The Ukrainian Peninsula is a part of Russia: President Putin’s response to the February 4 Ukrainian Referendum on Russian Unification and the Crimea Crisis

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia signed decrees on Friday to declare four Ukrainian regions part of Russia as the Kremlin seeks to solidify its tenuous hold over Ukrainian territory through a widely denounced illegal annexation.

The Grand Kremlin Palace is home to the St. George’sHall, where the Russian leader spoke when he said that the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea was a part of Russia.

Hundreds of Russian members of Parliament and regional governors sat in the audience for Mr. Putin’s speech, as well as many of his cabinet ministers and the four Russian-imposed leaders of the occupied Ukrainian regions.

Moscow hasn’t been able to establish full control over the lands that it claims as its own, despite the illegal annexation of four Ukrainian territories after the September referendums.

Stremousov might be aware of the fact that troublesome leaders of Russian-backed entities have a tendency to die violently, but some of the criticism is not new. The Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov urged the Russian military to expand its campaign just weeks after Putin launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

He reeled off a litany of Western military actions stretching over centuries — from the British Opium War in China in the 19th century to Allied firebombings of Germany and the Vietnam and Korean Wars.

He said the US was the only country that had used nuclear weapons. “By the way, they created a precedent,” Mr. Putin added in an aside.

There were conflicting reports on the scale of the attacks. An adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky, Mykhailo Podolyak, said in an earlier post that Russia had launched more than 120 missiles in the barrage, without offering further details. The goal of the attack was to destroy critical infrastructure and kill civilians.

Vladimir Putin’s annexation of the Donetsk and Luhansk provinces and the Kherson and Zaporizhia provinces

The moves are part of a carefully orchestrated process designed to provide a veneer of legality for the annexation of Donetsk and Luhansk provinces in eastern Ukraine and Kherson and Zaporizhzhia Provinces in the south.

Putin’s remarks come as attacks on Ukraine continue. On Sunday, there was an air raid alert for the country and three missiles were fired at the city of Kramatorsk.

Friday’s events include a celebration on Red Square. Official ratification of the decrees will happen next week, said Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman.

The moves follow staged referendums held in occupied territory during a war in defiance of international law. Much of the provinces’ civilian populations has fled fighting since the war began in February, and people who did vote sometimes did so at gunpoint.

Cementing Russia’s hold over the two eastern regions, an area collectively known as the Donbas that Mr. Putin considers his primary prize, could allow the Kremlin to declare a victory at a time when hawks in Russia have criticized Russian forces for not doing enough to prevent recent breakneck gains by Ukrainian forces in the south and northeast of the country.

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

For Ukrainian Orthodox Jews Asher and David Cherkaskyi, a father and son both fighting on the front lines in the eastern Donbas region, beating Russia has become especially important to them because of their faith.

During the month of July, NPR spoke with the father and son on the phone as Jews around the world celebrated the Jewish new year of Rosh Hashana and prepared for Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.

The Soviet Union ruled by Jews and the Kremlin was cynical and tough: David Cherkaskyi’s legacy

You would be docked points in school if you said you were Jewish. If you were fighting in the army, you wouldn’t be given a medal. You’d just be sent to the most dangerous places,” he says. The anecdotes and propaganda were used to humiliate us. Jews and other nationalities were considered inferior. It was the Russians who were good enough to rule the Soviet Union.

David Cherkaskyi, 20, has only known an independent Ukraine, which declared independence in 1991. “Ukraine is a completely free country,” he tells NPR. You can do what you want here. You can be a Muslim or Jewish, it’s not a problem.

David was going to deploy to the front in the Donbas, but NPR met the Cherkaskyis in Dnipro just hours before. The top sofruts in the world are located in the city and it has a large Jewish population.

Asher says he started identifying as a Ukrainian Jew in the year after Russia’s annexation of the peninsula. He remembered the referendum to unify with Russia.

The voting process the Kremlin just staged was even more cynical and tough than the referendum on the peninsula, believes Cherkaskyi.

Russia has been funneling new conscripts to the front line in the east, but it has proved to be ineffectual and high Russian casualties are expected, according to a Ukrainian general and western analysts.

As of last week, Ukraine said it had recaptured 2,400 square kilometers (927 square miles) in Kherson previously under Russian control. Authorities in Kyiv said Wednesday that it had liberated five more small, rural villages as the Ukrainian military pushes further southwest.

The Asher Debacle in Lyman, Ukraine, ratcheted by the Kremlin of a Russian Federation after the Rosh Hashana

But this past Rosh Hashana, Asher says they were able to celebrate as usual, with blessings, apples and honey. And, he says, they said a “a prayer for the light to overcome the darkness approaching Europe and the whole world from the Russian Federation.”

According to a Russian newspaper, Ukrainian forces hunted down and captured Russians who were still in the city of Lyman, after they fled from their demoralized troops.

Two days after President Vladimir V. Putin held a grandiose ceremony to commemorate the incorporation of four Ukrainian territories into Russia, the debacle in the city — Lyman, a strategic railway hub in the eastern region of Donbas — ratcheted up pressure on a Russian leadership already facing withering criticism at home for its handling of the war and its conscription of up to 300,000 men into military service.

The Komsomolskaya Pravda published an article Sunday about the last few days of Russian occupation of Lyman, which reported desertion, poor planning and delayed arrival of reserves.

The Kremlin’s spokesman told reporters on Friday that it was a Russian region. “It has been legally fixed and defined. There is no need for any changes here.

The strikes came just hours after Ukraine’s president announced that the country’s military had retaken three more villages in one of the regions illegally annexed by Russia.

A 3 year old girl was taken to a hospital for treatment after being rescued from multi-story buildings, according to the governor.

The U.N. nuclear watchdog meets Kiev in Kyiv to discuss the Zaporizhzhia facility, a critical blow to Vladimir V. Putin

The head of the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog is expected to visit Kyiv this week to discuss the situation at the Zaporizhzhia facility after Putin signed a decree Wednesday declaring that Russia was taking over the six-reactor plant. The Foreign Ministry of Ukranian called the act a criminal and said that Putin’s decree was not valid. The state nuclear operator said it would continue to operate.

The director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency plans to talk to Ukrainian officials about the Russian move. He will also discuss efforts to set up a secure protection zone around the facility, which has been damaged in the fighting and seen staff including its director abducted by Russian troops.

The leaders from more than 40 countries are meeting in the Czech Republic on Thursday to create a political community aimed at boosting security and prosperity across the continent.

The move puts Kyiv on the cusp of achieving one of its most significant victories of the war and deals a bitter blow to President Vladimir V. Putin, who just a month ago declared the Kherson region a part of Russia forever.

The deputy head of the Ukrainian regional government, Yurii Sobolevskyi, said military hospitals were full of wounded Russian soldiers and that Russian military medics lacked supplies. Once they are stabilized, Russian soldiers are being sent to Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014.

During the occupation, it was hit by heavy damage as Ukrainian soldiers fought to take it back. Mykola, a 71-year-old man who gave only his first name, was among about 100 residents who lined up for aid on Wednesday.

The ruin of war: destroying everything, killing everyone in Moscow, killing Ukraine in a devastating disaster. The one year anniversary of Russia’s war with Ukraine

“We want the war to come to an end, the pharmacy and shops and hospitals to start working as they used to,” he said. “Now we don’t have anything yet. Everything is destroyed in a disaster.

In his nightly address, a defiant Zelenskyy switched to speaking Russian to tell the Moscow leadership that it has already lost the war that it launched Feb. 24.

STAVKY, Ukraine — Racing down a road with his men in pursuit of retreating Russian soldiers, a battalion commander came across an abandoned Russian armored vehicle, its engine still running. There were helmets, a rifle and a rocket propelled grenade inside. The men didn’t return.

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

The one-year anniversary of this war brings with it a lot of emotions, including a deep admiration for the Ukrainian people. But another feeling comes up, too, that doesn’t get talked about enough: awe at the breathtaking waste of war.

That is worrying. The talk in Russia is not about ending a war, but about repairing the mistakes that caused a Russian retreat, reinforcing discipline, and doubling down in Ukraine.

Stremousov has been openly critical of the war’s decision-makers in Moscow and on the battlefield. Last week, he blamed the military setbacks in Kherson on “incompetent commanders” who have not been held accountable for their mistakes.

According to the head of the defense committee in the State Legislature, officials must stop lying to the Russian public.

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

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

“There is no need to somehow cast a shadow over the entire Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation because of some, I do not say traitors, but incompetent commanders, who did not bother, and were not accountable, for the processes and gaps that exist today,” Stremousov said. “Indeed, many say that the Minister of Defense [Sergei Shoigu], who allowed this situation to happen, could, as an officer, shoot himself. But, you know, the word officer has never been used before.

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.

The Central Military District commander, Colonel-General Aleksandr Lapin, was accused by Kadyrov of moving his headquarters to another area and not providing enough for his troops.

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

The Great Patriotic War was one of the features of Putinism and is considered a fetish in Russia. The use of punishment battalions and desertion were some of the tactics used by the Red Army to fight Hitler’s Wehrmacht.

Kadyrov was promoted by Putin to the rank of general, and he has been one of the most vocal advocates of the harsh methods of the past. He said recently in a Telegram post that if he had his way, he would give the government extraordinary wartime powers in Russia.

Kadyrov said in post that he would call for a martial law throughout the country because they were at war with the NATO bloc.

A Russian commander of the Zaporizhzhia plant has been deployed to secure the Krasnador-Croynian bridge

On a day when Russia was invaded by the United States, the award of the Peace Prize to human rights activists in Russia was seen as a rebuke to Russia.

The governor said that the city of Nikopol was hit by heavy shells overnight. No casualties have been reported.

At least one high-rise apartment building partially collapsed after the blasts in the city, which is located in a region of Moscow that it has claimed as its own.

The Institute said that videos of the bridge showed damage, but it would not cripple Russia’s ability to equip its troops in Ukraine.

According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the Zaporizhzhia plant has lost its last external power source and is relying on emergency diesel generators.

Putin accused the Ukrainians of being involved in the attack on the bridge, but Ukraine did not claim responsibility. He said that the strike were in response to the attack, butUkrainian intelligence says the strikes had been planned for last week.

Putin put the Russian federal security service into charge of ensuring the security of the bridge and the energy infrastructure that runs between the two countries.

— A Russian commander wanted for his role in the downing of a Malaysian airliner over eastern Ukraine in 2014 has been deployed to the front, according to social media posts by pro-Kremlin commentators. According to posts by Maksim Fomin and others, the Russian leader of a front-line unit has been given responsibility.

The bridge is strategically important because it links Russia’s Krasnador region with the Crimean peninsula, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014 in a move roundly criticized by the international community.

Traffic was temporarily halted on the bridge. Automobile traffic resumed Saturday afternoon on one of the two links that remained intact, with the flow alternating in each direction, said Crimea’s Russia-backed leader, Sergey Aksyonov.

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

The destruction of an apartment building by a missile barrage in the city of Krasnodar, Kyiv, and two other neighborhoods

“We have already established the route of the truck,” he said, adding that it had been to Bulgaria, Georgia, Armenia, North Ossetia and Krasnodar — a region in southern Russia — among other places.

