Russia Retreats on Ukrainian Fronts

Russian stragglers in Lyman, Donbas, condemned by the Kremlin after annexation of four Ukrainian territories into Russia

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 of the city of Lyman, a strategic railway hub in the eastern region of Donbas, which happened two days after a grandiose ceremony to commemorate the annexation of four Ukrainian territories into Russia, has put pressure on a Russian leadership already facing withering condemnation at home.

In an unusually candid article published Sunday, the prominent Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda reported that in the last few days of their occupation, Russian forces in Lyman had been plagued by desertion, poor planning and the delayed arrival of reserves.

The Kremlin acknowledged it didn’t know what its new borders would be in southernUkraine when it reflected the disarray of its forces on the ground. “In terms of the borders, we’re going to continue to consult with the population of these regions,” Mr. Putin’s spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, told reporters on Monday.

The military conscription Mr. Putin ordered on Sept. 21 to bolster his battered forces has set off nationwide turmoil and protest, bringing the war home to many Russians who had felt untouched by it. The men who were supposed to be ineligible because of age or disability were drafted.

The explosion of Ukraine’s nuclear power plant and bridge during the opening day of the Russian-Russian war: CNN’s World Affairs Pro

Editor’s Note: Michael Bociurkiw (@WorldAffairsPro) is a global affairs analyst. He is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and a former spokesperson for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. He is a regular contributor to CNN Opinion. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own. More opinions can be found at CNN.

The bridge explosion came as Ukrainian forces seized control of several areas of Russian-controlled territory, adding to Putin’s humiliation.

A wave of missiles, rockets and drones has struck dozens of locations across Ukraine since Monday, according to officials, targeting civilian infrastructure in several major cities, including Kyiv, located hundreds of miles from the front lines in the east and south.

A fake video on social media showed hits near the Taras Shevchenko National University and just a short walk from the Presidential Office Building. Five people were killed as a result of strikes on the capital, according to Ukrainian officials.

There were no air raid sirens around my office in Odesa at midday, but there were 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).

Zaporizhzhia, a southeastern city close to the largest nuclear power plant in Europe, was hit by multiple strikes on apartment buildings while people slept. At least 17 people were killed and several dozens injured.

In a defiant video filmed Monday outside of his office, Zelensky said that most of the missile strikes were aimed at the country’s energy infrastructure. Some provinces are without power and 11 of the capital’s infrastructure facilities have been damaged.

In scenes reminiscent of the early days of the war when Russian forces neared the capital, some Kyiv media outlets temporarily moved their operations to underground bomb shelters. In one metro station serving as a shelter, large numbers of people took cover on platforms as a small group sang patriotic Ukrainian songs.

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.

Just as many regions of Ukraine were starting to roar back to life, and with countless asylum seekers returning home, the attacks risk causing another blow to business confidence.

For Putin, the symbolism of the only bridge linking mainland Russia and Crimea cannot be overstated. The attack can be taken as an added blow to an aging autocrat whose ability to survive is questionable.

Hardwiring newly claimed territory with expensive, record-breaking infrastructure projects seems to be a penchant of dictators. The Europe’s longest bridge was opened by Putin in 2018. That same year, one of the first things Chinese President Xi Jinping did after Beijing reclaimed Macau and Hong Kong was to connect the former Portuguese and British territories with the world’s longest sea crossing bridge. The $20 billion, 34-mile road bridge opened after about two years of delays.

Russian Response to the September 11, 2001 Ukrainian Explosion: A Crisis in the Kremlin and its Implications for Nuclear Security, Migration and Food Security

The reaction among Ukrainians to the explosion was instantaneous: humorous memes lit up social media channels like a Christmas tree. Many told their friends via text message.

In September, Putin warned that “in the event of a threat to the territorial integrity of our country and to defend Russia and our people, we will certainly make use of all weapon systems available to us. This is not a bluff.”

Facing increased criticism at home, and being placed on extremely thin ice, was also an act of selfish desperation.

Russia is concentrating its forces and preparing for revenge against free Europe and the free world, warned the Ukrainian President.

Now is the time for Washington and others to use urgent telephone diplomacy to convince China and India to not use more deadly weapons, as they still have leverage over Putin.

Anything short of these measures will only allow Putin to continue his senseless violence and further exacerbate a humanitarian crisis that will reverberate throughout Europe. A weak reaction will be taken as a sign in the Kremlin that it can continue to weaponize energy, migration and food.

