Russian President Vladimir Putin explains the Kiev annexation campaign as a “special military operation” and not a violation of international law
Putin announced that the Kremlin was going to annex nearly a fifth of the country, in blatant violation of international law.
The move puts the city on the verge of a major victory in the war and will deal a bitter blow to President Putin, who had declared Kherson a part of Russia forever.
Putin, however, attempted to claim that the referendums reflected the will of “millions” of people, despite reports from the ground suggesting that voting took place essentially – and in some cases, literally – at gunpoint.
I want the authorities in the West to hear me. Everyone is asked to remember. People living in Luhansk are becoming citizens. Forever,” the Russian president said during the annexation ceremony Friday.
The Russian president saw the annexation as an attempt to fix a mistake he believes was made after the fall of the Soviet Union.
Putin’s speech echoed his major foreign policy aim: restoring Russia as a major global power charged with protecting the Russian speaking world from the continued threat posed by Western forces.
Russia will now, despite the widespread international condemnation, forge ahead with its plans to fly its flag over some 100,000 square kilometers (38,600 square miles) of Ukrainian territory – the largest forcible annexation of land in Europe since 1945.
Lyman, a strategically important rail hub, sits on the northeastern bank of the Siversky Donets river amid a mesh of fields and forests. The Russians captured it in May, but over the weekend Ukraine’s forces retook the city as part of a stunning offensive that is pushing back Russia in the east. Lyman could serve as an important foothold in future Ukrainian advances.
It was a sign that domestic pressure had reached the point where Putin believed a brutal show of force was necessary to keep his audience happy.
In an unusual article published Sunday, the Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda said that Russian forces in Lyman had been plagued with desertion, poor planning and delayed arrival of reserves during the last few days of their occupation.
Russian President Vladimir Putin cast the campaign as a “special military operation” – not a war – and told citizens that they could, essentially, forget about the conflict in Ukraine. Draftees, he promised falsely, would not fight, and military operations would be left to the professionals. The talking points on Russian state television quickly parroted by Putin’sMinistry of Defense were about progress on the battlefield.
But when Aleksandr was captured outside the eastern city of Lyman last week, he was thinly dressed, without the customary armband denoting his allegiance — usually red or white for Russia and blue or yellow for Ukraine. To keep him warm, the Ukrainian soldiers gave him a Russian parka they had lying around in their trench.
“He came out of the forest and went to our positions,” said Serhiy, one of the Ukrainian soldiers who had found Aleksandr, recounting the capture to a pair of reporters from The New York Times visiting their position near the front line.
The Russian losses in these infantry advances are unknown. The institute described the advances as a betrayal of well-prepared Ukrainian units that fought in the war. The Ukrainian military’s estimates of Russian deaths are seen as inflated, but the relative increase in their numbers may point to a higher toll. On Friday, the Ukrainian military said more than 800 Russian soldiers had been wounded or killed over the previous 24 hours.
They looked for those who were left behind when their homes were damaged by strikes. The two men form a specialist unit that’s traveled from the capital, Kyiv.
“They dropped everything: personal care, helmets,” said the commander, who uses the code name Swat. “I think it was a special unit, but they were panicking. It was raining very hard, the road was bad and they drop everything and move.”
New evidence of crimes against civilians and civilians in Ukraine during the Second World War II. The Crimes against Crime against Ukrainians in Crimea
The bodies of more than 500 civilians have been discovered in territory in northeast Ukraine recently retaken from Russian forces, Ukrainian police say.
A view of a small building, which Ukrainian authorities say was a Russian prison and torture chamber, is displayed in the interior view.
The city was taken away, tortured, and disappeared when Russian troops rolled in at the beginning of the war.
People said that torture was normal. The police chief said that the signs of abuse were already apparent in some of the bodies. He said that there are bodies that were tortured to death. There are people with wounds, cuts, and a lot of tied hands.
It’s difficult for victims to testify about such facts. However, there are proceedings that we have registered, there are appeals from women who were raped. Bolvinov said that they had information on the alleged facts of rapes in torture chambers.
During the first part of the war Russia was accused of a bunch of war crimes. Reports of summary executions of Russian forces in indiscriminate shelling emerged after the Russian forces retreated from Bucha. There were bodies that were left to rot, some with signs of torture. In nearby Borodianka, dead civilians were found strewn along the streets. Homes were reportedly ransacked.
The United Nations says it has investigated cases in Ukraine of “sexual and gender-based violence” against people ranging from 4 to 82 years old. The UN said that criminal proceedings had begun as of September.
The state media in Russia maintained that the country was only hitting military targets in Kiev, leaving out the suffering of the millions of people who have been there.
Russia has seen some strange public criticism of the top brass running Putin’s war. It is not ok to criticize the war itself or Russia’s commander-in-chief, but those in charge of fulfilling the President’s orders are allowed to do so.
In a recent interview with Russian arch-propagandist Vladimir Solovyov, the head of the defense committee in Russia’s State Duma demanded that officials cease lying and level with the Russian public.
Kartapolov complained that the Ministry of Defense was evading the truth about incidents such as Ukrainian cross-border strikes in Russian regions neighboring Ukraine.
Valuyki is located near the border of Russia and Ukranian. Kyiv has generally adopted a neither-confirm-nor-deny stance when it comes to striking Russian targets across the border.
