Tag: Russia-Ukraine conflict

Ukrainian President Zelensky says push into Russia’s Kursk region is to create a buffer zone there

Post By World , ,

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Sunday the daring military incursion into Russia’s Kursk region aims to create a buffer zone to prevent further attacks by Moscow across the border.

It was the first time Zelensky clearly stated the aim of the operation, which was launched on August 6. Previously, he had said the operation aimed to protect communities in the bordering Sumy region from constant shelling.

Zelensky said “it is now our primary task in defensive operations overall: to destroy as much Russian war potential as possible and conduct maximum counteroffensive actions. This includes creating a buffer zone on the aggressor’s territory -– our operation in the Kursk region,” he said in his nightly address.

This weekend, Ukraine has destroyed a key bridge in the region and struck a second one nearby, disrupting supply lines as it pressed a stunning cross-border incursion that began Aug. 6, officials said.

Pro-Kremlin military bloggers acknowledged that the destruction of the first bridge on the Seim River near the town of Glushkovo will impede deliveries of supplies to Russian forces repelling Ukraine’s incursion, although Moscow could still use pontoons and smaller bridges. Ukraine’s air force chief, Lt. Gen. Mykola Oleshchuk, on Friday released a video of an airstrike that cut the bridge in two.

Less than two days later, Ukrainian troops hit a second bridge in Russia, according to Oleshchuk and Russian regional Gov. Alexei Smirnov.

As of Sunday morning, there were no officials giving the exact location of the second bridge attack. But Russian Telegram channels claimed that a second bridge over the Seim, in the village of Zvannoe, had been struck.

According to Russia’s Mash news site, the attacks left only one intact bridge in the area. The Associated Press could not immediately verify these claims. If confirmed, the Ukrainian strikes would further complicate Moscow’s attempts to replenish its forces in Kursk and evacuate civilians.

Glushkovo is about 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) north of the Ukrainian border, and approximately 16 kilometers (10 miles) northwest of the main battle zone in Kursk. Zvannoe is located another 8 kilometers (5 miles) to the northwest.

Kyiv previously has said little about the scope and goals of its push into Russia with tanks and other armored vehicles, the largest attack on the country since World War II, which took the Kremlin by surprise and saw scores of villages and hundreds of prisoners fall into Ukrainian hands.

The Ukrainians drove deep into the Kursk region in several directions, facing little resistance and sowing chaos and panic as tens of thousands of civilians fled the area. Ukraine’s Commander in Chief, Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, claimed last week that his forces had advanced across 1,000 square kilometers (390 square miles) of the region, although it was not possible to independently verify what exactly Ukrainian forces effectively control.

Zelensky said Ukrainian forces “achieved good and much-needed results.”

Analysts say that although Ukraine could try to consolidate its gains inside Russia, it would be risky, given Kyiv’s limited resources, because its own supply lines extending deep into Kursk would be vulnerable.

The incursion has proven Ukraine’s ability to seize the initiative and has boosted its morale, which was sapped by a failed counteroffensive last summer and months of grinding Russian gains in the eastern Donbas region.

The move into Kursk resembled Ukraine’s lightning operation from September 2022, led by Syrskyi, in which its forces reclaimed control of the northeastern Kharkiv region after taking advantage of Russian manpower shortages and a lack of field fortifications.

On Saturday, Zelensky urged Kyiv’s allies to lift the remaining restrictions on using Western weapons to attack targets deeper in Russia, including in Kursk, saying his troops could deprive Moscow “of any ability to advance and cause destruction” if granted sufficient long-range capabilities.

“It is crucial that our partners remove barriers that hinder us from weakening Russian positions in the way this war demands. … The bravery of our soldiers and the resilience of our combat brigades compensate for the lack of essential decisions from our partners,” Zelensky said in a post on the social platform X.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry and pro-Kremlin bloggers have alleged that U.S.-made HIMARS launchers have been used to destroy bridges on the Seim. These claims could not be independently verified.

Ukraine’s leaders have repeatedly sought authorization for long-range strikes on Russian air bases and other infrastructure used to pummel Ukraine’s energy facilities and other civilian targets, including with retrofitted Soviet-era “glide bombs” that have laid waste to Ukraine’s industrial east in recent months.

Moscow also appears to have increased attacks on Kyiv, targeting it Sunday with ballistic missiles for a third time this month, according to the head of the municipal military administration. Serhii Popko said in a Telegram post that the “almost identical” August strikes on the capital “most likely used” KN-23 missiles supplied by North Korea.

Another attempt to target Kyiv followed at about 7 a.m. Popko said, this time with Iskander cruise missiles. Ukrainian air defenses struck down all the missiles fired in both attacks on the city, he said.

In a separate development, the head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency said Saturday that the safety situation at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant is deteriorating following reports of a nearby drone strike.

Rafael Grossi, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, urged “maximum restraint from all sides” after an IAEA team stationed in the plant reported that an explosive carried by a drone detonated just outside its protected area.

According to Grossi’s statement, the impact was “close to the essential water sprinkle ponds” and about 100 meters (100 yards) from the only power line supplying the plant. The IAEA team at the plant has reported intense military activity in the surrounding area in the past week, it said.

Kyiv and Moscow have traded blame for attacks in the vicinity of the power plant since it was captured by Russian forces early in the 2022 invasion, including a fire at the facility last weekend. Grossi’s statement said the blaze had caused “considerable damage,” but posed no immediate danger to nuclear safety.

Ukraine has repeatedly alleged that Russia plans to stage an attack and blame Ukrainian forces. Last summer, Zelenskyy warned of possible explosives he said Moscow may have planted on the plant’s roof to blackmail Ukraine.

Russian ally Belarus has massed “nearly a third” of its army along its border with Ukraine, according to authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko.

Lukashenko told Russian state TV that Minsk was responding to the deployment of more than 120,000 Ukrainian troops to the 1,084-kilometer (674 mile) frontier. Belarus’ professional army numbers upwards of 60,000.

Ukrainian border force spokesman Andrii Demchenko said Sunday it had not observed any sign of a Belarusian buildup.

Lukashenko, in power for three decades, has relied on Russian support to suppress the biggest protests in Belarus’ post-Soviet history after his 2020 reelection, widely seen as a sham both at home and abroad. He allowed Russian troops to use Belarus’ territory to invade Ukraine and let Moscow deploy some tactical nuclear weapons on its soil.

Source link

#Ukrainian #President #Zelensky #push #Russias #Kursk #region #create #buffer #zone

How Russia looked the wrong way as Ukraine invaded

Post By World , , , ,

In the hours before Ukrainian soldiers stormed across Russia’s western border, there was no sign from Moscow that anything was amiss.

At midnight at the start of August 6, the Russian Defence Ministry posted good news: more than 2,500 members of the regiment responsible for the capture of a town in eastern Ukraine would receive state awards for heroism.

Later that morning, as Ukraine began the biggest invasion of Russia since World War Two, the ministry published video showing General Valery Gerasimov, commander of the Russian war effort, visiting a different combat zone, also in Ukraine. He heard reports from commanders and set “tasks for further actions”, it said.

The footage did not specify the exact time of the visit, but revealed no concerns, or knowledge, of the events unfolding in Russia’s western Kursk region that threatened to upset Gerasimov’s plans and shift the course of the two-and-a-half-year war.

Panic spread quickly among local Russian residents in the early hours of the assault, despite repeated attempts by authorities to assure them that everything was under control, according to a timeline by Reuters of the first two days of the incursion, based on public statements, social media posts and analysis of video footage.