Critical energy infrastructure around the country is protected by high tech defense systems. It’s urgent that heating systems are protected with winter around the corner.

The Russian War on the Balkans and the Gulf of Corintakia: A View from a Senior Consultant at Chatham House

The time has also come for the West to further isolate Russia with trade and travel restrictions – but for that to have sufficient impact, Turkey and Gulf states, which receive many Russian tourists, need to be pressured to come on board.

It is not the first time that the war is approaching a new phase. “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 in the war have been raised as winter approaches. Giles said there was no doubt Russia wanted to keep it up. The Ukrainian successes have sent a clear message to the Kremlin. “They are able to do things that take us by surprise, so let’s get used to it,” Giles said.

After a series of setbacks in the war, the attacks on Monday were evidence of Russian President Vladimir Putin lashing out and putting pressure on himself.

How well do the Russian forces in Kyiv, Donetsk, and Kherson are preparing for the Christmas Campaign? A key question for the Ukrainian government

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. Ukraine said it had liberated five more settlements in Kherson.

Earlier this week, the commander of Russia’s forces in Ukraine, Gen. Sergei Surovikin, proposed plans to withdraw from Kherson during a report to Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu on national television.

They were prophetic. Ukrainian resistance was expected to come crumbling down in days. Russian initial gains in Kherson and Kharkiv have been reversed by a much larger force from the Ukrainian military.

The Russians are hoping to avoid a collapse in their frontline before the winter sets in, said a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

“If they can get to Christmas with the frontline looking roughly as it is, that’s a huge success for the Russians given how botched this has been since February.”

It would raise the stakes for the Kremlin still higher if the Ukrainians were to make a successful counter-attack.

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 has not been a smooth path between whatUkrainians desperately need and when it gets delivered. As one Ukrainian official told CNN this month, “We need help yesterday and we are promised it tomorrow. The difference between yesterday and tomorrow is the lives of our people.”

NATO leaders have vowed to stand behind Ukraine regardless of how long the war takes, but several European countries – particularly those that relied heavily on Russian energy – are staring down a crippling cost-of-living crisis which, without signs of Ukrainian progress on the battlefield, could endanger public support.

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. But Ukrainian Prime Minister has warned that “there is a lot of work to do” to fix damaged equipment, and asked Ukrainians to reduce their energy usage during peak hours.

The Russian Air Force is Getting Closer to the End of the War: U.S. and Russia’s War on the Balkans

Western officials believe the Russian air force will become an important part of their battle plan, despite it being largely missing so far. Last week, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said that Russia has a lot of capability left and has a lot of aircraft in its inventory.

“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.

“Russia’s use of its limited supply of precision weapons in this role may deprive Putin of options to disrupt ongoing Ukrainian counter-offensives,” the ISW assessed.

The latest iteration of this gap is the scramble to provide tanks after months of obfuscation. The Russian main battle tanks are inferior to the Leopard 2s, Challengers and Abrams M-1s which have been earmarked for Ukraine. The numbers are not clear and even if there is a following wind the first cannot be in the field until April.

“The barrage of missile strikes is going to be an occasional feature reserved for shows of extreme outrage, because the Russians don’t have the stocks of precision munitions to maintain that kind of high-tempo missile assault into the future,” Puri said.

Any more involvement in the war by the people of Belarus could have a psychological effect, according to Puri. “Everyone’s mind in Ukraine and in the West has been oriented towards fighting one army,” he said. Inside Russia, Belarus joining the invasion “would play into Putin’s narrative that this war is about reuniting the lands of ancient Rus states.”

Giles said the reopening of a northern front would be a new challenge for Ukraine. It would provide Russia a new route into the Kharkiv oblast (region), which has been recaptured by Ukraine, should Putin prioritize an effort to reclaim that territory, he said.

By flipping the narrative of the conflict over the past two months, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has achieved one of his own key objectives: showing Ukraine’s Western allies that their military aid can help Kyiv win the war.

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.

In later years, accurate rockets from France, Poland and other countries allowed Ukrainian forces to degrade Russian command posts, fuel depots, and long-range weaponry. Real-time intelligence collection and fusion (supported by NATO), was integrated, creating a battlefield where Ukrainian units detected targets more quickly than the cumbersome Russian force.

