Published: 14:48 BST, 23 July 2022 | Updated: 17:11 BST, 23 July 2022
A Vladimir Putin body ‘double’ may have been used for his arrival at a summit in Tehran this week, according to the head of Ukrainian military intelligence.
While the Russian leader looked awkward as he came down the steps of his presidential plane in Tehran, Ukrainian sources noted he moved unusually quickly and was more alert than in prior public appearances.
The Russian premier looked animated when greeting the waiting party, before removing his jacket and clambering into a heavily armoured limousine.
Intelligence supremo Major-General Kyrylo Budanov was suspicious in a live interview on Ukraine’s 1+1 news channel.
Ukrainian reports said Budanov suggested a Putin lookalike could have flown to Tehran to meet with the presidents of Iran and Turkey.
‘I will only hint,’ he said.
‘Please look at the moment of Putin’s exit from the plane. Is it Putin at all?’
A Vladimir Putin body ‘double’ may have been used for his arrival at a summit in Tehran this week, according to the head of Ukrainian military intelligence
While the Russian leader looked awkward as he came down the steps of his presidential plane in Tehran, Ukrainian sources noted he moved unusually quickly and was more alert than in prior public appearances
Major-General Kyrylo Budanov (right) raised suspicions over an alleged body double of the Russian premier, whose health has been the subject of intense speculation in recent months
The Russian leader’s visit to Tehran where he met Iran’s leadership, plus Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, attracted worldwide attention.
It is only the second time Putin has been abroad since launching his brutal invasion of Ukraine five months ago.
In one video, Erdoğan kept Putin waiting, with the Russian ruler appearing ill at ease as he shuffled his feet and made strange facial movements.
But earlier Ukraine did not suggest this was a Putin double.
At the time, official Anton Gerashchenko posted on Telegram: ‘Erdogan made Putin wait during the meeting in Tehran.
‘The whole spectrum of emotions of the humiliated and insulted Führer is on his face.
‘The bunker is indeed the best place to stay with such a face.’
The Russian leader’s visit to Tehran where he met Iran’s leadership, plus Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, attracted worldwide attention
It marked just the second time Putin has been abroad since launching his brutal invasion of Ukraine five months ago
Ukrainian news agency UNIAN commented: ‘The dwarf doesn’t like to be disrespected.’
Putin two years ago admitted that officials had considered using doubles, but he claimed the idea was rejected.
‘I discarded the idea of any doubles,’ he said.
He was advised in the early 2000s when Russia was hit by terrorist attacks that a lookalike should take his place at events where the head of state might be at risk, he said.
‘This was during the toughest time of our war against terrorism,’ he said.
Body doubles were reportedly used by former Kremlin leaders, for example longtime Soviet supremos Josef Stalin and Leonid Brezhnev.
Meanwhile, a Russian expert on Putin has strongly disputed a CIA claim that the Kremlin leader is ‘too healthy’ and showing no evidence of multiple medical problems.
Political scientist Valery Solovey challenged a claim by CIA director William Burns this week that there was no intelligence to suggest Putin was seriously ill.
Solovey, who has long claimed the Russian leader is ailing, said: ‘The Americans, the CIA particularly, have information on the real state of health of the Russian president.
‘They definitely know that he has serious troubles, including mental ones.’
Putin two years ago admitted that officials had considered using doubles, but he claimed the idea was rejected
Putin arrived in Iran to forge a fearsome new alliance, with both sanction-hit countries united by their hatred for the West
Political scientist Valery Solovey (pictured) challenged a claim by CIA director William Burns this week that there was no intelligence to suggest Putin was seriously ill
Solovey, a former professor at Moscow’s prestigious Institute of International Relations, suggested that the ‘too healthy’ comment was made because the US is behind the scenes negotiating with Russia.
Burns had said: ‘There are lots of rumours about President Putin and as far as we can tell he’s entirely too healthy.’
Solovey countered: ‘The Putin’s health topic is one of the [most] central in Russian policy discussions.’
The Iranian Army launches a drone carrying a missile during military drills, with Russia expected to receive a shipment
A Russian delegation visited an Iranian airfield on June 8 and July 5 to inspect the drones which could be used to direct artillery fire and destroy Ukrainian military hardware
He claimed the denials of medical issues ‘only reinforce suspicions that there is some problem’.
‘[When] Putin shows up, what do we see?
‘A man who limps, a man with dark spots, a man who has to interrupt meetings for ostensible “consultations”.
‘In reality, he needs medical assistance at that moment… People make conclusions based on what they see.
‘TV is a big liar, but it becomes more difficult to hide the real state of affairs.’
Solovey, like channel General SVR, has claimed previously that Putin is suffering from serious illnesses including cancer, Parkinson’s disease and a schizoaffective disorder.
Photograph Source: Chatham House, London – CC BY 2.0
The cancel culture has hit high level diplomatic discussions. U.S. Russian negotiations are in the deep freeze. Even the head of the humanitarian International Committee of the Red Cross was severely criticized for talking to and shaking hands with the Russian Foreign Minister. Dialogue or contact with Russians is nyet, nyet. We have little knowledge of what Russians are thinking.
This was not always the case. The previous Cold War (1.0) was not as cold as it is presented. There was some dialogue. Georgi Arbatov, adviser to five Communist Party general secretaries and founder of the Institute for U.S. and Canadian Studies in Moscow, once told me he had had constant contacts with American officials during the Cold War. “Averell Harriman [American politician, businessman, and diplomat] and I spoke frequently about what we could do to avert an out-and-out conflict,” he confided. “It was in no one’s interest to have a nuclear confrontation.”
So, with no Arbatov or Harriman around in Cold War 2.0., Serge Schmemann’s interview with Sergei Karaganov in the NY Times warrants careful reading as an insight into what the Kremlin is thinking. Amid Western unilateral condemnations of the February 24 Russian invasion of Ukraine, we have had little information from intellectual, cosmopolitan Russians who have had decades of contacts with Western elites. Professors at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations or Moscow’s Higher School of Economics or members of think tanks like the Institute for U.S. and Canadian Studies, many of whom have also held government positions, have not been heard from in the mainstream Western press.
Have we not heard from them because they are afraid to speak up against Putin? Or have we not heard from them because they support Putin and we don’t want to hear what they are saying? While responses to both questions are difficult, the Schmemann/Karaganov interview gives insight into some Russian elite thinking by those in the second category. And that’s worth a short exegesis of the interview.
Who are Schmemann and Karaganov? Schmemann was the Times Moscow bureau chief and is a current member of its editorial board. He writes he has known Karaganov for over twenty years and has frequently interviewed him.
Karaganov has an impressive record as a political scientist, candidate to be defense minister under former Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov (1998-1999), adviser to several Russian presidents and close to Vladimir Putin. Before the February 24 invasion, he was a regular CNN commentator on Russian foreign and defense policies with an excellent command of English. He co-founded the Institute of Europe with Alexei Gromyko, grandson of the former Minister of Foreign Affairs of the USSR, Andrei Gromyko. He can certainly be considered a member of the Russian intellectual, policy elite. I first met Karaganov over 30 years ago at an academic conference in Dubrovnik with Western and Soviet scholars. We have had occasional contacts since.
In the interview, Karaganov’s general thesis about the Ukraine crisis is that “the West was collapsing in economic, moral, political terms” so the war was inevitable for Western elites “To divert attention they need an enemy.” For the eminent Russian political scientist and close Putin adviser, the Ukraine war is “to preserve the failing supremacy of Western elites.” More specifically, he described the current East-West confrontation as “a prolonged Cuban missile crisis” without the “people of the caliber of Kennedy and his entourage on the other side.”
His attacks on Western elites are not attacks against all in the West. “But most Western countries, not their presently ruling elites, will perfectly survive and thrive even when this liberal globalist imperialism imposed since late 1980’s will vanish.” And, optimistically, in the future “the elites will partially be changed, and we shall normalize relations.”