The idea that Ukraine could turn the tables on Russia and burst onto the territory of its much bigger neighbour seemed unthinkable to most observers before last week. The shock operation has raised questions about the effectiveness of Russia’s surveillance, as well as the calibre of its border fortifications and the forces guarding them.

Ukrainian servicemen repair a Armoured Personnel Carrier, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, near the Russian border in Sumy region.
| Photo Credit:
Reuters

“The Russians had a complete intelligence failure here,” French military expert Yohann Michel, research fellow at the IESD institute in Lyon, said in an interview.

With Ukraine’s forces retreating in eastern Ukraine, one of the most strategic sectors of the front line, Moscow may well have assumed Kyiv would not make a high-stakes gamble that even now it is far from clear will pay off, Michel said.

“I would understand if it was difficult for the Russians to think something that big could happen,” he said.

Ukrainian goals in Kursk include distracting Russian forces from the front line in the eastern region of Donetsk. Instead, fighting has intensified in that region in recent days, and the risks for Ukraine are rising as it tries to hold ground in Kursk.

A Russian member of parliament and former military officer, Andrei Gurulyov, said in a television interview two days after the incursion that Russian military leaders had been warned in a report about a month beforehand that there were signs of preparations for a Ukrainian attack, but it was not heeded.

The Russian defence ministry did not reply to requests for comment. Ukraine’s armed forces declined to comment about the ongoing operations, and the U.S. State Department, Pentagon and White House did not immediately respond to questions.

It was not until the afternoon of the following day, Aug. 7, that President Vladimir Putin and Gerasimov, his armed forces chief of staff, made their first public remarks on the Kursk events, which the Kremlin leader called “another major provocation” by Ukraine.

Gerasimov, fresh from his ill-timed trip, told Putin in the televised comments that Russian forces had “stopped” a force of up to 1,000 Ukrainian soldiers from thrusting deep inside Kursk region.

Ukrainian servicemen ride a military vehicle, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, near the Russian border in Sumy region.

Ukrainian servicemen ride a military vehicle, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, near the Russian border in Sumy region.
| Photo Credit:
Reuters

Michel, the military analyst, said it was unclear whether Gerasimov was misinformed by his own subordinates, or whether he felt compelled to deliver good news to Putin in front of the TV cameras.

Russian officials in such staged settings “say what they think the boss wants to hear or to see in public at that specific moment”, Michel said.

‘We advise people to leave’

It took nearly 12 hours from the time of the incursion, which Gerasimov stated as 5:30 a.m. on Aug. 6, for the defence ministry to publicly acknowledge Ukraine had attacked the border, let alone broken through it.

It was left to Kursk’s acting regional governor Alexei Smirnov, only months into the job, to fill the communications vacuum and try to coordinate with the multiple defence and security agencies responsible for protecting the border.

In the first of many Telegram posts on Aug. 6, Smirnov issued missile warnings at 1:51 and 3:11 a.m. local time, urging residents to take cover. At 3:15, he said air defences had knocked out three incoming Ukrainian drones. At 6:16, 11 more.

Regions either side of the border have long grown used to tit-for-tat missile and drone attacks. But strikes against the Kursk region, recorded by Smirnov in Telegram posts, had been more than usually persistent for the previous 10 days. Among the targets hit were oil depots, power substations and, according to the Ukrainian military, a storage facility for weapons and military equipment.

Ukrainian servicemen ride military vehicles from a crossing point at the border with Russia, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Sumy region.

Ukrainian servicemen ride military vehicles from a crossing point at the border with Russia, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Sumy region.
| Photo Credit:
Reuters

From about 5 a.m., alarm began to spread on social media. Locals posted that shelling in Sudzha, a Russian town on the border, had been going on for three hours.

“What’s going on with the lights? I’ve got no light or water,” said a woman posting as “Ekaterina Picasa”. A user called Denis reported nine explosions in Korenevo, about 26 km (16 miles) from the border.

Reuters made multiple attempts to contact residents via social media, but these were ignored or blocked.

A stream of posts appeared in “Native Sudzha”, a community channel on the social network VKontakte, but it was not clear whether the information was from official sources. “We advise people to leave the town,” said one such message at 7:34 a.m. People were warned to beware of drones and watch out for unexploded shells

By 8:15 a.m. Native Sudzha was reporting “active fighting on the border itself”. But a widely read Russian war blog was dismissive.

The “Two Majors” Telegram channel, followed by more than a million people, said a small group of “the enemy” had managed to get only as far as 300 metres inside Russia and was “being destroyed”. It suggested the operation was being staged by Ukrainian “TikTok units” as a media exercise.

Ukraine’s government has said little about the planning of the incursion.

In May, shortly after Russian troops crossed the border and seized territory in the nearby Kharkiv region, Ukraine’s military intelligence chief publicly warned of small groups of Russian forces gathering around the Sudzha area and said Moscow had planned an operation into Ukraine’s Sumy region from there.

Reuters could not independently verify whether Russia had been preparing an offensive into Sumy.

On Friday, Ukraine’s paratrooper corps said its fighters spent the first hours of the operation demining, breaching the border and destroying defensive lines, using aviation and artillery.

“Careful preparation, planning, surprise, fighting spirit and informational silence became decisive in the initial stage of the operation,” the Airborne Assault Troops said in an online post.

A Ukrainian soldier called Dmytro, 36, said he initially thought the Ukrainian army’s build-up was to prevent a Russian cross-border raid.

Instead, he found himself supporting the advance toward the border crossing near Sudzha after the assault units moved in, he said in an interview, giving his only first name in line with military protocol.

Ukrainian servicemen ride a military vehicle, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, near the Russian border in Sumy region.

Ukrainian servicemen ride a military vehicle, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, near the Russian border in Sumy region.
| Photo Credit:
Reuters

“We worked to pre-empt them and they did not see this coming at all,” he said.

‘Under control’

Just after 10 a.m. governor Smirnov confirmed for the first time that Ukraine had attempted an incursion but said Russian soldiers and border guards of the FSB security service had “prevented” the border from being breached.

It was the first of numerous statements that were to be quickly disproved by events.

Just before noon, the defence ministry published its video of Gerasimov visiting Russian forward positions in Ukraine. On events in Kursk, it was silent.

So too was the Kremlin, with spokesman Dmitry Peskov on a summer break and reporters left without his usual daily briefing. As of Aug. 16, 10 days later, he had not returned to work.

“Tell me please, is it true that Ukrainian tanks have broken through to Sudzha and Darino?”, a user, “Nestik”, posted on Telegram.

A satellite image shows the Sudzha border crossing in Oleshnya, Kursk Region August 1, 2024 in this handout obtained August 8, 2024 by Reuters.

A satellite image shows the Sudzha border crossing in Oleshnya, Kursk Region August 1, 2024 in this handout obtained August 8, 2024 by Reuters.
| Photo Credit:
2024 Planet Labs Inc/via Reuters

Smirnov posted that help was being provided to residents of areas that had been struck overnight by missiles and drones. “The situation is under control,” he wrote at 12:46 p.m.

About an hour later, Russian news agencies published the first word from the central authorities about the situation. It was from the FSB, saying Russia had “repelled an armed provocation.”

By now, however, an exodus was under way. Sudzha residents were “leaving en masse”, a woman called Anna said on Telegram.

“Of course. Everyone wants to live,” someone replied.

In the chaos, some were left behind. A search network, Liza Alert, said it has posted over 100 “missing” notices for people who have disappeared since Aug. 6, including many pensioners in their 70s and 80s.