This week Germany shipped the IRIS-T to Ukraine, and the NASAMS is expected from the United States. , Bronk said.

The Russian military in Donetsk, Ukraine: a rescue mission from the Russian Front after the September 11 attack on the Kharkiv town

Giles said that Russia can make the war personal by trying to force governments to remove their support for Ukrainians.

They join an army already degraded in quality and capability. The composition of Russia’s military force in Ukraine — as much of its prewar active duty personnel has been wounded or killed and its best equipment destroyed or captured — has radically altered over the course of the war. The Russian military leadership is unlikely to know with confidence how this undisciplined composite force will react when confronted with cold, exhausting combat conditions or rumors of Ukrainian assaults. Recent experience suggests these troops might abandon their positions and equipment in panic, as demoralized forces did in the Kharkiv region in September.

It would require demolishing an area of the size of Connecticut to capture the part of Donetsk that is still in Ukrainian hands. According to Ukrainian and Western officials, there’s issues with the supply of munitions to the Russian Front lines.

But a deafening boom of outgoing artillery from the critical Eastern Ukrainian town shakes that notion out of the system, as Ukrainian soldiers on Wednesday launched offensives to try and reclaim positions from Russian forces.

The guide is a military medic from the Ukranians. In tinted sunglasses and fatigues, she slings our convoy into the centre of the city at breakneck speed.

She showed us a building that had just been hit. Our car hadn’t even come to a complete halt as another artillery shell hit nearby. We scrambled for cover as more artillery rained and whizzed down nearby for around 20 minutes.

Fighting in Bakhmut: The Case of the Siege of Vladimir Putin’s Army on the Role of the Wagner Group in the War on Crimea

A small group of residents remain on the streets in Bkhamut. The streets are littered with craters, industrial garbage bins are merged into small pools of trash, and buildings have no windows.

Some people appear to live in a parallel universe. An elderly woman drags her shopping trolley behind them as they run through the streets on their bikes, and it’s odd to think which shops are open.

Sergey is one of those Bakhmut inhabitants still walking the streets. He was asked if he was worried about the shelling. Everything is going to be okay.

The deaths of soldiers and civilians have been caused by the intense fighting. “I cannot give you the number, but it is a lot… there are lot of injured from both sides and also lots of dead.”

The focus on Bakhmut may have taken a toll on Russian operations elsewhere. Despite the triumph of Russian generalship, the grinding campaign to take Bakhmut shows the need for a win regardless of the broader battlefield.

There are also two other strategic towns in the Donestk region, Kramatorsk and Slovyansk, which are to the north-west and south-west, respectively. All three are key to Vladimir Putin’s total control of the region.

He said that it had achieved its goals by 1000%. The case of defending Bakhmut will be a great strategic success for the Ukrainian armed forces even if the military leadership retreats to more favorable positions.

Here, Russian forces have made small, steady gains, largely thanks to the Wagner group, which is considered by analysts to be a Kremlin-approved private military company.

When there is no military power, the only other option is to rely on Russian airborne troops, Serhii Cherevatye said. We knocked them out. There will be no more Wagner fighters in the future if they keep doing the same things.

They are a lot of fun. There a few very well-trained professional fighters, but the majority of them have found themselves accidentally fighting in this war looking for money or for the ability to get out of jail,” she said.

In September, a video was uploaded showing a promise of clemency in exchange for six months of combat service in Ukraine by prisoners being recruited from Russian jails.

She admits that the price for Ukraine will be very high. “We will lose the best of the best, the most motivated and trained but we will definitely win we have no other choice it is our land. We will win absolutely.”

American officials say there is little chance of a widespread collapse in Russian forces that would allow Ukraine to take another huge swath of territory, similar to what it claimed last month. But individual Russian units could break in the face of sustained Ukrainian pressure, allowing Kyiv’s army to continue retaking towns in the Donbas and potentially seize the city of Kherson, a major prize in the war.

Russian claims can’t be verified and a video shows Ukrainian units under fire. It’s unclear if Russian forces have made progress in the area.

According to the commander of the Ukrainian military, the intensity of attacks by Russian forces in the area had tripled. He did not say where the attacks came from or what the time frame was.

“Under continuous fire from enemy artillery and aircraft, our soldiers at the front demonstrate superhuman resilience, courage and bravery,” he said. In particular, the units of the 93rd, 10th, 57th and 5th brigades who are defending our homeland in the east of the country.