There is no need for the defense of the Russian Federation to be shadowed by traitors, but incompetent commanders who failed and did not bother to fix the numerous gaps in the service. Many say that the Minister of Defense could have shot himself, because he allowed this situation to happen. An unfamiliar word for many is a word that is called an officer.
But after Russia’s retreat from the strategic Ukrainian city of Lyman, Kadyrov has been a lot less shy about naming names when it comes to blaming Russian commanders.
Writing on Telegram, Kadyrov personally blamed Colonel-General Aleksandr Lapin, the commander of Russia’s Central Military District, for the debacle, accusing him of moving his headquarters away from his subordinates and failing to adequately provide for his troops.
“The Russian information space has significantly deviated from the narratives preferred by the Kremlin and the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) that things are generally under control,” ISW noted in its recent analysis.
One of the central features of Putinism is a fetish for World War II, known in Russia as the Great Patriotic War. And those in Russia’s party of war often speak admiringly of the brutal tactics employed by the Red Army to fight Hitler’s Wehrmacht, including the use of punishment battalions – sending soldiers accused of desertion, cowardice or wavering against German positions as cannon fodder – and the use of summary execution to halt unauthorized retreats.
Kadyrov – who recently announced that he had been promoted by Putin to the rank of colonel general – has been one of the most prominent voices arguing for the draconian methods of the past. He recently said in another Telegram post that, if he had his way, he would give the government extraordinary wartime powers in Russia.
“Yes, if it were my will, I would declare martial law throughout the country and use any weapon, because today we are at war with the whole NATO bloc,” Kadyrov said in a post that also seemed to echo Putin’s not-so-subtle threats that Russia might contemplate the use of nuclear weapons.
With the Kremlin distracted by its flagging war more than 1,500 miles away in Ukraine, Russia’s dominium over its old Soviet empire shows signs of unraveling. Moscow is no longer in control, a situation that has created a disorderly vacuum that former soviet satraps and China are trying to fill.
On the mountain-flanked wasteland of southwestern Kyrgyzstan, there has been a devastating effect on one village, with homes reduced to rubble, a burned-out school and a gut-wrenching stench from the rotting carcasses of 24,000 dead chickens.
All fell victim last month to the worst violence to hit the area since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union — a brief but bloody border conflict between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, both members of a Russia-led military alliance dedicated to preserving peace but which did nothing to halt the mayhem.
Thousands of Russians Continue to Arrive in Turkey and Their Families in Kazan – A Model of Russian Folks in Antalya
The large sculpture of traditional Russian dolls is displayed at Matryoshka park, a small park near the Mediterranean Sea beach. More than half the sculpture’s dolls are missing now, since vandals destroyed them after Russia invaded Ukraine.
Russians continue to come to Antalya in large numbers. According to the provincial governor, up to 19,000 Russians are arriving every day. Some of the people who are fleeing the draft are tourists.
Russian anti-war demonstrators moved here in March after their country’s invasion of Ukraine. The local Russian community is seeing a bigger influx of people. The neighborhoods near Matryoshka Park are mostly Russian now. It’s the language used on the street and in the restaurant.
Two young Russian men stroll around the park looking like they just left the airport, carrying backpacks and dressed for cold weather, rather than the warm weather of Turkey. Like many Russian men around the city nowadays, they are easily identifiable as having fled the draft, with their meager belongings, winter outfits and stunned expressions.
The semi-autonomous region of Tatarstan in southwest Russia has two men from Kazan. They don’t want to reveal their names, fearing retribution from the Russian government.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/10/09/1127274054/thousands-of-russians-continue-to-arrive-in-turkey-fleeing-conscription
Why any Russian should stay here if you want to come to Turkey, but don’t want to go back to Moscow – a frustration for Russians in Turkey
One of the men, who is 25, says that it’s dangerous for any male. Don’t matter if you’re old, have lots of kids and no military experience. The men are in danger.
This is a war between the Russian government and the Russians. My issue is not just the mobilization, it’s the war. I have relatives in Ukraine and this is a disgusting situation for all of us,” says the other man, who is 26.
The men have been in Antalya for two weeks — having left Russia immediately after Putin’s draft announcement — and still feel as lost in Turkey as others who’ve just arrived today. They have left their families behind and no plans for the future. They haven’t found answers to their many questions.
Things have become more complicated for Russians in Turkey. Residency laws are getting tighter in the city, making it harder to live and work here legally.
Money is a big issue. Russian nationals are going to find it harder to pay for food at Turkish restaurants as a result of Turkish banks suspending the Russian version of Mastercard and Visa.
There is only one cash transfer that Russians can access in Antalya — Golden Crown, a Russian transfer system. It doesn’t take long for Russians to line up, but the only money they can withdraw per day is $200.
Turkish tourism companies that work with the Russians tell NPR that there has been a significant increase in single males booking long stays. But vacationers also are not boarding their planes back to Russia, and some flights are going back half empty.
A man from Moscow was the one who decided to stay. He was afraid to reveal his name but told NPR that he left in a hurry after buying a ticket to Turkey. He didn’t even have time to notify his bosses, who have no idea he’s leaving the company.
