Thread: Russia launches Ukraine invasion

Plus the Labour camps are teeming with disaffected individuals dreaming of Russian combat rations …..

Think you've been channeling Solzhenitsyn mate- that was the 1950's, which is indeed when the Gulag system ended. Actually, fast forward to the modern era, and these "millions of disaffected individuals" to be found in prison camps are in the USA, which has by far the worlds largest prison camp population. Maybe send them to Ukraine?

Ukraine: Controversy over Steinmeier visit sparks debate in Germany

German politicians have reacted with surprise after Ukraine refused a visit by German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier. The head of state recently admitted mistakes had been made in past efforts at detente with Russia.


Politicians from across the political spectrum have voiced their shock after the Ukrainian government refused a visit by German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

Steinmeier had planned to visit the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, alongside the heads of state of Poland and the Baltic republics of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.
However, the Ukrainian leadership rejected those plans, Steinmeier said.

While this was ostensibly because of Steinmeier's past fostering of detente with Russia, Ukraine has also made clear that it expects a visit from German Chancellor Olaf Scholz rather than from the president, whose role is largely ceremonial.

Initial disbelief, disappointment

Speaking to German public radio RBB, Scholz said the snub was "irksome" to the German government. The German chancellor did not comment any further, but said: "It would have been good to receive him (Steinmeier)."

Still, Scholz insisted that Germany would continue to support Ukraine.

German lawmaker Michael Roth, foreign policy expert for the Social Democrats (SPD) — the leading partner in Germany's coalition government, and Steinmeier's own party before he took up the presidency — expressed "great disappointment" at the cancellation of the visit.

"I couldn't believe it at first. Especially now, it is important to remain in conversation," the SPD politician told news magazine Der Spiegel.

Roth was among three top German politicians to travel to Ukraine on Tuesday, meeting Ukrainian parliamentarians in the west of the country. Alongside Roth, representing all three member parties of Germany's coalition government, were Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann of neoliberal Free Democrats (FDP) and Anton Hofreiter of the Greens.

Full- Ukraine: Controversy over Steinmeier visit sparks debate in Germany | News | DW | 13.04.2022

Russia says more than 1,000 Ukrainian marines have surrendered in the besieged port of Mariupol, but Ukraine denies this.

The city's Deputy Mayor, Serhiy Orlov, told the BBC that Ukrainian troops there were still fighting.

Tens of thousands of people have died in Mariupol, Ukraine says.

Fighting appears to be continuing around the giant Azovstal steel works in the port, which is one of two areas not under Russian control.

Russian television has broadcast footage which it says shows marines giving themselves up at the steel works.

But an adviser to Ukraine's president insisted that the marines had in fact broken through to connect with Azov battalion forces in another pocket.

Mariupol is a major port and a key target for Russia as it seeks to establish a land route to the Crimea peninsula, which it annexed in 2014.

The city has been the focus of a devastating assault by Russian forces, and Ukrainian troops there have said they are running out of ammunition.

A senior US defence official said that Russian air strikes continued to target Mariupol and the US does not believe the city has been fully taken by Russia.

Earlier on Wednesday Reuters journalists saw flames billowing from the Azovstal steel works where marines from the 36th brigade have been holed up for weeks.

The population of Mariupol stood at over 400,000 before the Russian invasion. Residents unable to escape the siege have struggled to access the basics for survival.
Mass surrender of troops in Mariupol, says Russia (msn.com)

More Russian propaganda, or More Ukrainian bullshit?

(Incidentally the 'Ukrainian Deputy Mayor' is a bit of an outdated reference- Mariupol has already appointed a new Mayor and Council. Maybe he just wanted to say hello from Kiev)

Not many left to cause a “mass” surrender. Ukrainian sources already reported the forthcoming loss of Mariupol.

Bit late- I told ya a coupla weeks ago.

This clip blows the propagandist argument that the US was somehow to blame for this war out of the water. I stand by my comments made several months ago that this war was predetermined, and the west could not have stopped it. This is a must-watch...

