RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

Ukraine losing ‘significant’ forces – White House

White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan has claimed that it was too early to make a call on the results of Ukraine’s counteroffensive operations, insisting that despite losing a “significant” amount of forces, Kiev still has “substantial” reserves to throw into battle.

When asked whether “the real counteroffensive is yet to come” at the Aspen Security Forum in Washington, DC on Friday, Sullivan insisted that the counteroffensive began “the day the first Ukrainian put their life on the line.”

“There have already been significant amounts of casualties and deaths of Ukrainian fighters in this counteroffensive, so it is well underway. And it is hard going. And we said it would be hard going,” the White House adviser told the forum’s moderator Edward Luce.

However, Ukraine has a “substantial amount of combat power that it has not yet committed to the fight,” and according to Sullivan, is now trying to choose the right moment “when it will have the maximum impact on the battlefield.”

“It is at that moment when they make that commitment that we will really see what the likely results of that counteroffensive will be,” Sullivan stated, noting that Washington is in “close consultation with the Ukrainians on the conditions for that.”

The West is evidently disappointed that despite “colossal amounts of resources” it sent to Kiev, its much-lauded counteroffensive has failed to produce any results and has led to high levels of Ukrainian casualties, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday.

Top Pentagon officials insisted earlier this week that it was too early to call the counteroffensive a “failure,” saying Washington had expected all along that the operation would be bloody and protracted. The New York Times reported last week that after losing up to 20% of the weaponry deployed in the counteroffensive in just two weeks, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky had paused the operation to shore up ammunition.

** Putin points to Kiev’s huge losses, depleted Western arsenals in failed counteroffensive

Russian President Vladimir Putin pointed to the Ukrainian army’s huge losses, depleted Western arsenals and a change in public mood in Ukraine and Europe as the consequences of Kiev’s much-trumpeted counteroffensive that yielded no results.

"It is obvious today that the Kiev regime’s Western handlers are clearly disappointed over the results of the so-called counteroffensive loudly trumpeted by the current Ukrainian authorities in the previous months," Putin told a meeting with permanent members of the country’s Security Council.

"There are no results [of Ukraine’s counteroffensive], at least for the time being. Neither huge resources pumped into the Kiev regime nor the deliveries of Western weapons - tanks, artillery, armor and missiles - nor thousands of foreign mercenaries sent there and most actively used in attempts to break through our army’s front are of any help," the Russian leader said.

The Russian supreme commander-in-chief highly praised the military command in the zone of the special military operation in Ukraine.

"The military command of the special military operation acts professionally. Our soldiers and officers, units and formations fulfil their duty to their Motherland courageously, perseveringly and heroically," the Russian leader stressed.

Depleted Western arms inventories

"Meanwhile, the entire world sees that the much-touted Western and allegedly invulnerable equipment is torched and is frequently inferior even to some Soviet-made armaments by its operational characteristics," the head of state said.

"Yes, of course, Western armaments can still be additionally supplied and thrown into battle. This, of course, causes certain damage to us and prolongs the conflict," the head of state said.

"However, firstly, NATO arsenals and old Soviet weaponry inventories in some states have already been considerably depleted. Secondly, the available production capacities in the West do not allow for quickly replenishing stocks of expended hardware and ammunition," Putin stressed.

As the Russian leader pointed out, "additional and, moreover, large resources and time are needed" to replenish the Western arms inventories.

Ukrainian army’s irreparable losses

The Ukrainian military lost tens of thousands of troops in its counteroffensive, the Russian president said.

"The main thing is that Ukrainian armed formations suffered huge losses as a result of suicidal attacks. They run into tens of thousands, exactly tens of thousands of people," Putin said.

As the Russian leader pointed out, "despite constant raids, incessant waves of total mobilization across cities and villages in Ukraine, it is increasingly difficult for the current regime to send new reinforcements to the front. The country's mobilization resource is running out."

Change in public sentiment

The Russian leader also pointed to a change in public mood in Ukraine and Europe.

"People in Ukraine increasingly often pose this question, a legitimate question: for the sake of what, for the sake of whose mercenary interests their relatives and friends are being killed. They are sobering up, even if gradually and slowly," the head of state said.

"We see that public opinion in Europe is also changing. Both Europeans and representatives of the European elites see that this so-called support of Ukraine is essentially a deadlock, a futile and endless waste of money and effort and in actual fact the servicing of someone else’s, far from European interests: the interests of the global hegemon from across the ocean that benefits from a weaker Europe," the Russian leader said.

Advantageous flames of war

As Putin pointed out, "the endless prolongation of the Ukraine conflict is also advantageous" for the United States.

"Judging from what is happening in real life, the current US ruling elites are doing precisely this. In any case, they are acting following this logic," the Russian leader said.

"Whether this policy corresponds to the true and vital interests of the American people is a big question and certainly a rhetorical question and let them deal with it themselves," the head of state said.

"However, the flames of war are being intensely fueled at present," Putin said. The Russian leader pointed out that the United States "exploits for this purpose the ambitions of leaders of some Eastern European states who have long turned their hatred of Russia and Russophobia into their chief export commodity and an instrument of their internal policy and now want to benefit from the Ukrainian tragedy."

** Zelensky threatens to ‘neutralize’ Europe's longest bridge

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has claimed that the bridge to Crimea is not civilian infrastructure, but a key logistical route for Russia’s “militarizing” of the peninsula, insisting Kiev was within its rights to target it using any means necessary.

