Russia didn't take US phone call after Poland missile strike
By TARA COPP and LOLITA C. BALDOR
37 mins ago
WASHINGTON (AP) — The top U.S. military officer said Wednesday that he tried to reach out to his Russian counterpart in the aftermath of the missile explosions in Poland, but wasn't able to get through.
Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said his staff tried to get Russia's top-ranking military official Gen. Valery Gerasimov on the phone to discuss the incident with “no success.”
Milley didn’t elaborate on the efforts, but the lack of communications raises concerns about high-level U.S.-Russian communications in a crisis. A strike against Poland, a NATO member, could have risked a larger conflict if it turned out that Russia had launched the strike.
The U.S. and other top leaders now say they believe the strike was probably launched by Ukrainian air defenses to defend against a Russian missile bombardment. But uncertainty swirled for hours. Several U.S. defense officials said it isn't unusual for Gerasimov to not be available for a call.
The lack of communication is worrisome, especially given the potential implications of the strike, said John Tierney, executive director of the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation in Washington.
Open lines of communication “are vital if we are to avoid the risk of conflict caused by misconception, miscalculations or mistake,” Tierney said. “It is unsettling to learn from General Milley that his counterpart was unreachable or not willing to engage when an explosion occurred in Poland.”
Milley did talk to his military counterparts in Ukraine and Poland as the governments worked quickly to assess whether the missile that killed two people in Poland had been launched by Russia or Ukraine.
The conversation came as Milley has said that Russia's recent defeat in the key southern city Kherson and the possible slowdown of military operations in the winter could provide an opportunity to negotiate.
“You want to negotiate at a time when you’re at your strength, and your opponent is at weakness,” Milley said at a Pentagon briefing Wednesday. “The Russian military is suffering tremendously," he said, citing large losses of Russian tanks, fighting vehicles, fighter jets and helicopters.
If fighting slows down, Milley said that may become “a window” for talks about a political solution.
Both he and U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said that they expect Ukraine to keep fighting through the winter, and the U.S. and its allies will continue to provide more support and weapons. And it will be up to Ukraine to determine any negotiation plans.
“We’ve said repeatedly that the Ukrainians are going to decide that and not us. And we will support them for as long as it takes,” said Austin, who was also at the briefing.
The missile that landed in Poland Tuesday was launched during the "largest wave of missiles that we’ve seen since the beginning of the war,” Austin said. On Tuesday Russia launched as many as 100 missiles at Ukraine as Moscow intensifies its airstrikes following significant ground losses.
Milley said it's unlikely that either side can gain a military victory quickly. He said the chance of Russia, which currently controls about 20% of Ukraine, overrunning the entire country “is close to zero.” And, he added, the “task of militarily kicking the Russians physically out of Ukraine is a very difficult task. And it’s not going to happen in the next couple of weeks unless the Russian army completely collapses, which is unlikely.”
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Russia launches new Ukraine barrage as grain deal extended
By JOHN LEICESTER
1 hour ago
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian airstrikes targeted Ukraine’s energy facilities again Thursday as the first snow of the season fell in Kyiv, a harbinger of the hardship to come if Moscow’s missiles continue to take out power and gas plants as winter descends.
Separately, the United Nations announced the extension of a deal to ensure exports of grain and fertilizers from Ukraine that were disrupted by the war. The deal was set to expire soon, renewing fears of a global food crisis if exports were blocked from one of the world's largest grain producers.
Even as all sides agreed to extend the deal, air raid sirens sounded across Ukraine on Thursday. At least four people were killed and more than a dozen others wounded in the drone and missile strikes, including one that hit a residential building, authorities said.
The Kremlin’s forces have suffered a series of setbacks on the ground, the latest being the loss of the southern city of Kherson. In the face of those defeats, Russia has increasingly resorted to aerial onslaughts aimed at energy infrastructure and other civilian targets in parts of Ukraine it doesn’t hold.
Thursday's salvo appeared to be on a lesser scale than the nationwide barrage of more than 100 missiles and drones that knocked out power to 10 million people earlier this week. Tuesday's strikes were described by Ukraine’s energy minister as the biggest barrage yet of the nearly 9-month-old invasion against the battered power grid.
It also resulted in a missile landing in Poland, killing two people. Authorities are still trying to ascertain where that missile came from, with early indications pointing to a Ukrainian air defense system meant to counter the Russian bombardment.
The renewed bombings come as many Ukrainians are coping with the discomforts of regular blackouts and heating outages, as winter approaches. A light snow dusted the capital Thursday, where the temperature fell below freezing.
The city’s military administration said air defenses shot down at least two cruise missiles and five Iranian-made exploding drones.
Russian strikes also hit the central city of Dnipro and Ukraine’s southern Odesa region for the first time in weeks. And critical infrastructure was also hit in the northeastern region of Kharkiv, in the area of Izyum, wounding three workers, the regional administration said.
The head of Ukraine’s presidential office, Andriy Yermak, called the strikes on energy targets “naive tactics of cowardly losers” in a Telegram post on Thursday.
“Ukraine has already withstood extremely difficult strikes by the enemy, which did not lead to results the Russian cowards hoped for,” Yermak wrote.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy posted on Telegram a video that he said was one of the blasts in Dnipro. The footage from a vehicle dashcam showed a fiery blast engulfing a rainy road.
“This is another confirmation from Dnipro of how terrorists want peace,” Zelenskyy wrote, referring to the Kremlin's forces. “The peaceful city and people’s wish to live their accustomed lives. Going to work, to their affairs. A rocket attack!”
Valentyn Reznichenko, governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region, said a large fire erupted in Dnipro after the strikes on the city hit an industrial target. The attack wounded at least 14 people, Reznichenko said.
An infrastructure target was hit on the Odesa region, Gov. Maksym Marchenko said on Telegram, warning about the threat of a “massive missile barrage on the entire territory of Ukraine.”
Elsewhere, a Russian strike that hit a residential building killed at least four people overnight in Vilnia in the southern region of Zaporizhzhia. Rescuers combed the rubble for any other victims, according to Kyrylo Tymoshenko, a senior official in the Ukrainian presidential office.
Officials in the Poltava, Kharkiv, Khmelnytskyi and Rivne regions urged residents to stay in bomb shelters.
The war's impact has been felt far beyond Ukraine, perhaps most significantly in global food markets. Ukraine and Russia are among the world's largest exporters of grain, and Russia is also a significant producer of fertilizer.
There were concerns in recent days about the fate of a U.N.- and Turkey-brokered deal meant to address disruptions to those exports that was set to expire Saturday. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres confirmed it had been extended for four months.
In addition to securing the safe passage of Ukrainian exports, Guterres said in a statement the United Nations is also “fully committed” to removing obstacles that have impeded the export of food and fertilizer from Russia.
The Russian Foreign Ministry confirmed the extension, and Zelenskyy called it a “key decision in the global fight against the food crisis.”
___
Associated Press writers Jamey Keaten in Geneva, and Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey, contributed to this report.
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Analysis: Have China and India shifted stance on Russia war?
By FOSTER KLUG
Today
NUSA DUA, Indonesia (AP) — China and India, after months of refusing to condemn Russia’s war in Ukraine, did not stand in the way of the release this week of a statement by the world’s leading economies that strongly criticizes Moscow.
Could this, at last, signal a bold new policy change by Beijing and New Delhi to align themselves with what the United States and its allies believe is the best way to end a war that has brought death and misery to Ukraine and disrupted millions of lives as food and energy prices soar and economies crack?
There's certainly an eagerness by a world weary of war to see it as the beginning of a shift by the burgeoning global powers.
Look close enough, however, and there’s enough subtlety, not to mention spots of vagueness, in both the official statement released at the end of the Group of 20 summit in Bali, Indonesia, and in actions from China and India themselves, to raise questions about whether a real change is underway.
Their positions will become clearer in coming weeks, but for now both nations, which have significant trade ties with Russia and have so far stopped short of outright criticism of the war, may simply be looking out for their own interests and keeping future options open.
Figuring out what exactly happened in Bali matters because there’s growing worry that without political and diplomatic pressure by China and India, Russia will be far less likely to end its war.
The conflict in Ukraine loomed large over the two-day summit on Bali, which was attended by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. News early Wednesday of an explosion that rocked eastern Poland prompted U.S. President Joe Biden to hastily arrange an emergency meeting with Group of Seven and NATO members at the summit.
The backroom wrangling at the G-20 over how to address Russia’s invasion in its statement was “very, very tough,” summit host Indonesian President Joko Widodo said.
“Most members strongly condemned the war in Ukraine and stressed it is causing immense human suffering and exacerbating existing fragilities in the global economy,” the statement said.
The less-than-universal language — “most members” — signals the presence of dissent, as does an acknowledgement that “there were other views and different assessments” and that the G-20 is “not the forum to resolve security issues.”
The final product, however, was seen by some as a strong rebuke of a war that has killed thousands, heightened global security tensions and disrupted the world economy.
The public statement used language from a March U.N. resolution that deplored “in the strongest terms the aggression by the Russian Federation against Ukraine” and demanded “its complete and unconditional withdrawal” from Ukrainian territory.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said the G-20 summit’s “surprisingly clear words” on Ukraine “wouldn’t have been possible if important countries hadn’t helped us to come together this way — that includes India and it also includes, for example, South Africa.”
“This is something which shows that there are many in the world who don’t think this war is right, who condemn it, even if they abstained in the votes at the United Nations for various reasons,” Scholz said. “And I am sure that this is one of the results of this summit: the Russian president stands almost alone in the world with his policy.”
John Kirton, director of the G-20 Research Group, called it a “big breakthrough” and an “active shift” by China and India in which they joined the “democratic side of the great immediate geopolitical divide.”
Privately, however, some diplomats were wary about declaring that China has shifted its stance on Russia.
Chinese President Xi Jinping may have simply made a decision to not be seen as a spoiler or outlier during face-to-face meetings with other leaders in Bali. The statement also allows China to avoid going all-in with a Russia that is looking more and more isolated as it increases attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure.
What Beijing hasn’t done is change — or even publicly question — its fundamental relations with Russia.
China has closely aligned its foreign policy with Russia in recent years, as pipeline projects and natural gas sales have brought them closer economically.
It has refused to publicly criticize Russia’s aggression or even refer to it as an invasion, while criticizing sanctions and accusing the United States and NATO of provoking Putin, although it has warned against allowing the conflict to go nuclear.
Just weeks before Moscow's invasion, the Russian and Chinese leaders met in Beijing, where they signed a joint statement affirming that their bilateral relationship had “no” limits.
It was unclear whether China pushed for the softening language in the G-20 statement acknowledging “other views and different assessments” and that the G-20 is “not the forum to resolve security issues,” but Shi Yinhong, professor of international relations at Beijing’s Renmin University, said it has pushed for such phrases on other occasions.
For India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has also avoided criticism of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Modi, however, indicated for the first time in public India’s discomfort with the attack when he met Putin in September.
“I know that today’s era is not of war,” Modi told Putin.
That message "resonated very deeply across all the delegations and helped to bridge the gap across different parties and contributed to the successful outcome of the document” in Bali, Indian Foreign Secretary Vinay Kwatra told reporters.
Navdeep Suri, a retired Indian diplomat, said he sees a subtle shift in India’s position in dealing with Russia.
China, however, may be “in a far more awkward position than India because China is the one that promised unlimited support to Russia a few days before the invasion,” Suri said. "China has (now) gone along with such tough language, including the unconditional and complete withdrawal of Russian forces from Ukraine.”
Dilip Sinha, another retired Indian diplomat, noted that India continues to buy oil, to trade with Russia and to abstain from U.N. resolutions critical of Russia.
"There is a feeling of bravado in India that it has its way. I don’t see any change at all in India’s policy on Russia on the war in Ukraine,” Sinha said.
___
Foster Klug, AP’s news director for the Koreas, Japan, Australia and the South Pacific, has covered Asia since 2005.
___
Associated Press writer Ashok Sharma in New Delhi contributed to this story.
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Where's Putin? Leader leaves bad news on Ukraine to others
By DASHA LITVINOVA
Today
TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — When Russia's top military brass announced in a televised appearance that they were pulling troops out of the key city of Kherson in southern Ukraine, one man missing from the room was President Vladimir Putin.
As Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Gen. Sergei Surovikin, Russia’s chief commander in Ukraine, stiffly recited the reasons for the retreat in front of the cameras on Nov. 9, Putin was touring a neurological hospital in Moscow, watching a doctor perform brain surgery.
Later that day, Putin spoke at another event but made no mention of the pullout from Kherson -– arguably Russia’s most humiliating withdrawal in Ukraine. In the days that followed, he hasn't publicly commented on the topic.
Putin’s silence comes as Russia faces mounting setbacks in nearly nine months of fighting. The Russian leader appears to have delegated the delivery of bad news to others — a tactic he used during the coronavirus pandemic.
Kherson was the only regional capital Moscow’s forces had seized in Ukraine, falling into Russian hands in the first days of the invasion. Russia occupied the city and most of the outlying region, a key gateway to the Crimean Peninsula, for months.
Moscow illegally annexed the Kherson region, along with three other Ukrainian provinces, earlier this year. Putin personally hosted a pomp-filled Kremlin ceremony formalizing the moves in September, proclaiming that “people who live in Luhansk and Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia become our citizens forever.”
The Russian military reported completing the withdrawal from Kherson and surrounding areas to the eastern bank of the Dnieper River on Nov. 11. Since then, Putin has not mentioned the retreat in any of his public appearances.
Putin “continues to live in the old logic: This is not a war, it is a special operation, main decisions are being made by a small circle of ‘professionals,’ while the president is keeping his distance,” political analyst Tatyana Stanovaya wrote in a recent commentary.
Putin, who was once rumored to personally supervise the military campaign in Ukraine and give battlefield orders to generals, appeared this week to be focused on everything but the war.
He discussed bankruptcy procedures and car industry problems with government officials, talked to a Siberian governor about boosting investments in his region, had phone calls with various world leaders and met with the new president of Russia’s Academy of Science.
On Tuesday, Putin chaired a video meeting on World War II memorials. That was the day when he was expected to speak at the Group of 20 summit in Indonesia — but he not only decided not to attend, he didn't even join it by video conference or send a pre-recorded speech.
The World War II memorial meeting was the only one in recent days in which some Ukrainian cities -– but not Kherson -– were mentioned. After the meeting, Putin signed decrees awarding the occupied cities of Melitopol and Mariupol the title of City of Military Glory, while Luhansk was honored as City of Labor Merit.
Independent political analyst Dmitry Oreshkin attributed Putin’s silence to the fact he has built a political system akin to that of the Soviet Union, in which a leader – or “vozhd” in Russian, a term used to describe Josef Stalin – by definition is incapable of making mistakes.
“Putin and Putin’s system … is built in a way that all defeats are blamed on someone else: enemies, traitors, a stab in the back, global Russophobia -– anything, really,” Oreshkin said. “So if he lost somewhere, first, it’s untrue, and second -– it wasn’t him.”
Some of Putin’s supporters questioned such obvious distancing from what even pro-Kremlin circles viewed as a critical developments in the war.
For Putin to have phone calls with the leaders of Armenia and the Central African Republic at the time of the retreat from Kherson was more troubling than “the very tragedy of Kherson,” said pro-Kremlin political analyst Sergei Markov in a post on Facebook.
"At first, I didn’t even believe the news, that’s how incredible it was,” Markov said, describing Putin’s behavior as a “demonstration of a total withdrawal.”
Others sought to put a positive spin on the retreat and weave Putin into it. Pro-Kremlin TV host Dmitry Kiselev, on his flagship news show Sunday night, said the logic behind the withdrawal from Kherson was “to save people.”
According to Kiselev, who spoke in front of a large photo of Putin looking preoccupied with a caption saying, “To Save People,” it was the same logic the president uses – “to save people, and in specific circumstances, every person.”
That's how some ordinary Russians can view the retreat, too, analysts say.
“Given the growing number of people who want peace talks, even among Putin’s supporters, any such maneuver is taken calmly or even as a sign of a possible sobering up –- saving manpower, the possibility of peace,” said Andrei Kolesnikov, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment.
For Russia's hawks -– vocal Kremlin supporters who have been calling for drastic battlefield steps and weren’t thrilled about the Kherson retreat -– there are regular barrages of missile strikes on Ukraine’s power grid, analyst Oreshkin said.
Moscow launched one Tuesday. With about 100 missiles and drones fired at targets across Ukraine, it was the biggest attack to date on the country’s power grid and plunged millions into darkness.
Oreshkin believes that such attacks don’t inflict too much damage onto Ukraine’s military and don’t change much on the battlefield.
“But it is necessary to create an image of a victorious ‘vozhd.’ So it is necessary to carry out some kind of strikes and scream about them loudly. That’s what they’re doing right now, in my opinion,” he said.
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Damn you Brandon! Now you’re getting the attention of conservative opinion writers. What’s next? An endorsement from Maggie Three Names for re-election?
OpinionBiden deserves props for his masterful Ukraine policy
This week’s report that a Russian-made missile had fallen in Poland, a NATO ally, could have increased tensions with Russia and even led to direct conflict between the belligerent nation and the Western alliance. The fact that it didn’t casts a light on one of the year’s underreported stories: how masterfully the Biden administration has handled the Ukraine crisis.
Some of my fellow conservatives will strenuously disagree with this assessment. In their telling, the United States has no essential national security interest in a free and democratic Ukraine. President Biden’s decision to send massive amounts of military aid to the nation unnecessarily risked war with nuclear-armed Russia. And his decision to join our European allies in imposing severe economic sanctions on Russia is harming our economy, too.
But that ignores the key fact: America’s primary national security interest is to keep our potential enemies far away from our shores, and the least costly and most effective way of doing that is to assemble a network of allies across the globe. We take interest in their security objectives; they, in turn, assist us in obtaining ours.