The recent conflict has focused on the north of the peninsula. Zelenskyy wrote in a Telegram post that he was unhappy with the latest attack.

Emergency crews tried to get to the upper floors of the building that was hit, as terrified residents watched from behind the police tape. The chasm was about 40 feet wide, and it burned where apartments once stood. The missile barrage blew out the windows and doors in an apartment building a few hundred feet away. At least 20 homes and 50 apartment buildings were damaged in the city.

When Anastasiia Hryn, a 34-year-old Kyiv resident, woke up to the sound of air raid sirens followed by an explosion, she and her son descended to the basement shelter beneath their building. They were not surprised and did not let that affect their spirits.

About 3 kilometers (2 miles) away in another neighborhood ravaged by a missile, three volunteers dug a shallow grave for a German shepherd killed in the strike, the dog’s leg blown away by the blast.

The Russian bridge attack on Ukraine and the fight for de-escalation: Bloomberg News’ Michael Bociurkiw in Washington D.C.

The Russian president formed a committee to investigate the bridge explosion but he did not respond strongly enough to appease angry war hawks according to an independent Russian political analyst. The attack and response, he said, has “inspired the opposition, while the loyalists are demoralized.”

They see that when the authorities say that everything is going to plan and we’re winning, they’re lying, and it demoralizes them.

— 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. There are preliminary indications that a large number of people are buried in one location and that another contains the bodies of fallen Ukrainian soldiers. Police said that people who were not members of the military were buried in a 40-meter long trench.

Russian units have been in contact with the Ukrainians in what is largely open rural territory for months, but have been hit with a lot of losses.

There are already signs of Russian attempts to damage our nuclear and thermal power plants by cutting off our generating facilities. “I urge Ukrainians to understand that the situation is difficult, I urge them to be as prepared as possible for the fact that there will be no quick improvement in the situation with electricity.”

China and India also call for de-escalation: After the strikes, China expressed hope that the situation in Ukraine will “de-escalated soon.” India has said that it is concerned by the increase in the conflict and urged a cessation of hostilities and return to the path of dialogue. The attack was also condemned by other European leaders.

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

Avadiivka, Ukraine: The city that fought to survive the weekend Kerch Bridge bombing attack and its impact on business confidence

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.

Both Ukrainian and pro-Russian accounts claim that there was a strike on a school for Russian conscripts in Makiivka on New Year’s Day.

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 upcoming weddings and parties.

The missiles hit an industrial area of the city, and there weren’t any casualties, according to the Ukrainian governor of Donetsk, Pavlo Kyrylenko. The city of Avdiivka was hit with six rounds of shelling on Sunday and a woman was wounded.

Back when Russian troops rolled in at the beginning of the war, this was a city that tried to resist: people were taken away, tortured, disappeared, residents said.

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

With many asylum seekers coming back home, the attacks could cause another blow to business confidence.

Putin’s reaction to the explosion of the longest road bridge between the UK and Belarus: What Russia can do about it, and what the West can do

It seems that dictators like to hardwire newly claim territory with expensive, record-breaking infrastructure projects. In 2018, Putin personally opened the Kerch bridge – Europe’s longest – by driving a truck across it. That same year, one of the first things Chinese President Xi Jinping did after Beijing reclaimed Macau and Hong Kong was to connect the former Portuguese and British territories with the world’s longest sea crossing bridge. The $20 billion, 34-mile road bridge opened after about two years of delays.

The reaction among Ukrainians to the explosion was instantaneous: humorous memes lit up social media channels like a Christmas tree. Many shared their sense of jubilation via text messages.

For Putin, consumed by pride and self-interest, sitting still was never an option. He responded in the only way he knows how, by unleashing more death and destruction, with the force that probably comes natural to a former KGB operative.

It was also an act of selfish desperation: facing increasing criticism at home, including on state-controlled television, has placed Putin on unusually thin ice.

“The Russians feel squeezed between our forces and the banks of the Dnipro, so they’re looking for ways to punish local communities,” said Natalia Humeniuk, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s southern command, on national television. Ukrainian commanders have set a goal to liberate Kherson by the winter.

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.

The most important thing that the West can do right now is to show unity and resolve as a man who probes for weakness and exploits divisions. Western governments need to realize that rhetoric and sanctions do not have an effect on Putin. They need to continue to arm Ukrainians and provide urgent training, even if it means sending military experts closer to the battlefield to speed up the integration of high technology weapons.

Furthermore, high tech defense systems are needed to protect Kyiv and crucial energy infrastructure around the country. With the cold around the corner, it is important to protect the heating systems.

The Kherson Regional Capital: How Russian Forces attacked the Ukrainians in the Early Stages of the Decay of the Dnipro River

Turkey and the Gulf states, which welcome many Russian tourists, need to be pressured to join the West in further isolating Russia.

Footage of the jubilant scenes emerged hours after Russia announced it had withdrawn from the west bank of the Dnipro River in the strategic southern region of Kherson, leaving the regional capital of Kherson and surrounding areas to the Ukrainians.

The announcement was made by a Russian deputy prime minister after the head of the Moscow-backed administration in Kherson appealed to the Kremlin for help moving people out of harms way.

The governor of the partially occupied Kherson region reported on Sunday that the Russian forces attacked the city of Kherson 41 times over the past 24 hours.

We suggested that residents of the Kherson region leave if they have a desire to protect themselves from missile strikes.

However, Kirill Stremousov, the deputy head of the Kherson region’s military administration, said that the civilian transports were not an “evacuation.”

On Tuesday, about 70 countries and international organizations pledged more than $1 billion to help repair Ukraine’s infrastructure. Last week, the Pentagon announced that more than $300 million in security assistance for Ukraine had been approved and would be used to bolster its air defense. In November, the US announced a $53 million package to support repairs to Ukraine’s power system.

The images captured hundreds of cargo trucks backed up and waiting to cross from Crimea into Russia by ferry, some five days after the bombing. The images, captured on Wednesday by Maxar Technologies, show a big backup at the port in Kerch and a line of trucks miles away at an airport that is apparently being used as a staging area.

The long lines for the ferry crossing were made worse by the security checkpoint set up during the bridge explosion, according to an analyst from the International Crisis Group.

The Road to War with Ukraine: Observing the Progress of the Russian Regime in the North of the Crimean Capital Vysokopillya

Two people were killed in attacks on the northeastern region of Ukraine. Oleh Syniehubov, head of the Kharkiv regional military administration, said four rockets had hit the city — likely S300s — and that critical infrastructure was the intended target.

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

With the cold months coming and likely bringing a slow down in ground combat, experts say the next weeks of the war are important, and another potential spike in intensity looms over Ukraine as each side seeks to strike another blow.

Ukrainian troops hoist the country’s flag above a building in Vysokopillya, in the southern Kherson region, last month. Ukrainian officials say they have liberated hundreds of settlements since their counter-offensive began.

The Russians want to avoid a collapse in their frontline before the winter sets in, according to the author of a book on Russia’s road to war with Ukraine.

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

Russia is taking action to stop recent Ukrainian advances while rebuilding ground forces that were decimated during the first eight months of the 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 attacking in the east, but on defense in the south.

It would send a powerful signal to the other side of the conflict if they were to win a significant victory in the war, and it is also possible that Ukraine will be eager to improve their situation before the cold weather sets in.

“There are so many reasons why there is an incentive for Ukraine to get things done quickly,” Giles said. The resilience of the Ukrainian government and its Western backers in the face of the winter energy crisis in Europe will always be a test of that.

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

While estimating the military reserves of the army is not straightforward, experts believe that Russia won’t form a recurrent pattern of bombardments and that Moscow may not have the capacity to keep it up.

Jeremy Fleming, the UK’s spy chief, said in a speech that Russian commanders were aware that their supplies were running out.

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

Justin Bronk, a military expert with the London-based Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), agreed with that assessment, telling CNN that, “Ukrainian interception success rates against Russian cruise missiles have risen significantly since the start of the invasion in February.”

Since October 10, the strikes of the scale have become less frequent. Budanov, the head of Ukrainian military intelligence, said that Russia is running out of cruise missiles.

The impact of such an intervention would be limited, since Belarusian troops are not large enough to bolster Russia. But it would threaten another assault on Ukraine’s northern flank below the Belarusian border.

Giles said that reopening the 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. The leader has sought to highlight Ukraine’s success in intercepting Russian missiles, saying more than half of the missiles and drones launched at Ukraine in a second wave of strikes on Tuesday were brought down.

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

The enemy wanted to diminish the attention of air defense, a Ukrainian Air Force spokesman said. 60 missiles were downed by the air defense forces of Ukraine, said Valeriy Zaluzhny, the military chief.

Ukraine “badly needed” modern systems such as the IRIS-T that arrived this week from Germany and the NASAMS expected from the United States Bronk said that.

Russia’s response to the Ukrainian counteroffensive and the threat of a French-Sweigsawi military deployment to Ukraine

It means that, as winter approaches, the stakes of the war have been raised once more. Giles said Russia would like to keep it up. But the Ukrainian successes of recent weeks have sent a direct message to the Kremlin, too. “They are able to do things that take us by surprise, so let’s get used to it,” Giles said.

The explosion triggered a frenzied response from the Kremlin, which used the explosion to justify a series of brutal airstrikes across Ukraine in scenes eerily similar to the beginning of the invasion.

More than a dozen explosions ripped through Russian border region and a series of blasts seriously damaged the offices of the Russian government in the Ukrainian city of Donetsk on Sunday, as Russia felt war on its own territory after a difficult weekend in southern and eastern Ukraine.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said the two men who shot at the troops were dead before taking their own lives.

Lengthy prison sentences have been meted out to high profile opposition voices on charges of “discrediting” the Russian army by questioning its conduct or strategy.

— France, seeking to puncture perceptions that it has lagged in supporting Ukraine, confirmed it’s pledging air-defense missiles and stepped-up military training to Ukraine. Up to 2,000 Ukrainian soldiers will be embedded with military units in France, rotating through for several weeks of combat training, specialized training in logistics and other needs, and training on equipment supplied by France, the French defense minister, Sébastien Lecornu, said in an interview published in Le Parisien.

The Institute for the Study of War believes that deporting Ukrainian citizens to Russian territory is a way of increasing Russian control over the occupied areas.

It referenced statements made this week by Russian authorities that claimed that “several thousand” children from a southern region occupied by Moscow had been placed in rest homes and children’s camps amid the Ukrainian counteroffensive. The original comments made by the deputy prime minister of Russia were reported by RIA Novosti.

Russian authorities admitted in the past that they had violated an international treaty on genocide prevention by placing children from Russia-held areas of Ukraine into adoptive homes with Russians.

Russian generals who are accused of directing the war effort far from the frontline have long been decried by the author as being uneducated in principle and unwilling to listen to warnings. The Dutch court of mass murder found Girkin guilty of the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in eastern Ukraine and he was sentenced to death.

Recently, Girkin’s social media posts have lashed out at Moscow’s battlefield failures. The Ukrainian defense intelligence agency will give a $100,000 reward to anyone who captures him.

Nuclear deterrence exercises in the Kherson region: NPR’s State of Ukraine and the “Steadfast Noon”

Nuclear deterrence exercises will be held by NATO. NATO has warned Russia not to use nuclear weapons on Ukraine but says the “Steadfast Noon” drills are a routine, annual training activity.

