RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE
Western officials losing faith in Ukraine's military – CNN
Kiev’s Western backers are losing faith in the ability of the Ukrainian military to penetrate Russian defenses and turn the tide of the conflict, US and other Western officials told CNN on Tuesday.
“[The Ukrainians are] still going to see, for the next couple of weeks, if there is a chance of making some progress. But for them to really make progress that would change the balance of this conflict, I think, it’s extremely, highly unlikely,” an unnamed “senior Western diplomat” told the American broadcaster.
Illinois Representative Mike Quigley, a Democrat who recently met with US commanders in Europe, described their briefings as “sobering.”
“We’re reminded of the challenges [the Ukrainians] face,” he said, adding that “This is the most difficult time of the war.”
Ukraine launched its long-awaited counteroffensive against Russian forces in early June, assaulting multiple points along the frontline from Zaporozhye to Donetsk regions. However, the Russian military had spent several months preparing a dense and multi-layered network of minefields, trenches, and fortifications, which the Ukrainian side has thus far failed to overcome.
Advancing through minefields without air support, Ukraine’s Western-trained and NATO-equipped units have suffered horrendous casualties, losing 43,000 troops and 4,900 pieces of heavy weaponry in just over two months, according to the most recent figures from the Russian Defense Ministry.
“[The] Russians have a number of defensive lines and [Ukrainian forces] haven’t really gone through the first line,” another anonymous Western diplomat told CNN. “Even if they would keep on fighting for the next several weeks, if they haven’t been able to make more breakthroughs throughout these last seven, eight weeks, what is the likelihood that they will suddenly, with more depleted forces, make them?”
Despite the best efforts of Ukraine’s armed forces chief, Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, to convince the US that “the initiative is on our side,” officials told CNN that Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky could soon be pushed to sue for peace if progress remains stalled.
A senior US military official predicted that Kiev would rely more and more on piecemeal strikes within Russia – like the recent drone attacks on Moscow – to compensate for its shortcomings on the battlefield. The Kremlin has drawn similar conclusions from these attacks, with spokesman Dmitry Peskov declaring last week that Kiev was launching “terrorist strikes” as “acts of desperation” to distract from its failing counteroffensive.
** Two combat drones shot down on approach to Moscow
Air defense systems have shot down two unmanned aerial vehicles on an approach to Moscow, Mayor Sergey Sobyanin said, adding that no injuries have been reported.
"Two combat drones have attempted to fly to the city. Both were shot down by air defense systems, one in the Domodedovo area, and another one in the vicinity of Minskoye Highway. No injuries have been reported," Sobyanin wrote on his Telegram channel.
WESTERN PERSPECTIVE
Ukraine accuses Russia of targeting rescue workers with consecutive missile strikes
Ukrainian officials on Tuesday accused the Kremlin’s forces of targeting rescue workers by hitting residential buildings with two consecutive missiles — the first one to draw crews to the scene and the second one to wound or kill them.
The strikes Monday evening in the downtown district of the city of Pokrovsk killed nine people and wounded more than 80 others, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly address. According to Ukrainian authorities, one of those killed was an emergency official, and most of those wounded were police officers, emergency workers and soldiers who rushed to assist residents.
The Russian missiles slammed into the center of Pokrovsk in the eastern Donetsk region, which is partially occupied by Russia. Emergency crews were still removing rubble on Tuesday. The Iskander missiles, which have an advanced guidance system that increases their accuracy, hit within 40 minutes of each other, according to Donetsk Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko said.
Since the start of the war, Russia has used artillery and missiles to hit targets and then struck the exact same spot around 30 minutes later, often hitting emergency teams responding to the first blast. The tactic is called a “double tap” in military jargon. Russians used the same method in Syria’s civil war.
“All of (the police) were there because they were needed, putting their efforts into rescuing people after the first strike,” Ivan Vyhivskyi, chief of Ukraine’s National Police, said Tuesday. “They knew that under the rubble were the injured — they needed to react, to dig, to retrieve, to save. And the enemy deliberately struck the second time.”
Russia’s Ministry of Defense claimed it hit a Ukrainian army command post in Pokrovsk. Neither side’s claims could be independently verified.
Among those injured was Volodymyr Nikulin, a police officer originally from the now Russian-occupied port city of Mariupol.
Arriving at the scene after the first missile strike, Nikulin was wounded in the second strike when shrapnel pierced his left lung and left hand.
“Today is not my happy day because Russian criminals committed another awful crime in Pokrovsk,” he said in a video he sent to The Associated Press from a hospital ward.
In the video, he is seen lying on a bed shirtless, with dried blood on his side and covering his left hand. He moves with pain to show his wounds.
Pointing his camera to show other wounded security forces in the ward, he says: “Look, these are Ukrainian heroes who helped (injured) people.”
He told the National Police in a video that he feared a second strike but went to help anyway.
There were so many injured at the hospital that Nikulin was still waiting for surgery on Tuesday morning. He was later transported to a hospital in Dnipro, where he was to have the shrapnel removed.
Nikulin had already witnessed some of the war’s horrors. He helped an AP team escape after Russian troops that besieged Mariupol entered the downtown area and searched for them.
He was featured in the award-winning documentary “20 Days in Mariupol,” a joint project between The Associated Press and PBS “Frontline” about the earliest phase of the invasion of Mariupol.
