Ukrainian pilot reveals what his country’s military really needs in fight against Russia
Greg Norman – April 13, 2022
A Ukrainian pilot who is frequently up in the sky trying to defend his country’s airspace from the Russian military says what Ukraine really needs to turn the tide is more advanced aircraft and weaponry – or else their pilots will continue to be “just targets” for the technologically-superior invading forces.
The 29-year-old fighter pilot, who identified himself only by his call sign “Juice”, made the remark to the Washington Post after Poland – and now Slovakia – floated plans of providing Soviet-era MiG-29 jets to Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s military.
“We’re ready to be killed,” Juice told the newspaper, describing how the MiG-29 jets he flies makes him and his colleagues “just targets” for Russia’s more advanced aircraft. “But we don’t want this, of course. We want to kill Russians and take down their bombers that are killing our cities and our families.”
A ground staffer directs a Ukrainian Air Force MiG-29 fighter jet during a training session in a military airbase outside of Kyiv in November 2016. (Getty Images)
“We have losses almost everyday in our air force,” he reportedly added. “You won’t see this on TV because everything is classified right now, but actually we have a lot of losses. That’s why we need to be technically equal with the Russians. Just our mental advantage is not enough to fight with these technologies.”
The newspaper reports that allies have been considering sending MiG-29s to Ukraine because it’s what the country’s military is familiar with using – and retired U.S. Air Force Gen. Herbert Carlisle added that if they received American-manufactured F-16s, their pilots and operational crews would have to learn “significantly different” flight systems and maintenance procedures.
But Juice and another Ukrainian pilot told the Washington Post that the learning curve isn’t as steep as it sounds, with the latter saying it could probably take two weeks for Ukraine’s military to get up to speed with using F-series aircraft.
Juice also said Ukraine’s military has been improvising in the skies to make up for the differences in technology, sometimes leading Russian pilots into areas where air defense systems are ready to strike.
“We are just trying to do something nonstandard, and sometimes it’s successful and sometimes it’s not,” Juice told the Washington Post. “Sometimes they’re just stupid and Russians are just showing their incompetence and underestimating our training.
“But in general, we cannot gain a real air superiority, unfortunately,” he said, adding that Western countries should supply Ukraine with more advanced air-defense systems if they can’t receive updated planes.
All Russian ground forces have entered Ukraine’s eastern flank: senior US defense official
Caitlin McFall – April 13, 2022
Moscow has shifted its focus in its war against Kyiv after nearly 50 days of fighting with a senior U.S. defense official reporting Wednesday that all of Russia’s ground forces have now entered Ukraine’s eastern flank.
Security officials have been sounding the alarm that the Kremlin’s inability to take the capital city of Kyiv meant it would launch a major offensive in eastern Ukraine.
Fighting in Ukraine has shifted to the eastern part of the country. Photo by ANATOLII STEPANOV/AFP via Getty Images
Russia launched its second convoy this week and ground forces are flooding across Ukraine’s northern border into the Lunhask region, the official said.
“I think you’d go so far as to say all their ground forces are either in the Donbas – Luhank Oblast or the Donetsk Oblast – and then in the south arrayed all the way from Mariupol down to Mykolaiv,” the official added.
Defense officials have warned that Russia’s determination to continue with its “special military operation” in a concentrated location like the Donbas, will mean an even more brutal fight ahead.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy mocked Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion Wednesday, questioning how many will need to die before he gives up.
“Do you remember how Russia bragged that they would seize Kyiv in 48 hours? Instead, Ukraine has been repelling the enemy for 48 days,” he said in an address to the nation.
“They say they do everything for the sake of the people, for the sake of Donbas, but even during World War II, Donbas did not see such cruelty in such a short time,” he continued. “In Donbas, the story of the siege of Leningrad was repeated. What would the people who died or almost died in Leningrad during the Nazi blockade say about this? What would they say about the blockade of Mariupol?”
Zelenskyy said this week that Ukrainian forces were not getting what they needed from allies to quickly end the war before it escalates even more in eastern Ukraine.
