The New York Times – Opinion

Putin’s Proxy Culture War

Michelle Goldberg – March 28, 2022

Recently I reached out to Serhiy Leshchenko, one of Ukraine’s most prominent investigative journalists, whom I’d met in Kyiv shortly before Donald Trump’s first impeachment. At the time, Leshchenko was being regularly smeared by people in Trump’s orbit who placed the journalist at the center of an elaborate conspiracy theory designed to make it look as if Trump was fighting corruption in Ukraine, not encouraging it.

Now Leshchenko is advising the chief of staff for Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, on Russian disinformation. He’s been especially worried about Russian lies about Ukrainian chemical and biological weapons, fearing that their purpose is to sow confusion ahead of a possible Russian chemical weapons attack. “Every day they have dozens of different stakeholders” promoting falsehoods about unconventional weapons made in Ukraine, he said. “It has to have an explanation. Why do they repeatedly say the same stuff?”

Leshchenko’s fear is shared by some American officials. “Based on a number of factors, some of which I can’t discuss, I sadly would be surprised if they don’t use chemical weapons,” Seth Moulton, a Massachusetts Democrat who sits on the House Armed Services Committee, told me last week.

Given the stakes, it’s alarming to Leshchenko to hear influential Americans repeating Russian talking points. “You maybe know this Georgia congresswoman, Marjorie Greene?” he asked, and then mentioned a recent floor speech in which Greene speculated that bioweapons labs in Ukraine could end up killing people.

Last week, further juicing the conspiracy theory, the Russian government linked the alleged biolabs to Hunter Biden and George Soros. On Thursday, Tucker Carlson picked up the Hunter Biden story line. (America has funded programs in Ukraine to secure labs studying pathogens and toxins, sometimes for vaccine development, and to watch for disease outbreaks.)

There is, said Leshchenko, a pattern to Russian disinformation campaigns. This one started, he said, with anonymous social media accounts. Then it was propagated by Russian propaganda outfits like Russia Today, followed by Russian officials like Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, and Vladimir Putin himself. Finally it went global. In information warfare, Leshchenko said, it helps to have “international recognition” of fictitious claims. Elements of the American right were happy to supply it.

Russia’s war on Ukraine has for the moment led many Republicans to rediscover their inner Cold Warriors. But pro-Putin sentiment — or, at least, anti-anti-Putin sentiment — remains strong on parts of the right. As NBC’s Ben Collins and Kevin Collier reported, “The biolab conspiracy theory has taken over as the prevailing narrative on pro-Trump and QAnon websites like The Great Awakening and Patriots.”

With Trump out of power, it can be tempting to dismiss the import of such fantasies, but the Republican Party doesn’t have a great record of standing up to its fringe — witness the recent QAnon-inflected attempt to link the Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson to pedophilia. Having watched Trump try to extort Zelensky, Ukrainians know it can be geopolitically consequential when crackpot Russian conspiracy theories gain a foothold in American politics.

Putin, presumably, knows this as well, which helps explain why he’s appealing to Anglophone culture warriors. On Friday, Putin gave a speech in which he complained about cancel culture and compared Russia’s international isolation to denunciations of the “Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling for her views on gender. It was preposterous, but it was also a signal to the Western right that his struggle is theirs. It’s what Putin has been doing for years, particularly in the wake of the annexation of Crimea in 2014, when, as Casey Michel wrote in Politico, “Moscow began forging a new role for itself at the helm of the global Christian right.”

Defending itself from Russia, Ukraine has been waging a globalized culture war of its own, trying to rally the world to an idealized liberal internationalism. Zelensky has framed Ukraine’s fight for survival as a fight not just for national self-determination, but for progressive modernity. As he said in his address to Congress, “Today, the Ukrainian people are defending not only Ukraine, we are fighting for the values of Europe and the world, sacrificing our lives in the name of the future.” He speaks to the highest aspirations of Western audiences who’ve been starved for inspiration.

Some of the most resonant videos coming out of Ukraine are about their determination to keep music in their lives even in wartime — like the man playing cello on a ruined street in Kharkiv, and the people in Odessa building fortifications while a band performs Bon Jovi’s “It’s My Life.” These videos go viral because they link the staggering courage of the Ukrainians to a common Western culture: Ukrainians seem like us as we wish we were.