Russian agents are suspected of carrying out a large explosion on a bridge to Crimea that killed eight people.

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

Saldo offered residents the option of relocating to cities “in any part of Russia,” and said the Russian government would provide housing vouchers to those who wished to move further from the fighting.

“We will not surrender the city, and we will fight to the end,” he said, adding that residents whose homes might be damaged from shelling could receive compensation from the Russian government.

Earlier in October, Ukrainian forces in the Kherson region pushed the Russian line back by 20 miles, according to the President’s office and Deep State, an independent monitoring group.

The situation in Kherson was described as very difficult by the general during his first interview after being appointed to lead Russia’s armed forces.

The goal is to maximize the safety of civilians and our soldiers. That is our priority,” Surovikin said to the Zvezda channel, a state media outlet funded by Russia’s Defense Ministry.

The two Ukrainian army reserve officers were told to deliver anti-tank missiles to their fellow soldiers in the suburbs north of Kyiv. Then, as they stood exposed on a highway, Nikitin, who goes by the battle nickname Concrete, says they received new orders.

“A guy on the radio said, ‘There are two Russian tanks coming at you. While sitting in a park in Mykolaiv, Nikitin said to try to hit one and post it on the internet.

There was a problem, neither soldier had ever fired an NLAW. They hid in some trees and looked up a video on how to do it, as the tanks approached. They prepared the missiles after taking their positions.

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

About 20 videos geolocated by CNN show basic tactical blunders in an area that’s open and flat, where Ukrainian spotters on higher ground can direct artillery strikes and where minefields are worsening Russian casualties.

Nikitin and Volovyk have fought in both environments and describe their on-the-job training as a mix of terror, adventure and black comedy. The two men offer an unvarnished view of the fighting and say the first days of the war were filled with confusion.

“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 learned English by playing video games. He says Russian tactics and decision-making have improved during the war, but he found some of their early actions perplexing. Riot police were deployed by the Russians, only to be wiped out.

“We see how they advance, we see how they fight and we were like, ‘Okay, is this their best or are they just mocking us?’” recalls Volovyk, who wears a camouflage cap with the message “Don’t Worry, Be Ready.”

“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.”

After two weeks, the men were offered new jobs doing reconnaissance. It’s dangerous work that involves getting close to enemy lines and trying to evade detection. But the men leapt at the opportunity — anything to get out of the trenches.

The “Fireflies” have their own social media accounts and a website. Their videos show them setting up a device in an abandoned farmhouse, and launching it from a field. Then they help guide a shell that just misses a Russian armored personnel carrier, enveloping it in a cloud of smoke. It’s a reminder that, even with all the advanced technology, it’s still hard to hit a moving target.

Volovyk and Nikitin say they prefer military-grade drones. The military drones are harder to jam because of their secure data transfer.

The soldiers have had some close calls. When they came across a Russian soldier in a field, they traveled with a team of engineers.

“He looks at me, I look at him and he just jumps into the bushes,” recalls Nikitin. He ordered the engineers to kill the Russians and any of their fellow soldiers.

Nikitin and Volovyk joined the army reserve six years ago, after the Russians invaded Crimea. Nikitin says they weren’t prophets, but they knew Russia would try to take the rest of Ukraine. Here down south, their goal is to liberate Kherson, the regional capital.

Grisly videos filmed by Ukrainian drones showing Russian infantry being struck by artillery in poorly prepared positions have partly supported those assertions, as has reporting in Russian news media of mobilized soldiers telling relatives about high casualty rates. The videos have not been independently verified and their exact location on the front line could not be determined.

According to the statement, Russian forces staged up to 80 assaults per day, and spoke with an American general who was the top commander in Europe.

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

“Russian forces would likely have had more success in such offensive operations if they had waited until enough mobilized personnel had arrived to amass a force large enough to overcome Ukrainian defenses,” the institute said in a statement on Thursday.

Earlier, Russia claimed that more than 600 Ukrainian soldiers were killed in a Russian strike in Kramatorsk carried out in “retaliation” over the Ukrainian attack on Russian-occupied Makiivka last week, according to a statement from the Russian Defense Ministry.

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

A black car rider’s tale of evacuating Russians in a Zaporizhia refugee camp: I. Viktor’s middle name

“I still can’t believe that I left there,” says Viktor, while pulling a red suitcase from the black car he rode to Zaporizhia, about 25 miles from occupied territory. “The madness.”

His home is close to Kherson. He and his wife Nadiya raised their three daughters there. The Russians broke into their house within hours of them leaving, Viktor says a neighbor told him.

At a Zaporizhzhia shelter, a volunteer who asks that he be called by his middle name, Artyom, helps care for Kherson evacuees as if they were his own family. Artyom asked that we not use his full name to protect his relatives in Kherson.

His wife stays at home as much as she can. She earns money by selling potatoes and vegetables at the street market.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/11/07/1134465380/kherson-ukraine-russia-battle-looms

Artyom and his wife worry that the Russians will stay with them, because they’re afraid of their family. Kherson, Bosnia, a prewar city

Artyom says it’s not fine. He puts his fingers on the fear he has of the Russians stopping his wife. He is worried she will get sick. She’s four months’ pregnant. He’s worried about the baby.

Holovnya, who is living in Kyiv, calls some of them collaborators. Some people can’t leave. Many are older. Others have few resources. Their lives right now are “intense,” he says.

What little public interaction there is now in the city revolves mostly around the local street markets that popped up since the war began. Most of the stores in Kherson are either closed or have empty shelves, so local farmers and bakers have been selling and trading items at the street markets.

“You can buy most things, from starting with medicine and finishing with meat,” says Natalyia Schevchenko, 30, who fled Kherson this summer. “But it’s terrible to observe. They cut meat on the side of the car and sell medicine on the hood.

Schevchenko, who is volunteering at an Odesa nonprofit called Side-by-Side to evacuate residents from Kherson and other occupied territories, remains in contact with those in the city. She says her Grandmother gives her updates whenever she needs them.

Artyom and his wife talk whenever they can. They try to keep their conversations light, but worry that Russians are listening in.

It’s scary — but they agree it’s a good thing. Artyom may be able to go home soon, if they think it means theUkrainians are getting closer.

While state media in Russia said that Ukrainian shelling had damaged the power lines, Yaroslav Yanushevych, the exiled Ukrainian head of the Kherson regional military administration, blamed Russian troops.

In Beryslav, near Kherson city, Russian forces have placed mines just north of a critical dam, according to Mr.Yanushevych.

About 200 Ukrainians were killed when the Russians occupied Borodianka shortly after the invasion began on Feb. 24 until the end of March, Yerko says. The town’s prewar population of 14,000 dwindled to a little more than 1,000. It’s back up to about 9,000 despite the lack of resources.

Ukrainian officials and residents say the civilians were forced to leave. Others say that it was about clearing the way for the Russian troops.

The return of Kostenko and many other soldiers from Kherson was a way for them to come home. The Russian retreat last week was also a major blow to Moscow’s war effort. Kherson city was the only regional capital to fall to the Russians, who saw it as a stepping stone in their long-shot strategy to take over Ukraine’s Black Sea coast.

The agency offered to guarantee the rights of Russian soldiers abandoned by their military leadership and still in Kherson, if they surrendered.

To escape Kherson, your commanders forced you to dress in civilian clothes. Obviously, you won’t succeed,” the Ukrainian statement said.

There are reports that the area’s only bridge over the Dnipro has been destroyed. Videos shared online appeared to show a large section of the bridge sheared off completely. Russian officials accused their Ukrainian counterparts of being responsible for the damage.

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

Hours earlier, the Kremlin had issued a statement saying that the withdrawal of its forces across the Dnipro River was complete, though residents reported that there were still Russian soldiers in the city, some wearing civilian clothes.

The withdrawal is intended to save resources and allow for deployment to other fronts, but it nonetheless deals a blow to the Moscow campaign in Ukraine.

Despite abandoning Kherson to Ukrainian forces, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov insisted Russia still maintains a legal hold over the territory. “Here, there is no need for change,” Peskov was quoted as saying.

After a Russian retreat from Kherson, Ukrainian soldiers started entering the city on Friday.

After Russia said the withdrawal of its troops from the Dnipro River was complete, videos went around on social media showing civilians cheering and awaiting the arrival of a contingent of Ukrainian troops.

Recapturing control of Kherson would also bolster the Ukrainian government’s argument that it should press on militarily while it has Russian forces on the run, and not return to the bargaining table, as some American officials have advocated.

After surviving months of Russian occupation, Elated civilians in Kherson descended on the 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 apparent final hours of the Russian occupation overnight Thursday to Friday featured several explosions and were chaotic and disorienting, according to residents of Kherson reached by telephone on Friday morning.

Serhiy, a retiree who asked that his last name not be published for security reasons, said in a series of texts that the conditions in the city had deteriorated overnight.

It was not possible to summon the fire department at night because the building burned in the center. “There was no phone signal, no electricity, no heating and no water.”

The situation in Kherson, Ukraine, as seen by a citizen-based television channel in the week after the Russian invasion of Mykolaiv

The Russian military has occupied local houses and schools. Military equipment is stationed in residential areas,” Federov said in November.

It also claimed that the Ukrainian advance had been held back for several days, and that “manpower and military equipment of the Armed Forces of Ukraine on the right bank of the Dnieper are being hit by fire.”

On Friday night, the president of Ukraine posted a video on his Facebook page of a crowd in the city waving flags and chanting ZSU.

The statement stated that not a single piece of military equipment was left behind on the west bank. “All Russian servicemen have moved to the left bank of the Dnieper.”

The east bank of Ukraine has not reported any incoming fire on Friday, even though it said a missile attack on the city of Mykolaiv killed seven people.

The Ukrainian military’s southern operational command said that Russian forces had been loading into boats that could be used to cross the river.

The relatively few residents who remain in Kherson have endured curfews, shortages of goods, partisan warfare and an intense campaign to force them to become Russian citizens and accept Moscow’s warped version of their culture and history.

A video circulating on social media on Friday, geolocated and authenticated by CNN, showed Ukrainian forces being greeted by residents on the main highway in Tyahinka. The village is located west of the Dnieper river and the hydroelectric dam at Nova Kakhovka.

One video shows a flag flying over a memorial for World War II and another shows a young girl holding a Russian flag in front of a billboard that says “Russia is here forever.”

In the past large protests against Russian plans to transform the region into a pro-Russian republic have brought joy to the streets of Kherson, which now have Ukrainian flags and painted faces on them.

Kyiv officials had warned that retreating Russian troops could turn the regional capital of Kherson into a “city of death” on the way out, and an official in southern Ukraine warned residents Friday to be wary of quickly returning to recently liberated territory due to the threat of mines.

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

The return of Kherson: Human Rights, Nuclear Power Plants, Bridges, and Humanoid Reservoirs as Seen by Locals

“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.”

Their suffering is yet to be focused on. Residents interviewed by journalists have told of friends being kidnapped, children being illegally deported, and relatives being tortured and killed. Evidence of human rights abuses in Ukraine have been uncovered after Russian left the country.