Biden understood from the start of the conflict in Ukraine that our European allies in NATO viewed Russian designs very differently. Our allies in Eastern Europe, such as Poland, feared they would be next if NATO allowed Ukraine to be conquered. Our allies in Western Europe, such as Germany and France, also feared an aggressive Russia but thought that Russian President Vladimir Putin could be bought off with his country’s extensive economic ties with their countries. Balancing those views was the most important principle animating U.S. policy in the run-up to the invasion.
Thus came Biden’s elegant two-step: First, he warned the world that the invasion was coming and that there would be serious consequences if Russia went through with it. Second, he let Germany and France take the diplomatic lead, giving them the opportunity to prove that their assessments of Putin were correct. Biden also chose not to rush massive amounts of arms to Ukraine, an act that would have given Putin a pretext for the invasion he had already decided to launch. Being too quick to provide weapons also would have harmed Biden’s ability to rally recalcitrant allies in an anti-Russian cordon.
This dance worked perfectly. The Eastern allies knew we shared their fears, and the Western allies were shocked into action after their views about Putin proved dangerously naive. This gave Biden massive credibility to shape the alliance’s actions regarding Russia.
As a result, the economic sanctions the U.S.-led grouping levied were far more severe than almost any observer would have thought possible beforehand. And the military aid the alliance provided has been much more lethal than any that had been contemplated just a year ago. Ukraine now has the upper hand in a war against a foe three times as large. That’s all due to Biden’s superb diplomacy.
This maneuvering has also created collateral behaviors that redound to U.S. security. European powers had been leery of confronting China before Russia’s invasion, weakening the United States’ ability to contain its primary security threat. Now, with Chinese President Xi Jinping tacitly supporting Russia, Europe no longer sees China as a benign power. Even though many European elites resent America for its sometimes overbearing diplomatic manner and military swagger, they also know they share more values with the United States than they ever could with an autocratic Russo-Chinese axis. They are now likelier to back our initiatives to reduce China’s economic and diplomatic influence.
None of this was preordained. A U.S. president whose primary goal was to prevent confrontation with Russia might have been inclined to cut a deal with Putin that effectively gave him what he wanted, pushing Europe further into a strategy of appeasement. A president who intended to confront Russia might have involved the United States too deeply in Ukraine, alienating our allies and setting up the potential for a direct military clash between superpowers. Biden’s middle course avoided these missteps and set the United States up to reap massive benefits.
Biden will have to keep this balanced approach as the war continues. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky would like to see the United States and NATO involve themselves more directly in his war, which is why he was quick to argue that his country was not responsible for the missile that fell in Poland. But the more territory Ukraine retakes, the closer it gets to the territory Russia seized in 2014. We now know Putin will not risk war with the West over Kherson or Zaporizhzhia. He might feel differently if a U.S.-armed Ukraine threatens to retake Crimea.
But those concerns are in the future. For now, it appears that Biden has reinvigorated NATO and brought the Europeans closer to our views on China. That’s cause for celebration across the partisan divide.
Damn you Brandon! Now you’re getting the attention of conservative opinion writers. What’s next? An endorsement from Maggie Three Names for re-election?
Opinion
Biden deserves props for his masterful Ukraine policy
This week’s report that a Russian-made missile had fallen in Poland, a NATO ally, could have increased tensions with Russia and even led to direct conflict between the belligerent nation and the Western alliance. The fact that it didn’t casts a light on one of the year’s underreported stories: how masterfully the Biden administration has handled the Ukraine crisis.
Some of my fellow conservatives will strenuously disagree with this assessment. In their telling, the United States has no essential national security interest in a free and democratic Ukraine. President Biden’s decision to send massive amounts of military aid to the nation unnecessarily risked war with nuclear-armed Russia. And his decision to join our European allies in imposing severe economic sanctions on Russia is harming our economy, too.
But that ignores the key fact: America’s primary national security interest is to keep our potential enemies far away from our shores, and the least costly and most effective way of doing that is to assemble a network of allies across the globe. We take interest in their security objectives; they, in turn, assist us in obtaining ours.
Biden understood from the start of the conflict in Ukraine that our European allies in NATO viewed Russian designs very differently. Our allies in Eastern Europe, such as Poland, feared they would be next if NATO allowed Ukraine to be conquered. Our allies in Western Europe, such as Germany and France, also feared an aggressive Russia but thought that Russian President Vladimir Putin could be bought off with his country’s extensive economic ties with their countries. Balancing those views was the most important principle animating U.S. policy in the run-up to the invasion.
Thus came Biden’s elegant two-step: First, he warned the world that the invasion was coming and that there would be serious consequences if Russia went through with it. Second, he let Germany and France take the diplomatic lead, giving them the opportunity to prove that their assessments of Putin were correct. Biden also chose not to rush massive amounts of arms to Ukraine, an act that would have given Putin a pretext for the invasion he had already decided to launch. Being too quick to provide weapons also would have harmed Biden’s ability to rally recalcitrant allies in an anti-Russian cordon.
This dance worked perfectly. The Eastern allies knew we shared their fears, and the Western allies were shocked into action after their views about Putin proved dangerously naive. This gave Biden massive credibility to shape the alliance’s actions regarding Russia.
As a result, the economic sanctions the U.S.-led grouping levied were far more severe than almost any observer would have thought possible beforehand. And the military aid the alliance provided has been much more lethal than any that had been contemplated just a year ago. Ukraine now has the upper hand in a war against a foe three times as large. That’s all due to Biden’s superb diplomacy.
This maneuvering has also created collateral behaviors that redound to U.S. security. European powers had been leery of confronting China before Russia’s invasion, weakening the United States’ ability to contain its primary security threat. Now, with Chinese President Xi Jinping tacitly supporting Russia, Europe no longer sees China as a benign power. Even though many European elites resent America for its sometimes overbearing diplomatic manner and military swagger, they also know they share more values with the United States than they ever could with an autocratic Russo-Chinese axis. They are now likelier to back our initiatives to reduce China’s economic and diplomatic influence.
None of this was preordained. A U.S. president whose primary goal was to prevent confrontation with Russia might have been inclined to cut a deal with Putin that effectively gave him what he wanted, pushing Europe further into a strategy of appeasement. A president who intended to confront Russia might have involved the United States too deeply in Ukraine, alienating our allies and setting up the potential for a direct military clash between superpowers. Biden’s middle course avoided these missteps and set the United States up to reap massive benefits.
Biden will have to keep this balanced approach as the war continues. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky would like to see the United States and NATO involve themselves more directly in his war, which is why he was quick to argue that his country was not responsible for the missile that fell in Poland. But the more territory Ukraine retakes, the closer it gets to the territory Russia seized in 2014. We now know Putin will not risk war with the West over Kherson or Zaporizhzhia. He might feel differently if a U.S.-armed Ukraine threatens to retake Crimea.
But those concerns are in the future. For now, it appears that Biden has reinvigorated NATO and brought the Europeans closer to our views on China. That’s cause for celebration across the partisan divide.
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'We survived': Kherson comes alive after Russian withdrawal
By HANNA ARHIROVA
Yesterday
KHERSON, Ukraine (AP) — A week since the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson was liberated, residents can't escape reminders of the terrifying eight months they spent under Russian occupation.
People are missing. There are mines everywhere, closed shops and restaurants, a scarcity of electricity and water, and explosions day and night as Russian and Ukrainian forces battle just across the Dnieper River.
Despite the hardships, residents are expressing a mix of relief, optimism, and even joy — not least because of their regained freedom to express themselves at all.
“Even breathing became easier. Everything is different now,” said Olena Smoliana, a pharmacist whose eyes shone with happiness as she recalled the day Ukrainian soldiers entered the city.
People are no longer afraid to leave home or worried that contact with Russian soldiers might lead to a prison or torture cell. They are gathering in city squares — adorned with blue-and-yellow ribbons on their bags and jackets — to recharge phones, collect water and to talk with neighbors and relatives.
“If we survived the occupation, we will survive this without any problems,” said Yulia Nenadyschuk, 53, who had hunkered down at home with her husband, Oleksandr, since the Russian invasion began but now comes downtown every day.
The worst deprivation was the lack of freedom to be yourself, which was like being in a “cage,” she said.
“You couldn’t say anything out loud, you couldn’t speak Ukrainian,” said Oleksandr Nenadyschuk, 57. “We were constantly being watched, you couldn’t even look around.”
Residents of Kherson talk about the "silent terror'' that defined their occupation, which was different than the devastating military sieges that turned other Ukrainian cities — such as Mariupol, Sievierodonetsk, and Lysychansk — to rubble.
Russian forces entered Kherson in the early days of the war from nearby Crimea, which Moscow illegally annexed in 2014, and quickly took over the city. The city was the only regional capital Moscow captured after the invasion began on Feb. 24.
People mostly communicate in Russian in Kherson. Early on in the war, some residents were tolerant of neighbors who sympathized with Russia, but there was a palpable shift during the occupation, said Smoliana, the pharmacist.
“I'm even ashamed to speak Russian,” she said. “They oppressed us emotionally and physically.”
Many people fled the city, but some just disappeared.
Khrystyna Yuldasheva, 18, works in a shop across the street from a building the Russian police used as a detention center and where Ukrainian officials are investigating allegations of torture and abuse.
“There is no one here anymore,” she told a woman who recently came by looking for her son.
Other people sought to leave, but couldn’t. “We tried to leave three times, but they closed all possible exits from the city,” said Tetiana, 37, who didn’t want to be identified by her last name.
While people were euphoric immediately after the Russian retreat, Kherson remains a city on hold. The Russian soldiers left a city devoid of basic infrastructure — water, electricity, transportation and communications.
Many shops, restaurants and hotels are still closed and many people are out of work. Residents were drawn downtown this past week by truckloads of food that arrived from Ukrainian supermarket chains or to take advantage of internet hotspots that were set up.
Russian products can still be found in small shops that survived through occupation. And the city is still adorned with banners touting Russian propaganda like “Ukrainians and Russians are a single nation,” or that encourage Ukrainians to get a Russian passport.
Some Ukrainians curse out loud when they walk past the remnants of war.
The humiliating Russian retreat did not end the sounds of war in Kherson. About 70% of the wider Kherson region is still in Russian hands. Explosions are heard regularly, although locals aren’t always sure whether they are from the mine-removal work or from clashing Russian and Ukrainian artillery.
On Saturday evening, two missiles struck an oil depot in Kherson — the first time a depot was hit in the city since the Russians withdrew, according to firefighters. Associated Press reporters saw a blazing fire and thick black smoke at the scene. Firefighters said the Russians stole firetrucks and ambulances as they retreated, leaving local authorities scrambling for resources to respond to attacks.
“There was a strong explosion,” said Valentyna Svyderska, who lives nearby. “We were scared, everyone was scared ... Because this is an army that is at war with the civilian population."
Earlier in the day, people excitedly waited for the first train to arrive in Kherson since the early days of the invasion. Mykola Desytniakov, 56, hasn’t seen his wife since she left for Kyiv, Ukraine's capital, with their two daughters in June.
Desytniakov stayed behind to take care of his ailing parents, he said, holding a single rose and peering anxiously over the platform.
“She will scold me, she doesn’t like flowers,” he said of his wife. “But I will give them to her anyway.”
Ludmila Olhouskaya didn’t have anyone to meet but went to the station anyway to show her support.
“This is the beginning of a new life,” the 74-year-old said, wiping off tears of joy. “Or rather, the revival of a former one.”
A major obstacle to bringing people back to Kherson, and to the rebuilding effort, will be clearing all the mines the Russians placed inside offices and around critical infrastructure, according to the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs.
“Demining is needed here to bring life back,” Mary Akopian, the deputy internal affairs minister, said. Kherson has a bigger problem with mines than any of the other cities Ukraine reclaimed from the Russians because it had been under occupation for the longest period, she said.
Akopian estimated it would take years to completely clear mines from the city and the surrounding province. Already, 25 people have died clearing mines and other explosives left behind.
Before retreating, Russian soldiers looted from stores and businesses — and even museums. The Ukrainian government estimates that 15,000 artifacts have been stolen from museums in the Kherson region and taken to Crimea, which itself was illegally annexed by Russia in 2014.
“There is, in fact, nothing there,” Kyrylo Tymoshenko, a senior official in Zelenskyy's office, wrote after a trip to the Kherson region. “The Russians killed and mined and robbed all cities and towns.”
Despite the ongoing fighting nearby, people in Kherson feel confident enough about their safety to ignore air-raid warning sirens and gather in large numbers on the streets — to greet each other and to thank Ukrainian soldiers.
Like many residents, the Nenadyschuks do not wince when they hear the explosions in the distance, and they are loathe to complain about any other difficulty they face.
“We are holding on. We are waiting for victory. We won’t whine,” said Yulia Nenadyschuk. “All of Ukraine," her husband added, "is in this state now.”
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US sending Ukraine $400 million in ammunition, generators
By TARA COPP
1 hour ago
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. is sending an additional $400 million in ammunition and generators to Ukraine, the White House announced Wednesday, and is pulling the gear from its own stockpiles to get the support to Kyiv as fast as possible as Russia continues to target Ukraine's energy sources and winter sets in.
Including the latest aid, the U.S. has committed more than $19 billion in weapons and other equipment to Ukraine since Russia attacked on Feb. 24. The new package of aid will be provided through presidential drawdown authority, which allows the Pentagon to take weapons from its own stock and quickly ship them to Ukraine.
The latest package includes 200 generators, an undisclosed amount of additional rounds for both the advanced NASAMS air defense systems and the HIMARS artillery systems the U.S. has shipped to Ukraine, 150 heavy machine guns with thermal sights to shoot down drones, 10,000 120mm mortar rounds and 20 million rounds of small arms ammunition, among other items, the Pentagon said.
Now in its ninth month, the intense firefight in Ukraine has had both sides firing thousands of rounds of munitions a day, from bullets for small arms to truck-sized cruise missiles. In a sign of how intense the ground battle has been, the U.S. to date has provided 104 million rounds of small arms ammunition to Ukraine.
“With Russia’s unrelenting and brutal missile and (drone) attacks on Ukrainian critical energy infrastructure, additional air defense capabilities remain an urgent priority," the Pentagon said in a statement. “The additional munitions for NASAMS and heavy machine guns will help Ukraine counter these urgent threats.”
The continued push of weapons to Kyiv, however, is raising questions about how long the U.S. and partner nations can continue to sustain the fight without harming their own military readiness. Many European nations have already said they have pushed forward all the excess they can afford to send.
Last week, the Pentagon's top weapons buyer, Bill LaPlante, traveled to Brussels to meet with representatives of 45 partner nations to discuss some of Ukraine's top priorities, including more air defense systems and long-range weapons. They discussed coordinating efforts to keep weapons flowing by identifying the capabilities of their individual defense industrial bases as well as the supply chain and production constraints they face, the Pentagon said in a statement.
The flow of weapons comes as the Biden administration seeks to pass an additional $37 billion in military and humanitarian aid for Ukraine during the post-election session of Congress, before Republicans take over control of the House in January. Some Republican members, including potential speaker Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., have questioned the amount of money being spent on Ukraine.
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Putin decries media 'lies' at meeting with soldiers' mothers
Today
MOSCOW (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday hit out at what he said were skewed media portrayals of Moscow’s military campaign in Ukraine as he met with mothers of Russian soldiers fighting there.
"Life is more difficult and diverse that what is shown on TV screens or even on the Internet. There are many fakes, cheating, lies there”, Putin said.
The meeting in the Kremlin with more than a dozen women came as uncertainty persists over whether enlistment efforts may resume in the face of recent battlefield setbacks.
Putin said that he sometimes speaks with troops directly by telephone, according to a Kremlin transcript and photos of the meeting.
“I’ve spoken to (troops) who surprised me with their mood, their attitude to the matter. They didn’t expect these calls from me… (the calls) give me every reason to say that they are heroes,” Putin said.
Some soldiers’ relatives have complained of not being invited to the meeting and have directly criticized Putin’s leadership as well as the recent "partial mobilization” that defense officials said resulted in 300,000 reservists being called up.
Olga Tsukanova of the Council of Mothers and Wives, a movement formed by relatives of mobilized soldiers, said in a video message on the Telegram messaging app authorities have ignored queries and requests from her organization.
“We are here in Moscow, ready to meet with you. We are waiting for your reply,” she said, addressing Putin directly.
“We have men in the ministry of defense, in the military prosecutor’s office, powerful guys in the presidential administration… and mothers on the other side. Will you start a dialogue or will you hide?,” she said in her message. Unconfirmed reports by some Russian media outlets suggested that some of the women meeting with Putin on Friday were members of pro-Kremlin social movements, the ruling United Russia party, or local officials backing Putin’s government.
Valentina Melnikova from of the Union of Committees of Soldiers’ Mothers, a Russian rights organization, told the independent Verstka publication earlier this week that its members were also not invited to the meeting.
Since October, relatives of mobilized soldiers have organized protests in over a dozen Russian regions, calling on the authorities to release their relatives from frontline duty and ensure they had appropriate food rations, shelter and equipment.
Reports by the AP, independent Russian media, and activists have suggested that many of the mobilized reservists are inexperienced, were told to procure basic items such as medical kits and flak jackets themselves, and did not receive proper training before deployment. Some were reported killed within days.
Concerns persist in Russia about whether the Kremlin may renew its mobilization efforts, as Ukrainian forces continue to press a counteroffensive in the country’s south and east. Moscow has suffered a string of battlefield setbacks, losing territory in the northeastern Kharkiv and southern Kherson regions.
While Russian officials last month declared the “partial mobilization” complete, critics have warned it could resume after military enlistment offices are freed up from processing conscripts from Russia’s annual fall draft.