Beyond the changing of Western elites, this normalization of East-West relations will be based on a new world order. According to Karaganov: “Belligerent Western policies…are cleaning our society, our elites, of the remains of pro-Western elements, compradors and ‘useful idiots.’” “Ukraine is an important but small part of an engulfing process of the collapse of the former world order of global liberal imperialism imposed by the United States and movement toward a much fairer and freer world of multipolarity and multiplicity of civilizations and cultures,” one of which will be centered in Eurasia.
Karaganov’s vision of the future is that it will be non-Western and non-Western elitist. The rest of the world “is developing largely in the right direction and is becoming larger and freer, while the West is rapidly shrinking.”
His condemnation of Western elites and decaying Western power are easy to understand. He surely knows the statistics about growing inequality in the United States; I’m sure he watched replays of the murder of George Floyd and the January 6 assault on the Capitol. Karaganov’s rejection of Western liberal imperialism comes from someone with intimate knowledge of NATO and the major U.S. universities and think tanks. He has seen the inside the belly of the beast, and, for him, it doesn’t work.
Karaganov believes that a growing diffusion of global power post-World War II American hegemony is inevitable. And this is where his argument loses strength. What about Russia? Where will Russia be in this new constellation?
Karaganov sees Russia as a future center. According to him, “Russia will be playing its natural role of civilization of civilizations.” “We are proud heirs of a great culture…We are heirs of unbeatable warriors…” By mentioning great writers and great marshals, he falls into the same elitist trap he has accused Western elites. Where are the workers of the world uniting?
By concluding with praises for great writers and great warriors, Karaganov negates his criticisms of Western elites. While he condemns Western elites for “failing and losing the trust of their populations,” he seems less concerned about the Russian population. “For Russia this conflict is about preservation of not only its elites, but the country itself.” So the Western elites have to be changed, not the Russian ones. The only Russian elites who should be changed are those who had pro-Western tendencies.
Sergei Karaganov’s interview reflects Russian perception of Western decay. But what about self-criticism of Russia? What about the internal problems of a country with an extraction based economy with many young IT people leaving? How to praise famous Russian “warriors” while watching the bombing of civilian targets throughout Ukraine? Is the cleavage between elites and the general population only valid in the West?
Serge Schmemann and the NYTimes have done us a service by publicly showing the thoughts of a prominent Russian political scientist/policy adviser. Unfortunately, and sadly, the opportunities to have an open discussion or debate are not possible. And, unfortunately, and sadly, people like Arbatov and Harriman are no longer with us to have conversations to keep conflicts like Ukraine from spiraling out of control. At least that, dear Sergei, we can agree upon.
News broke Monday evening that the FBI falsely labeled verified intelligence and credible evidence against Hunter Biden as “disinformation” in order to shut down an investigation of him in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election.
It’s hard to overstate the significance of this, despite the lack of attention the story has received so far from the corporate press. The FBI has now directly interfered in two consecutive presidential elections, placing a heavy hand on the scales to benefit Democrats in 2016 and 2020, all in hopes of keeping Donald Trump out of the White House. It would not be too much to say the FBI is a threat to democracy and that it should be disbanded.
Here’s what happened. According to a letter released by Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, addressed to Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray, numerous “highly credible whistleblowers” have come forward about “a scheme in place among certain FBI officials to undermine derogatory information connected to Hunter Biden by falsely suggesting it was disinformation.”
The result of this FBI scheme, which took place in the summer and fall of 2020, was to quash an investigation into Hunter Biden’s “criminal financial and related activity,” which had reportedly started as a tax investigation, just before the November election that year. Grassley, the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said that the “volume and consistency of these allegations substantiate their credibility and necessitate this letter.”
Grassley’s letter tells a shocking tale that should enrage every American, regardless of party, in part because some of the same FBI agents who interfered in the 2016 election did it again in 2020. Whistleblowers say that in August 2020, FBI supervisory intelligence agent Brian Auten “opened an assessment” of an ongoing FBI investigation of Hunter Biden, and that this assessment was used by FBI headquarters “to improperly discredit negative Hunter Biden information as disinformation and caused investigative activity to cease.”
Recall that Auten was deeply involved in Crossfire Hurricane, the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign that became the basis for the Russia collusion hoax. It was Auten who was in charge of verifying the phony Steele dossier but failed to flag its many errors and inconsistencies. He interviewed Igor Danchenko, a Russian-born lawyer who was the main source for the Steele dossier’s outlandish claims, three times in 2017. During those interviews, Danchenko undercut claims of collusion between the Trump campaign and Moscow, raising serious doubt about the reliability of the dossier.
Auten was also in charge of reviewing the flawed Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act application to spy on Trump campaign associate Carter Page, which relied on the discredited dossier. According to Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report on FISA abuse, Auten failed to advise his superiors of the inconsistencies between the Steele dossier and its primary source, Danchenko, including allegations against Page.
But it doesn’t stop there. Grassley’s letter also includes allegations from whistleblowers that the FBI assistant special agent in charge of the Washington field office, Timothy Thibault, “ordered closed” an “avenue of additional derogatory Hunter Biden reporting” in October 2020, a month before the election, without giving a reason as required by FBI guidelines, despite the reporting being “verified or verifiable via criminal search warrants.”
That is, Thibault closed the investigation even though he and others at the FBI knew much of what had been uncovered was true. Thibault is the FBI agent whose abjectly partisan social media presence prompted Grassley to send a letter in May accusing him of likely violations of federal law and FBI regulations for a “pattern of active public partisanship in his then public social media content.”
In order to ensure the Hunter Biden investigation was not reopened, Thibault and other FBI officials allegedly “attempted to improperly mark the matter in FBI systems so that it could not be opened in the future,” according to Grassley’s letter.
If Grassley’s sources are telling the truth, what we have here — at the very least — is a conspiracy inside the FBI to suppress an investigation into Joe Biden’s son in the months before the election. Why would the FBI do such a thing?
Perhaps some among the same cadre of FBI agents who cooked up the Russia collusion hoax knew that if the verified and verifiable derogatory information they had about Hunter Biden got out, it would kill Joe Biden’s chances of ousting Trump from the White House. So they killed the investigation, falsely labeled evidence against Hunter Biden as “disinformation,” and then tried to bury the whole thing.
Now that Grassley has come forward with these allegations, we need to know everything. The FBI and the Justice Department need to give Grassley everything he asked for, and there needs to be a full investigation (perhaps by a special counsel). Then if the allegations turn out to be true and the FBI really did intervene in the 2020 election as Grassley’s letter suggests, the forthcoming GOP congressional majority needs to disband — or at least defund — the FBI.
The issue is existential for our republic. If all this is true, then both the FBI and the Justice Department are, in Grassley’s words, “institutionally corrupted to their very core to the point in which the United States Congress and the American people will have no confidence in the equal application of the law.”
They also won’t have confidence in the freeness and fairness of our elections. And they’ll be right.
John Daniel Davidson is a senior editor at The Federalist. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Claremont Review of Books, The New York Post, and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter, @johnddavidson.
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Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu speaks during a news conference in Ankara, Turkey June 27, 2022. REUTERS/Cagla Gurdogan
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ANKARA, July 27 (Reuters) – Sweden and Finland have yet to extradite suspects Turkey seeks over terrorism-related charges despite signing an accord to lift Ankara’s veto to its NATO membership last month, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Wednesday.
The two Nordic countries applied for NATO membership in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but were faced with opposition from Turkey which accused them of imposing arms embargoes on Ankara and supporting groups it deems terrorists.
While Turkey has not set a firm deadline, it has said it expects the suspects to be extradited as soon as possible and that it was monitoring the situation closely.
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“Sweden maintains an ongoing dialogue with Turkey and Finland on the trilateral agreement which Sweden is following and will carry out in full in accordance with Swedish and international law,” a spokesman at Sweden’s Foreign Ministry said in an emailed comment.
