Tag: Live updates: Russia's war in Ukraine

Four Russian aircraft were shot down within Russian territory, according to unconfirmed reports, in what would mark a significant coup for Ukraine.

There are conflicting accounts about how many planes and helicopters may have been brought down inside the Russian region of Bryansk, but one Russian media outlet says that at least two combat aircraft — an Su-34 and an Su-35 — and two Mi-8 helicopters crashed.

Ukraine has not confirmed its air defenses were involved in the reported downing of the Russian aircraft on Saturday, but says the aircraft “ran into some trouble.”

Bryansk is on the border with Ukraine and has seen previous attacks blamed on Kyiv.

Multiple crashes within Russian territory at the same time would be unprecedented. Some analysts believe Ukrainian air defenses may have been pushed forward as the Russian air force uses more “glide munitions” that can fire at targets from distance.

Social media videos geolocated by CNN show at least one helicopter crashing near the town of Klintsy in Bryansk, which is 50 kilometers from the Ukrainian border.

Aleksandr Bogomaz, the governor of Bryansk, confirmed that a helicopter had crashed, injuring one civilian, but gave no details on the cause.

Another video, showing an aircraft coming down and a column of black smoke, has been geolocated to a village in Bryansk some 25 kilometers from Klintsy.

The official Russian news agency TASS published video of one helicopter exploding in mid-air and confirmed that an Su-34 fighter had crashed, without indicating the cause.

Read more here.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s request to address the Eurovision Song Contest final in the United Kingdom on Saturday has been denied by broadcasters. 

In a statement posted on its website on Thursday, the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) – an alliance of public service media organizations that oversees the event – stressed the importance of the “nonpolitical” nature of Eurovision. 

“This principle prohibits the possibility of making political or similar statements as part of the Contest,” the EBU added. 

The Ukrainian leader would likely have continued his pattern of using addresses at high profile international events to draw attention to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Some background: This year’s Eurovision Song Contest is being held in the English city of Liverpool – with the grand final coming on Saturday. Ukraine’s Kalush Orchestra won last year, with a wave of support across Europe sweeping the nation to victory.

As is tradition, the winner earns the right to host the next year’s competition. But, due to the ongoing war in Ukraine, the UK is hosting this year’s event – the first time that the contest is being held on behalf of another nation. The UK’s entry came second last year.

The EBU says it has taken great pains to ensure that Ukrainian music and culture feature prominently throughout the live semi-final and grand final events, which are being hosted by British broadcaster the BBC on behalf of Ukraine’s public broadcaster, UA:PBC.

The EBU listed the appearance of 11 Ukrainian musical acts, collaborations with a Ukrainian design agency on branding and a series of 37 short films as examples of the “best way” to “reflect and celebrate Ukraine’s Eurovision Song Contest win and show we are United By Music during these hard times.”

The Ukrainian duo TVORCHI, who are representing their country at this year’s Eurovision contest, have teamed up with Visa and the fundraising platform UNITED24 (launched by Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky), to raise funds for equipment to help Ukrainian babies born prematurely due to war stressors. 

During the Eurovision opening ceremony that took place on Sunday in the English city of Liverpool, the duo wore costumes with the names and the weights of Ukrainian babies born prematurely displayed on their jackets. 

“Sofia, 1340 grams. Marichka, 804.6 grams. Nikita, 1280 grams. Alice, 1600 grams. Denis, 900 grams…These names and weights are displayed on our costumes, that we wore on the turquoise Eurovision runway,” the TVORCHI duo wrote in an Instagram post on Monday. “They belong to children who were born in Ukraine during the war, very tiny. More often, because their mothers experienced stress during pregnancy due to explosions, shelling and a constant sense of threat.” 

“These babies survived — their little hearts were saved by intensive care incubators,” the duo added. 

According to UNITED24, “because of the war, the number of such newborns has increased by at least 15% and behind this figure there are thousands of vulnerable children who were born prematurely and cannot survive without special assistance.” 

The goal of the initiative is to attract international support to raise 10 million hryvnias (around $270,000) for the purchase of 10 incubators for Ukrainian infants, UNITED24 says.

Eurovision is traditionally hosted in the country that won the contest the previous year. Ukraine won the contest in 2022 but cannot host it due to the ongoing conflict, so the United Kingdom is hosting on its behalf.