Details revealed on $800 million U.S. weapons package for Ukraine


Ukraine was already stocking up on U.S.-made Javelins before Russia invaded. Here a group of Ukrainian servicemen take a shipment of Javelins in early February, as Russia positioned troops on Ukraine’s border.
Sergei Supinsky | AFP | Getty Images

U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin on Wednesday night revealed details about the latest military aid package the United States will send to Ukraine, which includes ...

• 200 M113 armored personnel carriers and 100 other armored, wheeled vehicles. The M113 is an older, tracked vehicle that the United States began using before the Vietnam War.
• 500 Javelin missiles and 300 Switchblade attack drones. Ukrainian defenders have used the Javelin and other shoulder-launched weapons to devastating effect against Russian tanks and other vehicles.
• Eight howitzers and
• 40,000 artillery rounds are also part of the newest U.S. arms shipment.
• The list includes “protective equipment” against chemical, biological and radiological attacks, as well as
• 30,000 sets of body armor and helmets.

Live updates: Latest news on Russia and the war in Ukraine

Originally Posted by David48atTD

200 M113 armored personnel carriers

Those are crap. They were used in the Vietnam War. FFS

Where are the M1's? The US has 3,000 sitting in storage. Those would end the war.

How many M1 Abrams are in storage? – Rampfesthudson.com

Originally Posted by David48atTD

Eight howitzers

That is not enough. A lot has been left off that list. $800,000,000 buys a lot more than that.

ODESSA, Ukraine — The fighter pilot known as “Juice” usually just has a few minutes to scramble. When he is on-call, which is pretty much always these days, he cannot be more than a bathroom break away from his cockpit. When a cruise missile or a Russian fighter is spotted moving toward the area Juice is assigned toby the Ukrainian air force, he doesn’t even have time to run through standard safety checks before taking off.

“We’re ready to be killed,” said Juice, who provided only his call sign for security reasons.

“But we don’t want this, of course,” the 29-year-old added. “We want to kill Russians and take down their bombers that are killing our cities and our families.”

Juice is one of the pilots helping Ukraine pull off the biggest surprise of this war: Its military has kept the airspace over Ukraine contested despite Russia’s more advanced jets and superior numbers. But he and other pilots say that’s not enough. While Kyiv’s forces have perhaps even outperformed Moscow’s on the ground, Russia has continued to inflict heavy losses on Ukraine from the sky.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has appealed to the United States and other NATO allies to establish a no-fly zone over the country — a step that leaders in the military alliance refused to take, citing fears of touching off a world war with Moscow. Now Zelensky is pushing for more advanced air-defense systems and jets.

But Juice and others have said the weapons that countries have discussed transferring to Ukraine — particularly Russian-made MiG-29 fighters and U.S.-made Stinger antiaircraft missiles — won’t help Kyiv’s air force tip the scales in its favor. The gap between the weapons Ukraine wants and what Western countries are willing to supply has become a key tension nearly two months into the fighting.

Nowhere is that divide more evident than in the proposed air materiel transfers. Juice flies the MiG-29, which is a Soviet-era staple of the Ukrainian air force. But he said Ukrainian pilots are “just targets” for Russian adversaries who fly far more advanced jets. Obtaining more outdated MiGs would not improve Ukraine’s position in the skies, he said.

“We have losses almost everyday in our air force,” he added. “You won’t see this on TV because everything is classified right now, but actually we have a lot of losses. That’s why we need to be technically equal with the Russians. Just our mental advantage is not enough to fight with these technologies.”

Poland last month offered to send a number of MiG-29 jets to Ukraine via a U.S. air base in Germany, blindsiding U.S. officials. In exchange, Poland requested that the United States send it replacement planes, presumably newer U.S.-manufactured F-16s, which would constitute a major upgrade. Washington rejected the plan.

Then on Monday, Slovakian Prime Minister Eduard Heger told reporters that Slovakia will consider providing Ukraine MiG-29 fighters if alternative protection of its own airspace can be arranged.

But for Ukrainian pilots, more MiG-29s aren’t the answer. The jets Poland offered to transfer them are even older — some date back to the late ’80s — than their current stock.

