Vladimir V. Putin in Lyman, Ukraine: Why Russian Forces are Running Themselves During Ukrainian Blitz Offfensive?

IZIUM, Ukraine — Russian forces in Ukraine were on the run Monday across a broad swath of the front line, as the Ukrainian military pressed its blitz offensive in the east and made gains in the south, belying President Vladimir V. Putin’s claims to have absorbed into Russia territories that his armies are steadily losing.

A day after President Putin held a grandiose ceremony to commemorate the integration of Ukrainian territories into Russia, the debacle in the city of Lyman heaped up pressure on the leadership of the country.

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 spokesman for the Kremlin told reporters Friday that it is a Russian region. “It has been legally fixed and defined. There can’t be changes here.

Russia is pouring the new conscripts across the whole of the front line in an attempt to halt recent Ukrainian advances while rebuilding ground forces decimated during eight months of war. After a chaotic mobilization in September, military analysts had predicted the deployment of Russian men to front line areas through the fall, with high numbers of casualties expected. Russian forces are in the east, while in the south they are on defense.

The story of two protests in Ukraine and Iran: the courage of women to protest against regime oppression — CNN opinion: Amini died in London

Editor’s Note: Editor’s note: Frida Ghitis, (@fridaghitis) a former CNN producer and correspondent, is a world affairs columnist. She is a weekly opinion contributor to CNN, a contributing columnist to The Washington Post and a columnist for World Politics Review. Her views are not shared in this commentary. CNN has more opinion on it.

Two groups of demonstrators came together in London, almost by accident. One was waving Ukrainian flags; the other Iranian flags. When they met, they cheered each other, and chanted, “All together we will win.”

The wars in Iran and Ukraine are very different, on the surface. At their core, however, they are being fought by individuals who have decided to risk their lives, to do what it takes to defend their right to live as they choose; to push back against violent, entrenched dictatorships.

It’s almost impossible for the rest of us to believe that these battles show bravery like this, and that they inspire support in places like Afghanistan.

Amini died in Iran last month. She died in the hands of morality police who had arrested her because they were not comfortable with her wearing modest clothing.

Iranian women have been dancing around fires in the night, removing their hijab and tossing it into the flames, in defiance of the regime.

Their peaceful uprising isn’t about the hijab nor is it about cutting oppression, this is why men have joined them in large numbers, even while the regime kills more and more protesters.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/04/opinions/iran-ukraine-autocracies-struggle-democracy-ghitis/index.html

What do we really want to do about the repressive regimes of Syria? Vladimir Putin and the rest of the world are waiting for his next move

After all, it was less than a decade ago that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s military entered Syria’s long civil war, helping to save the dictator Bashar al-Assad (as Iran had).

President Zelensky used the narrative of the conflict to show that the Western military aid can be used to win the war.

The US in particular has felt its way forward through incremental increases in the capability of weapons supplied to Ukraine, wary at each stage of Russia’s supposed “red lines” – but finding in each case that the red lines evaporate, and all Russia’s threats are empty bluster.

It is possible that the display of brutality and vengeance was a reaction to the fact that the bridge on the peninsula was being blown up. The prospect of a vicious new war has been raised by his indiscriminate targeting of Ukrainian civilians.

The repressive regimes of Moscow and Tehran are now isolated, pariahs among most of the world, openly supported by a bunch of autocrats.

Iran acknowledged for the first time that it provided drones to Russia, but denied continuing to supply them. Zelenskyy countered that Iran was “lying” because Ukrainian forces “shoot down at least 10 Iranian drones every day.”

These are two regimes that, while very different in their ideologies, have much in common in their tactics of repression and their willingness to project power abroad.

Niloofar Hamedi, a journalist, was the first to report the events surroundingMahsa Amini. In Russia as well, journalism is a deadly profession. So is disagreeing with Putin. Navalny was imprisoned indefinitely after being tried and failed in his attempt to kill him.

People in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Iraq are very interested in the fact that the Iranian regime could fall. It would make a big difference for their countries and their lives. Iran’s constitution calls for spreading the ideology of Islam.

The coming weeks are important for the battlefield, as well as in Europe, and around the globe, experts say. Giles said that Putin’s next move depends on how the rest of the world responds. Western countries fail to confront and deter Russia.

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. Inside there was a sniper rifle, rocket propelled grenades, helmets and belongings. The men were no longer with us.

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

Vladimir Putin is not happy with the invasion of Ukraine, but does he care about the future of the Ukrainian economy and the way of life with Russia?

After months of static fighting and holding the line under withering Russian rocket fire, Ukrainian soldiers are happy that they have regained swaths of territory captured by Russian troops earlier this year. They have almost succeeded in regaining the entire province and territory in the four regions that President Putin claims to have annexed.

Stremousov might be aware of the fact that some leaders of Russian-backed groups have a tendency of dying violently, but other criticism is not new. Just weeks after Putin launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, one of his key domestic enforcers, Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov, urged the Russian military to expand its campaign, implying that Moscow’s approach had not been brutal enough.

In a recent interview, the head of Russia’s defense committee demanded that officials stop lying to the Russian public.

The Ministry of Defense was covering up the fact that there were cross-border strikes in Russian regions.

He said the Russian city of Valuyki is under fire. From governors, Telegram channels, our war correspondents, we learn about this. No one else. The reports from the ministry of defense are still in substance. They say they destroyed 300 rockets, killed Nazis and so on. People are aware. Our people are very smart. But they don’t want to even tell part of the truth. This can lead to a loss of credibility.”

The border with the Ukraine is near Valuyki. Kyiv has generally adopted a neither-confirm-nor-deny stance when it comes to striking Russian targets across the border.

The Colonel Cassad of Lyman: Blaming Russian Commandants for the History of World War II and Russia’s Nuclear Warfare

Boris Rozhin, who also blogs about the war effort under the nickname Colonelcassad, said that “incompetence and an inability to grasp the experience of war continue to be a serious problem.”

But after Russia’s retreat from the strategic Ukrainian city of Lyman, Kadyrov has been a lot less shy about naming names when it comes to blaming Russian commanders.

Writing on Telegram, Kadyrov personally blamed Colonel-General Aleksandr Lapin, the commander of Russia’s Central Military District, for the debacle, accusing him of moving his headquarters away from his subordinates and failing to adequately provide 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.

Kadyrov was one of the most prominent voices arguing against the methods of the past and he just got promoted to the rank of colonel general. He told a Telegram post that he would allow the government extraordinary wartime powers in Russia.

Kadyrov said that he would order martial law throughout the country because they are at war with the entire NATO bloc.

Russia’s practice of carrying out missile and artillery strikes on civilian targets has already become notorious, from the Mariupol theater airstrike in May that killed 600 people to the bombings of multiple sites in central Kyiv that Russia carried out in October in retaliation for the destruction of the Kerch bridge linking the Crimean peninsula to Russia. The Russian military’s failure to take and hold territory in the face of the Ukrainian counteroffensive made it harder for the Kremlin to find softer, nonmilitary targets. “We are fighting against a terrorist state,” Reznikov wrote.

Both automobiles and trains were crossing the bridge again on Sunday, despite it being temporarily suspended due to the blast. Russia started a car ferry service.

Violation of the Ukrainian Constitution in the Regime of World War II: The Astonishment in Zaporizhzhia

He said that the route of the truck had taken it to a number of places, such as Georgia, North Ossetia, and Krasnodar.

There were conflicting reports on how big the attacks were. Mykhailo Podolyak said in an earlier post that Russia launched over 120 missiles in the assault, but didn’t give any further details. He said the intent of the attack was to “destroy critical infrastructure and kill civilians en masse.”

A new round of missile attacks by Russian forces in eastern Ukranian on Friday morning put the whole country under air-raid alert and left people scrambling for shelter, with strikes hitting critical infrastructure and disrupting power.

Recent fighting has focused on the regions just north of Crimea, including Zaporizhzhia. Zelenskyy, who is Ukrainian, expressed his displeasure in a Telegram post.

The facility was hit by the enemy. Shell fragments damaged residential buildings and the place where the medical aid and humanitarian aid distribution point is located,” Yanushevych later said in a Telegram video on Thursday.

Mucola Markovich said there was one explosion, then another. He had an apartment on the fourth floor with his wife.