Dragon’s teeth

Smirnov’s predecessor as governor, Roman Starovoit, had repeatedly told the public that Russia had boosted its border fortifications in Kursk region.

In December 2022, he posed in a snowy field beside pyramid-shaped “dragon’s teeth” anti-tank defences. The following month, he wrote: “Right now the risk of an armed invasion of the territory of Kursk region from Ukraine is not high. However, we are constantly working to strengthen the region’s defense capabilities.”

Yet last fall Ukraine’s National Resistance Center, created by the special operations forces, said in an online post that reconnaissance showed “almost all the strongholds are deserted of personnel and equipment” along the border with Kursk, and said corruption was a factor.

The video published by Ukraine’s paratroopers showed columns of armored vehicles pouring in through rows of dragon’s teeth, part of fortifications in Kursk that Russia media outlets have said cost 15 billion roubles ($168 million).

Pasi Paroinen, an analyst with Finland’s Black Bird Group, said the video appeared to show mine-clearing line charges blowing paths through minefields, dozer blades on armoured vehicles used to clear paths through the dragon’s teeth and bridging vehicles to cross ditches and small rivers.

“It’s clear that substantial amounts of different engineer equipment were prepared and used,” said Paroinen, who studies publicly available footage from the Russia-Ukraine war.

Brady Africk, a U.S. analyst mapping Russia’s defences, said those in Kursk region had fewer anti-vehicle ditches, obstacles and fighting positions when compared to Russian positions in occupied southern Ukraine, where a Ukrainian counteroffensive stalled last summer.

“It was likely easier for Ukrainian forces to progress around and through Russia’s fortifications in the region, especially if they were manned by fewer or poorly trained personnel,” he said.

Shared responsibility

Responsibility for defending the Russian border is shared between regular troops, FSB border forces and the national guard. Governor Smirnov was apparently referring to these various agencies when he said on mid-afternoon of the first day that he had met with “representatives of the security structures”.

Already, he was backtracking from his initial line that they had prevented the border from being pierced. “The situation in the border area remains difficult, but our defenders are successfully working to destroy the enemy,” Smirnov said.

At 5:05 p.m., the defence ministry mentioned the incursion for the first time and said Russia had transferred reserves to the area.

“Troops covering the state border, together with units of the border troops of the FSB of Russia, are repelling the attacks and inflicting fire on the enemy in the area of ​​the state border and on its reserves in the Sumy region (of Ukraine),” it said.

At the briefing on Aug. 7, Gerasimov told Putin: “The operation will end with the smashing of the enemy, and (Russian forces) reaching the state border.”

Ten days later, with more than 100,000 Russians displaced and Ukraine claiming control of more than 1,000 sq km (390 sq miles) of Kursk region, Moscow’s forces are still far from achieving that goal. ($1 = 89.3705 roubles)

Source link

#Russia #looked #wrong #Ukraine #invaded

Russia says it thwarted Ukrainian charge to expand Kursk incursion, Kyiv says it won’t occupy land

Post By World ,

Russia said Tuesday (August 14, 2024) that its forces checked an effort by Ukrainian troops to expand a stunning weeklong incursion into the Kursk region, as a Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesperson said Kyiv has no intention of occupying Russian territory.

“Russian army units, including fresh reserves, aircraft, drone teams and artillery forces, stopped Ukrainian armoured mobile groups from moving deeper into Russia near the Kursk settlements of Obshchy Kolodez, Snagost, Kauchuk and Alexeyevsky,” a Russian Defense Ministry statement said.


Also read: Ukraine offers to stop incursion if Russia agrees to ‘just peace’

Meanwhile, Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Heorhii Tykhyi said the cross-border operation was aimed at protecting Ukrainian land from long-range strikes launched from Kursk.

“Ukraine is not interested in taking the territory of the Kursk region, but we want to protect the lives of our people,” Mr. Tykhyi was quoted as saying by local media.

He said Russia had launched more than 2,000 strikes from the Kursk region in recent months using anti-aircraft missiles, artillery, mortars, drones, 255 glide bombs and more than 100 missiles.

“The purpose of this operation is to preserve the lives of our children, to protect the territory of Ukraine from Russian strikes,” he said.

The commander of the Ukrainian military, Oleksandr Syrskyi, said in a video posted Tuesday (August 13, 2024) to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s Telegram channel that Ukraine now controls 74 settlements in the Kursk region. “Ukrainian troops have continued to advance, gaining control over 40 square km of territory in the past 24 hours,” Syrskyi said.

“Fights are ongoing along the entire front line. The situation, despite the high intensity of combat, is under control,” he added.

Ukraine’s Western partners have said the country has the right to defend itself, including by attacking across the border. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Tuesday (August 13, 2024) that he backed the Ukrainian operation, though he said Kyiv officials did not consult him about it beforehand.

Russian military actions in Ukraine bear “the hallmarks of genocide, inhumane crimes, and Ukraine has every right to wage war in such a way as to paralyze Russia in its aggressive intentions as effectively as possible,” Mr. Tusk said.

Kremlin forces intensified their attacks in eastern Ukraine. Ukraine’s General Staff said Tuesday (August 13, 2024) that over the previous 24 hours, Russian troops launched 52 assaults in the area of Pokrovsk, a town in Ukraine’s Donetsk region that is close to the front line. That’s roughly double the number of daily attacks there a week ago.

Ukraine’s shorthanded army has struggled to hold back the bigger, better-equipped Russian forces in Donetsk.

The Ukrainian military claims that its charge onto Russian soil that began on August 6 has already encompassed about 1,000 square km of Russian territory. The goals of the swift advance into the Kursk region have been a closely guarded military secret.

Analysts say a catalyst may also have been Ukraine’s desire to ease pressure on its front line by attempting to draw the Kremlin’s forces into defending Kursk and other border areas. If so, the increased pressure around Pokrovsk suggests Moscow did not take the bait.

Ukraine’s ambitious operation – the largest attack on Russia since World War II – has rattled the Kremlin. It compelled Russian President Vladimir Putin to convene a meeting on Monday (August 12, 2024) with his top defence officials.

Apparently, Ukraine assembled thousands of troops – some Western analysts estimate up to 12,000 – on the border in recent weeks without Russia noticing or acting.

“About 121,000 people have been evacuated from Kursk or have fled the areas affected by fighting on their own,” Russian officials say. The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said it has seen geolocated footage indicating that Ukrainian forces advanced as much as 24km from the border.

The Russian Defence Ministry appeared to support that claim when it said Tuesday (August 13, 2024) it had also blocked an attack by the units of Ukraine’s 82nd Air Assault Brigade toward Maryinka, which is about that distance from Ukraine.

Russian state television on Tuesday (August 13, 2024) showed residents from evacuated areas lining up in buildings and on the street to receive food and water. Volunteers were pictured distributing bags of aid, while officials from the country’s Ministry of Emergency Situations helped people, including children and older people, off buses.

“There is no light, no connection, no water. There is nothing. It’s as if everyone has flown to another planet, and you are left alone. And the birds stopped singing,” an older man called Mikhail told Russian state television. “Helicopters and planes fly over the yard and shells were flying. What could we do? We left everything behind.”

A motive behind Ukraine’s bold dive into Russia was to stir up unrest, according to Putin, but he said that effort would fail.

The successful border breach also was surprising because Ukraine has been short of people at the front as it waits for new brigades to complete training.

Dara Massicot, an analyst at the Carnegie Endowment, said the Ukrainian breakthrough was a smart move because it exploited gaps between various Russian commands in Kursk – border guards, Ministry of Defense forces and Chechen units that have been fighting on Russia’s side in the war.