“I think the Ukrainians are right — you’re basically a target in the air if you don’t have any of that modern capability,” said Herbert “Hawk” Carlisle, a retired U.S. Air Force general. “It’s not just an airplane up there. You have to have all of that sophisticated equipment on it to make it really a viable air platform.”

Countries have proposed sending Ukrainians MiG-29s in large part because that’s what the country’s pilots already know how to fly. If they received F-16s, Carlisle said, it’s not just the pilots who would have to learn a flight system he described as “significantly different” from Soviet-style jets; personnel on the ground would have to train on how maintain the aircraft and load them with compatible munitions.

But Juice and another Ukrainian pilot, whose call sign is “Nomad,” said the learning curve isn’t as substantial as it’s often made out to be. Nomad, who is in the United States as part of a training program, said it would probably take Ukrainians about two weeks to learn the nuances of the U.S.-made F-series planes.

Many of the pilots already speak English and have participated in joint exercises with the U.S. Air Force, so they’re familiar with the terminology of those planes’ systems, they said.

The pilots were also critical of the effectiveness of Stinger antiaircraft missiles, which have been part of U.S. aid packages. Nomad said that “it’s almost impossible” to hit an agile, fast-moving Russian jet with the missiles. Carlisle agreed, adding that Stingers aren’t designed to take down fighters — they’re intended to be used against helicopters and other slow-moving, low-flying aircraft.

If Western countries are hesitant to give Ukraine modern jets its pilots haven’t trained on, Juice said they should at least consider sending more advanced air-defense systems. He said those are much easier to learn how to operate.

Military analysts expected Russia to wipe out Ukraine’s air-defense systems, airfields and aircraft on the very first day of the war, when Moscow still had the element of surprise. But Rob Lee, an expert on the Russian military and a senior fellow with the Foreign Policy Research Institute, said Russia “didn’t really go for a death blow,” and in some cases, their missiles hit the airfield but missed the runway.

Ukrainian pilots were able to improvise from there. Juice said the fight in the sky doesn’t feel fair when he’s going up against a more modern Russian jet. He often has to just avoid his adversary entirely to stay alive. Sometimes, he and his fellow pilots manage to trick the Russians into flying into an area where the Ukrainians have an air-defense system ready and waiting.

Analysts at the Oryx Blog, which tracks Russian military losses, documented 20 aircraft and 30 helicopters destroyed or damaged in Ukraine.

“We are just trying to do something nonstandard, and sometimes it’s successful and sometimes it’s not,” Juice said. “Sometimes they’re just stupid and Russians are just showing their incompetence and underestimating our training.

“But in general, we cannot gain a real air superiority, unfortunately.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world...g-29-russians/

^^ I had mentioned before that the war was a good excuse to use up old munitions/military equipment.

Sad, but true.


Great that they are getting the good anti-tank missiles etc ... 500 Javelin missiles and 300 Switchblade attack drones

Originally Posted by David48atTD

200 M113 armored personnel carriers

Originally Posted by bsnub

Those are crap. They were used in the Vietnam War. FFS

A Ukrainian navy missile battery reportedly has struck the Russian navy cruiser Moskvaoff the coast of Odessa, a strategic port city on the Black Sea in southwest Ukraine.

Multiple Ukrainian government officials claimed Wednesday that a Neptune anti-ship battery, apparently hidden in or around Odessa, scored two hits on Moskva, setting the 612-foot vessel ablaze.

Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Kyiv, announced the strike. So did Maksym Marchenko, head of the administration in Odessa. “Neptune missiles … caused very serious damage to the Russian ship,” Marchenko said.

An audio recording, purportedly of Ukrainian troops reporting the attack on the cruiser, circulated on social media.

Russian state media confirmed the ship was on fire and the crew evacuated, but blamed the blaze on an accidental ammunition explosion. Moskva reportedly later sank.

It’s possible Moscow is trying to muddy the waters, so to speak, in order to rob Kyiv of an information victory. It’s equally possible Ukraine just landed a devastating blow against Russia.
To be fair, Ukrainian sources more than once have reported hits on Russian warships blockading Odessa and other ports since Russia widened its war on Ukraine starting the night of Feb. 23.