The inadequate training and incompetence of Russian military personnel meant that they were unable to coordinate advances deep into enemy, according to a recent study by the European Council on Foreign Relations.

Cherevatyi said that there was a front line area to the northeast of Bakhmut that was 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217. He stated that Russia makes hundreds of attacks a day, usually more than 300. There were 344 attacks and 17 combat engagements over the last day.”

The Ukrainian military said on Friday morning that it had fired over 160 times at Russian positions in the past 24 hours, but that it had also reported Russians return fire into Ukrainian positions.

With conflicting signals over what may be coming, the residents of the city have been stocking up on food and fuel to survive in case of a battle.

BLAHODATNE, Ukraine — Ukraine’s troops entered the key city of Kherson on Friday, its military said, as jubilant residents waved Ukrainian flags after a major Russian retreat.

Ukraine’s recapture of the key southern city marked a major setback for Russia, just six weeks after Russian President Vladimir Putin illegally declared the broader Kherson region and three other territories were being incorporated into the Russian Federation.

Videos shared by Ukrainian government officials on social media showed scenes of civilians cheering and awaiting the arrival of a contingent of Ukrainian troops shortly after Russia said that the withdrawal of its forces across the Dnipro River was complete.

The soldiers continued to move in the region, and the residents welcomed them with joy as they made their way through the area.

The Last Hours of the Russian Occupation in Kherson City: Report of a Russian Drone Reconcerning Unit

Oleh Voitsehovsky, the commander of a Ukrainian drone reconnaissance unit, said he had seen no Russian troops or equipment in his zone along the front less than four miles north of Kherson city.

He said the Russians left all the villages. “We looked at dozens of villages with our drones and didn’t see a single car. We do not understand how they are leaving. They retreat at night.

Residents of Kherson reported that the last hours of the Russian occupation were chaotic and confusing.

Serhiy, a retiree in the city who asked not to be published for security reasons, sent a series of text messages that said conditions in the city had deteriorated overnight.

“At night, a building burned in the very center, but it was not possible even to call the fire department,” he wrote. There was no phone signal, no electricity, and no water in the area.

Ukrainian officials fear that Russia may have left soldiers behind to engage the Ukrainians in street battles or sabotage operations.

It said that Russian forces were setting up defensive positions on the eastern bank of the Dnipro and shelling the advancing Ukrainians across the river.

Videos shared on social media by Zelenskyy and other officials and citizens showed crowds in the street celebrating and chanting “ZSU! ZSU!” — the Ukrainian initials for the country’s armed forces.

“I want to live in Kherson,” a Kremlin spokesman told Reuters in response to the Antonivsky Bridge’s “torsion”

But Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov insisted that Russia still maintains a legal hold over the territory following the withdrawal. “Here there is no need to change,” Peskov said Friday.

“Even when the city is not yet completely cleansed of the enemy’s presence,” Zelenskyy said in his address, “the people of Kherson themselves are already removing Russian symbols from the streets and buildings and any traces of the occupiers’ stay in Kherson.”

Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence agency said it would guarantee the rights of any abandoned Russian soldiers who surrendered, under a program called “I Want to Live.”

The Russian withdrawal came amid reports of heavy damage to the Antonivsky Bridge — the area’s only road crossing over the Dnipro. Satellite images released by Maxar Technologies appeared to show a section of the bridge was completely sheared off.

The decision to withdraw from the eastern bank of the Dnipro River was complicated but necessary to save the lives of military personnel and preserve Russia’s combat capability.

The initial announcement drew skepticism from Ukraine’s government, which previously voiced concern that a troop withdrawal there could be a Kremlin ploy to lure Ukrainian forces into the city.

On Thursday, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov told Reuters he believed it would take “as a minimum, one week” for Russian forces to leave the city and that Moscow still had some 40,000 troops in the region.

The Russian pullback is widely believed to be a blow to Putin’s war effort in Ukraine — a view underscored by the Russian leader’s continued silence on the pullback.

Putin said in a state television interview, excerpts of which were released on Sunday afternoon that Russia is “prepared to negotiate some acceptable outcomes with all the participants of this process.”

He said that “it’s not us who refuse talks, it’s them” — something the Kremlin has repeatedly stated in recent months as its 10-month old invasion kept losing momentum.

