BAKHMUT, UKRAINE – OCTOBER 27: Ukrainian civilians ride their bikes near partially collapsed … [+] buildings in Bakhmut city, where the most violent conflicts take place in Ukraine on October 27, 2022. Massive explosions can be heard in the city center of Bakhmut, where warplanes fly low and armies of Ukraine and Russia use artillery systems, tanks and other weapons. (Photo by Metin Aktas/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
Dispatches from Ukraine. Day 246.
As Russia’s attack on Ukraine continues and the war rages on, reliable sources of information are critical. Forbes gathers information and provides updates on the situation.
By Polina Rasskazova
Ukraine’s energy infrastructure is under Russian attack. At night, Russian forces damaged energy infrastructure facilities in the central regions, disabling a number of essential facilities. The attacks were carried out by so-called kamikaze drones. According to information from the head of the Kyiv Regional Military Administration, Oleksiy Kuleba, there were no deaths or injuries. The office of the President of Ukraine warned that in order to overcome the consequences of the night attacks on Kyiv city, Kyiv, Zhytomyr, Chernihiv and the Cherkasy regions, from today onwards, “energy companies are forced to introduce tighter restrictions” on their supplies of electricity.
Kharkiv region.
Last night, the Russian army shelled areas of the Ukrainian regions located on the border with the Russian Federation with mortars, barrel and rocket artillery. According to the head of the Kharkiv Regional State Administration, Oleg Synehubov, there were no injuries as a result of the attacks. However, Sineрubov reported a high number of mines in the region. “Yesterday, in the Izium district, an anti-tank mine blew up a car of pyrotechnicians of the State Emergency Service. 1 person died, 6 were injured,” he said. A 62-year-old man was also injured by a mine today.
Russian invaders conduct military censorship in the temporarily occupied territories. According to the mayor of Melitopol, Ivan Fedorov, as of today, Russian forces may check the mobile phones of any resident in any occupied town of the Zaporizhzhia region. “They will check who a person communicates with, what they watch on the Internet. And if they find a subscription to Ukrainian Telegram channels there, the person will be fined or even thrown into a basement,” he said.
Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, Ukraine has conducted 28 exchanges and freed 978 people from Russian captivity, including 99 civilians,announced the Deputy Minister of Defense, Hanna Malyar, at a briefing. “The past few weeks have been a landmark in the issue of prisoner of war exchanges. Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, 28 exchanges have already been carried out and 978 people have been released, including 99 civilians,” the deputy minister said. “Negotiations regarding the release and exchange of our prisoners of war are ongoing.”
The National Police of Ukraine documented the mass burial of citizens in the Kharkiv region. The grave was found in the Boriv district and, according to preliminary police data, at least 17 people—civilians and soldiers of the Ukrainian Armed Forces—were buried there.
Residents of the village of Kopanky told the police that the Russians collected the bodies of the dead throughout the district. “On April 13, they brought in two trucks, dug a hole up to 3 meters deep with an excavator, and dumped all the bodies there. Then the burial place was leveled with tanks,” said eyewitnesses. It is reported that the Russians didn’t mark the grave and did not allow the villagers to do so.
Russia’s General Sergei Surovikin is no stranger to mass murder and spreading terror.
In Chechnya, the shaven-headed veteran officer, who has the physique of a wrestler and an expression to match, vowed to “destroy three Chechen fighters for every Russian soldier killed.” And he’s remembered bitterly in northern Syria for reducing much of the city of Aleppo to ruins.
The 56-year-old air force general also oversaw the relentless targeting of clinics, hospitals and civilian infrastructure in rebel-held Idlib in 2019, an effort to break opponents’ will and send refugees fleeing to Europe via neighboring Turkey. The 11-month campaign “showed callous disregard for the lives of the roughly 3 million civilians in the area,” noted Human Rights Watch in a scathing report.
Now he is repeating his Syrian playbook in Ukraine.
Two weeks ago, Vladimir Putin appointed Surovikin as the overall commander of Russia’s so-called special military operation, to the delight of Moscow’s hawks. Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov praised Surovikin as “a real general and a warrior.” He will “improve the situation,” Kadyrov added in a social media post.
But reversing a series of stunning battlefield Ukrainian victories and shifting the tide of the war may be beyond even the ruthless Surovikin. Ukrainians have shown throughout the year they’re made of stern stuff and aren’t going to be intimidated by war crimes — and they’ve endured bombing and bombardments before by equally unscrupulous Russian generals.
But Western military officials and analysts note there are already signs of more tactical coherence than was seen under his predecessor General Alexander Dvornikov. “His war tactics totally breach the rules of war but unfortunately they proved effective in Syria,” a senior British military intelligence officer told POLITICO. “As a war strategist he has a record of effectiveness — however vicious,” the officer added.
Surovikin and other officials point to the targeting of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure with a massive wave of attacks the past week. Strikes at the weekend resulted in power outages across the country leaving more than a million households without electricity, the deputy head of the Ukrainian presidency, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, said Saturday.
“These are vile strikes on critical objects,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address. “The world can and must stop this terror,” he said. “The geography of this latest mass strike is very wide,” Zelenskyy added. “Of course we don’t have the technical ability to knock down 100 percent of the Russian missiles and strike drones. I am sure that, gradually, we will achieve that, with help from our partners. Already now, we are downing a majority of cruise missiles, a majority of drones.”
Intercepting a majority of what’s being fired by the Russians at Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, though, isn’t enough to halt the disruption Surovikin is endeavoring to provoke with the strikes. The scale of the damage caused to Ukraine’s power system at the weekend exceeded what was inflicted in the first wave of strikes on energy infrastructure on October 10, according to a Telegram post by Ukrenergo, the state grid operator.
Cheap shots
Around a third of the country’s power stations have been destroyed since the attacks started, Ukrainian authorities say.
And for Russia the cost of the aerial assault is cheap, relying as it does on Iran’s Shahed-136 unmanned aerial vehicles, basically flying bombs nicknamed “kamikaze drones” because they are destroyed on impact.
Russian President Vladimir Putin with then-PM Dmitry Medvedev and Sergei Surovikin in 2017 | Pool photo by Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP via Getty Images
The drones, which have a flying range of 2,500 kilometers, loiter over a target until ordered to attack. With a wingspan of 2.5 meters they can be difficult to identify on radar and cost only an estimated €20,000 to make, compared, say, to cruise missiles costing up to €2 million to produce.
