Russian general killed in eastern Ukraine, Russian state media reporter says
June 5, 2022
FILE PHOTO: A view shows destroyed military vehicles in Rubizhne
LONDON (Reuters) – A Russian general was killed in eastern Ukraine, a Russian state media journalist said on Sunday, adding to the string of high-ranking military casualties sustained by Moscow.
The report, published on the Telegram messaging app by state television reporter Alexander Sladkov, did not say precisely when and where Major General Roman Kutuzov was killed.
There was no immediate comment from the Russian defence ministry.
Russian forces have intensified attacks to capture Sievierodonetsk, a key city in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region that Moscow is targeting after failing to take the capital Kyiv early in the war.
Russia already classifies military deaths as state secrets even in times of peace and has not updated its official casualty figures in Ukraine since March 25, when it said that 1,351 Russian soldiers had been killed since the start of its military campaign on Feb. 24.
Russia says it is carrying out “special military operation” designed to demilitarise Ukraine and rid it of nationalists threatening the Russian-speaking population. Ukraine and Western countries dismiss Russia’s claims as a pretext to invade.
Britain’s defence ministry said on Monday that Russia appeared to have suffered significant losses amongst mid- and junior-ranking officers in Ukraine.
(Reporting by Reuters; editing by Guy Faulconbridge and Nick Zieminski)
As Ukraine loses troops, how long can it keep up the fight?
John Leicester and Hanna Arhirova – June 4, 2022
An Ukrainian serviceman mourns during the a funeral of Army Col. Oleksander Makhachek in Zhytomyr, Ukraine, Friday, June 3, 2022. According to combat comrades Makhachek was killed fighting Russian forces when a shell landed in his position on May 30. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)Relatives of Army Col. Oleksander Makhachek mourn during his funeral in Zhytomyr, Ukraine, Friday, June 3, 2022. According to combat comrades Makhachek was killed fighting Russian forces when a shell landed in his position on May 30. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)Ukrainian servicemen carry the coffin with the remains of Army Col. Oleksander Makhachek during his funeral in Zhytomyr, Ukraine, Friday, June 3, 2022. According to combat comrades Makhachek was killed fighting Russian forces when a shell landed in his position on May 30. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)The mother of Army Col. Oleksander Makhachek cries during his funeral in Zhytomyr, Ukraine, Friday, June 3, 2022. According to combat comrades Makhachek was killed fighting Russian forces when a shell landed in his position on May 30. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)The mother, right, and sister of Army Col. Oleksander Makhachek mourn over the coffin with his remains during a funeral service in Zhytomyr, Ukraine, Friday, June 3, 2022. According to combat comrades Makhachek was killed fighting Russian forces when a shell landed in his position on May 30. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)
ZHYTOMYR, Ukraine (AP) — As soon as they had finished burying a veteran colonel killed by Russian shelling, the cemetery workers readied the next hole. Inevitably, given how quickly death is felling Ukrainian troops on the front lines, the empty grave won’t stay that way for long.
Col. Oleksandr Makhachek left behind a widow, Elena, and their daughters Olena and Myroslava-Oleksandra. In the first 100 days of war, his grave was the 40th dug in the military cemetery in Zhytomyr, 90 miles (140 kilometers) west of the capital, Kyiv.
He was killed May 30 in the Luhansk region of eastern Ukraine where the fighting is raging. Nearby, the burial notice on the also freshly dug grave of Viacheslav Dvornitskyi says he died May 27. Other graves also showed soldiers killed within days of each other — on May 10, 9th, 7th and 5th. And this is just one cemetery, in just one of Ukraine’s cities, towns and villages laying soldiers to rest.
Related video: Ukraine’s President Zelensky visits wounded soldiers
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said this week that Ukraine is now losing 60 to 100 soldiers each day in combat. By way of comparison, just short of 50 American soldiers died per day on average in 1968 during the Vietnam War’s deadliest year for U.S. forces.
Among the comrades-in-arms who paid respects to the 49-year-old Makhachek at his funeral on Friday was Gen. Viktor Muzhenko, the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ chief of general staff until 2019. He warned that losses could worsen.