Putin’s remarks come as attacks on Ukraine continue. There was an air raid alert and missiles hitting the city of Kramatorsk, in the partially occupied region, on Sunday.

We know they could go further after Bakhmut. They would be able to take the open road in the direction of their hometown of Kramatorsk.

The attack on Bakhmut, a Ukrainian city demolished by heavy artillery, as described by Yevgeny Prigozhin

A total of 16 people have been killed, according to the official, including three emergency workers killed in the process of demining the Berislav district of the region. Yanushevich said that 64 more have been wounded.

In the neighboring Dnipropetrovsk region, the city of Nikopol was shelled overnight from heavy artillery, Gov. Valentyn Reznichenko said. No casualties have been reported.

The head of Russia’s Wagner private military company has attempted to explain his group’s failure to capture the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, which has for months been the scene of intense fighting.

During a New Year’s visit with fighters on the front line, Yevgeny Prigozhin said that there was “a fortress in every house” in Bakhmut, and that “only clowns that sit around and try to predict these things.”

He said that the combined forces had broken the defense in Artyomovsk. The name was changed back to Bakhmut in 2016.

“Then they say: ‘What does it mean to “break through the defense?”’ ‘Breaking through the defense’ means breaking through the defense of one house this morning, then you have to go break the defense of the next house, right?” he said.

Ukraine’s Kramatorsk missile attack: Violations of the Fourth Ukrainian Relativistic Law and the Role of Terrorism

The question is: Who will take Artyomovsk? Which combined forces? He said that it would be the Wagner combined forces. “And who else? Other than Wagner PMC, who else is there?”

A fresh barrage of missiles ripped through the city of Kramatorsk in eastern Ukraine Thursday, sending flames and thick plumes into the air as screaming civilians scrambled to find shelter.

A CNN team arriving at the scene heard a strike on Kramatorsk. CNN saw the second attack, with two impacts about one minute apart. Two women jumped from their car and ran screaming into the house, while other people took shelter. The bullet fell from the blastproof glass of the CNN vehicle.

Medics rushed to the scene to save a person’s life. The Mayor of Kramatorsk said that there was a strike on the city and urged the residents to stay in bomb shelters.

Thirteen two-story buildings, three four-story buildings and a children’s clinic were damaged. “Russians confirm their status as terrorists every day.”

Moscow’s renewed assault came after Russian forces targeted the residential neighborhood with an Iskander-K missile Wednesday, killing at least three civilians and wounding another eight, according to local police. Honcharenko said two of the wounded were in critical condition.

Rescue workers searched through rubble in an effort to find survivors of Wednesday’s attack. People were evacuated to a school for shelter.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/02/europe/russia-ukraine-kramatorsk-missile-attack-intl/index.html

Operational Command North: Russian shelling of Vovchansk and Kharkiv, Sumy, Luhansk, and Kherson

“A country bordering absolute evil. And a country that has to overcome it in order to reduce to zero the likelihood of such tragedies happening again. We will find and punish the perpetrators. They do not deserve mercy.”

Moscow launched an attack in Kramatorsk after a top official said Russia was preparing for a large scale war in Ukraine.

“These will be defining months in the war,” Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, told Sky News in an interview broadcast Tuesday.

The General Staff reported shelling in the Kharkiv region, and included the border town of Vovchansk.

Kharkiv, Sumy and Luhansk regions: Oleh Syniehubov, head of the Kharkiv regional military administration, said two civilians were killed in Dvorichna, a village east of the city of Kharkiv. Russian forces are on the east bank of the Oskil River.

Further north, close to the Russian border, five people were injured in Russian shelling of the town of Vovchansk, which regularly comes under fire, according to Syniehubov. “At least seven apartment buildings and two private residential buildings were damaged by artillery fire in Vovchansk,” he said on Telegram.

“The occupiers continue to shell the border of Sumy region with mortars” 12 times on Wednesday evening in the area of Seredyna-Buda — which is right near the Russian border — according to Operational Command North. No casualties were reported.

Russian troops have launched more than 200 strikes on the area in the past 24 hours alone but are losing hundreds of men each day in their efforts, the spokesman for the Eastern Grouping of the armed forces said later on Thursday. CNN can’t verify those figures.

Russian troops will have “open road” to capture key cities in eastern Ukraine if they seize control of Bakhmut, President Volodymyr Zelensky warned in an interview with CNN, as he defended his decision to keep Ukrainian forces in the besieged city.