When Russian War Ends: A Syrian Tourist Tells NPR he Will Not Return to Turkey, But He Will Rather Stay Until Russia Loses The War
He says that he saw people diverted from the floor and taken to a separate room. I don’t know what happened to them. but I have a feeling they were not allowed to leave.”
He was among the lucky ones because he wasn’t drafted before he left, and he bought his travel package so he could be considered a tourist when asked why he was leaving.
But unlike other men who’ve fled to Turkey and told NPR they would never go back to Russia, this man says he will go back if Russia loses the war — which he believes can happen, as long as Russia sticks to conventional weapons.
“We have to rebuild, so I will go back then,” he says. “We have to vote for new people who will choose a different way. And one day, maybe when I am old, people will visit Russia again, because it’s a beautiful place.”
The attacks on the Kherson, Donetsk and Kharkiv neighborhoods by Ukrainian troops on Monday: a commentary on the city’s energy infrastructure
Michael is a global affairs analyst. He is currently working as a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. He is a regular contributor. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion at CNN.
The Ukrainian military told them that Russia was ready to launch an attack on the city. A major bridge connecting the city of Kherson to the eastern bank was blown up early Friday, severing the main route for Russian supplies coming in and for Russians trying to leave Kherson City.
The bombing of the Belgorod region by Russia and its allies next to Ukraine and the destruction of the Municipal Administration Building in the city of Donetsk, which was firmly controlled by Russia, is a sign that the carnage unleashed by President Putin is spreading far beyond the front lines.
The strikes happened when people were headed to work and kids were being dropped off. A friend in Kyiv texted me that she had just exited a bridge span 10 minutes before it was struck.
As of midday local time, the area around my office in Odesa remained eerily quiet in between air raid sirens, with reports that three missiles and five kamikaze drones were shot down. Usually when this time of the day is here, restaurants would be crowded with customers and chatter of upcoming weddings and parties.
Monday’s attacks also came just a few hours after Zaporizhzhia, a southeastern city close to the largest nuclear power plant in Europe, was hit by multiple strikes on apartment buildings, mostly while people slept. At least 17 people were killed and several dozens injured.
In a video filmed outside his office Monday, a defiant President Volodymyr Zelensky said it appeared many of the 100 or so missile strikes across Ukraine were aimed at the country’s energy infrastructure. At least 11 important infrastructure facilities in eight regions and the capital have been damaged; some provinces are without power, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said.
In the northeastern city of Kharkiv, which has experienced more bombardments than any other city, residents have gone to war footing, stocking up on food, gas and drinking water. Yet they also entertained themselves at the Typsy Cherry, a local bar. The owner said the mood was cheerful. People were having fun and wondering when the electricity would come back. The power came back hours later.
Indeed, millions of people in cities across Ukraine will be spending most of the day in bomb shelters, at the urging of officials, while businesses have been asked to shift work online as much as possible.
Just as many regions of Ukraine were starting to roar back to life, and with countless asylum seekers returning home, the attacks risk causing another blow to business confidence.
The symbol of the only bridge connecting mainland Russia and the peninsula of peninsular Russia can not be overstated by Putin. That the attack took place a day after his 70th birthday (the timing prompted creative social media denizens to create a split-screen video of Marilyn Monroe singing ‘Happy Birthday, Mr President”) can be taken as an added blow to an aging autocrat whose ability to withstand shame and humiliation is probably nil.
Hardwiring newly claimed territory with expensive, record-breaking infrastructure projects seems to be a penchant of dictators. In the year 2007, Putin opened the bridge by driving across it. The world’s longest sea crossing bridge was built in China after Beijing reclaimed Macau and Hong Kong. Two years of delays have not stopped the opening of the road bridge.
The Ukrainian Response to Vladimir Putin’s Blast and the Birth of a Nation: What do we need to learn about Russia and what can we do about it?
The reaction among Ukrainians to the explosion was instantaneous: humorous memes lit up social media channels like a Christmas tree. Many people shared their jubilation through text messages.
For Putin, consumed by pride and self-interest, sitting still was never an option. He unleashed more death and destruction, with the force that is likely to be natural to a former KGB operatives, because he was responding.
It was also an act of selfish desperation: facing increasing criticism at home, including on state-controlled television, has placed Putin on unusually thin ice.
Faced with growing setbacks, the Kremlin appointed a new overall commander of Russia’s invasion. With the Ukrainian counter-offensives being costly, it’s not clear if Gen. Sergey Surovikin can lead his forces back onto the front foot before the end of the year.
In this moment, it is important for Washington and other allies to use emergency telephone diplomacy to persuade China and India to resist the urge to use even more deadly weapons.
Anything short of these measures will only allow Putin to continue his senseless violence and further exacerbate a humanitarian crisis that will reverberate throughout Europe. There’s a sign that the Kremlin can weaponize energy, migration and food if there’s a weak reaction.
The tragic story of the Taras Shevchenko playground: A tale of two girls, one bathed, and one scared: the teenage askold left behind
There is a need for high tech defense systems to protect the country. With winter just around the corner, the need to protect heating systems is urgent.
Turkey and the Gulf states which receive a lot of Russian tourists should be pressured to agree to trade and travel restrictions on Russia in order for this to have an impact.
