Russia fortifies defensive lines with 200K troops
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Though Russia continues to fail in its attempts to soften Kyiv through air attacks, the Kremlin has fortified its defensive lines on Ukrainian territory with minefields and more than 200,000 troops to present “potentially formidable’’ resistance to Ukraine’s expected counteroffensive.
Russia’s latest overnight barrage featured 30 missiles fired at different parts of Ukraine early Thursday, including the ninth assault on the capital this month, but 29 of the projectiles were intercepted, Ukrainian officials said. The one that got through killed a civilian and injured two others in the southern city of Odesa.
Early Tuesday, Ukrainian air defenses boosted by Western weapons had downed all 18 missiles Russia launched from air, sea and land, including six of the supposedly unstoppable Kinzhal hypersonic rockets, Ukraine’s military said.
While Ukraine is establishing its ability to repel air attacks, a large question remains about its ability to recapture territory claimed by Russia, including the four provinces in the east and south illegally annexed in the fall. A Western official who requested anonymity told The Associated Press that Moscow’s defenses along the 600-mile front line are “potentially formidable.’’
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has enjoyed great success persuading allies to contribute advanced weapons to his country’s cause, most recently garnering an arsenal of missiles, tanks and drones on a European tour to bolster the counteroffensive’s chances against an enemy with dwindling armament.
“All players are well aware of the limited resources and time available to the Russian Federation and #Putin’s elite,” Ukraine presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak tweeted Thursday. “The path is unchanged. We will finish it off.”
Developments:
∙ An explosion caused the derailment of eight train cars Thursday in Russian-occupied Crimea, prompting renewed concerns about possible Ukrainian sabotage behind Russian lines.
∙ The Patriot air-defense battery damaged in Tuesday’s Russian attack on Kyiv has been repaired and is working properly, the Pentagon said. Russia had claimed to destroy the system.
∙ Senior Russian officials who may want to resign during the war are probably being dissuaded by veiled threats of facing trumped-up criminal charges, the British Defense Ministry said in an update.
∙ A Russian court extended by three months the detention of Robert Shonov, a Russian national who’s a former employee of the U.S. Consulate in Vladivostok, on charges of cooperating with a foreign state. The U.S. State Department has condemned his arrest.
∙ Moldova, a former Soviet republic of about 2.6 million people that borders Ukraine, has severed its dependence on Russian gas, Moldovan Prime Minister Dorin Recean said.
A “substantial” new package of sanctions shows the U.S. is intent on “tightening the screws” on Russia for invading Ukraine, a senior Biden administration official said Thursday.
The latest measure aims to make it harder for Russia to evade sanctions, access the international financial system and continue waging its war. Group of Seven nations, which are meeting in Japan, will also take steps to further reduce their reliance on Russia energy sources, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The Biden administration said it would blacklist 70 entities from receiving U.S. exports and introduce more than 300 new sanctions on individuals, entities, vessels and aircraft that the official said would target financial facilitators and other actors in Europe, the Middle East and Asia.
− Francesca Chambers
The Biden administration, which has resisted calls from the Ukrainian government to provide it with F-16 fighter jets, is hinting it won’t stand in the way of European allies supplying them, CNN reported Thursday.
Permission to export the American-made planes to a third country is required because they contain sensitive technology.
Zelenskyy has been lobbying for the warplanes and found a receptive audience in prime ministers Rishi Sunak of Britain and Mark Rutte of the Netherlands, who on Tuesday agreed to put together an international coalition to procure the jets and train Ukrainian pilots. The Dutch have said they would be open to exporting the planes.
Ukraine’s much-anticipated spring counteroffensive “cannot determine the course of the entire war,” and the West should have reasonable expectations, Natalia Halibarenko, ambassador of Ukraine’s mission to NATO, said Thursday.
Halibarenko told Lithuanian media outlet LRT it will probably take several offensives to drive Russian troops out of her country. Military support from the West is increasing, and she acknowledged that her country’s success depends heavily on international assistance.
“I understand that a certain fatigue is felt over time, this is normal human nature,” she said. “There cannot be that state of constant pressure. We tell Western societies that you help us with money, things, other support, but Ukrainians pay for freedom with their lives, and this should be kept in mind and not underestimated.”
More than 1,100 draft-age Russians trying to avoid military conscription have fled to Finland and are seeking asylum, some of thousands awaiting determination of their fate in several European countries.
The Finnish Immigration Service says it is awaiting the European Union’s position on the asylum requests, Finnish news agency STT reports.
“We haven’t been able to issue decisions regarding asylum,” said Sanna Sutter, the Interior Ministry’s immigration director. He said other Nordic nations also have decided to wait for EU guidance, but the EU has not provided a timeline on the question.
Thousands of Russians have fled since President Vladimir Putin announced the “partial mobilization” of 300,000 people last September. But one soldier, who made global headlines when he fled the war and sought asylum in Norway, says he wants to go back to Russia.
Andrei Medvedev, 26, had fought for Russia’s Wagner mercenaries before slipping into Norway in January. A few weeks later he was arrested on charges involving multiple barroom scraps and was sentenced last month to 14 days in a Norwegian jail.
“I hoped that I could find peace and calm here, that I could leave all the politics, the war, the army behind, but somehow I couldn’t manage,” Medvedev said in Russian on a video translated by Reuters. “We shall see what happens in Russia. If they kill me, OK. If they don’t, thanks a lot.”
The leader of Russian mercenary troops and a popular pro-Kremlin blogger both rejected Russian Defense Ministry claims of gains in the crucial battle for the eastern Ukraine city of Bakhmut as the war slogs toward its 15-month mark with little indication an end is near.
Ukraine’s military claimed modest gains in areas north and south of the beleaguered, nearly deserted city that once was home to more than 70,000 people. Russian claims of marginal advances were dismissed by the mercenary Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin, who criticized the defense ministry on Telegram for spinning what was actually a retreat.
Russian blogger Rybar agreed, posting on Telegram that Ukraine’s “unannounced counteroffensive” is underway with fierce battles that are allowing Ukraine to fulfill an important goal against Russian Federation troops.
“They are forcing the RF Armed Forces to stretch their forces and remove the most combat-ready units from other critical areas, forcing them to be transferred to threatened sectors of the front,” Rybar posted. “Now, unfortunately, we are in the position of playing along and are following the lead of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, pulling the most experienced units of the RF Armed Forces into the Bakhmut meat grinder. … What this threatens in the short term, even a fool will guess.”
Employees at Russia’s Institute of Theoretical and Applied Mathematics in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk published an open letter in defense of three of their hypersonic missile scientists − Anatoly Maslov, Alexander Shiplyuk, and Valery Zvegintsev − whom Russian authorities reportedly arrested under suspicion of “high treason,” the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War reports. The scientists says the arrests deter the younger generation from pursuing careers in science, which contributes to a decrease in the quality of scientific research. Kremlin Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that the Kremlin was aware of the letter and that Russian security services were involved in the case.