Catching up…
EA Worldview’s Ukraine Up-date- hop over to Scott’s amazing hourly Ukraine up-date page. I’ll fill in with some bits and bobs.
Arman Soldin’s last reportage and tweet: “60 sec in a 'stabilisation point' near Bakhmut Deep inside the wound, the Ukrainian soldier's heart is beating. It is 9 pm and he has just been brought to a field hospital from the battle for Bakhmut. The bullet went through the young man's left arm, crossed his chest..”
Arman Soldin was killed when an AFP team came under fire by Grad rockets while they were with a group of Ukrainian soldiers near Bakhmut, the epicentre of the fighting for months. His death brings to at least 11 the number of journalists, fixers or drivers for media teams killed since Russia invaded Ukraine more than a year ago, according to advocacy groups.
Stories we’re following…
Latest news: Col Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi, who heads Ukraine’s ground forces, has said that Russian forces in Bakhmut had been pushed back by up to 2km in some areas, after counter offensives.
”It was the competent conduct of the defensive operation that exhausted the trained forces of the ‘Wagner’ PvC and forced them to be replaced in certain directions by less well-prepared units of the Russian regular troops, which were defeated and left.”
Serhiy Cherevatyi, a spokesperson for Ukrainian troops in the east, said that Ukrainian forces have seriously damaged Russia’s 72nd independent motorised rifle brigade near Bakhmut, and that the eastern city remained Moscow’s main target.
“Unfortunately they have not destroyed the whole [Russian] brigade yet, two companies have been seriously damaged there,” Cherevatyi said in televised comments.
“The situation [in Bakhmut] remains difficult because for the enemy, despite all the white noise Prigozhin is trying to create, it [Bakhmut] is the main direction of attack, the main coveted target.”
2 killed, 5 injured as Russia attacks 9 Ukrainian regions over past day. Russian forces struck 126 Ukrainian settlements using various types of weapons and hitting 153 infrastructure facilities, Ukraine's Defense Ministry media center said on May 10.
The governor of the Kursk region, Roman Starovoit , said that on May 10, the Ukrainian military fired at a protective facility under construction near the village of Guevo in the Sudzhansky district. According to him, one of the builders was shell-shocked by the explosion, he was hospitalized.
Russia begins moving civilians from Zaporizhzhia Oblast under pretext of evacuation. Russia has begun new waves of relocating Ukrainian civilians from Russian-occupied areas of Zaporizhzhia Oblast under the pretext of evacuations. Some civilians are taken further into Russian-controlled parts of Ukraine, while others have been taken to Russia. On Wednesday, Ukrainian authorities revealed:
In Enerhodar, the Russian occupiers organised a so-called “evacuation” for family members of Zaporizhzhia NPP [nuclear power plant] employees. Yet the employees of the power plant are not allowed to leave the city.
Lieutenant General Serhii Naiev, Commander of the Joint Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, reports that defenders of Ukraine's north have received another batch of SUVs to create mobile air defence fire teams. He has said that a batch of pick-up trucks equipped with heavy machine guns and man-portable air defence systems had been delivered to the defence forces.
Governors claim attacks on three Russian regions bordering Ukraine. The governors of Russia's Voronezh, Belgorod and Kursk regions reported drone attacks and shelling on May 10. Kyiv hasn't yet commented on any of the incidents.
Russia continues to demolish homes destroyed by its months-long siege of Mariupol. Over the course of Russia's siege of Ukraine's southern city of Mariupol, over 2,000 residential buildings were heavily damaged, with around half of them now completely destroyed, the exiled Mariupol City Council said on Telegram on May 9.
ISW: Russia's latest mass strikes likely attempt to portray it deters Ukraine counteroffensive. However, the strikes are "likely not significantly constraining Ukrainian actions" as Russian troops appear to be more concentrated on maintaining a regular series of missile attacks than their actual effectiveness, the Institute for the Study of War said on May 9.
Kuleba says upcoming Ukraine counteroffensive 'should not be seen as final'. In an interview with the German newspaper Bild, Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba urged not to think about Ukraine's expected counteroffensive as the last one "because we don't know what will come out of it."
