Hillary Clinton is talking about Zelensky’s speech

Searching for Russian stragglers in Lyman, Ukraine: The case of a Russian convoluted convoy in Kiev (Kramatorski)

KRAMATORSK, Ukraine — Ukrainian forces on Sunday hunted Russian stragglers in the key city of Lyman, which was taken back from Russia after its demoralized troops, according to a major Russian newspaper, fled with “empty eyes,” and despite Moscow’s baseless claim it had annexed the region surrounding the city.

The debacle in the city of Lyman, a strategic railway hub in the east of the country, was another problem for Putin’s leadership as he faced withering criticism at home.

Russian troops in the last days of their occupation in Lyman were plagued by desertion and poor planning, it was reported by the Komsomolskaya Pravda in an article published Sunday.

STAVKY, Ukraine — Racing down a road with his men in pursuit of retreating Russian soldiers, a battalion commander came across an abandoned Russian armored vehicle, its engine still running. There was a lot of stuff inside, including a rifle, rocket propelled grenades and helmets. The men were gone.

“They dropped everything: personal care, helmets,” said the commander, who uses the code name Swat. I thought it was a special unit and they were panicked. It was raining very hard, the road was bad and they drop everything and move.”

What the ministry of defense has done about Ukrainian cross-border attacks on civilian energy infrastructure: “My Russian city of Valuyki is under constant fire”

On the battlefield, Ukraine has retaken key cities and shown unlikely resistance to an unprepared and ill-equipped Russian army. Russian President Vladimir Putin has been ruthless in his attacks on civilian energy infrastructure and this has wreaked havoc on Ukraine during the winter.

“Our Russian city of Valuyki… is under constant fire,” he said. Governors, Telegram channels, our war correspondents are just some of the people who learn about this. But no one else. The Ministry of Defense’s reports are not different in substance. They say they killed the Nazis and destroyed hundreds of rockets. People are aware. Our people are not stupid. But they don’t want to even tell part of the truth. This can lead to a loss of credibility.”

Petraeus: Putin has earned a failing grade to date. The most important task of a strategic leader is to get the big ideas right; that is, to get the overall strategy right. Putin clearly has failed abysmally in that task, resulting in a war that has made him and his country a pariah, set back the Russian economy by a decade or more (losing many of Russia’s best and brightest, and prompting over 1,200 western companies to leave Russia or reduce operations there), done catastrophic damage to the Russian military and its reputation and put his legacy in serious jeopardy.

Andrei Kartopoulosk, a former colonel-general in the Russian military and a member of the pro-Kremlin United Russia party, said that we need to stop lying. “We brought this up many times before … But somehow it’s apparently not getting through to individual senior figures.”

Kartapolov complained that the Ministry of Defense was evading the truth about incidents such as Ukrainian cross-border strikes in Russian regions neighboring Ukraine.

Valuyki is in Russia’s Belgorod region, near the border with Ukraine. Kyiv has generally adopted a neither-confirm-nor-deny stance when it comes to striking Russian targets across the border.

“There is no need to somehow cast a shadow over the entire Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation because of some, I do not say traitors, but incompetent commanders, who did not bother, and were not accountable, for the processes and gaps that exist today,” Stremousov said. According to some, the Minister of Defense, Sergei Shoigu, could potentially shoot himself as an officer. The term officer is new to a lot of people.

Kadyrov has been more forthcoming when blaming Russian commanders for the retreat from the strategically important Ukrainian city of Lyman.

The Central Military District Commander, Colonel-General Alexander Lapin, was personally blamed by Kadyrov for the debacle, accusing him of not providing enough for his troops.

“The Russian information space has significantly deviated from the narratives preferred by the Kremlin and the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) that things are generally under control,” ISW noted in its recent analysis.

One of the central features of Putinism is a fetish for World War II, known in Russia as the Great Patriotic War. And those in Russia’s party of war often speak admiringly of the brutal tactics employed by the Red Army to fight Hitler’s Wehrmacht, including the use of punishment battalions – sending soldiers accused of desertion, cowardice or wavering against German positions as cannon fodder – and the use of summary execution to halt unauthorized retreats.

Ramzan Kadyrov, the Chechen leader who called for Russia to “take more drastic measures” including the use of low-yield nuclear weapons in Ukraine, welcomed the appointment of a former infantryman who commanded in Afghanistan. Kadyrov is notorious for crushing all forms of dissent, so the praise from him is significant.

“Yes, if it were my will, I would declare martial law throughout the country and use any weapon, because today we are at war with the whole NATO bloc,” Kadyrov said in a post that also seemed to echo Putin’s not-so-subtle threats that Russia might contemplate the use of nuclear weapons.

The aftermath of a massive explosion on the Kerch Straight bridge: consequences for the Ukrainian government and for the development of infrastructure in Odesa, Ukraine

A global affairs analyst is Michael Bociurkiw. He is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and a former spokesperson for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. He contributes to CNN Opinion. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own. CNN has more opinion.

In the wake of the massive explosion on the Kerch Straight bridge over the weekend, fears of reprisals by the Kremlin were never far away.

Russian forces began their next major offensive in the eastern Ukrainian region of Luhansk, attacking Ukrainian defensive lines and making marginal advances, according to the Institute for the Study of War. Analysts at the Atlantic Council also said Russian forces are pushing to encircle Bakhmut, a city in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region.

The significance of the strikes on central Kyiv, and close to the government quarter, cannot be overstated. Western governments should see it as a red line being crossed on this 229th day of the war.

During the day, the area around my office in Odesa was eerily quiet, with only reports of missiles and drones being shot down. (Normally at this time of the day, nearby restaurants would be heaving with customers, and chatter of plans for upcoming weddings and parties).

Just a few hours earlier Zaporizhzhia, a southeastern city which is close to the largest nuclear power plant in Europe, was hit with multiple strikes on apartment buildings. At least 17 people died and many were injured.

The four-star hotel was in the entertainment district and was hit by Russian missiles. Ukraine’s power grid operator said it preventatively shut off electricity to several areas of the capital region, but did not report any damage to their infrastructure.

In scenes reminiscent of the early days of the war, some media outlets temporarily moved their operations to underground bomb shelters. In a metro station where there is a shelter, a large group of people took cover from a small group singing patriotic Ukrainian songs on the platforms.

Indeed, millions of people in cities across Ukraine will be spending most of the day in bomb shelters, at the urging of officials, while businesses have been asked to shift work online as much as possible.