Russian command and control are fractured in Kursk,” Mr. Massicot said on X late Monday.

The Ukrainian Army’s General Staff announced Tuesday (August 13, 2024) that it was establishing a 20km restricted-access zone along Russian-Ukrainian border in the northeastern Sumy region, which borders Kursk.

The measures were introduced because of the increasing intensity of combat in the area and the rising presence of Russian reconnaissance and sabotage units there, a statement said.

Source link

#Russia #thwarted #Ukrainian #charge #expand #Kursk #incursion #Kyiv #wont #occupy #land

Russia’s Putin says Ukraine’s incursion into Kursk is an attempt to stop Moscow’s eastern offensive

Post By World , , , , ,

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Monday (August 12, 2024) that the Ukrainian army’s incursion into the Kursk region, which has caused more than 100,000 civilians to flee and embarrassed the Kremlin, is an attempt by Kyiv to stop Moscow’s offensive in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region and gain leverage in possible future peace talks.

Russian forces are still scrambling to respond to the surprise Ukrainian attack after almost a week of fierce fighting, but Mr. Putin insisted Moscow’s army will prevail.

Speaking at a meeting with top security and defense officials, Mr. Putin said, “the attack that began August 6, 2024 appeared to reflect Kyiv’s attempt to gain a better negotiating position in possible future talks to end the war.”

He argued that Ukraine may have hoped to cause public unrest in Russia with the attack, adding that it has failed to achieve that goal, and claimed that the number of volunteers to join the Russian military has increased because of the assault. He said, “the Russian military is driving on with its eastern Ukraine offensive regardless.”

Also Read: President Volodymyr Zelenskyy acknowledges Ukraine’s military operation in Russia

“It’s obvious that the enemy will keep trying to destabilise the situation in the border zone to try to destabilise the domestic political situation in our country,” Mr. Putin said.

Acting Kursk Governor Alexei Smirnov reported to Mr. Putin that Ukrainian forces had pushed 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) into the Kursk region across a 40-kilometer (25-mile) front and currently control 28 Russian settlements.

Mr. Smirnov said that 12 civilians have been killed and 121 others, including 10 children, have been wounded in the operation. “About 121,000 people have been evacuated or left the areas affected by fighting on their own,” he said.

“Tracking down all the Ukrainian diversionary units roaming the region is difficult,” Mr. Smirnov said, noting that some are using fake Russian IDs.

The Governor of the Belgorod region adjacent to Kursk also announced the evacuation of people from a district near the Ukrainian border, describing Monday (August 12) morning as “alarming” but giving no detail.

Ukrainian forces swiftly rolled into the town of Sudzha about 10 kilometers (6 miles) over the border after launching the attack. They reportedly still hold the western part of the town, which is the site of an important natural gas transit station.

The Ukrainian operation is taking place under tight secrecy, and its goals — especially whether Kyiv’s forces aim to hold territory or are staging hit-and-run raids — remain unclear. The stunning maneuver that caught the Kremlin’s forces unawares counters Russia’s unrelenting effort in recent months to punch through Ukrainian defenses at selected points along the front line in eastern Ukraine.

Russia has seen previous incursions into its territory during the nearly 2 1/2-year war, but the foray into the Kursk region marked the largest attack on its soil since World War II, constituting a milestone in the hostilities. It is also the first time the Ukrainian army has spearheaded an incursion rather than pro-Ukraine Russian fighters.

The advance has delivered a blow to Mr. Putin’s efforts to pretend that life in Russia has largely remained unaffected by the war. State propaganda has tried to play down the attack, emphasising the authorities’ efforts to help residents of the region and seeking to distract attention from the military’s failure to prepare for the attack and quickly repel it.

Kursk residents recorded videos lamenting they had to flee the border area, leaving behind their belongings, and pleading with Mr. Putin for help. But Russia’s state-controlled media kept a tight lid on any expression of discontent.

Retired Gen. Andrei Gurulev, a member of the lower house of the Russian parliament, criticized the military for failing to properly protect the border.

“Regrettably, the group of forces protecting the border didn’t have its own intelligence assets,” he said on his messaging app channel. “No one likes to see the truth in reports, everybody just wants to hear that all is good.” The combat inside Russia rekindled questions about whether Ukraine was using weaponry supplied by NATO members. Some Western countries have balked at allowing Ukraine to use their military aid to hit Russian soil, fearing it would fuel an escalation that might drag Russia and NATO into war.

Though it’s not clear what weapons Ukraine is using across the border, Russian media widely reported that U.S. Bradley and German Marder armoured infantry vehicles were there. It was not possible to independently verify that claim.

Ukraine has already used U.S. weapons to strike inside Russia. But Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said in an interview published on Monday (August 12, 2024) that the weapons provided by his country “cannot be used to attack Russia on its territory”.

Meanwhile, German Defence Ministry spokesperson Arne Collatz said on Monday (August 12, 2024) that legal experts agree that “international law provides for a state that is defending itself also to defend itself on the territory of the attacker. That is clear from our point of view, too”.

Russia’s Defence Ministry said on Monday (August 12, 2024) that reinforcements sent to the area backed by air force and artillery had fended off seven attacks by Ukrainian units near Martynovka, Borki and Korenevo during the previous 24 hours.

The Ministry said, “Russian forces also blocked an attempt by Ukrainian mobile groups to forge deep into the Russian territory near Kauchuk.”

“Russian air force and artillery also struck concentrations of Ukrainian troops and equipment near Sudzha, Kurilovka, Pekhovo, Lyubimovo and several other settlements,” it said. “Warplanes and artillery hit Kyiv’s reserves in Ukraine’s Sumy region across the border,” it added.

Pasi Paroinen, an analyst with the Finland-based Black Bird Group open-source intelligence agency, which monitors the war, said the toughest phase of Ukraine’s incursion is likely to begin now as Russian reserves enter the fray.

Ukraine’s progress on Russian territory “is challenging the operational and strategic assumptions” of the Kremlin’s forces, according to the Institute for the Study of War. It could compel Russia to deploy more military assets to the long border between the two countries, the Washington-based think tank said in an assessment late Sunday (August 11, 2024).

It described the Russian forces responding to the incursion as “hastily assembled and disparate”.

Source link

#Russias #Putin #Ukraines #incursion #Kursk #attempt #stop #Moscows #eastern #offensive

Russia-Ukraine War: How Russia and the World Navigate Two Years of Conflict

Post By World , , , , , , , ,

Two years on, where does the Ukraine war stand?

Russia’s war in Ukraine has entered its third year. What many thought on February 24, 2022 would be a swift Russian military operation against its smaller neighbour has turned out to be the largest land war in Europe since the end of the Second World War. This is no longer about Russia and Ukraine. This is now a proxy conflict between Russia and NATO, a trans-Atlantic nuclear alliance. Two years since the war began, where does it stand today, and how it’s transforming Russia and the world?

If one looks back at the beginning of the war, it’s not difficult to see that President Vladimir Putin made a grave strategic miscalculation when he ordered the invasion of Europe’s second largest country with less than 2,00,000 troops. Mr. Putin probably expected a quick victory, like he did in Georgia in 2008 and Crimea in 2014. But that did not happen.

In 2022, Russians were forced to retreat from Kharkiv and Kherson. The West doubled down on its military and economic support for Ukraine. Russia had declared “demilitarisation” and “denazification” of Ukraine as their objectives. Ukraine wanted to push back the invading troops and recapture the lost territories, including Crimea. The West wanted to use Ukrainian forces to bleed out Russian troops and weaken Russia as a great power. The wheels of war were grinding on. Who is meeting their objectives today?