The ability of Ukraine to elicit international solidarity has been among its most potent weapons in this war. Against it, Putin needs some solidarity of his own, and the natural place for him to look for it is among liberalism’s enemies. He is working to cultivate cynicism about Ukrainian heroism, and convince those alienated by Western culture to identify with Russia. If he’s going to visit further atrocities on the Ukrainians, it helps to have Americans claiming it’s their own fault.

The New York Times – Opinion

Putin and the Myths of Western Decadence

Paul Krugman – March 28, 2022

Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was, first and foremost, a crime — indeed, the war crimes continue as you read this. But it was also a blunder. In less than five weeks Putin has destroyed Russia’s military reputation, battered his nation’s economy and strengthened the democratic alliances he hoped to undermine. How could he have made such a catastrophic mistake?

Part of the answer, surely, is strongman syndrome: Putin has surrounded himself with people who tell him what he wants to hear. All indications are that he went into this debacle believing his own propaganda about both his army’s martial prowess and the eagerness of Ukrainians to submit to Russian rule.

But there’s also reason to think Putin, like many of his admirers in the West, thought modern democracies were too decadent to offer effective resistance.

And here’s the thing: When I look at the United States, I worry that the West is, in fact, being made weaker by decadence — but not the kind that obsesses Putin and those who think like him. Our vulnerability comes not from the decline of traditional family values, but from the decline of traditional democratic values, such as a belief in the rule of law and a willingness to accept the results of elections that don’t go your way.

Of course, the idea that loose morals destroy great powers goes back centuries. In the Hollywood version of history, the Roman Empire fell because its elites were too busy with orgies to attend to the business of defeating barbarians. Actually, the timing is all wrong on that story, but I’ll get back to that in a minute.

Today’s right-wingers seem bothered less by weakness from sexual license than by weakness from gender equality: Tucker Carlson warned that China’s military was becoming “more masculine” while ours was becoming “more feminine, whatever feminine means anymore, since men and women no longer exist.” Senator Ted Cruz retweeted a video comparing a U.S. Army recruiting video with footage of a Russian paratrooper with a shaved head and declared that a “woke, emasculated military” might not be a good idea.

It would be interesting to know what has happened to that paratrooper since Putin invaded Ukraine. In any case, the heavy casualties suffered by Russia’s anti-woke military as it failed to overrun vastly inferior Ukrainian forces have confirmed what anyone who has studied history knows: Modern wars aren’t won with swaggering machismo. Courage and endurance, physical and moral, are as essential as ever; but so are more mundane things like logistics, vehicle maintenance and communications systems that actually work.

By the way, I can’t help mentioning that recent events have also confirmed the truism that many, perhaps most men who pose as tough guys … aren’t. Putin’s response to failure in Ukraine has been extremely Trumpian: insisting that his invasion is all going “according to plan,” refusing to admit having made any mistakes and whining about cancel culture. I’m half expecting him to release battle maps crudely modified with a Sharpie.

But back to the kind of decadence that really matters.

As I said, the Hollywood version of Rome’s decline and fall doesn’t stand up under examination. True, the spoils of empire made it possible for a few people to live in great luxury, possibly including the occasional orgy; the closest modern counterpart to that elite would be … Russian oligarchs. But Rome retained its territorial integrity and military effectiveness for centuries after the emergence of that pampered, libertine elite.

So what did go wrong? Historians have many theories, but surely a big factor was the erosion of norms that had helped establish political legitimacy, and the ever-growing willingness of some Romans, especially after around 180 C.E., to use violence against one another.

Obviously what’s going on in the U.S. today bears no detailed resemblance to the troubles of the ancient world. Yet these days not a month goes by without further revelations that a large part of America’s body politic, very much including members of the political elite, has contempt for democratic principles and will do whatever it takes to win.

It’s incredible how quickly we’ve normalized the fact that the last president tried to retain power despite losing the election and that a mob he incited stormed the Capitol. Many people took part in the effort to overturn the election — among them, we recently learned, the wife of a sitting Supreme Court justice, who hasn’t even recused himself in cases about the attempted coup.