In a statement, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator in Ukraine, Denise Brown, described the latest attack as “absolutely ruthless” and said it was “a serious breach” of international law and violated “any principle of humanity.”
Since the beginning of Russia’s invasion in February 2022, 78 employees of Ukraine’s State Emergency Service have been killed and 280 have been wounded while responding to Russian missile strikes, according to agency spokesperson Col. Oleksandr Khorunzhyi.
Ukrainian officials say rescuers are protected by international conventions as they are providing humanitarian assistance and are not engaged in combat operations.
The head of the Pokrovsk city administration, Serhii Dobriak, described the attacks as “a typical Russian scenario,” with 30 to 40 minutes between missiles.
“When rescuers come to save people’s lives, another rocket arrives. And the number of casualties increases,” he said in a video comment to local media.
Kyrylenko, the regional governor, said that 12 multistory buildings were damaged in Pokrovsk, as well as a hotel, a pharmacy, two stores and two cafes.
The roof of one building was partially demolished, and rubble filled the sidewalk outside. Across the road, a children’s playground was wrecked.
Russian missiles, drones and artillery have repeatedly struck civilian areas in the war. The Kremlin says its forces target only military assets and claims other damage is caused by debris from Ukrainian air defenses.
Meanwhile, an overnight attack on the town of Kruhliakivka, in the northeastern Kharkiv region, killed three people and injured nine others, Gov. Oleh Syniehubov said.
Russia also dropped four guided bombs on a village near Kupiansk, in the Kharkiv region, killing two civilians, Ukraine’s presidential office said.
Rescuers later came under fire, and two of them were wounded, it said.
Also on Tuesday, Russian-installed authorities of the Donetsk region accused Kyiv’s forces of shelling the region’s namesake capital and killing three people. The Moscow-appointed leader of the Donetsk region, Denis Pushilin, said Ukrainian shelling of the Russian-held city of Donetsk also wounded 11.
** 2 Russian missile strikes hit a city in eastern Ukraine, killing at least 5 people, officials say
Two Russian missile strikes hit the city center of the Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk in the eastern Donetsk region Monday evening, killing at least five people and wounding two dozen more, Ukrainian officials said.
The strikes, which targeted the Ukrainian portion of a region partially occupied by Russia, occurred within 40 minutes of each other, according to Donetsk Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko. The attack damaged nine- and five-story buildings, residential houses, a hotel where foreign journalists used to stay, dining establishments, shops and administrative buildings, he said.
Ukraine’s Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said five people, including a local official of Ukraine’s State Emergency Service, were killed and 31 more were wounded by the strikes. Nineteen policemen, five rescuers and one child were among the wounded, Klymenko said.
The Suspilne news site, however, cited head of the Pokrovsk City Military Administration Serhiy Dobriak as saying that seven people were killed and 27 were wounded. The conflicting reports could not be immediately reconciled.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in an online statement accused Russia of trying to leave nothing but “broken and scorched stones” in eastern Ukraine. His remarks accompanied footage of a damaged, five-story residential building with one floor partially destroyed.
The deadly attack came just a day after officials from around 40 countries gathered in Saudi Arabia to find a peaceful settlement for the war in Ukraine. Russia’s Foreign Ministry on Monday denounced the two-day talks in Jeddah as not having “the slightest added value” because Moscow — unlike Kyiv — wasn’t invited.
A statement by the Russian Foreign Ministry repeated previous assurances that Moscow is open to a diplomatic solution on its terms that would end the 17-month-old war, and that it is ready to respond to serious proposals. The Kremlin’s demands include Kyiv recognizing its annexation of four Ukrainian regions, which Russian forces at this point only partially control, and Crimea, which Moscow seized in 2014.
But Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Zelenskyy, ruled out Moscow’s previous demands that would give Russia time to dig in deeper in the parts of Ukraine it has occupied. He said on X, formerly known as Twitter, that Russian forces must fully withdraw from the occupied areas and there would be no compromise by Kyiv on that.
U.N. political chief Rosemary DiCarlo participated in the Jeddah meeting by video, and U.N. deputy spokesman Farhan Haq said the United Nations welcomes all diplomatic initiatives and wants “to keep pushing forward towards any form of a peace that is based on the U.N. Charter, including on the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine.”
Meanwhile, the Ukrainian Security Service announced Monday it had detained an alleged Russian informant who gathered intelligence about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s trip to the southern Mykolaiv region last month.
It claimed the woman “was collecting data for an airstrike during Zelenskyy’s visit.”
The woman attempted to establish Zelenskyy’s route, times and visits in the region. She was detained when she tried to pass the information to the Russians, the statement said, without providing evidence.
Zelenskyy has been a prime target for the Kremlin since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, when he refused to leave Kyiv as Moscow’s forces approached.
He has been one of Ukraine’s unexpected trump cards in the war, playing a key role in rallying public morale, including a nightly video address, and becoming a recognizable face across the world as he presses allies and others to help Ukraine.
Also on Monday, Russian shelling struck a nine-story residential building in the city of Kherson, killing one person and wounding four others, according to regional Gov. Oleksandr Prokudin. He said Kherson had endured a “tough night” as the Russians “covered the central part of the city with fire.”
A 57-year-old woman was killed and four people were wounded in the Russian shelling of a village in the northeastern Kharkiv province, Gov. Oleh Syniehubov said.
RT/Tass/AP