“This is one of the critical moments in the war, but it is not the peak,” Muzhenko told The Associated Press. “This is the most significant conflict in Europe since World War II. That explains why the losses are so great. In order to reduce losses, Ukraine now needs powerful weapons that match or even surpass Russian weaponry. This would enable Ukraine to respond in kind.”
Concentrations of Russian artillery are causing many of the casualties in the eastern regions that Moscow has focused on since its initial invasion launched Feb. 24 failed to take Kyiv.
Retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, the former commanding general of U.S. Army forces in Europe, described the Russian strategy as a “medieval attrition approach” and said that until Ukraine gets promised deliveries of U.S., British and other weapons to destroy and disrupt Russian batteries, “these kinds of casualties are going to continue.”
“This battlefield is so much more lethal than what we all became accustomed to over the 20 years of Iraq and Afghanistan, where we didn’t have numbers like this,” he said in an AP phone interview.
“That level of attrition would include leaders, sergeants,” he added. “They are a lot of the brunt of casualties because they are the more exposed, constantly moving around trying to do things.”
Makhachek, a military engineer, led a detachment that laid minefields and other defenses, said Col. Ruslan Shutov, who attended the funeral of his friend of more than 30 years.
“Once the shelling began, he and a group hid in a shelter. There were four people in his group, and he told them to hide in the dugout. He hid in another. Unfortunately, an artillery shell hit the dugout where he was hiding.”
Ukraine had about 250,000 men and women in uniform before the war and was in the process of adding another 100,000. The government hasn’t said how many have died in more than 14 weeks of fighting.
Nobody really knows the number of Ukrainian civilians who have been killed or how many combatants have died on either side. Claims of casualties by government officials — who may sometimes exaggerate or lowball their figures for public relations reasons — are all but impossible to verify.
Western analysts estimate far higher Russian military casualties, in the many thousands. Still, as Ukraine’s losses mount, the grim mathematics of war require that it find replacements. With a population of 43 million, it has manpower.
“The problem is recruiting, training and getting them on the front line,” said retired U.S. Marine Col. Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
“If the war is now moving into a long-term attrition struggle, then you have to build systems to get replacements,” he said. “This has been a difficult moment for every army in combat.”
Muzhenko, the Ukrainian general, said Zelenskyy’s admission of high casualties would further galvanize Ukrainian morale and that more Western weaponry would help turn the tide.
“The more Ukrainians know about what is happening at the front, the more the will to resist will grow,” he said. “Yes, the losses are significant. But with the help of our allies, we can minimize and reduce them and move on to successful offensives. This will require powerful weapons.”
Yuras Karmanau contributed to this report from Lviv.
Frightened occupation authorities transfer Pion self propelled guns to Kherson Oblast Pivden (South) Operational Command
Olha Hlushchenko – June 4, 2022
Russian occupation authorities in Kherson Oblast are afraid of the resistance put up by the local residents and have brought in four Pion-type self-propelled heavy artillery guns.
Source: Pivden [South] Operational Command on Facebook
Quote: “The occupiers are afraid of the resistance which is growing among the local population in Kherson Oblast.
Every day, new flags, motivational statements, and missives to the occupiers appear in the administrative centre of the oblast [the city of Kherson – ed.], and leaflets are being distributed.
The leaders of the occupation government are moving around with large numbers of security personnel, wearing body armor and in armored vehicles. They fear for their lives.
U.S. general calls on West to send fighter jets to Ukraine ‘as soon as possible’
Lara Seligman – June 3, 2022
The commanding general of the California National Guard is calling on U.S. and other Western officials to explore sending fighter jets to Ukraine “as soon as possible,” rekindling a longstanding request by Kyiv.
In a statement to POLITICO on Friday, Maj. Gen. David Baldwin, California National Guard adjutant general, also said sending Soviet-era MiG fighters in the near term is the best “immediate solution.”
“MiGs are the best immediate solution to support the Ukrainians, but U.S. or western fighters are options that should be explored as soon as possible,” Baldwin said.
The comments come a day after Baldwin told reporters that U.S. military officials are working with Ukrainian counterparts on Kyiv’s request to Western nations for fighter aircraft to help repel the Russian invasion.