The three countries signed an accord to lift Ankara’s veto in exchange for counter-terrorism promises, but Turkey has said it will block the membership bids if the pledges are not kept. It has sought the extradition of 73 people from Sweden and a dozen others from Finland.
Turkey’s foreign ministry summoned the Swedish charges d’affaires in Ankara to convey its “strong reaction” to what it called “terrorist propaganda” during a Kurdish group’s protest in Stockholm, diplomatic sources said at the weekend. read more
Officials from Turkey, Finland and Sweden will meet in August to evaluate the progress in meeting Ankara’s demands. read more
While Turkey holds off with its ratification for the two countries’ membership bids, 18 of NATO’s 30 members have already approved Sweden’s application to join the alliance.
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Reporting by Tuvan Gumrukcu and Ece Toksabay, additional reporting by Simon Johnson in Stockholm;
Editing by Ali Kucukgocmen and Tomasz Janowski
Credit…Illustration by Peter Somogyi; images via Getty Images
By Peter Pomerantsev
Mr. Pomerantsev is the author of “This Is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality.”
Valentyna told me that not long after Russian troops arrived in Yahidne, her village in northern Ukraine, a tall, blond soldier came to use her bathroom. She asked him what the Russians were doing in Ukraine. “We want you to be with us,” he told her, “for you to be with Russia.”
In Yahidne, the reality of being “with us” meant the following: The Russian soldiers herded some 300 villagers into a cellar underneath a school next to their artillery, turning them into human shields. The oldest villager was 96. “We are here to protect you,” the Russian soldiers told them. But they held the villagers in the cellar for about a month, and 10 died after Russians did not provide proper medical care. Others, including Valentyna, a pensioner who lives alone, stayed in their homes, which Russian soldiers ransacked, looking for money and loot.
I went to Yahidne in mid-April, not long after it had been liberated by Ukrainian troops. The village is not an unusual example of the brutality that Russia tries to sell as brotherhood in Ukraine. Throughout the war, being “with us” has been synonymous with atrocity: the mass bombings of schools, homes and hospitals, and the rape and execution of civilians.
It’s also been synonymous with humiliation.
To humiliate people is to exploit your power over them, making them feel worthless and dependent on you. It is clear, then, that the Russian military seems intent on humiliating Ukrainians, taking away their right to independence and their right to make their own decisions. This war is an act of imperialism, a colonial war meant to destroy another nation’s right to exist and to subjugate it. But it is not empire building in the sense of a coldly considered plan for territorial gain and economic resources; it is the next act of Vladimir Putin’s empire of humiliation.
Russia’s president would have the world believe that his country is guided by unifying ideas of cultural pride and conservative values, exceptionalism and splendid isolation. But in reality, Mr. Putin’s Russia has no coherent ideology; it’s just a mess of contradictions: It is Soviet nostalgia and a cultural arrogance that glorifies the Russian empire; it is a Russian ethnic and Christian Orthodox superiority that sits uncomfortably with what is supposed to be pride in being a patchwork of ethnicities and faiths.
Russia is a bastion of conservative values that has some of the world’s highest rates of divorce, and its soundtrack is a Kremlin TV that amplifies any compliment or conciliatory gesture from the West — clips of Tucker Carlson, the Fox News host, appear frequently. Kremlin propaganda claims Russia revels in isolationism, but it is also addicted to seeking approval from abroad.
And Mr. Putin’s success as president of Russia has rested for some time on his ability to mete out daily humiliations to Russians and then act as if he feels their rage as they do, as if he alone knows where to direct it — toward the West, toward Ukraine, anywhere except toward the Kremlin.
But when Mr. Putin himself tries to explain why Russia is in Ukraine, he swings between what seem like very different excuses. In a speech in June Mr. Putin compared himself to Peter the Great, on a mission to expand Russian lands. Another time he claimed “we had no choice” but to act in Ukraine, a message that was repeated endlessly on television.
So which is it? It is neither and both. Mr. Putin likes to perform both sides of the humiliation drama: from the seething resentment of the put-upon Russian everyman to cosplaying Peter the Great. This allows him to appeal to Russians’ deep-seated sense of humiliation, which the Kremlin itself inflicts on people, and then compensate for it. It’s a performance that taps into the cycle of humiliation and aggression that defines the experience of life in Russia, and now Ukraine is the stage.
When Russia pulled back from western Ukraine in May to regroup and launch its second phase in the east, it had lost more than 10,000 troops and enormous amounts of matériel. It was clear to almost everyone that it had suffered a major defeat.
In the weeks since, Mr. Putin and his generals have seemed quite content to continue to send troops to the front lines as cannon fodder. The Kremlin has not announced a national draft, which would likely be unpopular, but there have been initiatives to encourage people to enlist. The high death toll among ethnic minority soldiers suggests that they fill the front ranks in disproportionate numbers.
Mr. Putin, in his speeches, often employs the language of “family,” with Russia as the elder brother to other countries. It’s a rhetorical tool Mr. Putin uses when talking about Ukraine, too. Ukraine is the prodigal relative that must return to the family, that must once more be “with us.”
And there are many other members of this large and complicated family. According to the villagers I spoke to in Yahidne, there were both ethnic Russians and ethnic Tuvans there. Valentyna says that it was drunk, hungry Tuvans who ransacked her house and ripped up the paintings on her walls. Locals remember how ethnic Russians would claim they were there to “protect” the Ukrainians from Asian minority soldiers, even though they were all part of one army. (This racist framing shouldn’t be confused with actual investigations into who was responsible for abuses against civilians.)
Tuvans are an Asian minority from the poorest region of Russia. They were a Buddhist, nomad people. The Soviet regime gained control over the region during the 1920s and 1930s, before incorporating it in 1944. The Soviets forced the nomads to live in collective farms, give up their Buddhist beliefs and traditions and change how they ate and dressed. Resistance was crushed: Eight percent of Tuvans suffered from political repressions, such as imprisonment, execution and exile. These days, the Tuvan community has chronic levels of alcoholism and broken families: More than 68 percent of children are born out of wedlock.
The Tuvans are not the only colonized people whom Russia uses in Ukraine. Chechens, an ethnic minority from the Caucasus, are used by the Russian army for sudden assaults and to frighten civilians — Chechen shock troops have become infamous in Ukraine for posting videos online of themselves as they advance on and occupy new towns. Of course, they also know what it is like to be on the receiving end of an attack from Russia: When Chechens sought independence in the 1990s and early 2000s, their cities and villages were carpet-bombed by President Boris Yeltsin and then Mr. Putin.
In the “family,” ethnic Russians are known as “the elder brother,” but that doesn’t mean they are spared humiliation. Whether it’s the bureaucrats and cops who threaten and bribe citizens and businesses, the farce of participating in fixed elections or the cloying fear that you might be arrested if you dare to speak up against the Kremlin — or if some bureaucrat just wants your business — living in Mr. Putin’s Russia means enduring the daily humiliation of being governed by an extractive class that takes money and lives from its own people.
In this system, even tycoons must live with the uncertainty that someone closer to Mr. Putin than them could take away all their wealth tomorrow. The culture of humiliation goes deep into society. Sexual harassment is routine. A 2017 law decriminalized some domestic abuse against children and women. Extreme hazing has been rife in the army.
The father figure in this family is, of course, authoritarian. Over three-quarters of Russians believe that they need a “strong hand” to rule the country, a common phrase that denotes a leader who will both protect and violently discipline its people, and which Kremlin propaganda often uses to describe Mr. Putin.
In describing Ukraine, Mr. Putin often uses the same discourse. He invokes Russian clichés that deify Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, as the “mother of all Russian cities” and then turns on this idealized “mother” when “she” doesn’t do what he wants. Just weeks before the invasion, during a news conference with President Emmanuel Macron of France, Mr. Putin said Ukraine should just do “her duty — my beauty” and “put up with it,” a line that was widely viewed as a reference to lyrics about rape.