Last week the White House said Iranian drone experts — trainers and tech support workers — have been deployed on the ground in Russia-annexed Crimea to help launch attacks on Ukraine. “Tehran is now directly engaged on the ground, and through the provision of weapons that are impacting civilians and civilian infrastructure in Ukraine,” said national security spokesman John Kirby.
But turning to Iran for assistance also demonstrates a Russian weakness, says a Pentagon adviser. That they are using Iranian drones suggests they really are running out of missiles. “I don’t think their capabilities are anyway as good as they claim. I’ve always thought that the Russians were a bit of a hollow force. They don’t have depth in range with capabilities and they can’t really apply them very effectively. The fact that they’re going to Iranians for drone technology, that’s a pretty sad statement about the once vaunted Russian military-industrial or Soviet military-industrial complex,” the adviser told POLITICO.
And while the drones are helping to cause considerable damage, their light explosive payloads at 36 kilograms present the Russians with a problem – they are not powerful enough to cause “decommissioning” damage to big power stations and so are being aimed at smaller sub-stations instead. Eventually, too, Western and Ukrainian experts will find ways to jam the GPS system the drones depend on to shift them off target. So, they may have a short shelf life of effectiveness, say Western officials.
Not having sufficient depth in terms of capabilities isn’t the only problem facing Russian generals. One of the most debilitating problems for the Russians has been the lack of small-unit leadership and competent supervision on the battlefield.
Ukrainian servicemen and police officers stand guard in a street after a drone attack in Kyiv on October 17, 2022 | Sergei Supinsky/AFP via Getty Images
The Ukrainians since 2014 have been steeped in U.S. military doctrine and training, which focuses on building a professional corps of corporals and sergeants who understand the big picture and are given the delegated authority to make decisions on the battlefield as they lead their units, according to John Barranco, an analyst at the Atlantic Council who oversaw the U.S. Marines’ initial operations in Afghanistan after the 9/11 terror attacks and served in Iraq.
The failure of the Russians to build up such a cadre has plagued them in Ukraine and it isn’t a deficiency Surovikin has time to rectify. In fact, the situation is likely to worsen with the Kremlin now throwing into inadequately battle-trained conscripts from Putin’s partial mobilization order.
Russian retreat
After just a handful of days’ training, conscripts are already dying. And draftees are being sent to what is now the crucial front in this stage of the war — the southern port city of Kherson — where Russian authorities have ordered all residents to leave ahead of a closing advance by Ukrainian troops.
Kherson city is the only regional capital Russia has managed to seize since the invasion began. It was a key prize in establishing a land bridge between Crimea and Ukraine’s south, as well as opening the way for a potential assault on the major Black Sea port of Odesa.
But a Ukrainian counteroffensive that started in the summer is now bearing down on Kherson city. Russia’s tactical position in the area is highly compromised, with units of paratroopers dug in on the west bank of the Dnieper River, where they are highly vulnerable. “From a battlefield geometry point of view, it is a terrible position for the Russians,” Jack Watling, a land warfare expert at Britain’s Royal United Services Institute, told POLITICO.
Watling, who’s been conducting operational analysis with Ukraine’s general staff, says the Russians on the west bank are among their most capable troops but can’t be resupplied reliably “at the scale needed to make them competitive” and they won’t be able to counterattack.
“The Ukrainians have the initiative and can dictate the tempo,” Watling said. “From a purely military point of view, the Russians would be much better off withdrawing from Kherson city and focusing on holding the river [from the east bank] and then putting the bulk of their forces on the Zaporizhzhia axis, but for political reasons they have been slow to do that and seem to ready to fight a delaying action.”
A view taken on October 19, 2022 shows a road sign reading “Kherson” in the town of Armyansk in the north of Moscow-annexed Crimean peninsula bordering the Russian-controlled Kherson region in southern Ukraine | AFP via Getty Images
That seems in line with what Ukraine’s general staff reported at the weekend. Russian troop movements have been occurring in the Kherson region with some units preparing for urban combat, while others have been withdrawing.
In short, Surovikin is being forced to try to pull off one of the most difficult of military maneuvers — an orderly retreat to reposition forces, including draftees with scant training and units that have no cohesion. When more experienced Russian troops tried the same move near Kharkiv in northeast Ukraine last month, they suffered a rout.
Thuggery alone won’t save Russian conscripts from motivated and agile Ukrainian forces. Whether Surovikin has the tactical skills to navigate a dangerous retreat will be what counts.
Taisiia Kovaliova, 15, stands amongst the rubble of a playground in front of her house hit by a … [+] Russian missile in Mykolaiv, Sunday, Oct. 23, 2022. “I spent all my childhood and life at this courtyard, I already feel nostalgic. I went to this swing that stood it all” Taisiia said. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved
Dispatches from Ukraine. Day 242.
As Russia’s attack on Ukraine continues and the war rages on, reliable sources of information are critical. Forbes gathers information and provides updates on the situation.
By Polina Rasskazova
On the night of October 23, the Russian army again attacked the south of Ukraine with kamikaze drones. Eleven Russian drones were destroyed by the forces of Ukraine’s Operational Command “South” in the Mykolaiv region, three more Shahed-136s were shot down by other units of the Defense Forces of the South of Ukraine. The Ukrainian parliament informed about cooperating with the companies supplying drone components to Iran in order to stop that. “At the same time, we are working with Iran’s neighbors to stop or delay the supply of drones to Russia,” the member of the parliament said.
Mykolaiv Region. At night, the Russian military fired S-300 missiles at one of the districts of the city. As a result of shelling, three civilians were injured. According to the Head of the Mykolaiv Regional State Administration, Vitaliy Kim, one of the rockets hit a five-story residential building, completely destroying an apartment on the fifth floor.
Zaporizhzhia. Tonight, the Russian military launched an attack on the city of Zaporizhia with “Shahed-136” kamikaze drones, as well as surrounding towns, using S-300 missiles. “One of the drones hit an administrative building in the regional center. According to preliminary information, there are no victims,” reported the head of the Zaporizhzhia Regional State Administration. As a result of rocket fire in one of the villages of the Zaporizhzhia district, private houses and a school were damaged.
Dnipropetrovsk Region. In the morning, the Russians again attacked the city of Nikopol with artillery or missiles. Six people were injured: four men and two women. According to the State Emergency Service of Ukraine, as a result of the attack, residential houses, a kindergarten and three private enterprises were damaged in the city.