It was just as many regions of Ukraine were starting to recover, and with many asylum seekers coming back home, the attacks could cause another blow to business confidence.

Russia is struggling on the ground and is not achieving supremacy in the air, but Monday’s attacks may have achieved one goal – sending a signal of strength to Putin’s critics.

Hardwiring newly claimed territory with expensive, record-breaking infrastructure projects seems to be a penchant of dictators. In 2018, Putin personally opened the Kerch bridge – Europe’s longest – by driving a truck across it. The world’s largest sea crossing bridge was built in the year 2002 by Beijing after they reclaimed Macau and Hong Kong. The $20 billion, 34-mile road bridge opened after about two years of delays.

The Ukrainian Explosion: What Have We Learned in the Last 24 Hours? And What Should We Do now to Ensure That Russia is Right?

The explosion lit up the social media channels of the Ukrainians. Many shared their sense of jubilation via text messages.

The message was obvious for the world to see. Putin does not intend to be humiliated. He will not accept the fact that he’s lost. And he is quite prepared to inflict civilian carnage and indiscriminate terror in response to his string of battlefield reversals.

Facing increasing criticism at home has placed Putin on thin ice, which is an act of selfish desperation.

The Ukrainian offensive that is expected to be launched in the spring or summer will have better trained, better equipped and more capable Ukrainian forces.

What is crucially important now is for Washington and other allies to use urgent telephone diplomacy to urge China and India – which presumably still have some leverage over Putin – to resist the urge to use even more deadly weapons.

That said, we should not underestimate Putin. He still believes that Russia can “out-suffer” the Ukrainians, Europeans, and Americans in the same way that Russians out-suffered Napoleon’s army and Hitler’s Nazis. And the US and our NATO and western allies and partners need to do all that we can, as quickly as we can, to enable Ukraine and prove Putin wrong.

High tech defense systems are needed to protect energy infrastructure around the country. The need to protect heating systems is urgent as winter is about to start.

Russian-Surovikin Attacks on Ukrainian Cities and Infrastructure in Light of the December 11 Decay into Air-Right Attacks and the Deceleration of Crimea Bridge

Turkey and the Gulf states should be pressured by the West to impose restrictions on Russian tourists in order to have an impact on the situation.

The attacks snatched away the semblance of normality that city dwellers, who spent months earlier in the war in subways turned into air raid shelters, have managed to restore to their lives and raised fears of new strikes.

The targets on Monday had little military value and were used to indicate Putin’s need to find other targets because of his inability to destroy the Ukrainian military on the battlefield.

The bombing of power installations, in particular, Monday appeared to be an unsubtle hint of the misery the Russian President could inflict as winter sets in, even as his forces retreat in the face of Ukrainian troops using Western arms.

Biden first discussed the prospect of Zelensky visiting Washington during a telephone call with the Ukrainian leader on December 11, an administration official said. Zelensky accepted the invitation last week and began consultations with the security team about the risks and benefits of the trip.

John Kirby at the National Security Council suggested that Washington was in touch with the government in Kyiv every day and that it was looking favorably on their requests. “We do the best we can in subsequent packages to meet those needs,” he told CNN’s Kate Bolduan.

Kirby was also unable to say whether Putin was definitively shifting his strategy from a losing battlefield war to a campaign to pummel civilian morale and inflict devastating damage on Ukrainian cities and infrastructure, though he suggested it was a trend developing in recent days and had already been in the works.

“It likely was something that they had been planning for quite some time. Now that’s not to say that the explosion on the Crimea bridge might have accelerated some of their planning,” Kirby said.

An onslaught on civilians would be consistent with the resume of the new Russian general in charge of the war, Sergey Surovikin, who served in Syria and Chechnya. In both places, Russia indiscriminately bombarded civilian areas and razed built-up districts and infrastructure and is accused of committing serious human rights violations.

And it is critical that the leaders of the US and other western nations – and of China and India, as well – convey clearly and repeatedly to Putin that the consequences of the use of nuclear weapons for Russia would, indeed, be “catastrophic,” to quote US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan.

But French President Emmanuel Macron underscored Western concerns that Monday’s rush-hour attacks in Ukraine could be the prelude to another pivot in the conflict.

Retired Lt. Col Alexander Vindman, a former director for European affairs on the National Security Council, said that by attacking targets that would hurt Ukrainians, Putin was sending a message about how he will prosecute the war in the future.

The Russian Ministry of Defense claimed its soldiers had their cell phones exposed, after a Ukrainian strike killed dozens of troops on New Year’s Day.

If modern equipment was in place, we could probably increase the number of missiles downed and not kill innocent civilians or hurt Ukrainians.

The lesson of Russia’s biggest land war: the role of the Ukrainians for American security, Russian terror, and the interests of the United States

Putin is expected to launch a renewed offensive in Ukraine in the coming weeks, more than one year after he began Europe’s biggest land war since World War II with a failed assault on Kyiv and central Ukraine.

The lesson of this horrible war is that everything Putin has done to fracture a nation he doesn’t believe has the right to exist has only strengthened and unified it.

According to Olena Gnes, the mother of three who is documenting the war on YouTube, she was angry at the return of fear and violence to the lives of Ukrainians from a new round of Russian terror.

She said that this is just another terror to provoke or scare people in other countries, that he is still a bloody tyrant, so look what fireworks we can arrange.

Clinton thinks no one is asking for a blank check. “I believe that the Ukrainians have proven that they are a really good investment for the United States. They are not asking us to be there to fight their war. They’re fighting it themselves. We and our allies are asked to use the means to actually win.

The Russian War in Ukraine: Predictions for Christmas and New Outlooks for the rest of the War if the Russians are determined to keep it up

The war is headed towards a new phase, not for the first time. “This is now the third, fourth, possibly fifth different war that we’ve been observing,” said Keir Giles, a senior consulting fellow at Chatham House’s Russia and Eurasia Programme.

With the cold months nearing and likely bringing a slowdown in ground combat, experts say the next weeks of the war are now expected to be vital, and another potential spike in intensity looms over Ukraine as each side seeks to strike another blow.

The stakes of the war have been raised as winter approaches. “There’s no doubt Russia would like to keep it up,” Giles said. The Ukrainian successes of recent weeks have sent a message to the Kremlin. Giles said that they are capable of doing things that take us by surprise.

Oleksii Hromov, a senior Ukrainian military official, said last week that Kyiv’s forces have recaptured some 120 settlements since late September as they advance in the Kharkiv, Donetsk and Kherson regions. On Wednesday, Ukraine said it had liberated more five settlements in its slow but steady push in Kherson.