Maybe the description of the Russian Empire as a family is apt, actually. A family that is deeply unhappy and abusive, in which traumas are layered on top of traumas and some members are singled out for more suffering, some for less, but everyone suffers; those who feel unable to leave don’t want anybody to escape.
After the 2014 Russian-backed uprising in eastern Ukraine, the Kremlin turned the separatist areas of Donetsk and Luhansk into a Soviet Dismaland, with Soviet-style youth groups, propaganda parades with Soviet flags and marches of captured Ukrainian troops through the streets. This time in Ukraine, Russia repeats Soviet mass deportations, detentions and enforced disappearances of intellectuals and activists who support Ukrainian sovereignty. Humiliated people can struggle to imagine a future as they play out old traumas over and over. We won’t let you emerge into a future, the Kremlin seems to be saying to Ukrainians; we want you stuck in the past we can’t overcome.
Kremlin propaganda successfully sublimates the sense of humiliation onto the West. According to Denis Volkov, the director of the polling firm Levada Center since 2014, Russians have claimed that if it wasn’t for Ukraine, the West would have found another excuse to humiliate Russia through sanctions and other measures. Levada’s most recent research suggests that 75 percent of Russians support the war. That support, though, is more of a case of a people so crushed by the state they follow along with anything it tells them to, argues the sociologist Lev Gudkov. More objective statistics are TV ratings for political talk shows. The highest ratings go to shows such as “Sunday Evening With Vladimir Solovyov” and “60 Minutes,” where hosts and guests often call for the annihilation of Ukrainian independence.
Why is that?
In his exploration of humiliation, the contemporary English psychoanalyst Adam Phillips writes in the London Review of Books that, for the psychic survival of the humiliated, it’s necessary for them to “humiliate others, to make others experience what they have suffered” and “to transform the trauma of vulnerability into the triumph of omnipotent control.” The perpetrator enjoys his sadism; the victim, in order to deal with the humiliation, might learn to enjoy that too and become a masochist, before becoming sadistic to others.
Mr. Putin’s manipulation of the cycle of humiliation and aggression is integral to his psychological grip over Russia. That manipulation can look like legislating to criminalize opposition to the war while also appealing for solidarity in the fight against the West. As the impact of economic sanctions rolls across Russia, Kremlin propaganda has called for Russians to show how tough they are: Haven’t they survived great trials in the past? These calls for toughness can resonate — people can learn to define themselves through surviving pain to the point of getting a certain satisfaction from it.
The Kremlin, of course, avoids any suggestion that it is the source of any pain, now or in the past. There are no major public memorials in Russia, in the shape of museums or movies, statues or open archives, that stand as a record of how the Soviet Union sadistically slaughtered its citizens in the gulags and colonized and repressed other territories and peoples — some school textbooks in Russia celebrate Stalin as an “effective manager.”
Certainly, Russia is not the only country with a history of colonialism and internal repression. But in other countries these histories are usually part of an active debate. In Russia there seems to be nothing in the mainstream discourse that tries to make sense of the past, take responsibility for it or imagine a different path forward.
For Russia to have a chance to come to terms with itself, it will be necessary to confront this history and bring it into the public consciousness — via TV shows or public memorials and educational projects. But admitting one’s own role in this cycle of humiliation and aggression is stymied by the very culture of humiliation: The humiliated feel they have no agency, so why should they feel responsible?
Meanwhile, the threat Russia poses — to Ukraine and to the world — must be mitigated now.
Mr. Putin recently declared that there are only two types of countries: “Either a country is sovereign, or it is a colony,” he said. This is the logic of internal humiliation projected onto geopolitics. For those who are chronically humiliated and humiliate others in turn, the idea that countries large and small alike could have rights is impossible: The world is split into those who dominate and those who are dominated.
In the face of such threats, it can be tempting to try and placate Russia. The editorial board of The New York Times has said that Ukraine will likely have to accept territorial compromises. Mr. Macron has said that the West should avoid humiliating Russia. Such proposals are fundamentally misguided: Russia’s sense of humiliation is internal, not imposed upon it. To coddle the Putin regime is merely to participate in the cycle. If you yearn for sustainable security and freedom, abusive partners and predators cannot be indulged. The only option is to limit the sources of dependency.
For Ukraine, that means defending its sovereignty on the battlefield and, when negotiations come, making sure it is in a position of strength. The United States and other allies must keep arming Ukraine to do this. To stop doing so or to let up the pace is just an invitation for more violence and abuse.
For Europe it means breaking free of energy dependence. Though this may be expensive in the short term, in the longer term it will mean true economic security.
For the rest of the world, it means ensuring that we are no longer quite so reliant on Russian food supplies, and that Ukraine is able to export its own grains and fertilizers again. The deal the two countries agreed on for Ukraine to resume grain exports is a welcome development, but it demonstrated the frailty of the world’s dependence on Russia’s good will, especially after Russian missile strikes hit the southern port of Odesa a day after the agreement was struck.
Residual dependency is to always be vulnerable to Russia’s cycle of humiliation and aggression. “We want you to be with us,” the Russian soldier told Valentyna. But we know what “with us” really means.
*Update July 27: In response to my tweeting this article, Mykhailo Podolyak, an official advisor to the office of President Volodymyr Zelensky himself, responded with the following tweet:
Perfect understanding of the situation. Indeed, a hard expulsion from the Kherson region will allow to complete the extremely panic and hysterical mood in the Crimea and provoke a mass exodus of the occupiers from there …
“Perfect understanding of the situation. Indeed, a hard expulsion from the Kherson region will allow to complete the extremely panic and hysterical mood in the Crimea and provoke a mass exodus of the occupiers from there …” –Михайло Подоляк@Podolyak_M/Twitter
SILVER SPRING and WASHINGTON—Weeks ago, we saw Russia’s fronts around Kyiv, Chernihiv, and Sumy collapse into full routs, and Ukrainian forces have been successfully counterattacking outside of Kharkiv, preventing any major Russian advances towards Mykolaiv, and should be able to move to retake nearby Kherson in the not-too-distant future. And, oh, yeah, Ukraine destroyed Russia’s most prized and powerful warship, the Slava class cruiser Moskva (as far as I can tell, I was the only person to predict days before it happened that Ukraine would soon destroy the Moskva or other ships that did not withdraw from Ukraine’s coast out of range of whatever missiles were about to be deployed).
Russia is already spread thinly and has sustained horrific casualties—not even two weeks into Putin’s massive escalation, perhaps (even likely, as I argued) more Russians killed than all U.S. military deaths in eight years in Iraq and two decades in Afghanistan combined, now more than the official (admittedly underestimate) Soviet toll from a decade in Afghanistan from 1979-1989, and, as of April 24, maybe (likely) over 21,000 Russian military personnel killed; the U.S. Department of Defense estimates that, as of April 20, Russia has lost one-quarter of its combat power (combined troops, weapons, & equipment). Simply put, Russia’s military is not in prime condition.
As such, it is not likely there are large formations of troops south of Kherson not already being used on the frontlines that are ready to defend the rest of the territory Russia has gained in between Crimea and Kherson or even Crimea itself, so if the Russians are defeated on the Kherson front, there will likely be very little in between advancing Ukrainian forces and Crimea itself, and not a large number of defenders in Crimea, since Russia invaded from there and was expecting to be conquerors, not defenders. If Russia has to move troops to try to stop any Ukrainian advance if Ukraine destroys or breaks through Russian formations around Kherson, those will likely have to come from other fronts where those troops are needed and Russians are desperate, but generally failing, to advance, and, as the Russians aren’t particularly well-fueled or well-led, such a rapid adjustment of their troops’ positions cannot be counted on to be competently executed or even happen at all.