Although a three-way deal to send U.S. F-16s to Poland if Warsaw provided MiGs to Ukraine fell apart in March, Guard officials are still “steering them” toward the Soviet-era planes in the near term.
“There is a lot of goodness in them going to MiGs because they are already trained in that, but if they are going to use Western-type aircraft, it’s a discussion about numbers and types and capabilities of aircraft that may be available,” Baldwin said.
Members of the California National Guard have a longstanding relationship with the Ukrainian military. Guardsmen have been training with their Ukrainian counterparts in Eastern Europe under a state partnership since the 1990s. Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February, Guard members have also been helping to craft Kyiv’s requests to the Pentagon for weapons to use against Russian forces, Baldwin said.
In response to questions from POLITICO after the Thursday news conference, Lt. Col. Brandon Hill, a spokesperson for the California National Guard, stressed that a final decision about providing U.S.-made fighters to Kyiv would be up to the White House and the Pentagon. But he noted that, even before the conflict started, the intent was always for Ukraine to become “NATO-interoperable,” including giving them the opportunity to operate Western fighters.
California Guard members, particularly the pilots, are communicating with Ukrainian soldiers and airmen on a daily basis to share tactics and ideas, Baldwin noted.
“At our one-star generals, down to our colonels and some of our senior NCOs, they engage with Ukrainian leaders, the Ukrainian defense attaché and others, to help them refine their requests in terms of types of weapons systems are asking for and providing them information of things that might be available at the more tactical level,” Baldwin said Thursday. “The current one that we are working through is, ‘what’s the right fighter aircraft for them?’”
While “we are steering them toward those MiGs first,” there is also an “over-the-horizon” discussion of what aircraft will be needed in the future, Baldwin said.
“In the midterm, over the course of the next six months to the year and then the long term: What’s in the realm of possibility for systems that would be effective, available and affordable for them?” he said.
NATO members Bulgaria, Poland and Slovakia all operate the MiG-29, but their limited inventories are on the way out. Slovakia will replace its Soviet-era jets with U.S. F-16s in 2024, and the U.S. approved the sale of several F-16s to Bulgaria in April. Poland meanwhile signed a deal in 2020 for 32 F-35s, and Polish leaders have recently said they’re interested in adding to that number as soon as possible.
“We do not support the transfer of the fighters to the Ukrainian air force at this time and have no desire to see them in our custody either,” John Kirby told reporters at the time, after Poland offered to hand over the MiGs to the U.S. for eventual transfer to Ukraine. The Pentagon and the U.S. intelligence community had assessed the warplanes wouldn’t materially improve Ukraine’s ability to fend off Russia, but instead could draw NATO directly into the conflict, Kirby added.
There were also logistical issues involved in getting fighter jets over the border into Ukraine, and with flying the planes from a NATO country into a war zone.
Officials debated sending the HIMARS for weeks over concerns that sending advanced, longer-range rockets could provoke Vladimir Putin into escalating the conflict. Ultimately, they decided to send shorter-range munitions, and said they had received assurances that Kyiv would not use them to strike targets in Russia.
“America’s goal is straightforward: We want to see a democratic, independent, sovereign and prosperous Ukraine with the means to deter and defend itself against further aggression,” Biden wrote in a New York Times oped announcing the move. “We do not seek a war between NATO and Russia.”
In Mariupol, Russians execute and torture officials who refused to cooperate – the mayor
Alona Mazurenko – June 3, 2022
In the Mariupol district, occupiers are imprisoning and shooting Ukrainian volunteers and officials who have refused to cooperate with collaborators and the occupying authorities.
Source: Mariupol City Council, quoting Mayor Vadym Boichenko, Interfax-Ukraine
Quote: The “fake court of the DPR” [self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic] sentenced the head of one of the Azov villages to 10 years in prison.
At least one civil servant was executed by firing squad.
Dozens of volunteers are also being held in the Olenivka prison. In March-April, they helped evacuate Mariupol residents and tried to deliver food and water to the besieged city.
A Ukrainian judge is also awaiting the verdict from the fake republic. There are reports of her being tortured.”
Details: At a press conference on 3 June, Boichenko said that the occupiers were imposing “sentences” on those who were taken prisoner and refused to work with the occupiers.
According to him, the minimum term of such imprisonment is 10 years.