Russia said Thursday its forces would help evacuate residents of occupied Kherson to other areas, as Ukraine’s offensive continued to make gains in the region. In the wake of the appeal by the Kherson administration, the announcement came, showing that Russian forces were struggling in the face of Ukrainian advances.

The counter-offensives have turned the tide of the war and vindicated the suggestion that Ukraine lacked the ability to seize ground.

According to the senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, the Russians are playing for the whistle, hoping to avoid collapse in their frontline before winter sets in.

It would be a huge success for the Russians if they can get Christmas with the frontline looking roughly as it is.

Beyond that, it appears that Russia is massing replacement soldiers and additional units to launch an offensive to take the portions of Donetsk and Luhansk provinces in the southeast, that they do not control – while also establishing defensive positions in depth in other areas that they control in the south.

Landing a major blow in Donbas would send another powerful signal, and Ukraine will be eager to improve on its gains before temperatures plummet on the battlefield, and the full impact of rising energy prices is felt around Europe.

“There are so many reasons why there is an incentive for Ukraine to get things done quickly,” Giles said. “The winter energy crisis in Europe, and energy infrastructure and power being destroyed in Ukraine itself, is always going to be a test of resilience for Ukraine and its Western backers.”

There seems to be no suggestion the West will be relaxing its support for Ukraine. Both the US and increasingly Europe, which recently committed to raising its funding by $2 billion in 2023, appear determined to see Ukraine through this winter and beyond.

Ukraine’s national electricity company, Ukrenergo, says it has stabilized the power supply to Kyiv and central regions of Ukraine after much of the country’s electricity supply was disrupted by Russian missile attacks on Monday and Tuesday. The Ukrainian Prime Minister has asked people to cut back on their energy usage during peak hours to fix damaged equipment.

While estimating the military reserves ofeither army is a murky endeavor, Western assessments suggest Moscow might not have the capacity to keep it up.

“We know – and Russian commanders on the ground know – that their supplies and munitions are running out,” Jeremy Fleming, a UK’s spy chief, said in a rare speech on Tuesday.

The ISW stated, that Russia’s use of its limited supply of precision weapons in this role might deprive Putin of options to disrupt ongoing Ukrainian counter-offensives.

The amount of manpower left on each side will be important in determining how the momentum will shift in the coming weeks. Ukraine said it intercepted 18 cruise missiles on Tuesday and dozens more on Monday, but it is urging its Western allies for more equipment to repel any future attacks.

The onslaught of missile strikes will be used for shows of extreme outrage by the Russians, who don’t have the necessary stock of precision munitions to sustain that kind of high-tempo missile assault into the future.

Any further involvement in the war could have a psychological impact. “Everyone’s mind in Ukraine and in the West has been oriented towards fighting one army,” he said. The war inside Russia would coincide with Putin’s narrative that this is about the return of the lands of ancient Rus states.

Giles said that the reopening of a northern front is a new challenge for the Ukrainians. It would provide Russia with a new route into the region which has been wrested away from it’s original owner, he said.

Zelensky will want to drive the gains home with more supplies in the short-term. More than half of Russian missiles were brought down by Ukrainian defense systems in a second wave of strikes on Tuesday, according to the leader.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Tuesday that Ukraine needed “more” systems to better halt missile attacks, ahead of a meeting of NATO defense ministers in Brussels.

He said that NATO allies provide the air defense systems that shot down many incoming missiles this week.

Germany and the United States supplied the IRIS-T that arrived in Ukraine this week. , Bronk said.

Sergey Surovikin, the Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Aerospace Forces and the Idlib Operation in Syria

Russia’s Ministry of Defense changed its overall commander for operations in the war last Saturday, after the Ukrainian army took more territory than Russia in the last six months.

He played an important part in the operations in Syria, as the Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Aerospace Forces.

He said Surovikin was “very close to Putin’s regime” and “never had any political ambitions, so always executed a plan exactly as ​the government wanted.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin meets with Russian Armed Forces service personnel who took part in operations in Syria, including Sergey Surovikin, at the Kremlin on December 28, 2017.

After working as a reporter for the Russian state news agency, irisov hoped to go on to become an international journalist. He said that his wife worked there and she saw it as a main agency that tried to cover news in an impartial way.

He told CNN he knew nothing could justify this war, because his family hid in bomb shelters. He also knew from his military contacts that there were already many casualties in the first days of the war.

He worked at the air base in Syria for two years, coordinating flights with Damascus’ civilian airlines and working on aviation safety. He ​says he saw Surovikin several times during some missions and spoke to high-ranking officers under him.

The general was hated at headquarters because of the way he implemented his infantry experience into the air force, and he made a lot of people angry.

A private military company, the Wagner group, has operated in Syria and is known to have connections with the Kremlin.

The Russian media and two think tanks said he berated a subordinate so much that he took his own life.

And a book by the think tank the Washington DC-based Jamestown Foundation says that during the unsuccessful coup attempt against former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev in August 1991, soldiers under Surovikin’s command killed three protesters, leading to Surovikin spending at least six months in prison.

According to a 2020 report, he may have been responsible for the dozens of air and ground attacks on civilian objects in violation of the laws of war, that took place in the Idlib offensive in Syria. ​The attacks killed at least 1,600 ​civilians and forced the displacement of an estimated 1.4 million people, according to HRW​​, which cites UN figures.

Vladimir Putin, the “butcher of a city” and the commander of the Russian invasion: What has Putin learned in the last few months?

Vladimir Putin (left) toasts with then-Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev next to Sergey Surovikin after a ceremony to bestow state awards on military personnel who fought in Syria, on December 28, 2017.

The European Union imposed an EU sanction on the head of the Aerospace Forces in order to support and implement policies which undermine and threaten the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Ukraine.

Clark believes the generals promotion is a way to inject new blood into the Russian command system and put on this tough nationalist face.

His appointment “got widespread praise from various Russian military bloggers as well as Yevgeny (Prigozhin), who’s the financier of the Wagner Group,” Clark said.

He said that Dvornikov was the commander who was going to turn things around and get the job done. “But an individual commander is not going to be able to change how tangled Russian command and control is at this point in the war, or the low morale of Russian forces.”

Clark said he had a reputation like that of the “butcher of a city”, because he had been a commander of one of the groups of Russian forces.

