Thread: Russia launches Ukraine invasion

Originally Posted by David48atTD

now in its fourth month

A baby as far as wars go. Let's see where things are in 4 years.

Russia Controls Almost All of Luhansk as It Makes Gains in Eastern Ukraine


Russia controls 95% of Luhansk, which makes up the northern half of the Donbas region

by Dave DeCamp Posted onMay 27, 2022


Russia continues to make territorial gains in eastern Ukraine and now controls 95% of Ukraine’s Luhansk oblast, which makes up the northern half of the Donbas region.


The pro-Kyiv governor of Luhansk said Friday that Ukrainian forces might be forced to retreat from the near-surrounded cities of Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk, the last hold-outs in the region.

“We will have enough strength and resources to defend ourselves. However, it is possible that in order not to be surrounded we will have to retreat,” said Governor Serhiy Gaidai.

As the war grinds on in the east, Ukrainian officials are starting to admit that their military is facing a dire situation and are pleading for the US and its allies to send more advanced weapons.

Ukrainian volunteer soldiers told The Washington Post that they felt abandoned by the government in Kyiv as they were fighting in the east. In a video posted on Telegram, Ukrainian volunteers said they weren’t properly trained and didn’t have sufficient equipment or support to fight on the front lines.


“We are being sent to certain death,” a volunteer soldier said in the Telegram video. “We are not alone like this, we are many.”


The Post spoke with a volunteer company commander and his lieutenant who retreated to a hotel away from the front. After the interview, the men were arrested by Ukrainian military security services and accused of desertion.

https://news.antiwar.com/2022/05/27/...stern-ukraine/

Is there some kind of voluminous cut and paste waffle award sabang is going for?

He's the clear leader, even outpacing his fellow wanketeer, hoohoo, and that's some going.

No you're right, sabang has been cheerleading this massacre from the start.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy fired Roman Dudin, Head of Ukraine’s Security Service in Kharkiv Oblast, for negligent performance of his duties and promised that law enforcement would investigate his case.

"I convened a meeting with the leadership of the [Kharkiv] oblast and the city [of Kharkiv]. I thanked them for having stood and continuing to stand with Kharkiv residents, with Ukraine, and – what’s particularly important right now – with one another. There is perfect cooperation between the army, the police, the mayor of Kharkiv, and the oblast state administration – they are all truly working to bring our victory closer and are doing so very effectively.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about the local leadership of the Security Service of Ukraine. When I got here, I looked into it, and I fired the head of the Security Service in the oblast for selfishly caring only about his own interests rather than working to defend the city from the first days of the full-scale war. Law enforcement officers will find out what his motivations were."

Background: Roman Dudin was appointed Head of the Security Service of Ukraine in Kharkiv Oblast in 2020 by President Zelenskyy.
He was born on 13 March 1983 in the city of Dnipro. After his military service, he was hired by the Security Service of Ukraine in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. In 2013, he was transferred to the main directorate of the Security Service in Kyiv.

Earlier:

• On 1 April, President Zelenskyy fired General Serhii Kryvoruchko from his position as the head of the Security Service of Ukraine in Kherson Oblast for "antiheroism".
• The Security Service found out that Yevhen Balytskyi, former people’s deputy from the Block of Yulia Tymoshenko party, was collaborating with the Russian occupiers.
  
  Zelenskyy fires Kharkiv Security Service Head and hands him over to law enforcement

Sergey Lavrov, Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, has said that Russia’s absolute priority in the war against Ukraine is to capture Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts; he added that people who live in other Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine will have to "decide their future" themselves.

Source: Lavrov in an interview for French TV channel TF1, cited in the Kremlin-aligned Russian news media RIA Novosti and in TASS
Quote from Lavrov: "The liberation of Donetsk and Luhansk oblast, which the Russian Federation recognises as independent states, is an absolute priority."

Details: At the same time, the Russian minister said that in other Ukrainian territories where Russia is conducting its "special military operation", the people who live in those territories will have to "decide their future" themselves.

According to Lavrov, the environment created by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine "banned Russian education, media, culture, and the use of the Russian language in everyday life." In contrast, Lavrov claimed that in the environment that Russia will foster, those who live in Russian-occupied territories "will be able to raise their children however they want, not how Zelenskyy and his team want them to."

Lavrov also tried to argue that the extended duration of Russia’s "special operation" in Ukraine was due to the absolute ban on any attacks on civilian infrastructure that the Russian military has to observe. However, it has been widely reported that Russia has been destroying civilian infrastructure in Ukraine since the beginning of the war.

Lavrov names Russias "absolute priority" in the war against Ukraine

^Putins war has moved from the capital, to the Donbas?

Does this represent a move from failure - to success in winning the war, or does it simply ignore failures?

• Russia Readies New Bond-Payment Plan in Bid to Avoid Default

Russia is planning a bond-payment mechanism to sidestep US sanctions and a potential default as a grace period ticks down on its latest missed coupons.

The proposal would allow foreign investors to open accounts in Russian banks in both rubles and hard currency, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said in an interview with the Vedomosti newspaper. Unlike the previous payment system, investors will be able to access the funds without restriction, he was cited as saying.

Russia is back in default countdown as coupon payments in euros and dollars worth about $100 million had yet to trickle through to foreign investors’ accounts as of Friday evening, effectively triggering a 30-day grace period.

The transfers were complicated last week when the US Treasury allowed a sanctions loophole to expire, barring US banks and individuals from accepting bond payments from Russia’s government.

The next slate of payments -- worth about $400 million and due in June -- will take place “outside Western financial infrastructure,” Siluanov said in an interview shown Monday by Chinese state-run broadcaster CGTN.