The Ukrainian president again urged the U.S. and NATO to send warplanes so that his troops could remove the weeks-long blockade on Mariupol and help repel more invading Russian forces from taking a greater hold in the region.
The U.S. has provided more than 1.7 billion in security assistance since the invasion began but has refused to provide jets over fears it could direct Russian aggression toward NATO nations across Ukraine’s borders.
The Biden administration is expected to announce another round of security aid this week.
Kremlin leaves captured Putin ally Viktor Medvedchuk out to dry, saying Russia doesn’t want to exchange prisoners for him
Jake Epstein – April 13, 2022
Russian President Vladimir Putin (right) and Ukrainian tycoon Viktor Medvedchuk during their meeting in St. Petersburg, Russia on July 18, 2019.Mikhail Klimentyev, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP, File Kremlin leaves captured Putin ally Viktor Medvedchuk out to dry, saying Russia doesn’t want to exchange prisoners for him
Moscow denied a Ukrainian offer to swap a captured Putin ally for prisoners.
Viktor Medvedchuk, a Ukrainian politician, was captured by Ukraine’s security service on Tuesday while fleeing house arrest.
Medvedchuk chaired a pro-Russian political party and is thought to have been Putin’s pick to replace Zelenskyy as a puppet leader.
Russia shot down Ukraine’s offer to swap captured Kremlin ally Viktor Medvedchuk for Ukrainian prisoners, seemingly cutting ties with the oligarch who has close personal connections to Putin.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Wednesday that Medvedchuk is “not a citizen of Russia” and has nothing to do with President Vladimir Putin’s “special military operation,” Interfax reported.
“He is a foreign political figure,” Peskov said. “We don’t know at all whether he himself wants some kind of participation on the part of Russia in resolving this libelous situation against him.”
Ukraine’s security service on Tuesday said it captured Medvedchuk while he was trying to flee the country, after escaping from house arrest in February. The Ukrainian tycoon faced treason charges.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy offered Russia the chance to swap kidnapped Ukrainians for Medvedchuk, who chairs a pro-Russian opposition political party.
Putin and Medvedchuk are close allies. The two have reportedly gone on vacation together and Putin is the godfather of Medvedchuk’s youngest daughter.
Medvedchuk — who was thought to be Putin’s choice to serve as a puppet leader to replace Zelenskyy if the Ukrainian government was toppled — also has an estimated net worth is $620 million.
Medvedchuk was sanctioned by the Obama administration for undermining democracy in Ukraine after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014.
In Conference Call Before Riot, a Plea to ‘Descend on the Capitol’
Alan Feuer – April 13, 2022
One week before an angry mob stormed the Capitol, a communications expert named Jason Sullivan, a onetime aide to Roger Stone, joined a conference call with a group of President Donald Trump’s supporters and made an urgent plea.
After assuring his listeners that the 2020 election had been stolen, Sullivan told them that they had to go to Washington on Jan. 6, 2021 — the day that Congress was to meet to finalize the electoral count — and “descend on the Capitol,” according to a recording of the call obtained by The New York Times.
While Sullivan claimed that he was “not inciting violence or any kind of riots,” he urged those on the call to make their presence felt at the Capitol in a way that would intimidate members of Congress, telling the group that they had to ensure that lawmakers inside the building “understand that people are breathing down their necks.”
He also pledged that Trump was going to take action on his own; the president, he said, was going to impose a form of martial law on Jan. 6 and would not be leaving office.
“Biden will never be in that White House,” Sullivan declared. “That’s my promise to each and every one of you.”
The recording of the call, which took place on Dec. 30, 2020, emerged as the Justice Department has expanded its criminal investigation of the Capitol attack. It offers a glimpse of the planning that went on in the runup to the storming of the Capitol and the mindset of some of those who zeroed in on Jan. 6 as a kind of last stand for keeping Trump in office.