In other words, it shouldn’t be terribly difficult for Ukraine to take Crimea once it starts experiencing success on the Kherson front, which it already is: even as I am writing this, Ukraine announced that it destroyed the Russian command post for the Kherson region, with some fifty military officers inside at the time, claiming to have killed two generals and badly wounded another. If true, this would be a devastating blow to the command-and-control dimension of Russian operations in the region and we may be witnessing a momentum shift on this front as I write this.
Why Ukraine Can Pull This off
Looking beyond Kherson, here are the main reasons why Ukraine can take Crimea and end the Russian occupation that has been in place since 2014.
This was because Putin did not anticipate any serious resistance from Ukrainians (let alone Belarusians). As such, there has for much of the war been no strong presence inside the Russian border near Ukraine as Putin has committed nearly all troops initially allocated for this war to the fighting already. As some of the main axes of advance for Russia, the fronts that moved north from Crimea have also met stiff resistance and taken high casualties, and it is unlikely, with the same type of hubris in effect throughout Russian areas of operations, that much caution was taken in keeping healthy reserves of high-quality forces in Crimea. And even if Russian combat performance improves significantly (and for reasons that are deeply institutional and cultural this is unlikely), it would be improving from such a low level that performance would still leave oh-so-much to be desired.
Crimea Is Isolated
The Crimean Peninsula is isolated and not easily reinforceable or resupplied. Reinforcements and supplies can only come by land from one bridge over the Kerch Strait—the Crimean Bridge, or Kerch Strait Bridge—as everything to the north is Ukraine and Crimea is surrounded by sea on its other three sides. In part to combat this isolation, Russia constructed the Crimean Bridge through the Kerch Strait to join Russia and Crimea by land (this isolation is also one of the reasons the Kremlin wants to carve a land corridor from Russia to Crimea through Ukraine).
Work began on the bridge in early 2016 and it was completed in mid-2018, Putin personally opening it with much fanfare (the railway part was completed at the end of 2019) as the longest bridge built in Russian history and the longest in Europe (12 miles). But its construction was illegal as well as rushed, its quality and ability to stay intact in its harsh environment questioned by experts. It is still quite a source of Russian pride, a symbolic and substantive achievement that brings military and economic benefits to Russia. All this only makes a ripe target even more ripe, one that will probably be easier to destroy because of the rush-job.
Destroying the Crimean Bridge, then, in multiple locations across its span so that it would take a long time to become serviceable again should be a primary and immediate goal of Ukraine, one that should not be too difficult to accomplish, be it with missiles, maybe low-flying drones coming in over the waters to the south of the bridge, or perhaps even a special operations team. Indeed, the secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, Oleksiy Danilov, recently noted while I was writing this very piece that the bridge would very much be a target (much to the anger of the Kremlin).
True that, for now, Russia controls some of Ukraine north of Crimea and sort of has a land corridor to Donetsk (one of the two regions of the Donbas in Ukraine’s east that Russia has partially controlled since 2014) and Russia, but I doubt that will be the situation for long, given Russia’s track record of abysmal combat performance and that, as far as supplying or reinforcing Crimea by sea, Russia needs to soon withdraw or keep withdrawn Russian surface warships out of range of Ukraine’s anti-ship missiles or soon see them destroyed…
Russia’s Navy Has Been Exposed As Weak and Vulnerable
But, as I noted in my last piece predicting that Ukraine would take out the pride of the Russian Navy—the Black Sea Fleet flagship, the Slava class cruiser Moskva, Russia’s most powerful surface ship—counting on the Russian Navy for supplies, and most other forms of meaningful support, is something that cannot happen for much longer, and may even already be a thing of the past. The selective use of Ukraine’s own Neptune cruise missiles—two of them connecting on April 13 to destroy the Moskva—suggests, as I noted was a distinct possibility in my aforementioned piece, that the Russian invasion has disrupted the general deployment of Ukraine’s Neptune anti-ship missile program, scheduled for this very month. But whether more Neptune missiles or the anti-ship missiles promised by the West, plenty more anti-ship missiles are coming if they are not already there. The days of the Russian Navy operating freely by the coast of Ukraine, including Crimea, are about to be over and, already, Russia has apparently moved whichever of its nineteen remaining large surface ships in the region were still operating off the Ukrainian coast much farther away from the coast in the wake of the Moskva’s sinking
Russia cannot reinforce its combined fleet with any of the ships it has in the Mediterranean—some brought from fleets stationed far away in the run-up to the war—because Turkey has closed its Bosporus and Dardanelles Straits to incoming military vessels in a sign of solidarity with Ukraine (this has left more than a few key Russian ships unable to join their Black Sea-deployed brethren as planned). Only ships from the Caspian Sea Flotilla can reinforce, which has to be done through the Volga-Don canal (and wow, if Ukrainians could engage in a covert mission in Russia to damage the canal and put it out of commission, that would be amazing and would also do significant economic damage to Russia by halting shipping traffic between the Caspian and Azov/Black Sea regions). And, even if it does bring in ships from the Caspian Sea, like Russia’s other surface ships, they will just be prime targets for Ukrainian anti-ship missiles—on track to join the Moskva on the seafloor—if they don’t stay far away from Ukraine’s coast, all but negating their presence.
The Ukrainian Military’s Clear Advantages Over the Russian Military
Versus their Russian foes, the Armed Forces of Ukraine are in a much better overall position and of a much higher quality even though Russia has more and heavier weapons platforms such as tanks, artillery, planes, helicopters, and naval ships (I have explained away that last one already).
Ukraine actually has more troops. Far more. There is no shortage of Ukrainians willing to fight for Ukraine; at some points, there have been more volunteers than Ukraine has been able to accommodate, and large numbers of Ukrainians living abroad have been returning home to fight. So Russia is trying to carry out an offensive against what is actually a numerically superior force. Not a good strategy at all.
Ukraine’s individual troops are by far better equipped and supplied. They often have weapons that can easily knock out any Russian vehicles (and even, sometimes, Russian aircraft), more body armor, more night-vision goggles. No wonder the Russians are constantly getting beat when they engage in firefights.
Ukrainian forces have far higher morale.I have discussed how insanely poorly led, ill-equipped, ill-supplied, ill-trained, and ill-informed Russian soldiers in this war generally are. They are losing or stagnating everywhere they are fighting. And many of them have died, many more seeing their comrades die. Instead of “leaving no man behind,” the Russians frequently abandon their dead and wounded, so disorderly are many of their retreats. In contrast, it seems Ukraine has suffered far fewer losses, but while the Russians have died for just about nothing, Ukrainians are sacrificing for a very successful effort thus far. Their morale is high and they are passionately willing to freely defend their homes and families and fellow Ukrainians, which cannot be said to be the same for the Russians.
Ukrainians are fighting on home turf. Often, units in a particular area are from that area. They often know the terrain intimately, whereas the Russians do not. The advantages that play out on the battlefield from this are numerous, resulting in better intelligence and fewer losses for Ukrainians, more losses for Russians, more efficient operations for Ukrainians, slower operations for Russians.
Ukraine’s logistics and far better and far simpler.Unlike Russia, which has terrible logistics and needs to resupply or reinforce from Russia or the parts of Ukraine it occupied before February 24, Ukrainians are fighting often where they can easily bring in fresh supplies, new equipment and weapons coming in from the West, and their own reinforcements and new recruits. As they are often supplying themselves with interior lines, their supplies and troops need to traverse far smaller distances than Russian supplies and troops. In part as a result of that, those Russian supplies and troops are exposed to Ukrainian units that know their own home turf, resulting in those Russian supplies and convoys often being destroyed or ambushed before they can reach their final destination. And the next point greatly enhances this point…
Well, first and foremost, they should find a way to take out the pride of recent Russian infrastructure achievements, the Crimean Bridge. This would make it far more difficult to supply Crimea and Russian forces that have invaded further into Ukraine from Crimea; with the anti-ship missile threat looming for the Russian Navy, that leaves the treacherous land corridor from the Donetsk, subject to Ukrainian partisan attacks and Ukrainian military raids, counterattacks, and air, drone, and missile strikes. The destruction of the bridge will also further weaken Russia’s low morale, not just its pathetic logistical efforts.