Pimco Fund Added to Russia Swap Exposure in Weeks Before War

The proposed structure is a reverse-image of the way European nations currently pay for Russian gas, he said.

“This is how it works for gas payments: we get foreign currency, then it is converted to rubles” on behalf of the gas buyer, Vedomosti cited him as saying. “The Eurobond settlement mechanism will operate in the same way, but in the opposite direction.”

The plan is still being discussed by the government, after which it will be presented to investors and will be ready before the next coupons on June 23-24.

More Conservative

“Unlike gas supplies, getting bond interest payments might not be so critical in most cases,” said Alexander Dmitrenko, a partner at Ashurst LLP. “So on the balance of pros and cons, holders might take a more conservative approach.”

For now, investors are watching their accounts for the dollar and euro payments that were due on Friday. Then attention turns to the end of next month.

Two payments due June 23 have clauses that allow servicing in euros, pounds sterling or Swiss francs. Their terms also stipulate that the funds will land with the local paying agent, the NSD.

One day later, $159 million comes due that can only be paid in dollars, via a unit of JPMorgan as foreign paying agent.

“I doubt it will work -- for most foreign investors, the procedure for opening an account with a Russian bank may be too difficult,” said Alexey Tretyakov, a portfolio manager at Aricapital in Moscow.

“Only the largest institutional investors can cope. But they may face reputation risks and risks of sanctions violations when dealing with Russian counterparts.”

_____________

• Eurovision trophy sold to buy drones for Ukraine

Kalush Orchestra, the Ukrainian band which won this year's Eurovision Song Contest, have sold their trophy for $900,000 (£712,000; €838,000) to raise money for the war in Ukraine.

The crystal microphone was auctioned on Facebook, with the aim of buying drones for Ukraine's military.

The sale coincided with the band's appearance at a charity concert at Berlin's Brandenburg Gate.

It aimed to raise money for medical care and supplies.

Speaking at the concert, band member Oleh Psiuk appealed for people not to get used to the war, which has left at least 4,031 civilians dead and 4,735 injured, according to the UN, along with an unknown number of combatants.

It has also forced more than 14 million people to flee their homes since Russia invaded on 24 February, with towns and cities reduced to rubble.

"I think it should be on the front pages always, until peace comes," said Psiuk, whose Eurovision win had been hotly tipped in the run up to the contest. Their song, Stefania, was originally written in tribute to Psiuk's mother, but emotive lyrics like "I will always walk to you by broken roads" have been re-interpreted as a rallying cry.

Ukrainian TV presenter Serhiy Prytula announced that the money raised from the sale of the trophy would be used to purchase three Ukrainian-made PD-2 drones, Reuters news agency reports.

Drones are used heavily by Ukrainian and Russian forces, both as weapons and reconnaissance aircraft.

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• China Closes Airspace to Russian Airbus, Boeing Aircraft

China is prohibiting Russian Boeing and Airbus aircraft owned by foreign leasing companies from flying through its territory.

According to the Russian news outlet RBK (RBC Group), the ban affects equipment whose legal status has not been confirmed following Western sanctions as a result of

According to the report, China has requested proof that the aircraft in question are no longer registered outside of Russia. The sanctions imposed by the West in response to the Russian invasion on February 24 provide context. Because of the military assault authorized by the Kremlin, the EU and the US have banned the supply, maintenance, and insurance of civilian aircraft and spare parts to Russia.

Western leasing companies that have terminated their Russian contractors own a large portion of Russia’s air fleet. Moscow, for its part, has refused to return the planes and has re-registered them without delay.

In May, the Chinese aviation authorities asked all airlines, not only Russian ones, to update electronic dossiers or portfolios that contain information about aircraft, owners of airlines,
and ground handling contracts. Requesting such portfolios is a standard procedure. As per RBK, the procedure has recently been amended in China.

According to RBK, Russian airlines have been unable to produce such documents. This is why the Chinese aviation authorities, observing international air law, have denied the flights of such planes.

This is a developing story.

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• Independent experts accuse Russia of inciting genocide in Ukraine

Independent legal scholars and human rights experts in a report Friday accused Russia of inciting genocide and perpetrating atrocities that reveal an "intent to destroy the Ukrainian national group."

Driving the news: There is "a very serious risk of genocide" and states have a legal obligation to prevent it, warned the the report signed by more than 30 experts and published by the New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy and the Montreal-based Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights.

Under the 1948 Genocide Convention, genocide is defined as "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group."

Acts of genocide to those groups include killings, serious bodily or mental harm, measures to prevent births, and forcible transfer of children from one group to another.

Friday's report said that a "genocidal pattern of destruction targeting Ukrainians" has been established in Ukraine, citing mass killings, deliberate attacks on shelters, evacuations routes and humanitarian corridors, the destruction of vital infrastructure, including health care, reports of sexual violence, and the forcible transfer of Ukrainians, including thousands of children to Russia.

The report also said that there are "reasonable grounds to conclude" Russia is responsible for "direct and public incitement to commit genocide."

It cited high-ranking Russian officials and state media commentators denying the existence of a Ukrainian identity, justifying atrocities through propaganda that dehumanizes Ukrainians and Russian authorities denying atrocities committed by its forces in Ukraine and rewarding soldiers suspected of mass killings in the country.

“The purveyors of incitement propaganda are all highly influential political, religious and State-run media figures, including President Putin,” the report said. “There is mounting evidence that Russian soldiers have internalized and are responding to the State propaganda campaign by echoing its content while committing atrocities.”

The big picture: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has repeatedly accused Russia of carrying out genocide, pointing to atrocities committed in Ukrainian cities like Bucha and Mariupol, and mostly recently during Russia's military offensive in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine.