The occupation forces in Kherson region are becoming more aggressive with the local population under occupation. The National Resistance Centre reports that the occupying authorities have been given orders to destroy or damage Ukrainian passports in an effort to speed up forced passportisation.
The occupiers give the Russian passport the status of a document which is necessary to survive and solve even the smallest social and household needs. For example, from going outside the city limits, to medical services, which actually puts the local population in circumstances of irresistible force.
The National Resistance Centre also reports that in the Luhansk region, the occupiers are re-creating “military commissariats” because the previous institutions are unable to deliver the plan of the forced mobilization of Ukrainian citizens.
RIA Novosti reports that Putin has announced the call of reservists to military training camps.
"[I hereby order to] call up the citizens of the Russian Federation, who are a part of the reserve army, to the military training in the Armed Forces of Russia, forces of the National Guard of Russia, bodies of state security and the Federal Security Service (FSB), in 2023."
Putin signed a decree on the abolition of the visa regime for Georgian citizens from May 15. He also lifted a ban on air travel from Russia to Georgia that had been in place since June 2019.
Two Russian soldiers from Kamchatka, Alexander Stepanov and Andrei Mikhailov, have been jailed for two and a half years in prison for refusing to fight in Ukraine, human rights group OVD-Info said on Wednesday.
Prigozhin said on Tuesday that Wagner forces would be deemed ‘traitors’ if they withdrew from Bakhmut. Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Russian private military company Wagner Group, said that he and his mercenaries would be deemed “traitors” if they were to withdraw from Bakhmut, where they have been fighting for several months.
Prigozhin complained on Wednesday that his fighters were still not getting enough shells from the official defence ministry to underpin what he claimed was their advance in the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut.
Putin’s Parade: Investigative reporters at Agentstvo noticed that the Kremlin turned to veteran guests for Victory Day who never fought the Nazis. Putin’s VIP guests at Red Square this year included Yuri Dvoikin, an ex-NKVD agent who hunted down Ukraine’s nationalist underground after 1944, and Gennady Zaitsev, a former KGB agent who aided in the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia.
The decision of the Kazakh authorities to close the borders for suppliers of parallel imports to Russia may leave Russians without equipment from Samsung, Bosch, LG and Electrolux, Kommersant writes citing market participants.
Russia’s shadow fleet: The G7 countries are preparing measures to curb the circumvention of sanctions against the Russian oil industry and, in particular, the price ceiling mechanism, the Financial Times reports , citing an official familiar with the matter. According to him, the sanctions and the oil "ceiling", which prohibits the sale of Russian barrels above $60, will be discussed at a meeting of G7 finance ministers in Japan this week. The countries of the "coalition" intend to intensify the fight against "fraudulent practices" that allow oil from the Russian Federation to be traded at prices above the ceiling, a source told the FT.
A UK-led group of European countries has asked for expressions of interest to supply Ukraine with long-range missiles in what would be another step-up in military support for Kyiv against Russia’s invasion. The call for responses from companies who could provide the munitions with range of up to 300 km (190 miles) was included in a notice posted last week by the International Fund for Ukraine – a group of countries including Britain, Norway, the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden – set up to send weapons to Kyiv, Reuters reports.
Politico: US will not follow UK in sending Ukraine long-range missiles. The Biden administration has no intention of following Britain's lead in sending Ukraine long-range missiles, Politico reported, citing unnamed U.S. officials.
The secretary general of Nato, Jens Stoltenberg, has said the alliance needs to “redouble our efforts” in order to provide security to the 1 billion people in Nato countries, citing what he claimed was a range of rising threats.
In 2022, foreign partners provided Ukraine with UAH 495 billion as part of the World Bank project Public Expenditures for Administrative Capacity Endurance (PEACE) in Ukraine, - Ministry of Finance of Ukraine.
France has asked China to make clear to Russia that Moscow is in an “impasse” in its war with Ukraine, as Beijing seeks to mediate in the conflict.