And while Donald Trump’s effort to stay in office failed, most of his party has, in effect, retroactively backed that effort.

Why is that relevant to Ukraine? Putin effectively bet that an effete West would stand by as he carried out his conquest. Instead, President Biden very effectively mobilized a democratic alliance that has rushed aid to Ukraine and helped humiliate the aggressor.

But the next time something like this happens, America might not lead an effective alliance of democracies, because we ourselves will have given up on democratic values.

And that, if you ask me, is what real decadence looks like.

Good Morning America

What’s the cost of damage to Ukraine’s infrastructure amid Russia’s invasion?

Morgan Winsor – March 28, 2022

The cost of direct damage to Ukraine’s infrastructure amid Russia’s ongoing invasion has reached almost an estimated $63 billion, according to an analysis by the Kyiv School of Economics.

Shocking images and videos have emerged in recent weeks showing just some of the devastation across Ukraine since Russian forces attacked on Feb. 24. Where businesses, homes, hospitals, schools and other infrastructure once stood, there are now massive piles of unrecognizable rubble and crumbling shells of concrete.

The KSE Institute, an analytical unit of the Kyiv School of Economics in Ukraine’s capital, has been collecting and analyzing data from the “Russia Will Pay” project, launched in collaboration with the Ukrainian president’s office and the Ukrainian Ministry of Economy.

Through the resource, Ukrainian citizens, government officials and local authorities can confidentially submit reports on the loss of or damage to physical infrastructure across the country as a result of the war, including roads, residential buildings, businesses and other facilities. Analysts at the KSE Institute then assess those reported damages and estimate the financial value.

“It is aimed at collecting information about all the facilities destroyed as a result of the war that Russia waged against Ukraine,” the KSE Institute said in a recent statement about the “Russia Will Pay” resource. “The Ukrainian government will use this data as evidence in international courts for Russia to compensate for the intended damages.”

The latest analysis shows that, as of March 24, at least 4,431 residential buildings, 92 factories and warehouses, 378 institutions of secondary and higher education, 138 health care institutions, 12 airports, seven thermal power plants and hydroelectric power plants have been damaged, destroyed or seized in Ukraine since the start of the Russian invasion on Feb. 24 — totaling an estimated $62,889,000. Compared to the previous estimate published on March 17, net growth amounted to $3.5 billion, according to the KSE Institute.

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s overall economic losses due to the war — taking into account both direct losses calculated from the project as well as indirect losses, like GDP decline — range from $543 billion to $600 billion, according to an estimate by the KSE Institute and the Ukrainian Ministry of Economy.

Before updating its calculations, the KSE Institute said it received “detailed data” from the Ukrainian Ministry of Infrastructure on the destruction of its facilities, which allowed analysts to clarify and, in some cases, reduce the assessment of losses.

The KSE Institute said it has improved the methodology of assessing losses from the destruction of residential real estate “based on the World Bank’s experience in analyzing losses in Syria and Iraq, as well as the recommendations of the leading Ukrainian investment company Dragon Capital.”

“These calculations are based on the analysis of several thousands of public notifications from Ukrainian citizens, the government, local authorities about losses and damages throughout the country, as well as indirect assessment methods such as calculating the estimated area of the war-damaged property in the most affected cities,” the KSE Institute said. “These estimates are not exhaustive: information on numerous damages and destruction may be missing due to the inability of citizens, local and state authorities to promptly record the damage in each city and town.”

Associated Press

Ukrainians claim to retake ground ahead of latest talks

Yuras Karmanau – March 28, 2022

LVIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian forces claimed to have retaken a Kyiv suburb and an eastern town from the Russians in what is becoming a back-and-forth stalemate on the ground, while negotiators began assembling for another round of talks Tuesday aimed at stopping the fighting.

Ahead of the talks, to be held in Istanbul, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his country is prepared to declare its neutrality, as Moscow has demanded, and is open to compromise on the fate of the Donbas, the contested region in the country’s east.

The mayor of Irpin, a northwestern Kyiv suburb that has been the scene of some of the heaviest fighting near the capital, said Monday that the city has been “liberated” from Russian troops.

Zelenskyy warned that Russian forces are trying to regroup after losing the area.