Then, it could be possible for Ukraine, now getting reinforced by heavy weapons and troops that were victorious to the north, to launch an attack to break through the Kherson front and advance to the Crimean border, cutting it off from other Russian forces. Yet, as Russia seems keen on an offensive in the area, it would be wise to first allow Russian forces to smash themselves into pieces as they have with their offensives elsewhere. Unlike, say, the situation in Mariupol, where a small number of Ukrainian defenders have held on heroically despite the odds and inflicted outsized casualties on Russian forces, the Russians will find far more, better-rested, better-equipped, and better-supplied Ukrainian troops near Kherson. If the Russians are stupid enough to attack and repeat their failures near Kyiv and elsewhere in the north, the Ukrainians can play defense and inflict heavy casualties before launching their own counterattack.
But if Russia is slow to attack or is bluffing around Kherson to focus more on the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of the Donbas, Ukraine may be able to catch Russia off-guard and still launch an offensive from around Kherson that could cut off Crimea from Russian positions to its north and roll back many of the gains Russia has made in south-central Ukraine. Such a move might prompt Russia to weaken its support for the Donbas offensives to meet the Ukrainian offensive.
Whether it waits for the Russians to mash its battalion tactical groups (BTGs) against better equipped Ukrainian troops or takes the initiative and launches an assault first, Ukraine will be able to seriously threaten Crimea sooner rather than later if it can knock out that Crimean Bridge and destroy or drive off the Russian Navy with anti-ship missiles; indeed, both of these are well-within Ukraine’s capabilities.
With most forces that were in Crimea taking part in the invasion to Crimea’s north, again, we can expect a not terribly strong troop presence in Crimea. Adding support to the idea that Crimea is not the best-supplied area at the moment is that the Russians are looting grain from granaries in Kherson and elsewhere and moving the plundered grain into Crimea, along with vegetables.
Thus, it would be relatively easy to put Crimea under a form of siege. With its one bridge to Russia destroyed and Russian naval vessels either sunk from anti-ship missile or fleeing out of their range and into irrelevance, land and sea routes to resupply and reinforce Crimea will be cut off, and, as noted, it is unlikely large numbers of quality troops will have been left behind in Crimea. Air drops would be possible but aircraft will also be at risk from stinger missiles and Ukrainian air defense systems Ukraine could move to the border of Crimea, including air defense systems recently sent by NATO’s Slovakia. Russia has its own advanced air-defense systems in Crimea, so airstrikes would be difficult and risky for Ukraine. Thus, a siege to soften up the Russians before a ground assault would make the most sense, as the Russian troops will begin feeling it over the course of the siege, which would further weaken morale and combat effectiveness before that assault would come. If Ukraine can neutralize Russian air defenses during the course of the campaign, it could then utilize aircraft with far less risk to help finish the job.
The Siege of Crimea would weaken whatever resistance the Russian troops there—unable to be reinforced or resupplied by land or sea and not able to get much from the air if anything—would be able to offer, and when Ukraine does attack, it can use its more advanced, more precise, and heavier weapons it is now getting or about to get from the West.
It is true that most Crimeans are ethnic Russians who supported Russia’s illegal annexation, with those disagreeing having been mostly silenced, suppressed, “disappeared,” arrested (even for displaying the flag of Ukraine), tortured, or even killed, especially journalists, activists, and Crimean Tatars (who have a long history of persecution and oppression at the hands of Russia). But contrary to the expectations of many of those supporting Russia in Crimea, prosperity did not come to Russian-occupied Crimea; rather, stagnation, isolation, and sanctions did, along with a collapse of the tourism industry and an overalldeterioration in the quality of life. The population would have declined were Russia not moving in large numbers of military, security, and intelligence personnel and their families from Russia to Crimea. Morale among those living in Crimea would likely have been much higher right after the 2014 takeover than it is now. Ukraine will almost certainly be far more careful than Russians in avoiding civilian casualties, as Russia engages in indiscriminate bombings (or, more accurately, deliberate) of civilian areas. The people there, already suffering under a depressed economy for years, will likely see a further drop in morale during a siege. Many will try to leave, and, unlike the Russians, Ukrainians are near-certain to allow them to do so. For the above reasons, it is doubtful that many Crimean civilians will want to fight Ukrainians in the way Ukrainians rose up to resist Russians. If Ukraine were to invade, Russian troops weakened by the siege and suffering from low morale and the ubiquitous poor Russian leadership, knowing no reinforcements are coming and having nowhere to retreat to, would likely be defeated relatively quickly.
Losing Crimea Would be Russia’s Most Devastating Loss of the War
The loss of Crimea would be a devastating blow to not only morale for the Russian military, it would be quite substantive: one of its main bases in the region, including the main base of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet at Sevastopol, would be in Ukrainian hands. Perhaps even more importantly, it would shatter Russians’ confidence in their incompetent Putin: the retaking of Crimea was a great source of pride and their faith and confidence in him, and, regardless of what nonsense, mindless propaganda is thrown at them by Russian state television, losing Crimea would make it painfully obvious that Russia is losing the war and losing it badly, even more than the high casualties, even more than the sinking of the Moskva. It might not even occur to Russians that Ukraine could retake Crimea, but with the approaches I have laid out here, it is a distinct possibility, one that would devastate Russia’s war effort and wake up many Russians with a shock to the simple fact that Russia is failing in its insane war against the people and government of Ukraine, against democracy, and against reality itself.
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In the first phase of the war in Ukraine, the decisive weapon was arguably the British made NLAW anti-tank bazooka, helping repel Russian forces from the fringes of Kyiv. The second phase was dominated by Russia’s 152mm artillery, bombing cities to rubble before its ground forces gradually moved in.
But the talk now is of the impact of the US-made Himars rocket artillery, which the Ukrainian forces have been using to halt the Russian advance by striking ammunition dumps in the rear – 50 according to the country’s defence minister, Oleksiy Reznikov – and whether they can create the conditions for a successful advance towards Kherson, one of the largest cities captured by the invaders.
Kherson, captured in early March, has long been a focus for the Ukrainians, with the defenders making limited gains in the countryside between Mykolaiv and the target city since April. But, apparently helped by the longer-range weapons, with an effective firing distance of up to 50 miles (80km), the Ukrainians are growing more confident.
Sergiy Khlan, an aide to the administrative head of the Kherson region, told Ukrainian TV a turning point had been reached, and the region “will definitely be liberated by September”. It is a bold claim on the available evidence, and perhaps not surprisingly, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, instead talked about liberating Kherson “step by step”.
The Himars – of which Ukraine has 12 with four more on their way – appear to be having an impact in allowing Kyiv’s forces to target four key bridges leading into Kherson. The city, the only Russian stronghold west of the Dnieper River, is obviously strategically vulnerable if Ukraine can muster the force to push the occupiers out.
But the tale of the bridges partly illustrates some of the difficulties Ukraine faces in recapturing its population centres. Social media postings by Khlan make clear that Ukraine’s goal is not to destroy key bridges, in this case the Dariv Bridge across the Inhulets River east of the city, but rather to damage them to the point where the Russians cannot transport heavy equipment across them.
The Ukrainian military wants to ensure that food supplies can still cross into the city, and so, Khlan added, the country’s armed forces would “do everything possible not to destroy the structure”. That may be a difficult balance to strike, even allowing for the greater accuracy of the Himars – but more importantly it reveals a key constraint on the Ukrainians’ ability to strike back.
Russian officials, according to the RIA Novosti news agency, acknowledged damage to another of the key bridges, near the Kakhovka hydroelectric power station, across the Dnieper, about 40 miles to the east of Kherson. The damage, the Russians said, came from Himars rocket artillery, but the news agency shortly after released pictures to show workers apparently filling in a hole in the road.