Ukraine last year launched an ambitious counteroffensive with advances weapons from the West. Their plan was to make swift advances into Russia’s line of defence in the south and destroy Mr. Putin’s land bridge that connects the Donbas with Crimea.

Eight months after counteroffensive began, it’s now evident that the campaign has failed. Gen. Velery Zaluzhnyi, Ukraine’s former commander in chief who was fired by President Zelensky, had called for a mass mobilisation, suggesting that Ukraine was facing acute shortage of fighters on the frontline. They lost many of their West-supplied weapons in the counteroffensive and are waiting for fresh supplies. Ukraine is almost entirely dependent on the West for critical supplies, but aid from the U.S., the single largest supporter of Ukraine, is stuck in Congress amid growing Republican opposition.

On the other side, the Russians are on the offensive. In December, Russia claimed its first victory since the capture of Bakhmut in May when it seized Maryinka. Earlier this month, Ukraine was forced to abandon Avdiivka, a strategically important town in Donetsk. The Russians are now advancing westward in Donetsk and piling up pressure on Ukrainian forces in Krynky, Kherson, in the south.

The message from the battlefield is alarming for Ukraine and its partners in the West.

Editorial |Endless war: On the Russia-Ukraine war

Take a look at the West’s strategy. The West, or NATO to be specific, had taken a two-fold approach towards Ukraine. One was to provide economic and military assistance to Kyiv to keep the fight against Russia going on; and the second leg was to weaken Russia’s economy and war machine through sanctions. With Ukraine’s failed counteroffensive and a changing political climate in Washington with the prospect of a second Trump presidency looming, the first pillar of this policy faces uncertainty, if not absolute peril. The second pillar, sanctions, has hurt Russia badly. Western officials believe that sanctions have deprived Russia of over $430 billion in revenue it would otherwise have gained since the war began. Europe has also curtailed its energy purchases from Russia. Sanctions have also made it difficult for Moscow to acquire critical technologies, including microchips, which are necessary for its defence industry.

But this is not the whole story.

Russia has found several ways to work around sanctions and keep its economy going. When Europe cut energy sales, Russia offered discounted crude oil to big growing economies such as China, India and Brazil. It amassed a ghost fleet of ships to keep sending oil to its new markets without relying on western shipping companies and insurers. It set up shell companies and private corporations operating in its neighbourhood (say Armenia or Turkey) to import dual use technologies which were re-exported to Russia to be used in defence production. China, the world’s second largest economy, ramped up its financial and trade ties with Russia, including the export of dual use technologies. Russia moved away from the dollar to other currencies, mainly the Chinese yuan, for trade, and boosted defence and public spending at home (its defence budget was raised by nearly 70% this year).

Does it mean that everything is going well for Mr. Putin? No it doesn’t.

Since the war began, two countries in its neighbourhood, Sweden and Finland, have joined NATO, expanding the alliance’s border with Russia. Now, if you look at the Baltic Sea, all basin countries, except Russia, are practically NATO members, which makes it look like a NATO lake.

Mr. Putin spent years, after coming to power, to build strong economic ties with Europe, which are now in tatters. Russia’s hold on its immediate neighbourhood is also loosening, which was evident in tensions with Armenia and the latter’s decision to freeze participation in the Moscow-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). Russia is also increasingly becoming dependent on China, even though the Kremlin is careful not to upset the sensitivity of New Delhi.

But how does India look at the war?

India’s ties with Russia have multi-dimensions. While the energy aspect of this partnership, which flourished after the war, is seen largely opportunistic, the defence side is structural. India also sees Russia, a Eurasian powerhouse, as an important long-term strategic partner in tackling its continental challenges. But the elephant in the room was China.

Russia’s deepening ties with China triggered different arguments on India’s choices. One section argued that the growing synergy between Russia and China should serve as a wake-up call for India to revisit its Russia policy. Others, including yours truly, argued that India would be wary of pushing Russia deeper into China’s embrace by toeing the anti-Russian Western line.

External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar explained India’s thinking on this matter at the Raisina Dialogue recently. The world must give Russia more options, rather than “closing doors” on it and pushing it towards a closer embrace with China, Mr. Jaishankar said. The Minister’s comments underscored India’s concerns about a deepening China-Russia partnership, but his policy prescriptions were nuanced. “What’s happened today with Russia is essentially a lot of doors have been shut to Russia in the West,” he said. “We know the reasons why Russia is turning to parts of the world which are not West. Now, I think it makes sense to give Russia multiple options.”

Meaning, India’s ties with Russia are here to stay and expand, irrespective of what its western partners think of Moscow.

Script and presentation: Stanly Johny

Production: Richard Kujur

Video: Thamodharan B.

Source link

#RussiaUkraine #War #Russia #World #Navigate #Years #Conflict

Armed rebellion by Wagner chief Prigozhin underscores erosion of Russian legal system

Post By World , , , , ,

Russia’s rebellious mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin walked free from prosecution for his June 24 armed mutiny, and it’s still unclear if anyone will face any charges in the aborted uprising against military leaders or for the deaths of the soldiers killed in it.

Instead, a campaign is underway to portray the founder of the Wagner Group military contractor as driven by greed, with only hints of an investigation into whether he mishandled any of the billions of dollars in state funds.

Until last week, the Kremlin has never admitted to funding the company, with private mercenary groups technically illegal in Russia. But President Vladimir Putin revealed the state paid Wagner almost $1 billion in just one year, while Mr. Prigozhin’s other company earned about the same from government contracts. Mr. Putin wondered aloud whether any of it was stolen.

Also Read | Explained: Understanding the Wagner mutiny

The developments around Mr. Prigozhin, who remains unpunished despite Mr. Putin’s labelling of his revolt as treason, underscored what St. Petersburg municipal council member Nikita Yuferev called the “gradual erosion of the legal system” in Russia.

Andrei Kolesnikov, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, writing about the mutiny in a column, concluded: “The fabric of the state is disintegrating.”

After Putin indicated the government would probe financial irregularities by Mr. Prigozhin’s companies, state TV picked up that cue.

Commentator Dmitry Kiselyov said Wagner and another company owned by Prigozhin earned over 1.7 trillion rubles ($18.7 billion) through government contracts. Russian business daily Vedomosti cited a source close to the Defence Ministry as saying the earnings occurred between 2014 and 2023, years when both Prigozhin and Russian officials denied any ties to Wagner or even its existence.

“Big money made Prigozhin’s head spin,” Mr. Kiselyov said Sunday, saying the private army’s battlefield successes gave the mercenary boss “a feeling of impunity.”

One possible reason for Mr. Prigozhin’s mutiny, he said, was the Defence Ministry’s refusal to extend a multibillion-dollar contract with his legal catering company, Concord, to supply food to the army.

According to Mr. Kiselyov, Wagner earned 858 billion rubles from government contracts, while Concord earned another 845 billion. Those numbers were 10 times higher than what Putin gave last week.

Also unclear is whether Mr. Prigozhin will move to Belarus, Moscow’s closest ally, under a deal with the Kremlin to end the rebellion. Belarus’ authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko said Thursday that Prigozhin was in Russia. The Kremlin refused comment.

Russian media on Wednesday — including popular state TV channel Russia 1 — showed video of searches of Mr. Prigozhin’s St. Petersburg offices and an opulent mansion he purportedly owned, complete with helipad and indoor swimming pool. They also showed a van with boxes of cash, as well as gold bars, wigs and weapons in the estate.

