Thread: Russia launches Ukraine invasion

BRUSSELS — European Union officials and countries from the 27-nation bloc are discussing plans to dedicate an extra billion euros as well as setting up a joint procurement scheme to speed up the delivery of howitzer artillery rounds that Ukraine says are crucial to countering Russian forces.

With Ukraine facing shortages of ammunition to fight Russia, the idea of setting up a plan of action similar to the one devised during the coronavirus pandemic to buy vaccines was first brought to the table last month by Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas.

According to an EU official with direct knowledge of the project who briefed reporters Thursday, the priority now is to guarantee the swift delivery to Ukrainian armed forces of 155mm artillery rounds. The official was not authorized to speak publicly because the plan is still being finalized.

The EU has been helping Ukraine through its European Peace Facility — a fund being used to reimburse member countries that provide weapons, ammunition and military support to Ukraine.

Under the latest proposal, member countries providing ammunition immediately would be guaranteed to be repaid quickly and at high rates of reimbursement.

To fund the project, member states would need to use an additional billion euros after they already agreed in December to top up the European Peace Facility by a further 2 billion euros, with a possibility of an additional 3.5 billion.

The EU will also encourage third countries to join the fund, the official said. “We’re in discussions with the Norwegians, with potential interest from the Canadians.”

In parallel, the European Defense Agency would aggregate demands from member states to restock, and lead a fast-track procedure for direct negotiations with industrial providers of ammunition in Europe.

According to the official, a total of 12 companies in nine member states are producing 155mm ammunition. The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, will incentivize them to ramp up production, with guarantees of long-term demand, making the project interesting for them, the official said.

According to various estimates, Ukraine is firing 6,000-7,000 artillery shells daily, around a third of Russia’s total, one year into the war.

The plan will be discussed by EU defense ministers next week before foreign and defense ministers further look at it during a meeting on March 20. Leaders could then rubberstamp it during a summit in Brussels on March 23-24.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world...9ad_story.html

Ben Hodges: “The only hope the Russians have is that the West loses the will to keep supporting Ukraine”

As we look at the sheaves spread across a table in Munich’s Bayerischer Hof Hotel, the former commanding general of the US Army in Europe explains that this is no ordinary map. That much is clear. We are all used to Europe depicted as a political and geographic whole, spanning from Ireland to Istanbul and from Lisbon to Murmansk. But Lieutenant General (Retired) Ben Hodges’ map is centred on the Black Sea. It documents not Europe as a whole, but the interstitial territories where the continent abuts Asia and the Middle East; the crossroads of Western civilisation taking in Athens, Istanbul, Jerusalem and Kyiv; the pivot of so many global conflicts and contests today. Hodges explains how the map came into being. Between 2012 and 2014 he served as the first-ever commander of Nato’s Allied Land Command, a new headquarters for the alliance’s territorial forces established at İzmir on Turkey’s Aegean coast. He recalls asking a fellow senior Nato officer at an event in Ankara how things were. “I wake up in the morning,” came the reply, “and I’ve got Russia to the north; Iran, Iraq and Syria to the south; the Caucasus to the east; and the Balkans to the west. That’s a hell of a neighbourhood.” Hodges recounts how he “kind of laughed about it. I thought: yeah, of course. You know, he didn’t see himself at the bottom of the map the way [those places] are on every map in Europe.” On a later trip to London, he visited a cartographer and commissioned a chart that reflected that reality.

Now it is laid out in front of us, its folds well worn, its edges softened from years of movement, and annotated with scratchy pen marks. “Little [eastern Ukrainian] towns like Bakhmut or Lyman or Kreminna,” says Hodges as we talk, on the margins of the Munich Security Conference (MSC), about the war. “I write those on there. Look at that little mark there by Zaporizhzhia. I have a Ukrainian friend we invited and he got a pass [from the Ukrainian government] to come to our house in Frankfurt for Thanksgiving. He’s back killing enemies of his country right now. But he [made that mark and] said: ‘Yeah, right there.’”

Hodges grew up in northern Florida and speaks with a southern US lilt. He has a gentle sense of humour. During our discussion in Munich, a smartly dressed fellow pokes his head around the door of our grand meeting room and asks if we are waiting for the Greek prime minister. “No, but if he’s bringing chow, we’ll wait,” retorts Hodges. He served in South Korea, Afghanistan and Iraq. But he is also a consummate American-European. He worked as aide-de-camp to Nato’s supreme Allied commander Europe during the peak of the Balkan wars in the 1990s, before returning to the continent for his role in İzmir in 2012 and in 2014 – just as Russia began its years-long assault in Ukraine – taking the lead of the US Army in Europe, just as Russia began its years-long assault in Ukraine – a role he would hold until 2018. Now retired from the army and living with his German wife in her home country (on the “limes”, as he likes to put it, the old line marking the eastern frontier of the Roman empire), Hodges has made a new career as a public defender of Atlanticism in an age where it has appeared increasingly in question.

He endorsed Joe Biden in the 2020 US election and that same year co-authored Future War and the Defence of Europe, a book that warned of the fragility of Europe’s security order in passages prescient of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine little more than a year later. As one who consistently voiced confidence in the transatlantic alliance and allies like Ukraine when others doubted them, he would be entitled a certain smugness about the unexpected resilience that both have shown over the past 12 months. And Hodges does indeed note that many now see things the way he does – observing, by way of example, that Senators Jeanne Shaheen and Mitt Romney last year pushed through legislation requiring the US administration to create its first ever Black Sea strategy. But he is in no mood to gloat.

Rather, Hodges is concerned that defeatist thinking – or lack of confidence – could undermine Western support for Ukraine in the potentially decisive second year of the war. The mood from leaders speaking on the MSC’s main stage is assured, but in its corridors and meeting rooms concerns are evident. Can Ukraine really win? Will the transatlantic alliance hold? Does Russia not have the depth and gristle to survive a prolonged, attritional war?

To such questions, Hodges offers sinew-stiffening resolve. He swiftly dispatches the notion, prevalent among some Europeans, that US commitment to Ukraine and Europe is time-limited or growing weak. “We know that our best and most reliable allies all come from Europe, as well as Canada and Australia,” he notes, pointing to “the largest bipartisan congressional delegation to come to Munich” at this year’s MSC. “This morning, I spoke with several members of [that] delegation and also listened to [Republican] Senator [Mitch] McConnell and he said: ‘We came here to disabuse our European friends of the idea that the Republicans don’t care about Europe or Nato or Ukraine.’” When I ask about the possibility of a second Trump term from 2025, Hodges is doubtful both of its likelihood (“I think Americans eventually get a little bit tired of so much bragging”) and of its impact (“Even during the Trump administration, the number of troops permanently stationed in Germany went up”).

What, then, I ask, of the more thoughtful Republican scepticism about Europe? That voiced by figures like the former deputy assistant secretary of defence Elbridge Colby, who argue that the US cannot sustain commitments to Europe and Asia simultaneously? Here Hodges pauses and acknowledges “my friend ’Bridge”, but proceeds to set out a different analysis: that, in fact, American commitments to Europe are remarkably modest for the benefits they bring. Even with the recent troop increases, he notes, the US has just 100,000 troops in Europe: “That only just fills up Wembley Stadium or the University of Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor.”

Yet for this small footprint, he goes on to argue, the US gets outsized benefits, including not only a free Europe but also a base for American operations across Eurasia and Africa, and a major role in the Mediterranean (and thus the passage between the Indian and Atlantic Oceans). “Everything that the US has in Europe would fit inside Fort Hood, Texas, and Fort Bragg, North Carolina.” I note that even the US investment in protecting Ukraine is remarkably small for the impact it has had, and Hodges agrees: “Protecting all of our European allies, our Nato allies, from the biggest threat they face with not a single guy in uniform, man or woman, actually in Ukraine seems like a pretty good deal.”

We turn to Ukraine’s self-defence. “I believe they could liberate Crimea by the end of the summer if we gave them everything that they needed,” says Hodges. This contradicts some in the West who consider Crimea – annexed by Russia during its initial military move against Ukraine in 2014 – a matter for peace talks, and the occupied Donbas a more legitimate target. But flattening out his map on the table with the back of one hand, Hodges explains why they are wrong and why the peninsula should be Kyiv’s, and thus the West’s, top priority.

First, he says, it is a launch pad for sending drones and missiles into the rest of Ukraine and will remain so as long as it is under Russian control. If the Kremlin retains control, under any ceasefire it will become a base for Russian forces to regroup, rearm and launch a new attack on Ukraine within a few years. And second – Hodges slides his index finger across the country’s Black Sea coast on his map – without Crimea, Ukraine will not properly control its southern flank. As a result, its exports and economic future will be stifled: “Ukraine will never be able to rebuild its economy as long as Russia controls Crimea.” And without proper economic recovery the country will not be able to draw back the millions of Ukrainians who have fled, and thus set itself on a stable, democratic, prosperous path.

