World

Russians Seize 42 Towns in Eastern Ukraine as Fighting Intensifies


Ukrainian officials on Friday acknowledged that Russian forces had captured more than three dozen small towns in their first operation this week to capture eastern Ukraine, offering the first glimpse of what promises to be coming. is a fierce battle of the Kremlin to achieve broader territorial interests in a new phase. of the two-month war.

Fighting in the east – along increasingly fortified lines stretching more than 300 miles – intensified as a Russian commander signaled even broader ambitions, warning that Dien’s forces The Kremlin aims to “fully control” southern Ukraine as far as Moldova, Ukraine. southwest neighborhood.

Although it appeared the commander, Major General Rustam Minnekayev, was wrong, his warning still attracted skepticism, given Russia’s probable difficulty in initiating a widespread offensive. and the relatively obscure role of this general in the hierarchy. But his threat cannot be ruled out.

The broader war goals he outlined at a defense industry meeting in a Russian city more than 1,000 miles away from the fighting will be far more ambitious than the downsized goals. model that President Vladimir V. Putin has laid out in recent weeks, which has focused on achieving. control the Donbas region, eastern Ukraine.

Some political and military experts have suggested that the general’s statement could be part of Russia’s continued efforts to mislead or confuse Ukraine and its allies. General Minnekayev’s official work involved political propaganda work and often did not include military strategy.

On Friday, fierce fighting was raging across a stretch of southeastern Ukraine, engulfing communities on the banks of the Dnipro river. While Ukrainian officials concede that Russia has taken control of 42 small towns and villages in recent days, they say similar places are likely to fall to Ukraine before long.

Western analysts say Russian forces, in both the slow but largely successful fight south of Mariupol and the unsuccessful battle in Kyiv, were battered and weakened. But instead of resting, consolidating and re-equipping its forces, Moscow is moving east.

The Russian military appears to be trying to secure its interests on the battlefield – including capturing all of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, or outposts – by May 9, when Moscow celebrates its annual war anniversary. won in World War II.

Mason Clark, an analyst at Institute for War Studies in Washington. “They will probably take some territory. We don’t think they’ll be able to capture all of the turrets in the next three weeks. “

In his remarks on Friday, General Minnekayev asserted that one of Russia’s goals is “total control of Donbas and southern Ukraine”.

He said that would allow Russia to control Ukraine’s Black Sea ports, “through which agricultural and metallurgical products are transferred” to other countries. However, despite repeated attacks, Russia failed to capture those ports, including Odesa, a fortified city of 1 million inhabitants.

“I would like to remind you that many of the Kremlin’s plans have been destroyed by our army and people,” Andriy Yermak, chief of staff of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, wrote on social media in response to the remarks. of General Minnekayev.

General Minnekayev also issued a discreet warning to Moldova, where Moscow-backed separatists seized control of a 250-mile stretch of land known as Transnistria in 1992.

“Controlling southern Ukraine is another link with Transnistria, where there is also evidence of repression against Russian speakers,” the general said, echoing false claims of a “genocide.” ” against Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine that Mr. Putin used to help justify the February 24 invasion.

The Moldovan government then summoned the Russian ambassador to lodge a complaint, saying that General Minnekayev’s comments were “not only unacceptable but also baseless” and led to “increased tensions”.

Transnistria was never recognized internationally – not even Russia. But Russia still keeps 1,500 soldiers there, nominally to keep the peace and guard a large arsenal of Soviet-era weapons.

A poor country with 2.6 million people, Moldova is considered vulnerable to further Russian invasions. The country is not a member of NATO or the European Union, but it hastily applied to join the EU last month.

Yuri Fyodorov, a Russian military analyst, said that the broader goals detailed by General Minnekayev “from a military point of view are unattainable.”

“All of Russia’s combat readiness units are currently concentrated in Donbas, where Russia has not made any significant progress in the past five days,” Fyodorov said in an interview. Minnekayev’s rank in general would not allow him to make such sweeping policy statements, he said, contradicting what has been said by the country’s top leaders.