Trenches and checkpoints were empty, quickly abandoned by Russians who on Friday announced they had withdrawn from the west bank of the Dnipro River in the strategic southern region of Kherson, leaving the regional capital of the same name and surrounding areas to the Ukrainians.

The withdrawal will protect the lives of civilians and troops who have had to fight a punishing Ukrainian counteroffensive that targeted Russian ammunitions depots and command posts, which hampered their supply lines.

President Zelensky said Friday was a historic day for his country. “We are returning the south of our country, we are returning Kherson,” Zelensky said.

In addition, the success of Kherson may allow exhausted Ukrainian units some respite, and allow the focus of fighting to shift from Luhansk and Donetsk.

Maxar Technologies showed satellite images and other photos which showed that at least seven bridges have been destroyed in the last 24 hours.

There is new damage on the east bank of the Dnipro dam in the Kherson region city of Nova Kakhovka. For weeks, both sides have accused the other of planning to breach the dam, which if destroyed would lead to extensive flooding on the east bank and deprive the nuclear power plant in Zaporizhzhia of water to cool its reactors.

As the crew filmed live in Kherson’s central square, some in the crowd of locals sang the national anthem while others shouted “Slava Ukrayini!” – glory to Ukraine, a patriotic greeting.

Locals have been climbing top of the buildings in the square in order to put Ukrainian flags on top of them. Soldiers driving through are greeted with cheers and asked to sign autographs on flags.

She says that she has been having nightmares about Russians invading Kherson since the year 2014, when they invaded and occupied the peninsula of Simferopol. My nightmare came true.

“Everyone here is out celebrating in the square here. People are wearing the Ukrainian flag, they’re hugging the soldiers, they’ve come out to see what it’s like to have freedom,” Robertson said.

Katerina said the liberation was the best day of her life after eight months under Russian occupation. She told CNN that her street is free.

Speaking Saturday on the next steps for the Ukrainian military, CNN military analyst Cedric Leighton said: “This is going to be a major urban operation. What you are going to see is a methodical operation to clear buildings of potential booby traps and mines.

For much of the journey through smaller towns and settlements, our team of CNN journalists was forced to drive through diversions and fields: bridges over canals were blown up, and roads were full of craters and littered with anti-tank mines.

The outskirts of the city, which had been occupied by Russian forces since March 3, were deserted, with no military presence except for a Ukrainian checkpoint around 5 miles outside of the city center, where half a dozen soldiers waved CNN’s crew in.

The city has no water, no internet connection, and little power. As the CNN crew was entering the city center on Saturday, the mood was high.

The military presence is still limited, but the crowds on the street are excited and cheer whenever a truck full of soldiers drives past.

The old man and old woman hugged the young soldier with their hands on his shoulder, while the CNN crew stopped to regroup.

Everyone wants you to understand what the occupiers have gone through, how good they are now, and how grateful they are for the countries that have helped them.

A Hero’s Welcome Back to Kherson after the First Day of the Second World War and the Story of a Soldier That Has Been Done

An elderly neighbor greeted him with a bouquet of blue and yellow flowers, wrapped her arms around his shoulders and wept, according to a video Kostenko provided NPR.

“We’ve missed you so much,” said a villager in a black watch cap addressing the colonel and the soldiers accompanying him: Kostenko’s brother, Andriy, and their cousin, Denys.

The one-story house where Kostenko had grown up and where Russian troops had lived since March is in the courtyard. He passed a vulgar sign they had left painted on a wall and then stepped inside.

“The windows were broken,” Kostenko recalled in a text message with NPR. “Almost all the furniture and things were stolen,” including his body armor and medals. The Russians had left behind a bed, some old clothes and a grenade.

“We pretty much denied those troops their supply chains,” says Stanislav Volovyk, a Ukrainian drone operator who helps guide the fire of howitzers. “We blew up the bridges. They got their supply routes under fire control.

Various factors led to Ukraine’s routing of the Russians in this part of Kherson, but soldiers say the HIMARS had a big impact because they provided a range and level of accuracy the Ukrainians had never had before.

A soldier named Fox, who is from Kherson and goes by the nickname of the battle nickname, said that he helped target and kill 20 Russian soldiers who were hiding in a bunker after learning that a high-energy missile was flying.

Before the war, Fox worked as a seaman on a cargo ship out of the port of Kherson. He fled on the first day of the war, then joined the army and became part of a reconnaissance team. Last weekend, he returned to his neighborhood to a hero’s welcome. His neighbours had no idea he was going to be a soldier.

“They were completely unprepared,” said Fox, who arrived in full battle gear. “I didn’t tell them I had joined the army because it could’ve caused them problems as they were in Russian-occupied territory.”

Fox said he doesn’t remember a happier moment in his life today, as he returned to Kherson city over the weekend.

Fox pointed out that before they left, the Russians sabotaged the city’s water, electrical and mobile communications systems — the latter is in the process of being restored, according to the local military administration.

The Russians were able to continue the fight after crossing the Dnieper River as they were able to stay within easy bombing range of the city.

KYIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian and Russian forces traded fire on Monday from across the broad expanse of the Dnipro River that now divides them after Russia’s retreat from the southern city of Kherson, reshaping the battlefield with a victory that Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, declared marked “the beginning of the end of the war.”

The Dnipro has become the new front line in southern Ukraine, and officials there warned of continued danger from fighting in regions that have already endured months of Russian occupation.

During the day, there was a lot of fire in southern districts of the city near the destroyed Bridge over the Dnipro and fears that the Russian Army would use it to retaliate for the loss of the city.

Mortar shells struck near the bridge, sending up puffs of smoke. Near the riverfront, incoming rounds rang out with thunderous, metallic booms. It was not immediately possible to assess what had been hit.

Mines are dangerous: a serious incident in Novoraysk, a city in Ukraine, said Mr. Zelensky

The mines are dangerous. 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. Another mine injured six railway workers who were trying to restore service 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.

“Occupants rob local people and exchange stuff for samogon,” or homemade vodka, said one resident, Tatiana, who communicated via a secure messaging app from Oleshky, a town across the river from Kherson City. They get more aggressive after they get drunk. We are so scared here.” She asked that her surname be withheld for security.

Ivan wrote in a text message that Russian people roam around, 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609-. He lives in Skadovsk, which is south of Kherson city, and asked that his surname not be used out of concern for his safety. We try to arrange for someone local to stay at the owners’ place. Russians don’t take it so that it is not abandoned.

Is Putin really the only one in the Ukraine? An Observational Analysis of Putin’s Interaction with the Russian Military and Industrial Complex

Editor’s Note: David A. Andelman, a contributor to CNN, twice winner of the Deadline Club Award, is a chevalier of the French Legion of Honor, author of “A Red Line in the Sand: Diplomacy, Strategy, and the History of Wars That Might Still Happen” and blogs at Andelman Unleashed. He was previously a correspondent for CBS News in Europe and Asia. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. CNN has more opinion.

The first missile to have landed in Poland, a NATO member, may have been an anti-aircraft missile from the Ukrainians, who were believed to have shot down an incoming Russian missile just a short distance from one of the largest cities in Ukraine. (President Volodymyr Zelensky, meanwhile, has insisted the missile was not Ukrainian)

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.

Russian soldiers have rebelled at what they were told to do and refused to fight. Amid plummeting morale, the UK’s Defense Ministry believes Russian troops may be prepared to shoot retreating or deserting soldiers.

In the first two months of operations, the hotline and Telegram channel have booked 3,300 calls as a result of the Ukrainian military intelligence project called “I want to live.”

Putin has also tried, though he has been stymied at most turns, to establish black market networks abroad to source what he needs to fuel his war machine – much as Kim Jong-un has done in North Korea. The United States has already uncovered and recently sanctioned vast networks of such shadow companies and individuals centered in hubs from Taiwan to Armenia, Switzerland, Germany, Spain, France, and Luxembourg to source high-tech goods for Russia’s collapsing military-industrial complex.

Putin is being isolated more and more on the world stage. The session of the G20 was called the “G19” and only the head of state stayed away. Though Putin once lusted after a return to the G7 (known as the G8 before he was ousted after his seizure of Crimea), inclusion now seems but a distant dream. Russia’s sudden ban on 100 Canadians, including Canadian-American Jim Carrey, from entering the country only made the comparison with North Korea more striking.

Putin argued it was good riddance, part of a “self-cleansing” of Russian society from traitors and spies. Russian officials have suggested that the people who left the country have their passports taken away. Yet there are questions whether Russia can thrive without many of its best and brightest.

One leading Russian journalist, Mikhail Zygar, who has settled in Berlin after fleeing in March, told me last week that while he hoped this is not the case, he is prepared to accept the reality – like many of his countrymen, he may never be able to return to his homeland, to which he remains deeply attached.

Russian Civil Defense: The Case for a Future Combat Air System (CFAS) Mission in the Light of “Heroes of Russia”

The west is trying to deprive the country of material resources in order to pursue this war, which includes Russian oil and natural gas. “We have understood and learnt our lesson that it was an unhealthy and unsustainable dependency, and we want reliable and forward-looking connections,” Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission told the G20 on Tuesday.

Moreover, Putin’s dream that this conflict, along with the enormous burden it has proven to be on Western countries, would only drive further wedges into the Western alliance are proving unfulfilled. The French-German project for a next-generation jet fighter at the heart of the Future Combat Air System was starting to move forward on Monday after Word began spreading that the project was starting to move forward.

Above all, Putin still does not appear to have learned that revenge is not an appropriate way to act on or off the battlefield and in the final analysis is most likely to isolate and weaken Russia, perhaps irreversibly.

Putin made public comments regarding the attacks onUkraine’s energy infrastructure.

After the awards ceremony for “Heroes of Russia” at the Kremlin, he spoke to a group of soldiers, holding a glass of champagne.

“This book is a confession. I am guilty for not reading the signs much earlier. I am responsible for the war that Russia was involved in. My peers are as well. Russian culture is to blame for making these horrors possible.

Russia’s announcement that its airfield in theKursk region was targeted in a drone attack appears to be a reference to it. The Ukrainian Defense Ministry has offered no comment on recent explosions, including in Kursk, which are deep within Russia. The targets are well beyond the country’s declared drones.

The Donetsk School – A Community Resource for Families and Children – is Water Deficient in Putin’s Appearance

He ended his apparent off-the-cuff comments by claiming there is no mention of the water situation. “No one has said a word about it anywhere. At all! Complete silence ” he said.

Local Russian authorities in Donetsk — which Putin claimed to annex in defiance of international law — have reported frequent shelling of the city this week.

During the week, he shares the school with nearly 1,000 students. The school also serves as a shelter, providing heat, food and water for the community when extended blackouts hit.

Power cuts can last up to 24 hours. Farming equipment and warehouses in this agricultural region were destroyed. He believes business activity is less than it was.

The people are from the houses on the main street. The ones that were destroyed were the ones that Olhakozar was in charge of.

Taras Shevchenko, the bust of Ukraine’s national poet, and russia war Ukrainian townborodian Ka-banksy power cuts

She is standing in a hallway while the lights go out for an interview. She will wait to see if the power comes back. If it starts to feel cold, she will turn on the generator. She said it’s like this every day.

In the center of town is a bust of Ukraine’s national poet, Taras Shevchenko. He was in favor of Ukrainian independence from Russia in the 19th century. He wrote, “It’s bad to be in chains and die a slave.”