On Tuesday, the newly appointed commander of the Russian invasion, Gen. Sergei Surovikin, acknowledged that his army’s position in Kherson was “already quite difficult” and appeared to suggest that a tactical retreat might be necessary. General Surovikin said he was ready to make “difficult decisions” about military deployments, but did not say more about what those might be.

Petraeus: If Putin was successful in his efforts, it could happen. Putin seems to believe that the country might not respond to total mobilizers, so thus the partial mobilizes have been. In fact, reportedly, more Russian men left the country than reported to the mobilization stations in response to the latest partial call-up of reserves.

Russian troops are taking the lead in defeating Ukraine: a warning message from the Kremlin to the restraints in the city of Moscow

Some regional officials — including the mayor of Moscow, Sergey Sobyanin — appeared to be taking pains to offer reassurances. There are no plans to limit the city’s normal rhythm at present, according to Mr. Sobyanin.

The regional governors said that there would be no restrictions on entering or exiting.

But many Russians are sure to see a warning message in the martial law imposed in Ukraine, the first time that Moscow has declared martial law since World War II, analysts say.

The people are worried that the siloviki, the men in the Kremlin close to Mr. Putin, will follow through on their plans to close the borders.

Russia meanwhile continues to stockpile arms and ammunition in large quantities close to the troops they will supply and well within range of enemy weaponry. Standard military practice dictates that large depots must be broken up and scattered and that they should not be located within range of enemy lines.

Russia is sending newly drafted conscripts to the front line in Ukraine’s east, but so far, it has been ineffectual and high Russian casualties are expected, according to a Ukrainian general and Western analysts.

Russian news media have reported on soldiers who were killed in the line of duty and videos filmed by the Ukrainian drones show Russians being struck by shelling in poorly prepared positions. The videos have not been independently verified and their exact location on the front line could not be determined.

A statement from the General states that Russian forces stage up to 80 assaults a day, and that they had a phone conversation with the supreme allied commander in Europe.

The situation was discussed at the front. He said he had told his colleague that the Ukrainian forces were doing a great job defeating the attacks.

An assessment from the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based analytical group, also said that the increase in infantry in the Donbas region in the east had not resulted in Russia’s gaining new ground.

The institute said on Thursday that Russian forces would likely have had more success in offensive operations if they had waited until enough personnel arrived to amass a force.

In the south, where Ukrainian troops are advancing toward the Russian-occupied city of Kherson, the Ukrainian military said Friday morning that its artillery battalions had fired more than 160 times at Russian positions over the past 24 hours, but it also reported Russian return fire into Ukrainian positions.

With Russian and Ukrainian forces apparently preparing for battle in Kherson, and conflicting signals over what may be coming, the remaining residents of the city have been stocking up on food and fuel to survive combat.

The return of Brittney Griner after nearly 10 months in Russia after the handover of Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout to the United States

Ukrainian authorities have been stepping up raids on churches accused of links with Moscow, and many are watching to see if Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy follows through on his threat of a ban on the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine.

French President Emmanuel Macron hosts European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store for a working dinner Monday in Paris.

Also in France, on Tuesday, the country is set to co-host a conference with Ukraine in support of Ukrainians through the winter, with a video address by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

After nearly 10 months in Russian captivity, US basketball star Brittney Griner was freed in December. She was released as part of the exchange for the handing over of Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout. Griner is back in the U.S. and reunited with her wife. It is said that Bout has joined an ultranationalist party.

The new measures targeting Russia’s oil revenue took effect. They include a price cap and embargo on Russian oil imports from the EU.

Zelenskyy said that the city of Bakhmut was turned into burned ruins by Russian forces. Fighting has been fierce there as Russia attempts to advance in the city in the eastern Donbas region.

The State of Ukraine: A NPR Perspective on the 2009 December 11 Invasion of France by the Russian General Relative to Prime Minister Joe Biden

The leaders of France and Turkey, along with Zelenskyy, spoke with the President of the United States, Joe Biden, on December 11 in an attempt to improve relations over the Russian invasion.

You can read some of the recaps here. For context and more in-depth stories, you can find more of NPR’s coverage here. Listen and subscribe to NPR’s State of Ukraine to get updates throughout the day.

In Paris at the time, I witnessed how Zelensky pulled up to the Élysée Palace in a modest Renault, while Putin motored in with an ostentatious armored limousine. (The host, French President Emmanuel Macron, hugged Putin but chose only to shake hands with Zelensky).

Zelensky is a wartime president in trademark olive green who stirs the imaginations of many people by naming and shaming allies that do not arm his military.

Failure to demonstrate further progress on the battlefield with billions of dollars worth of military kit could stir unease among Western backers. But capitulation to Russia would be a political death sentence.

Zelensky’s upbringing in the rough and tumble neighborhoods of Kryvyi Rih in central Ukraine shaped him into a scrappy kid who learned how to respond to bullies.

This, after all, is the leader who when offered evacuation by the US as Russia launched its full-scale invasion, quipped: “I need ammunition, not a ride.”

It is perhaps easy to forget that Zelensky honed his political muscles earlier in his career standing up to another bully in 2019 – then-US President Donald Trump, who tried to bamboozle the novice politician in the quid pro quo scandal.

Amid the fog of war, it all seems a long, long way since the heady campaign celebration in a repurposed Kyiv nightclub where a fresh-faced Zelensky thanked his supporters for a landslide victory. Standing on stage among the fluttering confetti, he looked in a state of disbelief at having defeated incumbent veteran politician Petro Poroshenko.

His ratings seem to have been turned around by the war. Just days after the invasion, Zelensky’s ratings approval surged to 90%, and remain high to this day. Even Americans early in the war rated Zelensky highly for his handling of international affairs – ahead of US President Joe Biden.

His bubble includes many people from his previous professional life as a TV comedian in the theatrical group Kvartal 95. In the middle of the war a press conference was held at the platform of a metro station, with perfect lighting and camera angles to emphasize a wartime setting.

As for his skills as comforter in chief, I remember well the solace his nightly televised addresses brought in the midst of air raid sirens and explosions in Lviv.

Zelensky’s International Impact on Ukraine and the U.S. Warped with the G7 Decay Constraints

Zelensky is projecting himself to a younger, global audience as a confident and competent leader by wearing hoodies and T-shirts in Silicon Valley.

“He is probably more comfortable than Putin on camera, too, both as an actor and as a digital native,” she added. “I believe both of them want to come across as relatable, not aloof or untouchable, although Zelensky is definitely doing a better job balancing authority with accessibility.”

