammunition depots and command posts dozens of miles behind the front line in eastern Ukraine. Defense officials have credited the weapon and stiff Ukrainian resolve with slowing the Russian advance there. The package includes conventional artillery ammunition, armored ambulances and anti-tank weapons.

This represents the largest single shipment of security aid among the 18 sent to Ukraine since August 2021, Pentagon spokesman Todd Breasseale said. The Biden administration has provided Ukraine with $9.8 billion in military aid, the lion’s share of the $11.8 billion in security assistance the U.S. has sent the eastern European country since 2014.

Melitopol would be ‘reunified’ with Russia under referendum

The Russian-appointed leader of Ukraine’s occupied Zaporizhzhia region signed an order Monday to hold a referendum on “reunification” with Russia that could take place as soon as next month. The announcement from Evgeny Balitsky came one day after the city’s mayor, Ivan Fedorov, said Ukrainian forces used U.S.-supplied HIMARS rockets to strike Russian troops in the area, killing more than 100.

“I am signing an order to the Central Election Commission to start preparations for a referendum,” Balitsky said at a public forum in the southeastern city of Melitopol. “We are together with Russia.”

Russia stops allowing U.S. nuclear arsenal inspections that are part of treaty

At a time of increasingly strained relations, Russia said it will stop allowing the U.S. to inspect its nuclear arsenals, claiming Western sanctions imposed because of the assault on Ukraine have hampered similar tours of U.S. facilities by Russian monitors.

In halting U.S. inspections under the New START nuclear arms control treaty for the first time, Moscow said sanctions on Russian flights, visa restrictions and other obstacles are keeping Russian military experts from inspecting U.S. nuclear weapons sites, giving the Americans “unilateral advantages.”

The development came on the same day UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged countries with nuclear weapons to abide by their commitment to not be the first ones to use them, warning that the nuclear arms race has returned amid growing international tension.

Moscow, Kyiv blame each other for shelling at nuclear plant

“Suicidal” shelling of Europe’s largest nuclear plant must be halted and international inspectors must be granted access to ensure its safe operation, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said Monday. Moscow and Kyiv blamed each other for a series of attacks at Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station that the International Atomic Energy Agency said has created “the very real risk of a nuclear disaster.”

Ukraine’s military intelligence chief, Andriy Yusov, said his organization had received credible information from several sources that Russian forces have planted explosives at the plant to head off an expected Ukrainian counteroffensive in the region. The Ukraine power company Energoatom quoted a Russian general as saying, “The station will be either Russian or nobody’s.”

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia of carrying out the rocket attacks. The Russian Embassy in Washington issued a statement blaming Ukraine for the shelling, claiming a “disinformation campaign” in the U.S. media is falsely blaming Russian forces.

Ukrainian officials have previously said Russia is launching attacks from the plant and using Ukrainian workers there as human shields.

Embargo eased, Ukrainian grain shipment is first to reach destination

A cargo ship carrying 12,000 tons of Ukrainian corn arrived Monday in Turkey, the first vessel to arrive at its destination under a deal that eased Russia’s tight blockade of Ukrainian ports.

The Turkey-flagged Polarnet docked at Derince port in the Gulf of Izmit, three days after setting off from Chornomorsk. The first ship to depart Ukraine, the Sierra Leone-flagged Razoni, left Aug. 1 but had not reached its destination in Lebanon and was anchored off Turkey’s southern coast, according to the Marine Traffic website.

The ships are sailing under a deal to unblock grain supplies and stave off a global food crisis. Ukraine Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said the first ship’s arrival “sends a message of hope to every family in the Middle East, Africa and Asia: Ukraine won’t abandon you. If Russia sticks to its obligations, the ‘grain corridor’ will keep maintaining global food security.”

Six more ships carrying agricultural cargo have received authorization to leave Ukraine’s Black Sea ports, carrying more than 236,000 tons of grain. Ukraine has 20 million tons of grain sitting in silos.

Battered infrastructure could lead to humanitarian crisis

The eastern Ukrainian city of Sloviansk has no running water because of unrelenting Russian bombing, so residents must fill bottles by hand at public pumps throughout the city. The city’s remaining population has adapted, but local officials warn that the arrival of winter could set the stage for a humanitarian crisis. Most of the eastern Donetsk region is without gas for heating, and public wells and municipal water pipes are likely to freeze in winter.

Lyubov Mahlii, 76, collects 5 gallons of water twice a day from a public tank near her apartment, dragging the plastic bottles up four flights of stairs.

“When there are bombings and sirens, we keep carrying it,” she said. “It’s a great risk for us, but what can we do?”

Contributing: The Associated Press