Ukraine war: Several injured as Russian missiles target Kyiv
They said two ballistic missiles were intercepted, but seven people were injured as debris fell. Explosions were heard across the Ukrainian capital and a column of smoke was seen rising in the east. The city's mayor urged residents to immediately take cover as the attack came virtually without warning. Moments before the explosions the Ukrainian air force warned in a message on Telegram that a missile was flying towards the city.
“Russia has failed in its biggest goals, but those failures may be reversed. Ukraine’s successes are not guaranteed to endure, and at the moment, momentum seems to be shifting at least modestly in Russia’s favor.” Two years after Russia’s full-scale military invasion of Ukraine, Michael O’Hanlon takes stock of where the war stands and what happens if the U.S. House of Representatives fails to authorize additional financial and military aid.
PITA: Russia’s full-scale military invasion of Ukraine has lasted two full years, as of February 24th. The Ukrainian military and people have shown incredible resilience. Meanwhile, for those not in the trenches, the war has shaken perceptions of European security and continues to reshape NATO and other aspects of U.S.-European security architecture.
As Brookings scholars are taking stock of the current state of the war, several of them took part in a “reality check” on U.S. and European policy, debating some of the major questions facing Ukraine and its supporters. We’ll have a link to the written document in the show notes, or you can also go to brookings.edu slash events to find the live-action version, an online discussion with five of the authors on Friday morning. With us today is one of those authors, Mike O’Hanlon, senior fellow and director of the Strobe Talbot Center for Security, Strategy and Technology here at Brookings. Mike, welcome back.
France wants China to send ‘clear messages’ to Russia over Ukraine war
China should reason with Russia about the war in Ukraine, said French Foreign Minister Stéphane Séjourné in Beijing. The Chinese government “plays a key role in ... the respect of international law, including on Ukraine's sovereignty, and therefore we are clearly expecting that China will send very clear messages to Russia,” Sejourne said during a press conference in the Chinese capital speaking alongside his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi. Séjourné's comments come as Chinese President Xi Jinping is expected to meet with French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris in early May.
China presents itself as neutral on the Ukraine war and hasn't formally condemned Russia for the invasion. Instead, Beijing has deepened ties with Moscow — even deciding to ditch the United States dollar for bilateral trade. Last month, China's special envoy for Eurasian affairs warned about the war escalating and said both Ukraine and Russia “agree that negotiations, rather than guns, will ultimately end this war.” China wants Europe to let Russia sit at the table for future peace talks — or Beijing will boycott such discussions.
Biden and Xi Jinping discuss Russia-Ukraine war, Taiwan, election security and counternarcotics
U.S.-Chinese interests align on issues that include the risks and safety of artificial intelligence and climate change, a senior administration official said.
President Joe Biden held a call with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Tuesday morning to address U.S. concerns over China’s trade with Russia amid its war with Ukraine, the issues of cyberattacks and election interference, and efforts to counter illicit narcotics traffic, among other regional and global matters, the White House said. The "check-in" call between Biden and Xi — their first discussion since November — was an opportunity for them to talk about some tough issues and try to ensure that the two countries are responsibly managing their competition with each other, a senior administration official said in a background call with reporters on Monday evening. "Intense competition requires intense diplomacy to manage tensions, address misperceptions and prevent unintended conflict, and this call is one way to do that," the official said.
China’s trade with Russia as that nation wages war against Ukraine came up, the White House said in a readout of the call — a topic that has been part of the diplomatic conversations between the U.S. and China since the start of the war, the senior administration official said. The U.S. has grown more concerned over China helping to rebuild Russia’s defense industrial base, the official said. During a White House press briefing Tuesday, national security communications adviser John Kirby said the two leaders spoke for about an hour and 45 minutes in the call, which was meant to build on their meeting in Woodside, California, in November of last year. Asked what Biden’s message to Xi was on misinformation campaigns or election interference efforts by the Chinese government or people associated with it, Kirby said the administration has been clear about its concerns over election security in the U.S. and efforts by certain foreign actors, including some from China, to influence the 2024 election.
Ukraine’s army chief, Colonel-General Oleksandr Syrskii, said on Sunday that Russian forces aimed to capture the city of Chasiv Yar by May 9, setting the stage for an important battle for control of high ground in the east where Russia is focusing its assaults.