The theme of Eurovision 2023 is “United by music” and the final takes place on Saturday May 13.

Russia has accused Washington of being behind what it says was a drone attack on the Kremlin and an assassination attempt against President Vladimir Putin, the latest in a series of extraordinary allegations over the incident on Wednesday.

When asked by CNN if the Kremlin believed the US was behind the attack, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said: “Undoubtedly, Such decisions, the definition of goals, the definition of means — all this is dictated to Kyiv from Washington.” 

“We are well aware of this,” he added.

The Kremlin spokesperson doubled down on the accusations, without providing any evidence, expanding on Russia’s view of how these decisions are made.

“We know that it is often not even Kyiv who determines the goals themselves, they are determined in Washington, and then these goals are brought to Kyiv so that Kyiv fulfils [those tasks],” Peskov said. “Not every time Kyiv is given the right to choose the means, this is also often ordered from across the ocean.”

“Washington must clearly understand that we know this,” he added.

Peskov did not provide any evidence to his claims, nor additional details regarding the alleged attack, saying that information would be released later.

He also told journalists Putin is “calm,” despite the alleged attack and assassination attempt.

“You know that in such difficult, extreme situations, the president always remains calm, collected, clear in his assessments, in the commands he gives out,” he added. “Therefore, nothing changed in this regard.”

He told CNN during the call with reporters that the alleged strike damaged two of the Senate Palace’s copper sheets, which will be repaired.

Some background: Earlier this week, Russia claimed Ukraine launched a drone strike targeting the Kremlin in an attempt to kill Putin, the official residence of the Russian president and the most potent symbol of power in Moscow.

Ukraine has strongly denied involvement in the alleged strike.

US officials said earlier that they were still assessing the incident, and had no information about who might have been responsible.

CNN’s Sebastian Shukla, Nathan Hodge, Matthew Chance and Katharina Krebs contributed reporting.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had no conversations with the White House after a trove of classified US intelligence documents were posted on social media, he told The Washington Post Monday.

In an interview with the Post, Zelensky said he learned about the Pentagon leak through news coverage and claimed he “did not receive information from the White House or the Pentagon beforehand.”

A US official told CNN, “We are in constant communication with our Ukrainian counterparts about a range of issues, including over the unauthorized disclosures, but we aren’t going to get into the details of those private discussions.”

Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder said Tuesday he couldn’t speak to Zelensky’s claims, telling CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin “conducted a large number of phone calls” to allies and partners, including to Austin’s Ukrainian counterpart, Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov.

The documents allegedly leaked by 21-year-old Air National Guardsman Jack Teixeira appeared to catch the Biden administration flat-footed, disclosing a blunt US intelligence assessment of the war in Ukraine, as well as details revealing US intelligence collection on allies.

Read more here.

Russia has suffered more than 100,000 casualties since December and the “stunning” number is a key signal that Moscow’s winter offensive has “backfired,” according to new estimated figures announced by the Biden administration on Monday.

The US is defining the term “casualty” as both wounded and killed.  

Kirby, who serves as National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications, noted that “nearly half” of those casualties were fighters with the Russian private company Wagner — whom CNN has reported have experienced horrific experiences on the battlefield following minimal training and little leadership.

Kirby lambasted a recent assertion from Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, who said Sunday that his group had only suffered 94 casualties. Kirby called Prigozhin’s comments “just a ludicrous claim.” 

Pressed on the source of the new 100,000 figure, Kirby said it was “based on some downgraded intelligence that we’ve been able to collect.” He declined to provide information on Ukrainian casualties, noting that the US has “never” provided such information and would defer to Ukraine on the matter.

Kirby added that the Ukrainians “are the victims here, Russia is the aggressor, and I’m simply not going to put information in the public domain that’s going to, again, make it any harder for the Ukrainians.”

The official noted that it’s ultimately Ukraine’s decision to declassify the information and make their casualty figures public. “I don’t need to abide by that same sense of courtesy for the Russians — haven’t done it and I ain’t going to start now,” he said.

With regards to fighting on the ground, Kirby said “most” of Russia’s efforts have “stalled and failed” as the battle for the eastern city of Bakhmut continues. He added that Russia has made “incremental” gains in the town that has “very little strategic value.” 