A British artist well-known for his street spray-paintings, Banksy, scribbled on several badly scarred walls last month, after which he posted a picture of the painting on his social media accounts.

One image shows a young boy tossing a man to the floor. Both are in martial arts attire. The man is assumed to be Putin, the leader of Russia.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/12/10/1141536117/russia-war-ukraine-town-borodianka-banksy-power-cuts

“It’s hard to make the right decisions,” said mayor of Zaporizhzhia, a Russian city in the Odesa region

People are happy that we’re getting the attention. But the paintings are on buildings that were destroyed,” Yerko says. “We’re planning to remove the paintings and put them somewhere else.”

The mayor said that several explosions, including at the Christian Church, which the occupiers seized several months ago, turned into their hideout.

The missile attack on Melitopol destroyed a recreation center where people were eating dinner, according to the acting governor of Zaporizhzhia.

Ukrainian missiles were fired in the direction of the Voroshilovsky and Kalininsky districts, according to the city administration.

An explosion at a Russian military barracks in Sovietske killed and wounded many people, according to an unofficial portal.

Sergey Aksenov, the Russian-appointed head of Crimea, said on Telegram: “The air defense system worked over Simferopol. All services are functioning as usual.

He said that the strikes, using Iranian drones, had left many in the dark. Mr. Zelensky called the situation in the Odesa region “very difficult,” noting that only the most critical infrastructure there remained operational. He warned that although repair crews were working “nonstop,” restoring power to civilians would take “days,” not “hours.”

In his Saturday speech, Mr. Zelensky mentioned that 10 of the drones used by Russian forces had been shot down by the Ukrainians. It was not possible to verify his total.

Damning the Russian Orthodox Church with Missile Attacks: The U.S. has stepped up and issuing a ban on churches in Ukraine

During the missile attacks, authorities in Odesa said that there had been emergency power cuts. DTEK, a utility company said that they were introduced due to the threat of missiles hitting energy facilities.

“This is the true attitude of Russia towards Odesa, towards Odesa residents – deliberate bullying, deliberate attempt to bring disaster to the city,” Zelensky added.

The United States announced a $2 billion dollar security package to Ukraine, which includes new funding for contracts including HIMARS rockets, 155-millimeter artillery ammunition, drones, counter-drone equipment, mine-clearing equipment and secure communications equipment.

The repeated assaults on the plants and equipment that Ukrainians rely on for heat and light have drawn condemnation from world leaders, and thrust Ukraine into a grim cycle in which crews hurry to restore power only to have it knocked out again.

The power system is in a bad state and he is urging people to cut down on power use.

“It must be understood: Even if there is no heavy missile strikes, this still does not mean there are no problems. Missile attacks, drones and shelling are all happening almost every day. Almost every day, energy facilities are hit.

Many are watching to see if Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy follows through on his threat of a ban on the Russian Orthodox Church in the country after he stepped up raids on churches accused of links with Moscow.

Rescuing the Russian Invasion: The Return of a Promising Basketball Player to the USA after the Dec. 11 Inspiral

The European Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen, and the Norwegian Prime Minister, Kristers Gahn Store, will be having dinner in Paris with the French President.

A conference with Ukraine is going to be hosted by France on Tuesday and will include a video address by the Ukrainian President.

Fans, friends and family are celebrating the basketball player’s return to the US after she was released from a Russian prison. There are some Republican politicians complaining about the prisoner swap and other Americans still held by Russia.

New measures targeting Russian oil revenue took effect Dec. 5. A price cap and an embargo on most Russian oil imports are included.

President Zelenskyy had a phone call with President Biden on Dec. 11, as well as the leaders of France and Turkey, in an apparent stepping up of diplomacy over the 9 1/2-month-long Russian invasion.

There are shell blasts all around the home of Vyacheslav Tarasov. The buildings are mostly empty.

He was in the basement, where he now has to live, while the shelling took place. But last week he dared to venture out – to buy vegetables to make the national dish, borscht.

The traumatized civilians in Bakhmut, Ukraine: Tarasov recalls seeing the puddle after being blown apart by an invisible power

His face pales as he relays the graphic images still fresh in his mind. “I was wearing a leather jacket and if it wasn’t for that, I would have blown apart. My guts would have been all over the place. I had a lot of blood. I remember seeing it — a huge puddle.”

Tarasov believes that an invisible power saved his life. The Ukrainian soldiers threw him in their truck and drove him to the hospital that was the only one still capable of treating civilians wounded in the war.

When Tarasov arrived, he begged the doctors to save his limb. “The first thing I asked was if I could have my arm sewn back on. I saw that it was hanging off the sleeve and completely torn off. My stomach was burning. It seemed like the intestines were coming out. There was blood all over the place.

Russian attacks on the energy grid have caused power and water shortages, while the medical staff has continued to work. They had to rely on generators for eight hours a day last week.

She is a resident of Bakhmut. She was injured when a bomb went off in her abdomen and had damage to many organs. We see people with wounds every day. Every day.”

The shelling comes very close to the west of the army’s goal, which is to take Bakhmut. Since the beginning of the month, the town has been hit almost every day, the hospital director says.

Meanwhile, medical staff hear the constant thud of artillery fired around Bakhmut – unwelcome signals that another patient may soon lie on the operating table.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/12/europe/ukraine-bakhmut-injured-civilians-intl-cmd/index.html

The Dark Ukrainian Fairy Tale of Ieveniia and Her Father, Regime of the Crimes of Crime in Ukraine, as Revealed by the Video Call

“If I had a lot of money, I would rather live abroad,” Tarasov says. Everything I had saved up was invested there, even though I have no money. I didn’t have a place to go because I had no money.

Sasha Dovzhyk is a special projects curator at the Ukrainian Institute London and associate lecturer in Ukrainian at the School of Slavonic and East-European Studies, University College London. She divides her time between London and Ukraine, where she works as a producer and translator for foreign journalists.

Long nights with the promise of a miracle: December is the month of fairy tales, when we peer into the darkness only to be reassured of the “happily ever after.”

“We used to joke that our life was like a dark fairy tale inclined towards a happy ending. This December Ievheniia is nursing a two-month-old child in Poland while grieving for the child’s father.

The war was started when Russia invaded the east of Ukraine in February of 2014), but it wasn’t until last year that the war started. Her brother volunteered and served for four years in the Ukrainian Armed Forces; he too was killed on the front lines in 2018, as the international community turned a blind eye to Russian aggression.

In this dark Ukrainian fairy tale, there are crucial moments that take place via video link. This is what love looks like in a time of war, shifted to the digital space and disrupted mid-plot.

I met Ievheniia through a video call, a 36-year-old PhD candidate working as an IT consultant. A stranger took her pain to bring attention to the deaths of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers in the fight against Russia.

We have to remember Europe fell into darkness due to Russia’s war when we hurry to bring gifts to our loved ones.

A fairy tale about Ukrainian women and their families in Warsaw. Denys and Ievheniia, the enlistment officer, left Ukraine

After driving westwards across the country under Russian bombardment, Ievheniia finally arrived at an enlistment office. She was told to sign the contract after being interviewed on a Friday.

On the weekend, she decided to take a pregnancy test, just in case. “With war and evacuation, the ground was slipping under one’s feet,” she said with a laugh. “On top of that, it turned out that I was pregnant.”

The woman who planned to defend her homeland instead joined the refugees in Poland, as a result of the pregnancy test.

After being separated by war, Ievheniia and Denys tried to prove their partnership to the state. Now, Ukrainian servicemen can marry via video call, thanks to the ingenuity of the country at war. The civil servants were boring, so we got married by a handsome man in a uniform. Ievheniia had nothing to complain about.

Over the following months, Denys kept the magic alive via the Internet, with flower deliveries and professional photoshoots ordered for Ievheniia from the trenches.

Denys raised the alarm in Warsaw after Ievheniia didn’t pick up the phone. A delay could have resulted in death. A Caesarean section followed. Because the baby was born two months early, the father was able to meet his new son.

Ukrainian men who are fighting age are not allowed to leave the country under martial law. Yet as is appropriate for a fairy tale, Denys got permission, crossed the border, and spent five days with his family.

“It was a magical time filled with ordinary things: shopping, registering with a pediatrician, laughing, talking. He left. It was his birthday on November 17 and we sent him greetings,” Ievheniia remembered. He was killed the next day.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/14/opinions/ukraine-christmas-fairy-tales-death-dovzhyk/index.html

How do Ukrainians will survive in the fables of italo Calvino? Vladimir Putin urges us to act decisively against absolute evil

Italo Calvino, the celebrated Italian journalist and editor of folktales, among other works, called them “consolatory fables” because it is that a rare fairy tale ends badly. It means the time to be consoled has not yet arrived. Instead, it is time to act.

And we must not be deluded by the narrative logic of a fairy tale. The kid won’t rely on magic to defeat the monster. Like ten months ago, Ukrainians need military aid sufficient to bring a decisive victory over Russia, not just prolong the fight with enormous sacrifices. Ukrainian victory depends on our collective effort.

“As a teenager, I was reading a lot of fantasy books and wondering how I would act in a fight against absolute evil. Would I be able to turn away and proceed with my daily life?” Ievheniia told me. All of us have a chance to find out.

Denys Shmyhal, the Prime Minister of Ukraine told a government meeting that the goal was to leave Ukrainians without light, water and heat.

Ukrenergo reported on Friday that Russian strikes on thermal and hydroelectric power plants had caused more than 50% of the country’s energy capacity to be lost.

An explosion near a playground shook the windows of homes. If there is a water shortage, the Mayor urged residents to fill water containers and charge electronic devices.

Military intelligence and defense response to Russian missile and drone attacks on Engels and other air bases: The case of Zaporizhzhia

The southeastern region of Zaporizhzhia was hit by more than a dozen missile strikes, according to Oleksandr Starukh, chief of the regional military administration, but it was unclear what had been targeted.

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. No one has 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.

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. John Kirby, spokesman for the White House National Security Council, said that no missile has been delivered to Russia by Iran.

The Biden administration is in the final stages of preparing to send the most advanced ground-based air defense system in the US to Ukraine, according to a senior administration official. The Ukrainian government has asked the system to help defend against Russian missile and drone attacks. The system would help secure airspace for NATO members in Eastern Europe by providing effective long-range defensive weapons.

He said there will be another security assistance package for Ukraine, but did not give any further details.

The Kremlin attack in Kherson, Ukraine, as seen by the media and the public — it’s not easy, but it will happen, and Russia will fail

39 Iranian Shahed drones, two Russian Orlan drones and an X-59 missile were shot down by Ukraine’s Air Force Command on Monday.

“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 repeated attacks come as Ukrainians far from the eastern and southern frontlines of the ground war seek for some semblance of normality in the run-up to Christmas.

An artificial Christmas tree in the center of the city will be powered by a generator at certain times, according to the city’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko.

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.

Ukrainian children are asking St. Nicholas for air defense and weapons for “victory for all Ukrainians,” Zelensky said in his virtual address to the Joint Expeditionary Force leaders’ summit on Monday.

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

“This is not sensitive content — it’s the real life of Kherson,” Zelenskyy tweeted. The images showed cars on fire, bodies on the street and building windows blown out.