Just one report is verified. Ukrainian troops in the besieged city of Mariupol in late March scored a hit on a Russian patrol boat using an old anti-tank guided missile.
Compared to a Konkurs ATGM, Neptune is a much more sophisticated and, to Russian sailors, dangerous weapon. But the pre-war Ukrainian navy probably possessed just one Neptune battery out of the half-dozen or so it planned to induct this spring.

Kyiv launched development of the missile back in 2013 and completed the first test shots in 2018. The Neptune system fires R-360 cruise missiles that fly at low altitude as far as 180 miles. The missile borrows its booster from the S-125 anti-air missile and uses an MS-400 turbojet for cruising. The radar seeker head has a detection range of around 30 miles.

A Neptune battery includes a truck-mounted launcher with four rounds, a command truck and a pair of resupply trucks plus links to a mobile Mineral-U radar with a 370-mile range.

If the Ukrainians really did hit Moskva with a Neptune or two, it means they first managed to cobble together, man and deploy at least one complete battery with all its supporting systems—all in the middle of a devastating war.

It also means they fed accurate targeting data to the battery, via a drone, land-based radar or some other sensor. None of this is easy, but it’s certainly possible.

Still, the claimed attack on Moskva, if confirmed, would be consistent with the course of the broader naval campaign. The Russian Black Sea Fleet, of which the Moskva is the flagship, controls the waters around Ukraine but has been unable totally to suppress Ukraine’s coastal defenses.

Those defenses—mines, anti-tank missiles, long-range ballistic missiles and armed drones—make any amphibious operation against a Ukrainian port extremely risky for the attackers. The fate of the Russian landing ship Saratov, which burst into flames while pier-side in the occupied port of Berdyansk on March 24, underscored that risk.

It’s possible the Ukrainians hit Saratov with a Tochka ballistic missile. Or maybe one of the Ukrainian navy’s Turkish-made TB-2 drones managed to slip through local air-defenses to strike the vessel with a guided missile.

In any event, “the destruction of the Saratov landing ship at Berdyansk will likely damage the confidence of the Russian navy to conduct operations in close proximity to the coast of Ukraine in the future,” the U.K. defense ministry stated.

If the Ukrainians also hit Moskva, a Russian amphibious attack becomes even less likely.

In commission for 40 years, Moskva is not a new ship. But as one of Russia’s biggest warships, she’s heavily armed with 16 fixed launchers for P-1000 anti-ship missiles, vertical tubes for 64 S-300 air-defense missiles and rail launchers for 40 Osa missiles for aerial self-defense, plus a bevy of guns. Torpedo tubes and a helicopter round out her capabilities.

A veritable floating missile-battery, Moskva is—or maybe was—the Black Sea Fleet’s best defense against Ukrainian attack. With her, the fleet still is vulnerable. Without her, it would be even more exposed to missiles, rockets and drones.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidax...h=750cf9ac3971

What we know is that the Saratov extremely damaged and, hopefully sunk.

Should buy Odessa some more time to prepare.

My fondest memories are of Odessa.

Originally Posted by bsnub

A Ukrainian navy missile battery reportedly has struck the Russian navy cruiser Moskvaoff the coast of Odessa, a strategic port city on the Black Sea in southwest Ukraine.

That would be great news and right on time

Originally Posted by sabang

Bit late- I told ya a coupla weeks ago.

Then please explain why you are posting it today?

Just felt like it. Boneheads got no memory.

Ukraine seizes 154 assets of pro-Russian party leader, including 55 homes, 26 cars

Ukrainian authorities on Wednesday seized 154 assets — including 55 homes, 26 cars and a yacht — from Viktor Medvedchuk, a pro-Russian member of Ukraine’s Parliament who was captured by the nation’s forces on Tuesday.

The court of Lviv seized the assets at the request of Ukraine’s State Bureau of Investigation and the Prosecutor General’s Office, according to a Thursday release.

Also among the assets were 30 plots of land, 32 apartments and 17 parking spaces, and authorities took control of Medvedchuk’s shares in 25 companies.