Hodges is clear about what such a Ukrainian operation might entail. Ukraine would need to establish “economy of force” where Russia is attacking, in locations like Bakhmut in Donbas – minimising the forces needed to hold off or delay the advance of the great numbers of Russian troops being thrown at that battle. Then it would need to identify what the Prussian general and theorist Carl von Clausewitz called the “culmination point”, or the stage at which an enemy overreaches and starts to crumble. Hodges illustrates this with a downward dip of his hand and a whistling sound, adding that correctly identifying this point was what enabled the Ukrainians to achieve their astonishing counter-offensive around Kharkiv last September.

Finally Ukraine would need to use that moment, perhaps in the late spring, to gather together its forces – including the new high-tech tanks en route from the West – to punch through the Russian lines “on a very narrow front” to the Black Sea coast. This would sever the Russian land bridge to Crimea, enable Ukraine to close in on the peninsula and put it within reach of its Himars rocket launchers and other artillery. If it could achieve that, it would change the course of the war – and with it, European history.

I counter with the standard arguments against encouraging Ukraine to take Crimea back: the peninsula holds a particular place in the Russian imagination and losing it might prompt Vladimir Putin to use nuclear force. But Hodges pushes back politely on both points. He warns against overstating ordinary Russians’ commitment to the conflict: “When somebody says that Crimea is a holy land for them… for holiday, maybe, but not [to the point where they are] willing to put on a uniform.” And Hodges notes that where tactical nuclear weapons may have had a theoretical use during the Cold War, “to hit a place where you could create a gap in Nato defences”, there would be no equivalent benefit for Russia today, while it would incur an immense international cost (including the opprobrium of China, its one powerful ally). “So much downside for little upside. In fact, I can’t even think of an upside.”

And what, I ask, about the widely cited argument that Russia simply has more troops and time to throw at the conflict? The former commanding general of the US Army in Europe declares himself staggered at the poor quality of the Russian operations, working his way through the litany of failure, service by service. The army, he says, is “incoherent”. Of the leading figures behind the war effort – including the head of the Wagner militia group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Russian defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, and the Chechen warlord Ramzan Kadyrov – Hodges says: “These guys hate each other. So, thankfully, they will never fix their command structure to have a joint unified command. And because their soldiers don’t want to be there, I see no bright spots on the horizon for the Russian side.”

He is equally withering about the Russian navy, its Black Sea flagship sunk by the Ukrainians last April, and even more so about its air force: “If you think about what we were doing before the Normandy invasion, the Royal Air Force and US Air Force were bombing the hell out of trains, disrupting their ability to move stuff around and preventing the Wehrmacht from being able to react to the landing once it happened – the Russians have not yet hit a single train bringing equipment from Poland. How the hell can that be?” He concludes emphatically: “The only hope the Russians have is that the West loses the will to keep supporting Ukraine.”

Our meeting draws to a close. It is time to make way for the Greek prime minster. I survey Hodges’ bespoke map of the Black Sea world one last time before he folds it up, and cannot but think that Halford Mackinder would have approved. The Victorian “founding father of geopolitics” had argued that the fate of world power turned primarily on control of the tumultuous region comprising what is today eastern Ukraine, the Caucasus and the surrounding regions – the lands displayed on that well-handled sheet of paper. His, of course, was a vastly different world from ours. But as Ben Hodges’ compelling arguments show: different world, same map.

Ben Hodges: “The only hope the Russians have is that the West loses the will to keep supporting Ukraine” - New Statesman

Originally Posted by Latinodancer

And no matter what happens, Putin will forever be a marked man and will always live in fear of being assassinated.

When this is over and Russia has retreated within its own borders like a beaten animal, putin is a dead man.

India who have covered themselves in glory with their stance on Russia hosting Putin's mouthpiece

Civilians flee embattled town as Ukrainian pullout looms

KHROMOVE, Ukraine (AP) — Pressure from Russian forces mounted Saturday on Ukrainians hunkered down in Bakhmut, as residents attempted to flee with help from troops who Western analysts say may be preparing to withdraw from the key eastern stronghold.


A woman was killed and two men were badly wounded by shelling while trying to cross a makeshift bridge out of the city in Donetsk province, according to Ukrainian troops who were assisting them.


A Ukrainian army representative who asked not to be named for operational reasons told The Associated Press that it was now too dangerous for civilians to leave Bakhmut by vehicle and that people had to flee on foot instead.


Bakhmut has for months been a prime target of Moscow’s grinding eastern offensive in the war, with Russian troops, including forces from the private Wagner Group, inching ever closer.


An AP team near Bakhmut on Saturday saw a pontoon bridge set up by Ukrainian soldiers to help the few remaining residents reach the nearby village of Khromove. Later they saw at least five houses on fire as a result of attacks in Khromove.

Ukrainian units over the past 36 hours destroyed two key bridges just outside Bakhmut, including one linking it to the nearby town of Chasiv Yar along the last remaining Ukrainian resupply route, according to U.K. military intelligence officials and other Western analysts.

The U.K. defense ministry said in the latest of its regular Twitter updates that the destruction of the bridges came as Russian fighters made further inroads into Bakhmut’s northern suburbs.


The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, assessed late on Friday that Kyiv’s actions may point to a looming pullout from parts of the city. It said Ukrainian troops may “conduct a limited and controlled withdrawal from particularly difficult sections of eastern Bakhmut,” while seeking to inhibit Russian movement there and limit exit routes to the west.


Capturing Bakhmut would not only give Russian fighters a rare battlefield gain after months of setbacks, but it might rupture Ukraine’s supply lines and allow the Kremlin’s forces to press toward other Ukrainian strongholds in the Donetsk region.


Civilians spoke about daily struggles as the fighting raged on nearly nonstop, reducing much of Bakhmut to rubble. Husband and wife Hennadiy Mazepa and Natalia Ishkova, who chose to remain in the city, said they lack food and basic utilities.

“Humanitarian (aid) is given to us only once a month. There is no electricity, no water, no gas,” Ishkova told AP on Saturday.


“I pray to God that all who remain here will survive,” she added.


At the United Nations on Friday, deputy spokesman Farhan Haq said U.N. humanitarian staff reported “intensive hostilities” near Bakhmut and the few humanitarian partners on the ground were focusing on evacuating the most vulnerable.


Also Saturday, Russia’s defense chief traveled to eastern Ukraine to inspect troops and award them with state decorations, the Defense Ministry said.

Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu visited a command post where he was briefed by regional commander Rustam Muradov, according to a video published by the ministry. It did not disclose the command post’s location.


Elsewhere, Ukraine’s emergency services reported in the morning that the death toll from a Russian missile strike that hit a five-story apartment building in southern Ukraine on Thursday rose to 11.


Emergency services said in an online statement that rescuers pulled three more bodies from the wreckage overnight, some 36 hours after a Russian missile tore through four floors of the building in the riverside city of Zaporizhzhia. A child was among those reported killed, and the rescue effort was ongoing.


Russian shelling on Saturday also killed two residents of front-line communities in the surrounding Zaporizhzhia region, the local military administration reported.


A 57-year-old woman and a 68-year-old man also died in Nikopol, a town farther west near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, as Russian forces fired artillery shells and rockets at Ukrainian-held territory across the Dnieper river, regional Gov. Serhiy Lysak reported.

In the western city of Lviv, hundreds of kilometers from the front lines, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met Saturday with the head of the European Union parliament. Hours earlier, Zelenskyy held talks with U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland and top European legal officials on how to hold Russia accountable for its actions in Ukraine.


In a joint press briefing with Zelenskyy, European Parliament President Roberta Metsola said that “all those responsible” for suspected Russian war crimes in Ukraine, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, must be brought to justice before a durable peace is achieved.


Metsola voiced support for the EU’s announcement Thursday that an international center for the prosecution of the crime of aggression — the act of invading another country — would be set up in The Hague.


She also called for Ukraine to start negotiations on joining the 27-nation bloc as early as this year and urged Western nations to keep arming Kyiv as it battles Russian forces in the east and south.

The EU agreed in June to put Ukraine on a path toward membership, setting in motion a process that could take years or even decades. However, Moscow’s invasion and Ukraine’s request for fast-track consideration have lent urgency to the negotiations.


“Ukraine’s future is in the European Union. We will walk all the way with you,” Metsola said on Twitter late Friday.

Civilians flee embattled town as Ukrainian pullout looms | AP News

Wagner Boss Appears to Issue Veiled Threat to Kremlin in Ominous Video

Just as the Wagner Group appears on track to bring Moscow its first battlefield win in Ukraine in months, founder Yevgeny Prigozhin has released a nearly four-minute video apparently issuing a veiled threat to the Kremlin. Unlike a video released a day earlier, in which Prigozhin gleefully boasted that Wagner was on the brink of victory in Bakhmut, this time he spoke solemnly in a dark room to warn of the bloody consequences for Russia if his men were to now “retreat.”

“If Wagner retreats from Bakhmut now, the whole front will collapse,” he said. “The situation will be unpleasant for all military formations protecting Russia’s interests,” he added, claiming the [Russian] army would be “forced to stabilize the front” while “Crimea falls” and there would be “many other cataclysms.” Predicting that Wagner would be scapegoated for Russia losing the war, he said mercenaries under his command would know exactly who to blame for the betrayal.