The attack and response of Vladimir Putin on the Kerch Bridge: a message for Russia’s military operations in Ukraine, and for a peaceful settlement of the crisis

In a neighborhood ravaged by a missile, volunteers dug a grave for a dog that was killed in the strike, but lost his leg.

Abbas Gallyamov, an independent Russian political analyst and a former speechwriter for Putin, said the Russian president, who formed a committee Saturday to investigate the bridge explosion, had not responded forcefully enough to satisfy angry war hawks. The attack and response, he said, has “inspired the opposition, while the loyalists are demoralized.”

“Because once again, they see that when the authorities say that everything is going according to plan and we’re winning, that they’re lying, and it demoralizes them,” he said.

Putin personally opened the Kerch Bridge in May 2018 by driving a truck across it as a symbol of Moscow’s claims on Crimea. The bridge is important to Russia’s military operations in southern Ukraine.

Crimea is a popular vacation resort for Russians. People trying to drive to the bridge and onto the Russian mainland on Sunday encountered hours-long traffic jams.

On the aftermath of the Ukraine’s largest power plant collapse: CNN’s Michael Bociurkiw analysis of Ukrainian events in Lyman and Kharkiv

— In the devastated Ukrainian city of Lyman, which was recently recaptured after a months-long Russian occupation, Ukrainian national police said authorities have exhumed the first 20 bodies from a mass burial site. Initial indications are that around 200 civilians are buried in one location, and that another grave contains the bodies of fallen Ukrainian soldiers. The civilians, including children, were buried in single graves, while members of the military were buried in a 40-meter long trench, according to police.

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

After losing its last external power source early Saturday, Europe’s biggest power plant was reconnected to the grid by the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Michael Bociurkiw 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. View more opinion at CNN.

Even amid irrepressible jubilation here in Ukraine in the aftermath of a massive explosion that hit the hugely strategic and symbolic Kerch Straight bridge over the weekend, fears of retaliation by the Kremlin were never far away.

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.

As of midday local time, the area around my office in Odesa remained eerily quiet in between air raid sirens, with reports that three missiles and five kamikaze drones were 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).

Russia launched another barrage of strikes targeting Ukraine’s energy grid Dec. 5, knocking out electricity and water for many residents. Five days later, Russian attacks left over a million people without power in the Ukrainian port city of Odesa.

In the northeastern city of Kharkiv, which has seen more bombardments than Kyiv, residents shifted to war footing and stocked up on canned food, gas and drinking water. Yet they also entertained themselves at the Typsy Cherry, a local bar. The owner told The Times that the mood was cheerful. People have fun and wonder when the electricity will come back. (Power came back hours later.)

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

The attacks on the asylum seekers could cause a blow to business confidence as many of them return to their home countries.

The only bridge linking mainland Russia and the annexed peninsula can be seen by Putin as symbolism. The attack on him a day after his 70th birthday can be viewed as an extra blow to an older autocrat with the ability to endure shame and humiliation.

There was an instantaneous reaction to the explosion among Ukrainians. A lot of people shared their jubilation via text.

For the world to see, the message was obvious. Putin does not intend to be humiliated. He won’t admit defeat. And he is quite prepared to inflict civilian carnage and indiscriminate terror in response to his string of battlefield reversals.

Facing increased criticism at home, including on state-controlled television, was an act of selfish desperation that placed Putin on thin ice.

It’s possible that Mr. Putin would lashes out at Ukraine more broadly. The attacks of the past week — particularly striking critical civilian infrastructure — could be expanded across Ukraine if missile supplies hold out, while Russia could directly target the Ukrainian leadership with strikes or special operations.

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.

Anything less will allow Putin to continue his violence and create a new humanitarian crisis that will be felt throughout Europe. A weak reaction will be taken as a sign in the Kremlin that it can continue to weaponize energy, migration and food.

Russian attacks on civilians during the Monday rush-hour attacks in Ukraine as a warning to rejoint security and security operations in the US and beyond

Furthermore, high tech defense systems are needed to protect Kyiv and crucial energy infrastructure around the country. With winter just around the corner, the need to protect heating systems is urgent.

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.

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.

Putin needs to find new targets because of the inability to cause defeats onUkraine on the battlefield, and the targets on Monday had little military value.

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.

The attacks on civilians, which killed at least 14 people, also drove new attention to what next steps the US and its allies must take to respond, after already sending billions of dollars of arms and kits to Ukraine in an effective proxy war with Moscow.

The president spoke to the Ukrainian leader and offered advanced air systems that would help defend against Russian air attacks, however the White House didn’t give a detailed description of what would be sent.

John Kirby, the coordinator for strategic communications at the National Security Council, suggested Washington was looking favorably on Ukraine’s requests and was in touch with the government in Kyiv almost every day. He told Kate that they did the best they could to meet those needs in subsequent packages.

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. Kirby said that it was not clear if the explosion on the bridge had accelerated some of their planning.

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 lieutenant. Col Alexander Vindman, the former director for European Affairs on the National Security Council, said that by attacking targets designed to hurt Ukrainians, Putin was sending a signal about how he will prosecute the war in the coming months.

“So imagine if we had modern equipment, we probably could raise the number of those drones and missiles downed and not kill innocent civilians or wound and injure Ukrainians,” Zhovkva said.

It is hard to imagine the world would allow any other country to wage the same kind of campaign that Russia is doing in Ukraine, with an agenda of exterminating the Ukrainian people.

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.

Olena Gnes, a mother of three who is documenting the war on YouTube, told CNN’s Anderson Cooper live from her basement in Ukraine on Monday that she was angry at the return of fear and violence to the lives of Ukrainians from a new round of Russian “terror.”

“This is just another terror to provoke maybe panic, to scare you guys in other countries or to show to his own people that he is still a bloody tyrant, he is still powerful and look what fireworks we can arrange,” she said.

Drones, missiles, and energy: What do the Russians need now to defend themselves in the coming Ukrainian war? The question of air defense

Drones have played a significant role in the conflict since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in late February, but their use has increased since Moscow acquired the new drones from Iran over the summer.

As Ukraine races to shore up its missile defenses in the wake of the assault, the math for Moscow is simple: A percentage of projectiles are bound to get through.

Last Monday, Maj. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov, head of Ukraine’s military intelligence, claimed that Russia had nearly exhausted its arsenal of high-precision weapons, but that it still had enough supplies to inflict harm. The spokesman for the NSC, John Kirby, said that Iran has not delivered a missile to Russia.

Estimating Russian missile inventories is guesswork. In May, Zelensky said that Russia had probably used up as much as half of its precision-missile arsenal. That looks like a silly thought.

The S-300 is being adapted as an offensive weapon by the Russians. Their fast speed makes them hard to intercept in places like Zaporizhzhia and Mykolaiv. But they are hardly accurate.

He told CNN’s Richard Quest that this was the “first time from the beginning of the war” that Russia has “dramatically targeted” energy infrastructure.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Tuesday that more systems were needed for Ukraine to stop missile attacks. “These air defense systems are making a difference because many of the incoming missiles (this week) were actually shot down by the Ukrainian air defense systems provided by NATO Allies,” he said. “But of course, as long as not all of them are shot down, of course there is a need for more.”

Fighter jets have helped against Iranian drones, but the approach is expensive because of the use of air-to-air missiles. He said it was frustrating that we had to hit the drones with expensive missiles. We can’t do anything else. The reality now is this.

The Patriot system – advanced long-range air defense that’s highly effective at intercepting missiles – offers an immensely expensive means of defending a very limited number of high value targets. But it is neither a total solution to Ukraine’s air defense problem, nor a swift one, with one earliest possible in-service date in Ukraine estimated at February 2023.

Ukraine’s wish-list – circulated at Wednesday’s meeting – included missiles for their existing systems and a “transition to Western-origin layered air defense system” as well as “early warning capabilities.”

Speaking after the Ukraine Defense Contact Group meeting, he said such a system would not “control all the airspace over Ukraine, but they are designed to control priority targets that Ukraine needs to protect. You are looking at a mix of high altitude systems, medium altitude systems, and short-range low altitude systems.

Western systems are beginning to gain popularity in other countries. Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said Tuesday that a “new era of air defense has begun” with the arrival of the first IRIS-T from Germany, and two units of the US National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System (NASAM) expected soon.

These are items that you can buy in the open market. The IRIS-T had to be manufactured for Ukraine. Western governments have limited inventories of such systems. And Ukraine is a very large country under missile attack from three directions.