It also reflects the complexities that federal prosecutors are likely to face as they begin the task of figuring out how much — or even whether — people involved in the political rallies that preceded the assault can be held accountable for the violence that erupted.
After more than a year of focusing exclusively on rioters who took part in the storming of the Capitol, prosecutors have widened their gaze in recent weeks and have started to question whether those involved in encouraging protests — like the one that Sullivan was describing — can be held culpable for disrupting the work of Congress.
Sullivan’s remarks during the call appeared to be an effort to motivate a group of people aggrieved by the election to take direct action against members of Congress on Jan. 6, presaging what Trump himself would say in a speech that day. While it remains unclear whether anyone on Sullivan’s call went on to join the mob that breached the Capitol, he seemed to be exhorting his listeners to apply unusual pressure on lawmakers just as they were overseeing the final count of Electoral College votes.
In a statement provided by his lawyer, Sullivan played down the nature of the call, saying he had merely “shared some encouragement” with what he described as “people who all felt their votes had been disenfranchised in the 2020 elections.” Sullivan said he had been asked to participate in the call by a group of anti-vaccine activists — or what he called “health freedom advocate moms” — who were hosting “a small, permitted event” at the Capitol on Jan. 6.
“I only promoted peaceful solutions where Americans could raise their voices and be heard as expressed in our First Amendment,” Sullivan said in the statement. “I in no way condone the violence of any protesters.”
Still, in the recording of the call, Sullivan can be heard telling his listeners that the lawmakers inside the Capitol “need to feel pressure.”
“If we make the people inside that building sweat and they understand that they may not be able to walk in the streets any longer if they do the wrong thing, then maybe they’ll do the right thing,” he said. “We have to put that pressure there.”
As the Justice Department widens its inquiry, federal prosecutors are using a grand jury in Washington to gather information on political organizers, speakers and so-called VIPs connected to a series of pro-Trump rallies after the 2020 election. One prominent planner of those rallies, Ali Alexander, received a subpoena from the grand jury and said last week that he intended to comply with its requests.
In the run-up to Jan. 6, Alexander publicly discussed a pressure campaign against lawmakers that was meant to stop the final electoral count, saying he was working with Reps. Mo Brooks of Alabama and Andy Biggs and Paul Gosar of Arizona, all Republicans.
“We four schemed up of putting maximum pressure on Congress while they were voting,” Alexander said in a since-deleted video on Periscope. The plan, he said, was to “change the hearts and the minds of Republicans who were in that body, hearing our loud roar from outside.”
It is unclear if the Justice Department is aware of Sullivan’s conference call; the department declined to comment. The House committee investigating the events of Jan. 6 was provided with a copy of the recording some months ago by the woman who made it, Staci Burk, a law student and Republican activist from Arizona.
Shortly after the election, Burk became convinced that phony ballots had been flown in bulk into Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. She eventually submitted an anonymous affidavit concerning the ballots in an election fraud case filed in U.S. District Court in Phoenix by pro-Trump lawyer Sidney Powell.
After becoming involved with Powell, Burk said she had been approached by several members of a right-wing paramilitary group, the 1st Amendment Praetorian, which was associated with a former legal client of Powell’s, Michael Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser.
Burk said that members of the group then placed her under unwanted surveillance, insisting on moving into her home in what they described as an effort to protect her from people who might want to retaliate against her for coming forward about voter fraud.
It was a member of the 1st Amendment Praetorian, Burk said, who had joined the conference call that featured Sullivan. Burk said she recorded the call, much like she recorded other activities by the 1st Amendment Praetorian, because she felt threatened and unsafe by the group’s presence in her home.
At one point during the call, Sullivan was asked by an unknown questioner whether Trump intended to impose martial law on Jan. 6. That explosive notion had been raised publicly two weeks earlier by Flynn during an appearance on the right-wing television network Newsmax.
Sullivan answered the question by telling the man that he foresaw Trump putting in place “a limited form of martial law” on Jan. 6.
“I don’t see any other way around it, because he’s not going to allow an election fraud to take place,” Sullivan said. “It’s not going to happen.”