The UN said Friday that more than 4,000 civilians, including over 260 children, have been killed since Russia began its invasion on Feb. 23, though it stressed the actual figure is likely considerably higher. Russia has repeatedly denied it targets civilians, despite evidence contradicting those claims.

President Biden first used the term "genocide" last month, saying Russian President Vladimir Putin is "trying to wipe out even the idea of being Ukrainian." But other leaders have been more reluctant to label Russia's actions in Ukraine as "genocide."

The International Criminal Court, which can bring about war crimes and genocide charges, announced earlier this month it had sent 42 experts to Ukraine — its "largest ever" single field deployment — to investigate alleged war crimes.

The bottom line: "We understand there is a reluctance to invoke the Genocide Convention ... but in this instance, the pervasive and systematic atrocities targeting Ukrainians mandate these determinations and the responsibility to act," Irwin Cotler, international chair of the Raoul Wallenberg Centre, said in the afterword of Friday's report.

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

See I would have thought Russian troops would know the presence of a Ukrainian drone represented a clear and present danger.

But it seems either they aren't well informed or they're a little bit thick.

Russian soldier gives middle finger to Ukraine drone before it blows up tank | The Independent

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

See I would have thought Russian troops would know the presence of a Ukrainian drone represented a clear and present danger.

But it seems either they aren't well informed or they're a little bit thick.

Russian soldier gives middle finger to Ukraine drone before it blows up tank | The Independent

well they won't recognise any German weapons

Germany has not sent promised large arms to Ukraine, leaked documents show

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/05/29/germany-has-not-sent-promised-large-arms-ukraine-leaked-documents/

You gotta love the nomenclature. Everywhere else, a Bond payment is called exactly that- except in Russia of course, where it is a 'Bid to avoid default'.
Just to remind you, Russia has never defaulted on a Bond payment.

Originally Posted by sabang

Russia has never defaulted on a Bond payment

That is a lie. They defaulted in 1998. Nice try.

Russia Likely to Miss Interest Payment for First Time Since 1998 Crisis

European Union leaders said they had agreed on Monday to cut 90% of oil imports from Russia by the end of this year, resolving an impasse over the bloc's toughest sanction yet on Moscow since the invasion of Ukraine three months ago.

Diplomats said the agreement would clear the way for other elements of a sixth package of EU sanctions on Russia to take effect, including cutting Russia's biggest bank, Sberbank SBMX.MM, from the SWIFT messaging system.

Attention Required! | Cloudflare

When considering the current position of the war in Ukraine, it’s worth remembering that the assumption of Russian commanders when they began their “special military operation”, was that the whole thing would be complete within two weeks. So much for assumptions. What they face now is a protracted attritional battle which may go on for years.

In terms of manpower, the Russians have committed 110 of their 190 battalion tactical groups (BTGs) to Ukraine. Roughly one third of them have been committed to the area the Ukrainians call the “joint forces operation”, which we know as Donbas. Their intentions now are to surround and destroy a large defending Ukrainian force. They have made very slow and heavy work of it so far.

On May 27, the long-contested town of Lyman fell to Russia and fighting is going on to complete the encirclement of Severodonetsk and its twin town (across a river) of Lysychansk. There has been no major breakthrough but rather a series of bloody, short advances for the past few weeks.

There is no finesse in the Russian style – nor was any expected. This is a slogging match of artillery, the bombardment of trench systems and buildings and street fighting.

Casualties are very high. A very conservative estimate of overall Russian losses is that they have lost more troops killed since February 24 than in ten years of fighting in Afghanistan. This implies well over 40,000 men taken out of the fight, including the wounded.

When considering the current position of the war in Ukraine, it’s worth remembering that the assumption of Russian commanders when they began their “special military operation”, was that the whole thing would be complete within two weeks. So much for assumptions. What they face now is a protracted attritional battle which may go on for years.

In terms of manpower, the Russians have committed 110 of their 190 battalion tactical groups (BTGs) to Ukraine. Roughly one third of them have been committed to the area the Ukrainians call the “joint forces operation”, which we know as Donbas. Their intentions now are to surround and destroy a large defending Ukrainian force. They have made very slow and heavy work of it so far.

On May 27, the long-contested town of Lyman fell to Russia and fighting is going on to complete the encirclement of Severodonetsk and its twin town (across a river) of Lysychansk. There has been no major breakthrough but rather a series of bloody, short advances for the past few weeks.

There is no finesse in the Russian style – nor was any expected. This is a slogging match of artillery, the bombardment of trench systems and buildings and street fighting.

Casualties are very high. A very conservative estimate of overall Russian losses is that they have lost more troops killed since February 24 than in ten years of fighting in Afghanistan. This implies well over 40,000 men taken out of the fight, including the wounded.

As for Russian equipment at least 736 tanks, over 1,200 armoured fighting vehicles and infantry fighting vehicles as well as 27 combat aircraft and at lest 42 helicopters have been destroyed. Losses are likely to be higher, possibly far higher in the case of tanks and armoured vehicles.

Some commentators are asking whether the Russian military is “broken”. This is a somewhat premature assessment. That said, after this phase has culminated – certainly in the next few weeks – Russian forces will be unable to conduct any major offensive action in Donbas and will take up defensive positions whilst they regroup.

The Ukrainians are also taking fearful losses. On 22 May the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, stated that 50-100 troops are being killed every day. A well connected Ukrainian of my acquaintance told me recently that on some days the figures are likely to be far higher than that.

As matters stand, should the Russians succeed in their now very limited aims of securing Donbas in addition to their other gains, we can see how the shape of the war may unfold. Zelensky said in his evening address of Friday May 27: “If the occupiers think that Lyman and Severodonestsk will be theirs they are wrong. Donbas will be Ukrainian.”