The Russians are Playing for the Whist: How Do They Want to Win? The Story of Russia’s Air Defense Force in Ukraine

Poland has been thanked by the top military commander of the Ukrainian army for training an air defense battalion that had destroyed nine of 11 Shaheeds.

He said Poland had given Ukraine “systems” to help destroy the drones. The Polish government bought Israeli equipment last month and is transferring it to Ukraine, contrary to Israel’s policy not to sell advanced defensive technology to Kyiv.

The war is entering an unpredictable new phase for the first time. Keir Giles is a senior consulting fellow at Chatham House and he said that this is the third, fourth or fifth war that they have been observing.

American and Ukrainian officials are wary of saying exactly how long the fighting will last, but they say it is likely to continue for months more. And a number of variables could become particularly pertinent in shifting the trajectory of the conflict: more difficult fighting conditions in December, the extent to which President Vladimir V. Putin is willing to escalate the fight, whether Europe’s unity can be maintained this winter as energy prices soar and the potentially changing political environment in the United States that could result in a decrease of military support to Ukraine.

Giles said that it is now much more plausible for anything to be described as a Ukraine victory. Russia is likely to respond further.

The Ukrainian military also reported Wednesday that more than 30 settlements in the regions of Kharkiv and Sumy came under fire, with some of the shelling directed from Russian territory.

Hours after Russia announced it had pulled out of the Dnipro River in the southern region of Kherson, footage emerged of jubilant scenes.

The counter-offensives have made a difference in the war, debunking a suggestion that the Ukrainians lacked the ability to seize ground and that they were simply stoutly defending territory.

“The Russians are playing for the whistle – (hoping to) avoid a collapse in their frontline before the winter sets in,” Samir Puri, senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies and the author of “Russia’s Road to War with Ukraine,” told CNN.

It will be good for Russians if they can get Christmas with the frontline looking as it is.

They join an army already degraded in quality and capability. In the course of its war with Ukranian, the composition of Russia’s military force in Ukraine has changed as much as the prewar active duty personnel have been wounded or killed. 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. In September the demoralized forces left their positions and equipment in panic in the Kharkiv region.

The Institute of the Study of War says that Ukrainian troops crossed the Oskil River to push Russian forces eastwards and that Moscow will probably defend Starobilsk and Svatove in the Luhansk region.

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 little idea that the west will be stopping 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.

The energy operator Ukrenergo reported on Friday that more than half of the country’s energy capacity had been lost due to Russian strikes.

Jeremy Fleming, a UK spy chief, said in a speech on Tuesday that Russian commanders on the ground knew that their supplies were running out.

That conclusion was also reached by the ISW, which said in its daily update on the conflict Monday that the strikes “wasted some of Russia’s dwindling precision weapons against civilian targets, as opposed to militarily significant targets.”

The majority of missiles fired at the Ukrainians on Thursday were shot down by the defense forces, according to preliminary data. Klitschko said 16 missiles were destroyed by Ukraine’s air defenses over Kyiv.

The impact of such an intervention in terms of pure manpower would be limited; Belarus has around 45,000 active duty troops, which would not significantly bolster Russia’s reserves. But it would threaten another assault on Ukraine’s northern flank below the Belarusian border.

Giles stated that 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.

Now Zelensky will hope for more supplies in the short-term as he seeks to drive home those gains. Over half of the missiles and drones launched at Ukraine in the second wave of strikes on Tuesday were brought down, said the leader.

Ahead of a meeting of NATO defense ministers in the Belgian city of Belgium, the NATO Secretary General said that more missile attack systems were needed for Ukraine.

Many of the weapons that are used by Kyiv and other civilian areas of Ukraine are classified as loitering munitions by the defense industry. These drones explode on impact, which is why they are sometimes referred to as kamikaze drones.

The White House is not providing Kyiv with larger drones like the Predator and Reaper that U.S. forces used in the wars that began after the Sept. 11 attacks. Both aircraft can fly for hours while sending live video feeds of the ground and carry laser-guided missiles and guided bombs.

That’s not to say mobilized forces will be of no use. If used in support roles, like drivers or refuelers, they might ease the burden on the remaining parts of Russia’s exhausted professional army. They could also fill out depleted units along the line of contact, cordon some areas and man checkpoints in the rear. They are not likely to become a fighting force. There are signs of discipline problems in the Russian garrisons.

KYIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian forces fired rockets at a facility in the eastern Donetsk region where Russian soldiers were stationed, killing 63 of them, Russia’s defense ministry said Monday, in one of the deadliest attacks on the Kremlin’s forces since the war began more than 10 months ago.

Fresh rounds of Russian missile strikes hit several regions, prompting air raid sirens to sound over the weekend. The attacks killed at least six people in the Donetsk, Kharkiv and Chernihiv regions, while a man was injured early Monday.

Zelenskyy’s chief-of-staff again called on the west to giveUkraine more air defense systems. “We have no time for slow actions,” he said online.

Klitshchko posted a photo of shrapnel labeled “Geran-2,” Russian’s designation for the Iranian drones, but he removed the picture after commenters criticized him for confirming a Russian strike.

State of Ukraine at the High-Energy Putin-EU summit: Past highlights from the NPR’s NPR coverage of Crimea, Ukraine

The foreign ministers of the European Union are in Luxembourg. Before the meeting, Josep Borrell, the EU’s top diplomat, told reporters that the bloc would look into “concrete evidence” of Iran’s involvement in Ukraine.

It’s unclear how many casualties there have been, but one person was found dead under the rubble of a destroyed building in Kyiv, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said. Another remains trapped, Klitschko said.

Nuclear deterrence exercises with NATO will start on Monday. NATO warned Russia to not use nuclear weapons onUkraine but they said the “Stadfast Noon” exercises are a yearly training activity.

Russian agents detained eight people on Oct. 12 suspected of carrying out a large explosion on a bridge to Crimea, including Russian, Ukrainian and Armenian citizens.

Russia’s move to annex four areas of Ukraine was condemned by the UN General Assembly. Four countries voted with Russia, but other countries abstained in favor of the Ukrainian resolution.

Here you can read past recaps. 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.

“Shaped” Air Drones, the Blitz, and U.S.-S. Interactions in the Russia-Ukraine War

Another disadvantage of the Shahed drones is their speed, said Ret. Marine Col. Mark Cancian, who now serves as a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Cancian said the problem with them was that they were slow. “Like all propeller-driven drones, they are susceptible to being shot down by either missiles or aircraft guns because they’re not very fast.”

Meanwhile, Russia will continue to look for sources of replacement weapons as it scrapes the barrel for repurposed or adapted missiles to launch at Ukraine. Iran may be the only country interested in supplying Russia in the future.

“Iran has time and again declared that it is siding with no side in the Russia-Ukraine war. Iran has not provided arms to either warring side, according to the Foreign Ministry.

Both Nadimi and Cancian compared the Russian decision to target cities as it is losing on the frontlines to The Blitz – the German bombing campaign that targeted London in World War II.

Cancian pointed out that focusing on the cities would likely give the military more time to recover from the front lines like Britain did in WWII.

At the same time, the U.S. has said it is speeding up its delivery of NASAMS, the same ground-based air defense systems that are used to protect the White House in Washington, D.C., and the systems are expected to be in Ukraine in a few weeks.

The Pentagon said in August that it would send drones that soldiers could control from nine miles away. At altitudes of 500 feet, the umas can stay.

An Iranian MiG pilot in Vinnytsia, Ukraine, blamed for shooting down the Iranian Shahed-136 drones

The key question in wake of Makiivka was, how long can Putin keep himself out of the blame? The war will be entering a new year and there is no sign that Ukrainian forces are going to ease up on Russian forces in the east or south.

One Ukrainian MiG pilot won folk hero status in Ukraine this month for shooting down five Iranian Shahed-136 drones over the central Ukrainian city of Vinnytsia, only to be forced to eject after crashing into the debris of the last one. The pilot, who identified himself only as Karaya, told the local news media he would be able to destroy the weapon within a short period of time.

He said that Karaya steered his plane away from Vinnytsia after colliding with the debris. The jet crashed into houses in an outlying area, but injured nobody on the ground. Karaya apologized at the site.

“I visited the scene, said I was sorry for the discomfort I caused the residents and thanked them for their steel nerves,” he wrote on Instagram, saying he showed up in his tattered uniform, missing epaulets. He said it was a violation of military protocol. “Lost them while leaving the office,” he wrote.