The mayor of Mariupol added that “thousands of Mariupol residents and people from the region” are in the [newly] established prisons in the occupied territory of Donetsk Oblast.
According to Boichenko, the captured people are being held in terrible conditions: “This is a 2 by 3 (meters – ed.) cell, and 10-15 men or women are being held in it. They are allowed to go to the toilet once a day; they are given something resembling food once a day and they are given water.”
“15 weeks of cruelty, 15 weeks of bestiality, 15 weeks of violence, with so many reports of casualties, forced deportations, rape, filtration camps and destruction … it (is) difficult to comprehend the scale of the slaughter perpetrated by the Russian Federation,” said Carpenter.
“After 15 weeks, the terror that Russia is deliberately using against Ukraine’s civilian population has no end in sight.”
Carpenter described Russian tactics as medieval: Moscow uses destruction to force local populations to abandon their homes and flee, thereby making it easier to occupy barren lands.
He added that looting and pillaging of Ukrainian resources by the Russians are similarly hallmarks of barbaric approaches to warfare.
“Sadistic bestiality and the ‘filtering’ process could have a goal,” the official said.
“Especially if this goal is to eradicate the very concept of Ukrainian statehood in regions under Russian occupation, in order to absorb these parts of Ukraine more easily.”
From officials in Kyiv to residents in Kharkiv, the message is clear: The country will not accept concessions of territory in order to reach a peace agreement with its invading neighbor.
In conversations with people around the Kharkiv region, just miles from the Russian border, many expressed frustration and anger at recent suggestions that their country should consider giving up some territory currently under occupation in order to achieve a cease-fire agreement that might avert a bloody war of attrition that could drag on for another 100 days — or longer.
Image: Two women pass by a residential building at the site of multiple Russian strikes on May 25, 2022 in Kharkiv, Ukraine. (Pete Kiehart / For NBC News)
Yet, Ukrainian public opinion illustrates just how challenging it could be to reach an acceptable diplomatic resolution with Russia.
“Of course, we want peace, but we also want our territories back,” said Anna Ockmanko, 57, whose house in a small village outside of Kharkiv was destroyed when the Russian forces invaded. “If not, then what are we suffering for?”
Anna Ockmanko. (Mariia Vovk)
Olena Ruban, 53, said that conceding territory in exchange for peace “should not even be a discussion.”
“We will fight to the end. I will pick up a gun and fight myself if I need to,” she said, as she worked to clean up her house that was damaged when Russian forces occupied the region. Ukrainian troops pushed them out last month in a successful counterattack outside the country’s second-largest city of Kharkiv.
Olena Ruban. (Mariia Vovk)
“I understand even more clearly now that compromise is not an option,” she said. “We still believe in victory.”
As the death toll increases, oil prices skyrocket and fears mount of a global food shortage, some Western officials have recently suggested that Ukraine should consider giving up land to Russia in exchange for peace.
Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said Kyiv should accept ceding territory to bring an end to the invasion, while Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi called for a cease-fire in Ukraine “as soon as possible.” The New York Times’ editorial board argued in a recent piece that Ukraine would have to confront “painful territorial decisions.”
Ukrainian officials have slammed the idea.
Zelenskyy compared the suggestion to the 1938 Munich Pact — a failed European attempt to appease Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler by giving up territory in Czechoslovakia.
In a video address posted online, Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to Zelenskyy, said that “no one is going to trade a gram of our sovereignty or a millimeter of our territory.”
“Our children are dying, soldiers are being blown apart by shells, and they tell us to sacrifice territory. Get lost. It’s never going to happen,” he said.
Since the war started Feb. 24, Ukrainian forces have successfully pushed Russia out of territory around the capital city of Kyiv, as well as Kharkiv in the northeast. But Russia controls the strategically important cities of Kherson and Mariupol in the south, and is gaining ground in the eastern provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk, which together make up the Donbas region. Moscow may not be far off creating a much-desired land corridor to Crimea, which it invaded and annexed in 2014.
Zelenskyy has acknowledged that the war will only end through a diplomatic solution rather than a military victory. In a television address last month, he said the war “will be bloody, there will be fighting, but it will only definitively end through diplomacy.”