A social media consultant who calls himself “the Wizard of Twitter,” Sullivan worked for a political action committee run by Stone, a longtime confidant of Trump’s, during the 2016 presidential campaign. According to Reuters, one of the projects he did for Stone was a strategy document describing how to use Twitter “swarms” to amplify political messages.
More recently, Sullivan has taken an active role in promoting the QAnon conspiracy theory, which holds that prominent liberals belong to a cult of Satan-worshipping pedophiles. At a public appearance last year with Powell and Flynn, Sullivan called Hillary Rodham Clinton a “god-awful woman” and then made a gesture suggesting she should be hanged.
On the conference call ahead of Jan. 6, Sullivan told his listeners that he was an expert at making things go viral online, but that it was not enough to simply spread the message that the election had been stolen.
“There has to be a multiple-front strategy, and that multiple-front strategy, I do think, is descend on the Capitol, without question,” he said. “Make those people feel it inside.”
The statement came after Russian President Vladimir Putin said peace talks had reached a “dead end” and Russian troops would not leave Ukraine until the Kremlin’s goals are accomplished.
“It’s become clearer and clearer that Putin is trying to wipe out the idea of being Ukrainian,” Biden said.
More than 10,000 civilians have been killed in the city of Mariupol since the beginning of the invasion in February, Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boychenko said Monday.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has called the acts of Russia in Ukraine a genocide, and Biden said it would be up to international lawyers to see if the term fits.
“More evidence is coming out literally of the horrible things that the Russians have done in Ukraine,” Biden said.
How do you define genocide?
According to the United Nations, genocide is defined as intentionally destroying, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, by one of these acts:
Killing members of the group.
Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group.
Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.
Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.
Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
“The crime of genocide may take place in the context of an armed conflict, international or non-international, but also in the context of a peaceful situation,” according to the United Nations’ website.
Genocide can be considered a war crime if it is committed during a war, said Harold Hongju Koh, an international law professor at Yale Law School.
It also can be committed during peacetime, which makes it an international crime such as the Rwandan genocide in 1994, in which more than 800,000 people were killed after the majority ethnic Hutus targeted the smaller Tutsi population and others.
How do you prove genocide?
Koh told USA TODAY that to prove genocide, there has to be a high level of intent.
“The tricky part of it which is relevant to the president’s statement yesterday is if I kill one person, that’s homicide,” he said. “If I kill that person with the intent to destroy every person of that person’s ethnic group, then it could be a part of genocide, but you don’t know.”
Koh, who was a legal adviser to the State Department under President Barack Obama, said there is a process the State Department follows to determine whether genocide has been committed.
“Four of its bureaus meet to go over all the evidence and decide whether they can call it war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide,” he said.
It can take several months to make a declaration of genocide before it becomes official.
“Proving an intent to destroy an entire group is difficult, because it’s not that often someone says ‘I have intent to destroy the entire group,'” Koh said. “You don’t have a smoking gun that often.”
How many genocides have there been?
Since the 1900s there have been multiple documented genocides, including the Armenian genocide in 1915, the Holocaust in 1941, and the Bosnian genocide beginning in 1992, when an estimated 100,000 people were killed.
In 2003, a genocide occurred in Darfur, Sudan, where an estimated 400,000 people died in the conflict, according to The Genocide Education Project.
Backed-up pipes, stinky yards: Climate change is wrecking septic tanks
Jim Morrison – April 12, 2022
This trench was dug to help alleviate rainwater issues in the yard of Roosevelt Jones, whose septic system has increasingly failed at his Suffolk, Va., home. (Kristen Zeis for The Washington Post)
Lewis Lawrence likes to refer to the coastal middle peninsula of Virginia as suffering from a “soggy socks” problem. Flooding is so persistent that people often can’t walk around without getting their feet wet.
Over two decades, Lawrence, the executive director of the Middle Peninsula Planning District, has watched the effects of that problem grow, as rising waters and intensifying rains that flood the backyard render underground septic systems ineffective. When that happens smelly, unhealthy wastewater backs up into homes.