The fall of Chasiv Yar, west of the shattered city of Bakhmut, by the date Moscow marks the Soviet victory in World War II would indicate growing Russian battlefield momentum as Kyiv faces a slowdown in Western military aid.
Rob Lee, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, a think tank in Philadelphia, said on X that Chasiv Yar would likely prove an important battle. “Chasiv Yar is located on defensible high ground. If Russia takes the [town], they could potentially increase the rate of advance deeper into Donetsk [region] as part of an expected summer offensive,” he said.
Separately, fragments from a downed Russian missile fell on a settlement outside the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro on Sunday, injuring 12 people, the regional governor Serhiy Lysak said.
Lysak also said Russian forces used artillery in 11 attacks on the town of Nikopol, a frequent target opposite the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant. He said four people had been injured.
Ukraine May Have Just Crossed Putin's Nuclear Red Line
Drone attacks on a Russian radar site may have crossed one of Moscow's red lines for potential nuclear weapon use—the "disruption of the response actions of nuclear forces," per the wording of a Kremlin decree signed by Presiden Vladimir Putin in 2020. Ukrainian drones reportedly targeted the 590th separate radio engineering center of military unit 84680 in the city of Kovilkino on Wednesday morning and on April 11. Kovilkino is in the Mordovia Republic, some 360 miles from the Ukrainian border. The site is home to a 29B6 "Container" over-the-horizon radar, which forms part of Russia's reconnaissance and early-warning network for aerospace attacks, including those by ballistic missiles. Sources say the results of Wednesday's attack are still being determined. Ukrainian media reports suggested that the site's command post building was damaged during the attack on April 11, while Russian authorities said two unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) had been shot down. Ukrainska Pravda cited an unnamed Defence Intelligence of Ukraine (DIU) source who said the outcome of the strike is still being assessed.
Ukraine war updates: Russia fends off drone, missile and ‘balloon’ attack; Ukraine says it deserves same support as Israel
Russia said its air defense systems intercepted almost 50 Ukrainian drones, missiles and “small-sized balloons” over several of its border regions Wednesday night. Russia’s Defense Ministry said air defenses intercepted two “Tochka-U” missiles, rockets, drones and five “small-sized balloons” over the Belgorod, Rostov and Voronezh regions that border Ukraine. The regions have found themselves to be the targets of numerous drone and missile attacks in recent months. Meanwhile, it’s been a difficult week for Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Kyiv has watched how Israel’s Western partners actively intervened last Saturday to help to defend the state from a massive Iranian drone and missile strike. The solid allied response prompted Ukraine’s leadership to ask why its international partners can’t do the same for Ukraine. Zelenskyy told EU leaders last night that Ukraine deserved the same security as Israel.
Russia doesn’t have capability to knock Ukraine out of war: Ex-US commander
Ben Hodges, who led US forces in Europe, says Western powers should overcome their fears of supporting Ukraine towards victory.
For General Ben Hodges, who once commanded NATO forces in Europe, the worst-case scenario for Ukraine is for Western powers to “keep doing what we’re doing, exactly right now”. He told Al Jazeera in an interview on the sidelines of the recent Delphi Economic Conference in Greece that a paralysed US Congress, over-cautious White House administration and fearful allies in Europe constitute a Russian marketing success. Take the German refusal to send Ukraine 500km-range (310-mile) Taurus missiles. “That is 99 percent because [Olaf Scholz] is convinced that if [Donald] Trump is [US] president, then he will withdraw the nuclear shield from Europe and turn his back on NATO,” said Hodges, referring to the former US Republican leader who is running again this year. “Germany then, unlike France and the UK if it ended up in a conflict with Russia over Taurus, would be without a nuclear deterrent.” Or take the administration of US President Joe Biden, which Hodges described as “unduly scared”.
Russia says US facing humiliation in Ukraine like in Vietnam
Russia said on Sunday U.S. lawmakers' support for $60.84 billion more in aid for Ukraine showed that Washington was wading much deeper into a hybrid war against Moscow that would end in humiliation on a par with the Vietnam or Afghanistan conflicts.President Vladimir Putin's 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine has touched off the worst fall-out in relations between Russia and the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, according to Russian and U.S. diplomats.