“The bottom line is that Russia’s attempted offensive has backfired. After months of fighting and extraordinary losses, Russia continues to be focused on a single Ukrainian city with limited strategic value,” the official said.

Kirby said any decision about a spring counteroffensive from Ukraine would be “for President (Volodymyr) Zelensky to make,” but the US will continue to provide military aid and support. 

The US official also told reporters a future package for Ukraine would be unveiled “very soon.”

“What we want to stay focused on is making sure that we’re helping them be as ready as they can be for whenever they choose to step off. And that means, obviously, in material support,” he told reporters.

Russia may end its self-declared moratorium on the deployment of its ground-based intermediate and shorter-range missiles, according to Vladimir Ermakov, the Russian foreign ministry’s head of nuclear nonproliferation.

Ermakov told state-owned media agency TASS in an interview on Tuesday that Russia will only continue to adhere to its moratorium depending on the range of US missiles deployed, their characteristics and their ability to reach the Asia-Pacific region.

“But even now we can say with confidence that the destabilizing military programs of the United States and its allies are making our moratorium more and more fragile, both in the Asia-Pacific region and in Europe,” he said. 

Some background: The United States withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty with Russia in 2019.

The agreement, signed in 1987 by US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, limited both nations from fielding both “short range” and “intermediate range” land-based ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and missile launchers that could be used to carry either nuclear or conventional payloads.

Then-US Defense Secretary Mark Esper said the 2019 withdrawal was “a direct result of Russia’s sustained and repeated violations of the treaty over many years and multiple presidential administrations.”

As a result of the US decision, Russia also announced its withdrawal from the accord.

But Russia claimed it would continue a moratorium on the deployment of such weapons. At the time, Russian deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said:

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg dismissed Russia’s offer of a moratorium as “not credible,” because he said Russia had been deploying such missiles for years. 

Remember: In February, Russian President Vladimir Putin said he was suspending his country’s participation in the New START nuclear arms reduction treaty, which put limits on the number of deployed intercontinental-range nuclear weapons that both the US and Russia could have.

A Russian man who said he had killed children and other civilians while serving with the Wagner private military company in Ukraine appears to have recanted the claim, suggesting he was blackmailed into making it.

Azamat Uldarov, a former convict, made his retraction in a video call with the Russian news agency RIA-FAN. It’s unclear if there were any conditions to the interview.

He and another former convict, Alexey Savichev, previously gave long and rambling interviews to Russian human rights group Gulagu.net, saying they were among the tens of thousands of Wagner fighters recruited from Russian jails to fight in Ukraine.

Speaking with Gulagu founder Vladimir Osechkin, Uldarov said he shot and killed a young girl, calling it “a management decision.”

“I wasn’t allowed to let anyone out alive, because my command was to kill anything in my way,” he said, estimating that the girl was five or six years old.

In his interview with RIA-FAN — which is associated with Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin — Uldarov said he was drunk when he gave the interview, and alleged that Osechkin had blackmailed him about his time in prison.

Asked by RIA-FAN: “They made you say what you said in the video, correct?” Uldarov replied: “Not only correct, it’s [expletive] correct. I had to say it because I had no choice.”

“I said whatever I was told to say,” Uldarov then said.

“Prigozhin is a great guy,” he added, giving a thumbs up. “He saved our lives.”

But Gulagu’s Osechkin, who is based in France, told CNN he stood by the content of his interviews with the two men, citing Uldarov’s retraction as proof of how quickly dissenting voices are silenced in Russia.

Osechkin also claimed that both interviewees, Uldarov and Savichev, had been threatened with murder if they didn’t retract their statements to him. Savichev told Gulagu that his unit was ordered to kill any men 15 years old or older.

Read more here

The family of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who the US State Department classifies as wrongly detained by Russia, have spoken out for the first time in an exclusive video interview with the newspaper.

WSJ reporter Shelby Holliday asked the journalist’s father, Mikhail, if the pair ever talked about what could happen to him as a journalist in Russia. Mikhail said “no” but said he trusted his son and his judgement.

“Of course, it makes things more difficult for me now. [Because] I feel I’ve failed in some way as a father,” he added.

Following Gershkovich’s detention on March 29, his mother Ella Milman, who left the Soviet Union for the United States in 1979, said she had a sixth sense that something had happened to him.

His sister Danielle spoke of how her parents, who emigrated from the Soviet Union separately but in the same year, raised her and Evan to have pride in where they came from.