Yanushevych said Sunday that a total of 16 people had been killed in 71 Russian attacks across the wider Kherson region on Saturday, including three state emergency workers who were killed during demining operations. 64 people have injuries that are varying in severity, he said.

At least three people were injured and two others were removed from the damaged home on Thursday, according to Klitschko. The military administration of the city said that homes, an industrial facility and a playground were damaged in the capital.

There were no details of casualties in Stepne, which was also hit by shelling, according to the governor.

A Defiant Christmas Address to the Ukrainians in the Light of the Kherson Fireballs, Revised by President Volodymyr Zelensky

President Volodymyr Zelensky called on Ukrainians to have “patience and faith” in a defiant Christmas address after a deadly wave of Russian strikes pounded the southern city of Kherson.

He urged the nation to stand firm in the face of a grim winter of energy blackouts, the absence of loved ones and the ever-present threat of Russian attacks.

At least 10 people were killed and dozens were injured when rocket strikes slammed into Kherson on Christmas Eve. Zelensky described those attacks as “killing for the sake of intimidation and pleasure.”

“There may be empty chairs around it. And our houses and streets can’t be so bright. And Christmas bells can ring not so loudly and inspiringly. Through air raid sirens, or even worse – gunshots and explosions.”

He said that Ukraine had been resisting evil forces for three hundred days and eight years, however, “in this battle, we have another powerful and effective weapon. The hammer and sword of our spirit and consciousness. The wisdom of God. Courage and bravery. Virtues that incline us to do good and overcome evil.”

He said the Ukrainian people would sing Christmas carols louder than a power generator and hear greetings from relatives even if communication services are down.

We will hug each other tightly even in total darkness. And if there is no heat, we will give a big hug to warm each other.”

Zelensky said that we will celebrate our holidays. As always. We will smile and be happy. As always. The difference is not large. We will not wait for a miracle. After all, we create it ourselves.”

Ukraine has traditionally celebrated Christmas on January 7 in line with Orthodox Christian customs, which acknowledge the birth of Jesus according to the Julian calendar.

Vladimir Putin in Bakhmut and the attack on Ukraine’s nuclear energy grid: a lack of military facilities in the country, but a strategic motive to attack it

He wrote on Telegram Saturday that they are not military facilities. According to the rules defined, this is not a war. It is terror, it is killing for the sake of intimidation and pleasure.”

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

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

“Russian forces will likely struggle to maintain the pace of their offensive operations in the Bakhmut area and may seek to initiate a tactical or operational pause,” the institute concluded.

According to an official, 16 people have died in the region, including three emergency workers who were killed while demining the district. 64 more people have been wounded, saidYanushevich.

But the attacks, which remain sensitive enough that the Ukrainian government has not publicly acknowledged them, have forced Russia to move planes, potentially complicating Moscow’s campaign of aiming cruise missile strikes at Ukraine’s energy grid.

The missiles that are launched from the airfields hit are likely to be destroyed before they can be deployed.

Mr. Zagoro dinyuk said that he did not speak for the government and that they were fighting back. There is absolutely no strategic reason not to try to do this.”

The Ukrainian military has not confirmed the strike in question, but appeared to acknowledge the attack that Russian authorities reported.

Crime in Ukraine: Attacks on civilian targets in Kyiv, Ukraine, on New Year’s Eve and “Senseless Barbarism”

The Kinzhal, a missile that can reach targets in under a minute and is all but impossible to shoot down, is in short supply, Mr. Budanov said.

Several residential buildings in the capital Kyiv were destroyed, according to Kyrylo Tymoshenko, the lead for disaster response in the Ukrainian presidential office.

Maksym Marchenko, the administrator for the area along the Black Sea, said that Ukrainian air defense systems shot down 21 cruise missiles near Odesa. The city didn’t have electricity or water after successful missile strikes.

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.”

Anna Kovalchuk, another Kyiv resident, said she was determined not to let the Russians ruin her upcoming celebrations. I am more concerned that there will be no electricity for New Year’s Eve and that we will spend the holiday in the dark. She said she prepared herself by stocking up on power banks, garlands and other objects so that the blackout wouldn’t stop her.

Hryn said: “After the sirens gave the all clear, life in the capital went back to normal, with my neighbors and their child getting ready to go to the cinema to see the new movie.” Parents took their children to school and people went to work, while others continued with holiday plans in defiance.

Elsewhere in the capital, Halyna Hladka stocked up on water as soon as the sirens sounded and quickly made breakfast for her family so they would have something to eat. After nearly two hours, they heard the sounds of explosions. She told CNN that she thought they were close to our area, but it turned out to be air defense. We will celebrate the new year with our family and we won’t be affected by any attacks.

It is “senseless barbarism.” Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said those were the only words that came to mind watching Moscow launch a fresh wave of attacks on Ukrainian cities ahead of the New Year, adding there could be “no neutrality” in the face of such aggression.

Putin claimed that his forces were embarking on a special military operation, a term that meant a limited campaign that would be over in weeks.

War against Ukraine has left Russia is isolated and struggling with more turbulent-ahedrosphere: Insights from a Russian citizen’s perspective

The invasion has grown into the biggest land war in Europe since World War II, forcing millions of Ukrainians from their homes, decimating the Ukrainian economy and killing thousands of civilians.

Yet the war has also fundamentally upended Russian life — rupturing a post-Soviet period in which the country pursued, if not always democratic reforms, then at least financial integration and dialogue with the West.

Draconian laws passed since February have outlawed criticism of the military or leadership. Nearly 20,000 people have been detained for demonstrating against the war — 45% of them women — according to a leading independent monitoring group.

The repressions extend elsewhere: organizations and individuals are added weekly to a growing list of “foreign agents” and “non-desirable” organizations intended to damage their reputation among the Russian public.

Russia’s most respected human rights group, the 2022, co-recipient Memorial, stopped their activities because they were accused of violating the foreign agents law.

The state has also vastly expanded Russia’s already restrictive anti-LGBT laws, arguing the war in Ukraine reflects a wider attack on “traditional values.”

Repressions are still targeted for now. There are some new laws that aren’t enforced. But few doubt the measures are intended to crush wider dissent — should the moment arise.

Leading independent media outlets and a handful of vibrant, online investigative startups were forced to shut down or relocate abroad when confronted with new “fake news” laws that criminalized contradicting the official government line.

There are restrictions on internet users as well. American social media giants such as Twitter and Facebook were banned in March. Since the beginning of the conflict, more than 100,000 websites have been blocked by the Kremlin’s internet regulator.

Technical workarounds such as VPNs and Telegram still offer access to Russians seeking independent sources of information. But state media propaganda now blankets the airwaves favored by older Russians, with angry TV talk shows spreading conspiracies.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/12/31/1145981036/war-against-ukraine-has-left-russia-isolated-and-struggling-with-more-tumult-ahe

War against Ukraine Has Left Russia Isolated: The Case of the Ruling-Induced General Reionization of the Soviet Union

Thousands of perceived government opponents left during the war’s early days because of concerns of persecution.

Yet Putin’s order to mobilize 300,000 additional troops in September prompted the largest outflow: Hundreds of thousands of Russian men fled to border states including Kazakhstan, Mongolia and Georgia in an attempt to avoid the draft.

Meanwhile, some countries that have absorbed the Russian exodus predict their economies will grow, even as the swelling presence of Russians remains a sensitive issue to former Soviet republics in particular.

In the initial days of the invasion, Russia’s ruble currency cratered and its banking and trading markets looked shaky. Hundreds of global corporate brands, such as McDonald’s and ExxonMobil, have ceased their operations in Russia.

Ultimately, President Putin is betting that when it comes to sanctions, Europe will blink first — pulling back on its support to Ukraine as Europeans grow angry over soaring energy costs at home. He banned the export of oil to countries that follow the price cap for five months, which is likely to cause more pain in Europe.

The financial damage inflicted on Putin’s reputation for providing stability has caused a drop in his support among Russians who remember the chaotic years that followed the collapse of the USSR.

There isn’t a change in the government’s tone when it comes to Russia’s military campaign. The daily briefings from the defense ministry tell of successes on the ground. Putin assures everyone that everything is going according to plan.

With no Russian victory in sight, the sheer length of the war suggests that Russia underestimated Ukrainians’ willingness to resist.

The number of Russian losses officially is just under 6,000 men, but this is a very hard subject to broach at home. Western estimates place the figure much higher.

Russia’s invasion has backfired in its primary aim, which is to increase NATO’s reach towards Russia’s borders.

Longtime allies in Central Asia have criticized Russia’s actions out of concern for their own sovereignty, an affront that would have been unthinkable in Soviet times. India and China have been purchasing discounted Russian oil, but have not supported Russia’s military campaign.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/12/31/1145981036/war-against-ukraine-has-left-russia-isolated-and-struggling-with-more-tumult-ahe

The Makiivka massacre: the Russian government is trying to find a solution of the Russia-Putsk war crimes

A state of the nation address, originally scheduled for April, was repeatedly delayed and won’t happen until next year. Putin’s annual “direct line” — a media event in which Putin fields questions from ordinary Russians — was canceled outright.

An annual December “big press conference” – a semi-staged affair that allows the Russian leader to handle fawning questions from mostly pro-Kremlin media – was similarly tabled until 2023.

The Kremlin has given no reason for the delays. Many suspect it might be that, after 10 months of war and no sign of victory in sight, the Russian leader has finally run out of good news to share.

It was one of the most traumatic episodes of the war for Moscow’s forces as the defense ministry claimed that 63 Russian servicemen died in the attack.

The senator from Russia, Grigory Karasin, said those responsible for the killings of Russian soldiers in Makiivka need to be found.

“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.”

Bezsonov hopes that the facility’s decision makers will be reprimanded. There are plenty of old facilities in the area with sturdy buildings where personnel can be quartered.

The building was almost completely destroyed by the detonation of the ammunition stores according to a Russian propagandist who writes on Telegram.

“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, as many people are still missing.”

The unnecessary losses are caused by some conclusions not being made, which may have been avoided if the elementary precautions relating to dispersal and concealment of personnel were taken.

Yanushevich and the Ukrainians in a Russian attack in Kramatorsk, southeast of the city of Beryslav, Ukraine

Russian forces lost 760 people, and continued trying to attack Bakhmut, said the military general staff on Sunday.

Ukrainian officials on Sunday dismissed Moscow’s claim that a large number of Kyiv’s soldiers were killed in a Russian attack last week in Kramatorsk, eastern Ukraine.

Ukrainian forces fired six rockets from a HIMARS launch system and two of them were shot down, a defense ministry statement said. It did not say when the strike happened.

The strike, using a U.S.-supplied precision weapon that has proven critical in enabling Ukrainian forces to hit key targets, delivered a new setback for Russia which in recent months has reeled from a Ukrainian counteroffensive.

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 that they would have to make difficult decisions in the coming year.

The Russian forces attacked the city of Beryslav, the official said, firing at a local market, likely from a tank. Three of the wounded are in serious condition and are being evacuated to Kherson, Yanushevich said.

Seven drones were shot down over the southern Mykolaiv region, according to Gov. Vitali Kim, and three more were shot down in the southeastern Dnipropetrovsk region, Gov. Valentyn Reznichenko said.

