Evening update
News and notes from Europe
Claire—The reports from Mariupol are apocalyptic. A Reuters team that reached the city last week described “a wasteland of charred apartment blocks and bodies wrapped in blankets lying on the road.” Whole districts have been deported en masse to Russia, while more than 200,000 people remain trapped in a “freezing hellscape riddled with dead bodies and destroyed buildings.” Residents are dying of thirst and hunger. Russia is attacking every humanitarian convoy that tries to enter the city. People are drinking from water from radiators and from streams contaminated by rotting corpses, eating dogs, and scavenging for food in bombed buildings.
A month ago, people there lived perfectly normal lives.
Satellite images show mass graves in Mariupol.
The head of the UN human rights team in Ukraine said on Friday that monitors had received increasing information on mass graves in the encircled city of Mariupol, Ukraine, including one that appeared to hold 200 bodies.
BREAKING: Depending on the details, this is a very significant announcement:
That’s an astonishing thing to announce. (Not least because it would involve Turkey, Greece, and France acting in cooperation.)
Pentagon: Russia has lost full control of Kherson, the first major Ukrainian city they captured. (If so, a huge setback.)
The Russian army says that the first phase of its military campaign in Ukraine is over and troops will now focus on the complete “liberation” of the eastern Donbas region. According to Sergei Rudskoi, chief of the Main Operational Directorate of the General Staff of Russia’s armed forces, “The combat potential of Ukraine’s armed forces has been significantly reduced, which allows (us)— I emphasise once again—to focus our main efforts on achieving the main goal—the liberation of Donbas.”
A seventh Russian general has been killed!
Forbes: Ukrainian army now has 43 more tanks than it had at the beginning of the war.
Odessa prepares to repel Russian invasion.
The battle for Odessa has yet to begin but many believe it could play a decisive role in determining the outcome of the war. As Ukraine’s largest port and gateway to global shipping lanes, control over Odessa is essential as Moscow seeks to break Ukrainian resistance and subjugate the country.
There is one thing that everybody in Odessa seems to agree on: old myths about Russian-Ukrainian brotherhood and the alleged pro-Kremlin sympathies of Russian-speaking Ukrainians now belong on the ash heap of history. These longstanding Russian propaganda tropes have drowned in the bloodshed of Moscow’s criminal invasion and will never resurface. Instead, Russian-speaking Odessa watches and waits for the opportunity to hammer another nail in the coffin of Putin’s imperial ambitions.
A speech by the head of the Main Operational Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed forces of the Russian Federation:
The British Defense Ministry says Russia’s attempts to drive west toward Odessa, bypassing Mykolaiv, are being slowed by logistical issues and Ukrainian resistance in the south. In the north, it said Ukrainian counterattacks have allowed its forces to reclaim towns and positions up to 35 kilometers east of Kyiv.
The Ministry believes Ukraine’s forces are likely to continue attempts to push Russian forces toward Hostomel airfield along the northwestern axis from Kyiv.
(Another reason is that NLAWs and Javelins will obliterate the crew of whatever vehicle they hit. The IEDs or RPG-7s that US troops faced in Iraq and Afghanistan were less decisive.)
Ukraine said talks with Moscow were “very difficult” and vowed not to back down on its demands. Russia likewise said there had been “no progress” on the main issues in talks.
Highly recommended: A Call for Arms: The weapons Ukraine needs:
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to The Cosmopolitan Globalist to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.