On Saturday, the U.S. House of Representatives passed with broad bipartisan support a $95 billion legislative providing security assistance to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, over bitter objections from some far-right Republicans. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said it was clear that the United States wanted Ukraine "to fight to the last Ukrainian" including with attacks on Russian sovereign territory and civilians.
"Washington's deeper and deeper immersion in the hybrid war against Russia will turn into a loud and humiliating fiasco for United States such as Vietnam and Afghanistan," Zakharova said.
Russia, she said, will give "an unconditional and resolute response" to the U.S. move to get more involved in the Ukraine war. U.S. Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns warned last week that without more U.S. military support Ukraine could lose on the battlefield, but that with support Kyiv's forces could hold their own this year.
Russian invasion has gained ground in 2024 as Ukraine ran out of artillery, but a $61bn US aid package finally looks imminent
Ukraine has been struggling against Russian aggression since US military aid essentially dried up at the end of last year, suffering in particular from an increasingly serious shortage of artillery. Its military was forced to abandon the Donbas town of Avdiivka in February and is now coming under pressure in Chasiv Yar. Moscow’s forces have been able to outshell Kyiv by a ratio of at least five to one, rising to 10 to 1, meaning that Ukrainian artillery have been increasingly unable to prevent Russian forces from massing in advance of ground attacks. The shortages were so acute that some Ukrainian gunners reported they were reduced to firing smoke shells to scare the Russians because they had no shells left. At the same time, Ukraine has been short of air and missile defences, exposing its civilians to increased danger. Russia switched to aggressively targeting Ukrainian power stations, knocking out two in Kharkiv region in March and another south of Kyiv earlier in April. Electricity is rationed to a few hours a day in Kharkiv, a city of 1.3 million people, and there is growing anxiety that the power system may be unable to cope, particularly next autumn and winter.
‘Our artillery is starving:’ Ukraine holds its breath as US set to approve $60bn of military aid
Soldiers on the front lines in Ukraine say the prospect of final approval in the US Congress of a $60 billion military aid package for Kyiv will serve as a giant morale boost as Russia looks to step up its advance. The Ukraine aid bill, passed in the United States' House of Represenatatives, is now due to goto the Senate on Tuesday. If passed in Congress’s upper chamber then President Joe Biden has said he will sign it into law immediately, so that “we can quickly send weapons and equipment to Ukraine to meet their urgent battlefield needs.” Ukraine’s wish list is no secret. At the top: artillery shells and air defense systems.
For months, Ukrainian soldiers on the front lines have spoken of being badly outgunned by Russian forces. President Volodymyr Zelensky recently said the ratio was 10 to one in Russia’s favor. “To win, we need ammunition… our artillery is starving,” an artillery reconnaissance commander with the 110th mechanized brigade, callsign “Teren,” told CNN after the vote on Saturday. Teren knows what he’s talking about, having spent two years defending the industrial town of Avdiivka before it fell to Russia in February. Since then, Moscow’s forces have enjoyed considerable success pushing further west.
U.S. Secretly Shipped New Long-Range Missiles to Ukraine
Ukrainian forces for the first time used a longer-range version of weapons known as ATACMS, striking an airfield in Crimea and Russian troops in southeastern Ukraine.
The Army Tactical Missile System, or ATACMS. President Biden secretly approved sending long-range ATACMS to
Ukraine in mid-February.Credit...South Korean Defense Ministry, via Agence France
The United States last week secretly shipped a new long-range missile system to Ukraine, and Ukrainian forces immediately used the weapons to attack a Russian military airfield in Crimea last Wednesday and Russian troops in the country’s southeast overnight on Tuesday, according to a senior U.S. official. The United States previously Ukraine with a version of the Army Tactical Missile Systems — known as ATACMS — armed with wide-spreading cluster munitions that can travel 100 miles. But Ukraine has long coveted the system’s longer-range version, with a range of about 190 miles. That can reach deeper into occupied Ukraine, including Crimea, a hub of Russian air and ground forces, and supply nodes for Moscow’s forces in the country’s southeast. Overnight Tuesday, Ukraine used the longer-range missiles to strike Russian troops in the port city of Berdiansk on the Sea of Azov, the senior U.S. official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters.
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By: CeeJay | February 4, 2022