Medvedchuk is the leader of the pro-Russian Ukrainian party in Parliament, the Opposition Platform — For Life. He also claims that Russian President Vladimir Putin is the godfather of one of his daughters.

The Ukrainian politician was placed on house arrest last year for charges of treason and plundering resources in Crimea following Russia’s 2014 annexation.

Ukraine’s security service, known as the SBU, captured Medvedchuk on Tuesday after he previously fled home confinement shortly after Russia invaded the nation on Feb. 24.

After his detention, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky offered to swap Medvedchuk for Ukrainians held as prisoners in Russia, but the Kremlin rejected the offer on Wednesday, according to Reuters.

Ukraine’s investigative bureau on Thursday said they will continue “to prosecute traitors and confiscate their property, as required by law.”

• Europe Reluctantly Readies Russian Oil Embargo

European officials are drafting plans for an embargo on Russian oil products, the most contested measure yet to punish Russia for its invasion of Ukraine and a move long resisted because of its big costs for Germany and its potential to disrupt politics around the region and increase energy prices.

Having earlier this month banned Russian coal for the first time — with a four-month transition period to wind down ongoing orders — the European Union is now likely to adopt a similarly phased ban of Russian oil, E.U. officials and diplomats said. The approach is designed to give Germany, in particular, time to arrange alternative suppliers.

The discussions come just as President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia acknowledged on Thursday that the Western sanctions already in place had hurt his country’s vital energy sector.

The earliest the proposed E.U. embargo will be put up for negotiation will be after the final round of the French elections, on April 24, to ensure that the impact on prices at the pump doesn’t fuel the populist candidate Marine Le Pen and hurt president Emmanuel Macron’s chances of re-election, officials said.

The timeline is as important as the details of the ban, and is indicative of the brinkmanship required to convince all 27 E.U. countries to agree to take a previously unthinkable step, as Russia prepares a renewed offensive in eastern Ukraine.

But officials and diplomats, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter with the press, said that there was a growing sense that the measure would be taken even in the absence of a so-called trigger — another major news event like the atrocities in Bucha. But an event of that type could move the decision forward.

“The commission and E.U. members have smartly shied away from defining red lines that would trigger a sanctions response since Russia attacked Ukraine,” said Emre Peker, a director at the Eurasia Group consultancy.

“I expect the E.U. will shy away from defining triggers,” he added, “as continued escalation by Russia in eastern Ukraine and revelations from Bucha and elsewhere continue to drive momentum behind a hardening European stance. Any other major catastrophes that unfold will just add more impetus to the E.U. response.”

The European Union, which has taken five rounds of increasingly severe financial sanctions against Russia since the invasion began Feb. 24, is under tremendous pressure by allies to stop lining the Kremlin’s coffers through oil purchases. So far they have kept gas imports from Russia off the table, because they remain too critical to important European economies, Germany’s in particular.

But a handful of its members are also ill-prepared to deal with the economic consequences from closing the tap on Russian oil imports. Russia is the European Union’s largest oil supplier, providing the bloc with a quarter of its oil and petroleum product imports in 2020.

Germany, the bloc’s de facto leader, highly dependent on Russian oil and gas, has been a key country resisting a quick, universal and simultaneous E.U.-wide oil embargo, and much of the work around the details of the measure is focused on ensuring that Berlin comes on board.

Germany gets 34 percent of its oil from Russia. A key challenge will be not only to find alternative suppliers to make up for that, but also to line up sufficient land transport for oil heading to its two refineries that are fed by pipelines from Russia, in particular a refinery in the eastern city of Schwedt, by the Polish border.

This week, the German ambassador to the United States elaborated on her country’s thinking on energy sanctions in a long thread on Twitter.

“Going cold turkey on fossil fuels from Russia would cause a massive, instant disruption. You cannot turn modern industrial plants on and off like a light switch. The knock-on effects would be felt beyond Germany, the EU’s economic engine and 4th largest economy in the world,” the ambassador, Emily Haber, said.

Hungary, another E.U. country that’s highly dependent on Russian oil, has demanded any future sanctions be decided by E.U. leaders rather than senior diplomats or ministers, raising the prospect of an emergency summit meeting to debate the topic.