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IDK, there's a whole lot of people big mad at him for not giving Russia what they want therefore potentially inciting WWIII.
I agree with you though,... no brainer for man of the year.
Those people can eat my ass. Putin loves to create no-win scenarios. Ukraine's current options are to be absorbed into Russia where their culture, heritage, and history will be all but erased; or to fight back to desperately try to prevent that. If refusing to be invaded by fighting back catalyzes WWIII, the incitement will be on Putin alone for chicken-shit and antagonistic behaviours, and history will reflect that.
'05 - TO, '06 - TO 1, '08 - NYC 1 & 2, '09 - TO, Chi 1 & 2, '10 - Buffalo, NYC 1 & 2, '11 - TO 1 & 2, Hamilton, '13 - Buffalo, Brooklyn 1 & 2, '15 - Global Citizen, '16 - TO 1 & 2, Chi 2
EV
Toronto Film Festival 9/11/2007, '08 - Toronto 1 & 2, '09 - Albany 1, '11 - Chicago 1
Ukraine: Russia put rocket launchers at nuclear power plant
By E. EDUARDO CASTILLO
Yesterday
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian forces have installed multiple rocket launchers at Ukraine's shut-down Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Ukrainian officials claimed Thursday, raising fears Europe's largest atomic power station could be used as a base to fire on Ukrainian territory and heightening radiation dangers.
Ukraine's nuclear company Energoatom said in a statement that Russian forces occupying the plant have placed several Grad multiple rocket launchers near one of its six nuclear reactors. It said the offensive systems are located at new “protective structures” the Russians secretly built, "violating all conditions for nuclear and radiation safety.”
The claim could not be independently verified.
The Soviet-built multiple rocket launchers are capable of firing rockets at ranges of up to 40 kilometers (25 miles), and Energoatom said they could enable Russian forces to hit the opposite bank of the Dnieper River, where each side blames the other for almost daily shelling in the cities of Nikopol and Marhanets. The plant is in a southern Ukrainian region the Kremlin has illegally annexed.
The Zaporizhzhia station has been under Russian control since the war’s early days. Russia and Ukraine accuse each other of shelling the plant and risking a radiation release. Although the risk of a nuclear meltdown is greatly reduced because all six reactors have been shut down, experts have said a dangerous radiation release is still possible. The reactors were shut down because the fighting kept knocking out external power supplies needed to run the reactors' cooling systems and other safety systems.
The U.N.'s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, has stationed inspectors at the plant and has been trying to persuade both sides in the conflict to agree to a demilitarized zone around it. The agency did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the reported Grad installation. Ukraine has accused the Russians before of having heavy weapons at the plant. The Kremlin has said it needs to maintain control of the plant to defend it from alleged Ukrainian attacks.
With renewed focus on the dangers at Zaporizhzhia in the war, dragging on past nine months, the Kremlin is sending new signals about how to end it. It said Thursday it’s up to Ukraine’s president to end the military conflict, suggesting terms that Kyiv has repeatedly rejected, while Russian President Vladimir Putin vowed to press on with the fighting despite Western criticism.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that "(Ukrainian President Volodymyr) Zelenskyy knows when it may end. It may end tomorrow if he wishes so.”
The Ukraine war has deteriorated relations between Russia and much of the rest of the world, but limited cooperation continues in some areas, such as exchanges of prisoners. On Thursday, in a dramatic swap that had been in the making for months, Russia freed American basketball star Brittney Griner while the United States released a jailed Russian arms dealer.
The Kremlin has long said that Ukraine must accept Russian conditions to end the fighting. It has demanded that Kyiv recognize Crimea — a Ukrainian peninsula that Moscow illegally annexed in 2014 — as part of Russia and also accept Moscow’s other land gains in Ukraine.
Zelenskyy and other Ukrainian officials have repeatedly rejected those conditions, saying the war will end when the occupied territories are retaken or Russian forces leave them.
In an acknowledgement that it’s taking longer than he expected to achieve his goals in the conflict, Putin said Wednesday that the fighting in Ukraine “could be a lengthy process” while describing Moscow's land gains as “a significant result for Russia."
During a conference call with reporters, Peskov said Moscow wasn’t aiming to grab new land but will try to regain control of areas in Ukraine from which it withdrew just weeks after incorporating them into Russia in hastily called referendums — which Ukraine and the West reject as illegal shams. After earlier retreats from the Kyiv and Kharkiv areas, Russian troops last month left the city of Kherson and parts of the Kherson region, one of the four illegally annexed Ukrainian regions.
Putin vowed Thursday to achieve the declared goals in Ukraine regardless of the Western reaction.
“All we have to do is make a move and there is a lot of noise, chatter and outcry all across the universe. It will not stop us fulfilling combat tasks,” Putin said.
He described Russian strikes on Ukraine’s energy facilities and other key infrastructure as a legitimate response to an Oct. 8 truck bombing of a key bridge linking Crimea with Russia’s mainland, and other attacks the Kremlin claimed Ukraine carried out. Putin also cited Ukraine’s move to halt water supplies to the areas in eastern Ukraine that Russia controlled.
“There is a lot of noise now about our strikes on the energy infrastructure,” Putin said at a meeting with soldiers whom he decorated with the country’s top medals. “Yes, we are doing it. But who started it? Who struck the Crimean bridge? Who blew up power lines from the Kursk nuclear power station? Who is not supplying water to Donetsk?”
While stopping short of publicly claiming credit for the attacks, Ukrainian officials welcome their results and hint at Ukrainian involvement.
Heavy fighting continues, mostly in regions Russia annexed. Zelenskyy's office said 11 civilians were killed in Ukraine Wednesday.
The Donetsk region has been the epicenter of the recent fighting. Russian artillery struck the town of Yampil during distribution of humanitarian aid to civilians, Ukrainian officials said. Buildings were damaged in Kurakhove, 35 kilometers (22 miles) west of the regional capital, Donetsk, officials said.
More than ten cities and villages in the region were shelled, including the town of Bakhmut, which has remained in Ukrainian hands despite Moscow’s goal of capturing the entire annexed Donbas region bordering Russia.
In other developments:
— The International Committee of the Red Cross said that for the first time, its representatives visited Ukrainian prisoners of war that Russian forces are holding. Visits to Russian prisoners of war also took place. The Red Cross checked the prisoners' condition, gave them books, personal hygiene products, blankets and warm clothes, and contacted their relatives.
— A Russian ship-borne air defense system knocked down a drone in the area of Sevastopol, the Russian Black Sea Fleet’s base, the regional governor said. Several attacks have been launched since the war began on Sevastopol, which is on the Crimean Peninsula, and the Black Sea Fleet.
— Russian officials said Ukrainian forces shelled the Belgorod province, which borders Ukraine. According to Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov, the shelling damaged power lines in Yakovlevo, 50 kilometers (31 miles) from the Ukrainian border. Though Gladkov did not report casualties or injuries, a local news Telegram channel reported a fire at a military base, with several Russian military personnel killed or wounded. Ukrainian officials maintained their policy of not commenting on cross-border attacks.
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Russia grinds on in eastern Ukraine; Bakhmut 'destroyed'
By JAMEY KEATEN
Today
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian forces have turned the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut into ruins, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said, while Ukraine's military on Saturday reported missile, rocket and air strikes in multiple parts of the country that Moscow is trying to conquer after months of resistance.
The latest battles of Russia's 9 1/2 month war in Ukraine have centered on four provinces that Russian President Vladimir Putin triumphantly — and illegally — claimed to have annexed in late September. The fighting indicates Russia's struggle to establish control of those regions and Ukraine's persistence to reclaim them.
Zelenskyy said the situation “remains very difficult” in several frontline cities in eastern Ukraine's Donetsk and Luhansk provinces. Together, the provinces make up the Donbas, an expansive industrial region bordering Russia that Putin identified as a focus from the war's outset and where Moscow-backed separatists have fought since 2014.
“Bakhmut, Soledar, Maryinka, Kreminna. For a long time, there is no living place left on the land of these areas that have not been damaged by shells and fire," Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address, naming cities that have again found themselves in the crosshairs. “The occupiers actually destroyed Bakhmut, another Donbas city that the Russian army turned into burnt ruins.”
Some buildings remain standing in Bakhmut, and the remaining residents still mill about the streets. But like Mariupol and other contested cities, it endured a long siege and spent weeks without water and power even before Moscow launched massive strikes to take out public utilities across Ukraine.
The Donetsk region's governor, Pavlo Kyrylenko, estimated seven weeks ago that 90% of the city's prewar population of over 70,000 had fled in the months since Moscow focused on seizing the entire Donbas.
The Ukrainian military General Staff reported missile attacks, about 20 airstrikes and more than 60 rocket attacks across Ukraine between Friday and Saturday. Spokesperson Oleksandr Shtupun said the most active fighting was in the Bakhmut district, where more than 20 populated places came under fire. He said Ukrainian forces repelled Russian attacks in Donetsk and neighboring Luhansk.
Russia's grinding eastern offensive succeeded in capturing almost all of Luhansk during the summer. Donetsk eluded the same fate, and the Russian military in recent weeks has poured manpower and resources around Bakhmut in an attempt to encircle the city, analysts and Ukrainian officials have said.
After Ukrainian forces recaptured the southern city of Kherson nearly a month ago, the battle heated up around Bakhmut, demonstrating Putin’s desire for visible gains following weeks of clear setbacks in Ukraine.
Taking Bakhmut would rupture Ukraine’s supply lines and open a route for Russian forces to press on toward Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, key Ukrainian strongholds in Donetsk. Russia has battered Bakhmut with rockets for more than half of the year. A ground assault accelerated after its troops forced the Ukrainians to withdraw from Luhansk in July.
But some analysts have questioned Russia's strategic logic in the relentless pursuit to take Bakhmut and surrounding areas that also came under intense shelling in the past weeks, and where Ukrainian officials reported that some residents were living in damp basements.
“The costs associated with six months of brutal, grinding, and attrition-based combat around #Bakhmut far outweigh any operational advantage that the #Russians can obtain from taking Bakhmut,” the Institute for the Study of War, a think tank in Washington, posted on its Twitter feed on Thursday.
The Russian Defense Ministry said Saturday that Russian troops also pressed their Donbas offensive in the direction of the Donetsk city of Lyman, which is 65 kilometers (40 miles) north of Bakhmut. According to the ministry, they “managed to take more advantageous positions for further advancement.”
Russia’s forces first occupied the city in May but withdrew in early October. Ukrainian authorities said at the time they found mines on the bodies of dead Russian soldiers that were set to explode when someone tried to clear the corpses, as well as the bodies of civilian residents killed by shelling or who had died from a lack of food and medicine.
On Friday, Putin lashed out at recent comments by former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who said a 2015 peace deal for eastern Ukraine negotiated by France and Germany had bought time for Ukraine to prepare for war with Russia this year.
That deal was aimed to cool tensions after pro-Russia separatists seized territory in the Donbas a year earlier, sparking a war with Ukrainian forces that ballooned into a war with Russia itself after the Feb. 24 full-scale invasion.
Ukraine's military on Saturday also reported strikes in other provinces: Kharkiv and Sumy in the northeast, central Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhzhia in the southeast and Kherson in the south. The latter two, along with Donetsk and Luhansk, are the four regions Putin claims are now Russian territory.
A month ago, Russian troops withdrew from the western side of the Dniper River where it cuts through Kherson province, allowing Ukrainians forces to declare the region’s capital city liberated. But the Russians still occupy a majority of the province and have continued to attack from their news positions across the river.
Writing on Telegram, the deputy head of Zelenskyy’s office, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, said two civilians died and another eight were wounded during dozens of mortar, rocket and artillery attacks over the previous day. Residential areas, a hospital, shops, warehouses and critical infrastructure in the Kherson region were damaged, he said.
To the west, drone attacks overnight left much of Odesa province, including its namesake Black Sea port city, without electricity, regional Gov. Maxim Marchenko said. Several energy facilities were destroyed at once, leaving all customers except hospitals, maternity homes, boiler plants and pumping stations were without power, electric company DTEK said Saturday.
The Odesa regional administration’s energy department said late Saturday that fully restoring electricity could take as long as three months and it urged families whose homes are without power to leave the region if possible.
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Free for a month, Kherson still toils to clear Russian traps
By INNA VARENYTSIA and JAMEY KEATEN
Today
KHERSON, Ukraine (AP) — A hand grenade jerry-rigged into the detergent tray of a Kherson home’s washing machine. A street sign maliciously directing passers-by toward a deadly minefield. A police station that allegedly housed a torture chamber but remains so booby-trapped that demining crews can’t even start to hunt for evidence.
The departing Russians left behind all sorts of ugly surprises, and their artillery continues to batter the city from new, dug-in positions across the Dnieper River. The regional administration said Saturday that shelling over the past month has killed 41 people, including a child, in Kherson, and 96 were hospitalized.
Residents’ access to electricity still comes and goes, although water is largely connected, and indoor heating has only very recently been restored — and only to about 70-80% of the city — after the Russians last month blew up a giant central heating station that served much of the city.
For authorities and citizens, sifting through the countless headaches and hazards left behind by the Russians, and bracing for new ones, is a daily chore.
On Friday alone, according to the local affiliate of public broadcaster Suspilne, Russian forces shelled the region 68 times with mortars, artillery, tank and rocket fire. Meanwhile, in the last month, a total of 5,500 people have taken evacuation trains out, and work crews have cleared 190 kilometers (115 miles) of road, Suspilne reported.
When aid trucks arrived a month ago, war-weary and desperate residents flocked to the central Svoboda (Freedom) Square for food and supplies. But after a Russian strike on the square as a line of people queued to enter a bank in late November, such large gatherings have become less common and aid is doled out from smaller, more discreet distribution points.
Regional officials say some 80% of Kherson's pre-war population of about 320,000 fled after the Russians moved in, days after their invasion began on Feb. 24. With some 60,000-70,000 residents remaining, the city now has a feel of a ghost town. Those who remain mostly keep indoors because they're cautious about making forays into the streets.
“Life is getting back to normal, but there is a lot of shelling," said Valentyna Kytaiska, 56, who lives in the nearby village of Chornobaivka. She lamented the nightly “Bam! Bam!” and the unsettling uncertainty of where the Russian ordnance may land.
Normal is a relative term for a country at war. There’s no telling whether what Russia insists on calling a “special military operation” will end in days, weeks, months or even years.
In the meantime, painstaking efforts go on to establish a better sense of normalcy, like clearing the mess and mines left behind by the Russians, in tough wintertime weather.
"The difficulties are very simple, it’s the weather conditions," said one military demining squad member, who goes by the nom de guerre of Tekhnik. He said some of their equipment simply doesn't work in frost conditions “because the soil is frozen like concrete.”
The deployment of additional teams could help ease the heavy workload, he said. “To give you an idea, during the month of our work, we found and removed several tons of mines," said Tekhnik, adding that they focused only on about 10 square kilometers (about 4 square miles).
In Kherson's Beryslavskyi district, a main road was blocked off with a sign reading “Mines Ahead” and rerouting passersby to a smaller road. In fact, it was that side road which was mined, and cost the lives of some military deminers. A few weeks later, four police officers were also killed there, including the police chief from the northern city of Chernihiv, who had come down to help Kherson regain its footing.
The general state of disrepair of weather-beaten roads helped the outgoing Russians disguise their deadly traps: Potholes, some covered with soil, provided a convenient place to lay mines. Sometimes, the Russians cut into the asphalt to make holes themselves.
Demining squads go slowly house-to-house to ensure it's safe for owners or previous residents to return. Experts say a single home can take up to three days to be cleared.
One crew turned up a hand grenade in one house, stuffed into a a washing machine — the pin placed in such a way that opening the detergent tray would set off an explosion.
The city's main police station, where detainees were reportedly tortured, is packed with explosives. When demining squads tried to work their way in, part of the building exploded — so they've shelved the project for now.
Longer term questions remain: Kherson sits in an agricultural region that produces crops as diverse as wheat, tomatoes, and watermelon — a regional symbol. The fields are so heavily mined that about 30% of arable land in the region is unlikely to be planted in the spring, Technik the deminer said. A cursory look reveals the tops of anti-tank mines poking up in the fields.
Even so, after a night of shelling from Friday evening into Saturday, Kherson resident Oleksandr Chebotariov said life had been even worse under the Russians for himself, his wife and 3-year-old daughter.
“It's easier to breathe now,” the 35-year-old radiologist said — only to add: “If the banging doesn’t stop before the New Year, I’m going on vacation.”
___
Keaten reported from Kyiv, Ukraine. Evgeniy Maloletka in Kherson, Ukraine, contributed to this report.
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Dog therapy for kids facing the trauma of the war in Ukraine
By E. EDUARDO CASTILLO
Today
BOYARKA, Ukraine (AP) — Bice is an American pit bull terrier with an important and sensitive job in Ukraine — comforting children traumatized by Russia's war.
The playful 8-year-old gray dog arrived on time this week to a rehabilitation center on the outskirts of the Ukrainian capital, ready to start his duties.
As Bice waited in a hallway, inside of what looked like a school classroom with paintings and some books, a dozen children were seated around a table listening to Oksana Sliepova, a psychologist.
“Who has a dog?," she asked and several hands raised at once while the space filled with shouts of “Me, me, me!”.
One youngster said his dog was named Stitch; “Tank," said another boy, adding that he has a total of five, but he forgot all their names. Everyone burst out laughing.
The seven girls and nine boys — ranging in age from a 2-year-old boy to an 18-year-old young woman — look at first like schoolchildren enjoying class. But they have particular stories: Some witnessed how Russian soldiers invaded their hometowns and beat their relatives. Some are the sons, daughters, brothers or sisters of soldiers who are on the front lines, or were killed on them.