The Second Day of the War with Russia: Anatoliy Nikitin, Stas Volovyk, and Mixing Chaos with Adventure and Black Comedy

MYKOLAIV, Ukraine — On the second day of the war with Russia, Anatoliy Nikitin and Stas Volovyk, two Ukrainian army reservists, were ordered to deliver NLAW anti-tank missiles to fellow soldiers in the suburbs north of Kyiv. Nikitin, who goes by the battle nickname Concrete, said that they received new orders as they stood exposed on the highway.

“A guy on the radio said, ‘There are two Russian tanks coming at you. “You cantry to hit one and broadcast it!” says Nikitin sitting on a park bench in the southern city of Mykolaiv.

There was one problem: neither soldier had ever fired an NLAW. They hid among some trees and looked up a video on how to do it, as the tanks approached. They were able to prepare the missiles.

The commander exclaimed, ‘Oh, it’s ours!’ It’s ours! ‘” recalls Volovyk, who goes by the nickname Raptor. “So, we did not fire. It was a close call.

In their on-the-job training, Nikitin and Volovyk described it as a mixture of terror, adventure and black comedy. The first few days of the war were filled with confusion according to the two men.

“It was total chaos,” recalls Nikitin, who is 40, wears a salt-and-pepper beard and heads a construction company. “It’s lucky for us that the Russians were more chaotic than us.”

Volovyk was wearing a camouflage cap with the message “Don’t Worry, Be Ready” and was asking if they were mocking them.

The Russians began to retreat from the Kyiv suburbs in late March. The two men followed orders and traveled down to the south to fight a different kind of war. Outside of the capital, they left behind the protection of suburban buildings and forests, as well as sweeping farm fields with little cover. They started working in the trenches.

“It sucks,” says Volovyk. “You dig.” You dig. That’s the only thing you can do, because this is an artillery war and unless you dig, you’re pretty much dead.”

The men were given new jobs after a couple of weeks. It is a dangerous job that involves getting close to Enemy lines to avoid detection. The men leapt at the chance to get out of the trenches.

The “Fireflies” have their own accounts on bothYouTube andInstagram. In their videos, they show a drone launching from a field and setting up in an abandoned farmhouse. Then they help guide a shell that misses a Russian armored personnel carrier and explodes in a cloud of smoke. Even with advanced technology, hitting a moving target still isn’t easy.

The soldiers have had some heart-stopping moments. He recalls traveling with a group of engineers and seeing a Russian soldier.

He looked at me and then jumped into the bushes. He ordered the engineering team to shoot the Russian and any of his fellow soldiers.

Nikitin and Volovyk joined the army reserve six years ago, after the Russians invaded Crimea. They were not prophets but they knew that Russia would try to get the rest of Ukraine. Here down south, their goal is to liberate Kherson, the regional capital.

There is a report by the UK defense ministry which states that an increase in Russian casualties is likely due to lack of trained personnel, coordination and resources across the front.

Gen. Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, the commander of the Ukrainian military, said in a statement posted on the Telegram messaging app on Thursday that Russian forces had tripled the intensity of attacks along some parts of the front. He did not say who was behind the attacks or where they came from.

An assessment from Institute for the Study of War said that the increased number of infantry in the east did not lead to new ground being gained by Russia.

The institute said in a statement that Russian forces would likely have more success in the offensive operations if they had waited until enough personnel had arrived to overwhelm the Ukrainian defense.

In the south, where Ukrainian troops are advanced toward the Russian occupied city of Kherson, the military reported on Friday morning that it had fired over 160 times at Russians over the course of the previous 24 hours.

With conflicting signals over what may be happening, the remaining residents of the city have been stocking up on food and fuel in order to survive combat.

And Ukraine will be watching America’s midterm election results this week, especially after some Republicans warned that the party could limit funding for Ukraine if it wins control of the House of Representatives, as forecast.

The destruction of Kherson by Russian forces in the last days of the Dnipro River campaign triggered by the 2016 UN General Assembly report

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will be having a meeting with the prime minister of Sweden. Before it can join NATO, Sweden must meet certain conditions.

The International Atomic Energy Agency report will be discussed on Wednesday by the United Nations General Assembly.

The UN brokered a deal to allow Russia to export grain and other agricultural products from Ukraine. A few days before, Moscow had been suspended from its part in the deal, as it claimed that Ukraine had launched a drone attack on its Black Sea ships.

There will be $400 million in additional security aid to Ukraine from the Pentagon.

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.

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 loss of Kherson would be Russia’s third major setback of the war, following retreats from Kyiv, the capital, last spring, and from the Kharkiv region in the northeast in September. Kherson was the only provincial capital Russia had captured since invading in February, and it was a major link in Russia’s effort to control the southern coastline along the Black Sea.

Even as its soldiers fled, the Kremlin said that it still considered Kherson — which President Vladimir V. Putin illegally annexed in September — to be a part of Russia.

Elated civilians who had survived months of Russian occupation descended on Kherson’s central square, hugging newly arrived Ukrainian soldiers, snapping selfies with them, and waving Ukrainian flags.

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.

The residents of Kherson received a phone call Friday morning telling them that there were multiple explosions during the last hours of the Russian occupation.

In a series of text messages, Serhiy, a retiree living in the city who requested that his last name not be published for security reasons, said that the conditions in the city had changed overnight.

He wrote that a building burned at night, but it wasn’t possible to call the fire department. “There was no phone signal, no electricity, no heating and no water.”

Activists in the Kherson City: An investigation of Russian assault on the Dnieper bank in the southern hemisphere

Russian soldiers may have been hidden behind civilians in order to engage Ukrainians in street battles or sabotage operations, according to Ukrainian officials.

It was said that the Ukrainian military equipment on the Dnieper bank was being hit by fire, and that the Ukrainian advance had been held back for several days.

On Friday evening, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky posted a night-time video of celebrations in Kherson city, where a crowd was waving flags and chanting “ZSU,” the Ukrainian acronym for the armed forces.

There was not a single piece of military equipment or weaponry left behind on the west bank. “All Russian servicemen have moved to the left bank of the Dnieper.”

Russian and Ukrainian forces are having significant losses, according to Ukrainian officials. CNN could not confirm Russia’s claims.

There was no report of incoming fire from the east bank on Friday but a missile attack that killed seven people happened close to the border with Kherson.

The military from the southern command of the Ukrainian army said that Russian forces were loading boats that appeared to be good for crossing the river to escape.

The main conduit over the Dnipro had been destroyed by images and video on social media Friday.

A number of photos, also geolocated and authenticated by CNN, show that the Ukrainian forces were able to make their way into the village despite the main highway’s bridge and a pedestrian bridge being destroyed by the Russians as they withdrew. Dozens of bridges have been destroyed in the Kherson region.

The two sides are going to face each other across the Dnipro river, as far as the edge of the Black Sea, now that Ukrainian forces have regained control of Kherson.

Kherson region: According to the Ukrainian military, there was also heavy shelling of towns and villages in recently liberated parts of Kherson in the south. It listed 10 areas that had been shelled, including the city of Kherson.

According to videos on social media, residents of the town of Bilozerka raised a Ukrainian flag and ripped down Russian billboards on Friday.

The official in southern Ukraine warned people not to return to territory liberated from Russian troops because of the threat of mines, just days after officials in Kyiv warned that Russians could turn Kherson into a “City of Death” on the way out.

“There are a lot of mines in the liberated territories and settlements,” Vitaliy Kim, head of Mykolaiv region military administration, said on Telegram. “Don’t go there for no reason. There are casualties.

The Russian Federation is preparing for a new war: the case of Dnipro, the new front line of Ukraine, as highlighted by a surprise visit to Kherson

“This is a subject of the Russian Federation,” Dmitry Peskov said during a regular briefing with journalists. “It has been legally fixed and defined. There can be no changes here.

In southern Ukrainian, the Dnipro is the new front line and officials warn of continued danger from fighting in regions that have already undergone months of Russian occupation.

The southern district of the city was hit with fire throughout the afternoon due to fears that the Russian army would retaliate for the loss of the city by attacking it on the eastern bank.

The smoke from mortar shells came from near the bridge. There were loud metallic booms near the river. It was not immediately possible to assess what had been hit.