Journeying to where her husband can’t, Zelenska has shown herself to be an effective communicator in international fora – projecting empathy, style and smarts. She met King Charles during a visit to a refugee assistance center at the Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral of the Holy Family in London. Zelenska was not included on the cover of Time magazine and only a passing reference was given in the supporting text.

Despite the strong tailwinds at Zelensky’s back, there are subtle signs that his international influence could be dwindling. The G7 imposed a $60 a barrel price cap on Russian crude, despite pleas from Zelensky that it should have been set at $30 in order to inflict more pain on the Kremlin.

“We have everything for it. We have the motivation, certainty, the friends, the diplomacy. You have all come together for this,” Zelensky said. “If we all do our important homework, victory will be inevitable.”

US officials declined to provide additional details about the security arrangements ahead of the trip, including whether Zelensky flew aboard a US military aircraft out of his country. In and out of the country have been very difficult. Western leaders who have visited Kyiv over the past year have journeyed on a lengthy train ride from Poland.

A symbolic boost to Kyiv came days before the one-year anniversary of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, when Biden made his historic visit.

With the war nearing its one-year anniversary on February 24, Vice President Biden is hoping to demonstrate to the world that he is committed to Ukraine and not giving up.

Zelensky, the official said was very eager to come to the US, decided those parameters met his needs and the US will execute them. The trip was confirmed on Sunday.

Russia warned the US that it would face repercussions if it provided missiles to Ukraine, saying the shipments were an act of engagement with the war. Despite the increased security assistance, Biden kept the United States out of direct conflict with Russia.

US Army and Pentagon Support for Ukraine: The Patriot System, the NATO Air Defense, and Precision-Guided UAV Mid-Atlantic Missiles

The larger the battery, the larger the crews are required to properly operate it. Training for the missiles usually takes several months, but will now take more time under the pressure of attacks from Russia.

The official said US troops would train Ukrainians to use the system in a third country. CNN has reported the training would be at the US Army base in Germany.

“The President has been very clear that we are going to lean forward and be robust in our support for Ukraine on the military, economic, energy and humanitarian fronts, but we are not seeking to engage in a direct war with Russia. And nothing about that will change tomorrow,” the official said.

There are two key deliverables, the first being the Patriot missile systems. Complex, accurate, and expensive, they have been described as the US’s “gold standard” of air defense. NATO preciously guards them, and they require the personnel who operate them – almost 100 in a battalion for each weapon – to be properly trained.

The second are precision-guided munitions for Ukrainian jets. A majority of Russia and Ukraine’s weaponry is “dumb”- that is, it is fired roughly towards a target. Ukraine has been provided with more and more Western standard precision artillery and missiles, like Howitzers and HIMARS respectively.

Western analysts said that Russia has complained about these deliveries for a long time, but has been more circumspect in its response to the crossing of what, as recently as January, might have been considered red lines.

Yes. An enormous $45 billion aid package is in the works, and it is a part of a consistent drumbeat from the Biden administration. The message is simple: despite the fact that Washington is providing as much assistance as they can, Ukraine will not stop getting it.

The Biden wants Putin to hear from the headline figures in the billions, to make the Russian president angry and to push the European partners to help more.

This is difficult. Kevin McCarthy, likely the new Speaker of the Congress, has warned that the Biden administration can’t expect a “blank cheque” from Republicans.

Zelensky’s historic address on Saturday night in Kyiv: The battle against Russia in Ukraine, and its implications for the US and NATO

The remnants of the Trumpist “America First” elements of that party have echoed doubts about how much aid the US should really be sending to the edges of eastern Europe.

Realistically, the bill for the slow defeat of Russia in this dark and lengthy conflict is relatively light for Washington, given its near trillion-dollar annual defense budget.

She said Zelensky’s historic address strengthened both Democrats and Republicans who understand what is at stake for the fight against Russian aggression and now with Iran, as well.

The speech “connected the struggle of Ukrainian people to our own revolution, to our own feelings that we want to be warm in our homes to celebrate Christmas and to get us to think about all the families in Ukraine that will be huddled in the cold and to know that they are on the front lines of freedom right now,” Clinton said on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360” Wednesday.

She hopes they will send more than one. She noted there’s “been some reluctance in the past” by the US and NATO to provide advanced equipment, but added “We’ve seen with our own eyes how effective Ukrainian military is.”

Clinton said that as the war turns in the favor of Ukraine and Putin begins to lose popularity at home, the leader was probably impossible to predict.

Russian conscripts are likely to be thrown into the fight in Ukraine, according to Clinton.

The commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s Armed Forces, Valery Zaluzhny, said his air defenses successfully intercepted a total of 12 incoming attacks, six of which were in Kyiv. The number of attacks was not clear.

The sounds of at least 10 loud explosions echoed through the center of Ukraine’s capital on Saturday afternoon. In four of the city’s neighborhoods there were big blasts, according to the mayor. Several more people have been hospitalized and at least one person has died.

Emergency services were dispatched to several locations around the city. Videos published to social media and geo-located by NPR show several apparent injuries, including partially severed limbs and bloodied faces on one residential street.

Russia’s Defence Ministry said that it had negotiated the return of Russian prisoners of war who had been held in the hands of the Kyiv regime.

The Petraeus Account of the Russian War, and the Implications for the Security Practices of the Armed Forces in the United States

Petraeus has spent decades studying warfare and practicing its application. He was the US and coalition commander of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and later served as director of the CIA. He earned his Ph.D. from Princeton with a dissertation on the Vietnam War and the lessons the American military took from it. The co-author of the upcoming book is Petraeus, as well as British historian Andrew Roberts.

If the Russian account is accurate, it was the cell phones that the novice troops were using in violation of regulations that allowed Ukrainian forces to target them most accurately. The attack was not executed by the Ukrainians. But the implications are broader and deeper, especially for how Russia is conducting its war now.

President Putin called for a truce after the deadliest known attack on Russian servicemen. The move was dismissed by both US and Ukraine as a cynical attempt to gain breathing space in a very bad start to the year.

Russian officials said that four Ukrainian-launched HIMARS rockets hit the vocational school where its forces were housed, apparently adjacent to a large arms depot. (Another two HIMARS rockets were shot down by Russian air defenses).

The satellite-guided HIMARS — short for High Mobility Artillery Rocket System — currently have a range of 80 kilometers. A longer-range 300-kilometer HIMARS has not yet been authorized, despite repeated Ukrainian pleas. (The Biden administration has worried that the longer-range system could expand the war beyond Ukraine’s frontiers and lead to an escalation of hostilities.)