If cutting off the city by destroying the bridges is challenging, then capturing it, given the remaining civilian population, will be harder. Russia has shown it was willing to destroy cities such as Mariupol and Sievierodonetsk before capturing them. But for Ukraine – seeking to liberate its own territory – that is not obviously an option. Dislodging the Russians may be difficult if they choose to stay in the city itself.
Nor is it obvious that the arrival of one longer-range weapon can create the conditions for a more rapid overall advance. Ukraine has no meaningful air power available, so it must rely on an assembling a preponderance of ground forces against an enemy that has held the city for nearly five months. Meanwhile, western supplies continue to arrive gradually rather than in the numbers Ukraine needs.
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Reznikov said on Monday the first three of 15 Gepard mobile artillery guns promised by Germany back in April had arrived in Ukraine, and that he hoped to take delivery of several dozen Leopard tanks soon – most likely from Spain. The increasing supply may help Ukraine tip the balance on one part of the front, but so far there has been no evidence the defenders can manage a breakthrough.
After four months of gradual Russian advance in the east and the south, the arrival of Himars and rocket artillery looks to have tilted the military balance towards an equilibrium. But it is not yet obvious that the invaders can be rolled back: perhaps no wonder then that Khlan optimistically suggested the best option for the Russians was to voluntarily surrender Kherson.
A hotel has been shelled in the Donetsk town of Bakhmut, leaving one person dead and others injured.
The two-storey building was partially destroyed in the strike which took place at 7am local time this morning, Donetsk’s emergency services said on Facebook.
“At 9:25 am during search and rescue operations, a rescuer rescued a man from the rubble, who was hospitalized in a medical facility. In general, since the beginning of the works, the body of 1 dead person was found at the scene, and 4 people were injured. Acoustic contact is maintained separately with one injured person, the body of the other dead person is visible. Work on the demolition of debris continues.”
Earlier on Wednesday, the head of Donetsk’s regional military administration Pavlo Kyrylenko said in an operational update that Russian forces had targeted a hotel and that there were dead and wounded, and a rescue operation was underway. CNBC was unable to immediately verify the reports.
Bakhmut is a key target for Russian forces trying to advance into Donetsk, a part of the Donbas in eastern Ukraine. The nearby cities of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk and surrounding villages have also come under heavy fire.
— Holly Ellyatt
Ukraine confirmed it attacked the Antonivka Road Bridge, also known as Antonovsky Bridge, which is a key supply route for Russian forces in the occupied city of Kherson.
The strikes on the bridge, reported overnight, were confirmed by Natalia Humeniuk, a spokesperson for the southern command of Ukraine’s Armed Forces on Wednesday, who said it was vital for Ukraine to regain control of transport routes seized by Russia.
“This doesn’t allow them to maneuver or bring in more personnel or ammunition,” she said, according to a translation by NBC, and she hinted that the strikes to the bridge were not aimed at destroying it completely but making it unusable.
“I also want to stress that we value all of our infrastructure even when it’s under occupation. We ruin not the infrastructure itself, but the enemies plan. Our artillery’s work is aimed at demoralizing the enemy. There were hits on the bridge, but they were sophisticated,” she said.
Ukraine’s armed forces posted a video on social messaging site Telegram last night purportedly showing several missiles striking the bridge which is seen as a vital supply route for Russian forces in the city, and used to keep them stocked with ammunition and other heavy weaponry and equipment. Ukraine has previously attacked the bridge, as seen in this image below.
A picture taken on July 21, 2022 shows a car moving past a crater on Kherson’s Antonovsky bridge across the Dnipro river caused by a Ukrainian rocket strike, amid the ongoing Russian military action in Ukraine.
Stringer | Afp | Getty Images
Russian media also reported Wednesday that the Antonoskyy Bridge had been damaged as a result of an Ukrainian attack, but tried to downplay the significance.
“There are hits on the bridge, the bridge has not been destroyed. More holes have been added,” news agency Tass quoted the deputy head of the Russian-installed military-civilian administration of the Kherson region, Kirill Stremousov, as saying.
“At the moment, the bridge is completely closed to traffic,” he added, reportedly telling Tass that the strikes were carried out by Ukraine’s U.S.-supplied HIMARS light multiple rocket launchers.
The Russian-installed official claimed the damage to the bridge had “affected only civilian infrastructure and created inconvenience for residents of the Kherson region” and said “the attack on the bridge does not affect the situation in the Kherson region.” Repair of the bridge will begin soon, he added.
— Holly Ellyatt
The Nord Stream 1 pipeline, through which Russian natural gas has been flowing to Germany since 2011, will be shut down for around 10 days for scheduled maintenance work.
Gas flows through the Nord Stream 1 from Russia to Germany fell to 20% of the pipeline’s capacity on Wednesday, as Gazprom had previously forewarned.
Gas grid operator Gascade said that 1.28 million cubic meters per hour, or about 20% of Nord Stream’s maximum capacity, has been transported via Nord Stream 1 in accordance with nominations since 8 a.m. local time, Reuters reported Wednesday morning.
The supply cut has come into force just two days after the pipeline’s majority owner Gazprom said it would cut supplies via the route — which was already operating at greatly reduced capacity, and had just reopened last week after 10 days of annual maintenance — saying it had further maintenance to do on a turbine.
The decline in flows is causing concern in Europe, and particularly Germany, which still relies heavily on Russian gas while it scrambles to reduce its dependence on such supplies due to the war in Ukraine.
EU countries agreed Tuesday to lower their respective gas use by 15% from August to March as fears set in over the winter outlook. The agreement foresees EU states making voluntary cuts to their own gas demands but could become compulsory if the energy rationing is not properly implemented.
— Holly Ellyatt
US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen speaks during a press conference in Bali on July 14, 2022. U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen highlighted a proposed price cap on Russian oil on a call with British Chancellor of the Exchequer Nadhim Zahawi on Tuesday, the U.S. Treasury Department announced in a press release published on the same day. The proposed price cap aims to alleviate the impact of Putin’s war on global energy prices and curtail Russia’s war revenue.
Sonny Tumbelaka | Afp | Getty Images
U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen discussed a proposed price cap on Russian oil with U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer Nadhim Zahawi, according to readout from the Treasury.
The two also discussed U.S. and U.K. support for Ukraine as well as “opportunities to build on the historic sanctions imposed on Russia,” according to the Treasury readout.
— Natalie Tham
Ukraine’s armed forces have reportedly shelled the Antonovskyy Bridge that leads into Russian-occupied Kherson in southern Ukraine.
The armed forces posted a video on social messaging site Telegram last night purportedly showing several missiles striking the bridge which was occupied early on in the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The reports have not been able to be independently confirmed by CNBC.
The bridge is seen as a vital supply route for Russian forces in the city used to keep them stocked with ammunition and other heavy weaponry and equipment. It’s not the first time the bridge has come under attack as Ukraine attempts to recapture the city.
Last week Ukrainian shelling left the bridge partially damaged and some reports suggest it could have been destroyed last night but that has not been confirmed, and the state of the bridge is unknown.
— Holly Ellyatt
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy attends the NATO summit via video link, as Russia’s attack on Ukraine continues, in Kyiv, Ukraine June 29, 2022.
Ukrainian Presidential Press Service | via Reuters
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia is using gas prices to terrorize Europe.
“Among other things the engineered increase in gas prices to above $2000 for 1,000 cubic meters on European markets, is enough of an experience to broaden sanctions against Russia,” Zelenskyy said during a nightly address.
“As it is clear to everyone that this is intended Russian price terror against Europeans. Using Gazprom, Moscow is doing all it can to make this coming winter as harsh as possible for the European countries. Terror must be answered, impose sanctions,” he added.
— Amanda Macias
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin speaks at a news briefing at the Pentagon on July 20, 2022 in Arlington, Virginia.