The mines are located in dangerous places. Four people, including an 11-year-old, were killed when a family driving in the village of Novoraysk, outside the city, ran over a mine, Mr. Yanushevich said. Some railway workers were injured when they tried to restore services after lines were damaged. And there were at least four more children reportedly injured by mines across the region, Ukrainian officials said in statements.

The deaths underscored the threats still remaining on the ground, even as Mr. Zelensky made a surprise visit to Kherson, a tangible sign of Ukraine’s soaring morale.

“We are, step by step, coming to all of our country,” Mr. Zelensky said in a short appearance in the city’s main square on Monday, as hundreds of jubilant residents celebrated.

The Russians in Beryslav, Ukraine: “We do not want to go back and shoot them!” a Russian soldier told the military

Russian forces continued to fire from across the river on towns and villages newly recaptured by Ukrainian forces, according to the Ukrainian military’s southern command. Two Russian missiles struck the town of Beryslav, which is just north of a critical dam, the military said. There was no information as to whether there were any casualties.

One resident, who uses an app that provides secure messaging, said thatOccupants rob local people and exchange stuff for homemade vodka. “Then they get drunk and even more aggressive. We are afraid here. She asked that her surname be withheld for security.

“Russians roam around, identify the empty houses and settle there,” Ivan, 45, wrote in a text message. He lived in Skadovsk, which is south of Kherson city, and requested that his name not be used out of concern for his safety. “We try to connect with the owners and to arrange for someone local to stay in their place. So that it is not abandoned and Russians don’t take it.”

The first Ukrainian official and another source familiar with the requests said the Ukrainians want cluster munitions compatible with both the US-provided HIMARS rocket launchers and the 155 mm howitzers, and have argued that the munitions would allow Ukrainian troops to more effectively attack larger, more dispersed targets like concentrations of Russian soldiers and vehicles.

The M30A1 alternative warhead: how much is needed to protect the Ukrainian Army on the battlefield? CNN’s first investigation of the request by the Biden administration

Senior Biden administration officials have been fielding this request for months and have not rejected it outright, CNN has learned, a detail that has not been previously reported.

Cluster munitions are imprecise by design, and scatter “bomblets” across large areas that can fail to explode on impact and can pose a long-term risk to anyone who encounters them, similar to landmines. Mark Hiznay, an associate arms director for Human Rights Watch, told CNN that they create “nasty, bloodyFragment” to everyone hit by them, because the dozens of submunitions that explode at once across a large area.

The Biden administration has not removed the option of using it as a last resort if the inventories begin to run low. But sources say the proposal has not yet received significant consideration in large part due to the statutory restrictions that Congress has put on the US’ ability to transfer cluster munitions.

Those restrictions apply to munitions with a greater than one percent unexploded ordnance rate, which raises the prospect that they will pose a risk to civilians. President Joe Biden could override that restriction, but the administration has indicated to the Ukrainians that that is unlikely in the near term.

The Defense Ministry told CNN it does not comment on reports regarding requests for particular weapons systems or ammunition, choosing to wait until any agreement with a supplier is reached before many any public announcement.

The M30A1 alternate warhead replaced the dual-purpose improved conventional munitions, known as DPICMs. The M30A1 contains 180,000 small tungsten steel fragments that scatter on impact and do not leave unexploded munitions on the ground. Ukrainian officials, however, say that the DPICMs the US now has in storage could help the Ukrainian military enormously on the battlefield – more so than the M30A1.

The crisis in Kyiv: power knocking out again and again by missile attacks and drone attacks on Ukrainians, and the threat of a ban on Russian Orthodox churches

The strikes, using Iranian drones, had left a large group of people in the dark. The situation in Odesa is very difficult and only the most crucial infrastructure remained operational. He said that it would take days to restore power to civilians.

Ukraine has been thrust into a grim cycle of power being knocked out again and again, thanks to repeated assaults on the plants and equipment that Ukrainians rely on for heat and light, drawing condemnation from world leaders.

Forty percent of Kyiv residents were without power, mayor Vitali Klitschko said, adding that this was due to security measures taken by power engineers during the air raid alarm and that they were now working to resume services. “The city is supplying heat and water in normal mode,” Klitschko said on the messaging app Telegram.

He urged the people to reduce their power use because the power system is very far from a normal state.

“It must be understood: Even if there are no heavy missile strikes, this does not mean that there are no problems,” he continued. Missile attacks, drone attacks, are almost every day in different regions. Almost every day, energy facilities are hit.

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.

Insurrection over the Russian invasion of Ukraine: The French President and Prime Minister of the U.S. Reply to the Football Player’s Death

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.

On Tuesday, France will co- host a conference with Ukraine in aid of Ukrainians through the winter, with an address by the Ukrainian President.

Fans, friends and family of the basketball player are celebrating the return of the player to the U.S. There have been Republican politicians complaining about what happened with the prisoner swap.

The new measures targeting Russian oil revenue took effect on December 5. A price cap on Russian oil and a European Union embargo on Russian oil imports are included in the report.

The leaders of Turkey, France and Biden had a phone call with Zelenskyy, which is thought to have been a step up of diplomacy over the Russian invasion.

The local authorities have asked civilians to leave the region. For Tarasov it was impossible to flee his home for a safer area.

Tarasov, 48, was sheltering from the shelling in his basement where he now has to live. He purchased vegetables last week to make the national dish, borscht.

What happened to Tarasov’s arm when the shelling tore through his friend’s body went on fire: How he saw it

His face looked pale as he talked about the graphic images he was staring at. If it wasn’t for the leather jacket, I would have lost my mind. I mean, my guts would have been all over the place… I lost a lot of blood. I remember seeing it — a huge puddle.”

The blast that tore through Tarasov’s body killed his friend and as the shelling continued, he realized he might not make it either. He says he will tell you the truth. “I prayed to survive.”

He begged the doctors to save his limb when he arrived. “The first thing I asked was if I could have my arm sewn back on. I saw that it was completely torn off and was just hanging in the sleeve. And my stomach was burning. I figured it must be the intestines coming out. There was a lot of blood.

Medical staff at Kostiantynivka have been continuing their work through power failures and water shortages caused by repeated Russian attacks on the energy grid. They had to rely on generators for eight hours last week to keep the lights on.

She’s a resident of Bakhmut. She came under artillery fire and suffered a shrapnel wound to her abdomen with damage to several organs. We see people with these wounds every day. Every day.”

Shelling in Kiev and the U.S. help in rebuilding the city of Kherson after the November 23rd Ukrainian-occupied Crimea

Russian shelling appears to be increasing in areas of northern and eastern Ukraine that were taken by Ukrainian forces last September.

“It’s been quite loud lately,” says a surgeon stationed at the hospital. His colleague, nurse Lucia Marron, agrees. She says there is more movement around and more people. We’re used to it. You get to a point where you know what is dangerous and what is not.

“If I had a lot of money, I would rather live abroad,” Tarasov says. Everything I had saved up was invested there as I have no money. I did not have money or an alternate place to go.

The Russian-imposed official said that Ukrainian forces had unleashed the biggest assault on the occupied region in three years.

The town has become a lynchpin in the conflict in eastern Ukraine. Russian forces are trying to take it for three months. It would be hard for the Ukrainians to shut down the nearby railroad if Moscow wins here, as it would allow Russians to begin a northernhook in time for the spring offensive.

“Forty rockets from BM-21 ‘Grad’ MLRS were fired at civilians in our city,” he said Thursday, adding that a key intersection in Donetsk city center had come under fire.

In the city of Kherson which was liberated by Ukrainian forces in November, the head of the region’s military administration said four people were killed in shelling and rocket attacks. Shelling also set a multi-storey apartment building ablaze, and the body of a man was found in one apartment, the Ukrainian Prosecutor-General’s Office said. The city is still struggling to restore basic services.

The strikes in Kherson left the city “completely disconnected” from power supplies, according to the regional head of the Kherson military administration, Yanushevych.

Meanwhile, further west Kyiv received machinery and generators from the United States to help strengthen the Ukrainian capital’s power infrastructure amid the widespread energy deficits.

The Energy Security Project, run by USAID, delivered four excavators and over 130 generators, Klitschko said on Telegram. All equipment was free of charge.

The Russian Embassy in Kiev: “It’s hard to work out what has been wrong with Russia,” he told the Kremlin

Russia’s efforts at deterrence continue to bring success in the form of arguments for a ceasefire as a preferable outcome to a Ukrainian victory – based on fear of the consequences of Russia suffering a defeat.