“And this is exactly the problem with ammunition hunger. … Regular fighters… They will come and say, ‘Boss, could it be that this story is being played up somewhere deep in the Defense Ministry, or maybe higher, in order to explain to the Russian people why we ended up in this trouble?

What if they want to set us up and say we are villains, and that’s why we aren’t given ammo and weapons and allowed to reinforce personnel, including convicts?”


https://www.thedailybeast.com/wagner...video?ref=home

Two Ukrainian pilots are in the U.S. for training assessment on attack aircraft, including F-16s

Two Ukrainian pilots are currently in the United States undergoing an assessment to determine how long it could take to train them to fly attack aircraft, including F-16 fighter jets, according to two congressional officials and a senior U.S. official.

The Ukrainians’ skills are being evaluated on simulators at a U.S. military base in Tucson, Arizona, the officials said, and they may be joined by more of their fellow pilots soon.

U.S. authorities have approved bringing up to 10 more Ukrainian pilots to the U.S. for further assessment as early as this month, the officials said.

The arrival of the first two pilots marks the first time Ukrainian pilots have traveled to the U.S. to have their skills evaluated by American military trainers. Officials said the effort has twin goals: to improve the pilots’ skills and evaluate how long a proper training program could take.

“The program is about assessing their abilities as pilots so we can better advise them on how to use capabilities they have and we have given them,” an administration official said.

Two administration officials stressed that it isn’t a training program and said that the Ukrainians will not be flying any aircraft during their time in the U.S.

These officials said the pilots will be using a simulator that can mimic flying various types of aircraft, and they emphasized that there are no updates on the U.S. decision to provide F-16’s to Ukraine beyond what the Pentagon’s top policy official said to Congress last week.

The official, Colin Kahl, told the House Armed Services Committee that the U.S. has not made the decision to provide F-16’s and neither had U.S. allies and partners.

He also said the U.S. has “not started training on F-16s” and that the delivery timeline for F-16s is “essentially the same” as the training timeline, about 18 months.

“So you don’t actually save yourself time by starting the training early in our assessment,” said Kahl, who is the under secretary of defense for policy. “And since we haven’t made the decision to provide F-16’s and neither have our allies and partners, it doesn’t make sense to start to train them on a system they may never get.”

Other U.S. defense officials have said the training could be shortened to six to nine months, depending on the pilots previous training and knowledge of fighter aircraft.

Ukrainian officials have told the U.S. and other allies that they have fewer than 20 pilots ready to travel to the U.S. to train on F-16s and another 30 or so who could be trained in the near future, according to American and Western officials.

Asked about the assessment of two Ukrainian pilots, a defense official described it as “familiarization event.”

“It is a routine activity as part of our military-to-military dialogue with Ukraine,” the official said.

“The ‘familiarization event’ is essentially a discussion between the Air Force personnel and an observation of how the U.S. Air Force operates. This event allows us to better help Ukrainian pilots become more effective pilots and better advise them on how to develop their own capabilities.”

The defense official added that there are no immediate plans to increase the number of pilots beyond the two currently in Tucson but said “we’re not closing the door on future opportunities.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has repeatedly asked the U.S. for F-16s, but President Joe Biden has resisted the requests so far. In an interview with ABC News last month, Biden said Ukraine does not need F-16s at this time, adding that’s based on the U.S. military’s advice.

“I’m ruling it out for now,” he said when asked if he would ever send F-16s to Ukraine.

Biden also told reporters last week that he had discussed F-16s with Zelenskyy during his visit to Kyiv on Feb. 20 but would not disclose the details of that discussion.

In his appearance before the House Armed Services Committee, Kahl said that Ukrainian officials have asked the U.S. for as many as 128 aircraft — a mix of F-15s, F-16s, and F-18s.

Kahl said the U.S. Air Force estimates that Ukraine will ultimately need between 50 and 80 F-16s to replace its current air force. If the U.S. provides newly built aircraft, it will take three to six years to deliver them to Ukraine, with a slightly shorter timeline of 18 to 24 months if the U.S. sends refurbished older models F-16s.

The cost to send the F-16s would be as much as $11 billion, depending on the model and number delivered.

“That would consume a huge portion of the remaining security assistance that we have for this fiscal year,” Kahl said.

On Sunday, Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, said U.S. military officials told him they support providing F-16s to Ukraine.

“I was at the Munich Security Conference, met with a lot of the high-ranking military officials, including our supreme allied commander,” McCaul said on ABC News' "This Week."

“They’re all in favor of us putting not only F-16s in but longer-range artillery, to take out the Iranian drones in Crimea.”

But with the long timeline for delivery and training of F-16s, the huge price tag and the large Russian Air Force already gathering aircraft across the border from Ukraine, some US military leaders recommend focusing on weapons and equipment that Ukraine can use immediately like air defense systems.

“Even in our most earnest effort it will take months to get Ukrainians flying F-16s. They are beating the Russian Air Force with air defenses, why would we change tactics now?” a U.S. defense official said.

The Russian Air Force has roughly 500 aircraft, the official said, which dwarfs the Ukrainian force.

“It’s just not the way to fight the Russian Air Force,” the official added. “Even if we spend all the money and send every aircraft we can, it’s just a drop in the bucket compared to the Russian Air Force.”

Two Ukrainian pilots are in the U.S. for training assessment on attack aircraft, including F-16s

Russia’s Wagner Troops Exhaust Ukrainian Forces in Bakhmut

CHASIV YAR, Ukraine—Shielded by a small hill from Russian positions a half-mile away, a Ukrainian soldier spotted via drone feed a new foxhole that appeared overnight northwest of the embattled city of Bakhmut.


Three troopers of Russia’s Wagner paramilitary organization had crawled through no man’s land to establish a firing position, likely for a grenade launcher. The drone’s camera zoomed to Russian trenches behind.


“Corpses, corpses, corpses one atop another,” said Oleksiy, a soldier with Ukraine’s Third Storm Brigade who watched the footage and coordinated the response. “And now, look, these brave lads have come out our way.”


“They don’t even have their body armor on,” he shouted to a fellow trooper operating an American-made MK-19 grenade launcher above the staccato exchange of machine-gun fire. One of the bullets whizzed overhead. “Let’s hit them now.”


With a series of clinks, a volley of grenades flew to the Russian trench. “Done,” said Oleksiy.


These Wagner men, too, joined a long list of casualties that the group, which now relies mostly on convicts recruited in Russian prisons, has incurred in the monthslong battle for Bakhmut.

With their policy of executing on the spot troopers who attempt to retreat or surrender, and a disregard for losses that is shocking for modern warfare, Wagner’s disposable penal battalions have emerged as a unique threat to Ukrainian defenders, advancing at the time when the regular Russian military remains largely stalled.


No military in a democratic society can keep sending wave after wave of soldiers to near-certain death to gain another few hundred yards. Even Russia’s regular armed forces, known for their high tolerance of casualties, shy away from dispatching troops on clearly suicidal missions. Yet it is precisely such an approach that has allowed Wagner to come to the verge of capturing Bakhmut, at a cost that Ukrainian and Western officials estimate at tens of thousands of Russian casualties.


On Sunday, Wagner’s forces pushed toward central Bakhmut from the east and the north, as remaining Ukrainian defenders retreated west of the Bakhmutka river that runs through the city. Ukrainian forces battled to retain control over the two remaining supply routes into Bakhmut, with heavy artillery exchanges ringing across the frontline.

Ukraine has also suffered large casualties during the eight months of battling for Bakhmut, losing some of the troops that it needs to mount a spring offensive with new weapons supplied by the U.S. and allies. President Volodymyr Zelensky has come under growing pressure to pull back from the eastern city, home to 70,000 people before the war, in what would be Kyiv’s first such significant retreat since last summer.

At times, up to 18 human waves of Wagner troops have attacked a single trench here in a 24-hour period, said Sr. Lt. Petro Horbatenko, a battalion commander in the Third Storm Brigade, one of the Ukrainian units on the Bakhmut front.


“A Wagner fighter doesn’t have an option to pull back. Their only chance of survival is to keep moving ahead,” he said. “And this tactic works. It’s a zombie war…They are throwing cannon fodder at us, aiming to cause maximum damage. We obviously can’t respond the same way because we don’t have as much personnel and we are sensitive to losses.”


One of Wagner’s men captured on the Bakhmut front, a 48-year-old recidivist with convictions for murder, robbery and drug offenses, said that he was trained for three weeks with basically one skill: how to crawl and advance in a forest, an indication that he wasn’t expected to survive his first mission. Then, the night of Jan. 29, two Wagner squads, each containing five regular convicts and one commander, also an inmate, were ordered to assault a fortified Ukrainian outpost.

“Two machine guns were blazing at us, people were being torn to bits, but they kept telling us: keep crawling ahead and dig in. It was just plain dumb,” said the man, who was captured by Ukrainian forces in March, in an interview.


Four of the 12 members of that attack group remained combat-fit by the end of the night, with most others killed, he said. The Wagner fighter said he was allowed to retreat by the morning because of injuries to his arm. Even for the troopers who had sustained serious wounds, a pullback without permission wasn’t an option.