Donetsk Region. 20 strikes were carried out by Russian troops on the cities of the Donetsk region in Eastern Ukraine. The Russian army fired with the BM-27 Uragan, the BM-21 Grad, and artillery, the National Police of Ukraine reports. As a result of the attack, 14 civilian objects were destroyed and damaged—10 residential buildings, a kindergarten, and a store. Three people were killed as a result of night shelling of Kurdyumivka in the Toretsk community. “Artillery shells destroyed two houses. A couple died under the debris of the house, and a man died as a result of the fire,” the head of Donetsk, Ova Pavlo Kyrylenko, wrote in the Telegram channel. Also, Kyrylenko called on the residents of the region to evacuate immediately so as not to “turn themselves into a target for the Russians.”
Destroyed domes lie next to a damaged church in the retaken village of Bohorodychne, eastern … [+] Ukraine, Saturday, Oct. 22, 2022. (AP Photo/Andriy Andriyenko)
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved
Dispatches from Ukraine. Day 241.
As Russia’s attack on Ukraine continues and the war rages on, reliable sources of information are critical. Forbes gathers information and provides updates on the situation.
By Polina Rasskazova
At night, the armed forces of the Russian Federation launched a massive attack: 36 rockets, most of which were shot down. As a result of the destruction, almost 15,000 million Ukrainians were left without electricity. According to the deputy head of the president’s office, 672,000 subscribers were disconnected in the Khmelnytskyi region; 188,400 in the Mykolaiv region; 102,000 in the Volyn region; 242,000 in the Cherkasy region; 174,790 in the Rivne region; 61,913 in the Kirovohrad region; and 10,500 in the Odesa region. The scale of damage from today’s missile attack by Russian troops on energy facilities of main networks in the western and central regions of Ukraine may exceed the consequences of the attack on October 10-12, Ukrenergo reported.
The National Power Company has currently forced restrictions on energy supply in many cities and regions of Ukraine:“The consumer restrictions are necessary to reduce the load on the networks and avoid repeated accidents after the power grids were damaged by terrorist missile attacks.”
Odesa Region. Two cruise missiles hit a critical infrastructure object, reported Odesa District Military Administration. During the attack, three locals were injured.
Lutsk, Volyn Region. An energy facility in Lutsk, which was hit by Russian missiles in the morning, is completely destroyed and cannot be restored, Lutsk Mayor Ihor Polishchuk said in a comment to Suspilne. According to preliminary information, the object was hit by Kh-101 cruise missiles. In the regional center, a private home was damaged by the shock wave and fragments of the rocket. One person was injured.
Mykolaiv Region. According to the information of Ukraine’s Operational Command “South,” at night, over the Mykolaiv region, air defense forces shot down 10 “Shahed-136” kamikaze drones. Also, as a result of a Russian attack with high-precision Kalibr missiles, two objects of critical infrastructure were hit.
Donetsk Region. During the day, the Russian army launched 22 strikes on the civilian population. 13 settlements were under the fire, the National Police of Ukraine reports. As a result of the attack, 45 civilian objects were destroyed and damaged and civilians were killed and injured. “The city of Bakhmut again suffered the heaviest shelling. The occupiers opened fire on the city 4 times. High-rise buildings and private houses were damaged,” said the police.
Vladimir Semenets, 84, stands in front of his damaged house in the retaken village of Bohorodychne, … [+] eastern Ukraine, Saturday, Oct. 22, 2022. (AP Photo/Andriy Andriyenko)
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved
China’s President Xi Jinping has some good news for Europe — his country’s draconian zero-COVID policies aren’t likely to be dropped.
That’s a relief for European buyers of liquefied natural gas, as China’s economic slowdown has freed up LNG cargos crucial to replacing the Russian gas that used to supply about 40 percent of European demand.
“Regardless of what you think about the Chinese zero-COVID policy, simply looking at it only from the perspective of European gas supplies, it would be very helpful if China continued this policy,” said Dennis Hesseling, head of gas at the EU’s energy regulator agency ACER.
Xi took to the stage Sunday to kick off the week-long 20th Communist Party congress, and he doubled down on the zero-COVID approach, calling it a “people’s war to stop the spread of the virus.”
The once-in-five-year summit is “mostly a political meeting for within the party itself” but it does send crucial signals, said Jacob Gunter, a senior analyst at the China-focused MERICS think tank. So far it indicates China plans to “stick with [zero-COVID] for a while,” he said, adding that’s partly because government pandemic messaging has so spooked the population that lifting it would cause “chaos,” while Chinese vaccine hesitancy also remains high.
Since the outbreak of the pandemic in 2020, China has ruthlessly pursued its policy of crushing the coronavirus, involving snap lockdowns of entire cities accompanied by mass testing, surveillance and border closures. The slowdown in growth and depressed demand led to China’s LNG imports sinking by one-fifth, or 14 billion cubic meters, year-on-year for the first eight months of 2022, according to Jörg Wuttke, president of the EU Chamber of Commerce in China.
China and the EU each imported around 80 million tons of LNG in 2021, but China’s imports will fall to 64 million tons this year, according to data by market intelligence firm ICIS. That’s helping the EU buy gas on the global market and using it to fill the Continent’s storages ahead of the winter heating season.
“Europe is lucky that China has a severe economic downturn which will last well into 2023,” said Wuttke, adding that the drop in demand from China — historically the world’s largest LNG importer — is “roughly equivalent to the entire annual LNG imports of Britain.”
2023 worries
China’s President Xi Jinping | Anthony Wallace/Pool/AFP via Getty Images
With EU gas storage now over 90 percent full, the conversation in Brussels has already begun to shift to securing enough supplies for next year. At last week’s summit of EU energy ministers, International Energy Agency chief Fatih Birol warned that “next winter may well be even more difficult.”
As things stand, Beijing’s LNG imports are likely to rise back to 2021 levels next year, according to senior ICIS gas analyst Tom Marzec-Manser, with deliveries typically increasing around the winter season and then likely to ramp up again next summer.
China has already ordered its state-owned gas importers to stop reselling LNG to the EU to preserve stocks for the winter season at home.
But if the zero-COVID policy is scrapped, that could lead “to a step-change in growth again,” said Marzec-Manser.
European countries are well aware of this risk.
In a presentation given by ACER during last week’s informal Energy Council, ministers were told that “China’s COVID-driven demand decline in LNG volumes is currently being absorbed” by the bloc. “This raises questions as to when China’s LNG demand may turn back towards normal growth rates,” it added.
Although Russian shipments have fallen to less than 9 percent of EU demand, some Kremlin gas is still getting through. But “that may not be available at all next year,” said ACER’s Hesseling, adding that if there is no Russian gas and Chinese demand comes roaring back, more radical energy-saving measures would be needed in the EU.