They come together at the Center for Social and Psychological Rehabilitation, a state-operated community center where people can get help coping with traumatic experiences after Russia's invasion in February. Staffers provide regular psychological therapy for anyone who has been affected in any way by the war.
In the past they have worked with horses, but now they are adding support from another four-legged friend: Canine therapy.
Located in Boyarka, a suburb around 20 kilometers (12 miles) southwest of Kyiv, the center was established in 2000 as part of an effort to give psychological support to people affected, directly or indirectly, by the explosion at the nuclear plant in Chernobyl in 1986.
Now it focuses on people affected by the war. These days, when some areas are without power after the Russian attacks to Ukrainian energy infrastructure, the two-story building is one of the few places with light and heating.
With the kids gathered, some wearing festive blue or red Christmas hats, Sliepova cagily asked if they wanted to meet someone. Yes, they did, came the response. The door opened. The faces of the children glowed. They smiled.
And in came Bice, the tail-wagging therapist.
Darina Kokozei, the pooch's owner and handler, asked the children to come one by one, to ask him to do a trick or two. He sat. He stood up on his hind legs. He extended a paw, or rolled over. Then, a group hug — followed by a few tasty treats for him.
For more than 30 minutes, Bice let everybody to touch him and hug him, without ever barking. It was as if nothing else mattered at that moment, as if there were nothing to worry about — like, say, a war ravaging their country.
This is the first time that Sliepova has worked with a dog as part of her therapies. But, she said, "I read a lot of literature that working with dogs, with four-legged rehabilitators, helps children reduce stress, increase stress resistance, and reduce anxiety.”
The kids did not seem stressed out, but of course the reality is still out there.
She observed how some children are scared of loud noises, like when someone closes a window or when they hear the sound of a jet. Some drop to the floor or start asking whether there's a bomb shelter close.
Among the children were a brother and sister from Kupyansk, a city in the eastern region of Kharkiv, who witnessed Russian soldiers storming into their home with machine guns, grabbing their grandfather, putting a bag on his head and beating him, Sliepova said.
“Each child is psychologically traumatized in different ways,” she said.
The moms of some of the kids remained almost all the time seated along one of the walls, watching and listening at distance. When Bice came, some took pictures of their children.
Lesya Kucherenko was here with her 9-year-old son, Maxim. She said she can't stop thinking about the war and what could happen to her oldest son, a 19-year-old paratrooper fighting in the town of Bakhmut in the the eastern Donetsk region — one of the most active fronts these days.
Maxim smiled as he plays with Bice, but he was always checking on his mom and turned his head around to see her every once in a while.
Kucherenko said sometimes she breaks into tears when thinking about her soldier son. Right before this session, she got a call from him. He told her that he was fine, and by just remembering that, she started crying. The next second, Maxim was there, asking why.
“You see? He's comforting me — not me him,” she said.
As for the comforting canine, what's the best message that Bice offers the kids?
Owner Kokozei needs to think for only a couple of seconds, and replies: “Freedom.”
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Cornered in Ukraine, Putin ditches annual news conference
By The Associated Press
1 hour ago
President Vladimir Putin has ditched his annual marathon news conference following a series of battlefield setbacks in Ukraine — a tacit acknowledgment that the Russian leader's war has gone badly wrong.
Putin typically uses the year-end ritual to polish his image, answering a wide range of questions on domestic and foreign policy to demonstrate his grip on details and give the semblance of openness even though the event is tightly stage-managed.
But this year, with his troops on the back foot in Ukraine, it could be impossible to avoid uncomfortable questions about the Russian military's blunders even at a highly choreographed event. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed Monday that Putin wouldn’t hold the news conference this month without explaining why.
“Although questions are almost certainly usually vetted in advance, the cancellation is likely due to increasing concerns about the prevalence of anti-war feeling in Russia,” the U.K. Defense Ministry wrote in a commentary on Twitter.
“Kremlin officials are almost certainly extremely sensitive about the possibility that any event attended by Putin could be hijacked by unsanctioned discussion about the ‘special military operation,'” it said, using Moscow's term for the war.
Some of his previous performances lasted for more than 4 1/2 hours, during which he has sometimes faced some pointed questions, but used them to mock the West or denigrate his domestic opponents.
Putin also has canceled another annual fixture this year, a televised call-in show in which he takes questions from the public to nurture his father-of-the-nation image.
And he has so far failed to deliver the annual televised state-of-the-nation address to parliament, a constitutional obligation. No date has been set for Putin’s address.
The Kremlin has muzzled any criticism of its invasion of Ukraine from the liberal anti-war camp, shutting independent media outlets and criminalizing the spread of any information that differs from the official view — including calling the campaign a war. But it has faced an increasingly vocal criticism from Russian hardliners, who have denounced the president as weak and indecisive and called for ramping up strikes on Ukraine.
Political analyst Abbas Gallyamov said in a video commentary that the decision not to hold the news conference was likely because Putin “has nothing to say from the point of view of strategy.”
Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, claiming Moscow was forced to “demilitarize” the country in the face of NATO's refusal to offer Russia guarantees that Ukraine wouldn't be invited to join the alliance. Ukraine and much of the world denounced the Russian attack on its neighbor as an unprovoked act of aggression.
Putin and his officials hoped to rout the Ukrainian military in a few days, but a fierce Ukrainian resistance — bolstered by Western weapons — quickly derailed those plans. After a botched attempt to quickly capture the Ukrainian capital, the Russian troops pulled back from areas around Kyiv in March.
A mobilization of 300,000 reservists that Putin ordered in September so far has failed to reverse battlefield fortunes for Russia. The mobilization order has prompted hundreds of thousands of Russians to flee abroad to avoid recruitment, and those who have been called up reported glaring shortages of key equipment and supplies.
In a rare acknowledgement last week that the war in Ukraine is taking longer than he anticipated, Putin acknowledged that wrapping up the campaign could be a “lengthy process.” At the same time, he continued to claim that it was going according to plan and would achieve its goals.
Sergei Markov, a pro-Kremlin political expert, noted that Putin's decision to ditch the news conference and his failure so far to deliver the state-of-the-nation address reflected his hesitancy about the future course of action.
“Shall we forge ahead and defeat the enemy?" he wrote, reflecting hardliners’ calls for ramping up missile strikes on Ukraine. “Or on the contrary, shall we prepare for a difficult but necessary compromise?”
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US poised to approve Patriot missile battery for Ukraine
By LOLITA C. BALDOR and MATTHEW LEE
32 mins ago
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. is poised to approve sending a Patriot missile battery to Ukraine, finally agreeing to an urgent request from Ukrainian leaders desperate for more robust weapons to shoot down incoming Russian attacks, U.S. officials said Tuesday.
The approval is likely to come later this week and could be announced as early as Thursday, said three officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the decision is not final and has not been made public. Two of the officials said the Patriot will come from Pentagon stocks and moved from another country overseas.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy pressed Western leaders as recently as Monday to provide more advanced weapons to help his country in its war with Russia. Providing Patriot surface-to-air missiles would advance the kinds of defense systems the West is sending to help Ukraine repel Russian aerial attacks, and could mark an escalation.
During a video conference on Monday Zelenskyy told host Germany and other leaders of the Group of Seven industrial powers that his country needed long-range missiles, modern tanks, artillery and missile batteries and other high-tech air defense systems to counter Russian attacks that have knocked out electricity and water supplies for millions of Ukrainians.
He acknowledged that, “Unfortunately, Russia still has an advantage in artillery and missiles.” And he said that protecting Ukraine’s energy facilities from Russian missiles and Iranian drones “will be the protection of the whole of Europe, since with these strikes Russia is provoking a humanitarian and migration catastrophe not only for Ukraine, but also for the entire EU.”
White House and Pentagon leaders have said consistently that providing Ukraine with additional air defenses is a priority, and Patriot missiles have been under consideration for some time. One of the officials said that as the winter closed in that consideration took on increased priority.
The administration's potential approval of a Patriot battery was first reported by CNN.
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US poised to approve Patriot missile battery for Ukraine
By LOLITA C. BALDOR and MATTHEW LEE
32 mins ago
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. is poised to approve sending a Patriot missile battery to Ukraine, finally agreeing to an urgent request from Ukrainian leaders desperate for more robust weapons to shoot down incoming Russian attacks, U.S. officials said Tuesday.
The approval is likely to come later this week and could be announced as early as Thursday, said three officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the decision is not final and has not been made public. Two of the officials said the Patriot will come from Pentagon stocks and moved from another country overseas.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy pressed Western leaders as recently as Monday to provide more advanced weapons to help his country in its war with Russia. Providing Patriot surface-to-air missiles would advance the kinds of defense systems the West is sending to help Ukraine repel Russian aerial attacks, and could mark an escalation.
During a video conference on Monday Zelenskyy told host Germany and other leaders of the Group of Seven industrial powers that his country needed long-range missiles, modern tanks, artillery and missile batteries and other high-tech air defense systems to counter Russian attacks that have knocked out electricity and water supplies for millions of Ukrainians.
He acknowledged that, “Unfortunately, Russia still has an advantage in artillery and missiles.” And he said that protecting Ukraine’s energy facilities from Russian missiles and Iranian drones “will be the protection of the whole of Europe, since with these strikes Russia is provoking a humanitarian and migration catastrophe not only for Ukraine, but also for the entire EU.”
White House and Pentagon leaders have said consistently that providing Ukraine with additional air defenses is a priority, and Patriot missiles have been under consideration for some time. One of the officials said that as the winter closed in that consideration took on increased priority.
The administration's potential approval of a Patriot battery was first reported by CNN.
I'm sure they want to get this approved by the current Congress, since no one expects the new House to give Biden (or Ukraine) a win early. I expect this to happen quickly.
US poised to approve Patriot missile battery for Ukraine
By LOLITA C. BALDOR and MATTHEW LEE
32 mins ago
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. is poised to approve sending a Patriot missile battery to Ukraine, finally agreeing to an urgent request from Ukrainian leaders desperate for more robust weapons to shoot down incoming Russian attacks, U.S. officials said Tuesday.
The approval is likely to come later this week and could be announced as early as Thursday, said three officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the decision is not final and has not been made public. Two of the officials said the Patriot will come from Pentagon stocks and moved from another country overseas.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy pressed Western leaders as recently as Monday to provide more advanced weapons to help his country in its war with Russia. Providing Patriot surface-to-air missiles would advance the kinds of defense systems the West is sending to help Ukraine repel Russian aerial attacks, and could mark an escalation.
During a video conference on Monday Zelenskyy told host Germany and other leaders of the Group of Seven industrial powers that his country needed long-range missiles, modern tanks, artillery and missile batteries and other high-tech air defense systems to counter Russian attacks that have knocked out electricity and water supplies for millions of Ukrainians.
He acknowledged that, “Unfortunately, Russia still has an advantage in artillery and missiles.” And he said that protecting Ukraine’s energy facilities from Russian missiles and Iranian drones “will be the protection of the whole of Europe, since with these strikes Russia is provoking a humanitarian and migration catastrophe not only for Ukraine, but also for the entire EU.”
White House and Pentagon leaders have said consistently that providing Ukraine with additional air defenses is a priority, and Patriot missiles have been under consideration for some time. One of the officials said that as the winter closed in that consideration took on increased priority.
The administration's potential approval of a Patriot battery was first reported by CNN.
I'm sure they want to get this approved by the current Congress, since no one expects the new House to give Biden (or Ukraine) a win early. I expect this to happen quickly.
not sure this type of aid requires congressional approval though. its existing stockpiles. think pentagon and admin have some leeway here.
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US poised to approve Patriot missile battery for Ukraine
By LOLITA C. BALDOR and MATTHEW LEE
32 mins ago
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. is poised to approve sending a Patriot missile battery to Ukraine, finally agreeing to an urgent request from Ukrainian leaders desperate for more robust weapons to shoot down incoming Russian attacks, U.S. officials said Tuesday.
The approval is likely to come later this week and could be announced as early as Thursday, said three officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the decision is not final and has not been made public. Two of the officials said the Patriot will come from Pentagon stocks and moved from another country overseas.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy pressed Western leaders as recently as Monday to provide more advanced weapons to help his country in its war with Russia. Providing Patriot surface-to-air missiles would advance the kinds of defense systems the West is sending to help Ukraine repel Russian aerial attacks, and could mark an escalation.
During a video conference on Monday Zelenskyy told host Germany and other leaders of the Group of Seven industrial powers that his country needed long-range missiles, modern tanks, artillery and missile batteries and other high-tech air defense systems to counter Russian attacks that have knocked out electricity and water supplies for millions of Ukrainians.
He acknowledged that, “Unfortunately, Russia still has an advantage in artillery and missiles.” And he said that protecting Ukraine’s energy facilities from Russian missiles and Iranian drones “will be the protection of the whole of Europe, since with these strikes Russia is provoking a humanitarian and migration catastrophe not only for Ukraine, but also for the entire EU.”
White House and Pentagon leaders have said consistently that providing Ukraine with additional air defenses is a priority, and Patriot missiles have been under consideration for some time. One of the officials said that as the winter closed in that consideration took on increased priority.
The administration's potential approval of a Patriot battery was first reported by CNN.
I'm sure they want to get this approved by the current Congress, since no one expects the new House to give Biden (or Ukraine) a win early. I expect this to happen quickly.
not sure this type of aid requires congressional approval though. its existing stockpiles. think pentagon and admin have some leeway here.
I think it depends if it's in a current appropriations bill, like the new Defense bill that just went through the House. I guess we shall see.
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Wartime Ukraine erasing Russian past from public spaces
By JAMEY KEATEN
1 hour ago
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — On the streets of Kyiv, Fyodor Dostoevsky is on the way out. Andy Warhol is on the way in.
Ukraine is accelerating efforts to erase the vestiges of Soviet and Russian influence from its public spaces by pulling down monuments and renaming hundreds of streets to honor its own artists, poets, soldiers, independence leaders and others — including heroes of this year’s war.
Following Moscow’s invasion on Feb. 24 that has killed or injured untold numbers of civilians and soldiers and pummeled buildings and infrastructure, Ukraine's leaders have shifted a campaign that once focused on dismantling its Communist past into one of “de-Russification.”
Streets that honored revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin or the Bolshevik Revolution were largely already gone; now Russia, not Soviet legacy, is the enemy.
It’s part punishment for crimes meted out by Russia, and part affirmation of a national identity by honoring Ukrainian notables who have been mostly overlooked.
Russia, through the Soviet Union, is seen by many in Ukraine as having stamped its domination of its smaller southwestern neighbor for generations, consigning its artists, poets and military heroes to relative obscurity, compared with more famous Russians.
If victors write history, as some say, Ukrainians are doing some rewriting of their own — even as their fate hangs in the balance. Their national identity is having what may be an unprecedented surge, in ways large and small.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has taken to wearing a black T-shirt that says: “I’m Ukrainian.”
He is among the many Ukrainians who were born speaking Russian as a first language. Now, they shun it — or at least limit their use of it. Russian has traditionally been spoken more in the eastern and southern parts of the country. Western Ukraine, farther away from Russia, was quicker to shed Russian and Soviet imagery.
Other parts of the country are now catching up. The eastern city of Dnipro on Friday pulled down a bust of Alexander Pushkin — like Dostoevsky, a giant of 19th century Russian literature. A strap from a crane was unceremoniously looped under the statue’s chin.
This month, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko announced about 30 more streets in the capital will be rechristened.
Volodymyr Prokopiv, deputy head of the Kyiv City Council, said Ukraine's “de-Communization” policy since 2015 had been applied in a “soft” way so as not to offend sensitivities among the country's Russian-speaking and even pro-Moscow population.
“With the war, everything changed. Now the Russian lobby is now powerless – in fact, it doesn’t exist,” Prokopiv said in an interview with The Associated Press in his office overlooking Khreschatik Street, the capital's main thoroughfare. “Renaming these streets is like erasing the propaganda that the Soviet Union imposed on Ukraine.”
During the war, the Russians have also sought to stamp their culture and domination in areas they have occupied.
Andrew Wilson, a professor at University College London, cautioned about "the dangers in rewriting the periods in history where Ukrainians and Russians did cooperate and build things together: I think the whole point about de-imperializing Russian culture should be to specify where we have previously been blind — often in the West.”
Wilson noted that the Ukrainians "are taking a pretty broad-brush approach.”
He cited Pushkin, the 19th century Russian writer, who might understandably rankle some Ukrainians.
To them, for example, the Cossacks — a Slavic people in eastern Europe — “mean freedom, whereas Pushkin depicts them as cruel, barbarous, antiquated. And in need of Russian civilization,” said Wilson, whose book "The Ukrainians” was recently published in its fifth edition.
In its program, Kyiv conducted an online survey, and received 280,000 suggestions in a single day, Prokopiv said. Then, an expert group sifted through the responses, and municipal officials and street residents give a final stamp of approval.
Under the “de-Communization” program, about 200 streets were renamed in Kyiv before this year. In 2022 alone, that same number of streets have been renamed and another 100 are scheduled to get renamed soon, Prokopiv said.
A street named for philosopher Friedrich Engels will honor Ukrainian avant-garde poet Bohdan-Ihor Antonych. A boulevard whose name translates as “Friendship of Peoples” — an allusion to the diverse ethnicities under the USSR – will honor Mykola Mikhnovsky, an early proponent of Ukrainian independence.
Another street recognizes the “Heroes of Mariupol” — fighters who held out for months against a devastating Russian campaign in that Sea of Azov port city that eventually fell. A street named for the Russian city of Volgograd is now called Roman Ratushnyi Street in honor of a 24-year-old civic and environmental activist who was killed in the war.
A small street in northern Kyiv still bears Dostoevsky's name but soon will be named for Warhol, the late Pop Art visionary from the United States whose parents had family roots in Slovakia, across Ukraine's western border.
