Tag: russia

As the war enters its 808th day, these are the main developments.

Here is the situation on Sunday, May 12, 2024.

Fighting

• A missile attack on a restaurant in Donetsk, eastern Ukraine, killed three people and wounded eight, Denis Pushilin, the head of the region’s Russian-backed administration, said, adding that there were two strikes by US HIMARS precision rocket launchers.
• One woman was killed, 29 people wounded and hundreds of buildings, including a school and a hospital, were damaged after Ukraine attacked Russia’s Belgorod region over the weekend, according to regional Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov.
• Gladkov said Belgorod city, the region’s administrative centre, faced further risk of Ukrainian attack, with the entire region under air raid alerts on Sunday.

• The Russian Ministry of Defence says its air defence forces destroyed two Soviet-era conventional ballistic missiles launched overnight by Ukrainian forces over Belgorod.

• Fierce fighting raged overnight on the fringes of Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region as Moscow claimed it had captured five villages and was advancing in the Donetsk region. However, Kyiv said it was repulsing the attacks and battling for control of the settlements.

• President Volodymyr Zelenskyy admitted in his nightly video address that battles were going on around seven border villages in Kharkiv and called the situation in the southern Donetsk region “extremely difficult”.
• Kharkiv regional Governor Oleg Synegubov said more than 1,700 people evacuated from areas near the Russian border, as Moscow launched a surprise ground offensive in the region.

Politics and diplomacy

• Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that he was giving extra duties to two key government officials overseeing the defence industry and energy sectors, as the Kremlin chief girds the world’s second-largest oil exporter for a longer war in Ukraine.
• Incumbent Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda, a staunch supporter of Ukraine, and his closest opponent, Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte, promise to stand up to Russian threat at home, as the country heads to the polls on Sunday. Voters in the Baltic state are worried that the country could be a target of Russian aggression.

• Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Ukrainians with a residence permit and work in Germany could stay even as Ukraine seeks to recruit nationals living abroad to serve in the war against Russia.

Moscow’s forces captured five villages in a renewed ground assault in northeastern Ukraine, the Russian Ministry of Defence has said, as journalists in the city of Vovchansk described multiple buildings destroyed after Russian air raids.

Ukrainian officials on Saturday did not confirm whether Russia had taken the villages, which lie in a contested “grey zone” on the border of Ukraine’s Kharkiv region and Russia.

Ukrainian journalists reported that the villages of Borysivka, Ohirtseve, Pylna and Strilecha were taken by Russian troops on Friday.

Russia said the village of Pletenivka was also taken.

In an evening statement Saturday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said fighting was continuing in Strilecha and Pletenivka, as well as Krasne, Morokhovets, Oliinykove, Lukyantsi and Hatyshche.

“Our troops are carrying out counterattacks there for a second day, protecting Ukrainian territory,” he said.

On Friday, the Institute for the Study of War said that geolocated footage confirms at least one of the villages was seized. The Washington-based think tank described recent Russian gains as “tactically significant”.

The renewed assault on the region has forced more than 1,700 civilians residing in settlements near the fighting to flee, according to Ukrainian authorities. It comes after Russia stepped up attacks in March targeting energy infrastructure and settlements, which analysts predicted were a concerted effort by Moscow to shape conditions for an offensive.

On Saturday, Russia continued to pummel Vovchansk with air raids and rockets as police and volunteers raced to evacuate residents. At least 20 people were evacuated to safety in a nearby village. Police said that 900 people had been evacuated the previous day.

Journalists from The Associated Press news agency who accompanied an evacuation team described empty streets with multiple buildings destroyed and others on fire. The road was littered with newly made craters and the city was covered in dust and shrapnel with the smell of gunpowder heavy in the air. Mushroom clouds of smoke rose across the skyline as Russian jets conducted multiple air attacks.

The AP journalists witnessed nine air attacks during the three hours they were there.

“The situation in Vovchansk and the settlements along the border [with Russia] is incredibly difficult. Constant aviation attacks are carried out, multiple rocket missile systems strikes, artillery strikes,” said Tamaz Hambarashvili, the head of the Vovchansk military administration.

“For the second day in a row, we evacuated all the inhabitants of our community who are willing to evacuate,” he said.

“I think that they are destroying the city to make [local] people leave, to make sure there are no militaries, nobody. To create a ‘grey’ zone.’”

Russia’s recent push in Kharkiv seeks to exploit ammunition shortages before promised Western supplies can reach the front line and pin down Ukrainian forces in the northeast and keep them away from heavy battles under way in the Donetsk region where Moscow’s troops are gaining ground, analysts said.