EU leaders will meet later this week to discuss further measures to tackle sky-high energy prices in Europe, including measures for next year such as joint gas purchasing.
According to one senior EU diplomat, “competition from Asia [is] mentioned constantly,” adding that “it’s quite evident” a change in Beijing’s lockdown policy “may raise global demand and raise prices.”
“China is indeed a competitor and that needs to be taken into account whatever we might be doing,” they said.
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Vladimir Putin in power has brutalized millions as he careens into tyranny.
Yet Vladimir Putin out of power will bring its own brand of chaos: a Shakespearean knife-fight for power; unleashed regional leaders; a nuclear arsenal up for grabs.
For now, few want to publicly talk about that post-Putin world, wary of the perception of meddling in domestic politics. But privately, western countries and analysts are plotting the scenarios that could unfold when Putin inevitably departs — and how Ukraine’s allies should react.
“I will be careful speculating too much about the domestic political situation in Russia,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said last week when asked how the alliance was preparing for the possibility of the Russian leader leaving office.
“Regardless of what different analyses may indicate, I think what we need to do at NATO is to be prepared for all eventualities and when it comes to Ukraine, be prepared to continue to support them,” he said.
One consensus: It won’t be a clean transition, posing myriad dilemmas that could strain Western allies. How much can — and should — they influence the succession process? What should they do if a Russian republic breaks away? What relationship should they pursue with Putin’s successor?
“We should put aside any illusions that what happens next immediately is democracy,” said Laurie Bristow, a former British ambassador to Russia.
“What I think happens next,” he added, “is probably a time of troubles.”
An explosive succession fight
For now, Putin is in a safe position. He still controls the state apparatus, and the military is executing his murderous orders in Ukraine.
But the Russian leader’s flailing invasion of Ukraine has diminished his position at home and deepened uncertainties over who would take over, and how.
“To manage a stable succession when the time comes — which will in Putin’s mind be a time of his choosing — then you need a high degree of elite consensus,” said Bristow, who served as the United Kingdom’s envoy in Moscow from 2016 until 2020.
“What they’ve done now is break that consensus,” he said, noting there is now more vying for power within the Kremlin.
That fighting could turn bloody once the Kremlin’s top job finally opens up.
“This could get very Shakespearean, think King Lear, or [the] Roman Empire, like I, Claudius, or Games of Thrones, very quickly,” said William Alberque, a former director of NATO’s arms control center.
Alexander Vershbow, a former senior U.S. and NATO official, said the most likely scenario was still a “smooth transition” within Putin’s current inner circle — but he conceded that toppling tyrants can beget turmoil. “There could be internal instability,” he said, “and things become very unpredictable in authoritarian systems, in personalistic dictatorships.”
Bristow, the former British ambassador, warned Western powers to stay out of such succession fights: “I think we have to recognize the limits of our ability to influence these outcomes.”
Although, the ex-envoy conceded, “we certainly have an interest in the outcome.”
Nukes = power
Russia is sitting on the world’s largest stockpile of nuclear weapons, featuring thousands of warheads that can each inflict massive destruction, death and trauma on a population.
The arsenal has long been a source of Russian strength on the world stage and a dominant part of its global image — for years, the possibility of a Kremlin nuclear strike dominated the public imagination in the U.S. and elsewhere.
In a period of leadership uncertainty, that arsenal could become a coveted symbol of power. That would put focus on the Russian military’s nuclear protector, the 12th Main Directorate, or GUMO.
“There’s a real possibility,” said Alberque, “that there would be deadly competition — competition to include people trying to rally different parts of the military — particularly the 12th GUMO that controls Russia’s nuclear arsenal.”
Rogue regions
Put simply, Russia is the largest country in the world, stretching across 11 time zones and climbing from the Caucasus to the Arctic.
While Putin may seem to hold a despotic grip on that entire expanse, there are a number of Russian republics with more tenuous connections to Moscow — and some with ambitious political figures. A power vacuum in a faraway capital could present an opening for local leaders to seize more control.
While most analysts believe the Russian Federation would largely hold together through a battle for Kremlin control, they acknowledge the Russian government has long feared fragmentation.
In the event of such factional fighting, all eyes will be on Ramzan Kadyrov, the brutal head of the Chechen Republic.
“Does he throw his weight behind a competing faction? Or does he say, ‘I’m good with a decade of massive Russian subsidies — now let’s break off, and I can probably rule Chechnya and Dagestan; I can have my own empire here’?” said Alberque, now a director at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine could also come back to haunt the Kremlin.
Vershbow, a former American ambassador to Russia, said there is a “low probability” of disintegration but noted that “ironically” Putin’s annexation of areas in eastern Ukraine “could be cited as a precedent by separatist leaders inside the Russian Federation, to say ‘borders are now up for grabs’.”
A return of the reset debate
Once a new leadership team is in place, that’s when the most bedeviling policy debates will begin for Western governments.
With Putin off the political stage, some officials — in particular in western Europe — may argue there is an opportunity to forge a fresh relationship with Moscow.
The U.S. infamously offered Russia a symbolic “reset” button at the start of Barack Obama’s presidency, only to see relations deteriorate further. And Germany for years preached the gospel of economic engagement with Russia, only to declare a historic “Zeitenwende,” or turning point, after Moscow’s invasion.
With new leadership in the Kremlin, Germany may say “oh, Zeitenwende, never mind. Let’s push the U.S. to do another reset with the new Russian leader,” Alberque said.
Inevitably, NATO’s eastern wing would deplore such overtures. They’d argue “Russia never changes,” Alberque said, and lean on allies to not recede from the more assertive NATO stance adopted since the war began.
Polish Minister for National Defense Mariusz Błaszczak made exactly that point to POLITICO.
“Russia in a version with Tsar as a leader was the same like Russia in a version with a secretary-general of Communist party as a leader, and now it’s the same as Vladimir Putin as a leader,” he said.
“What is important from our perspective,” he added, “is to isolate Russia.”
For now, there is no expected Putin successor. But officials say they are expecting a regime with a similar ideology — or one even more extreme.
Jānis Garisons, a Latvian state secretary, pointed out that Putin has already jailed critics — and possible future leaders — like Alexei Navalny, and only more hardliners on the outside are ready to step in.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is seen at the Bocharov Ruchei state residence | Pool photo by Vladimir Smirnov/AFP via Getty Images
“The only people who criticize him” and not in prison “are from the right wing,” Garisons said.
