Tom Mutch reports: We can see the rockets landing in the field in front of us, around a mile away from the frontline barracks we are holed up in. A shell whistles over our head only to smash into the forest next to us, but the birds don’t even wait for the smoke to clear before you can hear their melodic singing waft from the trees along with the plumes of white smoke. With a bright blue twilight sky and…
Fred Kaplan writes: After a string of tactical defeats, the Russian army is making some headway in its campaign to capture the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, site of the war’s deadliest fighting. Its troops have taken nearly all of the region’s northern district, known as Luhansk, and all but surrounded the town of Severodonetsk. Meanwhile, Ukrainian troops are exhausted, with 100 to 200 dying daily. While this is true of Russian troops as well, the Ukrainians are running out…
The New York Times reports: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine triggered global condemnation and tough sanctions aimed at denting Moscow’s war chest. Yet Russia’s revenues from fossil fuels, by far its biggest export, soared to records in the first 100 days of its war on Ukraine, driven by a windfall from oil sales amid surging prices, a new analysis shows. Russia earned what is very likely a record 93 billion euros in revenue from exports of oil, gas and coal in…
AFP reports: Ukraine has received just 10 per cent of the weapons pledged by the West to help Kyiv to fight off the Russian offensive, the deputy defence minister said on Tuesday. “From what we said we need, we got about 10 per cent,” Anna Malyar said in televised remarks, saying the West should speed up its delivery schedule. “No matter how hard Ukraine tries, no matter how professional our army is, without the help of Western partners we will…
The Wall Street Journal reports: The war in Ukraine has turned into a grinding artillery contest where Russia is steadily gaining ground thanks to its overwhelming advantage in firepower. As the U.S. and allies gather Wednesday to discuss fresh military aid to Kyiv, Ukraine’s fate will largely depend on how fast and in what quantities these heavy weapons arrive. Without a broad and rapid increase in military assistance, Ukraine faces a defeat in the eastern Donbas region, Ukrainian officials warn….
Anders Åslund writes: Vladimir Putin’s 22-year reign has been marked by a steady decline in the goals he has set for himself and his country. He initially embraced progressive notions of domestic reform and international integration, but has since led Russia deeper and deeper into authoritarian isolation. His recent comments comparing himself to Peter the Great and boasting of plans to seize Ukrainian lands represent a new low in this depressing journey from would-be reformer to war criminal. It is…
Michaël Tanchum writes: After 100 days of war in Ukraine on Europe’s eastern flank, a critical new front has opened on Europe’s southern flank with the food crisis in Africa. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has accused Moscow of weaponizing famine and using it against Africa. Already on a near-war footing to counter Moscow’s westward advances in Ukraine, Europe is now pressed to prevent a famine-driven mass migration crisis coming to its southern shores from North Africa. As…
Mac William Bishop reports: We are watching as BM-21 Grad rockets rain down on Ukrainian positions near a village called Sviatohirsk. It’s impossible to see their individual effects amid the smoke and haze covering the densely forested hills. Standing in an observation post on high ground amid feathery grass and wild garlic, I give up on trying to count individual impacts and instead just count the salvos, timing each barrage. I witness as many as 480 rockets fired on a…
The Observer reports: Ukraine’s war with Russia is heading towards its fifth month amid increasing local concern that dwindling media attention could lead to a gradual loss of western support just as Moscow is making slow but steady gains on the frontline. The anxiety reflects a growing normalisation of the conflict in which large parts of the country feel distant from the war in eastern Donbas – as it becomes clear that casualties are mounting and economic costs soaring. “It’s…
Lawrence Freedman writes: Putin’s rhetoric is littered with historical references, recently, in his Peter the Great mode, to the start of the eighteenth century and Russia’s war with Sweden, to Catherine the Great’s acquisition of Novorussia, which includes much of the land that is now at the heart of the fighting, and then to the construction of the USSR and its eventual collapse, with the Great Patriotic War always the highlight. For Putin history describes a struggle for Russia to…
The Washington Post reports: More than three months of occupation by Russian soldiers has left much of Ukraine’s southern Kherson region isolated, without access to basic medicines and cut off from Ukrainian cellphone and internet service. The Russian tricolor flag is displayed at most of the main government buildings. There are whispers of a coming referendum that would formally make Kherson part of Russia, at least in the Kremlin’s eyes. The armed occupying forces patrol the streets, while the blasts…
If it wasn’t obvious by the reign of terror, Putin now openly admits he’s a Tsar. The 21st century Hitler disgraces even Russian history by comparing his depraved kleptocracy to a 17th century emperor who “opened a window to Europe.” Putin’s lobbing missiles thru that window. https://t.co/zGCA9sF5Qr — 🇺🇦Paula Chertok🗽🇺🇦 (@PaulaChertok) June 11, 2022 When Putin says he will retake what is "historically his" – and restore the Russian "borders" – I present you a map of Russia 1914. @cepa…
Robbie Gramer and Amy Mackinnon write: As Russia continues its assault on Ukraine, top Biden administration officials are working behind the scenes with the Ukrainian government and European allies to document a tsunami of war crimes allegedly committed by Russian forces. But the sheer volume of the documented war crime cases could be too overwhelming for Ukraine’s justice system as well as for the International Criminal Court (ICC), raising questions of how many cases will be brought to trial and…
The Guardian reports: Ukraine’s deputy head of military intelligence has said Ukraine is losing against Russia on the frontlines and is now reliant almost solely on weapons from the west to keep Russia at bay. “This is an artillery war now,” said Vadym Skibitsky, deputy head of Ukraine’s military intelligence. The frontlines were now where the future would be decided, he told the Guardian, “and we are losing in terms of artillery”. “Everything now depends on what [the west] gives…
Dan Sabbagh writes: Any way you count it, the figures are stark: Ukrainian casualties are running at a rate of somewhere between 6oo and 1,000 a day. One presidential adviser, Oleksiy Arestovych, told the Guardian this week it was 150 killed and 800 wounded daily; another, Mykhaylo Podolyak, told the BBC that 100 to 200 Ukrainian troops a day were being killed. It represents an extraordinary loss of human life and capacity for the defenders, embroiled in a defence of…
Politico reports: The signs had been there for weeks, if not months: Russian forces were massing around Ukraine, painting Zs and Vs on their military vehicles; Vladimir Putin’s rhetoric was getting more and more bellicose; and Western intelligence agencies were warning that an invasion was imminent. But the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the world’s largest security body, was caught napping. For eight years, it had overseen a Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) on the ground in Ukraine,…