Dmitri S. Peskov, Kremlin spokesman, declined to comment on General Minnekayev’s comments.

As Western allies race to arm Ukraine with increasingly heavy, long-range weapons, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, during a visit to India on Friday, said his country was considering sending tanks to Poland to Warsaw could then send its tanks to Ukraine. This month, the Biden administration said it would also help deliver Soviet-made tanks to Ukraine.

The Russian Defense Ministry, in its first statement on casualties after the sinking of the Black Sea fleet flagship Moscow on April 14, said one crew member had been killed, 27 were missing and 396 people were evacuated. Relatives of at least 10 Moscow crew members have expressed disappointment at the Kremlin’s silence, which is becoming a test of the Russians’ ability to grasp the information the Russians received about the war.

Ukraine says it sank the Moscow ship with two missiles – an assertion corroborated by US officials – while Russia alleges a fire on board caused a bomb explosion that destroyed the ship. destroy.

As Russia stepped up its crackdown on any domestic opposition to the war, it opened a criminal case against Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Russian pro-democracy activist and journalist. contributed to The Washington Post, for spreading “misinformation,” his attorney said Friday.

Mr. Kara-Murza, 40 years old, started this monthfaces 10 years in prison, according to the official decree against him posted online by his lawyer, Vadim Prokhorov.

It said he was being investigated over remarks he made before Arizona lawmakers on March 15. Mr. Kara-Murza told a local news outlet in Phoenix that month Russia committed “war crimes” in Ukraine but “Russia and the Putin regime are not one and the same.”

“Americans should be angry at Putin’s escalating campaign to silence Kara-Murza,” said Fred Ryan, publisher of The Post, said in a statement.

Mr. Putin, who has been increasingly vilified by the West over the war, has not completely refused to engage in diplomacy. On Friday, he agree to meet with the Secretary-General of the United Nations, António Guterres, in Moscow next week, a stark change from his refusal to accept Mr. Guterres’s phone calls. However, the meeting did not show any softening of Putin’s views on Ukraine, a former Soviet republic that he said should not even be a sovereign state.

The Ukrainian government said the fighting had become too dangerous to organize any evacuations from the fighting, which Michelle Bachelet, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, called “”Horror story of violations committed against civilians.

After another attack on the northeastern city of Kharkiv on Friday, residents watched as smoke billowed from shops. In the dilapidated port of Mariupol, hundreds of civilians and organized Ukrainian fighters ended up trapped in a sprawling steel mill, issuing urgent calls for help from underground bunkers. Newly released satellite images of the city show hundreds of hastily dug graves, giving credence to Ukraine’s claims that Russia is trying to cover up atrocities.

And in the Zaporizhzhya region of south-central Ukraine, Ukrainian troops have been dug in about two miles from Russian forces trying to move north in an effort to fortify a land bridge connecting Russian territory to the Crimean Peninsula, which Putin annexed in 2014.

The 128th separate mountain assault brigade of the Ukrainian army, equipped with anti-tank missiles supplied by the US and UK as well as other advanced weapons systems, claims to have destroyed two T-72 tanks of the Ukrainian army. Russia flew too close to their position.

Captain Vitaliy Nevinsky, commander of the brigade, said: “We are on our own land. “We are defending ourselves and dislodging this mob, our territorial invasion.”

Anton Troianovski report from Hamburg, Germany, Ivan Nechepurenko from Tbilisi, Georgia, and Michael Levenson from New York. Report contributed by Marc Santora from Krakow, Poland, Michael Schwirtz from Zaporizhzhya, Ukraine, Tyler Hicks from Kharkiv, Ukraine, Nick Cumming-Bruce from Geneva, Julian E. Barnes from Washington, Farnaz Fassihi from New York and Sameer Yasir from New Delhi.



Source link

news7f

News7F: Update the world's latest breaking news online of the day, breaking news, politics, society today, international mainstream news .Updated news 24/7: Entertainment, Sports...at the World everyday world. Hot news, images, video clips that are updated quickly and reliably

Related Articles

Back to top button