On Monday, state television not only reported on the suffering, but also flaunted it. It showed smoke and carnage in the city, along with empty store shelves, as well as a long-range forecast saying it would get cold in the city in months.
Nonna is a journalist at Channel 5-TV. She is a television director and a lecturer of TV and cinema at Kyiv’s Karpenko-Kary National University of Theatre, Cinema, and Television. The views expressed in this commentary are her own. Read more opinion on CNN.
A gaping crater has been created by Russian missiles that destroyed the children’s playground in Kyiv on Monday. Later, people gathered to take photos of the rocket’s footprint in the upturned soil, where bits of twisted metal lay scattered just a few feet from the brightly-painted climbing frame and merry-go-round.
We wanted to keep giving our child a normal life, even in a bomb shelter, karate workouts, and a daily walking and running routine in between the sirens of air-raids and curfew, because we felt it was important for our child to have a good sleep.
Our playground in Shevchenko Park is well known to every person in the city. Close to my parents’ home, it’s the park where I went for my first walk with my newborn son. We have visited almost daily since then, and still do to this day.
The Taras Shevchenko park is Askold’s main playground and remained that way when Russian tanks stood a mere 25 kilometers away in February and March.
Askold would take his wooden sword to the usually empty playground in the park, which was secured by the National Guard. The lack of play mates made it hard for him to choose anything but the merry-go-round and slide he wanted.
On a few days, the only people in the park were the National Guard and our family, but not the imposing monument of Taras Shevamph (which would come later).
The statue is close to Askold’s playground and just a short walk away from the university that bears her name.
The son of a novelist holds a wooden sword in Shevchenko Park with his grandparents and other people. The statue of Taras Shevchenko can be seen in the background.
Did Shevchenko somehow know that Russians would turn playgrounds into battlegrounds in Ukraine – playgrounds right here, in a carefully-groomed park named after him? Some people believe that the National University and the monument to historian Mykhailo Hrushevsky, regarded by many as the first President of Ukranian, would also be hit by projectiles. I think he probably did.
Is it possible that Russia is using old maps? Because it wants to destroy monuments of Ukrainian history and culture? Or, just simply, because it can?
Why Russia Doesn’t Want Us to Exist: My Son’s First Questions about the Revolution of Dignity in Asymptotically Crimea
This question from my son was also among the first he had asked early on the morning of February 24. The full-scale war was a huge shock but we were not surprised at all.
The Revolution of Dignity, also known as Euromaidan, began when Askold was 7 months old. A few months later, Russia annexed Crimea and started a war in the east of Ukraine. We knew that war would come in our home in Kyiv in 2022, and we always knew that.
Why does Russia do that? He was devastated after looking at videos and pictures of the crater where his favorite swing used to be.
I told him the truth: because the Russians don’t want us to exist. I thought that I’d say these words to my son after he’d seen mass graves in hostomel and Irpin. But I knew we had to.
There is a reason he goes to a bomb shelter rather than his classroom and the reason why Russia intends to destroyUkraine. The weapons in the hands of the National Guard are real and qualitatively different than wooden ones.
The Battle for Kherson: Implications for the future of the Cold War and Putin’s domestic rhetoric, and a warning to all Ukrainians
Footage of the jubilant scenes emerged hours after Russia announced it had withdrawn from the west bank of the Dnipro River in the strategic southern region of Kherson, leaving the regional capital of Kherson and surrounding areas to the Ukrainians.
Kirill Stremousov, Saldo’s Moscow-appointed deputy, urged residents to evacuate “as quickly as possible” — saying the battle for Kherson “would soon begin.”
Saldo claimed the cities of Kherson were being hit by dangerous airstrikes as part of the annexation of four Ukrainian regions.
If there is a wish to protect themselves from missile strikes, we suggest that all residents of the Kherson region leave and go to other regions.
However, Kirill Stremousov, the deputy head of the Kherson region’s military administration, said that the civilian transports were not an “evacuation.”
Not for the first time, the war is teetering towards an unpredictable new phase. “This is now the third, fourth, possibly fifth different war that we’ve been observing,” said Keir Giles, a senior consulting fellow at Chatham House’s Russia and Eurasia Programme.
The next month is expected to be crucial as both sides seek to strike another blow and experts predict a potential spike in intensity in the weeks to come.
Giles said that anything that could be described as aUkraine victory is now more plausible. “The response from Russia is likely to escalate further.”
Monday’s attacks, and further strikes throughout the week, were evidence of Russian President Vladimir Putin lashing out after a series of setbacks in the war that have put him under pressure domestically.
Russian Counter-Ofensives During the February 28 Ukrainian War: The Ukrenergo Regime and its Impact on the Middle East
The flag of Ukraine was hoisted over a building in the south of Kherson region last month. The counter-offensive by the Ukrainians has resulted in the liberation of hundreds of settlements.
These counter-offensives have shifted the momentum of the war and disproved a suggestion, built up in the West and in Russia during the summer, that while Ukraine could stoutly defend territory, it lacked the ability to seize ground.
“The Russians are playing for the whistle – (hoping to) avoid a collapse in their frontline before the winter sets in,” Samir Puri, senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies and the author of “Russia’s Road to War with Ukraine,” told CNN.
