Cracks in the Russian invasion. Bakhmut is turning into a giant Stalingrad for Putin, revolution lurks and Ukrainian attacks into Belgorod Oblast
All that Vladimir Putin is getting left with are second raters like the
Chechen? thug pictured as Russian state approved Blood and Crips style drug gang leadership to support a dying invasion of Ukraine. And it is having a huge strategic toll on Russia
Robin Horsfall stated it, and Yevgeny Prigozhin confirmed it
quote
end of quote
Whereas
quote
Prigozhin, a businessman whose influence has deepened since Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine more than a year ago, has scathingly criticised the country’s military leadership, accusing Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov of incompetence.
If ordinary Russians continued getting their children back in coffins while the children of the elite “shook their arses” in the sun, he warned in his latest video, Russia would face turmoil along the lines of 1917 that brought the Bolsheviks to power.
“This divide can end as in 1917 with a revolution,” he said.
end of quote
He is half right. The revolution is about to hit while Putin calls Ukraine a fictitious country
quote
The battle for Bakhmut has increasingly been the?focal point of the war , now in its 65th week, as Russian President Vladimir Putin prioritised capturing the region of Donetsk, in which the city with a pre-war population of 70,000 is situated, and neighbouring Luhansk.
Ukraine says it has used attritional street warfare in Bakhmut to draw in Russian forces from other parts of the front and to inflict high casualties. Over the past two weeks, its forces also launched a number of flanking operations around the city to reclaim land.
“Ukrainian counterattacks near Bakhmut have notably likely eliminated the threat of a Russian encirclement of Ukrainian forces in Bakhmut and forced Russian troops to allocate scarce military resources to defend against a limited and localized offensive effort, as Ukrainian command likely intended,” the Washington-based Institute of the Study of War said on Friday.
end of quote
In other words, Bakhmut is turning into Vladimir Putin's Stalingrad: Meanwhile there is now competition with Lavrov in the "Global south" appearing for once
quote
Political analysts say?Ukraine?is accelerating its push to court the Global South – a term meaning Latin America, Africa and much of Asia – and that the effort has taken on greater importance as rival peace proposals to end the war in?Ukraine?have popped up in other capitals.
China, which has touted its own peace plan,?sent a top envoy to Kyiv, Moscow and European capitals to discuss a “political settlement” this month. South Africa?said last week?Kyiv and Moscow had agreed to discuss a peace plan with African leaders. The Vatican also?fleshed out?a peace mission this month.
end of quote
quote
Wagner chief says 20,000 of its troops killed in Bakhmut battle
Yevgeny Prigozhin repeats criticism of Russia’s top brass and warns high number of fatalities is a risk to the country.
Published On 25 May 2023
25 May 2023
Some 20,000 troops from Russia’s Wagner mercenary group were killed in the months-long battle for control of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, its founder has said.
Yevgeny Prigozhin said he had recruited about 50,000 prisoners to?fight with Wagner ?in Russia’s war in Ukraine and that about 20 percent of them had been killed.
end of list
A similar number of his contract soldiers had also perished in the battle for the city, he told Russian political strategist Konstantin Dolgov in a video interview posted on his Telegram channel on Wednesday.
This weekend, Wagner and the Russian military claimed to have taken?control of Bakhmut , which has been left in ruins by the prolonged fighting, with Russian President Vladimir Putin congratulating the armed forces. But Kyiv has said its forces continue to fight for the city.
Prigozhin, a businessman whose influence has deepened since Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine more than a year ago, has scathingly criticised the country’s military leadership, accusing Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov of incompetence.
If ordinary Russians continued getting their children back in coffins while the children of the elite “shook their arses” in the sun, he warned in his latest video, Russia would face turmoil along the lines of 1917 that brought the Bolsheviks to power.
“This divide can end as in 1917 with a revolution,” he said.
“First, the soldiers will stand up and after that, their loved ones will rise up,” he said. “There are already tens of thousands of them – relatives of those killed. And there will probably be hundreds of thousands – we cannot avoid that.”
Last year, Prigozhin toured?Russian prisons ?in a bid to convince inmates to fight with Wagner in Ukraine in exchange for an amnesty if they survived to return home.
Sign up for Al Jazeera
Week in the Middle East
Catch up on our coverage of the region, all in one place.
Sign up
By signing up, you agree to our?Privacy Policy
Russia’s most powerful mercenary leader said Ukraine was preparing a counteroffensive aimed at pushing Russian troops back to its borders before 2014, when Moscow invaded and then annexed Crimea.
Ukraine would try to encircle Bakhmut, the focus of intense fighting in the east, and attack Crimea, he added.
“Most likely of all, this scenario will not be good for Russia so we need to prepare for an arduous war,” Prigozhin said in the interview.
“We are in such a condition that we could f***ing lose Russia – that is the main problem … We need to impose martial law.”
The attacks in Russia’s?Belgorod region , which Moscow has blamed on Ukraine, was a further example of the failures of the military leadership, he said, warning that Ukraine would seek to strike deeper into Russia.
Russia needed to mobilise more men and gear its economy exclusively to war, the Wagner chief said.