Russian military bloggers said the assault could mark the start of a Russian attempt to carve out a “buffer zone” that President Vladimir Putin pledged to create earlier this year to halt frequent Ukrainian attacks on Belgorod and other Russian border regions.

The governor of Russia’s Belgorod region, which borders Ukraine, said on Saturday that one woman was killed and 29 people were wounded, including a child, in shelling by Ukraine’s armed forces.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian officials have downplayed Russian statements about captured territory, with reinforcements being rushed to the Kharkiv region to hold off Russian forces.

On Telegram, Kharkiv regional governor Oleh Syniehubov said that heavy fighting continued in the areas around Borysivka, Ohirtseve, Pylna and Oliinykove, but that the situation was under control and there was no threat of a ground assault on the city of Kharkiv.

In the meantime, artillery, mortar and aerial bombardments hit more than 30 different towns and villages in the region on Saturday, killing at least three people and injuring five others, Syniehubov said.

As the war enters its 807th day, these are the main developments.

Here is the situation on Saturday, May 11, 2024.

Fighting

• Ukrainian strikes have killed three people and caused a large fire at an oil storage depot in Luhansk, the region’s Russia-installed governor, Leonid Pasechnik, has said in a Telegram message. Eight people were hospitalised.

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said he will quash a new major Russian ground assault in the northeastern Kharkiv region, as he acknowledged the latest “heavy battles along the entire front line”, and appealed to Western allies to deliver more military aid.

• Ukrainian reinforcements have headed to Kharkiv, launched artillery and drone counterstrikes in response to the latest Russian offensive, while the authorities told civilians to flee the heavy fighting.
• General Oleksandr Pavliuk, commander of the Ukrainian Ground Forces, has played down the significance of possibly losing the eastern town of Chasiv Yar, which is described as a gateway to other cities that Russia is targeting, like Kramatorsk and Sloviansk.
• Hundreds of people in Ukraine’s city of Vinnytsia have bid their final farewell to Nazary Gryntsevych, a member of the Azov Brigade who had become a national hero and symbol of bravery after fighting Russian forces despite the fall of Mariupol.

Diplomacy and politics

• White House National Security spokesperson John Kirby has said the United States expects Russia to intensify its new offensive and commit additional troops, with the aim of establishing a buffer zone along the Ukrainian border.
• “It is possible that Russia will make further advances in the coming weeks, but we do not anticipate any major breakthroughs,” Kirby said. “And over time, the influx of US assistance will enable Ukraine to withstand these attacks over the course of 2024.”
• The US has announced a new $400m military aid package – including armoured vehicles, surface-to-air missiles and rockets – for Ukraine amid the Russian assault in the northeast of the country. It is the third package for Ukraine in less than three weeks, following two in late April valued at a total of $7bn.
• Poland’s central bank governor,  Adam Glapinski, has warned that his country faces further economic risks if the war in Ukraine comes closer to its borders.
• Canadian Defence Minister Bill Blair has announced a $76m Canadian dollar ($56m) financial package that would allow Germany to ramp up its air defence aid for Ukraine.

• Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has declared that the aim of nuclear exercises planned by Russia is to work out the response to any attacks on Russian soil. Medvedev, who is now deputy chairman of Russia’s security council, warns the West that Russia could attack not only Ukraine in response to such attacks.

Ukrainian forces fighting to halt new Russian assault aimed at creating Putin’s planned ‘buffer zone’.

Russian forces attempted an armoured ground invasion of Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region with artillery and guided aerial bombs, Ukrainian officials have said.

On Friday, Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence said that Russian forces tried to breach Ukrainian defences near the town of Vovchansk with “armoured vehicles” at 5am (02:00 GMT), hitting an area near the border with aerial attacks. The assault had been repulsed, but “battles of varying intensity” continued, it said.

A senior Ukrainian military source told the Reuters news agency that Russian forces had pushed one kilometre (0.6 miles) into the region. They aimed, he said, to advance as far as 10km (six miles) to establish the buffer zone that Russian President Vladimir Putin promised to create earlier this year as a means of halting Ukrainian attacks on Russian border regions.

Ukraine had previously said it was aware that Russia was assembling thousands of troops along the northeastern border. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his forces were prepared for the ground assault.

“Ukraine met them there with troops: brigades and artillery,” he told a news conference.

Ukraine has sent more forces to the area as reinforcements.

Vitaliy Ganchev, a Russian-installed official in the Kharkiv region, said on the Telegram app that there was “fighting on several parts of the line of contact, including in the border areas”, and asked residents “to be careful and not to leave shelters without an urgent need”.