Local companies, he said, call the Middle Peninsula the “septic repair capital of the East Coast.” “That’s all you need to know,” he added. “And it’s only going to get worse.”
As climate change intensifies, septic failures are emerging as a vexing issue for local governments. For decades, flushing a toilet and making wastewater disappear was a convenience that didn’t warrant a second thought. No longer. From Miami to Minnesota, septic systems are failing, posing threats to clean water, ecosystems and public health.
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About 20% of U.S. households rely on septic, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Many systems are clustered in coastal areas that are experiencing relative sea-level rise, including around Boston and New York. Nearly half of New England homes depend on them. Florida hosts 2.6 million systems. Of the 120,000 in Miami-Dade County, more than half of them fail to work properly at some point during the year, helping to fuel deadly algae blooms in Biscayne Bay, home to the nation’s only underwater national park. The cost to convert those systems into a central sewer plant would be more than $4 billion.
The issue is complex, merging common climate themes. Solutions are expensive, beyond the ability of localities to fund them. Permitting standards that were created when rainfall and sea-level rise were relatively constant have become inadequate. Low-income and disadvantaged people who settled in areas with poor soils likely to compromise systems are disproportionately affected. Maintenance requirements are piecemeal nationwide. And while it’s clear that septic failures are increasing, the full scope of the problem remains elusive because data, particularly for the most vulnerable aging systems, are difficult to compile.
“The challenges are going to be immense,” said Scott Pippin, a lawyer and researcher at the University of Georgia’s Institute for Resilient Infrastructure Systems who has studied the problem along the state’s coast. “Conditions are changing. They’re becoming more challenging for the functionality of the systems. In terms of large-scale, complex analysis of the problem, we don’t really have a good picture of that now. But going forward, you can expect that it’s going to become more significant.”
Pippin’s work in Georgia is one of several studies as states from New Hampshire to Alabama confront the effects of septic system failures. Michigan’s Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy estimates that 24% of the state’s 1.37 million septic systems are failing and contaminating groundwater. A project funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is examining the potential longer-term impacts of climate change on septic systems in the Carolinas. Virginia has created a Wastewater Infrastructure Policy Working Group to address the issue.
An EPA spokesman said the agency didn’t have a report on the septic problem but noted that sea level rise, changing water tables, precipitation changes and increased temperature can cause systems to fail. The infrastructure bill passed last year provides $150 million to replace or repair systems nationwide.
For a century, conventional septic systems have been an inexpensive solution for wastewater. They work by burying a tank that collects wastewater from sinks, toilets, showers and washing machines, holding the solids while the liquid percolates through a few feet of filtering soil, where microbes and other biological processes remove harmful bacteria.
When that doesn’t happen, bacteria and parasites from human waste flow into drinking water supplies or recreational waters, creating a public health problem. Nitrogen and phosphorous, also a byproduct of the waste, pollute waters, creating oxygen-depleted zones in rivers and along the coast, closing shellfish harvests and killing fish.
For decades, septic systems have been designed with the assumption that groundwater levels would remain static. That’s no longer true. “Systems that were permitted 40, 50 years ago and met the criteria at that time now wouldn’t,” said Charles Humphrey, an East Carolina University researcher who studies groundwater dynamics. In North Carolina’s Dare County, which includes Outer Banks destinations such as Nags Head and Rodanthe, groundwater levels are a foot higher than in the 1980s.
That means there’s not enough separation between the septic tank and groundwater to filter pollutants. The threat isn’t only along the coasts. More intense storms dumping inches of rain in a few hours soak the ground inland, compromising systems for weeks. Too little precipitation is a problem as well. The lack of early, insulating snow in the Midwest, attributed to climate change, drives down the frost line, freezing drain fields and causing failures.
Georgia spent years creating a comprehensive database of septic systems, the only state to complete one. “Everybody wants to skip to a solution – how do we build a new infrastructure for the future? But I think the story is really the value of investing in the data and in that preliminary research to make smart investments and wise decisions,” Pippin said.