Chris Dougherty, a senior fellow in the Defense Program at the Center For New American Security in Washington, told me that Russia’s failure to break up or move large arms depots is a function of their inability to communicate adequately.

It is a view shared by others. James Lewis, director of the Strategic Technologies Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies told me in an email that bad security communications are a standard practice in the Russian Army.

The Russian military has a record of unsafe ammunition storage before the current war, but this incident highlights how unprofessional practices contribute to Russia’s high casualty rate.

The troops killed in Makiivka seem to have been recent conscripts, part of a larger picture of Russian soldiers being shipped to the front lines with little training and deeply sub-standard equipment and weapons.

Indeed, many of the most recent arrivals to the war are inmates from Russian prisons, freed and taken to the Ukrainian front. One can only imagine how appealing the use of cell phones would be to prisoners accustomed to years of isolation with little or no contact with the outside world.

Semyon Pegov, who blogs under the alias WarGonzo and was personally awarded the Order of Courage by President Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin two weeks ago, attacked the Ministry of Defense for its “blatant attempt to smear blame” in suggesting it was the troops’ own use of cell phones that led to the precision of the attack.

He questioned how the Ministry of Defense could be “so sure” that the location of soldiers lodging in a school building could not have been determined using drone surveillance or a local informant.

A month earlier, the defense ministry underwent a shakeup when Col. Gen. Mikhail Y. Mizintsev, known to Western officials as the “butcher of Mariupol,” was named deputy defense minister for overseeing logistics, replacing four-star Gen. Dmitri V. Bulgakov, who had held the post since 2008. It is most likely that the arms depot is next to the Makiivka recruits.

The defense minister is Sergei Shoigu and he told his forces in a video on the day after the attack that it was inevitable.

The key question is how long Putin can keep himself out of trouble. There is no indication that Ukrainian forces have any intention of lessening the pressure on Russian forces in the east or south of their country as the war enters a new calendar year.

Germany is sending four more Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine, increasing their commitment from 14 to 18. Sweden’s prime minister pledges to send Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine.

The War in Ukraine: What do Ukranians really expect from the United States, and what will they tell us about the next generation of war?

Ukrainian Ambassador to the U.S. Oksana Markarova attended President Biden’s State of the Union speech, for the second year in a row, but the war in Ukraine received far less attention in the address this time.

There is a “strong indication” that the Russian President gave the go-ahead to allow the supply of anti-aircraft weapons to the rebels.

Peter Bergen is a CNN national security analyst, New America vice president and a professor of practice at Arizona State University. You can find more opinions on CNN.

Bergen: Is this the first truly open-source war? Zelensky is trying to get involved in the war in Ukranian, as well as commercial overhead satellites that capture Russian battle groups in real-time, and social media accounts of Russian mercenaries that document their activities.

Petraeus disagreed with the Biden administration on Afghanistan and struck a different tone on Ukraine. He says that the President’s team has done a good job leading NATO and the west in the fight against the Russian invasion but he would have liked to have seen quicker decisions to provide weapons systems such as western tanks.

Petraeus: It’s not Russia. Russia has, after all, lost the Battles of Kyiv, Sumy, Chernihiv, and Kharkiv; failed to take the rest of Ukraine’s southern coast (not even getting through Mykolaiv, much less to the major port at Odesa).

It has lost what it had gained in Kharkiv province. The only forces west of the Dnipro River were withdrawn because the Ukrainians made the bridge connections to those forces impossible, taking out the headquarters and logistical sites supporting those forces.

The side with the best, well-trained and well-equipped forces will make the most gains. My bet is on Ukraine.

We are, however, seeing some glimpses and hints of what the future of warfare might look like. We see the use of drones by the Ukrainians as aerial observers, which will double in range from 70 to 80 kilometers, when the US gives them precision munitions that are expected to double in range.

The war is taking place for the first time in a context where smart phones, internet connections, and social media are commonplace.

Petraeus does not live in the Cold War: How European Union, Russia, and the rest of the world would be better than the United States

And there would incomparably greater numbers of vastly more capable unmanned systems (some remotely piloted, others operating according to algorithms) in every domain – not just in the air, but also at sea, sub-sea, on the ground, in outer space, and in cyberspace, and operating in swarms, not just individually!

I recall an adage back in the Cold War days that stated, “If it can be seen, it can be hit; if it can be hit, it can be killed.” In truth, we didn’t have the surveillance assets, precision munitions and other capabilities needed to truly “operationalize” that adage in those days. It is certain that every platform, base and headquarters will be seen in the future and therefore vulnerable to being hit and destroyed.

We must take innumerable actions to transform our forces and systems, that’s what it says about this. We must deter future conflict by ensuring that there are no questions about our capabilities or our willingness to employ them – and also by doing everything possible to ensure that competition among great powers does not turn into conflict among them.

Petraeus is not at all. Russia has enormous military capacity, is still a nuclear superpower, and has enormous energy, mineral, and agricultural blessings. It also has a population (about 145 million) that is nearly double that of the next largest European countries (Germany and Turkey, each just more than 80 million).

Thanks to Putin, the description of NATO as suffering from “brain death” by French President Macron in late 2019 has turned out to be more than a bit premature.

All of the above, plus more. They had poor campaign design, poor training, and a culture that condones war crimes as well as poor command, control, and communications.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/14/opinions/petraeus-how-ukraine-war-ends-bergen-ctpr/index.html

Petraeus-How Ukraine War Ends Bergen-Ct: The Incredible Nation in the Changing Era of War

And it is still led by a kleptocratic dictator who embraces innumerable grievances and extreme revanchist views that severely undermine his decision-making.

Bergen: You know the observation sometimes attributed to Stalin: “Quantity has a quality all its own.” Russia has a far bigger population than Ukraine: Will that make a critical difference to the Ukraine war over the long term?

It is thought that as many as 300,000 recruits and up to 300,000 more are being sent to the frontlines. That’s not trivial because quantity matters.

Thus, Ukrainians know what they are fighting for, while it is not clear that the same is true of many of the Russian soldiers, a disproportionate number of whom are from ethnic and sectarian minorities in the Russian Federation.

The Ukrainians have demonstrated enormous skill in adapting various technologies and commercial applications, which has enabled intelligence gathering, targeting and other military tasks.

In fact, the Ukrainians have also shown exceptional abilities to “McGyver” solutions for a variety of problems – whether adapting Western missiles for use on MiG-29 fighter aircraft, repairing battle-damaged armored vehicles left on the battlefield by the Russians (remember the Ukrainians’ “tractor army”), or jamming Russian communications.