Valeriy Sholomitsky, who has lived on Dostoevsky Street for nearly 40 years, said he could go either way.
“We have under 20 houses here. That’s very few,” Sholomitsky said as he shoveled snow off the street in front of a fading address sign bearing the name of the Russian writer. He said Warhol was “our artist” — with heritage in eastern Europe:
Now, “it will be even better,” he said.
“Maybe it is right that we are changing many streets now, because we used to name them incorrectly,” he added.
___
Vasilisa Stepanenko and Hanna Arhirova in Kyiv contributed.
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US to send $1.8 billion in aid, Patriot battery, to Ukraine
By LOLITA C. BALDOR and TARA COPP
1 hour ago
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. will send $1.8 billion in military aid to Ukraine in a massive package that will for the first time include a Patriot missile battery and precision guided bombs for their fighter jets, U.S. officials said Tuesday, as the Biden administration prepares to welcome Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to Washington.
U.S. officials described details of the aid on condition of anonymity because it has not yet been announced. The aid signals an expansion by the U.S. in the kinds of advanced weaponry it will send to Ukraine to bolster the country’s air defenses against what has been an increasing barrage of Russian missile strikes.
The package, which was expected to be announced Wednesday, will include about $1 billion in weapons from Pentagon stocks and another $800 million in funding through the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, which funds weapons, ammunition, training and other assistance, officials said.
Zelenskyy and other Ukraine officials have pressed Western leaders to provide more advanced weapons, including the Patriots, to help their country in its war with Russia. The Patriot would be the most advanced surface-to-air missile system the West has provided to Ukraine to help repel Russian aerial attacks. The timing of the military aid announcement — as Zelenskyy makes his first trip out of Ukraine since the war began — sends a strong message of continued U.S. support for Ukraine as the war drags on.
The aid comes as Congress is poised to approve another $44.9 billion in assistance for Ukraine as part of a massive spending bill. That would ensure that U.S. support will continue next year and beyond as Republicans take control of the House in January. Some GOP lawmakers have expressed wariness about the assistance.
The decision to send the Patriot battery comes despite threats from Russia's Foreign Ministry that the delivery of the advanced surface-to-air missile system would be considered a provocative step and that the Patriot and any crews accompanying it would be a legitimate target for Moscow's military.
It's not clear exactly when the Patriot would arrive on the front lines in Ukraine, since U.S. troops will have to train Ukrainian forces on how to use the high-tech system. The training could take several weeks, and is expected to be done at the Grafenwoehr training area in Germany. To date, all training of Ukraine forces by the U.S. and the West has taken place in European countries.
Also included in the package will be an undisclosed number of Joint Direct Attack Munitions kits, or JDAMs, officials said. The kits will be used to modify massive bombs by adding tail fins and precision navigation systems so that rather than being simply dropped from a fighter jet onto a target, they can be released and guided to a target.
U.S. fighter and bomber aircraft use the JDAMs, and the Pentagon has been working to modify them so they can be used by Ukraine.
The U.S. so far has been reluctant to provide Ukraine with American fighter jets. Russia has warned the the advanced aircraft would be considered provocative, and the U.S. to date has said other weaponry would be a better fit, citing the significant maintenance and training needs for those warplanes.
So instead of providing Ukraine those U.S. aircraft, the Pentagon is helping Kyiv find innovative ways to upgrade its fleet with the same capabilities it would get with a U.S. fighter jet.
The aid package will also include an undisclosed number of rockets for the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, thousands of artillery and mortar rounds, trucks, and HARM air-to-surface anti-radiation missiles.
According to officials, the urgent pleadings of Ukrainian leaders and the devastating destruction of the country’s civilian infrastructure, including loss of electricity and heat during winter, ultimately overcame U.S. reservations about supplying the Patriots.
White House and Pentagon leaders have said consistently that providing Ukraine with additional air defenses is a priority, and Patriot missiles have been under consideration for some time. Officials said that as the winter closed in and the Russian bombardment of civilian infrastructure escalated, that consideration took on increased priority.
U.S. officials had balked at providing the Patriots to Ukraine because they could be considered a escalation that would trigger a response from Moscow. In addition, there were concerns about the significant training that would be required and questions about whether U.S. troops would have been required to operate it. President Joe Biden has flatly rejected sending any U.S. combat troops to Ukraine.
One Patriot battery routinely includes up to eight launchers, each of which can hold four missiles. It would be coming from Pentagon training stocks in the U.S..
The entire system, which includes a phased array radar, a control station, computers and generators, typically requires about 90 soldiers to operate and maintain. However, only three soldiers are needed to actually fire it, according to the Army.
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KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Three days after the first Russian bombs struck Ukraine, Andrii Kuprash, the head of a village north of Kyiv, walked into a forest near his home and began to dig. He didn’t stop until he had carved out a shallow pit, big enough for a man like him. It was his just-in-case, a place to lie low if he needed.
He covered it with branches and went back home.
A week later, Kuprash got a call around 8 a.m. from an unknown number. A man speaking Russian asked if he was the village head. Something was amiss.
“No, you’ve got the wrong number,” Kuprash lied. “We will find you anyway,” the man responded. “It’s better to cooperate with us.’” Kuprash grabbed some camping kit and his warmest coat and headed for his hole in the woods.
Kuprash — and others The Associated Press spoke with — had been quietly warned that they were targets for advancing Russian forces. Word went round in circles of influential Ukrainians: Don’t sleep in your own home. Get rid of your phone. Get out of Ukraine.
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Comments
WASHINGTON (AP) — The top U.S. military officer said Wednesday that he tried to reach out to his Russian counterpart in the aftermath of the missile explosions in Poland, but wasn't able to get through.
Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said his staff tried to get Russia's top-ranking military official Gen. Valery Gerasimov on the phone to discuss the incident with “no success.”
Milley didn’t elaborate on the efforts, but the lack of communications raises concerns about high-level U.S.-Russian communications in a crisis. A strike against Poland, a NATO member, could have risked a larger conflict if it turned out that Russia had launched the strike.
The U.S. and other top leaders now say they believe the strike was probably launched by Ukrainian air defenses to defend against a Russian missile bombardment. But uncertainty swirled for hours. Several U.S. defense officials said it isn't unusual for Gerasimov to not be available for a call.
The lack of communication is worrisome, especially given the potential implications of the strike, said John Tierney, executive director of the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation in Washington.
Open lines of communication “are vital if we are to avoid the risk of conflict caused by misconception, miscalculations or mistake,” Tierney said. “It is unsettling to learn from General Milley that his counterpart was unreachable or not willing to engage when an explosion occurred in Poland.”
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Milley did talk to his military counterparts in Ukraine and Poland as the governments worked quickly to assess whether the missile that killed two people in Poland had been launched by Russia or Ukraine.
The conversation came as Milley has said that Russia's recent defeat in the key southern city Kherson and the possible slowdown of military operations in the winter could provide an opportunity to negotiate.
“You want to negotiate at a time when you’re at your strength, and your opponent is at weakness,” Milley said at a Pentagon briefing Wednesday. “The Russian military is suffering tremendously," he said, citing large losses of Russian tanks, fighting vehicles, fighter jets and helicopters.
If fighting slows down, Milley said that may become “a window” for talks about a political solution.
Both he and U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said that they expect Ukraine to keep fighting through the winter, and the U.S. and its allies will continue to provide more support and weapons. And it will be up to Ukraine to determine any negotiation plans.
“We’ve said repeatedly that the Ukrainians are going to decide that and not us. And we will support them for as long as it takes,” said Austin, who was also at the briefing.
The missile that landed in Poland Tuesday was launched during the "largest wave of missiles that we’ve seen since the beginning of the war,” Austin said. On Tuesday Russia launched as many as 100 missiles at Ukraine as Moscow intensifies its airstrikes following significant ground losses.
Milley said it's unlikely that either side can gain a military victory quickly. He said the chance of Russia, which currently controls about 20% of Ukraine, overrunning the entire country “is close to zero.” And, he added, the “task of militarily kicking the Russians physically out of Ukraine is a very difficult task. And it’s not going to happen in the next couple of weeks unless the Russian army completely collapses, which is unlikely.”
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KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian airstrikes targeted Ukraine’s energy facilities again Thursday as the first snow of the season fell in Kyiv, a harbinger of the hardship to come if Moscow’s missiles continue to take out power and gas plants as winter descends.
Separately, the United Nations announced the extension of a deal to ensure exports of grain and fertilizers from Ukraine that were disrupted by the war. The deal was set to expire soon, renewing fears of a global food crisis if exports were blocked from one of the world's largest grain producers.
Even as all sides agreed to extend the deal, air raid sirens sounded across Ukraine on Thursday. At least four people were killed and more than a dozen others wounded in the drone and missile strikes, including one that hit a residential building, authorities said.
The Kremlin’s forces have suffered a series of setbacks on the ground, the latest being the loss of the southern city of Kherson. In the face of those defeats, Russia has increasingly resorted to aerial onslaughts aimed at energy infrastructure and other civilian targets in parts of Ukraine it doesn’t hold.
Thursday's salvo appeared to be on a lesser scale than the nationwide barrage of more than 100 missiles and drones that knocked out power to 10 million people earlier this week. Tuesday's strikes were described by Ukraine’s energy minister as the biggest barrage yet of the nearly 9-month-old invasion against the battered power grid.
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It also resulted in a missile landing in Poland, killing two people. Authorities are still trying to ascertain where that missile came from, with early indications pointing to a Ukrainian air defense system meant to counter the Russian bombardment.
The renewed bombings come as many Ukrainians are coping with the discomforts of regular blackouts and heating outages, as winter approaches. A light snow dusted the capital Thursday, where the temperature fell below freezing.
The city’s military administration said air defenses shot down at least two cruise missiles and five Iranian-made exploding drones.
Russian strikes also hit the central city of Dnipro and Ukraine’s southern Odesa region for the first time in weeks. And critical infrastructure was also hit in the northeastern region of Kharkiv, in the area of Izyum, wounding three workers, the regional administration said.
The head of Ukraine’s presidential office, Andriy Yermak, called the strikes on energy targets “naive tactics of cowardly losers” in a Telegram post on Thursday.
“Ukraine has already withstood extremely difficult strikes by the enemy, which did not lead to results the Russian cowards hoped for,” Yermak wrote.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy posted on Telegram a video that he said was one of the blasts in Dnipro. The footage from a vehicle dashcam showed a fiery blast engulfing a rainy road.
“This is another confirmation from Dnipro of how terrorists want peace,” Zelenskyy wrote, referring to the Kremlin's forces. “The peaceful city and people’s wish to live their accustomed lives. Going to work, to their affairs. A rocket attack!”
Valentyn Reznichenko, governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region, said a large fire erupted in Dnipro after the strikes on the city hit an industrial target. The attack wounded at least 14 people, Reznichenko said.
An infrastructure target was hit on the Odesa region, Gov. Maksym Marchenko said on Telegram, warning about the threat of a “massive missile barrage on the entire territory of Ukraine.”
Elsewhere, a Russian strike that hit a residential building killed at least four people overnight in Vilnia in the southern region of Zaporizhzhia. Rescuers combed the rubble for any other victims, according to Kyrylo Tymoshenko, a senior official in the Ukrainian presidential office.
Officials in the Poltava, Kharkiv, Khmelnytskyi and Rivne regions urged residents to stay in bomb shelters.
The war's impact has been felt far beyond Ukraine, perhaps most significantly in global food markets. Ukraine and Russia are among the world's largest exporters of grain, and Russia is also a significant producer of fertilizer.
There were concerns in recent days about the fate of a U.N.- and Turkey-brokered deal meant to address disruptions to those exports that was set to expire Saturday. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres confirmed it had been extended for four months.
In addition to securing the safe passage of Ukrainian exports, Guterres said in a statement the United Nations is also “fully committed” to removing obstacles that have impeded the export of food and fertilizer from Russia.
The Russian Foreign Ministry confirmed the extension, and Zelenskyy called it a “key decision in the global fight against the food crisis.”
___
Associated Press writers Jamey Keaten in Geneva, and Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey, contributed to this report.
___
Follow the AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
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NUSA DUA, Indonesia (AP) — China and India, after months of refusing to condemn Russia’s war in Ukraine, did not stand in the way of the release this week of a statement by the world’s leading economies that strongly criticizes Moscow.
Could this, at last, signal a bold new policy change by Beijing and New Delhi to align themselves with what the United States and its allies believe is the best way to end a war that has brought death and misery to Ukraine and disrupted millions of lives as food and energy prices soar and economies crack?
There's certainly an eagerness by a world weary of war to see it as the beginning of a shift by the burgeoning global powers.
Look close enough, however, and there’s enough subtlety, not to mention spots of vagueness, in both the official statement released at the end of the Group of 20 summit in Bali, Indonesia, and in actions from China and India themselves, to raise questions about whether a real change is underway.
Their positions will become clearer in coming weeks, but for now both nations, which have significant trade ties with Russia and have so far stopped short of outright criticism of the war, may simply be looking out for their own interests and keeping future options open.
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Figuring out what exactly happened in Bali matters because there’s growing worry that without political and diplomatic pressure by China and India, Russia will be far less likely to end its war.
The conflict in Ukraine loomed large over the two-day summit on Bali, which was attended by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. News early Wednesday of an explosion that rocked eastern Poland prompted U.S. President Joe Biden to hastily arrange an emergency meeting with Group of Seven and NATO members at the summit.
The backroom wrangling at the G-20 over how to address Russia’s invasion in its statement was “very, very tough,” summit host Indonesian President Joko Widodo said.
“Most members strongly condemned the war in Ukraine and stressed it is causing immense human suffering and exacerbating existing fragilities in the global economy,” the statement said.
The less-than-universal language — “most members” — signals the presence of dissent, as does an acknowledgement that “there were other views and different assessments” and that the G-20 is “not the forum to resolve security issues.”
The final product, however, was seen by some as a strong rebuke of a war that has killed thousands, heightened global security tensions and disrupted the world economy.
The public statement used language from a March U.N. resolution that deplored “in the strongest terms the aggression by the Russian Federation against Ukraine” and demanded “its complete and unconditional withdrawal” from Ukrainian territory.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said the G-20 summit’s “surprisingly clear words” on Ukraine “wouldn’t have been possible if important countries hadn’t helped us to come together this way — that includes India and it also includes, for example, South Africa.”
“This is something which shows that there are many in the world who don’t think this war is right, who condemn it, even if they abstained in the votes at the United Nations for various reasons,” Scholz said. “And I am sure that this is one of the results of this summit: the Russian president stands almost alone in the world with his policy.”
John Kirton, director of the G-20 Research Group, called it a “big breakthrough” and an “active shift” by China and India in which they joined the “democratic side of the great immediate geopolitical divide.”
Privately, however, some diplomats were wary about declaring that China has shifted its stance on Russia.
Chinese President Xi Jinping may have simply made a decision to not be seen as a spoiler or outlier during face-to-face meetings with other leaders in Bali. The statement also allows China to avoid going all-in with a Russia that is looking more and more isolated as it increases attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure.
What Beijing hasn’t done is change — or even publicly question — its fundamental relations with Russia.
China has closely aligned its foreign policy with Russia in recent years, as pipeline projects and natural gas sales have brought them closer economically.
It has refused to publicly criticize Russia’s aggression or even refer to it as an invasion, while criticizing sanctions and accusing the United States and NATO of provoking Putin, although it has warned against allowing the conflict to go nuclear.
Just weeks before Moscow's invasion, the Russian and Chinese leaders met in Beijing, where they signed a joint statement affirming that their bilateral relationship had “no” limits.
It was unclear whether China pushed for the softening language in the G-20 statement acknowledging “other views and different assessments” and that the G-20 is “not the forum to resolve security issues,” but Shi Yinhong, professor of international relations at Beijing’s Renmin University, said it has pushed for such phrases on other occasions.
For India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has also avoided criticism of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Modi, however, indicated for the first time in public India’s discomfort with the attack when he met Putin in September.
“I know that today’s era is not of war,” Modi told Putin.
That message "resonated very deeply across all the delegations and helped to bridge the gap across different parties and contributed to the successful outcome of the document” in Bali, Indian Foreign Secretary Vinay Kwatra told reporters.
Navdeep Suri, a retired Indian diplomat, said he sees a subtle shift in India’s position in dealing with Russia.
China, however, may be “in a far more awkward position than India because China is the one that promised unlimited support to Russia a few days before the invasion,” Suri said. "China has (now) gone along with such tough language, including the unconditional and complete withdrawal of Russian forces from Ukraine.”
Dilip Sinha, another retired Indian diplomat, noted that India continues to buy oil, to trade with Russia and to abstain from U.N. resolutions critical of Russia.
"There is a feeling of bravado in India that it has its way. I don’t see any change at all in India’s policy on Russia on the war in Ukraine,” Sinha said.
___
Foster Klug, AP’s news director for the Koreas, Japan, Australia and the South Pacific, has covered Asia since 2005.
___
Associated Press writer Ashok Sharma in New Delhi contributed to this story.
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TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — When Russia's top military brass announced in a televised appearance that they were pulling troops out of the key city of Kherson in southern Ukraine, one man missing from the room was President Vladimir Putin.
As Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Gen. Sergei Surovikin, Russia’s chief commander in Ukraine, stiffly recited the reasons for the retreat in front of the cameras on Nov. 9, Putin was touring a neurological hospital in Moscow, watching a doctor perform brain surgery.
Later that day, Putin spoke at another event but made no mention of the pullout from Kherson -– arguably Russia’s most humiliating withdrawal in Ukraine. In the days that followed, he hasn't publicly commented on the topic.
Putin’s silence comes as Russia faces mounting setbacks in nearly nine months of fighting. The Russian leader appears to have delegated the delivery of bad news to others — a tactic he used during the coronavirus pandemic.