But peace negotiations have stalled, and Ukrainian public opinion could continue to harden as new allegations of Russian atrocities are uncovered.
A recent poll from the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology found that 82 percent of Ukrainian adults believe that “no territorial concessions should be allowed” in order to reach a peace agreement, compared to 10 percent who thought some territorial concessions should be made.
“Russia wants to establish control of all of Ukraine, and Ukrainians do not want this,” said Anton Grushetskyi, the deputy director of the institute. “When some politicians, experts in the West try to put pressure on Ukraine in this very complicated situation to concede some territory, they should understand that’s just not the real intentions of the population.”
The Kremlin seems determined to exert long-term control over areas it has seized, but Zelenskyy has said that any peace agreement would require Russia pulling back to its pre-invasion positions.
Some Ukrainians say that’s not enough.
Olena, 59, who asked not to use her last name out of fear that Russian troops could identify her son who is serving in the Ukrainian military, said that Russia’s brief occupation of her town changed how she felt about Crimea and other parts of the country’s east that have been under the control of Russian-backed separatists since 2014. Any peace agreement should include those territories, she said.
Olena. (Mariia Vovk)
“We think about the people who’ve been living under occupation for eight years. We’re crying for them,” she said. “I feel guilty that we didn’t do more earlier on, but now having lived under occupation for just one month, I understand so much better now what they are going through — the exhaustion, the fear.”
Serhii, 55, who also asked not to use his last name out of concern that Russian troops could return to the region and identify him, said that Ukrainians were clear eyed about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s plan “to conquer all of Ukraine.”
“The only option is to get everything back,” he said. “But we also need to accept that it might not happen soon.”
In Ukraine, broken lives in a broken house, just one of many
Oleksandr Stashevskyi and Natacha Pisarenko – June 2, 2022
Nila Zelinska holds a doll belonging to her granddaughter, she was able to find in her destroyed house in Potashnya outskirts Kyiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, May 31, 2022. Zelinska just returned to her home town after escaping war to find out she is homeless. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)Nila Zelinska, center, and Natalia Didenko, left, embrace a neighbor as they both arrive to their home town after escaping war in Potashnya, on the outskirtsof Kyiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, May 31, 2022. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)From right, Nila Zelinska, Eduard Zelenskyy, and Natalia Didenko arrive to their home town after escaping war in Potashnya, on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, May 31, 2022. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)The home of Eduard Zelenskyy and Nila Zelinska destroyed by attacks in Potashnya, on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, May 31, 2022. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)Eduard Zelenskyy stands outside his home destroyed by attacks in Potashnya, on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, May 31, 2022. Zelenskyy just returned to his home town after escaping war to find out he is homeless. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)Eduard Zelenskyy pets his dog at his home destroyed by attacks in Potashnya, on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, May 31, 2022. Zelenskyy just returned to his home town after escaping war to find out he is homeless. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)Nila Zelinska, left, walks to her home town after escaping war in Potashnya, on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, May 31, 2022. Zelinska’s home was destroyed during attacks. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)Eduard Zelenskyy walks inside his home destroyed by attacks in Potashnya, on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, May 31, 2022. Zelenskyy just returned to his home town after escaping war to find out he is homeless. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)Nila Zelinska sits inside her neighbor’s home as she arrives to her town to find out her house was destroyed during attacks in Potashnya, on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, May 31, 2022. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)
POTASHNYA, Ukraine (AP) — In 100 days of war in Ukraine, countless lives have been forever shattered, ripped apart, upended. For tens of thousands, life has been brutally ended. Those who have survived sometimes barely know how to begin picking up the pieces.
When a house symbolizing a lifetime of labor and memories is destroyed, how does one rebuild?
Nila Zelinska and her husband, Eduard, returned for the first time this week what used to be their home in a village outside Kyiv. It was in ruins, reduced to charred walls with no roof by shelling in the days after Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine.
“Rex! Rex!” she yelled, calling for the black Labrador they’d been forced to leave behind. Only later did the faithful hound finally reappear, tail wagging under its owner’s loving caresses.
But Rex aside, nothing was as it had been.
Instead of a home, their broken house is now a symbol of their broken lives.