Kherson region: The Ukrainian military reported that there was heavy shelling of the towns and villages recently liberated in the south. The city of Kherson was listed as one of the areas that had been shelled.

The military said that in occupied parts of Kherson, Russians were trying to kill civilians. Detainment to Russian territory is part of the Filtration measures.

A senior British official told CNN that it was unlikely that Russians would be more successful, though they seemed willing to send more troops into the meat grinder.

“It’s likely more aspirational than realistic,” said a senior US military official last week, with Russian forces moving before they are ready, due to political pressure from the Kremlin.

“They amassed enough manpower to take one or two small cities in Donbas, but that’s it,” a senior Ukrainian diplomat told CNN. The sense of panic they were trying to build in Ukranian was overwhelming.

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin stated Tuesday that the US isn’t seeing Russia “massing” its aircraft ahead of an aerial operation against Ukraine.

The following night, Ukrainian special forces, supported by accurate artillery, penetrated the base, killed dozens of Russian paratroopers and disabled the runway. The Russian concept of operations, so confidently rehearsed on table tops, was crumbling in its first phase.

By contrast, Ukrainian units have proved nimble and adaptive, harnessing drone technology, decentralized command and smart operational planning to exploit their enemy’s systemic weaknesses.

Perhaps one of the most impressive examples of Ukrainian agility came on the first day of the invasion, when a large Russian helicopter assault force seized an airfield on the outskirts of the capital Kyiv, threatening to turn it into a decisive bridge for the invading force to surge further reinforcements.

Zelensky was underscored by this action when he rejected an offer from the US to leave Kyiv and instead defiantly retorted, “I need armor, not a ride,” as well as the defiance of a small group of people on Snake Island.

But on this first anniversary of the Russian invasion Ukraine has more pressing needs than main battle tanks. During a CNN team’s two-week tour of frontline positions, one refrain echoed time and again: “We need shells.”

The Russians have learned to place logistics hubs beyond the reach of strikes, so the timing of GLSDB deliveries is important to defeat mass with precision.

The first GLSDBs won’t arrive until this fall, the foundation thinks missing Russian and Ukrainian offensives will determine the war’s future trajectory.

Ukrainian officials are frustrated by the never category, which currently includes US aircraft and missiles with a range of over 200 miles.

They still rely on massive bombardments of indirect fire to destroy defensive positions. This was the tactic in the cities of Mariupol, Severodonetsk and Lysychansk last year. In short: leave nothing standing that can be defended.

Tanks, fighting vehicles and other equipment will need time to be set up in order for it to break through the Russian lines.

It is possible that after a burst of fury this year, the conflict will erupt into a violent rassle, with little ground changing hands and many casualties.

Ukraine’s withdrawal from Bakhmut has not been a disaster: a comment on a former Ukrainian soldier and a Russian warmaker

Russia launched 27 airstrikes and 75 multiple launch rocket attacks on the Ukrainian ground, the General Staff of the Ukrainian armed forces said in its report.

Unofficial Ukrainian military accounts have given a similar picture of the fighting around Bakhmut, with most access routes to the city from the west and north-west cut off.

Russian military bloggers have also reported offensive actions in several areas of this front, including Mariinka, which has been almost obliterated by the fighting.

The ministry said Russian forces had carried out artillery and thermobaric attacks on Ukrainian positions in areas west of the city of Kreminna in Luhansk, and it claimed to have inflicted heavy losses on the Ukrainians in that area.

The Russians are threatening to take a Ukrainian city that has been abandoned by most of its prewar population.

But a Ukrainian withdrawal does not equal disaster if carried out in an orderly way. Ryan says that it should be treated as a routine tactic rather than a sign of disaster.

Men were moving street by street in Mariupol last year. But they were rarely Russian regulars, more often Chechen units, militia from the self-declared Luhansk and Donetsk Republics, and small numbers of Wagner operatives.

Bakhmut has become an obsession for the Russians in the absence of progress elsewhere, far beyond any strategic rationale. The Defense Ministry began pouring more forces into the area so they could be ready if Prigozhin needed them.

Russia’s mobilization last autumn, recruiting some 300,000 men into uniform, provided a pool of foot soldiers and helped reconstitute units that had suffered heavy losses. At the same time, Prigozhin was scouring Russian prisons and converting his Wagner forces into the shock troops of the campaign.