Kharkiv’s Governor Oleh Syniehubov said the authorities were evacuating about 3,000 civilians from Vovchansk, fewer than five kilometres (three miles) from the border, which had come under heavy shelling.

New front

Ukraine chased Russian troops out of most of the Kharkiv region in 2022, the first year of the war, but after weathering the Ukrainian counteroffensive last year, Russian forces are back on the offensive and slowly advancing in the Donetsk region further south.

Fears grew in March over the Kremlin’s intentions in the Kharkiv region when Putin called for the creation of a buffer zone inside Ukrainian territory when asked whether he thought it necessary to take Kharkiv, which borders Belgorod, a Russian province that has come under regular attack from Ukraine.

Since then, Kharkiv, which is particularly vulnerable because of its proximity to Russia, has been hammered by air raids that have caused major damage to the region’s power infrastructure.

Friday’s assault opens a new front, with Russia reportedly intent on exploiting a window of opportunity to make small, tactical gains while Ukraine remains outgunned and outmanned.

Ukrainian officials have repeatedly said that they need more Western-supplied weapons to hold out and ultimately push back Russian troops. On Thursday, Zelenskyy said that the United States’s $61bn military aid package would turn the tide.

Friday’s advance into Kharkiv came as Ukraine began to receive parcels of long-delayed US military aid for the first time in weeks. On Friday, a high-ranking Ukrainian military source told Reuters that Ukraine expects US-made F-16 fighter jets to be delivered in June-July.

Ukraine’s parliament voted on Thursday to crack down on draft dodgers, as the country grapples with a serious shortage of soldiers available to fight more than two years of war.

The bill, backed by a majority of lawmakers but not yet signed into law by Zelenskyy, includes raising fines for anyone caught trying to avoid the call-up and allowing authorities to detain draft dodgers for up to three days.

It comes in the same week that Parliament passed a bill allowing some convicts to enlist in the army and days before a new mobilisation law, that lowers the minimum age for new recruits, is due to come into force.

Russian forces continued to exploit a window of opportunity to make small, tactical gains during the past week, as Ukraine began to receive parcels of long-delayed US military aid for the first time in weeks.

Ukraine also reported that Russia was building up worrying numbers of troops on its northern border, and prepared to face a potential new front.

Against this tense background, Europe sought to boost Ukraine’s own defence industrial base to ensure political problems among its allies never interfere with weapons deliveries again.

Russian forces managed to steal another march on Ukrainian defenders in Ocheretyne. The village sits at the western point of a salient the Russians have gradually built west of Avdiivka after taking that city in February.

They took advantage of a poorly executed substitution of Ukraine’s defending battalion to enter Ocheretyne in late April, but faced fierce resistance.

Russia’s defence ministry announced Ocheretyne had fallen on May 5, Orthodox Easter Sunday.

Satellite imagery appeared to confirm that, and three days later Russian forces consolidated their catch by advancing four kilometres (2.5 miles) north of the village and extending their gains to its south.

National Guard captain Volodymyr Cherniak told The Guardian the Russian forces did this by flanking defences the Ukrainians had taken too long to dig because they lacked construction crews.

Russian forces made marginal gains as they fought street-to-street in Robotyne, a small town in western Zaporizhia that Ukrainian forces recaptured in last year’s counteroffensive. And on Monday, they swallowed Novoselivske, a village in Luhansk.

Sergei Shoigu, Russia’s defence minister, claimed during a conference call with Moscow’s military leadership that their forces had seized 547sq kms (211sq miles) of territory in Ukraine since the beginning of the year.

The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, put the figure at 519sq km (200sq miles).

But Russian tactical failures were notable.

Throughout the week, they tried and failed to recapture Nestryga, an island in the Dnipro Delta from which they had harassed Ukrainian forces on the right bank, and which Ukraine managed to take back on April 28.

Southern forces spokesperson Dmytro Pletenchuk told a telethon there were several assaults a day.

“The occupiers have a big obstacle – it is the Dnipro, and in order to overcome it, they are forced to use watercraft … but at the moment they are in an open area and therefore, it is quite difficult for them and they are suffering losses,” Pletenchuk said.

A Ukrainian bridgehead on the left bank that has forced back Russian artillery even managed to expand its position around Krynky by Monday. Here, too, relentless Russian assaults since the beginning of the year have failed to dislodge the garrison.

Russian forces also failed to capture the strategically important town of Chasiv Yar in the east – a prize Russian President Vladimir Putin reportedly wanted by May 9, the anniversary of Nazi Germany’s capitulation 79 years ago.