“If they can get to Christmas with the frontline looking roughly as it is, that’s a huge success for the Russians given how botched this has been since February.”
Moving to the east bank will make it easier for Russia to replenish its troops and regain defense in depth. Any attempt by Ukrainian forces to cross the Dnipro would be costly to the point of prohibitive, as Russian forces are well dug in along a stretch of the river. There are pillbox guardhouses and trenches on satellite imagery, as well as civilians being removed from homes close to the river.
Landing a major blow in Donbas would send another powerful signal, and Ukraine will be eager to improve on its gains before temperatures plummet on the battlefield, and the full impact of rising energy prices is felt around Europe.
“There are so many reasons why there is an incentive for Ukraine to get things done quickly,” Giles said. “The winter energy crisis in Europe, and energy infrastructure and power being destroyed in Ukraine itself, is always going to be a test of resilience for Ukraine and its Western backers.”
NATO leaders have vowed to stand behind Ukraine regardless of how long the war takes, but several European countries – particularly those that relied heavily on Russian energy – are staring down a crippling cost-of-living crisis which, without signs of Ukrainian progress on the battlefield, could endanger public support.
Much of the country’s electricity supply was disrupted by Russian missile attacks on Monday and Tuesday, but Ukrenergo says it has restored power to most of the country. But Ukrainian Prime Minister has warned that “there is a lot of work to do” to fix damaged equipment, and asked Ukrainians to reduce their energy usage during peak hours.
Experts believe that it will not be possible for Russia to keep up its aerial bombardment, even though estimating the military reserve of either army is difficult.
Jeremy Fleming, director of the UK’s spy agency said in a speech on Tuesday that Russian commanders on the ground know that their supplies are running out.
That conclusion was also reached by the ISW, which said in its daily update on the conflict Monday that the strikes “wasted some of Russia’s dwindling precision weapons against civilian targets, as opposed to militarily significant targets.”
How much weaponry and manpower each side has left in reserve is crucial to determining how the momentum will change. The Ukrainian government said it had defeated at least eighteen cruise missiles on Tuesday and dozens more on Monday but it wants more equipment from the Western world to prevent future attacks.
“Russians don’t have the stock of precision missiles to sustain that kind of high-tempo missile assault into the future, so the volley of missile strikes is going to be an occasional feature for shows of extreme outrage.”
The impact of such an intervention in terms of pure manpower would be limited; Belarus has around 45,000 active duty troops, which would not significantly bolster Russia’s reserves. There would be another assault on the northern side of the country.
“The reopening of a northern front would be another new challenge for Ukraine,” Giles said. It would provide Russia with a new way into the Kharkiv oblast, which has been taken over by the Ukrainians, if Putin wanted to try to do that, he said.
Now Zelensky will hope for more supplies in the short-term as he seeks to drive home those gains. The leader has sought to highlight Ukraine’s success in intercepting Russian missiles, saying more than half of the missiles and drones launched at Ukraine in a second wave of strikes on Tuesday were brought down.
According to NATO secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, NATO defense ministers will meet in the Belgian capital to discuss the situation in Ukraine.
The air defense systems provided by NATO Allies shot down many missiles this week, he said.
Ukraine “badly needed” modern systems such as the IRIS-T that arrived this week from Germany and the NASAMS expected from the United States, Bronk said.
When Russian forces invaded Ukraine Oct. 8, Gen Sergei Surovikin tells a journalist she would not leave a country without a weapon
The blasts, which Russia attributed to Ukrainian shelling, came a day after another sign of disarray in Russia’s once-vaunted military machine: Two men opened fire on fellow Russian soldiers at a training camp in the Belgorod region, killing 11 and wounding 15 before being killed themselves.
MOSCOW — Friday afternoons at the Chop-Chop Barbershop in central Moscow used to be busy, but at the beginning of a recent weekend, only one of the four chairs was occupied.
Many men have been staying away from the streets because of fear of getting a draft notice. As Olya came to work last Friday, she said, she witnessed the authorities at each of the four exits of the metro station, checking documents.
Olya, like other women interviewed, did not want her last name used because she was afraid of repercussions. “It is hard for me to know what to do. We had always planned as a couple.
The Russian government would give housing vouchers to people who relocated further from the fighting if they chose to do so, according to Saldo.
“We will not surrender the city, and we will fight to the end,” he said, adding that residents whose homes might be damaged from shelling could receive compensation from the Russian government.
Earlier in October, Ukrainian forces in the Kherson region pushed the Russian line back by 20 miles, according to the President’s office and Deep State, an independent monitoring group.
In his first interview since being appointed to lead Russia’s armed forces in Ukraine Oct. 8, General Sergei Surovikin called the situation in Kherson “very difficult” and refused to rule out “the hardest decisions.”
Russia’s focus now is on saving lives, and not on targeting civilians, as accused by the man who oversaw the mass bombardment of Ukrainian cities since taking over.
The goal of the operations will be maximization of the safety of civilians and soldiers. That is our priority,” Surovikin said to the Zvezda channel, a state media outlet funded by Russia’s Defense Ministry.
A think tank from D.C. suggested similar schemes are used to deport Ukrainian citizens to Russian territory, as they populate areas with Russian citizens.