On the other side, the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said that Donbas was the “unconditional priority”. This is an impasse, and there is only one way out of it: continued fighting. The war is likely to go on for a long time.

Thinking for the long-term

Ukraine is planning to retake the land that has been lost. Clearly, their army will need to replace human casualties in its ranks with recruits and refit old, ravaged units with newer equipment. It will need to build new brigades and battalions.

In addition to the weapons already supplied by the US and the rest of Nato, they will need long-range precision rocket systems to strike Russian supply lines, as well as far more precision artillery to counter the Russian preponderance.

Similarly, in the air, the missiles the Ukrainians possess at the moment can restrict to some extent Russian freedom above Ukrainian lines, but cannot challenge them at longer range. This is why the US is considering supplying Ukraine with Patriot missiles, the highly capable medium range anti-aircraft missiles, which first came to prominence during the 1990-1991 Gulf war. These are capable of striking Russian aircraft some distance behind their lines.

But it will take months to train the crews and integrate all of these new systems – if they even get them – into the Ukrainian armed forces.

Away from the cauldron of Donbas, Belarus has been rattling its somewhat rusty sabre by deploying troops to its border with Ukraine. This is unlikely to trouble Kyiv. The Belarus president, Alexander Lukashenko, is well aware that he may need them at home to shore up his shaky regime.

The troops are there to “fix” some Ukrainian forces in the north, keeping them at the border so that they cannot reinforce another sector. To the south, the Russians are not likely to get much further than they are now, they simply don’t have the forces necessary to do so.

Battle for Odesa

Finally, the naval dimension of this war is sometimes sidelined, save for spectaculars like the sinking of the Moskva, the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, or the battles for Snake Island at the start of the campaign and since. Both of these operations were part of the effort to try to challenge for access to the sea via the port city of Odesa.

The former supreme commander of allied forces in Europe, Admiral James Stavridis, was right when he said “unblocking Odesa is as important as providing weapons to Ukraine”. Having a working port on the Black Sea is the difference between Ukraine being a landlocked and blockaded failing state, and regaining its previous status as a mercantile nation.

It is this which may soon place Odesa centre stage, as Nato is considering convoying international merchant vessels in and out of the port. Such a decision, unlikely soon but perhaps inevitable in the longer term, would carry with it great risk.

This is a major European war of global and historical importance involving all military dimensions (land, sea, air, cyber and space) and where the stakes are national survival. In the absence of decisive and complete military victory and concession, neither of which are likely, the war will rage on. When the current phase of the battle for Donbas finishes, it is likely simply to constitute the end of the beginning.

https://theconversation.com/ukraine-...ginning-183955

Originally Posted by bsnub

Ukraine war: despite Russia’s success in Donbas this is only the end of the beginning

Good overall analyse of the war. Most certainly this will be the case.

Originally Posted by bsnub

What they face now is a protracted attritional battle which may go on for years.

Declare victory and leave now Vlad.

Moscow has diversified its commodities exports as the EU faces the difficult task of replacing Russia as its energy supplier, analysts say.

About a month after Russia launched an invasion of Ukraine, US President Joe Biden hailed the West’s “unprecedented sanctions” on Moscow and said they had caused the rouble to be “almost immediately reduced to rubble”.
The Russian currency lost nearly half of its value, dropping to a record low of 143 roubles to the United States dollar on March 7.
Following the invasion of Ukraine on February 24, Western nations imposed widespread sanctions on Moscow targeting its finances, including freezing its central bank assets to block access to foreign currency reserves.
In the first few weeks, panic ensued as the public tried to acquire as much cash as possible from the banks and to buy goods as the price of imported items shot up. Consumer prices rose by 17.5 percent in April.
But the following month, the Russian rouble rebounded to 40 percent against the dollar compared to January, reaching a seven-year high and becoming the world’s best-performing currency in 2022.


Russian President Vladimir Putin’s demand that foreign buyers pay for the country’s natural gas in the local currency – or else have their supplies cut – helped prop up the local currency, among other measures.
Iskander Lutsko, chief investment strategist at ITI Capital, told Al Jazeera three factors have been supporting the rouble: “escalating oil prices due to sanctions, capital controls, and a drop in dollar demand and excess FX [foreign exchange] liquidity due to high FX revenues from exports of oil and gas”.
Due to sanctions and capital controls, an “artificial and highly supportive environment” was created for the rouble, Lutsko said. Last week Russia’s central bank made its third interest-rate reduction in over a month to halt the rouble from appreciating.
As a result, the Russian banking system experienced excess FX liquidity that led to a drop in dollar rates, historically very rare.


Energy markets expert Vyacheslav Mishchenko told Al Jazeera that Russian financial authorities successfully managed to deal with the emotional reaction of the population and businesses at the onset of the war.
“The price hike was caused by [the] first emotional reaction, because it put a lot of pressure on customers to buy everything,” Mishchenko said.
“But then the beginning of April, the situation returned to normal. The supply is there. Yes, there are some troubles with importing goods, but there aren’t too many. The price hike was mostly on the psychological side, rather than on the economic side.”
As the European Union continued talks last month on phasing out Russian energy supplies, Putin maintained that Europe is “committing economic suicide” with its sanctions, as it would see higher energy prices and higher inflation.

‘Honeymoon period’

Analysts say Russia has so far made correct manoeuvres to withstand the effect of sanctions; the question is whether the West will be able to weather its own sanctions.
Lutsko said the first five months of sanctions have been “more like a honeymoon period” for the Russian economy, but as Europe makes the tough decision to embargo oil and gas, “there will be very little the Russian government could do”.
With Russia accounting for almost 20 percent of global oil and petroleum products combined and 17.5 percent of the world’s gas, making it the largest exporter in the world, there will be implications, Lutsko said.
The government has become reliant on oil and gas as its main source of income, which now accounts for 65 percent of its budget, compared to only 30 percent prior to the invasion of Ukraine.