More ominously, Ukrainian deputy military intelligence chief Vadym Skibitsky said Russia was possibly preparing to make a renewed attempt to capture Sumy and Kharkiv, two northern cities it failed to take in February 2022 along with Kyiv.

He told The Economist that Russia had concentrated 35,000 troops north of the Ukrainian border in these areas, and would launch them into Ukraine by late May or early June. Ukrainian military observer Kostyantyn Mashovets estimated the number was closer to 50,000.

Ukrainian parliamentarians have told Al Jazeera that Ukraine maintains tens of thousands of troops in the north of the country, far from the active battlefronts, precisely for such an eventuality. During the war, Russian troops based in Belarus have made various feints at a buildup, possibly as a distraction. It now appears Ukraine is taking the threat seriously.

Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyii recently said he was sending more artillery and tanks sorely needed on active fronts to bolster northern forces.

But what about the weapons?

Ukrainian officials have repeatedly said that they need more Western-supplied weapons to hold out and ultimately push Russia off Ukrainian soil.

US President Joe Biden signed into law a supplemental spending bill on April 24, after Congress took six months to approve it, but there has been disagreement on how long a billion dollars’ worth of weapons readied for delivery took to reach Ukraine.

Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh said deliveries have reached Ukraine “sometimes within hours if not a day or two”.

But on Friday, six days after Biden signed the bill, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said, “We are waiting for the weapons to arrive in Ukraine.”

Somewhat inscrutably, the New York Times said a first batch of antitank rockets, missiles and 155mm artillery rounds had arrived in Ukraine in the interim, on April 28.

Ukraine’s European allies have continued to send in weapons during the US hold-up, but they have not been sufficient to maintain even defensive operations because Europe’s defence industrial base has shrunk since the Cold War.

Ukraine embarked on a strategy of building up its own industrial base last December, and invited Western investors to speed up that process.

The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, sought to do so on Monday, when he brought together 350 Ukrainian and European industry representatives and government officials to foster partnerships backed by EU money.

“Ukraine is a country at war, it does not produce under normal conditions,” said Borrell. “That is why industry representatives must understand that, firstly, these are new opportunities, secondly, that there is a risk, and thirdly, that there is financing.”

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba called for a common European defence industrial space to remove redundancies and competing weapons systems, and for long-term industry contracts and planning of European defence.

“If we want to preserve peace in Europe, we must move to a European wartime economy and industry,” he told the forum virtually. “Only in this way can we restrain Russia’s aggression – by demonstrating that Europe has the means for self-defence.”

The Russian threat dawns on Europe

Kuleba was not the only one calling for an economic and political gear shift.

French President Emmanuel Macron told The Economist on Friday that Europe was facing a triple threat from Russia.

“It’s this triple existential risk for our Europe: a military and security risk; an economic risk for our prosperity; an existential risk of internal incoherence and disruption to the functioning of our democracies.”

Macron had struck this chord in a speech to the Sorbonne a week earlier.

“Our Europe today is mortal,” Macron had said. “It can die and that depends solely on our choices.”

Europe was not armed to defend itself when “confronted by a power like Russia that has no inhibitions, no limits”, Macron said. “Europe must become capable of defending its interests, with its allies by our side whenever they are willing, and alone if necessary.”

Macron also reiterated the possibility of sending French troops to Ukraine speaking to the Economist, saying it could happen if Russia had a breakthrough and Ukraine requested it. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the statement was “very important and very dangerous”.

Ukraine’s deputy military intelligence chief agreed that Europe was not ready to defend itself.

Vadym Skibitsky told Newsweek Russia could overrun the Baltic states in a week, whereas it would take NATO at least 10 days to begin the process of coming to their aid.

From NATO’s perspective, the need to help Ukraine has been growing along with the Russian threat perception in the rest of Europe.

Four months after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, NATO said it would create a standing force of 300,000 troops to defend its eastern borders, up from about 80,000 today. In January, a series of NATO defence chiefs sharing similar intelligence said the alliance should prepare for a potential Russian invasion of NATO soil in as little as five to eight years’ time.

On May 2, NATO’s political decision-making body, the Atlantic Council, said NATO allies are “deeply concerned about recent malign activities on Allied territory”.

Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said a Russian campaign of hybrid activities including misinformation, espionage and sabotage was already under way in Europe.

The Financial Times on Sunday quoted European intelligence officials saying Russia was preparing “covert bombings, arson attacks, and damage to infrastructure” in Europe.