Mr. Putin spoke at length about Europe’s dependence on Russian oil and gas at a meeting of top Russian officials on Thursday. He warned of a major disruption to the global economy should Western nations move to ban them.

“The consequences of this may be extremely painful, primarily for the initiators of the policy,” Mr. Putin said, according to an English-language transcript released by the Kremlin.

But he also acknowledged that the European measures already in place are hurting Russia’s energy exports because they affect logistics and finance.

“The most urgent problem here is the disruption of export logistics,” Mr. Putin said at the meeting, which included his top advisers. “Furthermore, there are setbacks in payments for Russian energy exports. Banks from these unfriendly countries are delaying the transfer of funds.”

For now, the drafting of the new European measures is being done by a small number of experts at the European Commission, the bloc’s executive arm, led by President Ursula von der Leyen’s chief of staff, Björn Seibert.

But in addition to the French election, the timetable is also slowed by the Catholic Easter on April 16 and the Orthodox Easter on April 24, observed as a holiday in Europe, meaning that the measures would be put up for debate in late April or early May at the earliest.

A European Union leaders’ summit on Ukraine is already scheduled for the end of May, but officials said it was possible events on the ground in Ukraine, in particular after the launch of the Russian offensive in the east, would make an earlier meeting to address an oil embargo necessary.

But with all these caveats applying, what once seemed an impossible step for Europe was now likely, officials said.

Following the working method of drafting E.U. sanctions, the Commission is not putting details of its proposals for an oil ban on paper — for fear it will leak, or force public expressions of disagreement among E.U. nations and so break its attempt to project a united front.

Instead, small groups of diplomats will meet with Commission officials to debate the measures in coming days, throughout the Easter break, officials said.

The most likely approach is a schedule that differentiates between types of oil products and methods of delivery, with consensus building around the feasibility of a faster embargo on oil transported by tankers, as opposed to oil coming to Europe via pipelines. That concession is intended to bring Germany on board.

A minimum one-month transition period will be part of the oil ban currently discussed, diplomats and officials said.

“While the direction of travel — toward oil sanctions and overall energy decoupling from Russia — is clear and broadly uncontested, many E.U. capitals led by Berlin want to roll out forthcoming measures with as little disruption as possible,” Mr. Peker said.

“That will require phase-outs and exemptions, to allow countries with a heavy reliance on Russian supplies to adjust. It will also be key to achieving consensus among 27 member states,” he added.

Germany’s economy minister, Robert Habeck, has publicly stated that the country is weaning itself off Russian oil with a year-end horizon, timeline that would likely be expedited.

“Companies are letting their contracts with Russian suppliers run out, not renewing them and switching to other suppliers at an insane pace,” Mr. Habeck said in Berlin in late March.

Powerful explosions heard in Kyiv after Russian warship sinks

KYIV/LVIV, Ukraine, April 15 (Reuters) – Powerful explosions were heard in Kyiv early on Friday, and air raid sirens blared across Ukraine as residents braced for new Russian attacks after Moscow’s lead warship in the Black Sea sank following a fire.


The explosions appeared to be among the most significant in Ukraine’s capital region since Russian troops pulled back from the area earlier this month in preparation for battles in the south and east.


Ukraine claimed responsibility for sinking the Moskva, saying the Soviet-era flagship of Russia’s Black Sea fleet was struck by one of its missiles. The vessel sank late on Thursday as it was being towed to port, Russia’s defence ministry said.


Over 500 crew aboard the missile cruiser were evacuated after ammunition on board exploded, the ministry said, without acknowledging an attack. Ukraine says it hit the warship with a locally made Neptune anti-ship missile.


The ship’s loss comes as Russia’s navy continues its bombardment of Ukrainian cities on the Black Sea nearly 50 days after it launched the invasion. Residents of Odesa and Mariupol, on the adjacent Azov Sea, have been bracing for new Russian attacks.


Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy alluded to the sunken warship in an early morning video address in which he warned of Russian intentions to target the eastern Donbas region, including Mariupol.