“We should not fall victim to a junta or some group of people coming forward saying that they want a reset,” said Ben Hodges, former commander of U.S. Army Europe, “if it’s still the same.”
One major difference this time around is that Europe is now less economically dependent on Moscow, reducing a key incentive to re-engage.
“We have gone a long way to stop buying from Russia,” said a senior EU diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “That would leave only the issues of nukes — but that will largely be with the Americans.”
Another signal Western leaders can look for is whether a Putin successor cooperates with international organizations seeking to prosecute Russian war crimes in Ukraine — a possibility, of course, that seems remote.
“Only a Russia determined to cooperate, would not represent a threat to Europe,” said Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavský.
Yet for all the assumptions that a cooperative Russia is far off, several current and former officials cautioned that western governments must combine deterrence with a longer-term effort to engage Russian civil society.
The Western alliance, said Bristow, must consider “how we reach out to Russian society beyond the Kremlin, to the next generation of Russian politicians, thinkers, intellectuals, teachers, businesspeople, to kind of spell out an alternative vision to the one they’ve got.”
“My sense,” he added, “is that quite a lot of people in Russia would like to do that.”
A man reacts near the body of his cousin, killed in a Russian rocket attack in Mykolaiv, Ukraine, … [+] Thursday, Oct. 13, 2022. (AP Photo/LIBKOS)
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Dispatches from Ukraine. Day 232.
As Russia’s attack on Ukraine continues and the war rages on, reliable sources of information are critical. Forbes gathers information and provides updates on the situation.
By Polina Rasskazova
The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) unanimously adopted a resolution that recognizes Russia as a terrorist regime and called for providing Ukraine with air defense systems. Key points of the document include recognition that the Russian regime is terrorist one; for the first time in history, the Council of Europe declared that weapons — air defense systems — should be given to a nation; it is noted that Russia’s presence in the UN Security Council is not legal; a call to establish an international tribunal as soon as possible.
Mykolaiv.
At night, the Russian army attacked the city of Mykolaiv with eight S-300 missiles. As a result of the shelling, a five-story building was damaged. “…the two upper floors were completely destroyed, the rest were under rubble. Previously, two people were injured,” reported the head of the Mykolaiv Regional State Administration. Among the wounded was an 11-year-old boy who spent 6 hours under the rubble. According to preliminary information, there may be 7 residents of the five-story building under the ruins of the building. Rescuers are searching for them and analyzing the destroyed structures.
Donetsk Region.
During the day, Russian forces shelled 13 towns, damaging residential buildings in the area and killing and wounding local residents, reported the National Police of Ukraine. The Russian troops fired from artillery batteries, tanks, a rocket salvo system and mortars. According to police, “24 civilian objects were destroyed and damaged — 13 residential buildings, a school, a boiler house, trade pavilions, a shop, and farm buildings.”
Dnipropetrovsk Region.
During the night, Russian troops attacked the city of Nikopol with 60 rocket salvo system missiles, 15 bursts of barrel artillery were also recorded, according to thehead of the Dnipropetrovsk State Administration, Valentin Reznichenko. As a result of the shelling, one person was injured––a 59-year-old man, listed as in serious condition. The attack damaged more than 30 high-rise and private buildings, gas pipelines and power lines, and around 2,000 families were left without electricity.
The Russian occupation authorities of the city of Melitopol treat wounded Russian soldiers with fraudulently obtained blood donated by local residents. Advertisements are posted around the city about the need to donate blood, allegedly for the needs of women in labor and cancer patients. “However, taking into account that refrigerators are constantly brought to Melitopol with the bodies of Russian soldiers eliminated in the Kherson direction and wounded from the entire region of hostilities, we understand for which ‘patients’ blood is needed,” wrote the mayor of Melitopol, Ivan Fedorov, on his Telegram channel.
Moreover, in the Melitopol district, hospitals are mostly closed. More than 50% of doctors have left Melitopol. Russian occupation forces did not deliver medicines to hospitals for 7 months. A month ago, they blocked the delivery of medicines from Zaporizhzhia. In a few weeks, Melitopol will run out of rare medicines. “People will start to die or leave,” Fedorov said, “and unfortunately there is no way to leave the city today.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin turned back to his bloody, destructive playbook from Syria with a barrage of rocket attacks against civilian targets across Ukraine on Monday, ramping up pressure on Western allies to supply Kyiv with the air defenses it has long sought.
Monday’s rush-hour bombardment on the streets of Kyiv, Lviv, Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia and other regions came as little surprise, given that Putin had already signaled his willingness to switch to ever more brutal tactics by appointing Sergey Surovikin, the general who oversaw Russian forces in Syria on-and-off from 2017 to 2020, as commander of his struggling war effort in Ukraine.
In a speech at an emergency meeting of his National Security Council on Monday, Putin claimed the strikes came in response to this weekend’s attack on the Kerch Bridge linking illegally occupied Crimea to Russia. Putin said Russia had deployed “high-precision, long-range weapons from the air, sea and land” to deliver “massive attacks on targets of Ukraine’s energy, military command and communications facilities.” He added that Russia would continue to dole out retribution if Ukraine continued to strike so-called “Russian” territory.
Ukraine’s defense ministry said 75 missiles were launched, 41 of which were shot down.
Moscow’s claims to precision attacks on strategic targets seemed to mask the fact that the aim was clearly to kill civilians, as the missiles struck the Shevchenkivskyi district in the heart of Kyiv during peak morning traffic. Pictures and footage taken by reporters and from security cameras show cars on fire; a crater beside a children’s playground in the Shevchenko Park and a pedestrian bridge destroyed.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Telegram that Russia appeared to have two targets in its assault: energy facilities throughout the country — and Ukrainians going about their daily lives.
“They want panic and chaos,” Zelenskyy said, in a video that appeared to have been shot on his cell phone on the streets of Kyiv. Monday’s attacks came at a time “especially chosen to cause as much damage as possible … Why such strikes exactly? The enemy wants us to be afraid, wants to make people run. But we can only run forward — and we demonstrate this on the battlefield. It will continue to be so.”
Zelenskyy also renewed his appeals to the West to provide Ukraine with additional air defenses. Kyiv has been seeking this additional firepower for weeks, arguing that Russia is likely to try to knock out Ukraine’s energy and industrial infrastructure over the winter, and it has been disappointed by the slow response.