Sometimes, I have thought that we should have decided to give various capabilities, such as longer-range precision munitions, tanks, etc. It was sooner than we have.

Eventually, for example, Ukraine is going to have to transition from eastern bloc aircraft (e.g., MiG-29s) to western ones (e.g., F-16s). They have more pilots than aircraft at this point and there aren’t any more MiGs that they can get.

So, we might as well begin the process of transition, noting that it will take a number of months, regardless, to train pilots and maintenance personnel. All that said, again, I think the Administration has done a very impressive job and proven to be the indispensable nation in this particular situation – with important ramifications for other situations around the world.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/14/opinions/petraeus-how-ukraine-war-ends-bergen-ctpr/index.html

How Russia War Ends the War? Petraeus: How the Chinese Think about the Moskva, the Black Sea Naval Spike, And the Wagner Group

Bergen: The quasi-private Wagner Group is the force that Putin sends into the meat grinder of the toughest battles. Do you think using mercenaries could be a tactic?

Petraeus: What Russia has done with what are, in essence, mercenaries, as you note, is somewhat innovative – but also essentially inhumane, as it entails throwing soldiers (many of them former convicts) into battle as cannon fodder, and with little, if any, concern for their survival.

These aren’t the tactics or practices that foster the development of well-trained, disciplined, capable and cohesive units that have trust in their leaders and soldiers on their left and right.

Bergen: What are the lessons of Ukraine for the Chinese if they were to stage an invasion of Taiwan, which would not be over a neighboring land border but over a 100-mile body of water? The Moskva, the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea navy was sunk last month. Does that affect how the Chinese think about this?

And especially if the target of such an operation has a population willing to fight fiercely for its survival and be supported by major powers – not just militarily but with substantial economic, financial, and personal sanctions and export controls.

Petraeus. I believe that is the case. This is the first war in which smartphones and social media have been so widely available and also so widely employed. The result is unprecedented transparency and an extraordinary amount of information available – all through so-called “open sources.”

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/14/opinions/petraeus-how-ukraine-war-ends-bergen-ctpr/index.html

Where does Russia want to go? Where do we stand in Kyiv, Russia? What do we expect from the Kiev invasion? The case of Biden and Dmitry

Putin wants to expand the area of Ukraine that is controlled by Russian forces, after failing to take control of Kyiv and replace Zelensky with a pro-Russian figure. To solidify Russian control over the southeastern part of Russia and to ensure that Russia does not have to depend on the Kerch Strait Bridge for access to the rest of the country.

That said, there does not seem to be a particularly innovative new plan, given the limitations of the professional capabilities of the Russian forces and their demonstrated inability to generate “combined arms effect” – to integrate the actions of tanks with infantry, artillery/mortars, engineers, explosive ordnance disposal, electronic warfare, fixed and rotary wing close air support, air defenses, effective command and control, drones, etc.

Beyond that, I believe we will see Ukrainian forces that are much more capable than the Russians at achieving the kind of combined arms effects that I described earlier and that thus enable much more effective offensive operations and can unhinge some of the Russian defenses. We may not see all this, however, until the spring or even summer, given the amount of time required for Ukrainian forces to receive and train on the new western tanks and other systems.

You famously asked a rhetorical question at the beginning of the Iraq War, “how this ends?” How does the war in Ukraine end?

Petraeus: Russia’s first year on the battlefield likely took many times the losses that the Soviets took in Afghanistan, and its home front has been heavily affected by economic turmoil, but I believe Putin will negotiate a negotiated resolution to the conflict.

Also when Ukraine reaches the limits of its ability to withstand missile and drone strikes, getting a Marshall-like plan (developed by the US and G7) to help rebuild the country, and gaining an ironclad security guarantee (either NATO membership or, if that is not possible, a US-led coalition guarantee).

President Joe Biden slipped into Kyiv on Monday for the first time since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine almost a year ago, demonstrating in dramatic personal fashion his commitment to the country and its struggle as the war enters an uncertain new phase.

CNN has reached out to the Kremlin, which has not yet publicly commented on Biden’s trip. But Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev dismissed the trip, accusing the US of warmongering support for Ukraine.

On Saturday evening, before he departed, Biden went out to dinner with his wife in Washington. He wasn’t seen in public until he arrived in Ukranian.

Biden is traveling with a relatively small entourage, including national security adviser Jake Sullivan, deputy chief of staff Jen O’Malley Dillon and personal aide Annie Tomasini.

Yet security precautions had prevented Biden from making a similar trip. Even though Biden said he had expressed interest in crossing the border, the White House didn’t even discuss it when he visited Poland in April last year.

Biden has been itching to visit Ukraine for months, particularly after several of his counterparts in Europe all endured lengthy train journeys to meet with Zelensky in Kyiv. The British Prime Minister and Canadian Prime Minister have both visited the country to demonstrate their support, as have the French President, German Chancellor, and British Prime Minister.

Even Biden’s wife, Dr. Jill Biden, paid a surprise visit on Mother’s Day last year to a small city in the far southwestern corner of Ukraine. She met Zelenska at a school that was turned into a temporary housing facility for displaced Ukrainians.

The First Chinese Foreign Minister Visits the United States since the Invasion of Ukraine and his Role in the War in the Crimes of Crime

The US has not defined what a settlement may look like beyond stating that it will be up to Zelensky to decide.

American officials told CNN on Saturday the US has recently begun seeing “disturbing” trends and there are signs that Beijing wants to “creep up to the line” of providing lethal military aid to Moscow without getting caught.

The officials would not describe in detail what intelligence the US has seen suggesting a recent shift in China’s posture, but said US officials have been concerned enough that they have shared the intelligence with allies and partners at the Munich Security Conference over the last several days.

Wang, who was named Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s top foreign policy adviser last month, is expected to arrive in Moscow this week, in the first visit to the country from a Chinese official in that role since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

According to China’s Foreign Ministry, Wang’s visit will provide an opportunity for China and Russia to continue to develop their strategic partnership and “exchange views” on “international and regional hotspot issues of shared interest” – a catch-all phrase often used to allude to topics including the war in Ukraine.

“Biden in [Kyiv]. Demonstrative humiliation of Russia,” Russian journalist Sergey Mardan wrote in a snarky response on his Telegram channel. Children might be left with tales of miraculous hypersonics. Just like spells about the holy war we are waging with the entire West.”