There was an explosion in the Dnipropetrovsk region. He said that energy infrastructure in the region was being targeted.

The Kremlin regime acted responsibly on Ukrainian soldiers in the aftermath of Wednesday’s ferocious New Year’s Eve attack

At least four people were killed and dozens of others were wounded in a ferocious New Year’s Eve assault across the country. The fourth victim, a 46-year-old resident of Kyiv, died in a hospital on Monday morning, Klitschko said.

A CNN team on the ground has seen no indication of any massive casualties in the area. The team stated that there was no unusual activity in and around Kramatorsk.

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.

A rare public blame game broke out between the Russian government and some pro-Kremlin leaders and military experts in the aftermath of the strike, after Moscow appeared to blame its own soldiers’ use of cell phones.

The account was angrily dismissed by a militaryblogger who was also an influential one, pointing out the difference between the conflicting statements from the leader of the self-declared DPR and the Russian command.

“They damaged 13 two-story buildings, three four-story buildings, a children’s clinic and school, garages and cars,” Kyrylenko said. Every day, Russians confirm their status as terrorists.

Rescue workers searched through the rubble for survivors after Wednesday’s attack damaged eight apartment buildings. Authorities also evacuated people to a local school for shelter.

Chaos in the Kramatorsk area, Ukraine: The latest attack by Russian marine infantry and troops in the DOnetsk People’s Republic

“A country bordering absolute evil. The country has to conquer it in order to reduce the chance of tragedies happening again. We will find the perpetrators and punish them. They are not deserving of mercy.

The attack in Kramatorsk came after a top official in the Ukrainian government said that Russia was preparing for a “maximum increase” of the war in their country.

Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council, told Sky News in an interview Tuesday that the months would be defining in the war.

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

According to the Operational Command North, the occupiers continued to shell the border of Sumy region with mortars on Wednesday evening and they are near the Russian border. No one was killed and no one was injured.

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 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.

The videos, released by the Ukrainian military and analyzed by CNN and military experts, showed that at least two dozen Russian tanks and infantry vehicles had been disabled or destroyed in 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. Russian President 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.”

Donetsk as a “fortress for the Russian Army” — Comment on Vladimir Cooper’s comments about the attack on Vuhledar

Cooper says the Russians built a formidable force around Vuhledar, “say, a total of about 20,000 troops, 90 MBTs [main battle tanks], perhaps two times as many IFVs [infantry fighting vehicles], and about 100 artillery pieces.”

The town has become a lynchpin in the conflict in eastern Ukraine. Russian forces have been trying to take it for three months. Victory for Moscow here would make it harder for the Ukrainians to shut down a nearby railroad that links Donetsk with Russian-occupied Crimea and allow the Russians to begin a northern “hook” as part of their anticipated spring offensive.

He said that the attacks launched in the last week of January were flawed. Cooper wrote on his website that he saw Ukrainian observers posted atop of high buildings in the town and that they were facing empty terrain on the eastern side.

A lot of good T-72B3/T-80BVM tanks and the best paratroopers and marines were killed.

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 stated that there are no new 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 something.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/13/europe/russia-ukraine-vuhledar-donetsk-fiasco-intl/index.html

Russian forces are behind Putin’s curse: the Vuhledar massacre of the Eastern Group of Forces commander and the Ukrainian ambassador to Ukraine

Several commentators in Russia have asked for the dismissal of Lieutenant General Rustam Muradov, the Eastern Grouping of Forces commander. The 155th men protested that his tactics were to blame for their 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.”

The Institute for the Study of War says that poor leadership is only part of the problem, and that the 155th Naval Infantry brigade is made up of poorly trained personnel.

Ukrainian military officials say there is a random mix of Russian forces in the area, including professional units, the militia of DPR and the infantry of a private military company.

The commander of the Ukrainian troops said on Saturday that effective fire damage requires an appropriate amount of weapons.

Russian forces have a strong advantage in weaponry. On Saturday they launched a barrage of thermobaric missiles at Vuhledar, a reminder that they are more capable of inflicting destruction than taking territory.

Ukrainian President Zelenskyy met leaders in London, Paris and Brussels as well as repeating his call for NATO to send fighter jets to his country.

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

There’s “strong indication” Russian President Vladimir Putin gave the go-ahead to supply anti-aircraft weapons to separatists in Ukraine, according to the international team investigating the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in 2014.

Putin War Ukraine: One Year After the Breakdown of My Husband and I During the Blast-of-The-Year Surgery on February 24, 2022

On February 24, 2022, I was supposed to be in Kyiv. My husband and I had to stay in Moscow after he broke his shoulder. He had surgery at 9:00 a.m.

The war claimed tens of thousands of lives and caused millions to be displaced in a year. It has unleashed unfathomable atrocities, decimated cities, driven a global food and energy crisis and tested the resolve of western alliances.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/18/opinions/one-year-anniversary-putin-war-ukraine-russia-wrap-opinions-ctpr/index.html

When the Russian Revolution Starged: My Husband and Is Hearned by the Darkness in My Father’s Eyes

Zaporizhzhia, February 23, 2022. I went to bed thinking that I would celebrate my husband’s birthday the next day. Our life was getting better. My husband was running his own business. Our daughter had started school and made friends there. Our son has a special needs nursery thanks to support services we were able to arrange. I had time to work. I felt like I was happy.

We want to live here and now. But the truth is, we are heartbroken. Our hearts are in Ukraine, even though we are in the Czech Republic.

Thanks to the opportunities for Ukrainians provided by the Czech Republic, my husband got a job. I found special needs classes for my son. He now attends an adaptation group for Ukrainian children and has a learning support assistant. My daughter goes to a Czech school while studying in her Ukrainian school remotely.

Andrei Kolesnikov is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He is the author of several books on the political and social history of Russia, including “Five Five-Year Liberal Reforms.” Russian Modernization and Egor Gaidar’s Legacy are some of the earliest examples of modernization.

That morning we woke up to learn that the invasion started. 12 Russian writers, directors and cultural figures co-signed an open letter I wrote in protest of the war. More than 100,000 Russians added their signatures when it was published.

After three days, my husband and I left Russia. I believed it was a moral obligation. I could no longer stay on the territory of the state that has become a fascist one.

We moved to Berlin. My husband went to work as a volunteer at the refugee camp next to the main railway station, where thousands of Ukrainians had been arriving every day. And I started writing a new book. It starts like this:

The whole year has been filled with tears and worries. I read the news about people who were killed by Russians, like a teammate, the director of the school or a friend’s parents.

Time and again since the Russian invasion started, I’m haunted by the darkness in my father’s eyes during the re-telling of chilling dinnertime stories of relatives shipped off to the Soviet gulag, never to return. Stories of millions of Ukrainians who starved to death in Stalin’s manmade famine of 1932-33.

Russian missiles began falling on February 24, 2022, what has changed? The fear felt by Ukrainians has been replaced with anger as they stand up to barrages of rockets and drones.

A year into the full-scale invasion, my passport is a novel in stamps. My life is split between London, where I teach Ukrainian literature, and Ukraine, where I get my lessons in courage.

My former classmates from Zaporizhzhia whom, based on our teenage habits, I expected to perish from addictions a long time ago, have volunteered to fight. My hairdresser, whom I expected to remain a sweet summer child, turned out to have fled on foot from the Russia-occupied town of Bucha through the forest with her mother, grandmother and five dogs.

My capital, which the Kremlin and the West expected to fall in three days, has withstood 12 months of Russia’s terrorist bombings and energy blackouts. The Russians have been able to bring closer to eternity the stars over Kyiv, which are seen in these dark winter nights.

It seems that since February 2022 we have experienced several eras. The first was euphoric, when Putin suddenly, after a significant time of stagnant ratings, received more than 80% approval from the population.

Putin wanted citizens to take responsibility for the war with him and that’s why the public demobilization was stopped in the fall. This provoked unprecedented anxiety, but instead of serious protests, the bulk of the population again preferred adaptation.

By aborting the past, he canceled the future. Those who were disoriented, preferred to support Putin: it is easier to live this way when your superiors decide everything for you, and you take for granted everything you are told by propaganda.

It is impossible to adapt to a disaster like that that happened to my family. As an active commentator on the events, I was labeled by the authorities as a ‘foreign agent.’ which increased personal risk and reinforced the impression of living in an Orwellian anti-utopia.

On the evening of February 23, I washed my dog, cleaned the house, and lit candles. I reside in a one-bedroom apartment in the northern part of Kyiv. I enjoyed taking care of it. I enjoyed the life I had. All of it – the small routines and the struggles. That night was the last time my life mattered.

I remember talking to colleagues, trying to assemble and coordinate a small army of volunteers to strengthen the newsroom. My parents should organize buying supplies.

The life I knew started falling apart soon after, starting with the small things. It no longer mattered what cup I used to drink my morning tea, or how I dressed, or whether or not I took a shower. Life itself no longer mattered, only the battle did.

The pre-war era was hard to remember as the full-scale invasion began. I had a hard time empathising because I was upset about my boyfriend. My life didn’t change on February 24, it was stolen from me on that day.

And besides the obvious battles, there was another one to fight – trying to claim my life back. Russia stole life from me and millions of Ukrainians.

By March, my initial shock and fear of the war turned into a desire to act through sports. The best way to fight the propaganda of Russia would be by athletes. We had to say how strong, kind and brave we are to the Ukrainians. How we have come together to defend our country.

I was no longer concerned with my personal ambitions. The only thing that was important was raising the flag to show we are still fighting despite the circumstances.

I didn’t enjoy my victories on the track. There were many defenders who died and they were only possible because of it. I received messages from soldiers on the frontline. They were so happy to follow our progress and that was the main reason for me continuing my career.

Newlyweds separated after saying their vows to make it easier for their groom to return to the front. A tax preparer in Boston who quit her job to return to Ukraine with suitcases full of medical supplies. The wife of a border guard who made the three-hour round trip from Lviv to the Polish border almost daily to drop off fleeing women and children and pick up weapons and supplies.

The sad thing is that people survive Covid and get right back into it, killing one another. Communities need more help to adapt to rising oceans and drying rivers when it is cheaper to use missiles, tanks, and other aid. It’s lunacy that farmers in a breadbasket of the world have gone hungry hiding in bomb shelters. Putin declared that Ukrainians were part of his own people, before he sent his army into the country where Russians have been accused of murdering and raping civilians.

Governments gussy up war. Soldiers are given hope that they will fight on if they win. But in the end, war is death in a muddy foxhole. It’s an existential fight over a frozen field with no strategic value. It is a new generational grudge. It was an $11 billion, 740-mile network laid across the Baltic Sea that was useless overnight. Some of the largest steel plants in Europe are unable to produce a single metal sheet. It’s a charming seaside city emptied out by bombings and siege.

The magic day of Kherson: Alexander Kamyshin, the CEO of the Ukrainian Railways, and the first train from Kiev to Mariupol, Ukraine

Two days after the fall of Kherson, Alexander Kamyshin, the CEO of the Ukrainian Railways, went to the city with a team of railway workers. They reached the central train station even before the regular army arrived to secure the city, and got to work. Six days later, the first train from Kyiv rolled into liberated Kherson.