“If you don’t push ahead and do what you’re told, you simply get nullified,” he said, using Wagner’s term for on-the-spot executions, often with a sledgehammer blow to the head. “Everyone knows that.”

In a hospital in Russian-occupied Luhansk, a Wagner doctor declared the man fit for service after ascertaining that he could still move his trigger finger. He was sent back to the front line northwest of Bakhmut on a detail evacuating casualties in late February. The number of the dead Wagner men that he saw in the nine days before his capture was in the hundreds, with fatalities outnumbering nonlethal casualties, he said. “We would just stack up all the corpses in one place and leave them there, there was no time to deal with them.”

Wagner didn’t provide his detail with food, he said, so the men scavenged for the rations of the dead in the debris-filled trenches that kept freezing and turning back into pools of mud.


The Wagner soldier was captured after he got lost and stumbled into a Ukrainian position.


Soldiers from Ukraine’s Third Storm Brigade said that a Wagner body in the no man’s land ahead of their position remained there untouched for five days. Then, one night, one of other Wagner troopers crawled out to remove the man’s backpack, leaving the corpse behind.


Founded by Yevgeny Prigozhin, President Vladimir Putin’s former caterer and confidant who spent a decade in Soviet prisons for robbery and other offenses, Wagner started off around 2014 as a private-military company that relied on experienced Russian military veterans and operated in Syria, Libya, the Central African Republic and Mali.

Wagner loosened its once-strict recruitment standards as it created new forces for the Ukrainian war, achieving critical successes that allowed Russia to capture Ukrainian-held parts of the Luhansk region between May and July. After the losses of that campaign, Mr. Prigozhin secured Mr. Putin’s permission to start recruiting in Russian prison camps.


Inmates were offered a promise of amnesty if they survived for six months. Those deserting, surrendering, drinking, taking drugs or engaging in sex were to be executed, Mr. Prigozhin said in addresses to potential recruits. A video released by Wagner in November showed one of their men, captured by Ukraine and then traded back in a prisoner exchange, murdered on camera with a blow by the group’s trademark sledgehammer to the skull.


As many as 50,000 prisoners have signed up, with nearly all of them sent to the Bakhmut front. Mr. Prigozhin, who has confirmed the group’s recruitment tactics and internal rules in multiple appearances, has said that Wagner tries to protect the lives of its inmate recruits. In late February, he also posted a photograph showing the corpses of several dozen Wagner fighters, an image that he said depicted only one of the casualty-collection points for that day’s toll in the Bakhmut area.

Wagner’s goal, Mr. Prigozhin has said, wasn’t so much to take Bakhmut but to grind down Ukraine’s military. To an extent, this plan worked: As Ukraine poured some of its best brigades in to defend the city in recent months, even a lopsided casualty ratio in the Ukrainian favor ultimately worked to Moscow’s advantage given Russia’s larger population—and the fact that Russia was trading ill-trained prisoners for the lives of Ukrainian troops.


Such losses in the Bakhmut area are threatening Kyiv’s ability to mount a strategic counteroffensive once the current mud season ends in the spring and unpaved roads become passable again.


“The war is won not by the party that gains territory, but by the party that destroys the armed forces of the adversary,” said Sr. Lt. Horbatenko, the Third Storm Brigade battalion commander. “Here, we are using up too much of the offensive potential that we’ll need for a breakthrough once Ukraine’s black earth dries up.”

Ukrainian combat casualties are classified. Officers in some other brigades say that several units—including some of the best-prepared ones—have been routed by fighting in the Bakhmut area in recent months.


Ukrainian brigades have big differences in the level of training and morale, and don’t always have proper communication with one another. One company commander said that his positions were overrun by Wagner south of Bakhmut because a nearby battalion, recruited from volunteers with poor training, had abandoned their allotted area without prior warning. Wagner’s tactic has been to target these weaker units, Ukrainian commanders in the Bakhmut area say.


Touting Wagner’s battlefield superiority, Mr. Prigozhin has repeatedly labeled Russia’s top military commanders as incompetent or worse. Russia’s military has lost well over a hundred tanks and other armored fighting vehicles, as well as hundreds of men, in a fruitless push to take the strategic town of Vuhledar in recent weeks. It has failed to achieve breakthroughs in other areas, too.

Even in Ukrainian captivity, some Wagner troopers take pride in their organization’s grit. “What Russian Ministry of Defense troops? What can they do?” said a 29-year-old convict recruited by Wagner and captured in Bakhmut in late February. “They need to be rejuvenated, energized a bit. They have lost their one-time steel. Our ancestors had taken Berlin, they were real men…And look now…”


Mr. Prigozhin’s conflict with the Ministry of Defense in Moscow means that the prison recruitment for Wagner has stopped, capping the organization’s ability to continue with its current tactic of human waves. Even if Mr. Prigozhin persuades the Kremlin to restore access to Russia’s prison camps, news of Wagner’s staggering losses in Bakhmut have already filtered back, deterring many remaining potential recruits.


The 48-year-old Wagner trooper captured by Ukraine said he initially signed up in October, but wasn’t picked at the time because he has hepatitis C. Then, on Dec. 30, Wagner changed its stance amid its manpower shortage. The man was shipped to training grounds in the Luhansk region. All of the men in the camp either had hepatitis C, identifiable by a white wristband, HIV, identifiable by a red wristband, or both. The 29-year-old Wagner trooper captured by the Ukrainians said he had contracted HIV in prison.


“Wagner is running out of people, too. They can’t sustain this,” said Lt. Vladyslav, a company commander in Ukraine’s 80th Assault Brigade whose men are protecting one of the access routes to Bakhmut, and recently took another Wagner prisoner. “Even in Russia, they don’t have enough men who seek suicide on our land.”

Russia’s Wagner Troops Exhaust Ukrainian Forces in Bakhmut - WSJ

Russian reservists fighting with shovels - UK defence ministry

Russian reservists are likely using "shovels" for "hand-to-hand" combat in Ukraine due to a shortage of ammunition, the UK's Ministry of Defence says.

In late February, reservists described being ordered to assault a Ukrainian position "armed with only 'firearms and shovels'", the ministry said in its latest intelligence update.

It mentioned a shovel known as MPL-50.

The tool was designed in 1869 and had changed little, the ministry said.

"The lethality of the standard-issue MPL-50 entrenching tool is particularly mythologised in Russia," the ministry said.

The continued use of the shovel "as a weapon highlights the brutal and low-tech fighting which has come to characterise much of the war", it said.

One of the reservists described being "neither physically nor psychologically" prepared for the action, the update added.

"Recent evidence suggests an increase in close combat in Ukraine," it said.

"This is probably a result of the Russian command continuing to insist on offensive action largely consisting of dismounted infantry, with less support from artillery fire because Russia is short of munitions."

The BBC has been unable to independently verify these reports. The ministry did not give information on where such battles were taking place.

Meanwhile Russian forces appear to have secured a sufficient positional advantage in the besieged city of Bakhmut, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said.

Bakhmut has seen months of fighting, as Russia tries to take control of the small city, where around 4,000 civilians remain.

Taking the city would be a rare battlefield success in recent months for Russia, but the city's strategic value has been questioned.

The ISW said Russia's positional advantage could allow a "turning movement" in the city.

The purpose of a turning movement is to force the enemy to abandon prepared defensive positions, and is different from the aim of an encirclement, which is to trap and destroy enemy forces, the ISW says.

"The Russians may have intended to encircle Ukrainian forces in Bakhmut, but the Ukrainian command has signalled that it will likely withdraw rather than risk an encirclement," the ISW said.

However, the Ukrainian military said on Sunday that it had no intention of withdrawing from Bakhmut.

A statement by the Armed Forces General Staff acknowledged that Russian forces were still trying to surround the city, but said more than 100 attacks had been repelled in the eastern Donbas region in the past 24 hours.

Thousands of Russian troops have died trying to take Bakhmut, which had a pre-war population of around 75,000.

Ukraine war: Russian reservists fighting with shovels - UK defence ministry - BBC News

Zelenskyy vows not to retreat from Ukrainian city of Bakhmut

CHASIV YAR, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy vowed Monday not to retreat from Bakhmut as Russian forces encroached on the devastated eastern city they have sought to capture for six months at the cost of thousands of lives.


Less than a week ago, an adviser to Zelenskyy said the defenders might give up on Bakhmut and fall back to nearby positions.


But Zelenskyy on Monday chaired a meeting in which top military brass “spoke in favor of continuing the defense operation and further strengthening our positions in Bakhmut.” Later in his nightly video address, the president reported that his advisers unanimously agreed to press on with the fight, “not to retreat” and to bolster Ukrainian defenses.


His top adviser, Mykhailo Podolyak, told The Associated Press that Ukrainian forces around Bakhmut have been grinding down enemy forces, reinforcing their positions and training tens of thousands of Ukrainian military personnel for a possible counteroffensive.


Intense Russian shelling targeted the city in the Donetsk region and nearby villages as Moscow waged a three-sided assault to try to finish off Bakhmut’s resistance.

The nearby towns of Chasiv Yar and Kostiantynivka came under heavy shelling, damaging cars and homes and sparking a fire. No casualties were immediately reported.