The Ukrainian side would need to take into account the realities that have evolved over time, according to the Kremlin.

He said the realities show that the Russian Federation has new subjects, including four areas that it claims to have annexed.

“They have set a goal to leave Ukrainians without light, water and heat,” Ukraine’s Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal told a government meeting, adding that 60 of the 76 missiles fired at Ukraine were intercepted by its air defense forces.

The Engels air base, which is home to Russia’s long-range, nuclear-capable bombers, was targeted in a drone attack in early December, according to the Kremlin, slightly damaging two planes. Kyiv has not claimed responsibility for the attack.

An MiG-31K, a supersonic aircraft capable of carrying a Kinzal hypersonic missile, was also seen in the sky over Belarus during the air attacks on Friday in Ukraine, according to Ukraine’s Armed Forces. But it was not clear from their statement whether a Kinzal was used in the attacks.

Kirby said that Russia was being taxed on their defense industrial base. They are having difficulty with that pace. We know that Russia’s President Vladimir Putin is having trouble getting some precision guided weapons to work again.

He said that there will be another one for Ukraine, but he did not give any details on the security assistance package.

Detonations of Iranian-Made Drones and the Ukraine’s Christmas Tree: a Brief Address to Kyiv City Council

The Iranian-made, self-detonating Shahed-136 and Shahed-131 drones were launched from the “eastern coast of the Sea of Azov,” the Air Force said in a statement on Facebook.

The damage was concentrated in two areas of the city. A road in Solomyanskyi was damaged, and fragments of a drone were thrown into a building in Shevchenkivskui district.

“I thank everyone who carries out these repair works in any weather and around the clock,” Zelensky said. “It is not easy, it is difficult, but I am sure: we will pull through together, and Russia’s aggression will fail.”

The Ukrainians are far from the eastern and southern fronts of the ground war and need some semblance of normal in the run-up to Christmas.

An artificial Christmas tree in the center of Kyiv is going to be lit with energy-saving garlands that will be powered by a generator at certain times, the city’s mayor said on Telegram.

Roughly 1,000 blue and yellow balls and white doves will decorate the tree in Sophia Square, with a trident placed at the tree’s summit. Flags of countries that are supporting Ukraine will be placed at the bottom.

The children of Ukrainian origin are asking for the help of Nicholas for air defense and weapons for their country, Zelensky said.

Russia, the War on Everybody: And What It Means for You. Iran, Ukraine, and the Dark Side of the Security Constabulary

Editor’s Note: Keir Giles (@KeirGiles) works with the Russia and Eurasia Programme of Chatham House, an international affairs think tank in the UK. He is the author of “Russia’s War on Everybody: And What it Means for You.” The views expressed in this commentary are his own. Read more opinion on CNN.

“Russia is preparing for maximum escalation. It is gathering everything possible, doing drills and training. When it comes to an offensive from different directions, as of now, I can say that we are not excluding any scenario in the next two to three weeks.”

Russia has been given a carte blanche to act as it pleases without fear of interference from a global community looking on in either ambivalence or powerless paralysis because of its UN Security Council veto.

Russia’s most effective tool of deterrence remains nuclear threats. Loose talk from Russia about using nuclear weapons has died down a little recently, but a decade or more of driving home the message of inevitable nuclear response if Russia is cornered or humiliated has already had its effect.

That sets a disastrous example for other aggressive powers around the world. Nuclear weapons allow you to wage genocidal wars of destruction against your neighbours, because other nations won’t intervene.

If that’s not the message the US and the West want other aggressor states around the world to receive, then supply of Patriot should be followed by far more direct and assertive means of dissuading Moscow.

In 2023, it will no longer be possible to sneak up on someone else’s country with an army, navy, or air force, or to conceal the death and destruction that they inflict. The armed forces will try to counter this by assembling, moving from home bases and maneuvering on the front lines as much as possible in plain sight. They will mostly fail, but the fleet of commercial vans moving small numbers of heavy artillery rounds on well-varied routes from West to East in Ukraine shows what can be done.

The second are precision-guided munitions for Ukrainian jets. Russia and Ukraine mostly have dumb weapons that are fired towards a target. Western standard precision weapons like Howitzers andHIMARS have been given to Ukranian.

Western analysts have noted Russia has grumbled consistently about these deliveries, but been relatively muted in its practical response to the crossing of what, as recently as January, might have been considered “red lines.”

Whatever the truth of the matter, Biden wants Putin to hear figures in the billions, push European partners to help more, and make Ukraine look like a bottomless pit.

This is trickier. Congress’s likely new Speaker, Republican Kevin McCarthy, has warned the Biden administration cannot expect a “blank cheque” from the new GOP-led House of Representatives.

Investigating the murders of a Ukrainian civilian killed in Bucha during the 1992 Tamil Tiger massacre: An investigation by journalists, journalists, and social media

The remnants of the Trumpist “America First” elements have doubts about how much help the US should give to eastern Europe.

Washington’s defense budget is so huge that the bill for the Russia defeat in this dark and lengthy conflict is relatively light.

Zelensky is in Washington to remind Republicans of the importance of the fight between Russians and Ukrainians, and how a loss for Kiev would lead to Russian nuclear-backed brutality at the doorstep of NATO.

He is an inspired rhetorician and the embodiment of how Putin has turned ordinary Ukrainians into wartime heroes.

This investigation was reported and produced by Yousur Al-Hlou , Masha Froliak , Dmitriy Khavin , Christoph Koettl , Haley Willis , Alexander Cardia , Natalie Reneau and Malachy Browne .

Times reporters spent months in Bucha after Russian forces withdrew, interviewing residents, collecting vast troves of security camera footage and obtaining exclusive records from government sources. The Times in New York reconstructed the killings along this one street. Some of the most damning evidence implicating the 234th included phone records and decoded call signs used by commanders on Russian radio channels.

The evidence shows that the killings were part of an effort to get to the capital of the country. Children fleeing to get away from their families were killed by soldiers as they crossed their path, as were people hoping to find groceries, or people trying to get back to their homes.

Historically, journalists and investigators relied on a single photograph or video to expose wartime atrocities. In 1992, Time magazine published a photo of an emaciated prisoner in Bosnia on its cover. The Tamil Tiger fighter execution was filmed almost two decades ago during the last days of Sri Lanka’s civil war.

Neither General Serdyukov nor Colonel Gorodilov’s immediate superior at the time, Maj. Gen. Sergey Chubarykin, has publicly announced any investigations into the carnage in the town despite the global outrage over the images. As superior officers, they ultimately answer for the actions of the forces under their command. They could bear responsibility for the atrocities in Bucha if they didn’t stop or investigate.

By analyzing the phone numbers dialed by Russian soldiers and uncovering social media profiles associated with their family members, The Times confirmed the identity of two dozen paratroopers as members of the 234th Regiment. We talked to relatives of some of the soldiers and even spoke to two of their own who admitted to having served in the 234th. We cross-referenced our findings with personal data sourced from leaked and official Russian databases provided by the Center for Advanced Defense Studies, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit group focused on global security.

For the first time, The Times identified all the people who were killed on Yablunska Street. The primary cause of death for most of the victims was gunshot wounds.

Residents of Bucha were most victims, ranging in age from young to old. Among the victims killed by Russian paratroopers were 52-year-old Tamila Mishchenko and her 14-year-old daughter, Anna, on March 5. They were among four women fleeing Bucha when Russian soldiers fired on their blue minivan.

The then head of the airborne forces, Col. Gen. Andrey Serdyukov, promoted Lieutenant Colonels to colonel after the fall of the Kyiv region. The ceremony was held days after the shocking images from Bucha emerged.

Reply to A Russian drone attack on a civilian airfield in Saratov” Oblast’s governor Roman Busargin

Reporting was contributed by Evan Hill , Ishaan Jhaveri and Julian Barnes . Translations and research by Aleksandra Koroleva , Oksana Nesterenko and Milana Mazaeva .

According to the defense ministry, three Russian servicemen were killed when the Ukrainian drones was shot down by air defenses as it approached a military airfield.

Law enforcement agencies are now investigating the incident at the airfield, said Saratov Oblast Governor Roman Busargin on Monday. He posted the comments on his Telegram channel after reports of an explosion in the city.

