Long deployments and a lack of training, support, food and equipment all affecting morale as war drags on
Russia’s assault on Ukraine’s east has brought it some battlefield success as its military has advanced slowly in fierce fighting in Donbas.
But those gains have come at a high price for the Russian invasion force, with evidence that high-level casualties are growing and that some units may be approaching exhaustion as the war moves past its 100-day mark.
Continue reading...US justice department prosecutors say both jets flew to Russia in March, violating export restrictions
A federal judge in New York on Monday authorized the US government to seize two private jets owned by Roman Abramovich, after they flew to Russia following its invasion of Ukraine, officials said.
The order from Judge Sarah Cave, based in Manhattan, is one of several sanctions from the US and other western countries aimed at billionaires from Russia since the invasion in February.
Continue reading...UK and US have so far promised a handful; official says with 60 they can stop Russians ‘dead in their tracks’
Ukraine needs 60 multiple rocket launchers – many more than the handful promised so far by the UK and US – to have a chance of defeating Russia, according to an aide to the country’s presidency.
Oleksiy Arestovych, a military adviser to the president’s chief of staff, told the Guardian that while he believed the rocket launchers were “a gamechanger weapon”, not enough had been committed to turn the tide in the war.
Continue reading...Kaja Kallas warns pain of sanctions will test relations, and also criticises Macron’s stance on Putin
European unity over the response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is proving difficult to maintain in the face of the war’s impact on inflation and living standards across the continent, Estonia’s prime minister has said.
Kaja Kallas also criticised the French president, Emmanuel Macron, for trying to provide Vladimir Putin with a diplomatic way out of the conflict, saying the only effect was to give the Russian leader the belief that he will not be isolated or face justice for his army’s war crimes.
Continue reading...Analysis: the conflict in Europe has entrenched the differences between Beijing and the US and its allies
More than 100 days into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, China’s strategic assessment of the conflict is becoming clearer: it does not wish to be cast in the same light as Russia, but the war has deepened Beijing’s mistrust of the west.
In Beijing’s view, the pessimism has been exacerbated by the US and its allies’ recent efforts, for example, to help Taiwan increase its international recognition. On Monday last week, Beijing made the second-largest incursion into Taiwan’s air defence zone this year with Taipei reporting 30 jets entering the area, including more than 20 fighters.
Continue reading...‘Unprecedented’ displacement of millions of Ukrainians; Russian warships pushed back more than 100km, Ukraine says
Russian forces continue to storm the eastern city of Sievierodonetsk and fired missiles at the nearby cities of Sloviansk, Lysychansk and Orikhove, Ukraine’s military has said.
Russian troops fired at Ukrainian units defending Sievierodonetsk with mortars and artillery fire, damaging infrastructure in the towns of Metolkino, Borivske, Ustynivka and Toshkivka, according to the latest operational report released by Ukraine’s general staff of the armed forces.
Continue reading...President makes rare publicised visit outside Kyiv to Lysychansk
The Ukrainian president has visited the frontline close to the fiercest fighting between his country’s troops and Russian forces in the east, where a regional official said the situation had worsened for Ukraine.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy visited the beleaguered city of Lysychansk on Sunday, just a few kilometres south from Sievierodonetsk, the main battlefield in the east where Russia has concentrated its forces.
Continue reading...Putin warns that Moscow will hit new targets if west supplies Ukraine with long-range missiles as Kyiv reels from first attack in more than a month
Continue reading...This live blog is now closed, you can find our latest coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war here
President Vladimir Putin said Russia would strike new targets if the United States started supplying Ukraine with longer-range missiles, the TASS news agency reported on Sunday.
The TASS news agency reports:
Putin said that if such missiles are supplied, that Russia will strike at those targets which we have not yet been hitting”, in an Rossiya-1 state television channel
Putin did not name the targets Russia planned to pursue if western countries began supplying Ukraine with longer-range missiles.
Continue reading...Putin warns of more strikes if deliveries continue, as Ukrainian railways chief says ‘no such tanks’ were at targeted plant
Russia launched airstrikes on Kyiv for the first time in five weeks on Sunday, claiming it had targeted western-supplied tanks – while the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, warned more targets would be struck if weapons deliveries continued.
Several explosions were heard around the eastern Kyiv suburbs of Darnytskyi and Dniprovskyi early on Sunday morning, wounding one person. The strikes represented a change of tack on the part of the invading forces.
Continue reading...Russians ‘suffering huge losses’, region’s governor claims, amid heavy fighting
Ukraine has staged a counterattack on the frontline city of Sievierodonetsk and recaptured a fifth of the city it had previously lost to the Russian invaders, according to the head of the region.