Police and volunteers evacuated people from Chasiv Yar and other front-line towns in an operation made difficult by the loss of bridges and constant artillery fire that has left barely a house standing.


Russian forces have been unable to deliver a knockout blow that would allow them to seize Bakhmut. Analysts say the city does not hold major strategic value and that its capture would be unlikely to serve as a turning point in the conflict.


The Russian push for Bakhmut reflects the Kremlin’s broader struggle to achieve battlefield momentum. Moscow’s full-scale invasion on Feb. 24, 2022, soon stalled, and Ukraine launched a largely successful counteroffensive. Over the bitterly cold winter months, the fighting has largely been deadlocked.


The city’s importance has become mostly symbolic. For Russian President Vladimir Putin, prevailing there would finally deliver some good news from the front. For Kyiv, the display of grit and defiance underscores the message that Ukraine is holding on after a year of brutal attacks, justifying continued support from its Western allies.


U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin endorsed that view Monday, saying during a visit to Jordan that Bakhmut has “more of a symbolic value than … strategic and operational value.”

Moscow, he added, continues “to pour in a lot of ill-trained and ill-equipped troops” into Bakhmut, while Ukraine patiently builds “combat power” elsewhere with Western military support ahead of a possible spring offensive.


Even so, some analysts question the wisdom of ordering Ukrainian defenders to hold out much longer. Others suggest that a tactical withdrawal may already be underway.


Michael Kofman, the director of Russia studies at the CAN think tank in Arlington, Virginia, said Ukraine’s defense of Bakhmut has been effective because it has drained the Russian war effort, but that Kyiv should now look ahead.


“The tenacious defense of Bakhmut achieved a great deal, expending Russian manpower and ammunition,” Kofman tweeted late Sunday. “But strategies can reach points of diminishing returns, and given Ukraine is trying to husband resources for an offensive, it could impede the success of a more important operation.”

The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said Kyiv’s smartest option now may be to withdraw to positions that are easier to defend.


“Ukrainian forces are unlikely to withdraw from Bakhmut all at once and may pursue a gradual fighting withdrawal to exhaust Russian forces through continued urban warfare,” the ISW said in an assessment published late Sunday.


The Bakhmut battle has exposed Russian military shortcomings and bitter divisions.


Yevgeny Prigozhin, the millionaire owner of the Wagner Group military company that has spearheaded the Bakhmut offensive, has been at loggerheads with the Russian Defense Ministry and repeatedly accused it of failing to provide his forces with ammunition.


On Monday, Prigozhin warned in a Russian social media post that the situation in Bakhmut “will turn out to be a ‘pie’: The filling is the parts of the Armed Forces of Ukraine surrounded by us (in the case, of course, if there is a complete encirclement of Bakhmut), and the shell is, in fact, the Wagner” Group.

Bakhmut has taken on almost mythic importance. It has become like Mariupol — the port city in the same province that Russia captured last year after an 82-day siege that eventually came down to a mammoth steel mill where determined Ukrainian fighters held out along with civilians.


Moscow looked to cement its rule in Mariupol. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu toured some of the city’s rebuilt infrastructure — a newly built hospital, a rescue center and residential buildings — the Defense Ministry said.


In other developments Monday:

— Russian forces attacked central and eastern regions of Ukraine with Iranian-made Shahed drones, said a spokesman for Ukraine’s Air Forces, Yurii Ihnat. Of 15 drones Russia launched, 13 were shot down, Ihnat said. It wasn’t immediately clear if the attack caused damage.


— Russian defenders shot down three missiles over Russia’s Belgorod region on the border with Ukraine, its governor, Vyacheslav Gladkov, said on Telegram. Debris injured one person and damaged power lines and façades of residential buildings, according to the official. Gladkov did not specify whether the missiles were fired from Ukraine.


— Ukraine’s chief prosecutor announced a criminal investigation into what appeared to be Russian troops’ execution of an unarmed Ukrainian prisoner of war. A video circulating on social media showed a uniformed Ukrainian soldier standing and smoking. The soldier recites Ukraine’s battle cry, “Glory to Ukraine!” then a volley of gunshots hits him, and he falls into a shallow hole dug into the ground. The AP could not verify the video’s authenticity.


Outrage over the video quickly sparked a flurry of social media posts, including by Zelenskyy, of “Glory to Ukraine!” In his nightly video address, Zelenskyy said: “I want us all together, in unity, to respond to his words: “Glory to the hero! Glory to heroes! Glory to Ukraine!” And we will find the killers.”


— Russia’s Federal Security Service, or FSB, reported thwarting an attempt to assassinate nationalist businessman Konstantin Malofeyev that was allegedly plotted by Ukrainian security services and the Russian Volunteer Corps that claims to be part of Ukraine’s armed forces. According to the FSB, the Russian Volunteer Corps leader Denis Kapustin was the mastermind behind the plan, which was to put a bomb under Malofeyev’s car.


Malofeyev is a media baron and owner of the ultra-conservative Tsargrad TV who has supported Russia-backed separatists in Ukraine and has trumpeted Moscow’s invasion as a “holy war.” He has been sanctioned by the U.S. and last year was charged with trying to evade sanctions.


The Russian Volunteer Corps last week claimed responsibility for an attack on Russian villages on the border with Ukraine. The FSB said Monday that Kapustin organized and spearheaded the raid, which killed two civilians and wounded two others. The FSB’s allegations could not be independently verified. Ukrainian officials have not commented.

Zelenskyy vows not to retreat from Ukrainian city of Bakhmut | AP News

Russian missile barrage slams into Ukrainian cities; 6 dead

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A barrage of more than 80 Russian missiles and a smaller number of exploding drones hit residential buildings and critical infrastructure across Ukraine on Thursday, killing six people and leaving hundreds of thousands without heat or electricity.


The largest such attack in three weeks also put Europe’s largest nuclear plant at risk by knocking it off the power grid for nearly half of the day before it was reconnected. Because nuclear reactors need constant power to run cooling systems to avoid a meltdown, the latest power loss at the Zaporizhzhia plant again raised the specter of a nuclear catastrophe.


Air raid sirens wailed through the night as the attacks targeted a wide swath of the country, including western Ukraine, which is far from the front lines. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the assault that came while many people slept was “another attempt by the terrorist state to wage war against civilization.”

The Russian Defense Ministry said the strikes were in retaliation for a recent incursion into the Bryansk region of western Russia by what Moscow claimed were Ukrainian saboteurs. Ukraine denied the claim and warned that Moscow could use the allegations to justify stepping up its own assaults.

The Kremlin’s forces started targeting Ukraine’s power supply last October in an apparent attempt to demoralize the civilian population and compel Kyiv to negotiate peace on Moscow’s terms. The attacks later became less frequent, and analysts speculated that Russia may have been running low on ammunition. The last major bombardment was Feb. 16.


The head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency said the Russia-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant lost all external power for 11 hours after its last remaining power line was disconnected following reports of the missile strikes. Rafael Grossi of the International Atomic Energy Agency emphasized that the incident “again demonstrated how fragile and dangerous the situation is” for the plant.


Overall, Russia launched 81 missiles and eight exploding Iranian-made Shahed drones Thursday, according to Ukraine’s chief commander of the armed forces, Valerii Zaluzhnyi. Thirty-four missiles were intercepted, as were four drones, he said. The mixture of munitions makes it harder for air defenses to cope with the onslaught, military analysts say.


Among the weapons were six hypersonic Kinzhal cruise missiles, which are among the most sophisticated weapons in the Russian arsenal, Ukrainian air force spokesman Yurii Ihnat said. Ukraine says its air defenses cannot intercept them.


The Russian Defense Ministry said the barrage hit military and industrial targets in Ukraine “as well as the energy facilities that supply them.”

The missile strikes took no toll on the army’s combat capability, but they played “on the nerves of the civilian population of Ukraine,” Ukrainian military analyst Oleh Zhdanov told The Associated Press.


In his evening video address to the nation, Zelenskyy struck a defiant tone.


“We have already shown what Ukraine is capable of,” he said. “And no matter how treacherous Russia’s actions are, our state and people will not be in chains. Neither missiles nor Russian atrocities will help them.”


Nearly half of households in Kyiv were without heat, as were many in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, where the water was also cut on a day when outdoor temperatures were expected to fall to around freezing, local officials said.

Around 150,000 households were left without power in Ukraine’s northwestern Zhytomyr region. In the southern port of Odesa, emergency blackouts occurred due to damaged power lines.


Viktor Bukhta, a 57-year-old resident of Kyiv’s Sviatoshynski district, where officials said three people were wounded, said a missile landed nearby in the early morning.


“We went into the yard. People were injured,” he said. “Then the cars caught fire. We tried to extinguish them with car fire extinguishers. And I got a little burned.”


Grossi said he was “astonished by the complacency” of members of the organization he leads in relation to the dangers at the Zaporizhzhia plant.


“What are we doing to prevent this happening?” Grossi asked the agency’s board of directors in a meeting Thursday, according to a statement from the organization.

“Each time we are rolling a dice,” he said. “And if we allow this to continue time after time, then one day our luck will run out.”


