WESTERN PERSPECTIVE
U.S. intel chief warns of 'devastating' impact of Russian missile attacks
President Biden’s chief intelligence adviser raised fresh concerns Thursday night that Russian missile attacks are having a “devastating” impact on the Ukrainian economy, noting that the war has already reduced the country's gross domestic product by nearly one-third.
Speaking during a question-and-answer session at the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said U.S. officials so far “do not see any reduction in the resolve of the Ukrainians to fight this war.”
But at the same time, Haines seemed to offer a more sobering view of the conflict than most Biden administration officials have shared to date. She said the “brutal” missile attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure are taking a far bigger toll than has been publicly understood.
“What we do see is the impact it's having on the economy,” she added. “The Ukrainian economy has already been devastated during this conflict. And we're seeing a reduction of about 30% of the GDP. I mean, it's really — it's brutal, and if [the Russians] take down the [Ukrainian energy] grid, and if they have the impact that they're looking to have on critical infrastructure, it will be really challenging.”
Haines’s comments came on a day when the Russians unleashed another barrage of missiles, killing 12 civilians, as part of a campaign targeting the energy grid with the apparent goal of leaving the country without power and water during the freezing winter months.
Her carefully couched comments on the difficulties facing Ukraine come during a crucial period when the Biden administration and Western allies are racing to step up their military aid to the Kyiv government.
** Russia Escalates Attack on Bakhmut Area as Kyiv Warns New Offensive Is Imminent
Russia escalated strikes on a town near the contested city of Bakhmut on Saturday as it sought to cut off Ukraine’s supply routes and encircle the city, while Ukrainian officials warned of a major new Russian offensive in coming weeks.
Inside Bakhmut, gunshots echoed from the east side of the river that bisects the city. Waves of Russian troops were pushing in from the east, and two pontoon bridges across the river hit this week were passable only by foot, Ukrainian soldiers said. Ukrainians said they were fighting for each block, but were outnumbered and outgunned, and the Russians were slowly taking territory in the city.
“If we hold a building and then they level it, of course we have to step back to another building,” said one private from the 93rd brigade who was resupplying troops around the city. He said the Ukrainians were outnumbered 10-to-1 in some parts of the city. Both sides were firing less than they had been months earlier, he said, showing a general dwindling of artillery supplies after six months of grinding battle for the city; pickup trucks were being used to evacuate injured soldiers.
“It’s really bad,” he said. “Really hard.”
The sound of gunfire also came from the southwest, where the Russians were pushing to take the town of Ivanivske in an effort to surround Bakhmut, Ukrainian soldiers said.
“Around a month ago, they changed their strategy—they realized we wouldn’t let them go through the city, so they started trying to go around,” said a national guard lieutenant, speaking from a basement where a dozen troops were eating soup, chicken and bread. The streets were all but abandoned just west of the river on Saturday. Cars full of soldiers sometimes sped by.
The lieutenant said Russians were pushing from east, south and north. For now, he said, his unit was holding their territory on the eastern front. But he added, “We have a shortage of people…We have a shortage of hard weapons—grenade launchers, artillery.”
To the west of Bakhmut, the town of Chasiv Yar, which lies on a crucial road into Bakhmut from other parts of the Donetsk region, has become a target for Russian strikes. The town’s elevated location provides Ukrainian troops with a point from which to target Russian defensive lines in Bakhmut with artillery.
Pavlo Kyrylenko, governor of the Donetsk region, said Russian attacks using multiple launch rocket systems had killed two people and wounded five, with a school, a residential housing block and private homes hit.
“The Russians are mercilessly scorching our earth with fire,” he said in a social-media post on Saturday. “And they will be mercilessly punished—every occupier will meet death on our land.”
The attacks come as Russia seeks to push Ukrainian forces out of Bakhmut after months of grinding battles and prevent them from bringing reinforcements into the city, which is currently the main target of Russia’s campaign after more than 11 months of war.
Trenches have been dug around Chasiv Yar, and Ukrainian soldiers fighting in and around Bakhmut said the town would serve as an obvious line of defense if they pull out of Bakhmut in coming weeks. Soldiers on Saturday were digging trenches beside the road connecting Chasiv Yar to Bakhmut.
