100,000 Russians killed, wounded in war
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Russia to withdraw from Ukrainian port city of Kherson
Russian troops will withdraw from the crucial port city of Kherson, according to the commander of Russian forces in Ukraine.
Damien Henderson, USA TODAY
As many as 40,000 Ukrainian civilians and “well over” 100,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded since Moscow’s invasion less than nine months ago, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff says.
The estimate came shortly before the Russian Defense Ministry announced Thursday that its troops had begun withdrawing from Kherson, the crucial Ukrainian port city and only regional capital Russia had seized in the conflict.
Army Gen. Mark Milley, the highest-ranking U.S. military officer, said Russia had amassed up to 30,000 troops in Kherson. A full retreat, he said, could take several weeks.
“The initial indicators are they are in fact doing it,” Milley said. “I believe they’re doing it in order to preserve their force, to reestablish defensive lines south of the (Dnieper) river, but that remains to be seen.”
Milley said he expected that Ukrainian military casualties were similar to Russia’s.
“There has been a tremendous amount of suffering, human suffering,” he said at The Economic Club of New York.
Latest developments:
►The Biden administration is poised to unveil another wave of aid for Ukraine, national security adviser Jake Sullivan said at a White House briefing Thursday. The package will include missiles and other air defense help, he said.
► Russian forces pounded the city of Nikopol and nearby areas overnight, Dnipropetrovsk Gov. Valentyn Reznichenko said. The neighboring Zaporizhzhia region, home to Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, also was shelled, according to Ukraine’s presidential office. Russian has occupied the plant for months.
►Russian and Russian-controlled forces have committed war crimes and likely crimes against humanity by unlawfully deporting civilians from occupied parts of Ukraine, Amnesty International said in a report Thursday.
►Britain has frozen assets owned by Russian oligarchs, other individuals and entities sanctioned for Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine that together account for $20.5 billion, the U.K. government said.
Almost 90% of Ukrainians believe that in 10 years Ukraine will be a prosperous country within the European Union, according to a survey by the Kiev International Institute of Sociology. Respondents were asked to choose an optimistic or pessimistic scenario for the future of Ukraine. Of those who chose an optimistic scenario, 63% fully share the expectation of a prosperous country within the EU, and 26% said they were less certain but still believed that was in Ukraine’s future.
The phone survey of 1,000 Ukrainians across the country drew only 5% of respondents who believed that in 10 years Ukraine will be a devastated country with an outflow of people.
“Taking into account our own observations and the experience of conducting surveys over many years, we still remain optimistic that, for the most part, respondents answer the questions sincerely,” the researchers said in their report.
Russian President Vladimir Putin will not attend the Group of 20 summit in Indonesia next week, an Indonesian government official said Thursday, avoiding a possible confrontation with the United States and its allies over the war. Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan, chief of support for G-20 events, said Putin’s decision was “the best for all of us.”
President Joe Biden, Chinese President Xi Jinping and other world leaders are to attend the two-day summit, which starts Tuesday. Biden and Xi have announced they plans to meet privately at the event to “discuss efforts to maintain and deepen lines of communication between the United States and the PRC, responsibly manage competition, and work together where our interests align, especially on transnational challenges that affect the international community.”
The Biden administration will not provide Ukraine with advanced Gray Eagle MQ-1C drones because of concerns about escalating the war, he Wall Street Journal reported, citing unnamed U.S. officials and other people familiar with the matter. Russia has been pounding Ukraine energy facilities with explosive, Iranian-built drones for weeks. But U.S. officials are hesitant to provide Ukraine with weapons that could hit targets in Russia.
Contributing: The Associated Press