Grossi and others have called for the plant to be demilitarized, including the withdrawal of Russian troops. The Kremlin, which says its troops are needed to protect the plant, has rejected the idea.


Speaking at the IAEA meeting in Vienna, Russian envoy Mikhail Ulyanov said Moscow supports measures to prevent attacks against the plant. He challenged Kyiv to make a pledge not to shell the facility.


Russia and Ukraine have long traded accusations about their forces shelling the Zaporizhzhia plant.


Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba tweeted that the attack had “no military objective, just Russian barbarism.”


Smoke could be seen rising from a facility in Kyiv’s Holosiivskyi district, and police cordoned off all roads leading to it.

Three men and two women were killed in the western region of Lviv after a missile struck a residential area, Gov. Maksym Kozytskyi said. Three buildings were destroyed by fire, and rescue workers combed through rubble looking for more possible victims, he said.


A sixth person was killed and two others wounded in multiple strikes in the Dnipropetrovsk region that targeted its energy infrastructure and industrial facilities, Gov. Serhii Lysak said.


Aside from the hail of missiles, Russian shelling killed six other civilians from Wednesday to Thursday, Ukrainian officials said, including three people at a bus stop in Kherson.


Russian missile barrage slams into Ukrainian cities; 6 dead | AP News

Cant see lukashenko comitting troops who will be left to supress the population at home.

Originally Posted by Hugh Cow

Cant see lukashenko comitting troops who will be left to supress the population at home.

He has next to nothing left to give. He already handed over most of his armies vehicles to Russia.

It appears the 4th Tank Brigade will be the first Ukrainian army unit to operate those Leopard 2 tanks Kyiv’s allies have pledged to the war effort. The battle-weary unit’s new tanks could save it from a slow collapse.

One big clue is the presence of a 4th Tank Brigade officer, Maj. Vadim Khodak, at the training range in Poland where Ukrainian officers are learning to operate the four-person, 69-ton tank with its tough armor, precise optics and powerful 120-millimeter smoothbore gun.

“The vehicle is of high quality, very good,” Khodak said of the German-designed Leopard 2. “What I like is that our soldiers like it very much.”

Khodak was referring to the first of the 14 Leopard 2A4s that Poland has donated to Ukraine. The 1985-vintage 2A4s are some of the oldest of the 59 Leopard 2s that a consortium of Kyiv’s allies—Canada, Germany, Norway, Portugal, Spain and Sweden in addition to Poland—so far have pledged.

The tank consignment also includes 21 of the latest, long-gun Leopard 2A6s and 10 Swedish Stridsvagn 122s that are derivatives of the Leopard 2A5. If Khodak and his tankers like the old 2A4s, their colleagues in other battalions or brigades should love the much more modern 2A5s and 2A6s.

However, any Leopard is an upgrade over the older, Soviet-style tanks—T-72s and maybe T-64s—the 4th Tank Brigade currently operates. The Leopard 2 has better optics than a T-72 has and tougher armor than a T-64 has.

The 4th Tank Brigade is one of just five tank brigades in the Ukrainian army. The unit formed in 2017, three years after Russian troops first seized Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula then invaded eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region.

Early on, the 4th Tank Brigade’s four tank battalions—each with two or three dozen tanks—operated the Ukrainian-built T-64, including the standard T-64BV and the upgraded T-64BM with improved armor.

But the whole Ukrainian army—not just the tank brigades, but also the tank battalions in mechanized brigades—before the war had just 800 T-64s in active use plus 450 or so in storage. The Russians have destroyed or captured around 300 of them in the first year of their wider war on Ukraine.

The T-64s are running out. And that seems to be why the 4th Tank Brigade lately has been spotted operating less-capable T-72AMT tanks from Ukrainian stocks and T-72M1s that Kyiv has received from foreign allies including Poland and the Czech Republic.

Before Poland handed over the first four Leopard 2A4s in late February, the 4th Tank Brigade was devolving, technologically speaking. “Currently we significantly lack armored vehicles,” Khodak conceded.

The Leopard 2s could reverse that trend and restore some of the combat power the brigade has lost in a year of hard combat. “I hope that when we arrive with vehicles at the front line, it will save the lives of many of our soldiers and bring us closer to victory.”

The 4th Tank Brigade is transitioning at least one of its tank battalions to the Leopard 2A4 while its other battalions are in the thick of the fighting, in and around Bakhmut in Donbas.

Just how many of the brigade’s battalions get Leopard 2s likely depends on exactly how Kyiv chooses to deploy the 40 2A4s Poland, Norway and Spain have pledged.

Forty tanks could equip one large battalion or two small ones. It would make logistical sense to assign all 40 2A4s to the same brigade, but it might make tactical sense to give two different brigades one battalion each of Leopard 2A4s.

If the battle for Bakhmut grinds on much longer, the 4th Tank Brigade 2A4s could join that fight. If that apocalyptic battle finally, mercifully ends soon, the brigade might save its Leopard 2s for Ukraine’s widely-anticipated spring counteroffensive.

The Ukrainian 4th Tank Brigade Was Running Out Of Tanks. Then It Got Leopard 2s.

A Kremlin spokesperson admitted that Russian President Vladimir Putin is losing control of Russia's narrative over the Ukraine war, according to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW).The admission comes more than one year after Putin launched the Ukraine "special military operation" on February 24, 2022, aiming for a quick victory against the Eastern Europe nation. However, Ukrainian troops responded with a stronger-than-expected defense effort, since bolstered by Western aid, that has prevented Russia from making substantial gains and sparking some internal Kremlin infighting about the war.

As the war continues, Russia has used the "information space" to promote its perspective on the conflict via news and social media platforms. Russia has long used these techniques to push its viewpoint and influence global affairs—all while cracking down on dissent within Russia's borders amid the Ukraine war.

But Putin's hold on the Russian information space could be slipping—a problem he may not be able to easily fix, according to the ISW.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova made the admission during a forum about the "practical and technological aspects of information and cognitive warfare in modern realities," the ISW reported on Saturday.

Zakharova confirmed that there is infighting in Putin's inner circle and that he has "ceded centralized control over the Russian information space."

"During a panel discussion Zakharova stated that the Kremlin cannot replicate the Stalinist approach of establishing a modern equivalent to the Soviet Information Bureau to centrally control Russia's internal information space due to fighting among unspecified Kremlin 'elites,'" according to the ISW report.

The ISW wrote that Zakharova's remarks "support" assessments that the Kremlin is losing control of the war narrative.

"The statement supports several assessments: that there is Kremlin infighting between key members of Putin's inner circle; that Putin has largely ceded the Russian information space over time to a variety of quasi-independent actors; and that Putin is apparently unable to take decisive action to regain control over the Russian information space," the report said.

The think tank questioned why Zakharova would make this public admission, speculating that it could be an attempt to quell criticisms from Russian milbloggers, who have become sharply critical of the Kremlin's handling of the war. Putin's troops for months have struggled to make substantial progress against Ukraine, spurring backlash.

The report is only the latest indication that the Kremlin has struggled with maintaining control over the Russian information space. In January, the ISW reported that Putin was trying to stifle dissent from military bloggers.

https://www.newsweek.com/kremlin-adm...ve-isw-1787164

No Evidence Russia Is Making Progress in Bakhmut: Report

There is no evidence that Russian forces are making headway in their ongoing bid to take the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, according to a report published late Saturday by a Washington-based think tank. The Institute for the Study of War said there had been no confirmed advances by Moscow on Saturday, though it appeared as though Russian soldiers and units from the paramilitary Wagner Group were continuing to launch ground assaults. “Ukrainian and Russian sources continue to report heavy fighting in the city, but Wagner Group fighters are likely becoming increasingly pinned in urban areas, such as the AZOM industrial complex, and are therefore finding it difficult to make significant advances,” the report said. Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Wagner Group’s founder, said Sunday on Telegram that the situation in Bakhmut was “difficult, very difficult, with the enemy fighting for each meter,” according to the Associated Press.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/russia...-says?ref=home

Igor Girkin, a former Russian army commander, recently shared his disappointing assessment of Russian President Vladimir Putin's forces, saying that they have "no chance" of taking certain regions after an unsuccessful winter in Ukraine.

In a video posted to Twitter on Sunday by Anton Gerashchenko, adviser to the Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, Girkin said, "Unfortunately the unsuccessful winter campaign and the fact the Ukrainian army didn't suffer a strategic defeat practically dooms Trans-Dniester to defeat and occupation."

Ukraine has received numerous aid packages from the United States and other Western countries since the start of the war last February. The Kremlin has credited the West with Ukraine's ability to hold the line amid Russia's attempts at advancement. Last month, Russian state TV host Vladimir Solovyov said Russia's "enemies will deliver everything, they'll give [Ukraine] everything, until we deal with them harshly and clearly."

In the video shared by Gerashchenko, Girkin added: "Russian forces have no chance of fighting their way to Trans-Dniester by land after leaving its right bank staging ground and retreating from Kherson. Unfortunately, we cannot repeat the crossing of Dnieper River on the fly without being met with resistance. At the moment, neither our fleet, nor the army have enough strength to destroy the enemy's [Ukraine] anti-ship and anti-aircraft defense systems."