Prigozhin is known for his?expletive-laden outbursts ?directed at Shoigu and Gerasimov.
Earlier this month, he accused the Russian defence chief of failing to provide his soldiers with enough ammunition and threatened to pull out of Bakhmut.
He filmed the video in front of rows of corpses he said were dead Wagner fighters as he unleashed a wave of invective at Shoigu and Gerasimov.
end of quote
Whereas
quote
|
Ukraine and Russia trade places in battle for Bakhmut
What happened in the 65th week of Russia’s war in Ukraine?
Published On 24 May 2023
24 May 2023
Russia’s Wagner Group claims to have captured Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine this week, but the government in Kyiv says it intends to recapture the?ruined city ?after surrounding it.
“We continue to advance on the flanks in the suburbs of Bakhmut and are actually approaching the capture of the city in a tactical encirclement,” overall ground forces commander Oleksandr Syrskyi said as Ukrainian forces added that they had recaptured 4sq km (1.5sq miles) of territory
KEEP READING
list of 3 items
The battle for Bakhmut has increasingly been the?focal point of the war , now in its 65th week, as Russian President Vladimir Putin prioritised capturing the region of Donetsk, in which the city with a pre-war population of 70,000 is situated, and neighbouring Luhansk.
Ukraine says it has used attritional street warfare in Bakhmut to draw in Russian forces from other parts of the front and to inflict high casualties. Over the past two weeks, its forces also launched a number of flanking operations around the city to reclaim land.
“Ukrainian counterattacks near Bakhmut have notably likely eliminated the threat of a Russian encirclement of Ukrainian forces in Bakhmut and forced Russian troops to allocate scarce military resources to defend against a limited and localized offensive effort, as Ukrainian command likely intended,” the Washington-based Institute of the Study of War said on Friday.
The following day, Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner Group and its mercenary forces,?said they had captured Bakhmut . Russia’s Ministry of Defence followed with an overnight announcement that it had conquered the city – competing, as they have done for months, for credit on the eastern front.
The online news service Meduza also said Bakhmut, for all intents and purposes, had been captured. The “disputed” area consists only of “a dozen high-rise buildings, schools, a kindergarten and some garages at the end of Tchaikovsky Street”, it said.
But Ukrainian Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Maliar said the defenders still held an area of “industrial and infrastructure facilities” in the southwestern outskirts of the city, known as the “airplane neighbourhood” because of a monument of a MiG-17 fighter plane there.
Maliar said Ukrainian troops remained in the neighbourhood on Tuesday. A day earlier, eastern forces spokesman Serhiy Cherevaty said Ukrainian soldiers carried out flanking manoeuvres to the city’s north and south and had pushed forward 200 to 400 metres (220 to 440 yards), indicating that the battle was anything but over.
Russia has committed enormous resources to the battle.
By signing up, you agree to our?Privacy Policy
On Saturday, Maliar said Moscow had sent several thousand reinforcements to Bakhmut. Cherevaty said they included airborne, motorised rifle and special forces. British military intelligence said it believed they could be several battalions, underlining the importance of the battle to the Kremlin.
“Russia’s leadership likely continue to see capturing Bakhmut as the key immediate war aim, which would allow them to claim some degree of success in the conflict,” a British intelligence analysis said.
领英推荐
Andriy Yusov, Ukraine’s military intelligence spokesman, said on Sunday, “The fact that the enemy is forced to transfer additional reserves in order to continue the operation on Bakhmut, in general, indicates the failure of their offensive actions.”
The Wagner Group has done the brunt of the fighting in Bakhmut, and Prigozhin threatened to pull out earlier in May, an action the Ministry of Defence said would be dealt with as treason. But on Sunday, Prigozhin said his soldiers would evacuate the theatre beginning on Thursday.
Incursion into Belgorod
Farther to the northeast, meanwhile, two pro-Ukrainian and anti-Kremlin militias on Monday staged a rare incursion into Russian territory.
Vyacheslav Gladkov, the governor of Russia’s Belgorod region bordering Ukraine, said the Federal Security Service, Border Service and National Guard were battling “a sabotage and reconnaissance group of the Armed Forces of Ukraine”.
The Ukrainian government denied any involvement, but members of the two groups – identified as the Russian Volunteer Corps and the Freedom of Russia Legion – claimed responsibility.
“Residents of Russia! We are Russians just like you,” said a video posted by the Freedom of Russia Legion. “The only difference between us is that we no longer wanted to justify the actions of criminals under the power of Russia and took up arms to defend our freedom and yours. Putin’s Russia has rotted from corruption, censorship and repression.”
Military reporters said the groups had captured the settlement of Kozinka near the border and attacked two others.
Yusov identified the fighters as Russian partisans who had launched “an armed struggle against the criminal regime of Vladimir Putin.” He said they could create a “certain security zone in the border regions of Russia bordering Ukraine”, from which shelling has been directed at Ukrainian towns and settlements.
It was not clear what role Ukraine had played, if any, in arming the groups. Russia’s Ministry of Defence also said nothing about the provenance of their weapons. Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhaylo Podolyak said Ukraine “observes the events in the Belgorod region of Russia with interest … but has no direct relation to it”.