While Virginia’s Middle Peninsula has a soggy socks problem, Miami-Dade County has a porous limestone bedrock problem. The soil under its 2.7 million South Florida residents allows septic tank effluent to reach groundwater, a problem intensified by climate change.
About half of the area’s 120,000 septic tanks were compromised during storms or wet years, according to a study. Roughly 9,000 are vulnerable to compromise or failure under current conditions. That number is expected to rise to 13,500 by 2040. The solution is to connect properties to a central sewer system, beginning with the most-threatened areas. So far, the county is using $100 million from the American Rescue Plan to begin converting homes to sewer and another $126 million to convert 1,000 commercial septic tanks. The plan is to expand sewer to the 9,000 most vulnerable properties within five to 10 years, if funding can be secured.
Connecting will cost between $5,000 and $20,000. Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said the county is looking for funds to help low- and moderate-income property owners.
“What’s at stake?” she asked. “I’m sitting on my 29th-floor office looking out the window at the beautiful bay. This is our lifeblood. Without a clean bay, we don’t have tourism. We don’t have health. We don’t have a marine industry. It is the lifeline, the economic driver.”
The cost Levine Cava outlined can be a barrier to low-income communities. In the Chuckatuck borough of Suffolk, a sprawling city in Southeast Virginia, the mostly Black, elderly residents of the Oakland neighborhood have suffered repeated septic failures in recent years. They blame the combination of new development increasing storm-water runoff and a failure by the city to maintain ditches carrying away the water.
When Roosevelt Jones, 81, moved into the neighborhood in 1961, he used an outhouse. Soon after, he installed septic. But in recent years, his system and others in the neighborhood have increasingly failed, backing up in sinks and toilets. During the 2020 winter, Jones, who has lived in his 1,300-square-foot cottage since 1961, had to pump his tank out four times at $350 each. “Normal is every five years,” he said. “When we get a bad rain, it’s going to flood my septic tank.”
When his toilet fills with sewage, Jones, who retired from a quality control position for a warehouse but still works custodial jobs, slips into a church he cleans up the road.
After the city ran a pipeline through their neighborhood to provide sewer service to a development of more than 100 homes uphill with prices starting at $300,000, residents were given the option to tie into the system. But it came at a cost – roughly $7,000 or more per house. Many in the village are on a fixed income. The price was too high. Only 33 of 75 property owners voted, with 18 of them favoring a sewer connection. “A lot of people got them [the petitions] and ended up throwing them away,” Jones said.
On Virginia’s low-lying Middle Peninsula, surrounded on three sides by the Chesapeake Bay, the Rappahannock River and the York River, Lawrence has had a preview of the effects of climate change and the challenges to septic systems. Failing to address the problem, he said, could eliminate decades of environmental progress.
“You’re sitting on all of the work for the last 30 years to clean up the Chesapeake Bay,” he said. One or two good hurricanes will destroy that because every residential home will become a brownfield because their septic tank is just sitting there full of bad stuff.”
Shortly after Lawrence started at the planning district in 1997, the General Assembly approved alternative septic systems in addition to the conventional gravity-fed systems. They’re engineered to have a secondary treatment that purifies the wastewater before discharging it into the soil.
Now, even those alternative systems are failing. Why? They don’t handle flooding well and flooding happens often on the Middle Peninsula.
Wastewater regulations for septic systems haven’t been overhauled in decades in states. Virginia updated requirements 20 years ago, said Lance Gregory, director of the Department of Health’s Water and Wastewater Services division. A bill passed last year directs the State Board of Health to create regulations making Virginia the first state to include the impacts of climate change on septic. The goal, Gregory said, is to not issue a permit for a system that 10 or 15 years from now will be an environmental and public health problem – and a costly repair for an owner.