There were no emergencies in the city’s residential areas and no damage to the infrastructure. He also extended his condolences to the families of the servicemen, saying the government would provide them with assistance.

In comments Monday, Ukrainian Air Force spokesperson Yurii Ihnat did not claim direct responsibility for the drone, but did suggest the attack was the “consequence of what Russia is doing.”

“Russian terrorists have been saving one of the most massive missile attacks since the beginning of the full-scale invasion for the last days of the year,” Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said in a statement on Twitter Thursday. “They dream that Ukrainians will celebrate the New Year in darkness and cold. They can’t defeat the Ukrainian people.

The explosion was seen by a video on the internet this month. At the time, Gov. Busargin also reassured residents that no civilian infrastructure was damaged and that “information about incidents at military facilities is being checked by law enforcement agencies.”

The quiet night in Ukraine: “What have we learned from the Russian shelling” of the Dnipropetrovsk region?

The night from Sunday to Monday in Ukraine was quiet. The Dnipropetrovsk region, which borders the partially occupied southern regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, has not been bombarded by the Russians for the first time in weeks.

“This is the third quiet night in 5.5 months since the Russians started shelling” the areas around the city of Nikopol, Reznichenko wrote. The Zaporizhzhia atomic power plant is under control of the Russian forces and is across the Dnieper River.

Ukrainian-controlled areas of the neighbouring Kherson region were shelled 33 times over the past 24 hours, according to Kherson’s Ukrainian Gov. Yaroslav Yanushevich. There were no injuries.

“If you mess with it, all sorts of systems are out of whack,” said a director of the Defense Priorities think tank who recently returned from a trip to the Ukrainian capital. “It’s not only an inconvenience but an enormous economic cost. It’s an effort to create pain for the civilian population, to show that the government can’t protect them adequately.”

Menon notes, however, that every one of his comments could just as easily apply to Russia’s earlier waves of cyberattacks on the country’s internet—such as the NotPetya malware released by Russia’s GRU hackers, which five years earlier destroyed the digital networks of hundreds of government agencies, banks, airports, hospitals, and even its radioactivity monitoring facility in Chernobyl. “They’re different in the technicalities, but the goal is the same,” he says. “Demoralizing and punishing civilians.”

Emergency Services and Public Transportation in Lviv, Ukraine, during the Oct. 10 Decay of a Large Crime-Induced Outage

According to the lead for disaster response in the Ukrainian presidential office, several buildings in the capital were destroyed.

There was a blast near a playground that shook the windows of nearby homes. Mayor Vitaliy Klitschko urged residents to charge their electronic devices and fill water containers in case of shortages.

Ninety percent of Lviv, a city near the Polish border, lost power, according to Mayor Andriy Sadovyi. Diesel generators were forced to power emergency services after the outage. Public transportation there ground to a halt.

Strikes of the scale like the one launched Thursday’s have become less frequent since they began Oct. 10. The head of Ukrainian military intelligence stated this week that Russia is running low on cruise missiles.

In separate comments to Russian media Wednesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov insisted Moscow would continue to pursue its objectives in Ukraine with “perseverance” and “patience.”

Authorities have been cautioning for days that Russia was preparing to launch an all-out assault on the power grid to close out 2022, plummeting the country into darkness as Ukrainians attempt to ring in the New Year and celebrate the Christmas holidays, which for the country’s Orthodox Christians falls on January 7.

Violations of the Constitutional Law and the First Laws: I. Halyna Hladka, Defence Minister of Ukraine, and invovchansk, northern Ukraine

Hryn said that life in the capital went back to normal after the sirens went off, and that he met a group of people who were going to the cinema on time. Parents took their children to school and people went to work, while others continued with holiday plans in defiance.

Halyna Hladka stocked water as soon as the sirens sounded in the capital, and prepared breakfast for her family so they would have something to eat. They heard the sounds of explosions for over two hours. She told CNN that air defense was to blame for the situation being close to her area. “Not a single attack will cancel the fact that we will celebrate the new year with the family.”

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.

“Senseless barbarism.” There could be no neutrality in the face of such aggression and Dmytro Kuleba was the Foreign Minister of Ukraine.

All the targets have been neutralised. The attack has resulted in stopping the production and maintenance of military hardware and ordnance, as well as in terminating the redeployment of reserve forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine from western regions of Ukraine,” the defense ministry said in a statement.

The ministry said that Russia’s armed forces launched a huge attack, using air and sea-based weapons, at the military control framework, and power facilities that ensured operating of Ukrainian defence industry.

But in spite of Russia’s purported victories on the battlefield, the ministry did not claim any territorial advances against Ukrainian forces, adding credibility to reports that the two sides are locked in a stalemate.

The Ukrainian military said later on Monday that the number of Russian servicemen killed in Makiivka is “being clarified” after claiming earlier that around 400 Russian soldiers were killed and a further 300 were wounded. The strike has not been directly acknowledged by it. CNN can’t verify the numbers or the weapons used in the attack.

One of the worst episodes of the war for Moscow would be remembered by the defense ministry after they acknowledged the attack and claimed that 63 Russian servicemen died.

Russian senator Grigory Karasin said that those responsible for the killing of Russian servicemen in Makiivka must be found, Russian state news agency TASS reported Monday.

The explosion of a vocational school in the Donetsk region of Ukraine: a Russian propagandist who writes about the war effort on Telegram

Video reportedly from the scene of the attack circulated widely on Telegram, including on an official Ukrainian military channel. It depicts a pile of rubble, which almost no part of the building is still standing.

“Greetings and congratulations” to the separatists and conscripts who “were brought to the occupied Makiivka and crammed into the building of vocational school,” the Strategic Communications Directorate of the Chief Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said on Telegram. “Santa packed around 400 corpses of [Russian soldiers] in bags.”

Daniil Bezsonov, a former official in the Russia-backed Donetsk administration, said on Telegram that “apparently, the high command is still unaware of the capabilities of this weapon.”

“I hope that those responsible for the decision to use this facility will be reprimanded,” Bezsonov said. “There are enough abandoned facilities in Donbas with sturdy buildings and basements where personnel can be quartered.”

A Russian propagandist who blogs about the war effort on Telegram, Igor Girkin, claimed that the building was almost completely destroyed by the secondary detonation of ammunition stores.

“Nearly all the military equipment, which stood close to the building without the slightest sign of camouflage, was also destroyed,” Girkin said. There are still no final figures on the number of casualties.

He has long decried the generals he claims to direct the war effort far from the frontline. The former minister of defence of the self-proclaimed, Russian-backed Ukrainian province of the same name was found guilty of murder in the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 and was sentenced to death by a Dutch court.

Russian troops are attacking Bakhmut, Ukraine, as promised by the Kremlin-Suzuki resolution of the February 24 invasion

Despite several months of war, there are some conclusions not made, which means that the unnecessary losses could have been avoided if precautions were taken.

Russian forces “lost 760 people killed just yesterday, (and) continue to attempt offensive actions on Bakhmut,” the military’s general staff said Sunday.

Moscow’s full-scale invasion on Feb. 24 has gone awry, putting pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin as his ground forces struggle to hold ground and advance. He said in his New Year’s address to the nation that 2022 was “a year of difficult, necessary decisions.”

Putin insists he had no choice but to send troops into Ukraine because it threatened Russia’s security — an assertion condemned by the West, which says Moscow bears full responsibility for the war.

Five people were wounded in the Monday morning shelling of a Ukraine-controlled area of the southern Kherson region, its Ukrainian Gov. Yaroslav Yanushevich said on Telegram.

A blistering New Year’s Eve assault killed at least four civilians across the country, Ukrainian authorities reported, and wounded dozens. The fourth victim, a 46-year-old resident of Kyiv, died in a hospital on Monday morning, Klitschko said.

The head of the military company that is owned by Russia tried to explain to the public how their group failed to gain control of the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut.

During his visit to the front line on New Years day, Yevgeny Prigozhin said that there was a fortress in every house and that only clowns were supposed to predict these things.

He said that the combined forces have advanced into Artyomovsk and broken the defense. The name was changed back to Bakhmut in 2016.

Breaking Through the Defense: The Biden Administration announced the German-US collaboration had been sent to Ukraine by a counterattack on Kiev’s armed forces

They asked “what does it mean to break through the defense?”, and he said that it meant breaking through the defense of the next house.

Who is going to take Artyomovsk? Which combined forces? He said it would be the combined forces of the two organizations. Who else? Other than Wagner PMC, who else is there?”