“We still have to fight, we have to endure,” the president said late Monday in his nighttime video address to the nation. “We can’t express our emotions now. We can’t raise expectations, simply so that we don’t burn out.”

Irpin gained wide attention after photos circulated of a mother and her two children who were killed by shelling as they tried to flee, their bodies lying on the pavement with luggage and a pet carrier nearby.

A senior U.S. defense official said the U.S. believes the Ukrainians have also retaken the town of Trostyanets, south of Sumy, in the east.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss U.S. intelligence assessments, said Russian forces largely remained in defensive positions near the capital, Kyiv, and were making little forward progress elsewhere in the country.

The official said Russia appeared to be de-emphasizing ground operations near Kyiv and concentrating more on the Donbas, the predominantly Russian-speaking region where Moscow-backed rebels have been waging a separatist war for the past eight years.

Late last week, with its forces bogged down in parts of the country, Russia seemed to scale back its war aims, saying its main goal was gaining control of the Donbas.

While that suggested a possible face-saving exit strategy for Russian President Vladimir Putin, it also raised Ukrainian fears that the Kremlin intends to split the country in two and force it to surrender a swath of its territory.

Meanwhile, a cyberattack knocked Ukraine’s national telecommunications provider Ukrtelecom almost completely offline. The chief of Ukraine’s state service for special communication, Yurii Shchyhol, blamed “the enemy” without specifically naming Russia and said most customers were cut off from telephone, internet and mobile service so that coverage could continue for Ukraine’s military.

Also Monday, an oil depot in western Ukraine’s Rivne region was hit by a missile attack, the governor said. It was the second attack on oil facilities in the region near the Polish border.

In recent days, Ukrainian troops have pushed the Russians back in other sectors.

In the city of Makariv, near a strategic highway west of the capital, Associated Press reporters saw the carcass of a Russian rocket launcher, a burned Russian truck, the body of a Russian soldier and a destroyed Ukrainian tank after fighting there a few days ago. In the nearby village of Yasnohorodka, the AP witnessed positions abandoned by Ukrainian soldiers who had moved farther west, but no sign of Russian troops.

And on Friday, the U.S. defense official said the Russians were no longer in full control of Kherson, the first major city to fall to Moscow’s forces. The Kremlin denied it had lost full control of the southern city.

Russia has long demanded that Ukraine drop any hope of joining NATO, which Moscow sees as a threat. Zelenskyy, for his part, has stressed that Ukraine needs security guarantees of its own as part of any deal.

Over the weekend, Zelenskyy said he is ready to agree to neutrality. He also said that “Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity are beyond doubt,” while suggesting at the same time that compromise might be possible over “the complex issue of Donbas.”

The Ukrainian leader has suggested as much before but rarely commented so extensively. That could create momentum for the talks, for which the Russian delegates arrived in Istanbul on Monday, Turkish media reported.

Still, it was not clear how a compromise on the Donbas would square with maintaining Ukraine’s territorial integrity.

In other developments:

— President Joe Biden made no apologies for calling for Putin’s ouster, saying he was expressing his “moral outrage,” not a new U.S. policy. Over the weekend, Biden said, “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.” On Monday, the president said: “I’m not walking anything back.”

— U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he has launched an effort to achieve a humanitarian cease-fire that would allow aid to be brought in and people to move around safely.

— Russia’s invasion has most Americans at least somewhat worried that the U.S. will be drawn directly into the conflict and could be targeted with nuclear weapons, according to a poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

— T he Group of Seven major economies rejected a Kremlin demand that some countries pay in rubles for Russia’s natural gas. That demand appeared designed to support the Russian currency, which is under pressure from Western sanctions.

Earlier talks, both by video and in person, have failed to make progress on ending the more than month-old war that has killed thousands and driven more than 10 million Ukrainians from their homes. That includes almost 4 million who have fled the country.

In the besieged southern port of Mariupol, the mayor said half the pre-war population of more than 400,000 has fled, often under fire, during weeks of shooting and shelling.

Alina Beskrovna, who escaped the city in a convoy of cars and made it to Poland, said desperate people are melting snow for water and cooking on open fires despite the risk of bombardment, “because if you don’t, you will have nothing to eat.”