On Tuesday, Russia’s defence ministry?said ?it had driven the forces back into Ukraine and said it had killed more than 70 of their fighters. Air raids, artillery fire and units covering the state border of the Western Military District were involved, the ministry said.
F-16s green-lighted
Separately, Western arms supplies to Ukraine reached another inflection point this week as United States President Joe Biden backed the joint allied training of Ukrainian pilots on F-16 fighter jets, before a decision is taken on how to do the provision of the aircraft – a pressing request by Ukraine.
Speaking on the sidelines of a?G7 meeting ?in Hiroshima, Japan, Zelenskyy assured Biden that the planes would not be used to strike Russian territory.
US national security adviser Jake Sullivan said the F-16s were not part of an anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensive that is expected to begin soon.
“We’ve reached a moment where it is time to look down the road and say, ‘What is Ukraine going to need as part of a future force to be able to deter and defend against Russian aggression as we go forward?’ F-16 fourth-generation fighter aircraft are part of that mix,” Sullivan said at a White House briefing.
The G7 signed off on new sanctions against Russia targeting its energy, metallurgical, technology and defence industries. They also targeted “an international network of organizations that procure components for the Russian company that produces Orlan drones”.
Ukrainian intelligence pointed out months ago that Russia was procuring sensitive parts such as microchips from Western companies for its missile and drone industry by shipping them through intermediary countries.
end of quote
Whereas
quote
Ukraine courts ‘Global South’ in push to challenge Russia
Ukraine’s foreign minister begins a tour of Africa after President Zelenskyy’s visits to the Middle East and Asia.
Published On 23 May 2023
23 May 2023
Ukraine’s foreign minister has begun a tour of African countries, stepping up wartime Kyiv’s diplomatic push to challenge Russian influence in the Global South and cement the vision laid out by Ukraine as the only path to peace.
Top diplomat Dmytro Kuleba said on Tuesday his main priority was to get African countries to endorse President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s peace plan as he travelled to Morocco on his second tour of Africa since Russia invaded in February last year.
“Important negotiations lie ahead with African leaders and business,” he wrote on Instagram, saying he aimed to win support for the uninterrupted flow of Ukrainian grain via the Black Sea and secure new openings for Ukrainian business.
The tour follows three days of diplomacy by Zelenskyy at the?Arab League ?on Friday and then at a?Group of Seven ?summit in Japan. As well as G7 leaders, he met those of India, Indonesia, Iraq and the Saudi crown prince during his travels.
Political analysts say?Ukraine?is accelerating its push to court the Global South – a term meaning Latin America, Africa and much of Asia – and that the effort has taken on greater importance as rival peace proposals to end the war in?Ukraine?have popped up in other capitals.
China, which has touted its own peace plan,?sent a top envoy to Kyiv, Moscow and European capitals to discuss a “political settlement” this month. South Africa?said last week?Kyiv and Moscow had agreed to discuss a peace plan with African leaders. The Vatican also?fleshed out?a peace mission this month.
“The urgency is because of these peace plans which are popping up,” said Alyona Getmanchuk, a political expert who heads the New Europe Center, a think tank in Kyiv.
“At some point, Ukraine realised that it had underperformed in the Global South for many, many years,” said Getmanchuk.
July peace summit?
Ukraine says Zelenskyy’s 10-point “peace formula”, which envisages the withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukrainian land, must be the basis for any settlement of the war launched by Russia.
Speaking at the G7 over the weekend, Zelenskyy proposed holding a global peace summit in July to promote the formula. Denmark’s foreign minister said on Monday?that Copenhagen would be prepared to host it.
Sign up for Al Jazeera
Week in the Middle East
Catch up on our coverage of the region, all in one place.
Sign up
By signing up, you agree to our?Privacy Policy
The minister, Lars Lokke Rasmussen, said it would be “necessary to build interest and involvement from countries like India, Brazil and China”.
While the West has poured military, financial and humanitarian aid into?Ukraine, Russia has bolstered its relations with Global South powers during the war, including by?selling ?more of its energy to India and China.
Russia ?has been nurturing ties in Africa for years and?plans to hold an Africa-Russia summit in St Petersburg in July. Moscow’s veteran foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, toured the continent last year and visited at least twice this year.
“There’s a growing realisation in Europe and?Ukraine?that there’s a risk that this war will come to be seen as essentially a European conflict that other countries don’t need to be concerned about and don’t need to condemn,” said Nigel Gould-Davies, an expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
“What we have here is Europe and?Ukraine?responding to Russia’s concerted efforts to create a narrative in the world about the war that does not condemn the war and seeks to maintain a relationship with Russia,” he added.
Kuleba did not say which countries he would visit on his latest tour of Africa.
His first tour last October took him to Senegal, Ivory Coast, Ghana and Kenya before it was cut short when Russia launched a campaign of missile and drone strikes targeting critical infrastructure in the run-up to winter.
end of quote
Whereas
quote
end of quote
Andrew Beckwith, PhD