Major Ukrainian cities including Kherson, Kyiv, Odessa, and Bakhmut have been at the center of Russian shelling and fierce fighting since Putin's invasion of the Eastern European country. Most recently, Bakhmut, which is in the country's Donetsk region, has been the site of months-long battles between Russian and paramilitary forces against Ukrainian troops.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky previously vowed to defend the "fortress" city, but Russian soldiers have slowly gained territory there in recent weeks. Analysts have said that the battle is likely to end "imminently" in Bakhmut.

The latest battlefield losses for Russia show Putin's troops have lost 159,090 personnel, making a single day loss of 1,090 troops, according to Ukraine's Ministry of Defense on Sunday. Additionally, Russia has lost 3,466 tanks, 304 military jets, and 259 air defense systems since February 24, 2022. Newsweek could not independently verify these numbers.

The repeated losses incurred by Putin's troops have even started depleting a decades old stockpile, according to Oleksiy Danilov, the secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine.

"Russia is running out of prepared stockpiles of weapons. Missiles and military equipment have been accumulating for decades. The calculations called for blitzkrieg, not blitzutilization," Danilov tweeted on Saturday. "A corrupt economy is unable to provide a front, foreign aid for terrorist Russia is a matter of primary importance."

Meanwhile, Gerashchenko posted another tweet of Girkin on Sunday showing the former military officer condemning current Russian leadership.

"Once again, I do not believe under the leadership of the current Ministry of Defense of Russia and it's wonderful, amazing, talented team we can win this war," Girkin said.

Director of the Grand Strategy Program at Defense Priorities, Rajan Menon, told Newsweek on Sunday, "At this point I see no indication that either side believes it's losing the war—or will lose it. Nor do I expect the war to end anytime soon. Putin's bet may be that time still favors him because he has larger numbers in troops and arms and that Western unity will eventually fray. The recent big losses in soldiers and arms seem not to matter to him."

He added: "Ukraine believes that when newly promised Western armaments (tanks and armored personnel carriers in particular) arrive in adequate numbers and the ground hardens after the rainy season, it can launch a counteroffensive. That move will likely be in the south—toward Melitopol as part of a larger plan to cut Russia's land corridor to Crimea by reaching the Azov Sea littoral."

https://www.newsweek.com/former-russ...forces-1787176

Since the outset of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year, Western leaders have privately been warning Kyiv against kicking Russia out of Crimea, the peninsula Russian President Vladimir Putin seized from Ukraine in 2014, out of a fear of triggering a nuclear flashpoint.

But now, over one year into the invasion, the tide appears to be turning—at least from Kyiv’s perspective.

Western leaders have started warming to the idea that Ukraine can take back Crimea in spite of Russian nuclear threats, Tamila Tasheva, the Ukrainian government official in charge of Crimea, told The Daily Beast in an exclusive interview.

“We heard from Western leaders that… if we come back to Crimea, that there would be an unavoidable escalation, that might even provoke a nuclear conflict,” Tasheva said, noting that those warnings have faded in recent weeks. “The rhetoric has been changing since we explain more and more what Crimea is, what it means for Russia, and how things are connected around Crimea,” she said referring to the way Russia has been using Crimea as a launchpad and key supply route for the war.

In the fall, The Daily Beast reported that Western officials were privately urging Ukraine’s government to back away from the idea of taking back Crimea. At the time, they expressed concerns to Tasheva that Putin, who had derived huge domestic support from seizing the Ukrainian peninsula in 2014, would view a Ukrainian campaign to take it back as an attack on Russia proper and respond with massive escalation.

Tasheva believes that concern has started melting away now that Ukraine is arguing that Crimea is key to a victory against Putin both because Russia continues to use it as a launchpad for the war, and because Putin views it as key to his political legitimacy in Russia.

Ukraine hopes its plan to kick Russia out of Crimea—as well as the other territory it has stolen—is finally gaining momentum.

It’s a dramatic shift from the early days of the war, when Ukraine’s goals were focused on defending against Russia’s invasion and forcing Russia out of Ukrainian land captured in 2022. As Ukraine’s forces have staged successful counteroffensives, though, Kyiv has gained confidence it might be able to push Russia out of territory it stole in 2014, including Crimea.

Now, with a Ukrainian counteroffensive likely targeted at southern Ukraine looming, the path to Crimea is becoming clearer.
Significant headwinds remain in the way of that goal, however.

Publicly, the Biden administration has signaled support in recent days for Ukraine taking back Crimea, but behind the scenes, sources say there’s a different narrative that has held steady.

“Crimea is Ukraine… It is Ukrainian territory and we want to see all of Ukraine’s internationally recognized borders restored,” White House National Security Council Coordinator John Kirby said in an interview with TV Rain last week, adding that the Biden administration is not dictating limits on what Ukraine can and cannot do.

President Joe Biden said last month in a speech in Warsaw that America will continue to back Ukraine. “Our support for Ukraine will not waver, NATO will not be divided, and we will not tire.”

Internally, though, senior administration officials in both the State Department and the Pentagon harbor reservations about going full speed ahead on taking back Crimea, sources who have spoken with senior administration officials in recent days told The Daily Beast.

The administration doesn’t seem to grasp the operational importance of isolating Crimea from Russia just yet, Ben Hodges, former commanding general of United States Army Europe, told The Daily Beast.

“The administration has not yet committed to the significance of Crimea. They, and I know this from talking to senior people in DOD and elsewhere… they don't get it,” Hodges said.

We repeat again and again that we need long-range missiles and as President Zelensky has mentioned, as soon as you give us the long-range weapons, we are going to liberate Crimea,” Tasheva said.

If the Biden administration was willing to help Ukraine go after Crimea, it would send Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS), longer-range munitions that can reach about 180 miles, Hodges said.
“If they did, they would be providing the long-range, precision weapons that would help make Crimea untenable for the Russians,” Hodges said.

Russia has threatened to respond harshly over Crimea. But Tasheva stressed that while Putin has hinted at nuclear responses in other scenarios in which Ukraine takes back land Russia has illegally annexed, his threats have been empty, including Kherson.

“We have doubts he would if we come back to Crimea,” Tasheva said.

For Ukraine, delays to taking back Crimea could be make-it or break-it, particularly because it’s not clear how long the political willpower—on either end of Pennsylvania Avenue—to help Ukraine will stand up.

The share of Americans that thinks the United States is providing too much aid to Ukraine has been rising in recent weeks, according to a recent Pew Research Center poll. The creeping doubt about the current policy on supporting Ukraine is spreading among both Republicans and Democrats, the survey found.

Early signs emerged last year that Republicans and Democrats alike harbored doubts about continuing to support Ukraine with military aid.

And while some lawmakers have walked back their stances, with the 2024 presidential elections looming, Americans’ attention may shift even further to other domestic concerns.

Several plausible Republican presidential candidates have already tossed aside the idea of Ukraine aid.

Nikki Haley, a former United Nations ambassador who has announced she is running for president, has signaled that U.S. aid could dry up under her leadership.

“I don’t think we need to put money in Ukraine,” Haley said last week before an audience in Iowa.

Haley, though, sought to strike a balance by framing the war in Ukraine as a conflict that must be won, noting that a loss could spell further trouble on the global stage and potentially lead to wider conflict.

“This is not a war about Ukraine, this is a war about freedom—and it’s one that we have to win,” Haley said. “If we win this war, this will send a message to China, it will send a message to Iran, it will send a message to North Korea, it will send a message to Russia. If we lose this war… they said Poland and the Baltics are next, and you’re looking at a world war.”

Potential 2024 candidate Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has indicated that his support for Ukraine would be less enthusiastic.

“While the U.S. has many vital national interests—securing our borders, addressing the crisis of readiness within our military, achieving energy security and independence, and checking the economic, cultural, and military power of the Chinese Communist Party—becoming further entangled in a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia is not one of them,” DeSantis told Fox News host Tucker Carlson this week.

Former President Donald Trump has said he would have let Russia “take over” parts of Ukraine if he were still in the White House.

Among Republicans who are eyeing the presidency, a Trump victory would likely be the worst outcome for Ukraine aid, former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine John Herbst said.

“Short of that I suspect that we will continue to provide substantial aid to Ukraine, because it is so clearly in American interests,” Herbst told The Daily Beast. “Republican aspirants understand that American interests require defeating Putin in Ukraine, because if he wins in Ukraine, we have a much larger national security problem, and a much more expensive national security problem.”

Kyiv is keeping tabs of the political developments in the United States with a watchful eye, particularly as the timeline for taking back Crimea hangs in the balance.

“I understand that Ukraine is becoming an issue in American domestic political fights for… American people and most of all, America’s current leadership,” Tasheva told The Daily Beast. “We realize that Ukraine is becoming a part of the agenda in political battles.”

Tasheva had a message for America’s political leaders, warning that ignoring Ukraine could lead to a wider war with American boots on the ground. Russia has already threatened to invade other countries beyond Ukraine, including those in NATO, which maintains a collective defense protocol. When one is attacked, the organization can consider it an attack on all and respond together.