“A lot of people are just, I think, starving to death in their apartments right now with no help,” she said. “It’s a mass murder that’s happening at the hands of the Russians.”

Putin’s ground forces have become bogged down because of stronger-than-expected Ukrainian resistance, combined with what Western officials say are Russian tactical missteps, poor morale, shortages of food, fuel and cold weather gear, and other problems. Moscow has resorted to pummeling Ukrainian cities with artillery and airstrikes.

In Stoyanka village near Kyiv, Ukrainian soldier Serhiy Udod said Russian troops had taken up defensive positions and suffered heavy losses.

The Russians probably “thought it would be like Crimea,” which the Kremlin annexed in 2014. “But here it’s not like in Crimea. We are not happy to see them. Here they suffer and get killed.”

Andrea Rosa in Kharkiv, Nebi Qena in Kyiv, Cara Anna in Lviv and Associated Press journalists around the world contributed to this report.

The Week

Zelensky offers a neutral Ukraine for Russian withdrawal, but there are some big caveats

Peter Weber, Senior editor – March 28, 2022

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told a group of independent Russian journalists on Sunday that he is ready to discuss enshrining Ukraine as a neutral country, without NATO aspirations, as part of a peace deal with Russia, in return for ironclad security guarantees.

“Security guarantees and the neutral, non-nuclear status of our state. We are ready to accept this. This is the most important point,” Zelensky said. “This was the first point of principle for the Russian Federation, as I recall. And as far as I remember, they started the war because of this.” He rejected even discussing Russia’s demands that Ukraine be “de-Nazified” or demilitarized,” and said “the issues of Donbas and Crimea must be discussed and solved” in peace talks.

Zelenksy later told Ukrainians that in negotiations with Russia, “the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine are beyond doubt.”

“On the face of it,” Zelensky’s offer “sounds like something of a breakthrough,” the BBC’s Jonah Fisher writes from Lviv. “But there are a number of important caveats.” Zelensky made clear Western countries would have to guarantee Ukraine’s security, neutrality would have to be put to a public referendum, and crucially, Russia would have to withdraw to its positions before its Feb. 24 invasion.

“Having fought so hard to gain ground, it’s very hard to see Russia agreeing to this, particularly in the south and east,” Fisher suggests. “And finally and most important of all, there’s the unanswered question of what Russia actually wants from this war. Is it about security and Ukraine’s NATO ambitions as was first claimed? Is it about more territory in eastern Ukraine? Or is President Putin determined to permanently disable Ukraine’s ability to function as an independent sovereign nation?”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said a meeting between Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin would be “couterproductive” at this point, before the two countries have agreed on key issues. Ukrainian and Russian negotiators will hold peace talks in Turkey this week. And while the Kremlin is surely aware of Zelenksy’s offer, it forbade any other Russian media organizations to broadcast any part of Zelensky’s interview.

Associated Press

Russia shifts focus to try to grind Ukraine’s army in east

Nebi Qena and Yuras Karmanau – March 28, 2022

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — With its aspirations for a quick victory dashed by a stiff Ukrainian resistance, Russia has increasingly focused on grinding down Ukraine’s military in the east in the hope of forcing Kyiv into surrendering part of the country’s territory to possibly end the war.

The bulk of the Ukrainian army is concentrated in eastern Ukraine, where it has been locked up in fighting with Moscow-backed separatists in a nearly eight-year conflict. If Russia succeeds in encircling and destroying the Ukrainian forces in the country’s industrial heartland, called Donbas, it could try to dictate its terms to Kyiv and potentially attempt to split the country in two.

The Russian military declared Friday that the “first stage of the operation” had been largely accomplished, allowing Russian troops to concentrate on their “top goal — the liberation of Donbas.”

Many observers say the shift in strategy could reflect President Vladimir Putin’s acknowledgment that his plan for a blitz in Ukraine has failed, forcing him to narrow his goals and change tactics amid a disastrous war that has turned Russia into a pariah and decimated its economy.

In some sectors, Ukrainian troops have recently pushed the Russians back.