Nila Zelinska recalled the terror of the bombardments that forced them to leave. They scooped up her 82-year-old mother and then escape the flames and explosions by fleeing with her through their garden.
“Everything was on fire,” she said. ”I didn’t think I could get her out of there, because she is very old. But we grabbed her by the arms and began to run.”
Much of what happened next is a hazy memory. The family evacuated westward, well away from the fighting that engulfed the outskirts of the Ukrainian capital and other cities to the north and east.
Repelled by Ukrainian defenders from capturing Kyiv, Russia has since redirected its troops and concentrated its attacks on the eastern industrial Donbas region, where the fighting is still fierce.
Reaching the 100-day milestone of war is both a tragedy for Ukraine but also an indication of how fiercely it has resisted: Some analysts thought its troops might quickly crumble against Russia’s larger and better-equipped military.
Nila Zelinska sobbed in the ruins of her home when she and her husband returned to their village, Potashnya. From the rubble, she recovered a doll that belonged to one of her grandchildren. She held it tightly, as though it was a real child.
Her husband gingerly picked his way through the piles of bricks and shattered glass.
“There is no place to live. If there was housing, we would return and plant a garden for ourselves, as we always did,” she said. “We had a garden here. Potatoes, cucumbers and tomatoes grew here. Everything was from the garden.”
Neither of them know right now what the future holds, but Nila knows what she wants.
“May there be peace on earth, peace so that our people are not suffering so much,” she said.
German leader says Russian economy is collapsing; Putin fires 5 more generals: Live Ukraine updates
John Bacon, USA TODAY – June 2, 2022
Russia’s economy is falling apart and “time is working against Russia” and its president, Vladimir Putin, a top German official said Thursday.
German Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck made the remarks the same day Russian officials revealed that five more generals had been fired.
Since invading Ukraine more than three months ago, Russia has secured modest gains in its battle for control of the eastern Donbas region. Income from energy sales to Europe has played a major role in funding Russia’s war, and Habeck acknowledged that Russia has been aided by historically high energy prices and Europe’s inability to completely halt purchases.
“We can only be ashamed that we haven’t yet managed to reduce this dependence more significantly,” said Habeck, who is also Germany’s economy minister. But he added that “Putin is still getting money, but he can hardly spend it” because of Western sanctions.
“Time is not working for Russia. It is working against Russia, it is working against the Russian economy,” he said. “No one wants to invest in Russia any more.”
Major developments:
►Ukraine’s soccer team won at Scotland, setting up a fixture against Wales for a spot in the World Cup tournament that begins Nov. 21 in Qatar.
►Danish Foreign Minister Jeppe Kofod said Thursday that he expects Denmark to join the European Union’s common defense on July 1. In a referendum on Wednesday, two-thirds of voters opted to abandon a 30-year-old waiver that kept the NATO member from full participation.
Mourners attend the funeral June 2, 2022, of Ukrainian soldier Valentyn Zvyryk who was killed during fighting with Russian troops in the Kharkiv region.
Putin fires 5 more generals
Russian President Vladimir Putin has fired five generals and a police colonel in what state-run media outlet Pravda described as “a standard employee reshuffle procedure.” All six had been assigned to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which is responsible for law enforcement across the nation of 145 million people.
Putin has fired several high-ranking military members amid the mixed results his troops have seen. Lt. Gen. Serhiy Kisel, a leader of the Russian Army’s failed effort to capture the northeastern city of Kharkiv was dismissed, as was Vice Adm. Igor Osipov, who led Russia’s Black Sea fleet when Ukrainian forces sank its flagship, the Moskva.
Lawmaker: Ukraine cities could vote on joining Russia this summer
Referendums to join Russia are likely to be organized this summer in the separatist Ukrainian territories of Donetsk and Luhansk along with the occupied cities of Kherson Zaporozhye, a high-ranking Russian lawmaker said Thursday. Leonid Slutsky, leader of the Liberal Democratic Party and chairman of the Russian Duma’s Committee on International Affairs said it is “no secret that there is such sentiment in Donbas and the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions.”
Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said such referendums would require “the will and the desire of the people living there” along with other conditions.