Zelenskiy paid homage to all “those who halted the progress of the endless convoys of Russian military equipment … Those who showed that Russian ships can go … down to the bottom.”


There were no immediate reports of damage following the explosions reported in Kyiv, Kherson in the south, the eastern city of Kharkiv and the town of Ivano-Frankivsk in the west. Ukrainian media reported electricity outages in parts of Kyiv.


Air raid sirens went off in all regions of Ukraine just after midnight on Friday and continued blaring in the eastern regions of Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia even after those elsewhere went quiet, Ukrainian media said.


Reuters could not immediately verify the reports.


MOSKVA


Whatever the cause of the Moskva’s loss, the episode is a setback for Russia. If Ukraine’s assertion that it hit the ship in a missile strike turns out to be true, the attack will go down in history as one of the highest-profile naval attacks so far this century.


Russia’s defence ministry said it is investigating the cause of the fire on board. The United States said it did not have enough information to determine whether the Moskva was hit by a missile.


“(But) certainly, the way this unfolded, it’s a big blow to Russia,” said national security adviser Jake Sullivan.


Russian forces have pulled back from some northern parts of Ukraine after suffering heavy losses and failing to capture Kyiv. Ukraine and its Western allies say Moscow is redeploying for a new offensive in the eastern Donbas region.


Russia launched its assault in part to dissuade Ukraine from joining NATO. But the invasion has pushed Finland, which shares a long border with Russia, and nearby Sweden to consider joining the U.S.-led military alliance.


Moscow warned NATO on Thursday that if Sweden and Finland join, Russia would deploy nuclear weapons and hypersonic missiles in a Russian enclave on the Baltic Sea, in the heart of Europe.


Commenting on Russia’s military setbacks, CIA Director William Burns said the threat of Russia potentially using nuclear weapons in Ukraine cannot be taken lightly, but that the agency has not seen much practical evidence reinforcing that concern.


BATTLE FOR MARIUPOL


Moscow describes its invasion as a “special military operation” aimed at demilitarising Ukraine. Kyiv and its allies say Russia has launched an unprovoked war that has seen more than 4.6 million people flee abroad and killed or wounded thousands.


Russia’s navy has fired cruise missiles into Ukraine and its Black Sea activities are crucial to supporting land operations in the south and east, where it is battling to seize full control of Mariupol.


Russia said on Wednesday that more than 1,000 Ukrainian marines from one of the units still holding out in Mariupol had surrendered. Ukrainian officials did not comment.


If taken, Mariupol would be the first major city to fall to Russian forces since they invaded, allowing Moscow to reinforce a land corridor between separatist-held eastern Donbas areas and the Crimea region it seized and annexed in 2014.


Ukraine said tens of thousands of people were believed to have been killed in Mariupol, where efforts were under way to evacuate civilians.


Russia’s defence ministry said late on Thursday that 815 people had been evacuated from the city over the past 24 hours. Ukraine said that figure was 289.

Powerful explosions heard in Kyiv after Russian warship sinks | Thai PBS World : The latest Thai news in English, News Headlines, World News and News Broadcasts in both Thai and English. We bring Thailand to the world

Putin’s Depraved Secrets Exposed in New Trail of Horrors

BORODYANKA, Ukraine—“I feel empty, like this photo,” Maria Litvin, a 26-year-old painter, told The Daily Beast as she held up a picture of two ruined buildings, one on each side of a pile of rubble that had been an apartment block less than six weeks ago.


She was standing in what was left of her bedroom in an apartment in Borodyanka, a small town around 40 miles from Kyiv that the Russians have razed to hell. The floor was covered in broken glass and smashed furniture. Had Litvin been in the room when bombs rained down March 1, the glass could have ripped her to shreds. Instead, when they heard the jets flying overhead, she, her mother, and grandmother hid in their cramped shower and bathroom and were spared.


Trapped Ukrainian Woman Watched Her Backyard Turn Into a Mass Murder Scene


But 27 people in their apartment complex were not so lucky and were killed in the blast. Many had been hiding in the basement of a building next door, which collapsed and buried them alive. Investigators believe there are still dozens of bodies underneath the rubble, and some may never be retrieved.