Lawrence is looking for solutions, partnering with Rise, a Norfolk-based technology innovations accelerator, in a challenge to design septic systems that can be elevated much like HVAC systems. “Why are we building our communities the same way we built them 100 years ago when we know Mother Nature isn’t operating the same way she did 100 years ago? It makes no sense,” he said. “We’ve got to be reimagining and designing our communities differently. If you can elevate a heat pump, why can’t you elevate a $40,000 septic system?”
The problem percolating underground so concerned William “Skip” Stiles of the nonprofit Virginia advocacy group Wetlands Watch that he created an ad hoc group of policymakers and researchers from Georgia to Maine to share knowledge and discuss solutions.
He hopes the group’s “noodling” on the issues, as he calls it, will inform new regulations. In the end, the answer to the septic problem may not be to improve the regulations and the technology, but to leave threatened areas.
“The septic system is the canary in the coal mine,” Stiles said. “If you’ve got a house and the septic is starting to flood, it won’t be long before the house goes. We ought to be using septic failures as an early warning system for those areas we’re going to have to take people out of.”
Russia’s losses in Ukraine include many elite troops that take years and millions of dollars to train, BBC investigation finds
Mia Jankowicz – April 12, 2022
Russian soldiers on a tank in Donetsk, Ukraine on March 26, 2022.Sefa Karacan/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
A BBC investigation found that the Russian army has lost numerous elite troops in Ukraine.
Some officers lost take over a decade, and between thousands and millions of dollars to train.
Estimates of Russian troop losses vary. Around 20% of those identified by the BBC were officers.
Russia has lost some of its most specialized and costly troops in its invasion of Ukraine, according to a BBC investigation.
Of the 1,083 Russian fighters identified by the BBC ‘s Russian-language operation, around a fifth — 217 — were officers ranking from junior lieutenant to general, the network said.
The BBC said that among those troops were some of Russia’s most expensive and difficult to replace.
The higher-ranking losses include 10 colonels, 20 lieutenant colonels, 31 majors and 155 junior officers, the BBC reported. To illustrate the cost to Russia, it said:
An infantry lieutenant costs $10,000 to train, over a five-year period.
Other officers can cost up to $60,000 each to train.
A top fighter pilot can cost up to $14 million to train over a period of 14 years.
Figures like these suggest that even Russia’s best troops are being killed in Ukraine, not just low-ranking soldiers who are easier to muster.
The BBC can track only a minority of troops killed in Russia. The network previously reported that Russia is suppressing news of casualties in the country, and defense officials give only sporadic updates. Western intelligence sources have said the true loses are much higher.
Members of elite units have also been killed, the BBC investigation found: 15 men from the special forces of the GRU intelligence agency and 10 special-forces troops of Rosgvardia, the Russian national guard.
It also noted that three of those killed had earned maroon berets marking them out as Russia’s most elite troops.
The BBC said that officers and elite fighters may be over-represented in its sample because their elevated status means their bodies are retrieved more urgently and their lives celebrated more widely.
As of early April, 18 commanders and generals have been reported killed in action, as Insider’s Alia Shoaib reported. The Kremlin has only officially confirmed the death of Maj. Gen. Andrei Sukhovetsky, in what was considered a major blow to troop morale.
As Insider’s Chris Woody reported on March 21, senior Russian officers tend to be more directly involved in combat than their US or NATO counterparts, exposing them to more danger.
Biden administration preparing to send more than $700 million in new military aid to Ukraine: reports
Charles R. Davis – April 12, 2022
A Ukrainian soldier stands near an apartment ruined from Russian shelling in Borodyanka, Ukraine, Wednesday, Apr. 6, 2022.AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky
The Biden administration is preparing to send more than $700 million in military aid to Ukraine.
The news was first reported by CNN and Reuters.
The US has already sent more than $2.4 billion in assistance since the year began.
The Biden administration is preparing to send more than $700 million in additional military assistance to Ukraine, according to reports on Tuesday.
Citing two unnamed US officials, Reuters reported that the aid would total $750 million and be announced as soon as Wednesday. According to the news service, the aid would consist of military equipment from US stockpiles, including ground artillery systems, bypassing the need for additional congressional authorization.