In the city of Makariv, near a strategic highway west of the capital, Kyiv, Associated Press reporters saw the carcass of a Russian rocket launcher, a burned Russian truck, the body of a Russian soldier and a destroyed Ukrainian tank after fighting there a few days ago. In the nearby village of Yasnohorodka, the AP witnessed positions abandoned by Ukrainian soldiers who had moved farther west, but no sign of Russian troops’ presence.

U.S. and British officials have noted that Moscow has increasingly focused on fighting the Ukrainian forces in the east while digging in around Kyiv and other big cities and pummeling them with rockets and artillery.

The chief of Ukrainian military intelligence, Kyrylo Budanov, said Sunday the change of focus could reflect Putin’s hope to break Ukraine in two, like North and South Korea, and enforce “a line of separation between the occupied and unoccupied regions.”

“He can’t swallow the entire country,” Budanov said, adding that Russia appears to be trying “to pull the occupied territories into a single quasi-state structure and pit it against independent Ukraine.”

Putin and his generals haven’t revealed specific military goals or a planned timeline, but the Kremlin clearly expected a quick victory when Russian troops rolled into Ukraine from the north, east and south on Feb. 24.

But the Russian attempts to swiftly capture Kyiv, the country’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, and other big cities in the northeast have been thwarted by well-organized Ukrainian defenses and logistical challenges that stalled the Russian offensive.

Russian forces have pounded the outskirts of Kyiv with artillery and air raids from a distance while putting their ground offensive on hold, tactics they also have used in attacking Kharkiv, Chernihiv and Sumy in the northeast.

Mykola Sunhurovskyi, a military analyst at the Kyiv-based Razumkov Center think tank, said Russia has abandoned attempts to storm Kyiv and other big Ukrainian cities for now and is laying siege to them to try to weaken Ukraine and win time.

“Russia has shifted tactics … to redistribute its forces and prepare for the next active stage of the war,” Sunhurovskyi said.

The Russian forces encircled the key strategic port of Mariupol and besieged it for weeks, hammering it with rockets and artillery i n a carnage that killed thousands of civilians. The fall of Mariupol would free up Russian forces there and allow them to engage in a potential pincer movement together with another group of troops moving from Kharkiv in the northeast to try to encircle the Ukrainian military in the east.

“Russian forces appear to be concentrating their effort to attempt the encirclement of Ukrainian forces directly facing the separatist regions in the east of the country, advancing from the direction of Kharkiv in the north and Mariupol in the south,” the British Ministry of Defense said Sunday.

A senior U.S. defense official, noting the latest Russian focus on Donbas, said Putin may now hope to take full control of the east while keeping other Ukrainian forces occupied with the defense of Kyiv and other areas, then try to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to formally surrender Donbas and recognize Russia’s ownership of Crimea, which Moscow annexed in 2014.

An analysis published Saturday by the Institute for the Study of War in Washington said the degree to which the Russians can push an accelerated move to cut off Donbas will depend in part on how soon their forces can gain full control of Mariupol and how badly damaged they emerge from that fight. It also noted that a halt in the Russian offensive on Kyiv could reflect “the incapacity of Russian forces rather than any shift in Russian objectives or efforts at this time.”

While the Russian military has focused increasingly on bleeding the Ukrainian troops in the east, it has continued to use its arsenal of air- and sea-launched cruise missiles to methodically target fuel depots, military arsenals and weapons plants across the country.

Philips P. O’Brien, a professor of strategic studies at the University of St. Andrews, described Saturday’s cruise missile strikes on Lviv, near the border with Poland, as part of the Russian strategy to cut off supplies to the Ukrainian forces fighting in the east.

“They will still want to disrupt as much as possible the flow of goods and supplies from west to east, much of which starts their journey around Lviv,” O’Brien said.

On the Black Sea coast, the Russians quickly took the port of Kherson and advanced to the outskirts of the key shipbuilding center of Mykolaiv where their offensive stalled.

If the Russian forces succeed in encircling Mykolaiv, Odesa and several other Black Sea ports, it will have completely cut Ukraine’s access to its coast in a devastating blow to its economy. The seizure of Odesa will also allow Moscow to establish a link to the separatist Trans-Dniester region of Moldova that hosts a Russian military base.