“We want to point out that we are here fighting for democratic values and it is democracy facing the threat of dictatorial regime,” she said.

“Ukraine is not a part of NATO, but Ukraine’s neighbors, including Baltic countries, are members of NATO,” Tasheva said. “I don’t think NATO countries’ leaders would like to send their own fighters to fight in this war, in case Ukraine loses. It’s necessary to help Ukraine win for that very reason.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/were-o...imea-nightmare

France accused of delaying EU’s €2bn plan to replenish Ukraine’s artillery shell stocks

France was on Wednesday accused of slowing down the European Union’s plans to replenish Ukraine’s dwindling artillery shell stocks by demanding the munitions be manufactured inside the bloc.


European sources told the Telegraph that Paris wanted guarantees that a €2 billion deal to jointly procure weapons would only benefit firms based in the EU.


The demand came during talks over a new Brussels-led scheme to purchase one million 155mm artillery shells to bolster supplies to Kyiv and fill depleted national armouries.


Under the scheme, member states would be given cash incentives to centralise and coordinate procurement among themselves in the hope of placing orders large enough to convince arms manufacturers to ramp up production.


French officials argued only defence firms based in the EU should be allowed to access the lucrative new contracts.


Critics of the French demand warned that this risked slowing down support for Ukraine because production capacity could be readily available outside the bloc.


“Many member states presented different opinions to that of France,” an EU diplomat told The Telegraph.


“If we want to act immediately, which is necessary, allowing non-EU companies into the scheme is very important.”


“Paris clearly favours the EU spending on its own industries over supporting Ukraine,” a European source added.

France accused of delaying EU’s €2bn plan to replenish Ukraine’s artillery shell stocks

Prigozhin Says Jealous Kremlin Deliberately Stopped Wagner Taking Bakhmut

Wagner Group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin has stepped up his angry attacks on the Russian Defense Ministry, accusing Kremlin officials of deliberately preventing his fighters capturing Bakhmut out of sheer jealousy at his military successes.


The mercenary boss dubbed “Putin’s Chef” said authorities are choosing to deprive Wagner of ammunition which has slowed progress in the blood-soaked battle to take Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine. “The objective is simple,” Prigozhin said: “PMC Wagner should not take Bakhmut.”

His comments, which were made during an interview with several Russian media outlets on Wednesday, are the latest development in an escalating war of words between Prigozhin and the official armed forces of Russia.


“Our actions today of course cause envy,” Prigozhin said, referring to jealousy among Russia’s military establishment. “So because we have successes, while in other places successes are not what they’d like to be, then instead of—remember what grandpa Lenin said: we all thought we were all meant to live well, but instead, they made it so that everyone lived the same but poorly.”


Prigozhin went on to say all of Russia “supported” Wagner after the fall of Soledar—a salt mining town near Bakhmut—a victory which he previously claimed was “solely” achieved by his mercenaries despite statements to the contrary by Russia’s Defense Ministry. After that success, Prigozhin claimed, the Kremlin’s attitude became: “Wagner should not be capturing Bakhmut under any circumstances.”


He said that his mercenaries have since been deprived of ammunition bringing “shell hunger” to the fight, but that “Wagner will take Bakhmut anyway.” He said this will be done “not because Prigozhin wants it,” but: “Bitch, we must prove to the whole world that the Russians can!”


After rattling off a string of other military targets in Ukraine, Prigozhin fumed: “No matter what it is, take fucking something!”


The mercenary chief also moaned about being deprived access to military phones. “Leave me the phone! Set wiretapping on it,” Prigozhin said. “Know what I’m talking about, and call me sometimes and say: ‘Prigozhin, you’re a [at][at][at][at], go fuck yourself,’ and hang up. At least like this. What’s the point of cutting it?”


He said receiving abuse from Defense Ministry commanders would be preferable to the current comms blackout, which could put his life in danger. “Is it so that my pilot, when he goes in the air, couldn’t warn air defense to not take me down because I’m flying?” Prigozhing asked. “You shouldn’t be playing kindergarten. War is very serious work.”


Internecine tensions have been brewing between Wagner and Russian President Vladimir Putin for months. Prigozhin’s latest outbursts comes after he was barred from entering Russia’s military command earlier this month. He has also accused Kremlin commanders of “betraying the motherland” and attempting to “destroy” Wagner through throttling supplies.


Fighting for outright control of Bakhmut remains intense. On Thursday, Russia’s puppet leader in the Donetsk region Denis Pushilin told state media agency TASS that the situation in Bakhmut “remains complicated, difficult,” and that he did not “see that there are any prerequisites there that the enemy is going to simply withdraw units.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/prigoz...mut?ref=scroll

Battle for Bakhmut grinds down Wagner’s mercenaries and cuts their notorious leader down to size


Yevgeny Prigozhin, the combative boss of Russia’s Wagner private military group, relishes his role as an anti-establishment maverick, but signs are growing that the Moscow establishment now has him pinned down and gasping for breath.


Prigozhin placed a bet on his mercenaries raising the Russian flag in the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, albeit at a considerable cost to the ranks of his force and probably to his own fortune.


He spent heavily on recruiting as many as 40,000 prisoners to throw into the fight, but after months of grinding battle and staggering losses he is struggling to replenish Wagner’s ranks, all the while accusing Russia’s Ministry of Defense of trying to strangle his force.


Many analysts think his suspicions are well-founded – that Russia’s military establishment is using the Bakhmut “meat-grinder” to cut him down to size or eliminate him as a political force altogether.

MORE Battle for Bakhmut grinds down Wagner's mercenaries and cuts their notorious leader down to size | CNN

The Wagner Group's offensive in the battle for Bakhmut, in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region, appears to be nearing culmination, according to an assessment by a U.S.-based think tank.Last week, the Institute for the Study of War, based in Washington D.C., assessed that fighters hired by Russian businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin for his paramilitary outfit appeared to be taking a "tactical pause" in their months-long offensive to capture the city. On Thursday, the think tank said the group appears to be nearing culmination—a military term denoting the point at which a unit is too stretched or exhausted to continue its advance.

Bakhmut, a small industrial city in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region, has been the scene of some of the most intense fighting since Russia launched its full-scale invasion over a year ago. Prigozhin's fighters had been leading conventional troops in the offensive, but the group now appears to be playing a less prominent role in operations around the city, amid increasing frictions with Russia's defense ministry.

Prigozhin has been ramping up his criticism of Russia's defense ministry in recent weeks, as the battle for Bakhmut intensifies. He has published several audio clips making a desperate plea for more ammunition for his forces, saying government officials are intentionally withholding the ammunition needed to secure victory in Bakhmut.

The ISW, in its latest assessment of the conflict, said that the relatively slower pace of Russian attacks on and around Bakhmut on March 16, coupled with relatively fewer Russian claims on advances in this area, supports the think tank's March 15 assessment that the Wagner Group offensive on Bakhmut is likely nearing culmination.

On Wednesday, the think tank observed that Ukrainian military sources have noted a "markedly decreased number of attacks" in and around the city, particularly over the last few days.

Meanwhile, Prigozhin has recently emphasized the toll that a reported lack of ammunition is having on his group's ability to pursue offensives in the city. Prigozhin said on Wednesday that Wagner has had to expand its encirclement of Bakhmut due to ammunition shortages and heavy fighting.

Last week, Prigozhin published an audio clip on the press service of the catering company Concord, which he owns, suggesting that he has been cut off from Russia's defense ministry amid their recent spats.

"In order for me to stop asking for ammunition, all special telephones were turned off for me in all offices, in all departments, etc. Another important thing they have done is blocked all passes to all the agencies that have to make decisions."

The ISW said Wednesday that Wagner's recent gains north of the industrial city suggest manpower, artillery, and equipment losses will likely constrain its ability to complete a close encirclement of Bakhmut or gain substantial territory in battles for urban areas.

"The capture of Zalizianske and other similarly small towns north of Bakhmut and east of the E40 highway is extremely unlikely to enhance Wagner's ability to capture Bakhmut itself or make other operationally significant gains," the report said. "It, therefore, is likely that Wagner's offensive on Bakhmut is increasingly nearing culmination."

Clashes between Russian and Ukrainian forces around Bakhmut have been increasing in ferocity as Moscow seeks to secure its first major battlefield victory since the summer of 2022.

Ukraine's Special Operations Forces said on Telegram Friday that in the past few days, it eliminated at least one company of Russian troops and destroyed an Orlan-10 unmanned aerial vehicle.

The commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, has said that its operation in Bakhmut is key to the stability of the defense of the entire front.

Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine's minister of internal affairs, has also outlined the importance of Bakhmut remaining under Ukrainian control.

He told Newsweek on February 17 that Bakhmut is "a live wall that allows us to prepare our troops for de-occupation"—implying that a successful defense of the city could put the Ukrainians in a position to launch a counteroffensive.

Bakhmut also holds "huge symbolic value" for Russia, Gerashchenko added. "The situation there is the most complicated at the moment, but our defenders stand strong and carry out their combat missions."

Newsweek has contacted Russia's foreign ministry by email for comment.

https://www.newsweek.com/wagner-grou...gozhin-1788421