Moscow’s response to the Ukrainian crisis: What do we know? An analysis of the re-election crisis in the Kharkiv province
The mayor of Moscow, Sergey Sobyanin, appeared to be taking pains to offer reassurances. Mr. Sobyanin wrote that there were no measures being introduced to limit the normal rhythm in the city.
The new power granted to the governors doesn’t include entry or exit restrictions.
But many Russians are sure to see a warning message in the martial law imposed in Ukraine, the first time that Moscow has declared martial law since World War II, analysts say.
The people are worried about Mr. Putin closing the borders, and the siloviki will do what they want.
Russia has been a military force in Syria for the better part of the last two years, helping the government keep its grip on power. But the change could herald shifts in the balance of power in one of the world’s most complicated conflict zones, and may lead Israel — Syria’s enemy — to rethink its stance toward the Ukraine conflict.
Police officers who have returned to towns and villages to re-establish a Ukrainian administration have been overwhelmed by complaints of theft and property damage, but also accounts of detentions, torture and missing relatives.
The police think the scale of abuse of the population is greater than that seen in the spring around the capital of the Ukrainian province, and it is likely to go on for many more years.
So far, police officers have logged more than 1,000 cases of people being detained in police stations and temporary holding facilities across the region, said Serhii Bolvinov, the police chief of Kharkiv Province. He said that the real figure is two to three times that.
A Russian woman’s experience of sexual violence: “Russia wasn’t ours until November 11”, according to a family of Ukrainians in Kherson
There are billboards in the city that have been painted over with a message stating: “Ukraine was Russia’s until November 11.”
Six allegations of sexual assault have been documented by a team from Kyiv in two weeks in the Kherson region. The real number is almost certainly much higher, they say.
She says they walked around the rooms. Two people came in here, one of which raped me. He came in, walked a little bit around the room and here in this place, he started groping me.”
He pinned her against the wardrobe, she says, and tore at her clothes. “I was crying, begging him to stop, but with no success,” she says. The only thing I thought was to live.
He warned her not to tell anyone, she recalls. She said that she did not tell her husband right away. “But I told my cousin, and my husband overheard. He said that he should have known the truth, but he didn’t.
She was widowed more than 30 years ago – she says her husband died in a motorcycle accident – and her son joined the military soon after Russia’s invasion on February 24. About three months after the Russian troops occupied her village, she left.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/02/europe/russia-ukraine-kherson-sexual-violence-intl/index.html
Do no sexual crimes exist in Tverdomedove? The case of a village liberated by a lightning counteroffensive
He found the head of his unit. He came to see me and told me, ‘I punished him severely, I broke his jaw, but the most severe punishment is ahead.’ Like shooting. The commander asked, “Do you mind this?” I said, ‘I don’t mind, I wish all of them will be shot.’”
Although the prosecutor, Kleshchenko, and police officer Oleksandr Svidro are looking specifically for evidence of sexual crimes, everywhere they go they are confronted with the horrors of occupation.
The village was behind Russian lines, but never directly occupied. Those gathered round shout that they’ve been abandoned for months, with no help from either Russia or Ukraine.
A man in the crowd tells the investigators that he was held by Russian soldiers and subjected to mock execution. It’s hard to hear, tales of torture like this are common here, but that’s not the subject of their work today.
A short drive down roads pockmarked by shelling, in Tverdomedove, a mother and daughter tell Kleshchenko that they have not heard of any sexual crimes in their one-road hamlet.
The Ukrainian military liberated her village after a lightning counteroffensive. Shelling had reduced her roof to its rafters.
Russian forces are advancing toward Kherson, not in the East, but in the Sud, as reported by the Institute for the Study of War
“I don’t know where to put it so that (the ceiling) won’t fall on my head,” she says. “If it would fall and kill me that would be better, so I won’t suffer. But I want to see my son again.”
Of course, many of these allegations will be impossible to prove; many do not even have a suspect. The investigators try to be able to file charges in the future as the team files its reports.
Grisly videos filmed by Ukrainian drones showing Russian infantry being struck by artillery in poorly prepared positions have partly supported those assertions, as has reporting in Russian news media of mobilized soldiers telling relatives about high casualty rates. The location of the front line is not known because the videos have not been independently verified.
Russian forces are staging up to 80 assaults per day, General Zaluzhnyi said in the statement, which described a telephone conversation with an American general, Christopher G. Cavoli, the supreme allied commander in Europe.
The report said the Ukrainian advance was held back for a while, and that the military equipment of the Ukrainians on the Dnieper were being hit by fire.
An assessment from the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based analytical group said that the increase in infantry in the east had not resulted in Russia gaining new ground.
According to the assessment, the Russian Army was trying to get a quick advance by attacking first and massing enough troops for success. The attacks have been directed at several towns and villages, including Bakhmut and Avdiivka.
In its two counteroffensives in the northeast and the south, the Ukrainian military has reported step-by-step gains in cutting supply lines and targeting Russian ammunition and fuel depots with long-range rockets and artillery.
In the south, where Ukrainian troops are advancing toward the Russian-occupied city of Kherson, the Ukrainian military said Friday morning that its artillery battalions had fired more than 160 times at Russian positions over the past 24 hours, but it also reported Russian return fire into Ukrainian positions.