The EU has been discussing reducing dependency on Russian energy, and after haggling for a month, it decided on Monday to ban 90 percent of Russian oil imports to the EU by the end of the year, part of the bloc’s sixth sanctions package. The EU finalised the decision on Thursday.
The ban applies to Russian oil exported to the EU by sea, exempting the 10 percent of imports by pipeline following Hungary’s opposition that it cannot easily get oil elsewhere. Slovakia and the Czech Republic also voiced the same concerns.

‘A huge discount’

Lutsko said that so far, sanctions have been beneficial for the Russian government as it has created huge volatility in commodity prices.
By March 2, oil had surged beyond $110 per barrel, whereas before it went for $60 per barrel.
And in the first quarter of the year, Russia recorded a historic high trade surplus of $58bn.
“The US and Europe, by imposing sanctions on Russia, they are at the same time shooting themselves in the foot,” Lutsko said.
“It’s highly unfortunate, especially for the world’s largest importers of oil. Some have benefited like China; they have been buying oil from Russia for a huge discount … It’s more of a problem for consumers like OECD Europe [Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development] and Southeast Asian countries,” Lutsko said.
“I think the whole purpose of those sanctions is created more for psychological pressure and to show that … actions are being taken, that they’re not just watching. But obviously, they haven’t taken into consideration the real impact [sanctions] will have – especially for the poorest countries.”


‘Disrupting the supply’

Mishchenko said when it comes to damage inflicted from sanctions, so far “Russia benefits from the situation much better than the EU.
“The demand for commodities is very high. Nobody can replace Russia on the global markets, especially on energy commodities. The more tension there is between Russia and Western countries, the higher prices there will be in specific commodities like we see in the gas market,” Mishchenko said.
“Despite the restrictions, the dispute, the ban of some routes, seaports, etc, Russia exports less in terms of volume but gets more in terms of money. It puts a lot of pressure on the dollar and euro, but the Russian rouble is doing very well.”
About 36 percent of the EU’s oil imports and more than 40 percent of its gas comes from Russia.
Mishchenko said Russia has been diversifying its exports for decades to other markets in the east, including India, China, Southeast Asia and other regions where there is key demand.



China is now Russia’s biggest trade partner, whereas prior to 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea and sanctions ensued, its biggest trade partner was Germany.
Similarly prior to 2014, Russia was one of the world’s biggest importers of food; today, it is a net exporter.
In the last three months, India has bought four times more crude oil from Moscow than it used to in the same period, becoming Russia’s top crude oil buyer, Mishchenko said.
Moscow is now earning a significant amount in oil export revenue – $20bn per month, an increase of 50 percent since the start of 2022.

FULL- ‘Shooting themselves in the foot’: Western sanctions on Russia | Russia-Ukraine war | Al Jazeera

• U.S. goes after more Russian yachts linked to Putin in expanded sanctions

The Treasury Department on Thursday said it expanded its Russian sanctions to further crack down on Moscow’s access to yachts as the U.S. continues to punish President Vladimir Putin for his decision to invade Ukraine.

The Office of Foreign Assets Control announced that its latest actions target a Kremlin-aligned yacht brokerage, several prominent Russian government officials, and Putin’s close associate and money manager, Sergei Roldugin.

Specifically, the Treasury blocked the use of two ships — the Russia-flagged Graceful and the Cayman Islands-flagged Olympia, saying Putin has used them for travel in the past.

“While the leader of Russia, Putin has taken numerous trips on these yachts,” the Treasury Department said in a press release, “including a 2021 trip in the Black Sea where he was joined by Alyaksandr Lukashenka, the OFAC-designated corrupt ruler of Belarus, who has supported Russia’s war against Ukraine.”

The U.S. and its allies have imposed a raft of unprecedented sanctions on Russia’s economy since Moscow attacked Ukraine on Feb. 24.

American officials also said financial penalties will be extended to companies and individuals who owned or managed the two boats, including Cyrus-registered SCF Management Services, Ironstone Marine Investments, JSC Argument and O’Neill Assets Corp.

The OFAC said it will target two other ships, Shellest and Nega. Shellest, officials said, occasionally travels to the coast where Putin’s infamous Black Sea palace is located, while Nega ferries Putin for travel in Russia’s north.

U.S. officials have for months said that Russian yacht and yacht management businesses are key to the country’s industrial complex and its web of shell companies that helps Moscow’s elite channel billions of dollars into luxury assets like superyachts and villas.

Many of Russia’s wealthiest citizens, with businesses linked to the Kremlin, plow hundreds of millions of profits into yachts: Gold-and-marble bathroom fixtures, decks made of rare wood and sized to accommodate helicopters, cars and several swimming pools.

U.S. financial and law enforcement officials are trying to put pressure on Putin by seizing these the ships as they come to anchor in allied ports.

A report from The New York Times published Wednesday said that Imperial Yachts, a ship management company, caters to oligarchs whose wealth rises and falls based on the decisions made by Putin.

One day later, OFAC said the Monaco-based company and its Russian CEO, Evgeniy Kochman, are now subject to U.S. sanctions.

• Russian soldiers sentenced in Ukraine war crimes trial

A Ukrainian court on Tuesday sentenced two Russian soldiers to 11 and a half years in prison in the second war crimes trial of the war, Reuters reports.

Driving the news: Alexander Bobikin and Alexander Ivanov pleaded guilty last week. "The guilt of Bobikin and Ivanov has been proved in full," Judge Evhen Bolybok said during the sentencing.