In tweets, Zelenskyy said he had spoken with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron in the wake of the strikes on the capital and other cities. With Macron, Zelenskyy said: “We discussed the strengthening of our air defense, the need for a tough European and international reaction, as well as increased pressure on the Russian Federation.”
Those discussions on air defense batteries are now likely to loom large at the U.S.-led Ukraine Defense Contact Group — also known as the Ramstein format — where senior defense officials from across the globe will gather in Brussels later this week.
Ukraine’s Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said on Monday: “The best response to Russian missile terror is the supply of anti-aircraft and anti-missile systems to Ukraine — protect the sky over Ukraine! This will protect our cities and our people. This will protect the future of Europe. Evil must be punished.”
The butcher of Syria takes over
Surovikin was only announced as the new Russian commander for Ukraine on Saturday.
The 55-year-old general, who before his promotion had been charged with leading Russia’s Southern Military District and Russian troops in Syria, has long been an infamous figure with a reputation for being ruthless.
He was linked to the violent suppression of the anti-Soviet 1990 Dushanbe riots in Tajikistan, and was reportedly imprisoned (before being freed without charge) after soldiers under his command killed three protesters in Moscow during the failed coup against then Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev in August 1991. In 1995, Surovikin received a suspended sentence (which was later overturned) for participating in the illegal arms trade. Surovikin also played a role in Russia’s second Chechen war, commanding the 42nd Guards Motorized Rifle Division.
But Surovikin is best known — and most feared — for his command of Russian forces in Syria, where Moscow intervened to prop up Bashar al-Assad’s regime. Human Rights Watch, a non-governmental organization, listed Surovikin as one of the commanders “who may bear command responsibility” for human rights violations during the 2019-2020 offensive in Syria’s Idlib province, when Syrian and Russian forces launched dozens of air and ground attacks on civilian targets and infrastructure, striking homes, schools, health care facilities and markets.
It was not the first time Russian forces were accused of war crimes in Syria. The Kremlin’s troops, working with Syrians, undertook a month-long bombing campaign of opposition-controlled territory in Aleppo in 2016, killing hundreds of civilians, including 90 children, with indiscriminate airstrikes, cluster munitions and incendiary weapons hitting civilian targets including medical facilities.
Now, with Russian forces on the back foot in Ukraine and Putin’s full-throated rhetoric out of step with the situation on the ground in his war, Surovikin appears to be turning to his old tactic of inflicting massive damage on civilians in an attempt to turn the tide of the war.
Russian President Vladimir Putin will hold a meeting of his national security council on Monday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told Russian state-owned news agency TASS on Sunday, following a fiery explosion on a strategic Crimean bridge on Saturday.
Although Peskov declined to say whether they would discuss the explosion on the Kerch Bridge connecting Russian-occupied Crimea to Russia, the blast that partially destroyed Putin’s pet infrastructure project — which is key to supply Russia’s military fighting in Ukraine — is bound to be on the security council’s agenda.
Over the past weeks, the Kremlin has been making thinly veiled threats to use its nuclear arsenal against Ukraine as Kyiv regains territory Russia has occupied in its invasion of the country.
The latest Russian official to sabre-rattle was Col. Gen. Andrey Kartapolov, who heads the defense committee of the State Duma.
“There will be an answer” that “all [Ukrainians] will feel” from the Russian side if Ukraine is found to be responsible for the blast that blew damaged the Kerch Bridge, Kartapolov told Russian news outlet Vedomosti on Sunday. “What the answer will be, we will find out. Our President and Supreme Commander-in-Chief never does what ‘partners’ expect from him. He does what is not expected of him,” Kartapolov said.
The Ukrainian government so far hasn’t been commenting about the origins of the apparent bombing. The country’s security service posted a cryptic message on Telegram Saturday after the blast, which reads: “Dawn, The bridge is well ablaze; Nightingale in Crimea, The SBU [Ukrainian security service] meets,” with a picture of the damaged bridge.
Russia opened an investigation into the explosion, and Russia’s Foreign Ministry is pointing the finger at Ukraine. “The reaction of the Kyiv regime to the destruction of civilian infrastructure testifies to its terrorist nature,” ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said, according to Russian news outlet Kommersant.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov declined to say whether they would discuss the explosion on the Kerch Bridge connecting Russian-occupied Crimea to Russia | AFP via Getty Images
Fear is mounting that Russia might resort to a nuclear response. Pope Francis on Sunday said that “we should not forget the danger of nuclear war,” asking “Why don’t we learn from history?”
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said the Russian army killed some 17 civilians in the Ukrainian area of Zaporizhzhia on Sunday.
“A missile attack on the civilian population of Zaporizhzhia destroyed residential houses, where people slept at night, lived, didn’t attack anyone,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.
Russia is rushing to repair the bridge connecting occupied Crimea to Russia after a major blast on Saturday, in an attempt to downplay the attack.
Suburban train lines are scheduled to start running again on the Kerch Bridge as of 7 p.m. local time, according to a message from the Russian Transport Ministry posted on Telegram Sunday. Long-distance freight and passenger trains on the bridge already “are moving according to the standard schedule,” the ministry said.
The fiery explosion Saturday morning marked a huge symbolic blow against Russian President Vladimir Putin, who grabbed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and started building the bridge connecting the Ukrainian peninsula to Russia that same year.
“This incident will likely touch President Putin closely,” the U.K. Ministry of Defense said in analysis published on Sunday, since the blast happened “hours after his 70th birthday” and his childhood friend Arkady Rotenberg built the bridge.
Putin tightened security for the bridge after Saturday’s explosion, and he ordered a government commission to investigate the damage. The initial report from Moscow’s inspection of the bridge is due later Sunday.
Meanwhile, the Russian Foreign Ministry appeared to be downplaying the blow as it tweeted a video of the Kerch Bridge with traffic flowing. Despite Moscow’s message of business as usual, the U.K.’s Defense Ministry said that transport “capacity will be seriously degraded” on the bridge.
“The extent of damage to the rail crossing is uncertain, but any serious disruption to its capacity will highly likely have a significant impact on Russia’s already strained ability to sustain its forces in southern Ukraine,” the U.K. ministry said.
Russia’s Ministry of Transport wrote on Telegram Sunday that vehicles containing perishable goods would be given priority on ferries crossing the Kerch Strait.
The Ukrainian government so far hasn’t been commenting about the origins of the apparent bombing. Ukraine’s Deputy Foreign Minister Emine Dzheppar posted a picture of the collapsed bridge section on Saturday with the hashtag #CrimeaIsUkraine.