Russia 1 programs also alleged Mr. Prigozhin’s adult children amassed significant wealth through him and said the searches were a part of an ongoing investigation, contrasting his lifestyle to his anti-elite image.

“So it turns out, Yevgeny Prigozhin didn’t have enough and wanted more?” an anchor mused.

The goal of these revelations is “to smear the person, show he is an oligarch,” said Ilya Shumanov, Russia director for Transparency International, noting Mr. Prigozhin often made crude and plain-spoken attacks on the military leadership.

“And here they say that he’s a billionaire, and all this (money) isn’t his, it’s from the (state) budget, and he was sitting on it, and there would have been no private military company with the Defence Ministry,” Shumanov told The Associated Press.

The revelations raised questions of how the government could fund Wagner at all, given that laws prohibit mercenary activities, including funding and training private troops, that put the company in a legal gray area.

Until the rebellion, Putin always denied any link between the state and Mr. Prigozhin’s mercenaries. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said as recently as 2020 that “there is no such thing as a private military company in Russian law,” and that he wasn’t aware of one.

By then, however, Wagner had sent its soldiers-for-hire to Syria and African countries as Russia expanded its global influence. By Mr. Prigozhin’s own admission, his forces also operated in eastern Ukraine to support a separatist uprising and later fought there after the 2022 invasion.

Asked Monday about the legality of state funding for Wagner, Peskov refused comment.

Shumanov told AP that Wagner was likely funded either with cash through shell companies, or through government contracts via Mr. Prigozhin’s other entities. How much is impossible to know, he noted, but added it was clear Mr. Putin’s remarks “gave a green light” to investigate the Wagner chief’s finances.

“I’d wait several weeks, and I think there will definitely be a reaction from the security forces in terms of Mr. Prigozhin and his economic activities,” he said.

The Kremlin’s message is that “we are dealing with a thief, a corrupt person, a thief and an oligarch, who went too far and stole money from the budget,” Shumanov said: “This is a very clear explanation, and no one needs to be sacrificed except for Prigozhin.”

Besides the finances, there is the matter of whether anyone will face prosecution for the deaths of the Russian troops who died at the hands of Mr. Prigozhin’s fighters.

Russian media reported about 15 military troops were killed during the rebellion as thousands of his soldiers seized a military headquarters in the southern city of Rostov-on-Don, then headed for Moscow, shooting down military helicopters and other aircraft on what Prigozhin called his “march of justice.” At a June 27 Kremlin ceremony, Mr. Putin held a minute of silence to honor the dead, although he didn’t say how many were killed.

A deal struck with Mr. Prigozhin to end the uprising stipulated that the Federal Security Service, or FSB, would drop charges against him and his fighters of mounting a rebellion. That agreement went against Putin’s vow in a nationally televised address during the uprising to punish those behind it.

Instead, the Kremlin said Mr. Prigozhin agreed to end the mutiny and go to Belarus — a settlement that didn’t sit well with some.

Yuferev, the St. Petersburg municipal council member, filed a request with the Prosecutor General’s Office and the FSB, asking who would be punished for the rebellion.

Thousands of people “rolling toward Moscow on tanks shoot down aircraft, kill 15 troops. … The president speaks, says: I will punish all of you, you are mutineers,’ the FSB launches a case -– and then nothing,” he added.

He said authorities must respond in 30 days, and while he doesn’t expect a substantive reply, he at least hopes to draw attention to this “erosion of the legal system of a state. It is very interesting what they will write there, how they will justify people committing an armed rebellion,” Yuferev said.

Whether other charges will be filed is unclear. Prominent lawyer Ivan Pavlov told AP that mounting an armed rebellion is only one charge, and that Mr. Prigozhin may face others -– especially since deaths occurred — but so far, “no one is talking about it.” Another topic drawing official silence is how the FSB — the successor agency to the feared KGB — failed to prevent the uprising, even though it routinely boasts of averting terrorist attacks, sabotage plots and other major crimes.

Russian security experts Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan said the FSB’s Rostov department “barricaded itself in its city headquarters,” while its military counterintelligence operatives assigned to Wagner ”did nothing.”

After Mr. Prigozhin announced his intentions June 23 to act against Russia’s Defence Minister, the FSB issued a statement urging Wagner fighters not to follow the rogue commander and for the troops “to detain him.”

Soldatov and Borogan wrote in a recent article that such a call for the mercenaries to take that action was odd, since only law enforcement agencies and security services like the FSB have the power to detain people.

Mark Galeotti of University College, London, an analyst on Russian security affairs, said the rebellion tested previous assumptions that Putin could count on his security forces.

“Now, the first time there’s a real challenge we actually see, security forces are willing to hang back and wait and see what happens,” he told AP.

So far, there has been no negative impact on the FSB, which Galeotti called “Mr. Putin’s favoured institution,” having been a former member.

Asked by AP during a conference call with reporters Monday why the FSB failed to stop the mutiny, Kremlin spokesman Peskov refused comment, except to say that such services “perform their functions, they do it properly.”

He also noted Putin last week had praised soldiers, law enforcement and security officers and “expressed his gratitude” to them.

Source link

#Armed #rebellion #Wagner #chief #Prigozhin #underscores #erosion #Russian #legal #system

Pelosi says Ukraine, democracy ‘must win’

Post By World , , , , , , , , , , , ,

“We thought we could die.”

The Russian invasion had just begun when Nancy Pelosi made a surprise visit to Ukraine, the House speaker then the highest-ranking elected U.S. official to lead a congressional delegation to Kyiv.

Ms. Pelosi and the lawmakers were ushered under the cloak of secrecy into the capital city, an undisclosed passage that even to this day she will not divulge.

“It was very, it was dangerous,” Ms. Pelosi told The Associated Press before April 30th’s one-year anniversary of that trip.

“We never feared about it, but we thought we could die because we’re visiting a serious, serious war zone,” Ms. Pelosi said. “We had great protection, but nonetheless, a war — theater of war.”

Ms. Pelosi’s visit was as unusual as it was historic, opening a fresh diplomatic channel between the U.S. and Ukraine that has only deepened with the prolonged war. In the year since, a long list of congressional leaders, senators and chairs of powerful committees, both Democrats and Republicans, followed her lead, punctuated by President Joe Biden’s own visit this year.

The steady stream of arrivals in Kyiv has served to amplify a political and military partnership between the U.S. and Ukraine for the world to see, one that will be tested anew when Congress is again expected this year to help fund the war to defeat Russia.

“We must win. We must bring this to a positive conclusion — for the people of Ukraine and for our country,” Ms. Pelosi said.

“There is a fight in the world now between democracy and autocracy, its manifestation at the time is in Ukraine.”

With a new Republican majority in the House whose Trump-aligned members have baulked at overseas investments, Ms. Pelosi, a Democrat, remains confident the Congress will continue backing Ukraine as part of a broader U.S. commitment to democracy abroad in the face of authoritarian aggression.

“Support for Ukraine has been bipartisan and bicameral, in both houses of Congress by both parties, and the American people support democracy in Ukraine,” Ms. Pelosi told AP. “I believe that we will continue to support as long as we need to support democracy … as long as it takes to win.”

Now the speaker emerita, an honorary title bestowed by Democrats, Ms. Pelosi is circumspect about her role as a U.S. emissary abroad. Having visited 87 countries during her time in office, many as the trailblazing first woman to be the House speaker, she set a new standard for pointing the gavel outward as she focused attention on the world beyond U.S. shores.