Just this week, the Biden administration announced the US was considering dispatching Bradley armored fighting vehicles to Ukraine. French president is sending light tanks, while Zelensky is pushing for heavier tanks. All of which puts German Chancellor Olaf Scholz under increasing pressure to add its powerful Leopard 2 tanks to the mix.

The Bradley fighting vehicle, which moves on tracks rather than wheels, can hold around 10 troops and is used to transport personnel into battle. According to the White House, the US and Germany would teach the Ukrainian troops how to use vehicles provided to them by Kyiv.

The Russian Army: What Happens When Military Systems are Unequipped to Communicate With Soldiers? An Analysis of the Makiivka Crisis

Those systems had been at the top of Zelensky’s wish list because it will allow his military to target Russian missiles flying at a higher altitude than they were able to target previously.

David A. Andelman, a contributor to CNN and two time winner of the Deadline Club Award, is the author of A Red Line in the Sand: Diplomacy, Strategy, and the History of Wars That Might Still Happen. He formerly was a correspondent for The New York Times and CBS News in Europe and Asia. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. CNN has more opinion.

It was the cell phones that the novice troops were using that allowed Ukrainian forces to target them most accurately, if the Russian account is correct. Ukraine, however, has not indicated how the attack was executed. But the implications are broader and deeper, especially for how Russia is conducting its war now.

It is telling that days after the deadliest attack on Russian servicemen, Putin called for a temporary ceasefire. The move was dismissed by both the US and Ukranians as a waste of time because of the bad start to the year for Russian forces.

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. Two more rockets were shot down by Russian air defenses.

The range of the satellite-guided HIMARS is currently 80 kilometers. The Ukrainian people made many pleas for the authorization of a longer-range 300- kilometer HIMARS. The Biden administration is worried that the long range system could make the war go beyond the frontiers of Ukranian.

The UK Ministry of Defense said that the Russian military had a record of unsafe ammunition storage before the current war and that this incident highlights the high casualty rate of Russia’s military.

Chris says that Russia’s failure to break up or move large arms depots is due to the fact that their forces cannot communicate adequately.

It is a view shared by other experts. “Bad communications security seems to be standard practice in the Russian Army,” James Lewis, director of the Strategic Technologies Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), told me in an e-mail exchange.

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, a number of the most recent arrivals to the war are inmates from Russian prisons, freed and transferred immediately 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. The location of the arms depot would have been on Mizintsev’s watch.

Still, Putin-favorite Sergei Shoigu remains defense minister — as recently as Saturday, before the Makiivka attack, telling his forces in a celebratory video: “Our victory, like the New Year, is inevitable.”

The War in Ukraine Will Not Change: The WIRED World’s Story of the 2016 Ukrainian Invasion of Crimea and the Crisis in Kramatorsk

The war in Ukraine was a shock, not a surprise—it was a clear and present danger ever since the Russian invasion of Crimea in 2014. Russia was assembling its forces on the border with Ukranian for months, and it was not a surprise. By integrating information from satellites, war will be transparent with all digital traces left as people and equipment move through a highly connected world.

This story is from the WIRED World in a few years. The series of stories can be read here or bought in the magazine.

War will never change even though it is about killing people and breaking their stuff quicker than they can do it for you. It will still be a contest of wills, an aspect of the human condition that is far from being eradicated for all its ferocity, irrationality, and despair. The outcome will remain an unscripted mix of reason, emotion, and chance. Technology only makes us fight more efficient.

There is no indication of any huge casualties in the area that a CNN team is in. There is no unusual activity in and around Kramatorsk, including in the vicinity of the city morgue, the team reported.

A Reuters reporter in Kramtorsk also reported no signs of a significant Russian strike on two college dormitories that Russia claimed had been housing hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers.

The Russian government and some pro-Kremlin leaders had a publicblame game after Moscow blamed soldiers for their use of cell phones.

The account was dismissed by an influential military post and contradicted by the leader of the self-declared DPR in eastern Ukraine, who pointed out that the Russian command was not in agreement with Moscow over the attack.

A Ukrainian military spokesman said Wednesday that there were signs that Russia was preparing for an attack on southern 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.

A fresh barrage of missiles ripped through Kramatorsk: a country bordering on evil. A country that does not deserve mercy

The ministry said that military representatives from the two countries will practice joint planning of troops based on the previous experience of armed conflicts.

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.

At least one wounded person was treated by paramedics. The Mayor of Kramatorsk said there had been a strike, and urged residents to stay in bomb shelters.

Rescue workers comb through the rubble of eight damaged apartment buildings to try and locate survivors. Authorities also evacuated people to a local school for shelter.

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

Operational Command North: “The enemy is on fire” in the Donetsk-Khmeron settlement, Vuhledar, Ukraine

Oleh Syniehubov, head of the Kharkiv regional military administration, said two people had been killed in Dvorichna. Russian forces occupy positions on the east bank of the nearby Oskil River.

“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.

An unofficial Telegram account of troops in Ukraine’s 46th Brigade, which has been in the Bakhmut area for several weeks, said the Russians had reached a highway northwest of the city and that fighting was continuing there.

The military also said that in occupied parts of Kherson, Russians are “conducting filtration measures against civilians.” Detention and deportation to Russian territory are included in the Filtration measures.

The scenes are chaotic: Russian tanks veering wildly before exploding or driving straight into minefields, men running in every direction, some on fire, the bodies of soldiers caught in tank tracks.

CNN and military experts studied the videos released by the Ukrainian military, which showed at least two dozen Russian tanks and infantry vehicles disabled or destroyed within a matter of days. Satellite images show intensive patterns of impacts along tree lines where Russian tanks tried to advance.

The Russian Defense Ministry has insisted the assault on Vuhledar, where the 155th Marine Brigade is prominently involved, is going according to plan. In remarks recorded for a Sunday television show, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the “marine infantry is working as it should. Right now. Fighting heroically.”

But the leader of the self-declared, Russian-backed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), Denis Pushilin, acknowledged Friday that the area was “hot” and said “the enemy continues to transfer reserves in large quantities, and this slowed down the liberation of this settlement.”

The name of the coal mine which was built for is called “vukledar” and it sits above the plains. Its high-rise buildings give its defenders – principally the Ukrainian 72nd Mechanized, as well as hardened underground cover, is a significant advantage.

There are setbacks around Vuhledar that do not bode well for a broader Russian offensive. ISW assesses that they “have likely further weakened the Russian ultranationalist community’s belief that Russian forces are able to launch a decisive offensive operation.”

A lot of good T-72B3/T-80BVM tanks and the best paratroopers and marines were destroyed during the war, stated Strelkov on Telegram.

In another post on Telegram, Strelkov wrote: “Only morons attack head-on in the same place, heavily fortified and extremely inconvenient for the attackers for many months in a row.”

Moscow Calling asserted that older T-72 tanks deployed in Vuhledar lack upgrades that would improve the driver’s breadth of vision. That may help explain several instances in which Russian tanks seemed to get entangled or reverse blindly.

“How are blind, deaf tanks, armored personnel carriers, with equally blind, deaf infantry supposed to fight without columns? And then how to coordinate any actions if there is no communication and situational awareness?” he wrote.

On the actions of Lieutenant General Rustam Muradov, commander of the Eastern Group of Forces, in the Vuhledar assault

Several Russian commentators have called for the dismissal of Lieutenant General Rustam Muradov, the commander of the Eastern Grouping of Forces. Muradov was in charge in November when men of the 155th protested that his tactics had caused disastrous losses.

In an expletive-laden post, the pro-Wagner Telegram channel Grey Zone said of Muradov: “This coward is lying down at the control point and sending column after column until the commander of one of the brigades involved in the Vuhledar assault is dead on the contact line.”

But the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) says that poor leadership is only part of the problem: the “highly dysfunctional tactics are far more indicative of the fact that the 155th Naval Infantry Brigade is likely comprised of poorly trained mobilized personnel than of poor command.”

Ukrainian military officials say there is a random mix of Russian forces in the Vuhledar area, including professional units, the recently mobilized, militia of the DPR and infantry of a private military company called Patriot, which is said to be close to the Russian defense ministry.

“The key to success on the battlefield is effective fire damage, which requires an appropriate amount of weapons and ammunition,” said the commander of Ukrainian forces Valeriy Zaluzhnyi on Saturday.