But according to the Modern War Institute at West Point, “Russia has been unable to prove it can effectively integrate new forces into damaged formations or build cohesive teams from ad hoc groupings of scattered unit remnants.”

In his paper, Rob Johnson wrote that basic battle skills such as concentration, liasion management and moving tactically across the terrain to avoid casualties were substandard.

NPR’s State of Ukraine: The U.S. and Russia’s top diplomats on the first day of the Russian-American invasion

The president of the European Commission will be in the White House Friday for a meeting with President Biden.

The top U.S. and Russian government diplomats met for the first time since the invasion began, in a brief walk and talk alongside meetings of the Group of 20 nations’ foreign ministers in India.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Belarus’ leader Alexander Lukashenko met in Beijing and declared their nations’ friendship “unbreakable.” Russia’s close ally Lukashenko supports China’s proposal to end the war in Ukraine.

Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, one of Europe’s staunchest supporters of Ukraine, is set to remain in her post after her center-right party overwhelmingly won Sunday’s election.

You can read past recaps here. For context and more in-depth stories, you can find more of NPR’s coverage here. Also, listen and subscribe to NPR’s State of Ukraine podcast for updates throughout the day.

“This is tactical for us,” Zelensky told CNN earlier this month, laying out his decision-making and insisting that Kyiv’s military brass was united in prolonging its defense of the city.

He said that if Russia could put a flag on Bakhmut, it would help mobilize the society in order to create a powerful army.

More casualties and a risk of hundreds or thousands of Ukrainian troops getting cut off are leading some commanders to question the necessity of holding Bakhmut.

A Russian soldier in Bakhmut’s enemy is a terrorist, or is it a crime? — A statement from the Ukrainian prime minister in Kiev

“All the time we were in the city, there were explosions. There wasn’t a single building that wasn’t damaged. There are still people in Avdiivka. People live in basements,” military spokesman Oleksiy Dmytrashkivskyi said.

A military official with the NATO alliance told CNN on Monday that Russia had lost at least five troops in the battle against Bakhmut, which NATO estimates to be every Ukrainian soldier’s death. The official said that the estimate was based on intelligence.

An adviser within the Ukrainian Presidency, Mykhailo Podolyak, told CNN on Monday that in defending Bakhmut, Ukraine had two main goals: buying time to replenish its forces and inflicting heavy losses on Russian armies.

Ukraine is meanwhile racing to integrate Western weapons systems and dozens of tanks into its operations, after Zelensky successfully persuaded the US, the UK, Germany and a bloc of other European nations to step up its military aid.

In recent days, Zelensky released a video that showed the execution of a Ukrainian soldier by the Russians, though Moscow has consistently denied committing war crimes.

According to the clip, the man was identified by the army as Tymofii Mykolayovych Shadura, and he was going to be executed.

“For us, it’s war for our freedom, for democracy, for our values. The attitude is that it is terrorism. They post this video. This is how the war is being portrayed. He said this was the face of the Russian Federation.

Bakhmut: The focus of the enemy’s main attack: Zelensky’s legacy as a top general in his second night in Kiev

A Ukrainian counter-offensive could be in the works as Russian troops are no longer in Bakhmut, according to a top general in the city.

Zelensky handed out awards to troops defending Bakhmut during a morale-boosting trip on Wednesday. “It is an honor for me to support our warriors who are defending the country in the toughest frontline conditions,” he later said in his nightly address.

His decision to ignore the Western calls to tactically retreat from Bakhmut is still being supported by the lengthy resistance of Ukrainian troops.

The eastern city of Bakhmut remains “the focus of the enemy’s main attack,” according to Serhii Cherevatyi, the spokesman for the Eastern Grouping of the armed forces.

Cherevatyi said it was difficult to tell whether the intensity of Russian attacks around Bakhmut was waning because of factors such as weather, the rotation of units or reserves being brought forward by the Russians.

Cherevatyi drew a distinction between the battle for Bakhmut and fighting elsewhere. Russian forces supported by the Luhansk militia have made over 400 attacks over the past day in the north, and it is not clear if there is evidence left to support this.

“The main task now is to withstand, to deplete the enemy’s forces, while units are being trained both in Ukraine and abroad, equipped with new defense equipment, and coordinated,” Cherevatyi said.