Russian army veteran and former Federal Security Service (FSB) officer Igor Girkin meanwhile suggested that Biden could have visited the frontlines in eastern Ukraine and escaped unharmed.

If the grandfather is brought to Bakhmut, he will not only be bad for anything but simple provocations, but nothing will happen to him.

Secretly Taking Joe Biden to Kiev: The Magic Day of the Ukrainian Operation “Rail Force One” in Mariupol, Ukraine

Jake Sullivan, a national security adviser to Biden, said the United States told Russia of the plans to visit theUkrainian capital for “deconfliction purposes” just before he left.

It’s known that the deputy head of Russia’s Security Council is known for making threats in order to shore up his nationalist credentials.

The debate over Biden’s visit will be unwelcome to Putin, who will on Tuesday make a major speech to the Federal Assembly in which he will discuss the ongoing invasion.

Participants of what Russia refers to as its “special military operation” will be in attendance but foreign guests or representatives will not be invited, the Kremlin’s spokesperson told reporters Monday.

Two days after Russian troops retreated from Kherson on November 11, Ukraine Railways CEO Alexander Kamyshin arrived in the city accompanied by Ukrainian special forces and a small team of railway workers. They reached the central train station even before the regular army arrived to secure the city, and got to work. The first train from Kyiv to liberated Kherson arrived six days later.

Kamyshin says that it was a magic day. There were people on the train, crying and waving their hands. Trust me, it was unforgettable. That is one of the days to remember for a long time.

Since Russia began an intense assault on Ukraine a year ago today, Kamyshin and his colleagues have worked ceaselessly to keep Ukraine’s trains running. They have moved 4 million refugees and more than 300,000 tons of humanitarian aid, often to the front lines of the conflict. With air travel all but impossible, Ukraine Railways has brought hundreds of foreign delegations into the city. Earlier this week, a train dubbed “Rail Force One” secretly carried US president Joe Biden to the Ukrainian capital for a symbolic visit.

All the work has been carried out under constant attack. “[The Russians shell] tracks, stations, bridges, power stations, cranes, they shell everything,” Kamyshin says. There were two hundred and fifty deaths and 800 injuries. Only railwaymen and women are in that picture. The price was paid in this war.

In Mariupol, a port city on the Black Sea close to the Russian border that was bombarded relentlessly until resistance finally collapsed in May 2022, rail workers managed to get trains in and out several times before the tracks were destroyed. The crews were able to leave, but there are two stuck trains.

The First Year of the Kyiv War: Zelensky, the Ukrainian President, the Security Council of Ukraine, and the United Nations Security Council

Zelensky replied to a question from Christiane Amanpour at the capital city press conference and said that victory would be inevitable. I am certain that there will be a victory.

The Ukrainian president has always rejected the idea that they negotiate a peace deal that will lead toUkraine losing any of its territory. He said Friday that he wouldn’t negotiate with Putin, even though he knew he was going to speak to him.

On Friday the former Russian President and deputy Chair of the Security Council of Russia said that Russia was trying to push the borders of threats to their country even if these are the borders of Poland.

Zelensky used the first anniversary of the war to rally troops and renew calls for international assistance for his country. He handed out awards to soldiers and visited wounded service members before holding the rare press conference.

Earlier on Friday morning, the Ukrainian leader addressed members of the military in Kyiv. They were told by him that they would decide the future of the country.

Ukraine’s international allies showed their solidarity on Friday, with landmarks around the world lit up in colors of the Ukrainian flag, and new weapons and funding announcements.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken called on the international community not to let Putin’s crimes “become our new normal,” at the United Nations Security Council.

And Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said he intends to present the idea of imposing new sanctions against Russia during a virtual meeting with G7 leaders and Zelensky.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/24/europe/kyiv-war-anniversary-intl-cmd/index.html

On a day in April, when air-raid sirens are not a threat to Kiev, the young woman in Kyiv pays her respects

While air-raid sirens are a daily fixture in Kyiv, there hasn’t been a major attack on the city in a few weeks, which means that whenever the alarms are activated, people are left gauging the level of risk.

Two students from her school died in the war, and so she went to lay flowers at the Monastery to remember them.

It was a bitterly cold morning in Kyiv, but Pahitsky said she felt it was her duty as the student president of her school to represent her classmates and pay her respects to the fallen heroes.

The photographs are on the main street. It’s a great honor. They died as liberators. It is very important for us. And it would have been for them,” she said.

“It was hard to say my feelings on Friday,” said Olexander Atamas, who worked at an IT company before he became an IT worker.

I don’t feel fear but I feel confident in my abilities, that’s what I would prefer to say. “One year ago … I felt fear, I was stressed, psychologically it unsettled me. But currently there is no fear at all.”

Sergei Shoigu’s visit to occupied Ukrainian territory: Why the enemy is out-of-touch with Prigozhin?

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu paid a rare visit to Russian troops in occupied Ukranian, which is just as much about the course of Russia’s invasion as it is about the troops.

The video released by the Defense Ministry shows Shoigu talking with three senior officers involved in the conflict. This is probably intended to show that the Defense Ministry is firmly in control of the operation, despite Prigozhin’s comments.

The Defense Ministry said Shoigu “inspected the forward command post of one of the formations of the Vostok The Eastern forces are in the South Donetsk direction.

Russian critics of Shoigu have frequently described him as remote and out-of-touch with the realities of the conflict. The boss of the private military company has often been seen on the frontlines telling of the Defense Ministry’s incompetence and starving of resources.

The only place that Russia’s forces can claim is Bakhmut, according to Prigozhin.

But it’s somewhat puzzling that the man directly in charge of the whole operation – Valery Gerasimov – did not appear to be part of this well-choreographed visit.

The pro-Wagner Telegram channel Grey Zone wrote of Muradov last month: “This coward is laying down at the control point and sending a column after column until the commander of one of the brigades involved in the Vuhledar assault is dead on the contact line.”

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/04/europe/russia-sergey-shoigu-ukraine-intl/index.html

Shoigu: A warning to the Russian troops in the aftermath of the September 11 attack on the Crimea Nevalitsky Observatory and a reminder that Russia is out of financial crisis

In the Defense Ministry video released Saturday, Shoigu is seen as presenting awards to several soldiers, saying: “There is still a lot of work ahead. I really hope that you will continue to faithfully serve our country. Good luck, success, and hopefully come back home alive!

Yet another hint that the Russian hierarchy expects a long slog to achieve the goals of the invasion, a far cry from the lightning campaign that was promised – and soon unraveled – one year ago.