In her office tucked away at the Capitol, Ms. Pelosi shared many of the honours and mementoes she has received from abroad, including the honorary passport she was given on her trip to Ukraine, among her final stops as speaker.

It’s a signature political style, building on Ms. Pelosi’s decades of work on the House Intelligence Committee, but one that a new generation of House leaders may— or may not— choose to emulate.

The new Speaker Kevin McCarthy hosted Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library this month, the Republican leader’s first foray as leader into foreign affairs.

Democrat Hakeem Jeffries took his own first trip abroad as House minority leader, leading congressional delegations last week to Ghana and Israel.

Ms. Pelosi said it’s up to the new leaders what they will do on the global stage.

“Other speakers have understood our national security— we take an oath to protect and defend— and so we have to reach out with our values and our strength to make sure that happens,” she said.

“I just want to say that this, for me, was the most logical thing to do,” Ms. Pelosi said.

When Pelosi arrived in Kyiv, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stood outside to meet the U.S. officials, a photo that ricocheted around the world as a show of support for the young democracy fighting Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion.

“The courage of the president in greeting us on the street rather than us just meeting him in his office was yet again another symbol of the courage of the people of Ukraine,” she said.

Ms. Pelosi told Mr. Zelenskyy in a video released at the time “your fight is a fight for everyone.”

A year on, with no end to the war in sight, Ms. Pelosi said: “I would have hoped that it would have been over by now.”

Ms. Pelosi’s travel abroad has not been without political challenges and controversy. During the Trump era, she acted as an alternative emissary overseas, reassuring allies that the U.S. remained a partner despite the Republican president’s “America First” neo-isolationist approach to foreign policy.

Last year, in one of her final trips as a speaker, Ms. Pelosi touched down with a delegation in Taipei, crowds lining the streets to cheer her arrival, a visit with the Taiwanese president that drew a sharp rebuke from Beijing, which counts the island as its own.

“Cowardly,” she said about the military exercises China launched in the aftermath of her trip.

Ms. Pelosi offered rare praise for Mr. McCarthy’s own meeting with Tsai, particularly its bipartisan nature and the choice of venue, the historic Reagan library.

“That was really quite a message and quite an optic to be there. And so I salute what he did,” she said.

In one of her closing acts as House speaker in December, Ms. Pelosi hosted Mr. Zelenskyy for a joint address to Congress. The visit evoked the one made by Winston Churchill, the Prime Minister of Britain, at Christmastime in 1941 to speak to Congress in the Senate chamber of a “long and hard war” during World War II.

Mr. Zelenskyy presented to Congress a Ukrainian flag signed by front-line troops that Ms. Pelosi said will eventually be displayed at the U.S. Capitol.

The world has changed much since Ms. Pelosi joined Congress— one of her first trips abroad was in 1991 when she dared to unfurl a pro-democracy banner in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square shortly after the student demonstrations that ended in a massacre.

After the long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s again Russia and China that remain front of her mind.

“The role of Putin in terms of Russia that is a bigger threat than it was when I came to Congress,” she said. A decade after the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, she said, Mr. Putin went up.

“That’s where the fight for democracy is taking place,” she said.

And, she said, despite the work she and others in Congress have done to point out the concerns over China’s military and economic rise, and its human rights record, “that has only gotten worse.”

Often mentioned as someone who could become an actual ambassador— there have been musings that Mr. Biden could nominate her to Rome or beyond— Ms. Pelosi said she is focused on her two-year term in office, no longer the House speaker but the representative from San Francisco.

“Right now my plan is to serve my constituents,” Ms. Pelosi said. “I like having 7,50,000 bosses, rather than one.”

Source link

#Pelosi #Ukraine #democracy #win

Why purported cross-border attack ups ante in Ukraine war

Post By World , , , ,

Russia has declared that saboteurs from Ukraine crossed into its territory and attacked border villages, a raid that fuelled fears of an escalation in the war as it has dragged into a second year.

A day after Thursday’s purported attack, details of what happened remain scarce and conflicting theories about possible perpetrators and their goals are still swirling.

Also Read | Putin tells Russian security council to tighten ‘anti-terror’ measures

Ukrainian officials have denied involvement and a presidential aide described it as a false-flag attack used by the Kremlin to justify the war in Ukraine.

An obscure group of Russian nationalists who described themselves as part of the Ukrainian military claimed responsibility for the attack, but their status and goals remain unclear.

What did Russian and Ukrainian officials say?

Russian authorities reported the attack on the villages of Lyubechane and Suchany in the Bryansk region early Thursday, saying that several dozen saboteurs infiltrated from Ukraine, killed two civilians and planted explosives.

Russian President Vladimir Putin cancelled a scheduled trip to an event in southern Russia because of what he described as a “terrorist attack” deliberately targeting civilians.

Hours later, the Russian authorities said the intruders were pushed back into Ukraine and targeted by artillery fire.

Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak described the Russian claims as “a classic deliberate provocation,” saying that Russia “wants to scare its people to justify the attack on another country and the growing poverty after the year of war”. But Podolyak also alleged that the attack could be the work of Russian guerrillas who had rebelled against the Kremlin.

“The partisan movement in the Russian Federation is getting stronger and more aggressive,” he said.

Ukraine’s military intelligence representative, Andrii Cherniak, similarly denied Ukraine’s involvement while also alleging that Russia is facing an uprising among its own disgruntled people.

“This was done by the Russians, Ukraine has nothing to do with it,” he told AP.

Mr. Cherniak noted that a group calling itself the Russian Volunteer Corps had claimed responsibility for the attack.

What is the Russian Volunteer Corps

The Russian Volunteer Corps released a video featuring its members standing outside a post office in one of the villages and urging the Russians to rebel against Mr. Putin.

The group has described itself as “a volunteer formation” of Ukraine’s armed forces. Little is known about the group, the number of its members and its ties, if any, with the Ukrainian military.

Russian bloggers identified some of the men who appeared in the video filmed in the village of Lyubechane as former members of Russia’s radical nationalist groups who had moved to Ukraine several years ago.

Ukrainian New voice-NV news portal quoted Ilya Bogdanov, who identified himself as a member of the Corps, confirming that his colleagues who crossed into the Bryansk region were serving in the Ukrainian army.

Ukrainian military analyst Oleh Zhdanov said that the Corps’ claim could be a Ukrainian propaganda effort intended to embarrass Russia.

“It’s quite possible if our propagandists believe it would be more efficient to cast it as a heroic feat and pretend that there is an entire corps of them,” he told the AP.

Mr. Zhdanov noted that despite its flashy name, the group could include just a handful of Russians who signed a contract to fight alongside the Ukrainian military.

What do experts say?

Security analysts say it’s hard to figure out quickly who was behind the attack.

Mark Cancian, a senior adviser for the International Security Program at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, argued that Ukraine could have launched the attack to force Russia to pull back some of its forces from the front line to tighten the border.

“If I had to bet I would say it’s the real thing,” Cancian said. “I can see why Ukraine might want to do this. Most of the border is not contested at the moment, so Ukraine might want to be forcing Russia to guard more of its borders, maybe pull some forces out of the Donbass.”

Eleonora Tafuro, a Russia expert at the ISPI think tank in Milan, said it appears possible the attack was carried out by the Russian Volunteer Corps to foment a sense of insecurity among the local population.

“The area is very exposed to fighting,” she said. “It could be a message: You are vulnerable. You are exposed.’”

Brad Bowman, senior director of the Centre on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defence of Democracies, warned against quickly rushing to conclusions, noting that the Kremlin could be interested in rallying the public as the war drags on.