With Russian and Ukrainian forces apparently preparing for battle in Kherson, and conflicting signals over what may be coming, the remaining residents of the city have been stocking up on food and fuel to survive combat.
A stranger’s tale of two Russians: Kherson-ukraine-russia-battle-looms-and-his-wife
He pulled a red suitcase out from the black car he was riding in to Zaporizhia, which was 25 miles from occupied territory. “The madness.”
Outside of Kherson is where his home is. He and his wife were here for many years. A neighbor told Viktor that the Russians broke into the house after they left.
At a shelter, a volunteer who is named Artyom helps care for the evacuees as if he were his own family. Artyom asked that we not use his full name to protect his relatives in Kherson.
His wife stays home as much as she can. She sells her produce at the local street market, in order to earn money.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/11/07/1134465380/kherson-ukraine-russia-battle-looms
The Kherson problem hasn’t stopped: Artyom and his wife are frustrated with the Soviet invasion of Ukraine, and he feels threatened by Russian troops
Artyom says it’s not good. He counts his fingers and fears that Russians will stop his wife. He worries that she’ll get sick. She’s four months’ pregnant. He worries about the baby.
Holovnya, who is living in Kyiv, calls some of them collaborators. And he says some are people who just can’t leave. Many of them are older. Others don’t have many resources. Their lives right now are “intense,” he says.
What little public interaction there is now in the city revolves mostly around the local street markets that popped up since the war began. Local farmers and bakers have been selling their goods at the street markets because most of the stores in Kherson are closed or have empty shelves.
“You can buy most things, from starting with medicine and finishing with meat,” says Natalyia Schevchenko, 30, who fled Kherson this summer. “But it’s terrible to observe. On one car they sell medicine on the hood and cut meat on the side.
Schevchenko, who is volunteering at an Odesa nonprofit called Side-by-Side to evacuate residents from Kherson and other occupied territories, remains in contact with those in the city. She says her grandmother gives her daily updates.
Artyom and his wife talk whenever they can get a decent connection. They generally try to keep their conversations light; they worry that Russians are listening in.
It’s scary — but they agree it’s a good thing. They think it means the Ukrainians are getting closer — and that means Artyom may be able to go home soon.
While state media in Russia said that Ukrainian shelling had damaged the power lines, Yaroslav Yanushevych, the exiled Ukrainian head of the Kherson regional military administration, blamed Russian troops.
The Russian forces have placed mines around some water towers located north of Kherson city and less than 50 miles away from the front lines of the fighting.
“The Russian invaders continue their looting of settlements from which they are retreating,” spokesman for the General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces Oleksandr Shtupun said. The enemy is attempting to damage power lines and other critical infrastructure in the Kherson region.
There were many people who used to live in the city before the war. Ukrainian activists estimate that 30,000 to 60,000 people remain, but it is impossible to know how accurate such guesses are.
Russia has suffered three major setbacks of the war, the latest being the loss of Kherson. Since invading in February, Russia had captured only one provincial capital, Kherson, and that was very important in controlling the southern coastline of the Black Sea.
BLAHODATNE, Ukraine — Ukraine’s troops entered the key city of Kherson on Friday, its military said, as jubilant residents waved Ukrainian flags after a major Russian retreat.
The Kremlin issued a statement hours ago saying that the withdrawal of its forces across the Dnipro River was complete, but residents reported that there were still Russian soldiers in the city.
Recapturing control of Kherson would also bolster the Ukrainian government’s argument that it should press on militarily while it has Russian forces on the run, and not return to the bargaining table, as some American officials have advocated.
The scenes of people greeting Ukrainian troops across the region were in sharp contrast to claims by Russian-appointed officials in Kherson six weeks ago that 87% of voters there supported integration into the Russian Federation, in a referendum widely condemned by the international community as a sham. Russia illegally annexed four Ukrainian regions in September.
“This is a subject of the Russian Federation,” Dmitry Peskov said during a regular briefing with journalists. It has been defined and fixed. There can’t be changes here.
The Last Days of the Russian Occupation in Kherson, Ukraine: The Story of U.S. Airborne Drones and the ZSU Video
After nine months of occupation, the residents of the area were happy to see the soldiers moving through their towns and villages.
Oleh Voitsehovsky, the commander of a Ukrainian drone reconnaissance unit, said he had seen no Russian troops or equipment in his zone along the front less than four miles north of Kherson city.
The final hours of the Russian occupation were chaotic and confusing, according to people in Kherson who spoke to a caller on Friday morning.
Serhiy, a retiree in Kherson who asked that his last name be kept out of the media for security reasons, had sent a number of text messages before the city was overrun by Ukrainian soldiers.
“At night, a building burned in the very center, but it was not possible even to call the fire department,” he wrote. “There was no phone signal, no electricity, no heating and no water.”
While there was no visible Russian military presence in the city on Friday, four residents described seeing Russian soldiers dressed in civilian clothes — some armed — moving about parts of the city.
Russian troops were setting up defensive positions on the eastern bank of the Dnipro and shelling Ukrainian forces across the river.
A crowd was waving flags and chanting “ZSU”, a Ukrainian acronym for the armed forces, in the video posted by Volodymyr Zelensky.