“It is necessary for China to use its relations with Russia to make Russia understand better that it is at an impasse, and to tell Russia to come back to its senses,” she said.
French parliament approves motion to list Wagner as terrorist organization. France's National Assembly approved a motion urging the French government and the EU to officially designate the Wagner mecenary group as a terrorist organization, France 24 reported on May 9.
Britain is also set to formally blacklist Wagner as a terrorist organization to increase pressure on Russia, the Times of London newspaper reported on Tuesday. After two months of building a legal case, proscription or a formal blacklisting of the group was “imminent” and likely to be enacted within weeks, the newspaper reported citing a government source.
President's office: 37 countries hold summit on tribunal for Russian crimes. The 37 member states of the Core Group have held an online summit to discuss establishing a tribunal for Russian crimes of aggression committed in Ukraine, the President's Office reported on May 9.
Department of State Statement: On May 4, 2023, in The Hague, the Netherlands and the United States concluded their second inter-agency dialogue on cyber issues. Building on their close ties and partnership, the two sides shared their concern over the threat of malicious conduct by state and non-state actors in cyberspace. The Netherlands and the United States specifically condemned Russia’s continuing cyber-attacks in the context of its illegal, unprovoked, and unjustified invasion of Ukraine.
Canada and Latvia will help train Ukrainian troops. They will jointly lead Ukrainian soldiers on Latvian soil from 15 May, the Canadian defence minister, Anita Anand, said on Wednesday.
European People's Party says Ukraine should be invited to join NATO. The European People's Party (EPP), the largest faction in the European Parliament, adopted a resolution calling on NATO to invite Ukraine to join the alliance after the NATO summit in Vilnius in July.
The US FBI has identified and deactivated Snake —"one of Russia's most sophisticated cyber-espionage tools" run by the hacker group Turla. The software has been used for two decades to steal documents from NATO governments, journalists and others, according to The Wall Street Journal, citing court documents released Tuesday. According to American counterintelligence officers, it consists of employees of the Ryazan division of the FSB. To cover their tracks, stolen documents were sent through infected computers located in the United States.
The North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, said Russia “will prevail” in its fight against what he described as “imperialists”, the state news agency KCNA said on Tuesday, in remarks seen to be aimed at Ukraine and its western supporters such as the US.
The Italian government intends to walk back from China’s Belt and Road Initiative. Prime Minister reportedly said so to United States House Speaker Kevin McCarthy when he visited Rome (along with a bipartisan delegation of MPs) last week. This was revealed by Bloomberg, which cited people present at the meeting and explained that the PM’s diplomatic advisers are still considering the details and timing of the decision as they fear an economic backlash from China.
Timothy Snyder, We Forget Nuclear Powers Have Lost Wars
In nearly 15 months of war, despite Russian nuclear propaganda and Western anxiety, there has been no use of nuclear weapons. This is an absence worthy of an explanation. Those who predicted escalation if Ukrainians resisted, if the West supplied weapons or if Russia suffered defeat have thus far been wrong. Strategic thinkers point to deterrence and note that nuclear use would not in fact bring a Russian victory. It would ensure a dramatic Western response and make Russian leaders pariahs. But there is a deeper explanation: Russia’s nuclear talk is itself the weapon.
It rests on false assumptions. Russian nuclear propaganda assumes that the bully always wins. But the bully does not always win. Russian propagandists want us to think that nuclear powers can never lose wars, on the logic that they could always deploy nuclear weapons to win. This is an ahistorical fantasy. Nuclear weapons did not bring the French victory in Algeria, nor did they preserve the British Empire. The Soviet Union lost its war in Afghanistan. America lost in Vietnam and in Iraq and in Afghanistan. Israel failed to win in Lebanon. Nuclear powers lose wars with some regularity. [continue reading]
Eurovision- first semi-final results
Programming note…
Why has the Ukrainian government launched a wave of criminal investigations against the church, detained its leaders, and displayed a willingness to engage in conflict with one of the world’s most prominent religious groups?
May 11: E-Stories