State of play: Bobikin and Ivanov acknowledged last week that they were involved in shelling targets in the Kharkiv region, destroying an educational establishment in the town of Derhachi.

Ukrainian prosecutors had asked for the two captured soldiers to be jailed for 12 years.

Vadim Shishimarin, a 21-year-old Russian soldier, was sentenced to life in prison this month for committing war crimes during Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.

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• 600 Russians Suspected of War Crimes, Says Ukraine’s Top Prosecutor

Ukraine’s top prosecutor says she has identified more than 600 Russians suspected of war crimes.

Criminal prosecutions already have started for 80 of the suspects, which include “top military, politicians and propaganda agents of Russia," Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova told a news conference in The Hague.

Estonia, Latvia, Slovakia, Lithuania and Poland also are participating in the investigations, Venediktova said.

In addition, the group is working with the International Criminal Court, which began looking into potential war crimes in March.

"We should collect and protect everything in the right way. It should be acceptable evidence in any court," Venediktova said.

Russia has consistently denied it has targeted civilians following its invasion of Ukraine on February 24.

_________________

• Mass civil legal action to seek compensation for Ukrainian war victims

A consortium of Ukrainian and international lawyers is preparing to launch a mass civil legal action against the Russian state, as well as private military contractors and businesspeople backing the Russian war effort, in an attempt to gain financial compensation for millions of Ukrainian victims of the war, the Guardian can reveal.

The team, made up of hundreds of lawyers and several major law firms, plans to bring “multiple actions in different jurisdictions against different targets”, including the UK and the US, said Jason McCue, a London-based lawyer who is coordinating the initiative, in an interview in Kyiv.

The plan is to use UK and US judgments to seize Russian assets across the globe.

Targets are likely to include the Russian state and private military contractors such as the Wagner Group, which is believed to have been active in Ukraine. But McCue said they would also include business figures linked to these contractors, and to the Russian war effort more broadly. He believes that it will be possible to go after assets that have already been hit by sanctions as well as those that have not.

The class action will be a private case, independent of the Ukrainian state. But according to McCue, they will need access to Ukraine’s evidence and intelligence.

The Ukrainian MP and businessman Serhiy Taruta is supporting the initiative by facilitating meetings for the lawyers and investigators with Ukrainian officials.

Taruta, who is from Mariupol and had investments in the city, lost a large chunk of his business when Russia and its proxy forces took more than half of the Donbas region in 2014. This time he lost friends, colleagues and a cousin as Russia destroyed Mariupol while attempting to occupy it.

“Ukrainians have waited 20 years for the prosecution of [Pavlo] Lazarenko, and now eight for MH17,” said Taruta, referring to a case against Ukraine’s former prime minister who embezzled millions, and to an ongoing case in The Hague over the downing of a Malaysian Airlines flight in 2014.

“We need to develop a quicker mechanism [for compensation],” said Taruta. “The normal routes are too slow.”

Ukraine has already begun prosecuting captured Russian soldiers for war crimes in criminal cases, and other war crime cases may later be tried in international courts. But claims for reparations for the war damage are trickier, and McCue said part of the idea behind speedily launching the case was because reparations on a state-to-state level are rarely possible.

“Often when it gets to the negotiations, the issue of reparations is put to one side to focus on the sustainability of peace,” he said.

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According to Taruta, individuals who have suffered the loss of a loved one or property or who have been injured will be the primary recipients of the compensation, followed by state and local institutions, and only then businesses. He estimated the total potential claim could be no less than $1tn (£793.9bn).

A number of teams of investigators have come on board to help the team find assets of businesspeople they believe to be complicit in Russia’s war effort. They include Bellingcat, which has been investigating the activities of the Wagner Group and other Russian private military contractors for some years.

“We are closely monitoring the activity of Russia’s mercenary units in Ukraine,” said Christo Grozev, Bellingcat’s executive director.

“We believe that a deep dive into the [Wagner Group’s] chain of command and its links to official Russian authorities would not only help bring justice for the victims and their families, but also will bring more public awareness and transparency on how Russia is conducting this war,” said Grozev.

A key part of the case will involve pleading that Russia’s invasion is not just an aggressive war but also falls at least partially under the legal definition of terrorism, which would make it easier to go after assets.

“All the legal teams from different countries are satisfied that we have what we need,” said McCue. “It’s very solid.”

McCue has extensive experience in similar cases on a smaller scale, the first of which was won on behalf of victims of the 1998 Omagh bombing, in which four men were found liable for the bombing and ordered to pay compensation to families of the victims.

“The evidence was with the police but nobody was prosecuting because of the peace process,” said McCue, who described how the families approached him. “So, we did a civil action, and we won, and we managed to take houses off two of them.”

The Ukraine case, which is much bigger in scale, is likely to operate on similar principles, though it will be more focused on winning financial compensation for people who have suffered the loss of their loved ones, property or businesses.

“The Omagh case wasn’t about money, it was about proving who did it. This case is about money,” said McCue.

He conceded that there would be enormous work ahead to verify and rank cases and create a “victim hierarchy”, and that targeted figures were likely to work hard to move or cover up their assets. However, he said he believed the case had a good chance of succeeding.

“What we know is that if we don’t do this, people are less likely to get something. This increases the chances,” he said.

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• Top Russian Military Brass Caught Venting: Youre Fucked, Putin—Motherfucker!

Two high-ranking Russian military officers have been caught shit-talking Kremlin leadership in unimaginably colorful language. The two colonels blast the defense minister and lash out at that “motherfucker” Vladimir Putin for his poor strategy in Ukraine, according to a leaked recording of a phone conversation.

While Western and Ukrainian intelligence agencies have routinely reported on plunging morale among rank-and-file Russian troops fighting in Ukraine, many of whom have been heard complaining of dysfunction in intercepted communications, the latest audio appears to be the first to expose frustrations among high-ranking officers.