Russia gains in Luhansk, but struggles loom
Russian troops are making steady gains in separatist Luhansk Oblast, enabled by a heavy concentration of artillery, the British Ministry of Defense said Thursday. But the assessment adds that those gains “have not been without cost,” citing losses sustained by Russian forces.
Crossing the Siversky Donets River is vital for Russian forces as they secure Luhansk and switch focus to Donetsk Oblast, the assessment says. Potential crossing sites remain controlled by Ukrainian forces that have destroyed existing bridges.
“It is likely Russia will need at least a short tactical pause to re-set for opposed river crossings,” the assessment says. “To do so risks losing some of the momentum they have built over the last week.”
Impact of long-range rockets on war unclear
President Joe Biden’s decision to provide Ukraine with longer-range precision rockets unleashed angst in Moscow and applause in Kyiv. But it’s not clear yet how much of a difference the advanced weapons will make in what has become a stalemate with no clear end game. It also remains to be seen how Russia will respond to the U.S. move. As the U.S. has ramped up the flow of American-made weapons to Ukraine, the Kremlin has increasingly tried to frame its invasion of Ukraine as a proxy war between Washington and Moscow, although Biden has repeatedly said he would not send American troops to fight in the conflict.
“The Biden administration argues this most recent military aid package will help Kyiv target Russian artillery behind the front and give the Ukrainians more leverage when or if negotiations resume,” said Daniel DePetris, a fellow at Defense Priorities, a Washington-based think tank that advocates for military restraint. “Unfortunately, no negotiations are on the horizon.” Read more here.
– Tom Vanden Brook, Maureen Groppe and Deirdre Shesgreen
Time is running out for Russia, German economy minister says
June 2, 2022
BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany must work harder to reduce its energy-dependence on Russia but Western sanctions in response to Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine are still taking a heavy toll on the Russian war machine, German Economy Minister Robert Habeck said on Thursday.
“The Russian economy is collapsing,” Habeck told lawmakers, adding that Germany had played its part here by reducing exports to Russia in March by 60%, with an even sharper fall expected in April.
Across the allied countries participating in the sanctions, exports to Russia fell by 53% over previous months, while the drop among neutral or pro-Russian states was 45%, according to the minister.
“Putin is still getting money but … time is not working for Russia, it is working against Russia,” he said.
As a result of the sanctions, Moscow had lost access to parts crucial to its ability to fight the war, Habeck said, such as “security updates for airplanes, with the result that the planes will soon be grounded”.
(Reporting by Rachel More; Editing by Madeline Chambers and Maria Sheahan)Our goal is to create a safe and engaging place for users to connect over interests and passions. In order to improve our community experience, we are temporarily suspending article commenting.
Related: Bloomberg
Sanctions Will Break Russia’s Economy in the End, Germany Says
Iain Rogers – June 2, 2022
(Bloomberg) — Russia’s economy has been dealt a severe blow by international sanctions imposed following the invasion of Ukraine and that damage will become increasingly clear, according to Germany’s vice chancellor.
The revenue Russia receives from commodities like oil and gas is “painful,” Robert Habeck, who is also the economy minister, said Thursday in a speech to parliament. But that doesn’t accurately reflect the pressure President Vladimir Putin is under because the country can “barely spend any of it,” he said.
Habeck said that a shortage of software security updates for aircraft will soon lead to planes being grounded while a lack of high-tech equipment will “lead to production processes being destroyed.”
“He can’t keep going much longer,” Habeck told lawmakers in the Bundestag in Berlin. “Time is not working in favor of Russia, it’s working against Russia, it’s working against the Russian economy.”
Even with Germany and other countries halting or phasing out Russian energy imports, Moscow’s oil-and-gas revenue will be about $285 billion this year, up by more than a fifth compared with 2021, according to estimates from Bloomberg Economics based on Economy Ministry projections. Including other commodities, it more than makes up for the $300 billion in foreign reserves frozen by sanctions.
With the war in Ukraine now into a fourth month, there is little evidence that sanctions are forcing Putin to abandon his military campaign.
“We’re not doing this for fun,” Habeck told lawmakers. “We’re doing it to hurt Putin’s economy and make our economic policy contribution to bringing an end to this war at some point. We’re looking to cut the Russian economy to the quick.”