Kherson was the only regional capital Moscow’s forces had seized in Ukraine, falling into Russian hands in the first days of the invasion. Russia occupied the city and most of the outlying region, a key gateway to the Crimean Peninsula, for months.
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Moscow illegally annexed the Kherson region, along with three other Ukrainian provinces, earlier this year. Putin personally hosted a pomp-filled Kremlin ceremony formalizing the moves in September, proclaiming that “people who live in Luhansk and Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia become our citizens forever.”
Just over a month later, however, Russia's tricolor flags came down over government buildings in Kherson, replaced with the yellow-and-blue banners of Ukraine.
The Russian military reported completing the withdrawal from Kherson and surrounding areas to the eastern bank of the Dnieper River on Nov. 11. Since then, Putin has not mentioned the retreat in any of his public appearances.
Putin “continues to live in the old logic: This is not a war, it is a special operation, main decisions are being made by a small circle of ‘professionals,’ while the president is keeping his distance,” political analyst Tatyana Stanovaya wrote in a recent commentary.
Putin, who was once rumored to personally supervise the military campaign in Ukraine and give battlefield orders to generals, appeared this week to be focused on everything but the war.
He discussed bankruptcy procedures and car industry problems with government officials, talked to a Siberian governor about boosting investments in his region, had phone calls with various world leaders and met with the new president of Russia’s Academy of Science.
On Tuesday, Putin chaired a video meeting on World War II memorials. That was the day when he was expected to speak at the Group of 20 summit in Indonesia — but he not only decided not to attend, he didn't even join it by video conference or send a pre-recorded speech.
The World War II memorial meeting was the only one in recent days in which some Ukrainian cities -– but not Kherson -– were mentioned. After the meeting, Putin signed decrees awarding the occupied cities of Melitopol and Mariupol the title of City of Military Glory, while Luhansk was honored as City of Labor Merit.
Independent political analyst Dmitry Oreshkin attributed Putin’s silence to the fact he has built a political system akin to that of the Soviet Union, in which a leader – or “vozhd” in Russian, a term used to describe Josef Stalin – by definition is incapable of making mistakes.
“Putin and Putin’s system … is built in a way that all defeats are blamed on someone else: enemies, traitors, a stab in the back, global Russophobia -– anything, really,” Oreshkin said. “So if he lost somewhere, first, it’s untrue, and second -– it wasn’t him.”
Some of Putin’s supporters questioned such obvious distancing from what even pro-Kremlin circles viewed as a critical developments in the war.
For Putin to have phone calls with the leaders of Armenia and the Central African Republic at the time of the retreat from Kherson was more troubling than “the very tragedy of Kherson,” said pro-Kremlin political analyst Sergei Markov in a post on Facebook.
"At first, I didn’t even believe the news, that’s how incredible it was,” Markov said, describing Putin’s behavior as a “demonstration of a total withdrawal.”
Others sought to put a positive spin on the retreat and weave Putin into it. Pro-Kremlin TV host Dmitry Kiselev, on his flagship news show Sunday night, said the logic behind the withdrawal from Kherson was “to save people.”
According to Kiselev, who spoke in front of a large photo of Putin looking preoccupied with a caption saying, “To Save People,” it was the same logic the president uses – “to save people, and in specific circumstances, every person.”
That's how some ordinary Russians can view the retreat, too, analysts say.
“Given the growing number of people who want peace talks, even among Putin’s supporters, any such maneuver is taken calmly or even as a sign of a possible sobering up –- saving manpower, the possibility of peace,” said Andrei Kolesnikov, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment.
For Russia's hawks -– vocal Kremlin supporters who have been calling for drastic battlefield steps and weren’t thrilled about the Kherson retreat -– there are regular barrages of missile strikes on Ukraine’s power grid, analyst Oreshkin said.
Moscow launched one Tuesday. With about 100 missiles and drones fired at targets across Ukraine, it was the biggest attack to date on the country’s power grid and plunged millions into darkness.
Oreshkin believes that such attacks don’t inflict too much damage onto Ukraine’s military and don’t change much on the battlefield.
“But it is necessary to create an image of a victorious ‘vozhd.’ So it is necessary to carry out some kind of strikes and scream about them loudly. That’s what they’re doing right now, in my opinion,” he said.
—-
Follow AP coverage of the war in Ukraine at: https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
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Opinion Biden deserves props for his masterful Ukraine policy
Some of my fellow conservatives will strenuously disagree with this assessment. In their telling, the United States has no essential national security interest in a free and democratic Ukraine. President Biden’s decision to send massive amounts of military aid to the nation unnecessarily risked war with nuclear-armed Russia. And his decision to join our European allies in imposing severe economic sanctions on Russia is harming our economy, too.
But that ignores the key fact: America’s primary national security interest is to keep our potential enemies far away from our shores, and the least costly and most effective way of doing that is to assemble a network of allies across the globe. We take interest in their security objectives; they, in turn, assist us in obtaining ours.
Biden understood from the start of the conflict in Ukraine that our European allies in NATO viewed Russian designs very differently. Our allies in Eastern Europe, such as Poland, feared they would be next if NATO allowed Ukraine to be conquered. Our allies in Western Europe, such as Germany and France, also feared an aggressive Russia but thought that Russian President Vladimir Putin could be bought off with his country’s extensive economic ties with their countries. Balancing those views was the most important principle animating U.S. policy in the run-up to the invasion.
Thus came Biden’s elegant two-step: First, he warned the world that the invasion was coming and that there would be serious consequences if Russia went through with it. Second, he let Germany and France take the diplomatic lead, giving them the opportunity to prove that their assessments of Putin were correct. Biden also chose not to rush massive amounts of arms to Ukraine, an act that would have given Putin a pretext for the invasion he had already decided to launch. Being too quick to provide weapons also would have harmed Biden’s ability to rally recalcitrant allies in an anti-Russian cordon.
This dance worked perfectly. The Eastern allies knew we shared their fears, and the Western allies were shocked into action after their views about Putin proved dangerously naive. This gave Biden massive credibility to shape the alliance’s actions regarding Russia.
As a result, the economic sanctions the U.S.-led grouping levied were far more severe than almost any observer would have thought possible beforehand. And the military aid the alliance provided has been much more lethal than any that had been contemplated just a year ago. Ukraine now has the upper hand in a war against a foe three times as large. That’s all due to Biden’s superb diplomacy.
This maneuvering has also created collateral behaviors that redound to U.S. security. European powers had been leery of confronting China before Russia’s invasion, weakening the United States’ ability to contain its primary security threat. Now, with Chinese President Xi Jinping tacitly supporting Russia, Europe no longer sees China as a benign power. Even though many European elites resent America for its sometimes overbearing diplomatic manner and military swagger, they also know they share more values with the United States than they ever could with an autocratic Russo-Chinese axis. They are now likelier to back our initiatives to reduce China’s economic and diplomatic influence.
None of this was preordained. A U.S. president whose primary goal was to prevent confrontation with Russia might have been inclined to cut a deal with Putin that effectively gave him what he wanted, pushing Europe further into a strategy of appeasement. A president who intended to confront Russia might have involved the United States too deeply in Ukraine, alienating our allies and setting up the potential for a direct military clash between superpowers. Biden’s middle course avoided these missteps and set the United States up to reap massive benefits.
Biden will have to keep this balanced approach as the war continues. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky would like to see the United States and NATO involve themselves more directly in his war, which is why he was quick to argue that his country was not responsible for the missile that fell in Poland. But the more territory Ukraine retakes, the closer it gets to the territory Russia seized in 2014. We now know Putin will not risk war with the West over Kherson or Zaporizhzhia. He might feel differently if a U.S.-armed Ukraine threatens to retake Crimea.
But those concerns are in the future. For now, it appears that Biden has reinvigorated NATO and brought the Europeans closer to our views on China. That’s cause for celebration across the partisan divide.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/17/biden-deserves-props-ukraine-russia-missile-poland/
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KHERSON, Ukraine (AP) — A week since the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson was liberated, residents can't escape reminders of the terrifying eight months they spent under Russian occupation.
People are missing. There are mines everywhere, closed shops and restaurants, a scarcity of electricity and water, and explosions day and night as Russian and Ukrainian forces battle just across the Dnieper River.
Despite the hardships, residents are expressing a mix of relief, optimism, and even joy — not least because of their regained freedom to express themselves at all.
“Even breathing became easier. Everything is different now,” said Olena Smoliana, a pharmacist whose eyes shone with happiness as she recalled the day Ukrainian soldiers entered the city.
Kherson's population has dwindled to around 80,000 from its prewar level near 300,000, but the city is slowly coming alive. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy triumphantly walked the streets on Monday, hailing Russia’s withdrawal — a humiliating defeat for Russian President Vladimir Putin — as the “beginning of the end of the war.”
People are no longer afraid to leave home or worried that contact with Russian soldiers might lead to a prison or torture cell. They are gathering in city squares — adorned with blue-and-yellow ribbons on their bags and jackets — to recharge phones, collect water and to talk with neighbors and relatives.
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“If we survived the occupation, we will survive this without any problems,” said Yulia Nenadyschuk, 53, who had hunkered down at home with her husband, Oleksandr, since the Russian invasion began but now comes downtown every day.
The worst deprivation was the lack of freedom to be yourself, which was like being in a “cage,” she said.
“You couldn’t say anything out loud, you couldn’t speak Ukrainian,” said Oleksandr Nenadyschuk, 57. “We were constantly being watched, you couldn’t even look around.”
Residents of Kherson talk about the "silent terror'' that defined their occupation, which was different than the devastating military sieges that turned other Ukrainian cities — such as Mariupol, Sievierodonetsk, and Lysychansk — to rubble.
Russian forces entered Kherson in the early days of the war from nearby Crimea, which Moscow illegally annexed in 2014, and quickly took over the city. The city was the only regional capital Moscow captured after the invasion began on Feb. 24.
People mostly communicate in Russian in Kherson. Early on in the war, some residents were tolerant of neighbors who sympathized with Russia, but there was a palpable shift during the occupation, said Smoliana, the pharmacist.
“I'm even ashamed to speak Russian,” she said. “They oppressed us emotionally and physically.”
Many people fled the city, but some just disappeared.
Khrystyna Yuldasheva, 18, works in a shop across the street from a building the Russian police used as a detention center and where Ukrainian officials are investigating allegations of torture and abuse.
“There is no one here anymore,” she told a woman who recently came by looking for her son.
Other people sought to leave, but couldn’t. “We tried to leave three times, but they closed all possible exits from the city,” said Tetiana, 37, who didn’t want to be identified by her last name.
While people were euphoric immediately after the Russian retreat, Kherson remains a city on hold. The Russian soldiers left a city devoid of basic infrastructure — water, electricity, transportation and communications.
Many shops, restaurants and hotels are still closed and many people are out of work. Residents were drawn downtown this past week by truckloads of food that arrived from Ukrainian supermarket chains or to take advantage of internet hotspots that were set up.
Russian products can still be found in small shops that survived through occupation. And the city is still adorned with banners touting Russian propaganda like “Ukrainians and Russians are a single nation,” or that encourage Ukrainians to get a Russian passport.
Some Ukrainians curse out loud when they walk past the remnants of war.
The humiliating Russian retreat did not end the sounds of war in Kherson. About 70% of the wider Kherson region is still in Russian hands. Explosions are heard regularly, although locals aren’t always sure whether they are from the mine-removal work or from clashing Russian and Ukrainian artillery.
On Saturday evening, two missiles struck an oil depot in Kherson — the first time a depot was hit in the city since the Russians withdrew, according to firefighters. Associated Press reporters saw a blazing fire and thick black smoke at the scene. Firefighters said the Russians stole firetrucks and ambulances as they retreated, leaving local authorities scrambling for resources to respond to attacks.
“There was a strong explosion,” said Valentyna Svyderska, who lives nearby. “We were scared, everyone was scared ... Because this is an army that is at war with the civilian population."
Earlier in the day, people excitedly waited for the first train to arrive in Kherson since the early days of the invasion. Mykola Desytniakov, 56, hasn’t seen his wife since she left for Kyiv, Ukraine's capital, with their two daughters in June.
Desytniakov stayed behind to take care of his ailing parents, he said, holding a single rose and peering anxiously over the platform.
“She will scold me, she doesn’t like flowers,” he said of his wife. “But I will give them to her anyway.”
Ludmila Olhouskaya didn’t have anyone to meet but went to the station anyway to show her support.
“This is the beginning of a new life,” the 74-year-old said, wiping off tears of joy. “Or rather, the revival of a former one.”
A major obstacle to bringing people back to Kherson, and to the rebuilding effort, will be clearing all the mines the Russians placed inside offices and around critical infrastructure, according to the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs.
“Demining is needed here to bring life back,” Mary Akopian, the deputy internal affairs minister, said. Kherson has a bigger problem with mines than any of the other cities Ukraine reclaimed from the Russians because it had been under occupation for the longest period, she said.
Akopian estimated it would take years to completely clear mines from the city and the surrounding province. Already, 25 people have died clearing mines and other explosives left behind.
Before retreating, Russian soldiers looted from stores and businesses — and even museums. The Ukrainian government estimates that 15,000 artifacts have been stolen from museums in the Kherson region and taken to Crimea, which itself was illegally annexed by Russia in 2014.
“There is, in fact, nothing there,” Kyrylo Tymoshenko, a senior official in Zelenskyy's office, wrote after a trip to the Kherson region. “The Russians killed and mined and robbed all cities and towns.”
Despite the ongoing fighting nearby, people in Kherson feel confident enough about their safety to ignore air-raid warning sirens and gather in large numbers on the streets — to greet each other and to thank Ukrainian soldiers.
Like many residents, the Nenadyschuks do not wince when they hear the explosions in the distance, and they are loathe to complain about any other difficulty they face.
“We are holding on. We are waiting for victory. We won’t whine,” said Yulia Nenadyschuk. “All of Ukraine," her husband added, "is in this state now.”
___
Sam Mednick contributed to this story.
___
Follow all AP stories on the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine.
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WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. is sending an additional $400 million in ammunition and generators to Ukraine, the White House announced Wednesday, and is pulling the gear from its own stockpiles to get the support to Kyiv as fast as possible as Russia continues to target Ukraine's energy sources and winter sets in.
Including the latest aid, the U.S. has committed more than $19 billion in weapons and other equipment to Ukraine since Russia attacked on Feb. 24. The new package of aid will be provided through presidential drawdown authority, which allows the Pentagon to take weapons from its own stock and quickly ship them to Ukraine.
The latest package includes 200 generators, an undisclosed amount of additional rounds for both the advanced NASAMS air defense systems and the HIMARS artillery systems the U.S. has shipped to Ukraine, 150 heavy machine guns with thermal sights to shoot down drones, 10,000 120mm mortar rounds and 20 million rounds of small arms ammunition, among other items, the Pentagon said.
Now in its ninth month, the intense firefight in Ukraine has had both sides firing thousands of rounds of munitions a day, from bullets for small arms to truck-sized cruise missiles. In a sign of how intense the ground battle has been, the U.S. to date has provided 104 million rounds of small arms ammunition to Ukraine.
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“With Russia’s unrelenting and brutal missile and (drone) attacks on Ukrainian critical energy infrastructure, additional air defense capabilities remain an urgent priority," the Pentagon said in a statement. “The additional munitions for NASAMS and heavy machine guns will help Ukraine counter these urgent threats.”
The continued push of weapons to Kyiv, however, is raising questions about how long the U.S. and partner nations can continue to sustain the fight without harming their own military readiness. Many European nations have already said they have pushed forward all the excess they can afford to send.
Last week, the Pentagon's top weapons buyer, Bill LaPlante, traveled to Brussels to meet with representatives of 45 partner nations to discuss some of Ukraine's top priorities, including more air defense systems and long-range weapons. They discussed coordinating efforts to keep weapons flowing by identifying the capabilities of their individual defense industrial bases as well as the supply chain and production constraints they face, the Pentagon said in a statement.
The flow of weapons comes as the Biden administration seeks to pass an additional $37 billion in military and humanitarian aid for Ukraine during the post-election session of Congress, before Republicans take over control of the House in January. Some Republican members, including potential speaker Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., have questioned the amount of money being spent on Ukraine.
___
Follow the AP's coverage of Russia's war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine.
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MOSCOW (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday hit out at what he said were skewed media portrayals of Moscow’s military campaign in Ukraine as he met with mothers of Russian soldiers fighting there.
"Life is more difficult and diverse that what is shown on TV screens or even on the Internet. There are many fakes, cheating, lies there”, Putin said.
The meeting in the Kremlin with more than a dozen women came as uncertainty persists over whether enlistment efforts may resume in the face of recent battlefield setbacks.
Putin said that he sometimes speaks with troops directly by telephone, according to a Kremlin transcript and photos of the meeting.
“I’ve spoken to (troops) who surprised me with their mood, their attitude to the matter. They didn’t expect these calls from me… (the calls) give me every reason to say that they are heroes,” Putin said.
Some soldiers’ relatives have complained of not being invited to the meeting and have directly criticized Putin’s leadership as well as the recent "partial mobilization” that defense officials said resulted in 300,000 reservists being called up.
Olga Tsukanova of the Council of Mothers and Wives, a movement formed by relatives of mobilized soldiers, said in a video message on the Telegram messaging app authorities have ignored queries and requests from her organization.
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“We are here in Moscow, ready to meet with you. We are waiting for your reply,” she said, addressing Putin directly.
“We have men in the ministry of defense, in the military prosecutor’s office, powerful guys in the presidential administration… and mothers on the other side. Will you start a dialogue or will you hide?,” she said in her message. Unconfirmed reports by some Russian media outlets suggested that some of the women meeting with Putin on Friday were members of pro-Kremlin social movements, the ruling United Russia party, or local officials backing Putin’s government.