Serhiy Haidai, governor of Luhansk, said Russian forces were giving up recent gains in the city, as reports also emerged of foreign fighters joining the battle for the easternmost city held by Kyiv in the fiercely contested Donbas.
Continue reading...French president says door must be left open to allow for improvement in diplomatic relations after war
Russia must not be humiliated in Ukraine, Emmanuel Macron has said, to allow an improvement in diplomatic relations between the west and Moscow whenever the war comes to an end.
The French president said his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, had made a “historic and fundamental” error in invading Ukraine, but that nevertheless a wider escalation in hostilities had to be avoided.
Continue reading...US embassy in Kyiv says ‘those responsible for war crimes must face justice’
Russian forces have combined airstrikes and massed artillery fires to bring its “overwhelming” firepower to bear in Donbas, the UK Ministry of Defence has said in its latest intelligence report released this morning.
This combined use of air and artillery strikes has been a key factor in Russia’s recent tactical successes in the region, the report reads.
Russian air activity remains high over contested ground in the Donbas with Russian aircraft conducting strikes using both guided and unguided munitions.
These strikes alone however have failed to have a meaningful impact on the conflict and Russian stocks of precision guided missiles are likely to have been significantly depleted as a result.
The combined use of air and artillery strikes has been a key factor in Russia’s recent tactical successes in the region. The increased use of unguided munitions has led to the widespread destruction of built-up areas in the Donbas and has almost certainly caused substantial collateral damage and civilian casualties.
Continue reading...Dmitry Kovtun was one of two Russian men accused over poisoning death of ex-spy in London in 2006
Dmitry Kovtun, one of the two Russian men accused of assassinating the former spy and Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko in London, died of Covid in a Moscow hospital on Saturday.
Litvinenko died in 2006, weeks after drinking tea laced with the radioactive isotope polonium 210 at a London hotel, where he met Kovtun and the other suspect, Andrei Lugovoi. The case has since weighed on relations between Britain and Russia.
Continue reading...Serhiy Haidai says counterattack has recaptured a fifth of frontline city from Russian invaders
Ukraine has staged a counterattack on the frontline city of Sievierodonetsk and recaptured a fifth of the city it had previously lost to Russian invaders, according to the head of the region.
Serhiy Haidai, the governor of Luhansk oblast, told Ukrainian television that Russian forces were forfeiting recent gains in the city, the easternmost held by Kyiv in the Donbas region, where fighting has been concentrated.
Continue reading...More than 1,400 cases of treason and collaboration with the Russian army have been brought against citizens
On the third day of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the mayor of the city of Kupyansk received a call from a Russian army commander suggesting they talk.
Russian forces were already on the outskirts of the city, in the north-eastern Kharkiv region. Mayor Gennady Matsegora released a video address explaining that he had accepted a Russian offer.
Continue reading...US general in Finland to back Nato bid; 14 million Ukrainians displaced in conflict, says UN; Macron says Putin isolated after ‘historic error’
Continue reading...Eduard Khudainatov is blacklisted for ‘benefiting from the government of the Russian Federation’
The European Union has imposed sanctions on a Russian oil boss who is separately alleged by the US authorities to be acting as a “straw owner” of two yachts linked to Vladimir Putin and his inner circle.
Eduard Khudainatov served as chairman and chief executive of the state-controlled oil company Rosneft before setting up his own energy business, Independent Oil and Gas Company, which has grown rapidly to become one of Russia’s top oil producers with interests in extraction, refining and trading.
Continue reading...Moscow has seized about a fifth of Ukrainian territory since its invasion and vows to continue ‘until all goals are achieved’
Ukraine will fight off Russia’s invasion, its president has said, while the Kremlin pledged to persist until “all our goals have been achieved” as Moscow’s war entered its 100th day with Russian troops pounding the Donbas region.
“Victory shall be ours,” Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a video featuring the same key ministers and advisers who appeared with him in a defiant broadcast on 24 February, the day his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, launched his unprovoked assault.
Continue reading...Ukrainian forces say they have pushed back Russians in the city
Reuters has what it says is an exclusive interview with prosecutor general Iryna Venediktova, who is overseeing multiple war crimes inquiries in Ukraine. It reports that prosecutors investigating war crimes cases in Ukraine are examining allegations of the forcible deportation of children to Russia as they seek to build a genocide indictment.
Venediktova said “We have more than 20 cases about forcible transfer of people. From the first days of the war, we started this case about genocide.”
Task #1 today for Russia — to undermine trust between Ukraine and US. Ukraine is waging a defensive war and does not plan to use the MLRS to attack facilities in Russia. Our partners know where their weapons are used. Any allegations of such intentions - PSYOP of Russian special services.
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