Radio Free Europe’s Ukrainian service published the curse-laden recording late Monday, reporting that it was provided by Ukrainian intelligence. One of the men heard in the purported intercepted call—identified as Colonel Maksim Vlasov—is no stranger to the eight-year war in Ukraine’s Donbas. He has been wanted by Ukrainian authorities since 2018 for the 2015 shelling of Mariupol—an attack in which he previously implicated himself by carelessly blabbing about it by phone in an earlier intercepted phone call covered by Bellingcat.

The latest recording, dated April 14, is said to show Vlasov and another colonel, Vitaly Kovtun, a doctor at the Naro-Fominsk military hospital said to hold many military honors, raging against the many failures of Putin’s “special military operation” in Ukraine.

“There are horrible losses of our guys, fuck. And you know, I am familiar with military history a bit, and I compare this to the fucking Soviet-Finnish war of 1939-1940. It’s fucking one and the same,” said Vlasov, referring to a war in which the Soviets are estimated to have lost 126,875 troops.

Kovtun responds in kind, saying, “Shoigu is fucking shit. [There are] no contracted forces. Of course not! Why would there fucking be? They paid them 30,000 rubles [$490], where are they going to get contractees?”

“Shoigu has assembled all these fucked up [Emergency Situations] guys… if we have head of inspection Colonel-General [Pavel] Plat, fuck, he’s never even served in the army…” Vlasov said.

“They’ve brought forth a whole stellar cast of bootlickers. That [Alexander} Dvornikov is a legend of fuckery… He’s the one who thought up this ‘anti-Banderov push,’” he said, apparently referring to the Kremlin’s narrative about Ukrainians all being neo-Nazis.

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• Biden Says U.S. Agrees To Send Longer-Range Rocket Systems To Ukraine

U.S. President Joe Biden has agreed to provide Ukraine with advanced rocket systems that can strike with precision at targets up to 80 kilometers away.

"We will provide the Ukrainians with more advanced rocket systems and munitions that will enable them to more precisely strike key targets on the battlefield in Ukraine," Biden wrote in a guest essay in The New York Times on May 31.

Biden said Russia's invasion of Ukraine will end through diplomacy, but the United States must provide significant weapons and ammunition to give Ukraine the highest leverage at the negotiating table.

The United States agreed to provide the high-mobility artillery rocket systems, known as Himars, after Ukraine gave "assurances" that it will not use the missiles to strike inside Russia, a senior administration official said.

The official told reporters that the Himars have a range longer than the howitzers currently deployed by Ukraine. They will be part of a $700 million weapons package expected to be unveiled on June 1.

The weapons package also includes ammunition, counter fire radars, a number of air surveillance radars, additional Javelin anti-tank missiles, as well as anti-armor weapons, the administration official said.

But the Himars are the centerpiece of the package, and the pledge to send them comes as the Ukrainians are battling Russian artillery in the Donbas region.

Ukrainian forces could use the rocket systems to both intercept Russian artillery and take out Russian positions in towns where fighting is intense, such as Syevyerodonetsk.

Russia has been making incremental progress as it tries to take the remaining sections of the Donbas not already controlled by Russian-backed separatists.

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• Nobel-winning Russia journalist to auction off prize to support Ukrainian children

Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov has announced that he plans to auction off the money he won from his Nobel Peace Prize in an effort to support displaced Ukrainian children amid Russia’s ongoing invasion of the country.

Muratov, who was the editor of the now-suspended news publication Novaya Gazeta, said that the $500,000 prize money will be used to support various charitable foundations, The New York Times reported.

Muratov’s Nobel Peace model will be auctioned off by Heritage Auctions in New York on June 20. One hundred percent of the auction’s proceeds will be donated to the United Nations agency UNICEF.

June 20 is also World Refugee Day, according to Heritage Auctions.

“One successful bidder will walk away from this auction with a gold medal representing Mr. Muratov’s life’s work and sacrifice. Still, it is his wish that EVERYONE participates by donating what they can to UNICEF,” the auction website said. “The goal is to use this event to foster awareness of refugee crises and for the giving to continue long after the auction on June 20th.”

In an interview last month, Muratov said he’s conducting the auction to help support Ukrainians who were displaced due to the conflict, calling the situation a “tragedy,” according to the Times.

“If we look at the number of refugees, we basically have World War III, not a local conflict,” Muratov told the Times. “This has been a mistake, and we need to end it.”

This comes after Muratov initially announced his plans to auction off his Nobel Prize medal in March, a month into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Muratov won the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize award along with fellow journalist Maria Ressa of the Philippines, both recognized for “their efforts to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace.”

“Novaya Gazeta and I have decided to donate the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize Medal to the Ukrainian Refugee Fund,” Muratov told the Times.

“There are already over 10 million refugees,” Muratov added. “I ask the auction houses to respond and put up for auction this world-famous award.”

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which began on Feb. 24, has killed thousands on both sides and led about 6.8 million Ukrainian refugees to flee the country to escape ongoing fighting. https://thehill.com/policy/3508897-n...nian-children/

Russia should not close the U.S. embassy despite the crisis triggered by the war in Ukraine because the world's two biggest nuclear powers must continue to talk, the U.S. ambassador to Moscow was quoted as saying on Monday.

President Vladimir Putin has cast the invasion of Ukraine as a turning point in Russian history: a revolt against the hegemony of the United States, which the Kremlin chief says has humiliated Russia since the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union.

Ukraine - and its Western backers - says it is fighting for its survival against a reckless imperial-style land grab which has killed thousands, displaced more than 10 million people and reduced swathes of the country to wasteland.