“The Kremlin’s information warfare efforts are meant to deceive Russians so they will believe that Russia is under grave threat and will be willing to fight and die in an illegal war of aggression,” he said.

And William Courtney, who served as ambassador to Kazakhstan and Georgia and is now a senior fellow at the RAND Corp., a non-profit research institute, argued that the purported attack could be a false-flag operation.

“It has an engineered quality to it that was carried out to make Ukraine look like a terrorist state,” Courtney said.

What are the consequences of the attack?

The purported attack came as an embarrassment for Mr. Putin, who had told officials to tighten protection of the long and porous border with Ukraine earlier in the week.

It has caused outrage among Russian hawks, who harshly criticised the Kremlin for failing to protect the border and mount a quick and forceful retaliation.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the rogue millionaire who owns the Wagner Group military company, mocked the authorities for idly watching the crossing of another Russian red line. And Ramzan Kadyrov, the regional leader of Chechnya, has challenged the Kremlin to up the ante by introducing martial law.

Hawkish commentators and military bloggers have derided the Kremlin’s indecision, calling for strikes on Ukraine’s presidential office and the deployment of hit men to target top Ukrainian officials.

It remains unclear if Mr. Putin could use the incident to double down.

In his initial statement, the Russian leader cast the purported attack as proof that Russia did the right thing by invading Ukraine, but he didn’t signal an intention to change the status of the operation or ramp up strikes.

On Friday, Mr. Putin had a video call with members of his Security Council, saying in opening remarks that it would focus on tightening protection against terrorist attacks but giving no details.

Source link

#purported #crossborder #attack #ups #ante #Ukraine #war

Putin orders tightening of Ukraine border as drones hit Russia

Post By World , , ,

Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the border with Ukraine tightened on Tuesday after several drones attacked inside Russian territory, including one that crashed just 100 kilometres (60 miles) from Moscow in an alarming development for Russian defences.

The drones caused no injuries but raised questions about the Kremlin’s security more than a year after Russia’s full-scale invasion of its neighbour.

Moscow blamed Kyiv for the attacks. Ukrainian officials did not immediately claim responsibility, but they similarly avoided directly acknowledging responsibility for past strikes and sabotage while emphasising Ukraine’s right to hit any target in Russia.

Also Read | U.N. chief points to ‘massive’ rights violations in Ukraine

Although Mr. Putin did not refer to any specific attacks in a speech in the Russian capital, his comments came hours after the drones targeted several areas in southern and western Russia. Authorities closed the airspace over St. Petersburg in response to what some reports said was a drone.

Also on Tuesday, several Russian television stations aired a missile attack warning that officials blamed on a hacking attack.

The drone attacks on Monday night and Tuesday morning targeted regions inside Russia along the border with Ukraine and deeper into the country, according to local Russian authorities.

A drone fell near the village of Gubastovo, 100 kilometers (60 miles) from Moscow, Andrei Vorobyov, governor of the region surrounding the Russian capital, said in an online statement.

The drone did not inflict any damage, Vorobyov said, but it likely targeted “a civilian infrastructure object”.

Pictures of the drone showed it was a Ukrainian-made model with a reported range of up to 800 kilometres (nearly 500 miles) but no capacity to carry a large load of explosives.

Russian forces early on Tuesday shot down a Ukrainian drone over the Bryansk region, local Gov. Aleksandr Bogomaz said in a Telegram post.

Three drones also targeted Russia’s Belgorod region on Monday night, with one flying through an apartment window in its namesake capital, local authorities reported. Regional Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov said the drones caused minor damage to buildings and cars.

The Russian Defence Ministry said Ukraine used drones to attack facilities in the Krasnodar region and neighbouring Adygea.

It said the drones were brought down by electronic warfare assets, adding that one of them crashed into a field and another diverted from its flight path and missed an infrastructure facility it was supposed to attack.

While Ukrainian drone strikes on the Russian border regions of Bryansk and Belgorod are not unusual, the hits on the Krasnodar and Adygea regions further south were noteworthy.

A fire broke out at an oil depot in Russia’s Krasnodar region on Monday, Russia’s state RIA Novosti agency reported. Russian Telegram channels claimed that two drones exploded near the depot.

Some Russian commentators described the drone attacks as an attempt by Ukraine to showcase its capability to strike areas deep behind the lines, foment tensions in Russia and rally the Ukrainian public. Some Russian war bloggers described the raids as a possible rehearsal for a bigger, more ambitious attack.

Last year, Russian authorities repeatedly reported shooting down Ukrainian drones over annexed Crimea. In December, the Russian military said Ukraine used drones to hit two bases for long-range bombers deep inside Russian territory.

Separately, the government of St. Petersburg — Russia’s second-largest city about 1,300 kilometers (800 miles) north of the border with Ukraine — said early on Tuesday that it was temporarily halting all departures and arrivals at the city’s main airport, Pulkovo. It did not give a reason for the move.

Hours earlier, unconfirmed reports on Russia’s Telegram social network referred to the airspace over St. Petersburg being shut down and to overflights by Russian warplanes. It wasn’t immediately clear whether this was connected to drone attacks in Russia’s south.

The Russian military said its air defence forces in western Russia conducted drills on “detection, interception and identification” of enemy targets in its airspace, and in coordination with civilian air traffic services in an emergency situation.

The Russian Defence Ministry did not specifically mention St. Petersburg, but its statement appeared designed to explain the temporary closure of the airspace.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov refused to comment on the situation in St. Petersburg, urging reporters to wait for details from the country’s aviation authorities or the military. He noted that Mr. Putin had “full information” on the situation.

Speaking at Russia’s main security agency, the FSB, Mr. Putin urged the service to tighten security on the Ukraine border.

Russian media reported Tuesday that an air raid alarm interrupted the programming of several TV channels and radio stations in several Russian regions.

Footage posted by some news sites showed TV sets displaying a yellow sign with a person heading to a bomb shelter, with a female voice repeating: “Attention! Air raid alarm. Everyone should head to a shelter immediately.”

Russia’s Emergency Ministry said in an online statement that the announcement was a hoax “resulting from a hacking of the servers of radio stations and TV channels in some regions of the country”.

In other developments, four people were killed and five others wounded on Tuesday by renewed Russian shelling of the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson, regional Gov. Oleksandr Prokudin said in a Telegram.

A 68-year-old man was also killed as Russian forces shelled Kupiansk, a town in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region, its Gov. Oleh Syniehubov said.

The fiercest fighting continued to be in eastern areas of Ukraine, where Russia wants control over all four of the provinces it illegally annexed in September.

Ukrainian officials said that Russian forces have deployed additional troops and equipment, including modern T-90 tanks, in those areas.

Meanwhile, satellite photos analysed by AP appeared to show a Beriev A-50 early warning aircraft was parked at a Belarus air base just before a claimed attack by partisans there.

Images from Planet Labs PBC shows the A-50, a late Soviet-era aircraft known for its distinctive rotodome above its fuselage, parked on the apron of the Machulishchy Air Base near Minsk, Belarus’ capital, on February 19.

A lower-resolution image taken on February 23 showed a similarly shaped aircraft still parked there, though heavy cloud cover has blocked any images since.

Belarusian opposition organisation BYPOL claimed that guerrillas damaged the A-50 in an attack Sunday.

AP has been unable to independently confirm the claimed attack, which both Belarus and Russia have yet to acknowledge.

Source link

#Putin #orders #tightening #Ukraine #border #drones #hit #Russia