Anna Moneymaker | Getty Images
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin spoke with his Ukrainian counterpart and gave an update on the latest U.S. military aid package.
Austin reassured Ukrainian Minister of Defense Oleksii Reznikov that the United States is moving as quickly as possible to deliver equipment to Ukraine. Reznikov also updated Austin on the situation on the battlefield.
The latest security package will include additional High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS. The HIMARS, manufactured by defense giant Lockheed Martin, are designed to shoot a variety of missiles from a mobile 5-ton truck.
— Amanda Macias
Wally Adeyemo, deputy U.S. Treasury secretary, speaks during a news conference at the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Monday, Nov. 8, 2021.
Ting Shen | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Wally Adeyemo met with government counterparts in Paris this week to discuss additional sanctions imposed on Russia for its war in Ukraine.
Adeyemo also spoke with the executive director of the International Energy Agency about a price cap on Russian oil and other ways of restricting revenue to fund Russia’s military.
“In addition, Deputy Secretary Adeyemo met with financial services executives as well as economists and scholars to analyze the economic outlook in the United States, France, Europe, and globally, and the impact of Russia’s illegal war, particularly on global energy prices and food insecurity,” according to a readout from the Department of Treasury.
In the months since Russia invaded its ex-Soviet neighbor, Washington and its allies have imposed rounds of coordinated sanctions that vaulted Russia past Iran and North Korea as the world’s most-sanctioned country.
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia targeted Ukraine’s southern Black Sea regions of Odesa and Mykolaiv with airstrikes Tuesday, hitting private buildings and port infrastructure with missiles fired from long-range bomber aircraft, the Ukrainian military said.
In the Odesa region, buildings in coastal villages were hit and caught fire, Ukraine’s Operational Command South said on Facebook. A Ukrainian air force spokesman said long-range Russian Tu-22M3 bombers and Su-30 and Su-35 fighter jets launched the strikes from the Black Sea. In the Mykolaiv region, port infrastructure was targeted despite agreements intended to allow grain grain shipments to resume from Ukraine’s Black Sea ports.
Hours after the strikes, a Moscow-installed official in southern Ukraine said the Odesa and Mykolaiv regions would soon be “liberated” by Russian forces, just like the already occupied Kherson region further east.
“The Kherson region and the city of Kherson have been liberated forever,” Russian state news agency RIA Novosti quoted the region’s Russia-appointed official, Kirill Stremousov, as saying.
On the diplomatic front, Russia’s foreign minister repeated his insistence that Moscow was ready to hold talks with Ukraine on ending the war, though he again claimed that Kyiv’s Western allies oppose a deal.
“We never refused to have talks, because everybody knows that any hostilities end at the negotiating table,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Tuesday during a trip to Uganda.
While Ukrainian officials have spoken of a possible counteroffensive in the south, the British Defense Ministry reported Tuesday no indication a Ukrainian warship and a stockpile of anti-ship missiles were at Odesa’s port, as Moscow claimed when it struck the site over the weekend.
The British ministry said Russia sees Ukraine’s use of anti-ship missiles as “a key threat” limiting its Black Sea Fleet.
“This has significantly undermined the overall invasion plan, as Russia cannot realistically attempt an amphibious assault to seize Odesa,” the ministry said. “Russia will continue to prioritize efforts to degrade and destroy Ukraine’s anti-ship capability.”
It added, “Russia’s targeting processes are highly likely routinely undermined by dated intelligence, poor planning, and a top-down approach to operations.”
In other military developments, Russian shelling over the previous 24 hours killed at least three civilians and wounded eight in Ukraine, the Ukrainian president’s office said Tuesday.
In the eastern Donetsk region, where the fighting has focused in recent months, shelling continued along the entire front, with Russian forces targeting some of the region’s largest cities, Bakhmut, Avdiivka and Toretsk, the presidential office said.
Donetsk regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko accused Russian troops of using cluster munitions and repeated his call for civilians to evacuate.
“There is not a single safe place left. Everything is being shelled,” Kyrylenko said in televised remarks. “But there are still evacuation routes for the civilian population.”
The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, reported that Moscow was using mercenaries from the shadowy Wagner Group to capture the Vuhledar Power Plant on the northern outskirts of the Bakhmut region village of Novoluhanske.
But Russian forces have made “limited gains” there, Ukraine’s General Staff acknowledged.
The main regional Russian focus for the moment is on capturing Bakhmut, which the Russian military needs to press its eastern offensive on Ukrainian strongholds in Donetsk, the cities of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk.
“Russian forces made marginal gains south of Bakhmut but are unlikely to be able to effectively leverage these advances to take full control of Bakhmut itself,” the Institute for the Study of War said.
Russian forces continued to strike civilian infrastructure in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, and the surrounding region in the country’s northeast.
Kharkiv Gov. Oleh Syniehubov said the strikes on the city resumed around dawn Tuesday and damaged a car dealership.
“The Russians deliberately target civilian infrastructure objects — hospitals, schools, movie theaters,” Syniehubov told Ukrainian television. “Everything is being fired at, even queues for humanitarian aid, so we’re urging people to avoid mass gatherings.”
The Moldovan foreign ministry said Tuesday a Moldovan citizen was killed and another wounded in what it claimed was a Ukrainian attack on Russia’s border with Ukraine. The unconfirmed report said the attack occurred at a border checkpoint in Russia’s Bryansk region.
Responding to a comment by Lavrov on Monday that Moscow’s overarching goal in Ukraine is to free its people from its “unacceptable regime,” German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said the Kremlin wants “the complete subjugation of Ukraine and its people.”
“We must be prepared for this war — which Russia is conducting with absolute brutality, and is conducting in a way that no one else would — to last months,” Baerbock said during a visit to Prague.
In other developments:
— European Union governments agreed to ration natural gas this winter to protect against Russian supply cuts. EU energy ministers approved a draft law designed to lower demand for gas by 15% from August through March. The legislation entails voluntary national steps to reduce gas consumption and, if they yield insufficient savings, a trigger for mandatory actions. Russian energy corporation Gazprom said it would cut gas flows through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline to Germany to 20% of capacity starting Wednesday. In his nightly video address Tuesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused the Russian government of “doing everything to make this winter the toughest for European countries.” “It is necessary to respond to terror – respond with sanctions,” he added.
— Russia’s space chief said the country will opt out of the International Space Station after 2024 and focus on building its own orbiting outpost. Yuri Borisov, appointed earlier this month to lead the state-controlled space corporation Roscosmos, said Russia would fulfill its obligations at the space station before it leaves the project. The move is part of a broader disengagement trend stemming from soaring tensions between Russia and the West over the Kremlin’s military action in Ukraine.
— Britain imposed sanctions on two national Russian government officials overseeing justice and two top regional officials in Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine. Also facing sanctions are several Syrian military figures accused of recruiting Syrians to fight for Russia in Ukraine.
— German Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht said her country has delivered previously announced Mars II multiple-launch rocket systems, along with three more howitzers, to Ukraine. Lambrecht said Germany also has delivered five of a pledged 30 Gepard self-propelled armored anti-aircraft guns, German news agency dpa reported.
— The Russian military announced plans to hold large-scale drills in Russia’s east, noting that it continues regular troop training despite the action in Ukraine. The Russian Defense Ministry said Tuesday that airborne troops, long-range bombers and military cargo planes will participate in the Vostok 2022 (East 2022) exercise scheduled Aug. 30-Sept. 5.
— U.S. officials said they had not yet seen evidence of Iran supplying Russia with drones for use in the Ukraine war. The White House had previously released satellite images indicating that Russians had visited an Iranian airbase to see weapons-capable drones. But White House national security spokesman John Kirby said Tuesday, “We haven’t seen anything that it’s been actually effected.” Kirby said Moscow’s interest in the drones shows that sanctions and export controls are impacting Russia’s military production.
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