She said she was “in awe of him” when reading about Russia through his reporting

Danielle noted that her and her brother are “so different. I’m a home body. He’s a thrill seeker, an adventure. I can’t even relate to him sometimes in the life he leads, as a reporter.

His parents told the WSJ he “loved having fun’ from an early age and was always very curious. His mother said he had “so many friends” and they saw Russia through his eyes, and it was “beautiful”.

The reporter began his role at the WSJ a month before the Russian invasion in Ukraine began in February last year. “He said that I’m one of the few left there, I know that he felt like it was his duty to report there,” his mother recalled.

“When we came to visit him in 2018, I said to him that this is the country that I left and this is the country that you love and he said, ‘what an interesting thought’,” she added.

His dad said he “couldn’t have stopped him” from going to Russia.

His sister said she hopes he’s writing in prison and she’s hoping he “can make friends” in there. She said seeing the publicity his case is getting is “strangely helpful for me” and as a family “they will do whatever it takes” to free him.

“It’s one of the American qualities that we absorbed, be optimistic, believe in… happy ending. That’s where we stand right now. But I am not stupid. I understand what’s involved, but that’s what I choose to believe,” his mother Ella concluded.

Some background: Gershkovich was detained last month by Russian authorities who accused him of spying, ratcheting up tensions between Russia and the US.

Gershkovich’s arrest marks the first time an American journalist has been detained on accusations by Moscow of spying since the Cold War.

A Russian military group fighting in Ukraine on behalf of Vladimir Putin attempted to buy weapons and equipment from an unlikely source: NATO member Turkey, according to a leaked US intelligence document that was obtained by CNN.

The leaked document appears to show the lengths the Russian private military group Wagner has gone to try to further strengthen its capabilities as the war in Ukraine — in which it is playing a key role — continues on with no signs of abating.

As a NATO member, Turkey is broadly considered a partner nation to the US and other nations providing direct military support to Ukraine, and it has publicly expressed opposition to Russia’s invasion.

It is also home to a major US military base where nuclear weapons are stored and act as an obvious warning sign to deter Russian aggression against NATO members. 

Evidence that Turkey has discussed selling weapons to Russian mercenary forces would likely raise serious concerns in Washington and complicate Ankara’s relationship with other NATO members.

Not only does the document reference intelligence about Wagner seeking to purchase weapons from Turkey, it also states that the paramilitary group planned to resume recruitment of prisoners from Russia’s jails. 

According to the US signals intelligence reporting cited in the document, personnel from the Wagner Group met with “Turkish contacts” in early February with the intent “to purchase weapons and equipment from Turkey” that could then be used by Wagner mercenaries who are fighting alongside Russian forces in Ukraine.

Wagner also planned to use the weapons and equipment from Turkey in Mali, where the group maintains a significant presence, according to the leaked document.

While there is no evidence that shows that Turkey has moved forward with any arms sales to the Wagner Group, details about the February meeting — outlined in a section of the leaked document titled, “Mali, Russia, Turkey: Vagner seeks weapons from Ankara” — suggest US officials believe the Russian mercenary outfit has at least tested the waters. 

CNN has not independently confirmed the veracity of the document, but US officials have indicated that most of the leaked tranche are authentic. A State Department spokesperson said the “the Department of Defense and the intelligence community are actively reviewing and assessing the validity” of the leaked documents, adding “we are not in a position to confirm or comment on any specific information they contain.”

CNN has reached out to the US National Security Council, the office of the Turkish President and Turkey’s Embassy in Washington for comment on the document.

Read more here.

Two videos have emerged on social media in the past week which purport to show beheadings of Ukrainian soldiers.

The videos appear to be of separate events – one of them may have been filmed very recently, while the other, from the amount of foliage seen on the ground, looks like it was filmed during the summer.

The first video was posted to a pro-Russian social media channel on April 8. It was purportedly filmed by Russian mercenaries from the Wagner group and appears to show the beheaded corpses of two Ukrainian soldiers lying on the ground next to a destroyed military vehicle.

In the video, a voice can be heard, behind the camera, the sound seemingly distorted to prevent the speaker’s identification.

“(The armoured vehicle) got f**ked by a mine,” the voice, speaking Russian, says. 