Moscow’s warped history in the past: the case of Mykolaiv, a city in the western outskirts of Kherson
“Not a single piece of military equipment or weaponry was left behind on the right [west] bank,” the statement added. “All Russian servicemen have moved to the left bank of the Dnieper.”
The Defense Ministry of Russia denied that Russian personnel, equipment and materiel were lost in the Ukrainian attacks on Russian troop concentrations that were withdrawing.
A missile attack on the city of Mykolaiv, close to Kherson’s border, killed seven people early Friday, but Ukraine didn’t report any fire from the east bank.
The southern operational command of the Ukrainian military noted that Russian forces had been loading boats into the river to try to escape.
Satellite images and other photos show at least seven bridges destroyed in the last 24 hours, four of them crossing the Dnipro.
Alexander Kots, a reporter for the Russian pro-government tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda embedded with Russian forces, posted a video on his Telegram channel standing on the crossing, showing the entire center section of the bridge destroyed. There is two spans of the bridge that are behind me. They were probably blown up when the Russian group of forces withdrew from the right bank to the left.
A video on social media on Friday showed forces from the Ukranian army getting a good reception from the people of Tyahinka. The village is just 14 miles (20 km) west of the hydroelectric dam and bridges that stretch across the Dnieper river at Nova Kakhovka.
The residents of the town of Bilozerka on the western outskirts of Kherson city hoisted a Ukrainian flag and tore down the Russian billboards on Friday, according to videos on social media.
“There are a lot of mines in the liberated territories and settlements,” Vitaliy Kim, head of Mykolaiv region military administration, said on Telegram. Don’t do it for no reason. There are deaths.
The relatively few residents who remain in Kherson have endured curfews, shortages of goods, partisan warfare and an intense campaign to force them to become Russian citizens and accept Moscow’s warped version of their culture and history.
When living under Russian rule, most people have had frightening experiences, such as a teenager tellingCNN he was beaten by Russian soldiers who thought he was a spy. The residents said that they were overwhelmed with what this new found freedom meant.
While the military move was to save resources and allow them to be deployed to different fronts, it still dealt a blow to Moscow’s campaign in Ukraine.
The withdrawal would protect the lives of civilians and soldiers who have faced a punishing Ukrainian counteroffensive that targeted Russian ammunition depots and command posts.
Russia retains control of a majority of the Kherson region, south and east of the Dnipro, as well as the coastline on the Sea of Azov. So long as Moscow’s troops control and fortify the Dnipro’s east bank, Ukrainian forces will struggle to damage or disrupt the canal that carries fresh water to Crimea.
Zelensky called Friday a historic day for his country. Zelensky said we are returning to the south of the country.
Success in Kherson may also allow exhausted Ukrainian units some respite, as well as allow redirected focus on Donbas, where fierce fighting continues in both Luhansk and Donetsk.
Ukranian authorities also have a massive task of reconstruction ahead in Kherson, where Russian forces destroyed critical infrastructure and left a huge number of mines behind.
The Dnipro dam that spans the Dnipro in the Kherson region city of Nova Kakhovka has had new damage. For weeks, both sides have accused the other of planning to breach the dam, which if destroyed would lead to extensive flooding on the east bank and deprive the nuclear power plant in Zaporizhzhia of water to cool its reactors.
The events in Kherson have shown that the Ukrainians are much better at battlefield intelligence than the Russians.
As the crew filmed live in Kherson’s central square, some in the crowd of locals sang the national anthem while others shouted “Slava Ukrayini!” – glory to Ukraine, a patriotic greeting.
Locals have also been climbing onto the tops of the buildings, including the cinema, in the square to erect Ukrainian flags. Soldiers driving through are greeted with cheers and asked to sign autographs on flags.
“We were terrified by [the] Russian army, we were terrified by soldiers that can come any moment in our house, in our home – just open the door, like they are living here, and steal, kidnap, torture,” Olga said.
Everyone is celebrating in the square. Robertson said that people wore the Ukrainian flag, were hugging the soldiers and came to see what it was like to have freedom.
The liberation was the best day in Katerina’s life after eight months under Russian occupation. She told CNN that her street is free.
CNN military analyst Cedric Leighton said on Saturday that there would be a major urban operation in the next step for the Ukrainian military. A methodical operation will be made to clear buildings of potential booby traps and mines.
When our team of CNN journalists traveled through small towns and settlements, they were forced to drive through fields with bridges blown up and roads filled with anti-tank mines.
The Russian Revolutionary War in Kherson, Ukraine: CNN Arrived to the City Center for a Reconcile Rejoinder
Trenches and checkpoints were empty, quickly abandoned by Russians who on Friday announced they had withdrawn from the west bank of the Dnipro River in the strategic southern region of Kherson, leaving the regional capital of the same name and surrounding areas to the Ukrainians.
The city’s residents have no water, no internet connection and little power. The CNN crew entered the city center on Saturday, and the mood was celebratory.
The military presence is still limited but there is huge applause from crowds on the street every time a truck full of soldiers passes by.
As CNN’s crew stopped to regroup, we observed an old man and an old woman hugging a young soldier, with hands on the soldier’s shoulder, exchanging excited “thank yous.”
Everyone wants to know what the occupiers have gone through, how they feel now that they are gone, and how grateful they are to the countries who helped them.