Valentina Melnikova from of the Union of Committees of Soldiers’ Mothers, a Russian rights organization, told the independent Verstka publication earlier this week that its members were also not invited to the meeting.
Since October, relatives of mobilized soldiers have organized protests in over a dozen Russian regions, calling on the authorities to release their relatives from frontline duty and ensure they had appropriate food rations, shelter and equipment.
Reports by the AP, independent Russian media, and activists have suggested that many of the mobilized reservists are inexperienced, were told to procure basic items such as medical kits and flak jackets themselves, and did not receive proper training before deployment. Some were reported killed within days.
Concerns persist in Russia about whether the Kremlin may renew its mobilization efforts, as Ukrainian forces continue to press a counteroffensive in the country’s south and east. Moscow has suffered a string of battlefield setbacks, losing territory in the northeastern Kharkiv and southern Kherson regions.
While Russian officials last month declared the “partial mobilization” complete, critics have warned it could resume after military enlistment offices are freed up from processing conscripts from Russia’s annual fall draft.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Best quote when he was offered exile, "I need ammunition, not a ride."
https://time.com/person-of-the-year-2022-volodymyr-zelensky/
IDK, there's a whole lot of people big mad at him for not giving Russia what they want therefore potentially inciting WWIII.
I agree with you though,... no brainer for man of the year.
EV
Toronto Film Festival 9/11/2007, '08 - Toronto 1 & 2, '09 - Albany 1, '11 - Chicago 1
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian forces have installed multiple rocket launchers at Ukraine's shut-down Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Ukrainian officials claimed Thursday, raising fears Europe's largest atomic power station could be used as a base to fire on Ukrainian territory and heightening radiation dangers.
Ukraine's nuclear company Energoatom said in a statement that Russian forces occupying the plant have placed several Grad multiple rocket launchers near one of its six nuclear reactors. It said the offensive systems are located at new “protective structures” the Russians secretly built, "violating all conditions for nuclear and radiation safety.”
The claim could not be independently verified.
The Soviet-built multiple rocket launchers are capable of firing rockets at ranges of up to 40 kilometers (25 miles), and Energoatom said they could enable Russian forces to hit the opposite bank of the Dnieper River, where each side blames the other for almost daily shelling in the cities of Nikopol and Marhanets. The plant is in a southern Ukrainian region the Kremlin has illegally annexed.
The Zaporizhzhia station has been under Russian control since the war’s early days. Russia and Ukraine accuse each other of shelling the plant and risking a radiation release. Although the risk of a nuclear meltdown is greatly reduced because all six reactors have been shut down, experts have said a dangerous radiation release is still possible. The reactors were shut down because the fighting kept knocking out external power supplies needed to run the reactors' cooling systems and other safety systems.
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The U.N.'s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, has stationed inspectors at the plant and has been trying to persuade both sides in the conflict to agree to a demilitarized zone around it. The agency did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the reported Grad installation. Ukraine has accused the Russians before of having heavy weapons at the plant. The Kremlin has said it needs to maintain control of the plant to defend it from alleged Ukrainian attacks.
With renewed focus on the dangers at Zaporizhzhia in the war, dragging on past nine months, the Kremlin is sending new signals about how to end it. It said Thursday it’s up to Ukraine’s president to end the military conflict, suggesting terms that Kyiv has repeatedly rejected, while Russian President Vladimir Putin vowed to press on with the fighting despite Western criticism.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that "(Ukrainian President Volodymyr) Zelenskyy knows when it may end. It may end tomorrow if he wishes so.”
The Ukraine war has deteriorated relations between Russia and much of the rest of the world, but limited cooperation continues in some areas, such as exchanges of prisoners. On Thursday, in a dramatic swap that had been in the making for months, Russia freed American basketball star Brittney Griner while the United States released a jailed Russian arms dealer.
The Kremlin has long said that Ukraine must accept Russian conditions to end the fighting. It has demanded that Kyiv recognize Crimea — a Ukrainian peninsula that Moscow illegally annexed in 2014 — as part of Russia and also accept Moscow’s other land gains in Ukraine.
Zelenskyy and other Ukrainian officials have repeatedly rejected those conditions, saying the war will end when the occupied territories are retaken or Russian forces leave them.
In an acknowledgement that it’s taking longer than he expected to achieve his goals in the conflict, Putin said Wednesday that the fighting in Ukraine “could be a lengthy process” while describing Moscow's land gains as “a significant result for Russia."
During a conference call with reporters, Peskov said Moscow wasn’t aiming to grab new land but will try to regain control of areas in Ukraine from which it withdrew just weeks after incorporating them into Russia in hastily called referendums — which Ukraine and the West reject as illegal shams. After earlier retreats from the Kyiv and Kharkiv areas, Russian troops last month left the city of Kherson and parts of the Kherson region, one of the four illegally annexed Ukrainian regions.
Putin vowed Thursday to achieve the declared goals in Ukraine regardless of the Western reaction.
“All we have to do is make a move and there is a lot of noise, chatter and outcry all across the universe. It will not stop us fulfilling combat tasks,” Putin said.
He described Russian strikes on Ukraine’s energy facilities and other key infrastructure as a legitimate response to an Oct. 8 truck bombing of a key bridge linking Crimea with Russia’s mainland, and other attacks the Kremlin claimed Ukraine carried out. Putin also cited Ukraine’s move to halt water supplies to the areas in eastern Ukraine that Russia controlled.
“There is a lot of noise now about our strikes on the energy infrastructure,” Putin said at a meeting with soldiers whom he decorated with the country’s top medals. “Yes, we are doing it. But who started it? Who struck the Crimean bridge? Who blew up power lines from the Kursk nuclear power station? Who is not supplying water to Donetsk?”
While stopping short of publicly claiming credit for the attacks, Ukrainian officials welcome their results and hint at Ukrainian involvement.
Heavy fighting continues, mostly in regions Russia annexed. Zelenskyy's office said 11 civilians were killed in Ukraine Wednesday.
The Donetsk region has been the epicenter of the recent fighting. Russian artillery struck the town of Yampil during distribution of humanitarian aid to civilians, Ukrainian officials said. Buildings were damaged in Kurakhove, 35 kilometers (22 miles) west of the regional capital, Donetsk, officials said.
More than ten cities and villages in the region were shelled, including the town of Bakhmut, which has remained in Ukrainian hands despite Moscow’s goal of capturing the entire annexed Donbas region bordering Russia.
In other developments:
— The International Committee of the Red Cross said that for the first time, its representatives visited Ukrainian prisoners of war that Russian forces are holding. Visits to Russian prisoners of war also took place. The Red Cross checked the prisoners' condition, gave them books, personal hygiene products, blankets and warm clothes, and contacted their relatives.
— A Russian ship-borne air defense system knocked down a drone in the area of Sevastopol, the Russian Black Sea Fleet’s base, the regional governor said. Several attacks have been launched since the war began on Sevastopol, which is on the Crimean Peninsula, and the Black Sea Fleet.
— Russian officials said Ukrainian forces shelled the Belgorod province, which borders Ukraine. According to Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov, the shelling damaged power lines in Yakovlevo, 50 kilometers (31 miles) from the Ukrainian border. Though Gladkov did not report casualties or injuries, a local news Telegram channel reported a fire at a military base, with several Russian military personnel killed or wounded. Ukrainian officials maintained their policy of not commenting on cross-border attacks.
___
Yuras Karmanau contributed from Tallinn, Estonia.
Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine: https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
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another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian forces have turned the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut into ruins, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said, while Ukraine's military on Saturday reported missile, rocket and air strikes in multiple parts of the country that Moscow is trying to conquer after months of resistance.
The latest battles of Russia's 9 1/2 month war in Ukraine have centered on four provinces that Russian President Vladimir Putin triumphantly — and illegally — claimed to have annexed in late September. The fighting indicates Russia's struggle to establish control of those regions and Ukraine's persistence to reclaim them.
Zelenskyy said the situation “remains very difficult” in several frontline cities in eastern Ukraine's Donetsk and Luhansk provinces. Together, the provinces make up the Donbas, an expansive industrial region bordering Russia that Putin identified as a focus from the war's outset and where Moscow-backed separatists have fought since 2014.
“Bakhmut, Soledar, Maryinka, Kreminna. For a long time, there is no living place left on the land of these areas that have not been damaged by shells and fire," Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address, naming cities that have again found themselves in the crosshairs. “The occupiers actually destroyed Bakhmut, another Donbas city that the Russian army turned into burnt ruins.”
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Some buildings remain standing in Bakhmut, and the remaining residents still mill about the streets. But like Mariupol and other contested cities, it endured a long siege and spent weeks without water and power even before Moscow launched massive strikes to take out public utilities across Ukraine.
The Donetsk region's governor, Pavlo Kyrylenko, estimated seven weeks ago that 90% of the city's prewar population of over 70,000 had fled in the months since Moscow focused on seizing the entire Donbas.
The Ukrainian military General Staff reported missile attacks, about 20 airstrikes and more than 60 rocket attacks across Ukraine between Friday and Saturday. Spokesperson Oleksandr Shtupun said the most active fighting was in the Bakhmut district, where more than 20 populated places came under fire. He said Ukrainian forces repelled Russian attacks in Donetsk and neighboring Luhansk.
Russia's grinding eastern offensive succeeded in capturing almost all of Luhansk during the summer. Donetsk eluded the same fate, and the Russian military in recent weeks has poured manpower and resources around Bakhmut in an attempt to encircle the city, analysts and Ukrainian officials have said.
After Ukrainian forces recaptured the southern city of Kherson nearly a month ago, the battle heated up around Bakhmut, demonstrating Putin’s desire for visible gains following weeks of clear setbacks in Ukraine.
Taking Bakhmut would rupture Ukraine’s supply lines and open a route for Russian forces to press on toward Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, key Ukrainian strongholds in Donetsk. Russia has battered Bakhmut with rockets for more than half of the year. A ground assault accelerated after its troops forced the Ukrainians to withdraw from Luhansk in July.
But some analysts have questioned Russia's strategic logic in the relentless pursuit to take Bakhmut and surrounding areas that also came under intense shelling in the past weeks, and where Ukrainian officials reported that some residents were living in damp basements.
“The costs associated with six months of brutal, grinding, and attrition-based combat around #Bakhmut far outweigh any operational advantage that the #Russians can obtain from taking Bakhmut,” the Institute for the Study of War, a think tank in Washington, posted on its Twitter feed on Thursday.
The Russian Defense Ministry said Saturday that Russian troops also pressed their Donbas offensive in the direction of the Donetsk city of Lyman, which is 65 kilometers (40 miles) north of Bakhmut. According to the ministry, they “managed to take more advantageous positions for further advancement.”
Russia’s forces first occupied the city in May but withdrew in early October. Ukrainian authorities said at the time they found mines on the bodies of dead Russian soldiers that were set to explode when someone tried to clear the corpses, as well as the bodies of civilian residents killed by shelling or who had died from a lack of food and medicine.
On Friday, Putin lashed out at recent comments by former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who said a 2015 peace deal for eastern Ukraine negotiated by France and Germany had bought time for Ukraine to prepare for war with Russia this year.
That deal was aimed to cool tensions after pro-Russia separatists seized territory in the Donbas a year earlier, sparking a war with Ukrainian forces that ballooned into a war with Russia itself after the Feb. 24 full-scale invasion.
Ukraine's military on Saturday also reported strikes in other provinces: Kharkiv and Sumy in the northeast, central Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhzhia in the southeast and Kherson in the south. The latter two, along with Donetsk and Luhansk, are the four regions Putin claims are now Russian territory.
A month ago, Russian troops withdrew from the western side of the Dniper River where it cuts through Kherson province, allowing Ukrainians forces to declare the region’s capital city liberated. But the Russians still occupy a majority of the province and have continued to attack from their news positions across the river.
Writing on Telegram, the deputy head of Zelenskyy’s office, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, said two civilians died and another eight were wounded during dozens of mortar, rocket and artillery attacks over the previous day. Residential areas, a hospital, shops, warehouses and critical infrastructure in the Kherson region were damaged, he said.
To the west, drone attacks overnight left much of Odesa province, including its namesake Black Sea port city, without electricity, regional Gov. Maxim Marchenko said. Several energy facilities were destroyed at once, leaving all customers except hospitals, maternity homes, boiler plants and pumping stations were without power, electric company DTEK said Saturday.
The Odesa regional administration’s energy department said late Saturday that fully restoring electricity could take as long as three months and it urged families whose homes are without power to leave the region if possible.
___
Follow AP's coverage of the war in Ukraine: https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
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KHERSON, Ukraine (AP) — A hand grenade jerry-rigged into the detergent tray of a Kherson home’s washing machine. A street sign maliciously directing passers-by toward a deadly minefield. A police station that allegedly housed a torture chamber but remains so booby-trapped that demining crews can’t even start to hunt for evidence.
Sunday marks exactly one month since Russia's troops withdrew from Kherson and its vicinity after an eight-month occupation, sparking jubilation across Ukraine. But life in the southern city is still very far from normal.
The departing Russians left behind all sorts of ugly surprises, and their artillery continues to batter the city from new, dug-in positions across the Dnieper River. The regional administration said Saturday that shelling over the past month has killed 41 people, including a child, in Kherson, and 96 were hospitalized.
Residents’ access to electricity still comes and goes, although water is largely connected, and indoor heating has only very recently been restored — and only to about 70-80% of the city — after the Russians last month blew up a giant central heating station that served much of the city.
For authorities and citizens, sifting through the countless headaches and hazards left behind by the Russians, and bracing for new ones, is a daily chore.
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On Friday alone, according to the local affiliate of public broadcaster Suspilne, Russian forces shelled the region 68 times with mortars, artillery, tank and rocket fire. Meanwhile, in the last month, a total of 5,500 people have taken evacuation trains out, and work crews have cleared 190 kilometers (115 miles) of road, Suspilne reported.
When aid trucks arrived a month ago, war-weary and desperate residents flocked to the central Svoboda (Freedom) Square for food and supplies. But after a Russian strike on the square as a line of people queued to enter a bank in late November, such large gatherings have become less common and aid is doled out from smaller, more discreet distribution points.
Regional officials say some 80% of Kherson's pre-war population of about 320,000 fled after the Russians moved in, days after their invasion began on Feb. 24. With some 60,000-70,000 residents remaining, the city now has a feel of a ghost town. Those who remain mostly keep indoors because they're cautious about making forays into the streets.
“Life is getting back to normal, but there is a lot of shelling," said Valentyna Kytaiska, 56, who lives in the nearby village of Chornobaivka. She lamented the nightly “Bam! Bam!” and the unsettling uncertainty of where the Russian ordnance may land.
Normal is a relative term for a country at war. There’s no telling whether what Russia insists on calling a “special military operation” will end in days, weeks, months or even years.
In the meantime, painstaking efforts go on to establish a better sense of normalcy, like clearing the mess and mines left behind by the Russians, in tough wintertime weather.
"The difficulties are very simple, it’s the weather conditions," said one military demining squad member, who goes by the nom de guerre of Tekhnik. He said some of their equipment simply doesn't work in frost conditions “because the soil is frozen like concrete.”
The deployment of additional teams could help ease the heavy workload, he said. “To give you an idea, during the month of our work, we found and removed several tons of mines," said Tekhnik, adding that they focused only on about 10 square kilometers (about 4 square miles).
In Kherson's Beryslavskyi district, a main road was blocked off with a sign reading “Mines Ahead” and rerouting passersby to a smaller road. In fact, it was that side road which was mined, and cost the lives of some military deminers. A few weeks later, four police officers were also killed there, including the police chief from the northern city of Chernihiv, who had come down to help Kherson regain its footing.
The general state of disrepair of weather-beaten roads helped the outgoing Russians disguise their deadly traps: Potholes, some covered with soil, provided a convenient place to lay mines. Sometimes, the Russians cut into the asphalt to make holes themselves.
Demining squads go slowly house-to-house to ensure it's safe for owners or previous residents to return. Experts say a single home can take up to three days to be cleared.
One crew turned up a hand grenade in one house, stuffed into a a washing machine — the pin placed in such a way that opening the detergent tray would set off an explosion.
The city's main police station, where detainees were reportedly tortured, is packed with explosives. When demining squads tried to work their way in, part of the building exploded — so they've shelved the project for now.
Longer term questions remain: Kherson sits in an agricultural region that produces crops as diverse as wheat, tomatoes, and watermelon — a regional symbol. The fields are so heavily mined that about 30% of arable land in the region is unlikely to be planted in the spring, Technik the deminer said. A cursory look reveals the tops of anti-tank mines poking up in the fields.
Even so, after a night of shelling from Friday evening into Saturday, Kherson resident Oleksandr Chebotariov said life had been even worse under the Russians for himself, his wife and 3-year-old daughter.
“It's easier to breathe now,” the 35-year-old radiologist said — only to add: “If the banging doesn’t stop before the New Year, I’m going on vacation.”
___
Keaten reported from Kyiv, Ukraine. Evgeniy Maloletka in Kherson, Ukraine, contributed to this report.
___
Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine: https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
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BOYARKA, Ukraine (AP) — Bice is an American pit bull terrier with an important and sensitive job in Ukraine — comforting children traumatized by Russia's war.
The playful 8-year-old gray dog arrived on time this week to a rehabilitation center on the outskirts of the Ukrainian capital, ready to start his duties.
As Bice waited in a hallway, inside of what looked like a school classroom with paintings and some books, a dozen children were seated around a table listening to Oksana Sliepova, a psychologist.
“Who has a dog?," she asked and several hands raised at once while the space filled with shouts of “Me, me, me!”.
One youngster said his dog was named Stitch; “Tank," said another boy, adding that he has a total of five, but he forgot all their names. Everyone burst out laughing.