After Ukrainian forces pushed the Russians out of Kyiv Oblast on April 3, there was a brief period of jubilation. The Ukrainians had resisted the initial Russian offensive, and the survival of their nation and its capital seemed assured. But this relief quickly turned to horror and disgust as the full extent of the war crimes committed in the towns occupied by Russia became clear. In Bucha alone, at least 500 corpses have been found, many apparently the victims of summary execution. Local women and girls have reported repeated incidents of rape and sexual violence.


When The Daily Beast visited Bucha this week, authorities were exhuming a mass grave of nearly 60 residents in a plot of land next to a small church. A team of war crimes investigators was also present, inspecting the bodies for tell-tale markings of bindings around the neck and wrists that indicate execution-style killings.


Despite the utter horror in Bucha, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has warned that the situation in Borodyanka could be even more dire.


Borodyanka is a classic “one-street town” of just over 10,000 people, which residents speak of without particular affection. Litvin said that like many young people, she had left as soon as she could to study in Kyiv, and now spends most of her time in Ivano-Frankivsk in western Ukraine. The buildings lining Borodyanka’s central avenue are drab gray Soviet-style high-rise apartment blocks and the only hint of art or sculpture in the town is a statue of Ukraine’s national poet, Taras Shevchenko. Even this expression of culture was too much for the occupiers, who allegedly smashed the head off the statue the day they arrived.


Now, Borodyanka is a hellscape of destruction. Dozens of orange-vested workers shovel rocks and concrete into heaps, while bulldozers patrol the streets digging for remains. In Bucha and Irpin, the main streets are already mostly cleaned up, and bridges and buildings are being assessed for reconstruction. Shortly down the road from Irpin, there is a graveyard holding dozens of burned-out wrecks of cars that have been towed and dumped in a clearing near a forest. The residents here cannot imagine the town ever being rebuilt, such is the scale of the destruction.


Borodyanka was directly on the road of the Russian advance to Kyiv, so Putin’s troops chose to flatten it with airstrikes to smooth their advance. At least a dozen residential apartment blocks were destroyed, along with dozens of smaller houses, shops and a supermarket.


One resident, a white-haired man in his sixties who did not wish to be named, showed us the remains of an apartment where his dead neighbors had recently been pulled from. They were a young couple with two children, all of whom had been killed instantly. “There was no military here, no Ukrainian army, just a few poorly armed territorial volunteers. There was no reason for this type of attack,” he said.


Tatiana, Litvin’s 50-year-old neighbor who only wanted to share her first name, said that after the initial airstrikes the humanitarian situation in the town quickly deteriorated. “My doctor—one of the last in the town—also died in that basement,” she said. After that, they packed their stuff and left for a refugee basement shelter close to the station of Borodyanka. They spent almost all their time there during the invasion.


“Russians were just shooting with tanks and guns at every building. They told us, ‘Borodyanka must be destroyed, it can no longer exist,’” Tatiana told The Daily Beast. She names them as the infamous “Kadyrovtsy,” the Chechen forces who are implicated in many of the worst atrocities in Bucha. “They even tried to make us believe that the Ukrainian army was defeated,” she added. Now that the Russians are gone, Tatiana is staying with her husband and her mother in a house nearby.


Russia, of course, dismisses all these allegations as “fake news,” claiming its soldiers have acted with the utmost restraint in the face of overwhelming evidence of their barbarity.


Ukrainians are bracing themselves for an even greater catalog of crimes to appear when they explore areas surrounding the nearby cities of Chernihiv and Sumy, which were also besieged by Russian forces who withdrew at the same time as those assaulting Kyiv. The Russian Foreign Ministry has already warned that Western intelligence has prepared further “provocations” in these regions—a sure sign that they are aware of what their troops have left behind and are prepared for more crimes to be uncovered.


For now, the residents of Borodyanka have created a makeshift memorial out of the possessions of the dead. It sits near a bomb crater left by the worst of the airstrikes, where an oversized child’s teddy bear with vacant white eyes stares out over the wreckage.


Putin’s Depraved Secrets Exposed in New Trail of Horrors