Over the past few weeks, Ukraine has been leading a counteroffensive against Russia and regaining territory and towns held by Moscow. Kyiv is now asking for more Western weapons, including air defense systems. The Kremlin signalled on Sunday that if the West were to provide Ukraine with heavier long-distance arms, Russia would retaliate.
“Deliveries of long-range or more powerful weapons to Kyiv” would cross Russia’s “red lines,” Russian foreign affairs official Aleksey Polishchuk told the country’s state-owned news agency TASS on Sunday.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba renewed the call for additional defensive systems on Sunday, after at least 17 people were reported killed overnight by Russian shelling on the city of Zaporizhzhia.
“Russia continues its missile terror against civilians in Zaporizhzhia,” Kuleba said in a tweet. “We urgently need more modern air and missile defense systems to save innocent lives. I urge partners to speed up deliveries.”
KYIV — The fiery blast on the Kerch Bridge on Saturday triggered a chorus of calls for brutal retaliation against Ukraine among Russian public figures who support President Vladimir Putin.
The calls increase political pressure on Putin, who said in September that Moscow is ready to use “all available means” to protect the country and its people “if our country is threatened.”
“This is not a bluff,” Putin added, speaking during the announcement of the mobilization of 300,000 reservists for the war on Ukraine.
His statement triggered speculation among Ukraine’s Western backers about a possible deployment of tactical nuclear weapons against Ukrainian troops in case Kyiv is successful in its counteroffensive in four Ukrainian territories formally annexed by the Kremlin, or if Ukraine attempts to win Crimea back. Kyiv hasn’t claimed responsibility for the bridge explosion.
Sergei Markov, a Kremlin-connected politician and former parliamentarian with Putin’s United Russia party, believes that “the terrorist attack” on the Kerch Bridge is evidence that “the U.S. and its Ukrainian proxy regime will move the red line further and further.”
“No response from Russia? Even further. And again? Even further,” he wrote on social media, demanding a tough response from Moscow.
Konstantin Dolgov, a member of the upper house of Russia’s parliament, also branded the explosion “a terrorist attack” and “another sinister manifestation of the terrorist nature of the puppet Kyiv regime.”
Referring to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Dolgov said: “Terrorists must be treated unequivocally!”
Rodion Miroshnik, who represented in Moscow until recently the Russia-backed Luhansk People’s Republic, wrote on social media that “undamaged Ukrainian bridges across the Dnieper river look ridiculous against the backdrop of a blazing Crimean bridge.”
The damage to the Kerch Bridge, which connects Russia with Crimea, the peninsula illegally annexed by Moscow in 2014, not only poses a problem to Russia’s supplies of manpower and weapons to its units in southern Ukraine. It is also a serious humiliation for Putin personally, having happened on the morning after his 70th birthday.
The explosion was also a slap in the face to propagandists in Russia’s state-controlled media, who have regularly used the bridge as a symbol of Russia’s successful annexation of Ukrainian territory.
Television journalist Vladimir Solovyov, sanctioned earlier this year by the EU for his propaganda activities, wrote in his Telegram channel: “It’s time to respond. By all means available.”
He said that Ukraine “must be immersed in dark times,” and urged Russia to destroy bridges, dams, railways, thermal power plants and other infrastructure facilities in Ukraine. According to international law, such deliberate destruction would be a war crime. The U.N. already said last month that Russia had committed war crimes in Ukraine including the bombings of civil areas and summary executions.
Andrei Medvedev, a prominent television journalist and a vice speaker of the Moscow city council, said that “what will happen to us [Russia] depends, among other things, on the reaction [of the authorities] to today’s events.”
KYIV — The Kerch bridge in Crimea was partially destroyed by an explosion Saturday morning, in a strategic and symbolic blow to Russian President Vladimir Putin and his campaign against Ukraine.
The damage to the bridge, which comes as Ukrainian advances continue to reclaim occupied territories from Moscow’s forces, endangers a crucial route for Russian military supplies to support its forces in southern Ukraine.
Two spans of the road portion of the bridge collapsed as a result of “an accident,” according to Sergei Aksyonov, the Russia-installed head of the Crimea administration. “Fuel tanks have also caught fire,” Aksyonov said in a post on social media.
Russia’s National Anti-Terrorist Committee said that a truck was blown up on the bridge, according to Russian media. As a result of the blast, “a partial collapse” of two spans occurred, it said. Russia’s Investigative Committee said three people were killed in the explosion, according to media reports.
According to videos and photos posted Saturday morning by eyewitnesses, several fuel tankers were on fire on the rail part of the bridge, while at least one road span had partially collapsed into the waters of the Kerch Strait, which connects the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov.
“As soon as the fire is extinguished, it will be possible to assess damage to the bridge and pillars, and it will be possible to talk about the timing of the restoration of traffic,” Aksyonov said.
The head of the Russian-installed regional parliament in Crimea, Vladimir Konstantinov, blamed the damage to the bridge on “Ukrainian vandals,” according to Russian media.
Kyiv hasn’t claim responsibility for the damage to the bridge, but Ukrainian officials celebrated the blast on social media. Referring to a flagship Russian vessel sunk by Kyiv earlier this year, Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense tweeted: “The guided missile cruiser Moskva and the Kerch Bridge – two notorious symbols of Russian power in Ukrainian Crimea – have gone down. What’s next in line, russkies?”
The Kerch bridge, which connects Crimea with the Russian mainland, was opened personally by Putin with much fanfare in 2018, after Moscow seized the peninsula from Ukraine in 2014. The construction of the bridge was slammed by both Kyiv and its Western backers as illegal at the time.
Since the start of the Kremlin’s war on Ukraine in late February, the bridge has been crucially important for the transfer of manpower, weapons and fuel to Russian units fighting Ukrainian troops in southern Ukraine.
Putin on Saturday ordered a government commission to investigate “the emergency on the Crimean bridge” and officials have been dispatched to the scene, Russian media reported, citing Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.
Crimea, the bridge, the beginning. Everything illegal must be destroyed, everything stolen must be returned to Ukraine, everything occupied by Russia must be expelled. pic.twitter.com/yUiSwOLlDP
According to Aksyonov, ferry service will start operating on Saturday in place of the damaged bridge.
Over the past months, Ukrainian officials have repeatedly declared Kyiv’s plans to target the Crimea bridge. In April, Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, said in a radio interview that the bridge will “definitely” be hit, if Kyiv gets an opportunity. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov branded Danilov’s statement as “announcing a possible terrorist attack.”