Western and Ukrainian officials say Russia is laying the groundwork for what could be a major new offensive in the spring, focusing on the Luhansk and Donetsk regions of eastern Ukraine that Russian President Vladimir Putin has from the war’s outset pledged to bring fully under Russian control.
“The Kremlin is likely preparing to conduct a decisive strategic action—most likely in Luhansk Oblast—in the next six months intended to regain the initiative and end Ukraine’s current string of operational successes,” Washington-based think tank Institute for the Study of War said in its daily analysis of the war on Friday.
Plans for a new offensive have been made possible by a mass mobilization that Putin announced last September, which has brought some 300,000 new troops, many of them convicts, into the ranks of Russia’s military and the Wagner Group paramilitary unit that is spearheading many of the key offensives in east Ukraine.
Mykhailo Zabrodsky, a lawmaker and former commander of Ukraine’s air-assault forces who is close to the war planning process, said Moscow has reverted back to a World War II practice of throwing waves of soldiers at the enemy’s defensive lines instead of safeguarding lives with probing attacks led by armored vehicles and other modern arms.
“They’ve gone back to using Stalin-era methods,” he said in an interview. He described the situation in Bakhmut as “difficult but stable” and said there are no plans for an imminent withdrawal.
The mobilization has allowed Russia to bolster the front lines with thousands of new service members, and Ukrainian defenders fighting in Bakhmut said the manpower difference is being felt.
“The Russians have a lot more troops, maybe three times more,” said a soldier in Chasiv Yar. “And we are really limited with supplies.”
“They’re like zombies. They’re coming from all sides—east, north and south,” said a private in the border guards serving in Bakhmut. He said some units had been pulling back from east of the river, with basements that had been full of soldiers a week ago now empty.
Russia is seeking a breakthrough in Bakhmut ahead of the arrival of tanks pledged by Kyiv’s Western backers, which Ukraine says will help it slice through Russian lines and take back more territory. The U.S. and European allies promised dozens of armored vehicles to Ukraine, including main battle tanks more powerful than the older models fielded by Russia.
Ukraine’s ambassador to France, Vadym Omelchenko, said on Friday that Ukraine had been promised a total of 321 ranks from Western allies. “The conditions of delivery vary in each case, and we need this help as soon as possible,” he told French television.
Oleksiy Danilov, the head of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, said Russia wants to launch its major new offensive to coincide with the one-year anniversary of the war, on Feb. 24.
“Right now they are preparing for maximum activation” and readying forces for a significant advance focused on taking the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, he said in a Ukrainian radio interview.
** Ukraine in talks with allies about getting long-range missiles, aide says
Expedited talks are under way among Kyiv and its allies about Ukraine's requests for long-range missiles that it says are needed to prevent Russia from destroying Ukrainian cities, a top aide to President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Saturday.
Ukraine has won promises of Western battle tanks and is seeking fighter jets to push back against Russian and pro-Moscow forces, which are slowly advancing along part of the front line.
"To drastically reduce the Russian army's key weapon - the artillery they use today on the front lines - we need missiles that will destroy their depots," presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak told Ukraine's Freedom television network. He said on the Russian-occupied Crimean Peninsula there were more than 100 artillery warehouses.
"Therefore, firstly, negotiations are already under way. Secondly, negotiations are proceeding at an accelerated pace," he said without giving details.
Zelenskiy, speaking separately, said Ukraine wanted to preempt Russian attacks on Ukrainian urban areas and civilians.
"Ukraine needs long-range missiles ... to deprive the occupier of the opportunity to place its missile launchers somewhere far from the front line and destroy Ukrainian cities," he said in an evening video address.
Zelenskiy said Ukraine needed the U.S.-made ATACMS missile, which has a range of 185 miles (297km). Washington has so far declined to provide the weapon.
Earlier in the day, the Ukrainian air force denied a newspaper report that it intended to get 24 fighter jets from allies, saying talks were continuing, Ukraine's Babel online outlet said.
Spain's El Pais newspaper, citing Ukrainian air force spokesperson Yuri Ihnat, said Ukraine initially wanted two squadrons of 12 planes each, preferably Lockheed Martin F-16 jets.
But in a statement to Babel, