Wagner chief offered to give Russian troop locations to Ukraine, leak says By Shane Harris and Isabelle Khurshudyan May 15, 2023 at 10:42 ET In late January, with his mercenary forces dying by the thousands in a fight for the ruined city of Bakhmut, Wagner Group owner Yevgeniy Prigozhin made Ukraine an extraordinary offer. Prigozhin said that if Ukraine’s commanders withdrew their soldiers from the area around Bakhmut, he would give Kyiv information on Russian troop positions, which Ukraine could use to attack them. Prigozhin conveyed the proposal to his contacts in Ukraine’s military intelligence directorate, with whom he has maintained secret communications during the course of the war, according to previously unreported U.S. intelligence documents leaked on the group-chat platform Discord. Prigozhin has publicly feuded with Russian military commanders, who he furiously claims have failed to equip and resupply his forces, which have provided vital support to Moscow’s war effort. But he is also an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who might well regard Prigozhin’s offer to trade the lives of Wagner fighters for Russian soldiers as a treasonous betrayal. The leaked document does not make clear which Russian troop positions Prigozhin offered to disclose. Two Ukrainian officials confirmed that Prigozhin has spoken several times to the Ukrainian intelligence directorate, known as HUR. One official said that Prigozhin extended the offer regarding Bakhmut more than once, but that Kyiv rejected it because officials don’t trust Prigozhin and thought his proposals could have been disingenuous. A U.S. official also cautioned that there are similar doubts in Washington about Prigozhin’s intentions. The Ukrainian and U.S. officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information.
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
Wagner chief offered to give Russian troop locations to Ukraine, leak says By Shane Harris and Isabelle Khurshudyan May 15, 2023 at 10:42 ET In late January, with his mercenary forces dying by the thousands in a fight for the ruined city of Bakhmut, Wagner Group owner Yevgeniy Prigozhin made Ukraine an extraordinary offer. Prigozhin said that if Ukraine’s commanders withdrew their soldiers from the area around Bakhmut, he would give Kyiv information on Russian troop positions, which Ukraine could use to attack them. Prigozhin conveyed the proposal to his contacts in Ukraine’s military intelligence directorate, with whom he has maintained secret communications during the course of the war, according to previously unreported U.S. intelligence documents leaked on the group-chat platform Discord. Prigozhin has publicly feuded with Russian military commanders, who he furiously claims have failed to equip and resupply his forces, which have provided vital support to Moscow’s war effort. But he is also an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who might well regard Prigozhin’s offer to trade the lives of Wagner fighters for Russian soldiers as a treasonous betrayal. The leaked document does not make clear which Russian troop positions Prigozhin offered to disclose. Two Ukrainian officials confirmed that Prigozhin has spoken several times to the Ukrainian intelligence directorate, known as HUR. One official said that Prigozhin extended the offer regarding Bakhmut more than once, but that Kyiv rejected it because officials don’t trust Prigozhin and thought his proposals could have been disingenuous. A U.S. official also cautioned that there are similar doubts in Washington about Prigozhin’s intentions. The Ukrainian and U.S. officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information.
continues.....
what else is he going to do without any ammo?
"You can tell the greatness of a man by what makes him angry." - Lincoln
Biden endorses F-16 training for Ukrainians as Zelenskyy is set to attend G7 summit
By Elaine Kurtenbach, Foster Klug, Zeke Miller
5 mins ago
HIROSHIMA, Japan (AP) — President Joe Biden on Friday endorsed plans to train Ukrainian pilots on U.S.-made F-16 fighter jets, according to two people familiar with the matter, as he huddled with allies at the Group of Seven summit on how to bolster support for Kyiv against Russia's invasion.
The people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss Biden's private conversations with allies, said he announced he had approved the training, which is likely to be conducted in Europe over the coming months, during a meeting of G7 leaders in Hiroshima, where the leaders also announced new sanctions on Moscow in advance of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy joining them at the summit on Sunday.
Biden told the leaders that decisions on when, how many, and who will provide the fourth-generation fighter jets for Ukraine to use in battle will be made in the months ahead while the training is underway.
Zelenskyy has consistently called for the supply of Western fighter jets to bolster his country's defenses against Russia's 15-month invasion, but has until now faced skepticism from the U.S. Under export licensing rules, the U.S. needed to sign-off on any allied effort to train Ukrainian pilots.
European allies in recent weeks have warmed up to the notion of sending fighter jets to Ukraine, as have elements of Biden's Cabinet, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who has emerged as a staunch advocate within the administration.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.
HIROSHIMA, Japan (AP) — Leaders of the world’s most powerful democracies vowed Friday to tighten punishments on Russia for its 15-month invasion of Ukraine, days before President Volodymyr Zelenskyy joins the Group of Seven summit in person on Sunday.
“Our support for Ukraine will not waver," the G7 leaders said in a statement released after closed-door meetings, vowing “to stand together against Russia’s illegal, unjustifiable, and unprovoked war of aggression against Ukraine.”
“Russia started this war and can end this war,” they said.
Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, confirmed on national television that Zelenskyy would attend the summit.
“We were sure that our president would be where Ukraine needed him, in any part of the world, to solve the issue of stability of our country,” Danilov said Friday. “There will be very important matters decided there, so physical presence is a crucial thing to defend our interests.”
Zelenskyy announced Friday that he had opened a visit to Saudi Arabia, where Arab leaders were holding a summit.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s nuclear threats against Ukraine, along with North Korea ’s months-long barrage of missile tests and China’s rapidly expanding nuclear arsenal, have resonated with Japan’s push to make nuclear disarmament a major part of the G7 summit. World leaders Friday visited a peace park dedicated to the tens of thousands who died in the world’s first wartime atomic bomb detonation.
After group photos near the city's iconic bombed-out dome, a wreath-laying and a symbolic cherry tree planting, a new round of sanctions were unveiled against Moscow, with a focus on redoubling efforts to enforce existing sanctions meant to stifle Russia's war effort and hold accountable those behind it, a U.S. official said. Russia is now the most-sanctioned country in the world, but there are questions about the effectiveness of the financial penalties.
The U.S. component of the actions would blacklist about 70 Russian and third-country entities involved in Russia's defense production, and sanction more than 300 individuals, entities, aircraft and vessels, said a U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to preview the announcement.
The official said the other G7 nations would undertake similar steps to further isolate Russia and to undermine its ability to wage war in Ukraine. Details were to emerge throughout the weekend summit.
The G7 nations said in Friday's statement that they would work to keep Russia from using the international financial system to prosecute its war, would “further restrict Russia’s access to our economies” and would prevent sanctions evasion by Moscow.
They urged other nations to stop providing Russia with support and weapons “or face severe costs.”
The European Union was focused on closing loopholes and plans to restrict trade in Russian diamonds, Charles Michel, president of the European Council, told reporters Friday.
The UK also announced new sanctions that freeze the assets of 86 people and organizations connected to Russia’s energy, metals, defense, transport and financial sectors.
“We need to give Ukraine the tools now to successfully defend itself and regain full sovereignty and territorial integrity. We should provide Ukraine the necessary military and financial support. And we have to do this as long as it takes,” EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, who represents Hiroshima in parliament, wants nuclear disarmament to be a major focus of discussions, and he formally started the summit at Hiroshima's Peace Memorial Park. The visit by world leaders to a park dedicated to preserving reminders of Aug. 6, 1945, when a U.S. B-29 dropped an atomic bomb over Hiroshima, provided a striking backdrop to the start the summit. An estimated 140,000 people were killed in the attack, and a fast-dwindling number of now-elderly survivors have ensured that Hiroshima has become synonymous with anti-nuclear peace efforts.
“Honestly, I have big doubts if Mr. Kishida, who is pursuing a military buildup and seeking to revise the pacifist constitution, can really discuss nuclear disarmament,” Sueichi Kido, a 83-year-old “hibakusha” or survivor of the Nagasaki explosion, told The Associated Press. “But because they are meeting in Hiroshima I do have a sliver of hope that they will have positive talks and make a tiny step toward nuclear disarmament.”
Biden, who scrapped plans to travel on to Papua New Guinea and Australia after his stay in Japan so that he can get back to debt limit talks in Washington, arranged to meet Saturday on the G-7 sidelines with leaders of the so-called Quad partnership, made up of Japan, Australia, India and the U.S.
The four originally had been scheduled to meet in Australia as part of Biden's effort to revitalize relationships in the Indo-Pacific.
On Thursday night, Kishida opened the global diplomacy by sitting down with President Joe Biden. Kishida also held talks with British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
The Japan-U.S. alliance is the “very foundation of peace and security in the Indo-Pacific region,” Kishida told Biden. Japan, facing threats from authoritarian China, Russia and North Korea, has been expanding its military but also relies on 50,000 U.S. troops stationed in Japan and U.S. military might.
“We very much welcome that the cooperation has evolved in leaps and bounds,” Kishida said.
Biden said: “When our countries stand together, we stand stronger, and I believe the whole world is safer when we do."
As G7 attendees made their way to Hiroshima, Moscow unleashed yet another aerial attack on the Ukrainian capital. Loud explosions thundered through Kyiv during the early hours, marking the ninth time this month that Russian air raids have targeted the city after weeks of relative quiet.
The United States has frozen Russian Central Bank funds, restricted banks’ access to SWIFT -- the dominant system for global financial transactions -- and sanctioned thousands of Russian firms, government officials, oligarchs and their families.
The Group of Seven nations collectively imposed a $60 per-barrel price cap on Russian oil and diesel last year, which the U.S. Treasury Department on Thursday defended in a new progress report, stating that the cap has been successful in suppressing Russian oil revenues. Treasury cites Russian Ministry of Finance data showing that the Kremlin’s oil revenues from January to March this year were more than 40% lower than last year.
The economic impact of sanctions depends largely on the extent to which a targeted country is able to circumvent them, according to a recent Congressional Research Service repor t. So for the past month, U.S. Treasury officials have traveled across Europe and Central Asia to press countries that still do business with the Kremlin to cut their financial ties.
“The challenge is to make sure the sanctions are painful against Russia, not against ourselves,” said Michel. “It's very clear that each package is more difficult than the previous one and requires more political effort to make a decision.”
G7 leaders and invited guests from several other counties are also expected to discuss how to deal with China's growing assertiveness and military buildup as concerns rise that it could could try to seize Taiwan by force, sparking a wider conflict. China claims the self-governing island as its own and its ships and warplanes regularly patrol near it.
In a bit of dueling diplomacy, Chinese President Xi Jinping is hosting the leaders of the Central Asian countries of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan for a two-day summit in the Chinese city of Xi’an.
The leaders are due to discuss efforts to strengthen the global economy and address rising prices that are squeezing families and government budgets around the world, particularly in developing countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
The G7 includes Japan, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Canada and Italy, as well as the European Union.
__
Associated Press writers Josh Boak, Adam Schreck and Mari Yamaguchi in Hiroshima, Japan, Raf Casert in Brussels, Hanna Arhirova in Kyiv, Ukraine, and Fatima Hussein in Washington contributed to this report.
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$3 billion accounting error means Pentagon can send more weapons to Ukraine
By Lolita C. Baldor, Tara Copp
Yesterday
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon has overestimated the value of the weapons it has sent to Ukraine by at least $3 billion — an accounting error that could be a boon for the war effort because it will allow the Defense Department to send more weapons now without asking Congress for more money.
The acknowledgment Thursday comes at a time when Pentagon is under increased pressure by Congress to show accountability for the billions of dollars it has sent in weapons, ammunition and equipment to Ukraine and as some lawmakers question whether that level of support should continue.
It also could free up more money for critical weapons as Ukraine is on the verge of a much anticipated counteroffensive — which will require as much military aid as they can get. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has previously said the offensive was delayed because they did not yet have everything they needed.
The error was caused when officials overvalued some of the systems sent to Ukraine, using the value of money it would cost to replace an item completely rather than the current value of the weapon. In many of the military aid packages, the Pentagon has opted to draw from its stockpiles of older, existing gear because it can get those items to Ukraine faster.
“During our regular oversight process of presidential drawdown packages, the Department discovered inconsistencies in equipment valuation for Ukraine. In some cases, ‘replacement cost’ rather than ‘net book value’ was used, therefore overestimating the value of the equipment drawn down from U.S. stocks,” said Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh.
She added that the mistake hasn't constrained U.S. support to Ukraine or hampered the ability to send aid to the battlefield.
A defense official said the Pentagon is still trying to determine exactly how much the total surplus will be. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said the comptroller has asked the military services to review all previous Ukraine aid packages using the proper cost figures. The result, said the official, will be that the department will have more available funding authority to use as the Ukraine offensive nears.
The aid surplus was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.
To date the U.S. has provided Ukraine nearly $37 billion in military aid since Russia invaded in February 2022. The bulk of that has been in weapons systems, millions of munitions and ammunition rounds, and an array of trucks, sensors, radars and other equipment pulled from Pentagon stockpiles and sent quickly to Ukraine.
Members of Congress have repeatedly pressed Defense Department leaders on how closely the U.S. is tracking its aid to Ukraine to ensure that it is not subject to fraud or ending up in the wrong hands. The Pentagon has said it has a “robust program” to track the aid as it crosses the border into Ukraine and to keep tabs on it once it is there, depending on the sensitivity of each weapons system.
There also is a small team of Americans in Ukraine working with Ukrainians to do physical inspections when possible, but also virtual inspections when needed, since those teams are not going to the front lines.
In late February, the Pentagon’s inspector general said his office has found no evidence yet that any of the billions of dollars in weapons and aid to Ukraine has been lost to corruption or diverted into the wrong hands. He cautioned that those investigations are only in their early stages.
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Head of Russian private army Wagner says more than 20,000 of his troops died in Bakhmut battle
By Joanna Kozlowska, Susie Blann
Today
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The head of the Russian private army Wagner has again broken with the Kremlin line on Ukraine, saying its goal of demilitarizing the country has backfired, acknowledging Russian troops have killed civilians and agreeing with Western estimates that he's lost more than 20,000 men in the battle for Bakhmut.
Yevgeny Prigozhin said about half of those who died in the eastern Ukrainian city were Russian convicts recruited for the 15-month-old war. His figures stood in stark contrast to Moscow's widely disputed claims that just over 6,000 of its troops were killed throughout the war as of January. By comparison, official Soviet troop losses in the 1979-89 Afghanistan war were 15,000.
Ukraine hasn’t said how many of its soldiers have died since Russia’s full-scale invasion began in February 2022.
White House officials said Wednesday that Prigozhin’s comments were in line with their own estimates that Russian losses have accelerated. The White House estimated this month that Russian forces had suffered 100,000 casualties, including 20,000 killed in fighting, since December. White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said then that about half of those killed were Wagner forces.
Analysts believe many of those killed in the nine-month fight for Bakhmut were Russian convicts with little military training.
Prigozhin — himself a former convict — has frequently criticized Russian military officials for not supplying his troops with enough ammunition. He also has questioned their tactics, commitment and leadership capabilities, and complained they haven't sufficiently credited his forces for battlefield successes.
He's highlighted his forces' sacrifices, and on Saturday touted what he claimed was the capture of the city of Bakhmut.
In an interview published late Tuesday with Konstantin Dolgov, a pro-Kremlin political strategist, Prigozhin went even further in his criticism — questioning some of Russian President Vladimir Putin's rationale for the war. Prigozhin said Russia’s goal of “demilitarizing” Ukraine has backfired because Kyiv’s military has become stronger with Western weapons and training.
In invading Ukraine, Putin also cited the need to increase Russia's security and prevent Ukraine from joining NATO. Since the war began, Ukraine has applied to join NATO, and cross-border attacks into Russia itself have increased.
In Washington, Kirby speculated Wednesday on Prigozhin's motives.
“And it’s possible that this could be a sort of morbid way of him ... claiming credit for whatever they’ve been able to achieve in Bakhmut, but also trying to publicly embarrass the Ministry of Defense further that the cost was borne in blood and treasure by Wagner, and not by the Russian military.”
In the interview, Prigozhin also challenged Moscow's vehement denials that Russian forces had killed civilians.
In what it says is likely a low estimate, the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights says that from February 2022 until early April 2023, it recorded 22,734 civilian casualties in Ukraine: 8,490 killed and 14,244 injured.
Prigozhin, a wealthy businessman with longtime links to Putin, is known for his bluster — often spiced with obscenities — and has previously made unverifiable claims from which he later backtracked.
Earlier this month, his media team published a video of him shouting, swearing and pointing at about 30 uniformed bodies on the ground, saying they were Wagner fighters who died in a single day. He claimed the Russian Defense Ministry had starved his men of ammunition, and he threatened to give up the fight for Bakhmut.
Prigozhin has frequently warned of a counteroffensive that Ukrainian officials have said they're planning, and in Tuesday's interview, he said that, given continued Western support, Kyiv's forces might succeed in pushing Russian troops out of all territory they occupy in southern and eastern Ukraine, as well as annexed Crimea.
“A pessimistic scenario: the Ukrainians are given missiles, they prepare troops, of course they will continue their offensive, try to counterattack," he said. "They will attack Crimea, they will try to blow up the Crimean bridge (to the Russian mainland), cut off (our) supply lines. Therefore we need to prepare for a hard war.”
Prigozhin's admission of heavy losses appears to show the impact of Ukraine's strategy. Ukrainian officials have said their goal in Bakhmut was to exhaust and deplete Russian forces, distract them from protecting territory they occupy elsewhere, and buy time for more Western weapons and ammunition supplies to arrive, and for training to be completed.
Russia’s largest state-run and pro-Kremlin media did not report Prigozhin’s interview, posted in a Telegram channel with only 50,000 followers, making it unlikely to be widely seen in Russia. Nor did Russian military bloggers, whose popular Telegram pages are important sources of information about the war to many Russians, mention it.
On the battlefield, the Ukrainian General Staff said Wednesday that “heavy fighting” was continuing inside Bakhmut, days after Russia claimed it had completely captured the devastated city. Bakhmut lies in Donetsk province, one of four Russia illegally annexed last fall and only partially controls.
The head of Ukraine’s ground forces, Oleksandr Syrskyi, said Kyiv’s forces “are continuing their defensive operation” in Bakhmut, with unspecified “successes” on its outskirts. He didn't elaborate.
A Ukrainian commander in Bakhmut told The Associated Press on Tuesday that the Ukrainians planned to trap the Russians.
“Now we don’t need to fight in Bakhmut. We need to surround it from flanks and block it,” Yevhen Mezhevikin said. "Then we should ‘sweep’ it. This is more appropriate, and that’s what we are doing now.”
Elsewhere, more attacks continued in a border region that Russian officials had claimed had calmed down after one of the most serious incursions since the war began. Russian forces shot down “a large number” of drones in Russia’s southern Belgorod region, a local official said Wednesday, a day after Moscow announced that its forces crushed a cross-border raid from Ukraine.
The drones were intercepted overnight, Belgorod Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov said on Telegram, and another was shot down Wednesday just outside the regional capital, also called Belgorod. He said no one had been hurt, but property had been damaged.
Ukrainian officials made no immediate comment.
In Moscow, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu vowed to respond “promptly and extremely harshly” to such attacks.
Details of the incident in the rural region, about 80 kilometers (45 miles) north of the city of Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine and far from the war's front lines, are unclear.
Moscow blamed the incursion on Ukrainian military saboteurs. Kyiv described it as an uprising against the Kremlin by Russian partisans. It was impossible to reconcile the two versions, to say with certainty who was behind the attack or to ascertain its aims.
The region is a Russian military hub holding fuel and ammunition depots. The Belgorod region, like the neighboring Bryansk region and other border areas, has seen sporadic spillover from the war.
___
Kozlowska reported from London. Yuras Karmanau in Tallinn, Estonia, Aamer Madhani in Washington, and Andrew Katell in New York contributed.
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Prigozhin says war in Ukraine has backfired, warns of Russian revolution By Mary Ilyushina May 24, 2023 at 15:17 ET RIGA, Latvia — Fresh off his claim of victory in capturing the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, Russian mercenary boss Yevgeniy Prigozhin warned that Moscow’s brutal war could plunge Russia into turmoil similar to the 1917 revolution unless its detached, wealthy elite become more directly committed to the conflict. In a lengthy interview with Konstantin Dolgov, a political operative and pro-war blogger, Prigozhin, the founder and leader of the Wagner mercenary group, also asserted that the war had backfired spectacularly by failing to “demilitarize” Ukraine, one of President Vladimir Putin’s stated aims of the invasion. He also called for totalitarian policies. “We are in a situation where we can simply lose Russia,” Prigozhin said, using an expletive to hammer his point. “We must introduce martial law. We unfortunately … must announce new waves of mobilization; we must put everyone who is capable to work on increasing the production of ammunition,” he said. “Russia needs to live like North Korea for a few years, so to say, close the borders … and work hard.”
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you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
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Prigozhin says war in Ukraine has backfired, warns of Russian revolution By Mary Ilyushina May 24, 2023 at 15:17 ET RIGA, Latvia — Fresh off his claim of victory in capturing the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, Russian mercenary boss Yevgeniy Prigozhin warned that Moscow’s brutal war could plunge Russia into turmoil similar to the 1917 revolution unless its detached, wealthy elite become more directly committed to the conflict. In a lengthy interview with Konstantin Dolgov, a political operative and pro-war blogger, Prigozhin, the founder and leader of the Wagner mercenary group, also asserted that the war had backfired spectacularly by failing to “demilitarize” Ukraine, one of President Vladimir Putin’s stated aims of the invasion. He also called for totalitarian policies. “We are in a situation where we can simply lose Russia,” Prigozhin said, using an expletive to hammer his point. “We must introduce martial law. We unfortunately … must announce new waves of mobilization; we must put everyone who is capable to work on increasing the production of ammunition,” he said. “Russia needs to live like North Korea for a few years, so to say, close the borders … and work hard.”
continues....
they are not going to lose russia. there is not going to be a revolution. people are not angry enough these days. well, not angry enough to sacrifice their lives by trying to overthrow putin and co.
"You can tell the greatness of a man by what makes him angry." - Lincoln
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NATO-trained units will serve as tip of spear in Ukraine’s counteroffensive By Isabelle Khurshudyan and Kamila Hrabchuk June 04, 2023 at 1:00 ET When Ukraine’s long-awaited counteroffensive finally begins, the fight will be led by brigades armed not only with Western weapons but also Western know-how, gleaned from months of training aimed at transforming Ukraine’s military into a modern force skilled in NATO’s most advanced warfare tactics. As other Ukrainian units were fighting to expel the Russian occupiers from the country’s east and south, the brand-new 47th Separate Mechanized Brigade was preparing for the next phase of war from a classroom at a NATO base in Germany. The brigade’s leadership trained with computers that simulated situations they might face in real life. Deputy commander Maj. Ivan Shalamaha and others planned their assaults and then let the program show them the results — how their Russian enemies might respond, where they could make a breakthrough and where they would suffer losses. “You understand the overall picture, how it works,” Shalamaha said. “You understand where and what your shortcomings were. And we pay attention to what we failed to do during this simulation.” [To liberate territory, Ukraine must smash fortified Russian defenses] Now the war games are over. The 47th brigade and other assault units have been armed with Western weapons, including Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, and relocated to a secret location closer to the front line. During a recent visit by Washington Post journalists, the soldiers were waiting for the order to charge ahead to retake a large swath of Ukrainian territory and tip the war back in Kyiv’s favor. The counteroffensive will be the biggest test yet of the U.S.-led strategy of giving the Ukrainians weapons and training to fight like an American army might — but on their own.
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you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
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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
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
Ukraine recaptures village as Russian forces hold other lines, fire on fleeing civilians elsewhere
By Jamey Keaten
40 mins ago
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukraine's military on Sunday reported recapturing a southeastern village as Russian forces claimed to repel multiple attacks in the area, while a regional official said three people were killed when Moscow's troops opened fire at a boat evacuating people from Russian-occupied areas to Ukrainian-held territory along a flooded front line far to the south.
The battlefield showdown in the southeast and chaotic scenes from inundated southern Ukraine marked the latest upheaval and bloodshed in Russia's war in Ukraine, now in its 16th month.
Oleksandr Prokudin, governor of the Kherson region, said on his Telegram account that a 74-year-old man who tried to protect a woman was among those who died in the attack on evacuees, which wounded another 10. An Associated Press team on site saw three ambulances drop off injured evacuees at a hospital, one of whom was splattered with blood and whisked by stretcher into the emergency room.
The Kherson region straddles the Dnieper River and has suffered heavy flooding since last week's breach of a dam that Ukraine and Russia accuse each other of causing. Russian forces occupy parts of the region on the eastern side of the river.
Many civilians have said Russian authorities in occupied areas were forcing would-be evacuees to present Russian passports before taking them to safety. Since then, many small boats have shuttled from Ukrainian-held areas on the west bank across the river to rescue desperate civilians stuck on rooftops, in attics and other islands of dry amid the deluge.
To the northeast, nearly half-way up the more than 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) front line, Ukrainian forces said they drove out Russian fighters from the village of Blahodatne, in the partially occupied Donetsk region. Ukraine's 68th Separate Hunting Brigade posted a video on Facebook that showed soldiers installing a Ukrainian flag on a damaged building in the village.
Myroslav Semeniuk, spokesman for the brigade, told The Associated Press that an assault team captured six Russian troops after entering several buildings where some 60 soldiers were holed up. “The enemy keeps shelling us but this won’t stop us,” Semeniuk said. “The next village we plan to reclaim is Urozhayne. After that, (we’ll proceed) further south.”
Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said Ukrainian troops in the area had advanced up to 1.5 kilometers (about a mile) and had taken control of another village, Makarivka.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Saturday that Ukrainian counteroffensive actions were underway. But while the recapture of Blahodatne pointed to a small Ukrainian advance, Western and Ukrainian leaders have repeatedly cautioned that efforts to expel Russian troops more broadly are expected take time. Russia has made much of how its troops have held their ground elsewhere.
The Russian Defense Ministry on Sunday continued to insist that it was repelling Ukrainian attacks in the area. It said in a statement that Ukrainian attempts at offensive operations on the southern Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia axes of the frontline over the past 24 hours had been “unsuccessful.”
Vladimir Rogov, a Russian-installed official in the Zaporizhzhia region, insisted that Blahodatne and two other villages in the region were in a “gray area” in terms of who controls them. However, Rogov said in a Telegram post that Russian fighters had been forced to leave the village of Neskuchne in the Donetsk region. In a video, fighters identifying themselves as members of a Ukrainian volunteer force claimed to have taken the village.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has asserted that that Ukraine’s counteroffensive had started, and said Ukrainian forces were taking “significant losses.”
In other developments:
Ukrhydroenergo, Ukraine’s hydropower generator, said Sunday that water levels on a reservoir above the ruptured Kakhovka dam continued to decline — at 9.35 meters (30 feet, 6 inches) on Sunday morning, marking a drop of more than seven meters since the dam break on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, below the dam, Prokudin said water levels on the Ukrainian-held west bank were receding, even if more than 32 settlements remained flooded. He said conditions were worse on the Russian-occupied eastern bank, which sits at a lower elevation and where water levels were slower to drop back down.
Also Sunday, the Russian military accused Ukrainian forces of attacking — albeit unsuccessfully — one of its ships in the Black Sea.
According to Russia’s Defense Ministry, the attempted attack took place when six unmanned speedboats targeted Russia’s Priazovye reconnaissance vessel that was “monitoring the situation and ensuring security along the routes of the TurkStream and Blue Stream gas pipelines in the southeastern part of the Black Sea.”
All the speedboats were destroyed by the Russian military, and the ship didn’t sustain any damage, the ministry said. The claim could not be independently verified, and Ukrainian officials made no immediate comment.
Ukraine and Russia reported exchanging scores of prisoners of war on Sunday; Russia said 94 of its soldiers were freed and Yermak said 95 Ukrainians were released.
Russia’s Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu has signed a decree ordering all Russian volunteer formations to sign contracts with the ministry by July 1, according to his deputy Nikolai Pankov. The move would give the formations legal status and allow them to receive the same state benefits as contract soldiers.
Observers say the move likely targets the Wagner private military company. Wagner owner Yevgeny Prigozhin, who has a long-running feud with the Russian military, said Sunday that the group would not sign such contracts “precisely because Shoigu cannot manage military formations normally.”
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I fear the war is stalemating into attrition, with Bakhmut becoming the new Flanders fields.
bunch of weaponry is coming online for them. training and tactics for leadership will be implemented here soon too. tide is turning. I think thats evident from the russian use of water as a weapon. shot themselves in the foot on that one though. the areas they control got it worse as far as flooding. also that dam supplied crimea with water , I read?
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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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
I fear the war is stalemating into attrition, with Bakhmut becoming the new Flanders fields.
bunch of weaponry is coming online for them. training and tactics for leadership will be implemented here soon too. tide is turning. I think thats evident from the russian use of water as a weapon. shot themselves in the foot on that one though. the areas they control got it worse as far as flooding. also that dam supplied crimea with water , I read?
I think the tide is turning inasmuch as Ukraine is ready to launch its offensive. But I'm very skeptical that they will push Russia out of Crimea. Maybe they reclaim some of the Eastern Oblasts.
I fear the war is stalemating into attrition, with Bakhmut becoming the new Flanders fields.
bunch of weaponry is coming online for them. training and tactics for leadership will be implemented here soon too. tide is turning. I think thats evident from the russian use of water as a weapon. shot themselves in the foot on that one though. the areas they control got it worse as far as flooding. also that dam supplied crimea with water , I read?
I think the tide is turning inasmuch as Ukraine is ready to launch its offensive. But I'm very skeptical that they will push Russia out of Crimea. Maybe they reclaim some of the Eastern Oblasts.
how long do you think adequate training in F-16s take?
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
I fear the war is stalemating into attrition, with Bakhmut becoming the new Flanders fields.
bunch of weaponry is coming online for them. training and tactics for leadership will be implemented here soon too. tide is turning. I think thats evident from the russian use of water as a weapon. shot themselves in the foot on that one though. the areas they control got it worse as far as flooding. also that dam supplied crimea with water , I read?
I think the tide is turning inasmuch as Ukraine is ready to launch its offensive. But I'm very skeptical that they will push Russia out of Crimea. Maybe they reclaim some of the Eastern Oblasts.
how long do you think adequate training in F-16s take?
I have no clue. But I also don't necessary think that gives Ukraine some clear advantage in the war. Russians have jets too. That's why I think it's going to stalemate and then there will need to be some peaceable solution. But Ukraine is not going to publicly agree to cede one ounce of territory until a deal is actually made. Until then, my guess is their official position is they want all lost territory back.
0
curmudgeoness
Brigadoon, foodie capital Posts: 3,990
I fear the war is stalemating into attrition, with Bakhmut becoming the new Flanders fields.
bunch of weaponry is coming online for them. training and tactics for leadership will be implemented here soon too. tide is turning. I think thats evident from the russian use of water as a weapon. shot themselves in the foot on that one though. the areas they control got it worse as far as flooding. also that dam supplied crimea with water , I read?
Yes, flooding, followed by desertification. They're going to have to drill wells in Crimea, people do not have adequate drinking water.
The Kyiv Independent and ISW already are reporting significant gains by Ukraine in its counteroffensive, a number of villages (or what's left of them) have been liberated.
I don't know much of anything about military strategy or weaponry. I know that the official stance is "Crimea is Ukraine," and that there is a very long cultural memory of the abuses suffered under the Russians (not just Chornobyl -- the Holodomor and persistent efforts to deny the existence of a separate Ukrainian culture). Given that the Russian-speaking parts of Ukraine have been hit hardest by Russia's latest invasion, I am skeptical that the Ukrainians still living there would acquiesce and submit to permanent Russian rule.
All those who seek to destroy the liberties of a democratic nation ought to know that war is the surest and shortest means to accomplish it.
Ukraine claims recapture of seven villages in early stages of counteroffensive
By Jamey Keaten
Today
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian troops have retaken seven villages spanning 90 square kilometers (35 square miles) from Russian forces in the past week, the deputy defense minister said Monday as the early stages of Kyiv's counteroffensive notched small successes.
Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar wrote on the Telegram app that the Ukrainian flag was again flying over the village of Storozhov, in the eastern Donetsk province, and that her troops had also retaken three other nearby small villages and three in neighboring Zaporizhzhia province.
“The battles are tough, but our movement is there, and that is very important,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address." He added that rainy weather is challenging his troops, and that he's discussed with his military commanders “which points of the front we need to strengthen and what actions we can take to break more Russian positions.”
On Sunday, Ukrainian officials said their troops took the Donestk villages of Blahodatne, Makarivka and Neskuchne — south of the town of Velyka Novosilka. Maliar reported Monday that the Zaporizhzhia province settlements of Lobkove, Levadne and Novodrivka were also now back under Ukrainian control.
Russian officials did not confirm Ukraine's gains, which were impossible to verify and could be reversed in the to-and-fro of war. The gains amounted to only small bits of territory and underscored the difficulty of the battle ahead for Ukrainian forces, who will have to fight meter by meter to regain the roughly one-fifth of their country under Russian occupation.
Recent fighting on the western edge of the 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) front line has been complicated by a dam breach that sent floodwaters into a part of the Dnieper River separating the two sides.
Western analysts and military officials have cautioned that an effort to rid Ukraine of entrenched and powerfully armed Russian troops could take years, and the success of the Ukrainian counteroffensive is far from certain. French President Emmanuel Macron said in Paris that the Ukrainian counteroffensive began several days ago and “is set to be deployed over several weeks, if not months.”
Vladimir Rogov, an official with the Moscow-appointed administration of the Zaporizhzhia region at the western end of the front line, said “heavy battles" were raging in the area Monday involving Russian artillery, mortars and air power.
The villages are part of an area where the Russian front lines jut out into territory held by Ukraine. While just a few kilometers (more than 1 mile) deep, the protrusion has recently become one of several epicenters of intense fighting along the front line that cuts across southern and eastern Ukraine.
Despite their small size, the capture of the villages involved an incursion into the first line of Russian defenses and could allow Ukrainian forces to try a deeper thrust into occupied areas.
Russian forces control far less Ukrainian land than they did before a blistering Ukrainian counteroffensive last year that retook the northern city of Kharkiv and southern city of Kherson, among other places.
On Saturday, Zelenskyy said “counteroffensive, defensive actions are taking place” without specifying whether it was the all-out counteroffensive that has long been expected after a vast infusion of Western firepower and air defense systems into Ukraine. A day earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin asserted that the counteroffensive had started and Ukrainian forces were taking “significant losses.”
Ukrainian forces have focused on the Zaporizhzhia region and an area near the devastated Donetsk city of Bakhmut, among other locations.
Russian authorities have said their troops are largely holding their ground.
But Semyon Pegov, a prominent Russian military blogger who goes by the nickname WarGonzo, acknowledged Russian troops had withdrawn from Blahodatne, Neskuchne and Makarivka, and said Ukrainian forces were trying to push forward along the banks of the Mokri Yaly River on Monday.
Alexandet Kots, military correspondent for Russian daily Komsomolskaya Pravda, said Ukrainian forces were attempting to advance, despite heavy losses, toward the town of Staromlinovka, which sits on a strategic highway leading to the port city of Mariupol. Russian forces captured the city over a year ago, after Ukrainian forces held out for several months in a grueling and desperate defense.
Separately Monday, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry said least four civilians were killed and 16 others wounded by Russian shelling over the last 24 hours.
In Donetsk, Russian shelling hit nine towns and villages and left one civilian dead and two others wounded. Donetsk Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko posted images of apartment buildings and a cultural center damaged by Russian strikes in the town of Avdiivka.
In Kharkiv, to the north, Russian forces pummeled several settlements with artillery, mortar and rocket fire, wounding at least three people, regional state administration chief Oleh Synehubov wrote on Telegram.
The reported Ukrainian advance came as authorities on both sides of the front line pressed on with rescue and relocation efforts for civilians in the Kherson region driven from their homes by flooding from the breach of the Kakhovka dam last week.
With many homes and shops submerged in polluted river water, the U.N. and other aid groups say access to fresh drinking water is crucial and that water-borne diseases pose a big risk. Thousands of people have been evacuated, though some remain.
Kherson Gov. Oleksandr Prokudin said Monday that water levels have been receding. They now average about 3 meters (nearly 10 feet) higher than normal — down from about 5 meters at the peak level last week. More than 32 towns and villages remain flooded, he said, and Russian forces have continued shelling inundated areas held by Ukraine on the river's western bank.
On Sunday, Prokudin said three people were killed when Moscow’s troops opened fire on a boat evacuating people from Russian-occupied areas toward Ukrainian-held ones.
___
Associated Press writers Illia Novikov in Kyiv, Ukraine, and Yuras Karmanau in Tallinn, Estonia, contributed to this report.
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
I fear the war is stalemating into attrition, with Bakhmut becoming the new Flanders fields.
bunch of weaponry is coming online for them. training and tactics for leadership will be implemented here soon too. tide is turning. I think thats evident from the russian use of water as a weapon. shot themselves in the foot on that one though. the areas they control got it worse as far as flooding. also that dam supplied crimea with water , I read?
Yes, flooding, followed by desertification. They're going to have to drill wells in Crimea, people do not have adequate drinking water.
The Kyiv Independent and ISW already are reporting significant gains by Ukraine in its counteroffensive, a number of villages (or what's left of them) have been liberated.
I don't know much of anything about military strategy or weaponry. I know that the official stance is "Crimea is Ukraine," and that there is a very long cultural memory of the abuses suffered under the Russians (not just Chornobyl -- the Holodomor and persistent efforts to deny the existence of a separate Ukrainian culture). Given that the Russian-speaking parts of Ukraine have been hit hardest by Russia's latest invasion, I am skeptical that the Ukrainians still living there would acquiesce and submit to permanent Russian rule.
If you look at Sevastopol and other areas of Crimea, you're looking at about 40% ethnic Russian. Donbass is going to have similar numbers. It's even larger if you count Russian speakers, as many of them speak Russian primarily, but identify as Ukrainian. And they supported Yanukovych. So there is a strong pro-Russian sentiment.
You probably would be hard pressed to find someone that's more pro-Uke than me, considering that is my heritage, but there's a realpolitik consideration here. Can the Ukrainians really push Russia out of Crimea and the eastern Oblasts? Which one is more important? It's a good question. Donbass has big coal reserves but Crimea provides the best access to the Black Sea and to the Sea of Azov. If they kept the coal reserves, well then they have to transport all the way to the Dnipro River to get it out to sea.
0
curmudgeoness
Brigadoon, foodie capital Posts: 3,990
Those all are good points. I'd argue that we really don't know enough right now to predict what might happen. My understanding is that a lot of that pro-Russian sentiment has vaporized over the past year -- but we really have no good way of determining the level of support. We have to assume that everything Russia says about local support is a lie. Beyond that -- ??
I think part of the dilemma Ukraine faces is that any territory they cede sends the message to Putin that he can just start wantonly burning stuff to the ground and eventually he'll get a little something for his efforts. The human cost doesn't matter to him, and he doesn't seem to want the territory for anything other than bragging rights, so scorched-earth and war crimes are fine by him.
Giving in also incentivizes Putin to go after the Baltic states, tiny Moldova, etc.
I tend to believe that crushing Putin is the only long-term solution, because otherwise, as long as he draws breath he is going to be a threat to neighboring countries that really, really don't want to see "the band" (USSR) get back together. I'm also not confident that his successor, whoever that might be, would be any better.
All those who seek to destroy the liberties of a democratic nation ought to know that war is the surest and shortest means to accomplish it.
Those all are good points. I'd argue that we really don't know enough right now to predict what might happen. My understanding is that a lot of that pro-Russian sentiment has vaporized over the past year -- but we really have no good way of determining the level of support. We have to assume that everything Russia says about local support is a lie. Beyond that -- ??
I think part of the dilemma Ukraine faces is that any territory they cede sends the message to Putin that he can just start wantonly burning stuff to the ground and eventually he'll get a little something for his efforts. The human cost doesn't matter to him, and he doesn't seem to want the territory for anything other than bragging rights, so scorched-earth and war crimes are fine by him.
Giving in also incentivizes Putin to go after the Baltic states, tiny Moldova, etc.
I tend to believe that crushing Putin is the only long-term solution, because otherwise, as long as he draws breath he is going to be a threat to neighboring countries that really, really don't want to see "the band" (USSR) get back together. I'm also not confident that his successor, whoever that might be, would be any better.
I think there is grave risk in trying to knock Putin out. When he goes, it will be a coup or he dies. I think sending his military back to Russia without anything to show for it increases the likelihood of some nuclear event. That's where I'm very worried.
Regarding Moldova, I was also very worried about that early on in the war. It could create some domino effect. Plus Russian intelligence was already trying to destabilize the gov't there. But I'm less worried now considering how strong Ukraine's military is, plus its other border is Romania, who is a very strong US ally.
0
curmudgeoness
Brigadoon, foodie capital Posts: 3,990
I'm more worried about a nuclear accident than a nuclear attack, TBH. Never underestimate the Russian propensity for incompetence and corruption. I disagree with Tom Nichols about a number of things, but I think he's on solid ground when it comes to nuclear matters. I'm much less worried about Putin going nuclear than I was a year ago (I'm not going to panic until Tom says it's time to panic).
I'm not suggesting that "we" should try to eliminate Putin; but he is a Russian man of a certain age, in a certain position, so there will be a successor, likely sooner than later. And I'm not hearing anything to suggest that there's anyone waiting in the wings who is not steeped in the old ways.
All those who seek to destroy the liberties of a democratic nation ought to know that war is the surest and shortest means to accomplish it.
Comments
By Shane Harris and Isabelle Khurshudyan
May 15, 2023 at 10:42 ET
In late January, with his mercenary forces dying by the thousands in a fight for the ruined city of Bakhmut, Wagner Group owner Yevgeniy Prigozhin made Ukraine an extraordinary offer.
Prigozhin said that if Ukraine’s commanders withdrew their soldiers from the area around Bakhmut, he would give Kyiv information on Russian troop positions, which Ukraine could use to attack them. Prigozhin conveyed the proposal to his contacts in Ukraine’s military intelligence directorate, with whom he has maintained secret communications during the course of the war, according to previously unreported U.S. intelligence documents leaked on the group-chat platform Discord.
Prigozhin has publicly feuded with Russian military commanders, who he furiously claims have failed to equip and resupply his forces, which have provided vital support to Moscow’s war effort. But he is also an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who might well regard Prigozhin’s offer to trade the lives of Wagner fighters for Russian soldiers as a treasonous betrayal.
The leaked document does not make clear which Russian troop positions Prigozhin offered to disclose.
Two Ukrainian officials confirmed that Prigozhin has spoken several times to the Ukrainian intelligence directorate, known as HUR. One official said that Prigozhin extended the offer regarding Bakhmut more than once, but that Kyiv rejected it because officials don’t trust Prigozhin and thought his proposals could have been disingenuous.
A U.S. official also cautioned that there are similar doubts in Washington about Prigozhin’s intentions. The Ukrainian and U.S. officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information.
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"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
HIROSHIMA, Japan (AP) — President Joe Biden on Friday endorsed plans to train Ukrainian pilots on U.S.-made F-16 fighter jets, according to two people familiar with the matter, as he huddled with allies at the Group of Seven summit on how to bolster support for Kyiv against Russia's invasion.
The people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss Biden's private conversations with allies, said he announced he had approved the training, which is likely to be conducted in Europe over the coming months, during a meeting of G7 leaders in Hiroshima, where the leaders also announced new sanctions on Moscow in advance of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy joining them at the summit on Sunday.
Biden told the leaders that decisions on when, how many, and who will provide the fourth-generation fighter jets for Ukraine to use in battle will be made in the months ahead while the training is underway.
Zelenskyy has consistently called for the supply of Western fighter jets to bolster his country's defenses against Russia's 15-month invasion, but has until now faced skepticism from the U.S. Under export licensing rules, the U.S. needed to sign-off on any allied effort to train Ukrainian pilots.
European allies in recent weeks have warmed up to the notion of sending fighter jets to Ukraine, as have elements of Biden's Cabinet, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who has emerged as a staunch advocate within the administration.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.
HIROSHIMA, Japan (AP) — Leaders of the world’s most powerful democracies vowed Friday to tighten punishments on Russia for its 15-month invasion of Ukraine, days before President Volodymyr Zelenskyy joins the Group of Seven summit in person on Sunday.
“Our support for Ukraine will not waver," the G7 leaders said in a statement released after closed-door meetings, vowing “to stand together against Russia’s illegal, unjustifiable, and unprovoked war of aggression against Ukraine.”
“Russia started this war and can end this war,” they said.
Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, confirmed on national television that Zelenskyy would attend the summit.
“We were sure that our president would be where Ukraine needed him, in any part of the world, to solve the issue of stability of our country,” Danilov said Friday. “There will be very important matters decided there, so physical presence is a crucial thing to defend our interests.”
Zelenskyy announced Friday that he had opened a visit to Saudi Arabia, where Arab leaders were holding a summit.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s nuclear threats against Ukraine, along with North Korea ’s months-long barrage of missile tests and China’s rapidly expanding nuclear arsenal, have resonated with Japan’s push to make nuclear disarmament a major part of the G7 summit. World leaders Friday visited a peace park dedicated to the tens of thousands who died in the world’s first wartime atomic bomb detonation.
After group photos near the city's iconic bombed-out dome, a wreath-laying and a symbolic cherry tree planting, a new round of sanctions were unveiled against Moscow, with a focus on redoubling efforts to enforce existing sanctions meant to stifle Russia's war effort and hold accountable those behind it, a U.S. official said. Russia is now the most-sanctioned country in the world, but there are questions about the effectiveness of the financial penalties.
The U.S. component of the actions would blacklist about 70 Russian and third-country entities involved in Russia's defense production, and sanction more than 300 individuals, entities, aircraft and vessels, said a U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to preview the announcement.
The official said the other G7 nations would undertake similar steps to further isolate Russia and to undermine its ability to wage war in Ukraine. Details were to emerge throughout the weekend summit.
The G7 nations said in Friday's statement that they would work to keep Russia from using the international financial system to prosecute its war, would “further restrict Russia’s access to our economies” and would prevent sanctions evasion by Moscow.
They urged other nations to stop providing Russia with support and weapons “or face severe costs.”
The European Union was focused on closing loopholes and plans to restrict trade in Russian diamonds, Charles Michel, president of the European Council, told reporters Friday.
The UK also announced new sanctions that freeze the assets of 86 people and organizations connected to Russia’s energy, metals, defense, transport and financial sectors.
“We need to give Ukraine the tools now to successfully defend itself and regain full sovereignty and territorial integrity. We should provide Ukraine the necessary military and financial support. And we have to do this as long as it takes,” EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, who represents Hiroshima in parliament, wants nuclear disarmament to be a major focus of discussions, and he formally started the summit at Hiroshima's Peace Memorial Park. The visit by world leaders to a park dedicated to preserving reminders of Aug. 6, 1945, when a U.S. B-29 dropped an atomic bomb over Hiroshima, provided a striking backdrop to the start the summit. An estimated 140,000 people were killed in the attack, and a fast-dwindling number of now-elderly survivors have ensured that Hiroshima has become synonymous with anti-nuclear peace efforts.
“Honestly, I have big doubts if Mr. Kishida, who is pursuing a military buildup and seeking to revise the pacifist constitution, can really discuss nuclear disarmament,” Sueichi Kido, a 83-year-old “hibakusha” or survivor of the Nagasaki explosion, told The Associated Press. “But because they are meeting in Hiroshima I do have a sliver of hope that they will have positive talks and make a tiny step toward nuclear disarmament.”
Biden, who scrapped plans to travel on to Papua New Guinea and Australia after his stay in Japan so that he can get back to debt limit talks in Washington, arranged to meet Saturday on the G-7 sidelines with leaders of the so-called Quad partnership, made up of Japan, Australia, India and the U.S.
The four originally had been scheduled to meet in Australia as part of Biden's effort to revitalize relationships in the Indo-Pacific.
On Thursday night, Kishida opened the global diplomacy by sitting down with President Joe Biden. Kishida also held talks with British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
The Japan-U.S. alliance is the “very foundation of peace and security in the Indo-Pacific region,” Kishida told Biden. Japan, facing threats from authoritarian China, Russia and North Korea, has been expanding its military but also relies on 50,000 U.S. troops stationed in Japan and U.S. military might.
“We very much welcome that the cooperation has evolved in leaps and bounds,” Kishida said.
Biden said: “When our countries stand together, we stand stronger, and I believe the whole world is safer when we do."
As G7 attendees made their way to Hiroshima, Moscow unleashed yet another aerial attack on the Ukrainian capital. Loud explosions thundered through Kyiv during the early hours, marking the ninth time this month that Russian air raids have targeted the city after weeks of relative quiet.
The United States has frozen Russian Central Bank funds, restricted banks’ access to SWIFT -- the dominant system for global financial transactions -- and sanctioned thousands of Russian firms, government officials, oligarchs and their families.
The Group of Seven nations collectively imposed a $60 per-barrel price cap on Russian oil and diesel last year, which the U.S. Treasury Department on Thursday defended in a new progress report, stating that the cap has been successful in suppressing Russian oil revenues. Treasury cites Russian Ministry of Finance data showing that the Kremlin’s oil revenues from January to March this year were more than 40% lower than last year.
The economic impact of sanctions depends largely on the extent to which a targeted country is able to circumvent them, according to a recent Congressional Research Service repor t. So for the past month, U.S. Treasury officials have traveled across Europe and Central Asia to press countries that still do business with the Kremlin to cut their financial ties.
“The challenge is to make sure the sanctions are painful against Russia, not against ourselves,” said Michel. “It's very clear that each package is more difficult than the previous one and requires more political effort to make a decision.”
G7 leaders and invited guests from several other counties are also expected to discuss how to deal with China's growing assertiveness and military buildup as concerns rise that it could could try to seize Taiwan by force, sparking a wider conflict. China claims the self-governing island as its own and its ships and warplanes regularly patrol near it.
In a bit of dueling diplomacy, Chinese President Xi Jinping is hosting the leaders of the Central Asian countries of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan for a two-day summit in the Chinese city of Xi’an.
The leaders are due to discuss efforts to strengthen the global economy and address rising prices that are squeezing families and government budgets around the world, particularly in developing countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
The G7 includes Japan, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Canada and Italy, as well as the European Union.
__
Associated Press writers Josh Boak, Adam Schreck and Mari Yamaguchi in Hiroshima, Japan, Raf Casert in Brussels, Hanna Arhirova in Kyiv, Ukraine, and Fatima Hussein in Washington contributed to this report.
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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon has overestimated the value of the weapons it has sent to Ukraine by at least $3 billion — an accounting error that could be a boon for the war effort because it will allow the Defense Department to send more weapons now without asking Congress for more money.
The acknowledgment Thursday comes at a time when Pentagon is under increased pressure by Congress to show accountability for the billions of dollars it has sent in weapons, ammunition and equipment to Ukraine and as some lawmakers question whether that level of support should continue.
It also could free up more money for critical weapons as Ukraine is on the verge of a much anticipated counteroffensive — which will require as much military aid as they can get. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has previously said the offensive was delayed because they did not yet have everything they needed.
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The error was caused when officials overvalued some of the systems sent to Ukraine, using the value of money it would cost to replace an item completely rather than the current value of the weapon. In many of the military aid packages, the Pentagon has opted to draw from its stockpiles of older, existing gear because it can get those items to Ukraine faster.
“During our regular oversight process of presidential drawdown packages, the Department discovered inconsistencies in equipment valuation for Ukraine. In some cases, ‘replacement cost’ rather than ‘net book value’ was used, therefore overestimating the value of the equipment drawn down from U.S. stocks,” said Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh.
She added that the mistake hasn't constrained U.S. support to Ukraine or hampered the ability to send aid to the battlefield.
A defense official said the Pentagon is still trying to determine exactly how much the total surplus will be. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said the comptroller has asked the military services to review all previous Ukraine aid packages using the proper cost figures. The result, said the official, will be that the department will have more available funding authority to use as the Ukraine offensive nears.
The aid surplus was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.
To date the U.S. has provided Ukraine nearly $37 billion in military aid since Russia invaded in February 2022. The bulk of that has been in weapons systems, millions of munitions and ammunition rounds, and an array of trucks, sensors, radars and other equipment pulled from Pentagon stockpiles and sent quickly to Ukraine.
Members of Congress have repeatedly pressed Defense Department leaders on how closely the U.S. is tracking its aid to Ukraine to ensure that it is not subject to fraud or ending up in the wrong hands. The Pentagon has said it has a “robust program” to track the aid as it crosses the border into Ukraine and to keep tabs on it once it is there, depending on the sensitivity of each weapons system.
There also is a small team of Americans in Ukraine working with Ukrainians to do physical inspections when possible, but also virtual inspections when needed, since those teams are not going to the front lines.
In late February, the Pentagon’s inspector general said his office has found no evidence yet that any of the billions of dollars in weapons and aid to Ukraine has been lost to corruption or diverted into the wrong hands. He cautioned that those investigations are only in their early stages.
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KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The head of the Russian private army Wagner has again broken with the Kremlin line on Ukraine, saying its goal of demilitarizing the country has backfired, acknowledging Russian troops have killed civilians and agreeing with Western estimates that he's lost more than 20,000 men in the battle for Bakhmut.
Yevgeny Prigozhin said about half of those who died in the eastern Ukrainian city were Russian convicts recruited for the 15-month-old war. His figures stood in stark contrast to Moscow's widely disputed claims that just over 6,000 of its troops were killed throughout the war as of January. By comparison, official Soviet troop losses in the 1979-89 Afghanistan war were 15,000.
Ukraine hasn’t said how many of its soldiers have died since Russia’s full-scale invasion began in February 2022.
White House officials said Wednesday that Prigozhin’s comments were in line with their own estimates that Russian losses have accelerated. The White House estimated this month that Russian forces had suffered 100,000 casualties, including 20,000 killed in fighting, since December. White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said then that about half of those killed were Wagner forces.
Analysts believe many of those killed in the nine-month fight for Bakhmut were Russian convicts with little military training.
Prigozhin — himself a former convict — has frequently criticized Russian military officials for not supplying his troops with enough ammunition. He also has questioned their tactics, commitment and leadership capabilities, and complained they haven't sufficiently credited his forces for battlefield successes.
He's highlighted his forces' sacrifices, and on Saturday touted what he claimed was the capture of the city of Bakhmut.
In an interview published late Tuesday with Konstantin Dolgov, a pro-Kremlin political strategist, Prigozhin went even further in his criticism — questioning some of Russian President Vladimir Putin's rationale for the war. Prigozhin said Russia’s goal of “demilitarizing” Ukraine has backfired because Kyiv’s military has become stronger with Western weapons and training.
In invading Ukraine, Putin also cited the need to increase Russia's security and prevent Ukraine from joining NATO. Since the war began, Ukraine has applied to join NATO, and cross-border attacks into Russia itself have increased.
In Washington, Kirby speculated Wednesday on Prigozhin's motives.
“And it’s possible that this could be a sort of morbid way of him ... claiming credit for whatever they’ve been able to achieve in Bakhmut, but also trying to publicly embarrass the Ministry of Defense further that the cost was borne in blood and treasure by Wagner, and not by the Russian military.”
In the interview, Prigozhin also challenged Moscow's vehement denials that Russian forces had killed civilians.
In what it says is likely a low estimate, the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights says that from February 2022 until early April 2023, it recorded 22,734 civilian casualties in Ukraine: 8,490 killed and 14,244 injured.
Prigozhin, a wealthy businessman with longtime links to Putin, is known for his bluster — often spiced with obscenities — and has previously made unverifiable claims from which he later backtracked.
Earlier this month, his media team published a video of him shouting, swearing and pointing at about 30 uniformed bodies on the ground, saying they were Wagner fighters who died in a single day. He claimed the Russian Defense Ministry had starved his men of ammunition, and he threatened to give up the fight for Bakhmut.
Prigozhin has frequently warned of a counteroffensive that Ukrainian officials have said they're planning, and in Tuesday's interview, he said that, given continued Western support, Kyiv's forces might succeed in pushing Russian troops out of all territory they occupy in southern and eastern Ukraine, as well as annexed Crimea.
“A pessimistic scenario: the Ukrainians are given missiles, they prepare troops, of course they will continue their offensive, try to counterattack," he said. "They will attack Crimea, they will try to blow up the Crimean bridge (to the Russian mainland), cut off (our) supply lines. Therefore we need to prepare for a hard war.”
Prigozhin's admission of heavy losses appears to show the impact of Ukraine's strategy. Ukrainian officials have said their goal in Bakhmut was to exhaust and deplete Russian forces, distract them from protecting territory they occupy elsewhere, and buy time for more Western weapons and ammunition supplies to arrive, and for training to be completed.
Russia’s largest state-run and pro-Kremlin media did not report Prigozhin’s interview, posted in a Telegram channel with only 50,000 followers, making it unlikely to be widely seen in Russia. Nor did Russian military bloggers, whose popular Telegram pages are important sources of information about the war to many Russians, mention it.
On the battlefield, the Ukrainian General Staff said Wednesday that “heavy fighting” was continuing inside Bakhmut, days after Russia claimed it had completely captured the devastated city. Bakhmut lies in Donetsk province, one of four Russia illegally annexed last fall and only partially controls.
The head of Ukraine’s ground forces, Oleksandr Syrskyi, said Kyiv’s forces “are continuing their defensive operation” in Bakhmut, with unspecified “successes” on its outskirts. He didn't elaborate.
A Ukrainian commander in Bakhmut told The Associated Press on Tuesday that the Ukrainians planned to trap the Russians.
“Now we don’t need to fight in Bakhmut. We need to surround it from flanks and block it,” Yevhen Mezhevikin said. "Then we should ‘sweep’ it. This is more appropriate, and that’s what we are doing now.”
Elsewhere, more attacks continued in a border region that Russian officials had claimed had calmed down after one of the most serious incursions since the war began. Russian forces shot down “a large number” of drones in Russia’s southern Belgorod region, a local official said Wednesday, a day after Moscow announced that its forces crushed a cross-border raid from Ukraine.
The drones were intercepted overnight, Belgorod Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov said on Telegram, and another was shot down Wednesday just outside the regional capital, also called Belgorod. He said no one had been hurt, but property had been damaged.
Ukrainian officials made no immediate comment.
In Moscow, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu vowed to respond “promptly and extremely harshly” to such attacks.
Details of the incident in the rural region, about 80 kilometers (45 miles) north of the city of Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine and far from the war's front lines, are unclear.
Moscow blamed the incursion on Ukrainian military saboteurs. Kyiv described it as an uprising against the Kremlin by Russian partisans. It was impossible to reconcile the two versions, to say with certainty who was behind the attack or to ascertain its aims.
The region is a Russian military hub holding fuel and ammunition depots. The Belgorod region, like the neighboring Bryansk region and other border areas, has seen sporadic spillover from the war.
___
Kozlowska reported from London. Yuras Karmanau in Tallinn, Estonia, Aamer Madhani in Washington, and Andrew Katell in New York contributed.
___
Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
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By Mary Ilyushina
May 24, 2023 at 15:17 ET
RIGA, Latvia — Fresh off his claim of victory in capturing the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, Russian mercenary boss Yevgeniy Prigozhin warned that Moscow’s brutal war could plunge Russia into turmoil similar to the 1917 revolution unless its detached, wealthy elite become more directly committed to the conflict.
In a lengthy interview with Konstantin Dolgov, a political operative and pro-war blogger, Prigozhin, the founder and leader of the Wagner mercenary group, also asserted that the war had backfired spectacularly by failing to “demilitarize” Ukraine, one of President Vladimir Putin’s stated aims of the invasion. He also called for totalitarian policies.
“We are in a situation where we can simply lose Russia,” Prigozhin said, using an expletive to hammer his point. “We must introduce martial law. We unfortunately … must announce new waves of mobilization; we must put everyone who is capable to work on increasing the production of ammunition,” he said. “Russia needs to live like North Korea for a few years, so to say, close the borders … and work hard.”
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"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
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Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
By Isabelle Khurshudyan and Kamila Hrabchuk
June 04, 2023 at 1:00 ET
When Ukraine’s long-awaited counteroffensive finally begins, the fight will be led by brigades armed not only with Western weapons but also Western know-how, gleaned from months of training aimed at transforming Ukraine’s military into a modern force skilled in NATO’s most advanced warfare tactics.
As other Ukrainian units were fighting to expel the Russian occupiers from the country’s east and south, the brand-new 47th Separate Mechanized Brigade was preparing for the next phase of war from a classroom at a NATO base in Germany.
The brigade’s leadership trained with computers that simulated situations they might face in real life. Deputy commander Maj. Ivan Shalamaha and others planned their assaults and then let the program show them the results — how their Russian enemies might respond, where they could make a breakthrough and where they would suffer losses.
“You understand the overall picture, how it works,” Shalamaha said. “You understand where and what your shortcomings were. And we pay attention to what we failed to do during this simulation.”
[To liberate territory, Ukraine must smash fortified Russian defenses]
Now the war games are over. The 47th brigade and other assault units have been armed with Western weapons, including Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, and relocated to a secret location closer to the front line. During a recent visit by Washington Post journalists, the soldiers were waiting for the order to charge ahead to retake a large swath of Ukrainian territory and tip the war back in Kyiv’s favor.
The counteroffensive will be the biggest test yet of the U.S.-led strategy of giving the Ukrainians weapons and training to fight like an American army might — but on their own.
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Prague Krakow Berlin 2018. Berlin 2022
EV, Taormina 1+2 2017.
I wish i was the souvenir you kept your house key on..
https://wapo.st/3qz1eIH
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukraine's military on Sunday reported recapturing a southeastern village as Russian forces claimed to repel multiple attacks in the area, while a regional official said three people were killed when Moscow's troops opened fire at a boat evacuating people from Russian-occupied areas to Ukrainian-held territory along a flooded front line far to the south.
The battlefield showdown in the southeast and chaotic scenes from inundated southern Ukraine marked the latest upheaval and bloodshed in Russia's war in Ukraine, now in its 16th month.
Oleksandr Prokudin, governor of the Kherson region, said on his Telegram account that a 74-year-old man who tried to protect a woman was among those who died in the attack on evacuees, which wounded another 10. An Associated Press team on site saw three ambulances drop off injured evacuees at a hospital, one of whom was splattered with blood and whisked by stretcher into the emergency room.
The Kherson region straddles the Dnieper River and has suffered heavy flooding since last week's breach of a dam that Ukraine and Russia accuse each other of causing. Russian forces occupy parts of the region on the eastern side of the river.
Many civilians have said Russian authorities in occupied areas were forcing would-be evacuees to present Russian passports before taking them to safety. Since then, many small boats have shuttled from Ukrainian-held areas on the west bank across the river to rescue desperate civilians stuck on rooftops, in attics and other islands of dry amid the deluge.
To the northeast, nearly half-way up the more than 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) front line, Ukrainian forces said they drove out Russian fighters from the village of Blahodatne, in the partially occupied Donetsk region. Ukraine's 68th Separate Hunting Brigade posted a video on Facebook that showed soldiers installing a Ukrainian flag on a damaged building in the village.
Myroslav Semeniuk, spokesman for the brigade, told The Associated Press that an assault team captured six Russian troops after entering several buildings where some 60 soldiers were holed up. “The enemy keeps shelling us but this won’t stop us,” Semeniuk said. “The next village we plan to reclaim is Urozhayne. After that, (we’ll proceed) further south.”
Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said Ukrainian troops in the area had advanced up to 1.5 kilometers (about a mile) and had taken control of another village, Makarivka.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Saturday that Ukrainian counteroffensive actions were underway. But while the recapture of Blahodatne pointed to a small Ukrainian advance, Western and Ukrainian leaders have repeatedly cautioned that efforts to expel Russian troops more broadly are expected take time. Russia has made much of how its troops have held their ground elsewhere.
The Russian Defense Ministry on Sunday continued to insist that it was repelling Ukrainian attacks in the area. It said in a statement that Ukrainian attempts at offensive operations on the southern Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia axes of the frontline over the past 24 hours had been “unsuccessful.”
Vladimir Rogov, a Russian-installed official in the Zaporizhzhia region, insisted that Blahodatne and two other villages in the region were in a “gray area” in terms of who controls them. However, Rogov said in a Telegram post that Russian fighters had been forced to leave the village of Neskuchne in the Donetsk region. In a video, fighters identifying themselves as members of a Ukrainian volunteer force claimed to have taken the village.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has asserted that that Ukraine’s counteroffensive had started, and said Ukrainian forces were taking “significant losses.”
In other developments:
Ukrhydroenergo, Ukraine’s hydropower generator, said Sunday that water levels on a reservoir above the ruptured Kakhovka dam continued to decline — at 9.35 meters (30 feet, 6 inches) on Sunday morning, marking a drop of more than seven meters since the dam break on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, below the dam, Prokudin said water levels on the Ukrainian-held west bank were receding, even if more than 32 settlements remained flooded. He said conditions were worse on the Russian-occupied eastern bank, which sits at a lower elevation and where water levels were slower to drop back down.
Also Sunday, the Russian military accused Ukrainian forces of attacking — albeit unsuccessfully — one of its ships in the Black Sea.
According to Russia’s Defense Ministry, the attempted attack took place when six unmanned speedboats targeted Russia’s Priazovye reconnaissance vessel that was “monitoring the situation and ensuring security along the routes of the TurkStream and Blue Stream gas pipelines in the southeastern part of the Black Sea.”
All the speedboats were destroyed by the Russian military, and the ship didn’t sustain any damage, the ministry said. The claim could not be independently verified, and Ukrainian officials made no immediate comment.
Ukraine and Russia reported exchanging scores of prisoners of war on Sunday; Russia said 94 of its soldiers were freed and Yermak said 95 Ukrainians were released.
Russia’s Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu has signed a decree ordering all Russian volunteer formations to sign contracts with the ministry by July 1, according to his deputy Nikolai Pankov. The move would give the formations legal status and allow them to receive the same state benefits as contract soldiers.
Observers say the move likely targets the Wagner private military company. Wagner owner Yevgeny Prigozhin, who has a long-running feud with the Russian military, said Sunday that the group would not sign such contracts “precisely because Shoigu cannot manage military formations normally.”
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bunch of weaponry is coming online for them. training and tactics for leadership will be implemented here soon too. tide is turning. I think thats evident from the russian use of water as a weapon. shot themselves in the foot on that one though. the areas they control got it worse as far as flooding. also that dam supplied crimea with water , I read?
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how long do you think adequate training in F-16s take?
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KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian troops have retaken seven villages spanning 90 square kilometers (35 square miles) from Russian forces in the past week, the deputy defense minister said Monday as the early stages of Kyiv's counteroffensive notched small successes.
Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar wrote on the Telegram app that the Ukrainian flag was again flying over the village of Storozhov, in the eastern Donetsk province, and that her troops had also retaken three other nearby small villages and three in neighboring Zaporizhzhia province.
“The battles are tough, but our movement is there, and that is very important,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address." He added that rainy weather is challenging his troops, and that he's discussed with his military commanders “which points of the front we need to strengthen and what actions we can take to break more Russian positions.”
On Sunday, Ukrainian officials said their troops took the Donestk villages of Blahodatne, Makarivka and Neskuchne — south of the town of Velyka Novosilka. Maliar reported Monday that the Zaporizhzhia province settlements of Lobkove, Levadne and Novodrivka were also now back under Ukrainian control.
Russian officials did not confirm Ukraine's gains, which were impossible to verify and could be reversed in the to-and-fro of war. The gains amounted to only small bits of territory and underscored the difficulty of the battle ahead for Ukrainian forces, who will have to fight meter by meter to regain the roughly one-fifth of their country under Russian occupation.
Recent fighting on the western edge of the 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) front line has been complicated by a dam breach that sent floodwaters into a part of the Dnieper River separating the two sides.
Western analysts and military officials have cautioned that an effort to rid Ukraine of entrenched and powerfully armed Russian troops could take years, and the success of the Ukrainian counteroffensive is far from certain. French President Emmanuel Macron said in Paris that the Ukrainian counteroffensive began several days ago and “is set to be deployed over several weeks, if not months.”
Vladimir Rogov, an official with the Moscow-appointed administration of the Zaporizhzhia region at the western end of the front line, said “heavy battles" were raging in the area Monday involving Russian artillery, mortars and air power.
The villages are part of an area where the Russian front lines jut out into territory held by Ukraine. While just a few kilometers (more than 1 mile) deep, the protrusion has recently become one of several epicenters of intense fighting along the front line that cuts across southern and eastern Ukraine.
Despite their small size, the capture of the villages involved an incursion into the first line of Russian defenses and could allow Ukrainian forces to try a deeper thrust into occupied areas.
Russian forces control far less Ukrainian land than they did before a blistering Ukrainian counteroffensive last year that retook the northern city of Kharkiv and southern city of Kherson, among other places.
On Saturday, Zelenskyy said “counteroffensive, defensive actions are taking place” without specifying whether it was the all-out counteroffensive that has long been expected after a vast infusion of Western firepower and air defense systems into Ukraine. A day earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin asserted that the counteroffensive had started and Ukrainian forces were taking “significant losses.”
Ukrainian forces have focused on the Zaporizhzhia region and an area near the devastated Donetsk city of Bakhmut, among other locations.
Russian authorities have said their troops are largely holding their ground.
But Semyon Pegov, a prominent Russian military blogger who goes by the nickname WarGonzo, acknowledged Russian troops had withdrawn from Blahodatne, Neskuchne and Makarivka, and said Ukrainian forces were trying to push forward along the banks of the Mokri Yaly River on Monday.
Alexandet Kots, military correspondent for Russian daily Komsomolskaya Pravda, said Ukrainian forces were attempting to advance, despite heavy losses, toward the town of Staromlinovka, which sits on a strategic highway leading to the port city of Mariupol. Russian forces captured the city over a year ago, after Ukrainian forces held out for several months in a grueling and desperate defense.
Separately Monday, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry said least four civilians were killed and 16 others wounded by Russian shelling over the last 24 hours.
In Donetsk, Russian shelling hit nine towns and villages and left one civilian dead and two others wounded. Donetsk Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko posted images of apartment buildings and a cultural center damaged by Russian strikes in the town of Avdiivka.
In Kharkiv, to the north, Russian forces pummeled several settlements with artillery, mortar and rocket fire, wounding at least three people, regional state administration chief Oleh Synehubov wrote on Telegram.
The reported Ukrainian advance came as authorities on both sides of the front line pressed on with rescue and relocation efforts for civilians in the Kherson region driven from their homes by flooding from the breach of the Kakhovka dam last week.
With many homes and shops submerged in polluted river water, the U.N. and other aid groups say access to fresh drinking water is crucial and that water-borne diseases pose a big risk. Thousands of people have been evacuated, though some remain.
Kherson Gov. Oleksandr Prokudin said Monday that water levels have been receding. They now average about 3 meters (nearly 10 feet) higher than normal — down from about 5 meters at the peak level last week. More than 32 towns and villages remain flooded, he said, and Russian forces have continued shelling inundated areas held by Ukraine on the river's western bank.
On Sunday, Prokudin said three people were killed when Moscow’s troops opened fire on a boat evacuating people from Russian-occupied areas toward Ukrainian-held ones.
___
Associated Press writers Illia Novikov in Kyiv, Ukraine, and Yuras Karmanau in Tallinn, Estonia, contributed to this report.
___
Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine: https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
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You probably would be hard pressed to find someone that's more pro-Uke than me, considering that is my heritage, but there's a realpolitik consideration here. Can the Ukrainians really push Russia out of Crimea and the eastern Oblasts? Which one is more important? It's a good question. Donbass has big coal reserves but Crimea provides the best access to the Black Sea and to the Sea of Azov. If they kept the coal reserves, well then they have to transport all the way to the Dnipro River to get it out to sea.
Regarding Moldova, I was also very worried about that early on in the war. It could create some domino effect. Plus Russian intelligence was already trying to destabilize the gov't there. But I'm less worried now considering how strong Ukraine's military is, plus its other border is Romania, who is a very strong US ally.