The aid could also include a range of new military equipment that Ukraine has been requesting, including helicopters and armored vehicles, The Washington Post reported.
Since the start of the year, the US has provided more than $2.4 billion in military assistance to Ukraine, including anti-tank missiles that have inflicted heavy losses on the invading Russian forces.
Ukraine secret service says it has arrested top Putin ally
April 12, 2022
(Reuters) -Ukraine’s security services on Tuesday said they had arrested pro-Russian politician Viktor Medvedchuk, who is President Vladimir Putin’s closest and most influential ally in Ukraine.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy had earlier published a photo of a tired-looking and handcuffed Medvedchuk, who says Putin is godfather to his daughter.
In February, Kyiv said Medvedchuk, the leader of the Opposition Platform – For Life party, had escaped from house arrest. Last year authorities opened a treason case against Medvedchuk, who denies wrongdoing.
“You can be a pro-Russian politician and work for the aggressor state for years. You may have been hiding from justice lately. You can even wear a Ukrainian military uniform for camouflage,” the security services said in an online post.
“But will it help you escape punishment? Not at all! Shackles are waiting for you and same goes for traitors to Ukraine like you.”
The post cited Ivan Bakanov, head of the secret services, as saying his operatives had “conducted a lightning-fast and dangerous multi-level special operation” to arrest Medvedchuk but did not give details.
Last month Zelenskiy said the Opposition Platform – For Life, which is Ukraine’s largest opposition movement, and several other smaller political parties with ties to Russia had been suspended.
A spokesperson for Medvedchuk was not immediately available for comment.
(Reporting by Max Hunder; writing by David Ljunggren; editing by Chris Reese and Grant McCool)
Russian convoy heads for eastern Ukraine, defense official says weather will force troops to stick to roads
Caitlin McFall – April 12, 2022
A senior defense official said Tuesday a convoy of Russian vehicles headed south in the direction of eastern Ukraine appears to be slow-moving and will likely be forced to stick to the roads due to the spring weather.
The official told reporters it was unclear how fast the convoy was moving but said it is not heading for the eastern front with any “breakneck speed.”
Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said Monday that the Russian convoy appears to be an attempt to “reinforce their efforts in the Donbas” – but he was unable to confirm what Russian forces are bringing with them apart from a “mix of personnel” and armored vehicles.
The convoy is roughly 37 miles north of the city of Izyum, which is roughly 16 miles from the Donbas regional border.
“I don’t know its final destination,” a senior defense official told reporters Tuesday, noting the convoy is moving south. “But I would rely on that with the spring whether they have to stay on the paved roads. They’re staying on highways and avenues. They’re not going off-roading here.”
Officials have long warned warmer weather will make it more difficult for Russia to carry out ground invasions as heavily-armored vehicles will be slower moving in muddy conditions.
The senior U.S. defense official said it does not appear that Ukrainian troops have started attacking the convoy as of yet, though Russia’s previous attempts to push a convoy south into Kyiv proved unsuccessful earlier this year.
Russia is assessed to have maintained just over 80 percent of its combat force since Moscow’s invasion 47 days ago.
But officials have also warned that Russia could be looking to recruit as many as 60,000 more troops to aid in its deadly campaign.
The U.S. and NATO said last week that Russia will seek to hit eastern Ukraine with a “major offensive” after it failed to take the capital city of Kyiv.
Ukrainian President Voldymyr Zelenskyy warned Tuesday that his forces are still short of what they need to end the Russian incursion, and again urged allied nations to send Kyiv jets and more armored vehicles.
The U.S. pledged to send Ukraine Switchblade drones armed with tank-busting warheads but Washington has continued to refuse to send actual warplanes.
A senior defense official told reporters that a “significant” amount of the first 100 Switchblade drones have been delivered to Ukraine and more are expected imminently.
The official said the U.S. is in constant communication with Ukraine to get it what it needs in a timely manner.