After the partial collapse of the Kerch bridge Saturday morning, Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office, said in a tweet that “everything illegal must be destroyed, everything stolen must be returned to Ukraine, everything occupied by Russia must be expelled.”
Zelenskyy, in an address Friday night, said Ukraine has taken back more than 2,400 square kilometers of its territory occupied by Russia. “This week alone, our soldiers liberated 776 square kilometers of territory in the east of our country and 29 settlements,” Zelenskyy said.
KYIV — Russia’s annexation of four Ukrainian regions, announced by President Vladimir Putin on Friday, will not affect Kyiv’s resolve to free them with military force, said an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
“For our plans, [Russia’s annexation] doesn’t matter,” Mykhailo Podolyak told POLITICO, speaking before the signing ceremony in Moscow orchestrated by Putin. The Russian leader railed at the United States and the West, denounced the Ukrainian government, and warned: “We will protect our land using all our forces.”
The annexation comes on a day when Ukrainian soldiers have reportedly encircled thousands of Russian troops near the city of Lyman in eastern Ukraine, and a couple of weeks after a successful counteroffensive that pushed Russian forces from the region near Kharkiv — the country’s second city.
The nation “should liberate all its territories,” Podolyak said.
Ukrainian troops have “likely nearly completed” the encirclement of Russian troops in Lyman in the Donetsk region, according to the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank.
“Virtually all approaches, logistics routes of the enemy, through which it delivered ammunition and manpower, are already under our fire control,” Serhiy Cherevatyi, a spokesman for the Ukrainian eastern military grouping, told Ukrainian television.
Moscow has not commented on the situation.
Podolyak also shrugged off Putin’s announcement of a “partial” mobilization of reservists last week, with thousands called up and thousands more fleeing the country.
“The mobilization shows that Russia has run out of a professional army,” Podolyak said, adding: “This army is being replaced by absolutely untrained people. A living resource has been thrown onto the front lines, and it will simply be exterminated.”
“This may sound paradoxical, but it’s actually to our advantage that Russia has announced this mobilization,” he said. “This shows the people of Russia that the country really is at war, that it’s not doing very well in this war, and that the Russians themselves will be the ones to pay the price.”
The mobilization is prompting Kyiv to call for more weapons from its Western allies.
“For example, 100 more 155mm-caliber missiles would solve the problem, if you will excuse me for putting it that way, of additional human resources being utilized by Russia on the field of battle,” Podolyak said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin annexed four Ukrainian territories after holding sham referendums | Kay Nietfeld/Pool/AFP via Getty Images
On Wednesday, U.S. authorities announced a $1.1 billion arms package for Ukraine, including 18 additional High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS).
“Russia now has one card left to play in this war: nuclear weapons. Against a non-nuclear nation. That’s absurd,” Podolyak said.
The worry is how Putin will react to Ukraine’s efforts to liberate the territories seized by Russia, and if the Kremlin will see that as an attack on Russia itself. However, Ukrainian attacks on Crimea and even strikes into Russia proper over the course of the seven-month war have not led to such a retaliation.
Last week, Putin warned: “We doubtlessly will use all weapons resources at our disposal … This is not a bluff.”
U.S. President Biden has warned Putin of the consequences of using nuclear or chemical weapons. Podolyak wants those warnings to be “clearly communicated” to Moscow and for “very tough retaliation measures aimed at the destruction of Russia’s defense infrastructure” to follow.
“For instance, Russia’s naval forces in the Black Sea could be completely destroyed,” he said. “This would be a proportionate response to Russia’s attempt to launch a tactical nuclear strike against the combat positions of the Ukrainian army.”
Meanwhile, Ukraine “will keep doing its job” to liberate its territory, he said.
“We have no other options when it comes to ending the war properly. We can’t leave some enclave [under Russian occupation] or create a new dividing line,” he said, referring to the frozen conflict that followed Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the Donbas war in 2014-2015.
Russian authorities are opening more military enlistment offices near Russia’s borders in an apparent effort to intercept some of the Russian men of fighting age who are trying to flee the country by land to avoid being called up to fight in Ukraine.
A new draft office opened at the Ozinki checkpoint in the Saratov region on Russia’s border with Kazakhstan, regional officials said Thursday. Another enlistment center was set to open at a crossing in the Astrakhan region, also on the border with Kazakhstan.
Earlier this week, makeshift Russian draft offices were set up near the Verkhny Lars border crossing into Georgia in southern Russia and near the Torfyanka checkpoint on Russia’s border with Finland. Russian officials said they would hand call-up notices to all eligible men who were trying to leave the country.
Over 194,000 Russian citizens have fled to neighboring Georgia, Kazakhstan and Finland — most often by car, bicycle or on foot — since Russian President Vladimir Putin last week announced a partial mobilization of reservists. In Russia, the vast majority of men under age 65 are registered as reservists.
The Kremlin has said it plans to call-up some 300,000 people, but Russian media reported that the number could be as high as 1.2 million, a claim that Russian officials have denied.
Russia’s Defense Ministry has promised to only draft those who have combat or service experience, but according to multiple media reports and human rights advocates, men who don’t fit the criteria are also being rounded up.
The official decree on mobilization, signed by Putin last week, is concise and vague, fueling fears of a broader draft.
In an apparent effort to calm the population, Putin told Russia’s Security Council on Thursday that mistakes had been made in the mobilization. He said that Russian men mistakenly called up for service should be sent back home, and that only reservists with proper training and specialties should be summoned to serve.
“It’s necessary to deal with each such case independently, but if there is a mistake, I repeat, it must be fixed. It’s necessary to bring back those who were drafted without proper reason,” Putin stressed.
The mass exodus of Russian men — alone or with their families or friends — began Sept. 21, shortly after Putin’s address to the nation, and continued all this week. Airline tickets to destinations abroad have sold out days in advance, even at unprecedentedly high prices.
Long lines of cars formed on roads leading to Russia’s borders. Russian authorities tried to stem the outflow by turning back some men at the borders, citing mobilization laws, or setting up draft offices at border checkpoints.
The bus stations in Samara and Tolyatti, two large Russian cities in the Samara region, on Thursday halted service to Uralsk, a border city in Kazakhstan.
Finland announced that it would ban Russian citizens with tourist visas from entering the country starting Friday. With the exception of Norway, which has only one border crossing with Russia, Finland has provided the last easily accessible land route to Europe for Russian holders of European Schengen-zone visas. The Nordic country has taken in tens of thousands of people fleeing the military call-up in recent days.