Apparently referring to the bodies on the ground, the voice, laughing, continues, “They killed them. Someone came up to them. They came up to them and cut their heads off.” 

The dead soldiers also appear to have had their hands cut off. 

Russian social media accounts say the video was shot near Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, which has been the scene of the war’s fiercest fighting for many months, with Wagner fighters heavily involved. CNN is unable to independently confirm the video’s location.

The second video, which was posted on Twitter and is heavily blurred, looks to have been filmed during the summer because of the amount of plant life on the ground. It purports to show a Russian fighter using a knife to cut off the head of a Ukrainian soldier. A voice at the beginning of the video suggests the victim might have still been alive when the attack began.

Shortly after the videos emerged, Andriy Yermak, a top advisor to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, tweeted: “There will be an accountability for everything.”

Read more here.

Wagner founder and financier Yevgeny Prigozhin claimed on Tuesday that Russian forces now control much of the embattled eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut. 

“We are fully concentrated on Bakhmut, continuing to carry out combat missions. In Bakhmut, most of it — that is, more than 80% — is under our control, including the entire administrative center, plants, factories, the city administration,” Prigozhin said. “What is left is part of the multi-story residential areas, where fortification districts were made. There are tunnels under these high-rise buildings.”

Ukrainian officials have denied Prigozhin’s claim.

“Prigozhin needs to show at least some victory in the city, which they have been trying to capture for nine months in a row, so he makes such statements,” Cherevatyi added. 

The Wagner founder has been known to make incorrect claims about his forces’ advance on the ground in Ukraine. Last week, he posted a grainy video raising a flag at dawn, saying Bakhmut had “been taken,” despite ongoing fighting in and around the city. His claim was seen as a “pretty desperate” attempt, Western officials said.

What Western officials are saying: The officials conceded Russia had been able to make some progress in Bakhmut, but added it could be “measured in meters.”

“The Russians at the moment, despite trying for six months, with huge numbers of personnel and huge numbers of losses, have been unable to take the town, and at the moment have made very, very slow progress,” the officials said at a briefing last Wednesday. 

In the video this Tuesday, Prigozhin said Wagner fighters had relinquished control of some areas around Bakhmut to the Russian military. 

“We handed over the flanks to the Ministry of Defence. Units of the Ministry of Defence, including the airborne troops, have today taken over both the right and left flanks,” he said. “That is why Zaliznyanskoye, Nikolaevka, and other settlements, which were stormed by units of the Wagner PMC in previous months, are in the area of responsibility of the airborne troops and other units of the Ministry of Defence.”

CNN’s Max Foster contributed to this post.

Seven-year-old Karolina plays the piano at the Ukraine House cultural center in the United States capital, poking at keys, swinging her sneakers underneath. She could be any child playing the piano — except the legs swinging below the bench are prosthetic.

Karolina lost her legs last fall in a Russian attack on the Ukrainian city of Nikopol and came to the United States to receive treatment.

Sitting with Karolina is Ukraine’s ambassador to the United States, Oksana Markarova, who helped arrange the young girl’s care.

Visits like these are now typical for the wartime ambassador.

This month marks two years since Markarova became ambassador. She was less than a year into her post when Russian leader Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022.

“We were preparing for it,” she recalled. “We knew that the intent to attack us was there, but you never completely believe until, unfortunately, something horrific like war happens.”

Markarova said that for the first couple of months of the war she would wake up and wonder if it was a bad dream.

“Everyone in Ukraine, of course, it’s more difficult for them,” she acknowledged. “As I say always, the bombs are not falling on us here – but we work literally 24/7 since February 24, and we will continue working like that until we win.”

All around Washington: These days, much of Markarova’s time is spent outside the embassy, shuttling between various government agencies around Washington.

On a recent car ride from the Capitol to the Commerce Department for one of those meetings, Markarova noted the cars she uses have become “a second office.”

“This is where I prepare between the meetings, drive around everywhere,” she told CNN from the back seat.

The former private equity associate said she is not only working on securing military aid from Congress but also seeking support from American companies and entities as Ukraine begins rebuilding.

While House Republicans are divided over helping Ukraine, Markarova said she doesn’t see a difference with the chamber’s new GOP majority. She conceded, however, that there are members she has to “talk to more.”

Markarova hopes the burgeoning political debate will not weaken support overall.

Read CNN’s full profile on Markarova here.