“It was a magic day,” Kamyshin says. “We saw the faces of the people seeing the train, crying, waving their hands. Trust me, it was unforgettable. That’s one of the days to remember forever.”

Since Russia began an intense assault on Ukraine a year ago today, Kamyshin and his colleagues have worked ceaselessly to keep Ukraine’s trains running. They moved 4 million refugees and more than 350,000 metric tons of humanitarian aid, often to the front lines of the conflict. With air travel all but impossible, Ukraine Railways has brought at least 300 foreign delegations into Kyiv in a program it calls “iron diplomacy.” Earlier this week, a train dubbed “Rail Force One” secretly carried US president Joe Biden to the Ukrainian capital for a symbolic visit.

The work has taken place under constant attack. “[The Russians shell] tracks, stations, bridges, power stations, cranes, they shell everything,” Kamyshin says. “Two hundred and fifty people died, 800 people injured. That’s only railwaymen and women. It was the price we paid in this war.

In Mariupol, a port city on the black sea close to the Russian border, rail workers were able to get trains in and out many times before the tracks were destroyed, as resistance was bombarded relentlessly until May 2022, when it finally collapsed. The stranded crews were able to evacuate by road, but two trains are still stuck there.

Ukraine’s First Year of War: How Russia Will Win and How the Security Council Will Support Its Mission to Ukraine (Russian-French-Indian-Polish War)

Responding to a question from CNN’s Christiane Amanpour at a press conference in the capital city, Zelensky said: “Victory will be inevitable. I am sure there will be a victory.

The former Russian President and the current chair of the Security Council of Russia said on Friday that Russia is aiming to push the borders of threats to their country even if they are not located in Poland.

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

Earlier on Friday morning, the Ukrainian leader addressed members of the military in Kyiv. He told them who was going to make the decisions about the country’s future.

landmarks all over the world were lit up in color with the Ukrainian flag on Friday as part of a show of solidarity by the international allies.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken called for the UN Security Council to not allow Putin’s crimes to become normal.

Germany said it would send a further four Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine, increasing its original commitment from 14 tanks to 18. Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson also pledged to send Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine.

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

Kyiv student president Kathalina Pahitsky, student president and Olexander Atamas, a former IT worker and the father of two Russian warfighters

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

While air-raid sirens are a way of life in Kyiv, they haven’t been hit in a few weeks, which means that people are left to assess the chances of an attack.

Kathalina Pahitsky, a 16-year old student, went to the St. Michael’s Golden-Domed Monastery in Kyiv to lay flowers in memory of two former students from her school who lost their lives fighting in the war.

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

“Their photographs are here on the main street. It is a great honor. They died doing what they loved. It’s important for us. And it would have been for them,” she said.

Olexander Atamas, who was an IT worker before the war and now serves with the Naval Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, said it was hard to describe his feelings on Friday.

“I would prefer to describe what I don’t feel now, I don’t feel a fear, but [I] feel confidence in my abilities,” he told CNN. I was stressed and scared one year ago. There is no fear right now.

Wargonzo, the Ukrainian General Staff, and the Attacks on the Kreminna-Khtariv City of Bakhmut

The military author, who goes by the name WarGonzo, said that the fighters from the private military company had attacked in multiple directions around Bakhmut. He claimed that there is a slight advance to the east of the city and made a reference to Wagner’s claims that it now controls Berkhivka.

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

27 communities had been affected by cross-border shelling into thekhtariv region according to the Ukrainian General Staff.

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

KHERSON, Ukraine — Tetiana Horobstova, a retired physics teacher born in Russia, did not believe Russians would attack this city founded by Catherine the Great.

On Feb. 24, 2022, despite warnings from the West that Russia was about to invade Ukraine, Horobstova remembers waking to a beautiful morning and watching the sunrise from her balcony. It turned the sky pink and illuminated green fields bursting with the winter harvest.

Oksana Pohomii: An accountant’s rattail in the aftermath of the first Ukrainian invasion of the Dnipro River

“And then I heard the explosions. And then I saw the explosions,” she says. “One near the airport, then a second. The third was at a gas station.

She began to cry. She called her friends and family to see if they were okay. Some people were moving to the west. Horobstova, her husband, Volodymyr, and her youngest daughter refused. Their loyalties had been clear even with their Russian roots.

The first few days of the invasion were chaotic. Serhiy, a soldier from a local brigade, watched in horror as Russian soldiers quickly overran the riverbank on the other side of the Dnipro River.

Many civilians wanted to help the Ukrainian military. Oksana Pohomii, a 59-year-old accountant and city council member, had been warning for years that the Kremlin could not be trusted and says at first President Volodymyr Zelenskyy didn’t take the Russian threat seriously.

Pohomii has a rattail that’s similar to a Viking’s, and she also has dyed her hair red. She applied to training as a soldier with the territorial defense before the invasion, but the office denied her because they were flooded with applicants.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/25/1157422023/ukraine-russia-war-kherson-spies

Underground Resistance in the Crimea: Stories of a brave boy with an amputated leg and a Russian soldier’s spying in Ukraine

“I remember this boy with an amputated leg in the central market,” she says. He played and sang the Ukrainian national anthem. It was very brave. We would sing along quietly with him, like bunnies.

Just as quietly, an underground resistance formed. Hundreds of civilians secretly became partisans, forming espionage cells reporting to the Ukrainian military and security services. Pohomii joined one. She was supposed to document people collaborating with Russian forces and send her findings to the Ukrainian security services via a secure messaging app.

She was one of the city council members, a prominent doctor who helped the city survive and a childhood friend who was a teacher.

Chupikova said that she followed Russian troops wherever she could and she told them where they lived.

She says that she would pretend to go to the grocery store or waiting for the bus and change her clothes as often as she could. “I’m not saying I’m Agent 007. I just did whatever made sense to me.”

Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/25/1157422023/ukraine-russia-war-kherson-spies

The Ukrainian War K-Spies: How Valerii Chupikova and Iryna Tracked the Russian Contingents

Chupikova was hard to track, in part, because “I do not look like a threat,” she says. With her pixie cut and bright blue eyes, she looks like a Minnesota soccer mom about to offer you a freshly baked apple pie.

“They wanted us to look average, unremarkable, not easy to remember so we could work undetected,” she says, “as if we were moving between drops of rain.”

Valerii Chupikov was recruited to work with her. They used internet mapping services to find out the coordinates of Russian convoys, which they sent via a signal to a contact in the Ukrainian military.

When the internet was down, she climbed onto the roof of her house to try to get a signal from her cellphone.

Russian troops appeared to be following everyone. Olha Chupikova says residents were getting arrested for simply giving Russian soldiers dirty looks.

Iryna’s phone and laptop were taken away by the armed men, while Horobstova’s laptop only had physics lessons on it.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/25/1157422023/ukraine-russia-war-kherson-spies

Russians had torment a partisan in the forest. The partisans in a breeding ground of what? — Diav yells

“And I kept saying ‘a breeding ground of what?’ ” she says. I said it was the flag of our country where I reside and my daughter lives. You have your own flag as well, and you also have a country. He kept yelling.

A shy, bearded apartment manager named Diav, had worked for months on espionage forUkrainian’s security services. He thinks the Russians may have found a way to listen to some people talking. But he says Russians also got information about cells by torturing captured partisans.

The torture began very quickly. His hands shake as he recalls four long torture sessions, three of them especially brutal. They electrocuted him and beat him with clubs, metal pipes and their boots. They inquired about the man in his espionage cell.

The partisans were screaming in the jail. The imprisoned partisan remembers hearing the sound of a man being raped by Russian soldiers.

The man could barely move after being tortured for two weeks. His Russian captors kicked his left leg so badly that it broke and got infected. He said he wanted a doctor.

He thought he was going to be executed in the forest, instead of the doctor. He had heard in prison that others there had died that way.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/25/1157422023/ukraine-russia-war-kherson-spies

Moscow’s First Russian Referendum: Oksana Pohomii, a city councilwoman and a partisan on the lookout for collaborators

Oksana Pohomii, the city councilwoman and partisan on the lookout for suspected collaborators, saw a list of locals who helped organize the referendum and recognized many names, including the son of her former classmate. She says that classmate also forced residents to vote, driving them to the polls herself.

The results of the referendum showed that most of the people that voted wanted to join Russia. She says even the Russians knew it was a sham and that it made Russian President Vladimir Putin look desperate.

The politicians were killed by the Russians. When Ukraine got sophisticated missiles from the U.S., military officials say the partisans helped Ukrainian troops target sites like the Antonivka Bridge, which cut off Russian supply routes.

Russian forces started to evacuate the city after Oleksandr and the doctor helped him escape from the hospital. Russian-installed officials even removed the bones of Grigory Potemkin, the 18th century Russian commander, from St. Catherine’s Cathedral.

“They were blasting Ukrainian music, and I realized our guys were entering the city,” he says. “Every day we were waiting for this. When I was tortured, I kept imagining the day when the Ukrainian soldiers would come home, and all our work would mean something.”

The next morning, it was clear that Ukrainian troops controlled Kherson. People poured into the streets. A poor man is cheering from his bed.

They hit Kherson every day with rockets, missiles and artillery. More than 80 civilians have died. Only 20% of the city’s 300,000 population is still here.

The soldier from the local brigade is back in Kherson. He runs a lot of missions to the left bank of the Dnipro in order to know where traitors and collaborators are hiding.

He theorizes that they were afraid that we would seek vengeance on traitors. “I felt bad not to be there. But I understand why I wasn’t.”

Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/25/1157422023/ukraine-russia-war-kherson-spies

The Oksana Pohomii Project: Spying on Russia’s War-Kherson Spies with a Volunteer Bakery

Oksana Pohomii now runs a volunteer bakery with her friend Olha Chupikova, the landscape designer who used to spy on the Russian military near the Antonivka Bridge. A missile strike outside the bakery has left a huge crater.

They are dusted in flour as they stack warm loaves that they call “Kherson Undefeated Bread.” The bread is free. Pohomii says they deliver to residents who are stressed.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/25/1157422023/ukraine-russia-war-kherson-spies

Telling the Russians how to leave their home. Tetiana Horobstova is afraid to leave, but she doesn’t know where she’s going

“We don’t try to force anyone to stay because not everyone can take it,” she says. “I know people who don’t leave their homes. I know people who can handle the shelling at first. After people died from shelling, something broke inside them. They stopped drinking and eating. And I said, “It’s time to leave.’ “

“They always ask if I’ll leave Kherson, and I always say no,” she said. No way! “I’ll say that.” she says. “I tell them that as soon as we free them, I’m going to bake bread for 24 hours straight, load the loaves onto a motorboat with the Ukrainian flag, cross the Dnipro River and bring it to them personally.”

She still works with a Ukrainian soldier who she worked with in the spy world. He’s in Bakhmut, where the fiercest fighting of the war is taking place. She is worried about him and looks back on the work they did together with pride.

Many partisans are still missing, presumed to be somewhere in Russian custody. Tetiana Horobstova’s daughter Iryna is among them. Horobstova hasn’t spoken to her daughter and isn’t sure where she’s being held, though there’s evidence she’s imprisoned in Russian-occupied Crimea.

She was only wearing a summer top when she was taken away, so I worry that she is cold. She doesn’t have a change of underwear, hygiene pads or anything else.