The seven girls and nine boys — ranging in age from a 2-year-old boy to an 18-year-old young woman — look at first like schoolchildren enjoying class. But they have particular stories: Some witnessed how Russian soldiers invaded their hometowns and beat their relatives. Some are the sons, daughters, brothers or sisters of soldiers who are on the front lines, or were killed on them.
They come together at the Center for Social and Psychological Rehabilitation, a state-operated community center where people can get help coping with traumatic experiences after Russia's invasion in February. Staffers provide regular psychological therapy for anyone who has been affected in any way by the war.
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In the past they have worked with horses, but now they are adding support from another four-legged friend: Canine therapy.
Located in Boyarka, a suburb around 20 kilometers (12 miles) southwest of Kyiv, the center was established in 2000 as part of an effort to give psychological support to people affected, directly or indirectly, by the explosion at the nuclear plant in Chernobyl in 1986.
Now it focuses on people affected by the war. These days, when some areas are without power after the Russian attacks to Ukrainian energy infrastructure, the two-story building is one of the few places with light and heating.
With the kids gathered, some wearing festive blue or red Christmas hats, Sliepova cagily asked if they wanted to meet someone. Yes, they did, came the response. The door opened. The faces of the children glowed. They smiled.
And in came Bice, the tail-wagging therapist.
Darina Kokozei, the pooch's owner and handler, asked the children to come one by one, to ask him to do a trick or two. He sat. He stood up on his hind legs. He extended a paw, or rolled over. Then, a group hug — followed by a few tasty treats for him.
For more than 30 minutes, Bice let everybody to touch him and hug him, without ever barking. It was as if nothing else mattered at that moment, as if there were nothing to worry about — like, say, a war ravaging their country.
This is the first time that Sliepova has worked with a dog as part of her therapies. But, she said, "I read a lot of literature that working with dogs, with four-legged rehabilitators, helps children reduce stress, increase stress resistance, and reduce anxiety.”
The kids did not seem stressed out, but of course the reality is still out there.
She observed how some children are scared of loud noises, like when someone closes a window or when they hear the sound of a jet. Some drop to the floor or start asking whether there's a bomb shelter close.
Among the children were a brother and sister from Kupyansk, a city in the eastern region of Kharkiv, who witnessed Russian soldiers storming into their home with machine guns, grabbing their grandfather, putting a bag on his head and beating him, Sliepova said.
“Each child is psychologically traumatized in different ways,” she said.
The moms of some of the kids remained almost all the time seated along one of the walls, watching and listening at distance. When Bice came, some took pictures of their children.
Lesya Kucherenko was here with her 9-year-old son, Maxim. She said she can't stop thinking about the war and what could happen to her oldest son, a 19-year-old paratrooper fighting in the town of Bakhmut in the the eastern Donetsk region — one of the most active fronts these days.
Maxim smiled as he plays with Bice, but he was always checking on his mom and turned his head around to see her every once in a while.
Kucherenko said sometimes she breaks into tears when thinking about her soldier son. Right before this session, she got a call from him. He told her that he was fine, and by just remembering that, she started crying. The next second, Maxim was there, asking why.
“You see? He's comforting me — not me him,” she said.
As for the comforting canine, what's the best message that Bice offers the kids?
Owner Kokozei needs to think for only a couple of seconds, and replies: “Freedom.”
“Freedom from problems, and happiness,” she adds.
___
Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine: https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
President Vladimir Putin has ditched his annual marathon news conference following a series of battlefield setbacks in Ukraine — a tacit acknowledgment that the Russian leader's war has gone badly wrong.
Putin typically uses the year-end ritual to polish his image, answering a wide range of questions on domestic and foreign policy to demonstrate his grip on details and give the semblance of openness even though the event is tightly stage-managed.
But this year, with his troops on the back foot in Ukraine, it could be impossible to avoid uncomfortable questions about the Russian military's blunders even at a highly choreographed event. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed Monday that Putin wouldn’t hold the news conference this month without explaining why.
“Although questions are almost certainly usually vetted in advance, the cancellation is likely due to increasing concerns about the prevalence of anti-war feeling in Russia,” the U.K. Defense Ministry wrote in a commentary on Twitter.
“Kremlin officials are almost certainly extremely sensitive about the possibility that any event attended by Putin could be hijacked by unsanctioned discussion about the ‘special military operation,'” it said, using Moscow's term for the war.
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Some of his previous performances lasted for more than 4 1/2 hours, during which he has sometimes faced some pointed questions, but used them to mock the West or denigrate his domestic opponents.
Putin also has canceled another annual fixture this year, a televised call-in show in which he takes questions from the public to nurture his father-of-the-nation image.
And he has so far failed to deliver the annual televised state-of-the-nation address to parliament, a constitutional obligation. No date has been set for Putin’s address.
The Kremlin has muzzled any criticism of its invasion of Ukraine from the liberal anti-war camp, shutting independent media outlets and criminalizing the spread of any information that differs from the official view — including calling the campaign a war. But it has faced an increasingly vocal criticism from Russian hardliners, who have denounced the president as weak and indecisive and called for ramping up strikes on Ukraine.
Political analyst Abbas Gallyamov said in a video commentary that the decision not to hold the news conference was likely because Putin “has nothing to say from the point of view of strategy.”
Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, claiming Moscow was forced to “demilitarize” the country in the face of NATO's refusal to offer Russia guarantees that Ukraine wouldn't be invited to join the alliance. Ukraine and much of the world denounced the Russian attack on its neighbor as an unprovoked act of aggression.
Putin and his officials hoped to rout the Ukrainian military in a few days, but a fierce Ukrainian resistance — bolstered by Western weapons — quickly derailed those plans. After a botched attempt to quickly capture the Ukrainian capital, the Russian troops pulled back from areas around Kyiv in March.
In September, Ukraine won back large swaths of land in the northeastern Kharkiv region, and last month it reclaimed control of the strategic southern port city of Kherson.
A mobilization of 300,000 reservists that Putin ordered in September so far has failed to reverse battlefield fortunes for Russia. The mobilization order has prompted hundreds of thousands of Russians to flee abroad to avoid recruitment, and those who have been called up reported glaring shortages of key equipment and supplies.
In a rare acknowledgement last week that the war in Ukraine is taking longer than he anticipated, Putin acknowledged that wrapping up the campaign could be a “lengthy process.” At the same time, he continued to claim that it was going according to plan and would achieve its goals.
Sergei Markov, a pro-Kremlin political expert, noted that Putin's decision to ditch the news conference and his failure so far to deliver the state-of-the-nation address reflected his hesitancy about the future course of action.
“Shall we forge ahead and defeat the enemy?" he wrote, reflecting hardliners’ calls for ramping up missile strikes on Ukraine. “Or on the contrary, shall we prepare for a difficult but necessary compromise?”
___
Follow AP war coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
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WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. is poised to approve sending a Patriot missile battery to Ukraine, finally agreeing to an urgent request from Ukrainian leaders desperate for more robust weapons to shoot down incoming Russian attacks, U.S. officials said Tuesday.
The approval is likely to come later this week and could be announced as early as Thursday, said three officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the decision is not final and has not been made public. Two of the officials said the Patriot will come from Pentagon stocks and moved from another country overseas.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy pressed Western leaders as recently as Monday to provide more advanced weapons to help his country in its war with Russia. Providing Patriot surface-to-air missiles would advance the kinds of defense systems the West is sending to help Ukraine repel Russian aerial attacks, and could mark an escalation.
During a video conference on Monday Zelenskyy told host Germany and other leaders of the Group of Seven industrial powers that his country needed long-range missiles, modern tanks, artillery and missile batteries and other high-tech air defense systems to counter Russian attacks that have knocked out electricity and water supplies for millions of Ukrainians.
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He acknowledged that, “Unfortunately, Russia still has an advantage in artillery and missiles.” And he said that protecting Ukraine’s energy facilities from Russian missiles and Iranian drones “will be the protection of the whole of Europe, since with these strikes Russia is provoking a humanitarian and migration catastrophe not only for Ukraine, but also for the entire EU.”
White House and Pentagon leaders have said consistently that providing Ukraine with additional air defenses is a priority, and Patriot missiles have been under consideration for some time. One of the officials said that as the winter closed in that consideration took on increased priority.
The administration's potential approval of a Patriot battery was first reported by CNN.
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KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — On the streets of Kyiv, Fyodor Dostoevsky is on the way out. Andy Warhol is on the way in.
Ukraine is accelerating efforts to erase the vestiges of Soviet and Russian influence from its public spaces by pulling down monuments and renaming hundreds of streets to honor its own artists, poets, soldiers, independence leaders and others — including heroes of this year’s war.
Following Moscow’s invasion on Feb. 24 that has killed or injured untold numbers of civilians and soldiers and pummeled buildings and infrastructure, Ukraine's leaders have shifted a campaign that once focused on dismantling its Communist past into one of “de-Russification.”
Streets that honored revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin or the Bolshevik Revolution were largely already gone; now Russia, not Soviet legacy, is the enemy.
It’s part punishment for crimes meted out by Russia, and part affirmation of a national identity by honoring Ukrainian notables who have been mostly overlooked.
Russia, through the Soviet Union, is seen by many in Ukraine as having stamped its domination of its smaller southwestern neighbor for generations, consigning its artists, poets and military heroes to relative obscurity, compared with more famous Russians.
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If victors write history, as some say, Ukrainians are doing some rewriting of their own — even as their fate hangs in the balance. Their national identity is having what may be an unprecedented surge, in ways large and small.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has taken to wearing a black T-shirt that says: “I’m Ukrainian.”
He is among the many Ukrainians who were born speaking Russian as a first language. Now, they shun it — or at least limit their use of it. Russian has traditionally been spoken more in the eastern and southern parts of the country. Western Ukraine, farther away from Russia, was quicker to shed Russian and Soviet imagery.
Other parts of the country are now catching up. The eastern city of Dnipro on Friday pulled down a bust of Alexander Pushkin — like Dostoevsky, a giant of 19th century Russian literature. A strap from a crane was unceremoniously looped under the statue’s chin.
This month, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko announced about 30 more streets in the capital will be rechristened.
Volodymyr Prokopiv, deputy head of the Kyiv City Council, said Ukraine's “de-Communization” policy since 2015 had been applied in a “soft” way so as not to offend sensitivities among the country's Russian-speaking and even pro-Moscow population.
“With the war, everything changed. Now the Russian lobby is now powerless – in fact, it doesn’t exist,” Prokopiv said in an interview with The Associated Press in his office overlooking Khreschatik Street, the capital's main thoroughfare. “Renaming these streets is like erasing the propaganda that the Soviet Union imposed on Ukraine.”
During the war, the Russians have also sought to stamp their culture and domination in areas they have occupied.
Andrew Wilson, a professor at University College London, cautioned about "the dangers in rewriting the periods in history where Ukrainians and Russians did cooperate and build things together: I think the whole point about de-imperializing Russian culture should be to specify where we have previously been blind — often in the West.”
Wilson noted that the Ukrainians "are taking a pretty broad-brush approach.”
He cited Pushkin, the 19th century Russian writer, who might understandably rankle some Ukrainians.
To them, for example, the Cossacks — a Slavic people in eastern Europe — “mean freedom, whereas Pushkin depicts them as cruel, barbarous, antiquated. And in need of Russian civilization,” said Wilson, whose book "The Ukrainians” was recently published in its fifth edition.
In its program, Kyiv conducted an online survey, and received 280,000 suggestions in a single day, Prokopiv said. Then, an expert group sifted through the responses, and municipal officials and street residents give a final stamp of approval.
Under the “de-Communization” program, about 200 streets were renamed in Kyiv before this year. In 2022 alone, that same number of streets have been renamed and another 100 are scheduled to get renamed soon, Prokopiv said.
A street named for philosopher Friedrich Engels will honor Ukrainian avant-garde poet Bohdan-Ihor Antonych. A boulevard whose name translates as “Friendship of Peoples” — an allusion to the diverse ethnicities under the USSR – will honor Mykola Mikhnovsky, an early proponent of Ukrainian independence.
Another street recognizes the “Heroes of Mariupol” — fighters who held out for months against a devastating Russian campaign in that Sea of Azov port city that eventually fell. A street named for the Russian city of Volgograd is now called Roman Ratushnyi Street in honor of a 24-year-old civic and environmental activist who was killed in the war.
A small street in northern Kyiv still bears Dostoevsky's name but soon will be named for Warhol, the late Pop Art visionary from the United States whose parents had family roots in Slovakia, across Ukraine's western border.
Valeriy Sholomitsky, who has lived on Dostoevsky Street for nearly 40 years, said he could go either way.
“We have under 20 houses here. That’s very few,” Sholomitsky said as he shoveled snow off the street in front of a fading address sign bearing the name of the Russian writer. He said Warhol was “our artist” — with heritage in eastern Europe:
Now, “it will be even better,” he said.
“Maybe it is right that we are changing many streets now, because we used to name them incorrectly,” he added.
___
Vasilisa Stepanenko and Hanna Arhirova in Kyiv contributed.
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WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. will send $1.8 billion in military aid to Ukraine in a massive package that will for the first time include a Patriot missile battery and precision guided bombs for their fighter jets, U.S. officials said Tuesday, as the Biden administration prepares to welcome Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to Washington.
U.S. officials described details of the aid on condition of anonymity because it has not yet been announced. The aid signals an expansion by the U.S. in the kinds of advanced weaponry it will send to Ukraine to bolster the country’s air defenses against what has been an increasing barrage of Russian missile strikes.
The package, which was expected to be announced Wednesday, will include about $1 billion in weapons from Pentagon stocks and another $800 million in funding through the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, which funds weapons, ammunition, training and other assistance, officials said.
Zelenskyy and other Ukraine officials have pressed Western leaders to provide more advanced weapons, including the Patriots, to help their country in its war with Russia. The Patriot would be the most advanced surface-to-air missile system the West has provided to Ukraine to help repel Russian aerial attacks. The timing of the military aid announcement — as Zelenskyy makes his first trip out of Ukraine since the war began — sends a strong message of continued U.S. support for Ukraine as the war drags on.
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The aid comes as Congress is poised to approve another $44.9 billion in assistance for Ukraine as part of a massive spending bill. That would ensure that U.S. support will continue next year and beyond as Republicans take control of the House in January. Some GOP lawmakers have expressed wariness about the assistance.
The decision to send the Patriot battery comes despite threats from Russia's Foreign Ministry that the delivery of the advanced surface-to-air missile system would be considered a provocative step and that the Patriot and any crews accompanying it would be a legitimate target for Moscow's military.
It's not clear exactly when the Patriot would arrive on the front lines in Ukraine, since U.S. troops will have to train Ukrainian forces on how to use the high-tech system. The training could take several weeks, and is expected to be done at the Grafenwoehr training area in Germany. To date, all training of Ukraine forces by the U.S. and the West has taken place in European countries.
Also included in the package will be an undisclosed number of Joint Direct Attack Munitions kits, or JDAMs, officials said. The kits will be used to modify massive bombs by adding tail fins and precision navigation systems so that rather than being simply dropped from a fighter jet onto a target, they can be released and guided to a target.
U.S. fighter and bomber aircraft use the JDAMs, and the Pentagon has been working to modify them so they can be used by Ukraine.
The U.S. so far has been reluctant to provide Ukraine with American fighter jets. Russia has warned the the advanced aircraft would be considered provocative, and the U.S. to date has said other weaponry would be a better fit, citing the significant maintenance and training needs for those warplanes.
So instead of providing Ukraine those U.S. aircraft, the Pentagon is helping Kyiv find innovative ways to upgrade its fleet with the same capabilities it would get with a U.S. fighter jet.
The aid package will also include an undisclosed number of rockets for the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, thousands of artillery and mortar rounds, trucks, and HARM air-to-surface anti-radiation missiles.
According to officials, the urgent pleadings of Ukrainian leaders and the devastating destruction of the country’s civilian infrastructure, including loss of electricity and heat during winter, ultimately overcame U.S. reservations about supplying the Patriots.
White House and Pentagon leaders have said consistently that providing Ukraine with additional air defenses is a priority, and Patriot missiles have been under consideration for some time. Officials said that as the winter closed in and the Russian bombardment of civilian infrastructure escalated, that consideration took on increased priority.
U.S. officials had balked at providing the Patriots to Ukraine because they could be considered a escalation that would trigger a response from Moscow. In addition, there were concerns about the significant training that would be required and questions about whether U.S. troops would have been required to operate it. President Joe Biden has flatly rejected sending any U.S. combat troops to Ukraine.
One Patriot battery routinely includes up to eight launchers, each of which can hold four missiles. It would be coming from Pentagon training stocks in the U.S..
The entire system, which includes a phased array radar, a control station, computers and generators, typically requires about 90 soldiers to operate and maintain. However, only three soldiers are needed to actually fire it, according to the Army.
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KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Three days after the first Russian bombs struck Ukraine, Andrii Kuprash, the head of a village north of Kyiv, walked into a forest near his home and began to dig. He didn’t stop until he had carved out a shallow pit, big enough for a man like him. It was his just-in-case, a place to lie low if he needed.
He covered it with branches and went back home.
A week later, Kuprash got a call around 8 a.m. from an unknown number. A man speaking Russian asked if he was the village head. Something was amiss.
“No, you’ve got the wrong number,” Kuprash lied. “We will find you anyway,” the man responded. “It’s better to cooperate with us.’” Kuprash grabbed some camping kit and his warmest coat and headed for his hole in the woods.
Kuprash — and others The Associated Press spoke with — had been quietly warned that they were targets for advancing Russian forces. Word went round in circles of influential Ukrainians: Don’t sleep in your own home. Get rid of your phone. Get out of Ukraine.
The hunt was on.
continues....
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
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another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14