The Crimean Bridge – the longest in Europe, which links the peninsula to mainland Russia over the Kerch Strait – was damaged in an explosion on Monday. The drone strike, which Moscow called a Ukrainian terrorist attack, killed a couple and seriously injured their 14-year-old daughter, who was traveling in the same car.

Neglecting to even mention civilian casualties, CNN’s Fareed Zakaria asked Zelensky at the Aspen Security Forum in Washington, DC on Friday whether destroying the bridge “completely” was Kiev’s “short-term objective.”

“For us this is understandably an enemy facility built outside the law, built outside international laws, and all applicable norms, so understandably this is our objective. And any target that is bringing war, not peace, has to be neutralized,” the Ukrainian leader stated.

Zelensky went on to say that Kiev’s objective was to “reclaim all of Crimea because it is our sovereign territory,” avoiding the host’s question whether such a grand goal could be reached through an ongoing counteroffensive that has so far shown underwhelming results.

Government sources cited by Ukrainian media outlets confirmed the strike had been launched by Kiev. The SBU, the security service that allegedly co-organized the operation with the Ukrainian military, reacted by promising to release details about the incident after the conflict with Russia is over.

Crimea broke away from Ukraine shortly after the Western-backed 2014 Maidan coup, which deposed the democratically-elected Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich. Afterwards, the peninsula joined Russia, with its population overwhelmingly backing reunification in a referendum. Since then, seizing Crimea from Russia has become a top talking point for Ukrainian officials.

WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

Russia pounds Ukraine's grain, UN warns of hunger from price rises

Russia pounded Ukrainian food export facilities for a fourth day in a row on Friday and practised seizing ships in the Black Sea in an escalation of what Western leaders say is an attempt to wriggle out of sanctions by threatening a global food crisis.

The attacks on Ukraine's grain, a major part of the global food chain, followed a vow by Kyiv to defy Russia's naval blockade on its export ports after Moscow's withdrawal this week from a UN-brokered safe sea corridor agreement.

The UN warned that millions of people in poor countries around the world were at greater risk of hunger and starvation from the knock-on effect for food prices.

"Some will go hungry, some will starve, many may die as a result of these decisions," UN aid chief Martin Griffiths told the Security Council.

In Ukraine, local governor Oleh Kiper said the grain terminals of an agricultural enterprise in Odesa region were hit by air, with 100 tons of peas and 20 tons of barley destroyed.

Photographs released by the emergencies ministry showed a fire burning among crumpled metal buildings that appeared to be storehouses. Two people were injured, Kiper said, while officials reported seven dead in Russian air strikes elsewhere in Ukraine.

Moscow has described the attacks as revenge for a Ukrainian strike on a Russian-built bridge to Crimea - the Ukrainian Black Sea peninsula seized by Moscow in 2014. It accuses Ukraine of using the sea corridor to launch "terrorist attacks."

Russia said its Black Sea fleet had practised firing rockets at "floating targets" and it would deem all ships heading for Ukrainian waters to be potentially carrying arms. Kyiv responded with a similar warning about ships headed to Russia.

The attacks on grain export infrastructure and anxiety over shipping drove prices of benchmark Chicago wheat futures towards their biggest weekly gain since the February 2022 invasion.

The UN says the deal had helped the poorest by lowering food prices more than 23% globally since March last year.

Russia says not enough Ukrainian grain had reached poor countries and that it is now negotiating directly with those most in need. It says it will not re-enter the deal without better terms for its own food and fertiliser sales.

Western leaders accuse Moscow of seeking to loosen sanctions imposed over its invasion of Ukraine, which already exempt exports of Russian food. Russian grain has moved freely through the Black Sea to market throughout the conflict.

WAGNER NEAR POLAND BORDER

A Polish broadcaster reported on Friday that a military reconnaissance drone of unspecified origin had crashed near a base in southwestern Poland this week.

NATO military alliance member Poland has been reinforcing its border with Belarus, where Russia's Wagner mercenary force has taken up residency after a failed mutiny last month.

Belarus has said Wagner fighters are training its troops near the Polish border. Residents in Poland close to the frontier report having heard shooting and helicopters.

Russia's President Vladimir Putin said it was Poland that had territorial ambitions in the region, telling Russia's Security Council that Moscow would react to any aggression against Belarus "with all the means at our disposal."

Investigators in Russia detained prominent nationalist Igor Girkin, a former commander of Russia's proxy forces in Ukraine, who had publicly accused Putin and army chiefs of not prosecuting the war in Ukraine harshly or effectively enough.

"This is a direct outcome of Prigozhin's mutiny: the army's command now wields greater political leverage to quash its opponents in the public sphere," said Tatiana Stanovaya, founder of the R.Politik analysis firm.

Inside Ukraine, four people were killed in 80 Russian attacks on settlements in the southern Zaporizhzhia region over the past 24 hours, regional governor Yuriy Malashko said.

A married couple in their 50s were killed in Russian shelling of the city of Kostiantynivka in the eastern region of Donetsk, the general prosecutor's office said.

And in the northern region of Chernihiv, a woman's body was pulled from rubble after a missile strike, regional governor Viacheslav Chaus said.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in his nightly video address, noted that Odesa port, its grain facilities and its surrounding region, had once again been a target of Russian attacks with more than 20 people injured this week alone.

"If someone in Russia hopes that they can somehow turn the Black Sea into an area of arbitrary action and terrorism, this will not work for them," he said.

"We know how to defend ourselves and we see around the world a readiness to work together further and more actively in order to guarantee calm for our region."

Russia sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine last year and claims to have annexed nearly a fifth of its territory. Moscow says it is responding to threats posed by its neighbour, while Kyiv and the West call it an unprovoked war of conquest.