In a clear attempt to send a message to the Kremlin, John J. Sullivan, the U.S. ambassador appointed by President Donald Trump, told Russia's state TASS news agency that Washington and Moscow should not simply break off diplomatic relations.

"We must preserve the ability to speak to each other," Sullivan told TASS in an interview. He cautioned against the removal of the works of Leo Tolstoy from Western bookshelves or refusing to play the music of Pyotr Tchaikovsky.

His remarks were reported by TASS in Russian and translated into English by Reuters.

Despite the crises, spy scandals and brinkmanship of the Cold War, relations between Moscow and Washington have not been broken off since the United States established ties with the Soviet Union in 1933.

Now, though, Russia says its post-Soviet dalliance with the West is over and that it will turn eastwards.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken last month quipped that he would like to dedicate Taylor Swift's "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together" to Putin.

Asked about that remark, Sullivan said: "We also will never break up entirely."

Don't close the embassy, U.S. ambassador tells Russia

You mean, begs Russia not to close the Embassy? Shame the US didn't listen to some former US Ambassadors to Russia, such as Jack Matlock.

Ukraine needs many more rocket launchers from west, says adviser

Ukraine needs 60 multiple rocket launchers – far more than the handful promised so far by the UK and the US – to have a chance of defeating Russia, according to an aide to the country’s presidency .

Oleksiy Arestovych, a military adviser to the president’s chief of staff, told the Guardian that while he believed the rocket launchers were “a game-changing weapon”, not enough had been committed to reverse the course of the war.

“The less we have, the worse our situation will be. Our troops will continue to die and we will continue to lose ground,” especially if countries with only dozens of systems “decide to give away four or five,” Arestovych said. .

On Monday, Britain announced it would donate a handful of M270 tracked rocket launchers, carrying missiles with a range of around 50 miles, days after the United States announced that they would donate four similar truck-based high mobility artillery rocket systems (Himars).

Arestovych said Ukraine needs several times more multiple launch rocket systems (MLRS), which have a range far beyond anything in the country’s existing arsenal.

“If we get 60 of these systems, the Russians will lose all ability to advance anywhere, they will be stopped dead in their tracks. If we get 40, they will advance, albeit very slowly with heavy casualties; with 20, they will continue to advance with higher losses than now,” he said.

The US Army has 363 Himars and 225 M270 rocket launchers, and the US Marines have 47 others, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, while the UK has 35 of its version of the M270s, which which indicates that there might be a capacity to provide more. to Ukraine.

Russia has repeatedly said it would step up its offensive in Ukraine if the longer-range rockets were delivered. Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, said on Monday: “The longer the range of weapons you supply, the further the line from which the neo-Nazis are removed.” [the Ukrainians] could threaten the Russian Federation will be pushed.

On Sunday, Vladimir Putin said Moscow would hit “new targets” in Ukraine if the West increased arms deliveries. Early Sunday morning, Russia launched a cruise missile strike on a railway depot in the eastern suburbs of Kyiv, the first time the capital had been hit in more than five weeks.

Ukraine’s latest public lobbying came as a battle for control raged in the small eastern town of Sievierodonetsk, with Kyiv forces attempting to mount a counterattack after Russia nearly managed to capture it at the end of last week.

Serhiy Haidai, the governor of Luhansk, where the city is located, said Monday morning that “the situation has gotten a bit worse for us”, having reached a point where Ukrainian forces had “liberated almost half of the city “.

Later Monday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy struck a more pessimistic note, telling reporters in Kyiv that if his country’s forces resist, “there are more [Russians] and they are stronger”. Ukraine’s military casualties have been estimated by insiders at 150 dead per day and 800 wounded.

Haidai said the shelling had increased tenfold in Sievierodonetsk and the nearby town of Lysychansk, still held by Ukraine, and that there were other reports of intense fighting involving machine guns, mortars and shelling. artillery involving thousands of soldiers.

Overnight, it emerged that Zelenskiy had traveled to nearby frontlines on Sunday to boost soldiers’ morale. The President revealed that he made a risky trip to Lysychansk and nearby Soledar which at one point took him within a few miles of Russian positions.

“We also brought you something from them,” added Zelenskiy in a selfie video posted in the early hours. “It’s important. We brought confidence. And strength. I wish them health. Low reverence to their parents. I wish us all victory.

Arestovych said Zelenskiy wanted to “show his support for the troops” because the fighting in the Donbass region was “hard enough for us”. The president also wanted to push back against “Russian misinformation” that he “sits in his bunker in Kyiv and doesn’t care about the front line.”

Ukrainian strategists said they tried to induce Russian forces to expand into Sievierodonetsk, hoping to blunt the operational effectiveness of the invasion force. Although 120 Russian battalions remain inside Ukraine, Kyiv believes they are currently operating at 40-50%.

Russia, however, has been making slow but steady progress in the Donbass region, advancing at a rate of around 500 meters to 1 km per day in recent weeks, largely focusing its efforts on an increasingly small from the front line, in the area around Sievierodonetsk where there is a bulge in the positions of Ukraine.

Arestovitch said Ukraine’s main problem was that, although it was able to inflict losses on the Russians and blunt their advances in the Donbass and on an 800-mile (1,300 km) front line, it was much more difficult to push the occupants back. Military members generally need to secure a battlefield advantage of 3 to 1 or more to have any prospect of victory.

“We need four to five heavy weapons brigades to be able to carry out a proper counter-offensive and make it successful. We have the manpower, we don’t have the armaments,” Arestovych said. “Being on the offensive is about five times harder than being on the defensive.”

The adviser said his biggest fear was that the West would stop sending arms to Ukraine, “because it would return to the original situation before the war, long and static front lines, this time three times as much of our lands having been captured”. than before.”