Despite Ukrainian and Western fears, the Russian army so far hasn’t pursued efforts to bypass Mykolaiv and march on Odesa. Ukrainian authorities have noted that Russia’s failure to press its offensive along the coast could be explained by the fact that most of its troops in the south have remained locked in the battle for Mariupol where they have suffered heavy losses.

On Friday, the Russian military reported it had lost 1,351 soldiers killed and 3,825 wounded since the start of the campaign, but NATO estimates 7,000 to 15,000 have been killed — potentially as many as the Soviet Union lost in the entire 10-year war in Afghanistan.

The big losses and slow pace of the Russian offensive could be a factor that forced Putin to lower his ambitions and take a more realistic approach.

Volodymyr Fesenko, the head of the independent Kyiv-based Penta Center, said Russia’s declared shift to the east could be an attempt to put a good face on its failed blitz and regroup before the next stage of fighting.

“Both sides need a break now for various reasons, and the Kremlin is using it to regroup its forces and search for new tactics without changing its strategic goal of subduing Ukraine,” Fesenko told the AP.

“Tactics could change from a blitz to laying siege to cities, destroying the economy and the infrastructure with bombardment, blockading ports and doing other things. Putin has a broad arsenal of means of pressure.”

“The stiff Ukrainian resistance could turn the war into a protracted conflict, and then the issue of financial and military resources, including warplanes and tanks Zelenskyy is urging the West to provide will be of primary importance,” he said.

Karmanau reported from Lviv, Ukraine. Robert Burns and Matthew Lee in Washington and Danica Kirka in London contributed to this report.

Insider

A Ukrainian woman recounts being raped by the Russian soldiers who killed her husband: ‘Shall we kill her or keep her alive?’

Katherine Tangalakis-Lippert – March 28, 2022

• A Ukrainian woman said she was repeatedly assaulted by Russian soldiers after they killed her husband.
• Her claims are being investigated by the Ukraine prosecutor-general, the first such investigation.
• “This younger guy pulled gun to my head and said: ‘I shot your husband because he’s a Nazi.'” she said.

A Ukrainian woman who said she was repeatedly assaulted by Russian soldiers after they killed her husband is having her allegations investigated by Ukrainian officials, the first such investigation into a rape by Russian soldiers since the beginning of the invasion.

“I heard a single shot, the sounds of the gate opening and then the sound of footsteps in the house,” an anonymous woman, who went by the pseudonym Natalya, told The Times.

On March 9, two Russian soldiers who had earlier killed the family’s dog while walking by her home near Shevchenkove, outside Kyiv, had returned to kill her husband, she said. “I cried out, ‘Where is my husband?’ Then I looked outside and I saw him on the ground by the gate. This younger guy pulled gun to my head and said: ‘I shot your husband because he’s a Nazi.'”

Natalya told The Times she told her 4-year-old son to hide in the boiler room where they had been sheltering. The soldiers repeatedly raped her as her son cried in the next room.

“He said ‘you’d better shut up or I’ll get your child and show him his mother’s brains spread around the house,'” she told The Times. “He told me to take my clothes off. Then they both raped me one after the other. They didn’t care that my son was in the boiler room crying. They told me to go shut him up and come back. All the time they held the gun by my head and taunted me, saying ‘how do you think she sucks it? Shall we kill her or keep her alive?'”

Her story is one of multiple reports of sexual violence and rape during the invasion of Ukraine and the first to be investigated by Ukraine’s prosecutor general. Earlier this month, Ukrainian member of parliament Lesia Vasylenko spoke to UK officials about the rising reports of rape.

“We have reports of women being gang-raped. These women are usually the ones who are unable to get out. We are talking about senior citizens,” The Guardian reported Vasylenko said. “Most of these women have either been executed after the crime of rape or they have taken their own lives.”

Natalya and her son have since fled, leaving the home her husband built for them and his body behind. She hasn’t yet told her son that his father died. “We cannot bury him, we can’t get to the village, because the village is still occupied,” she said.

Even if the Brovary district is liberated, she does not know if she will return. “Memories are hard,” she told The Times. “I don’t know how I will live with all of it but I still understand that my husband built this house for us. I would never be able to bring myself to sell it.”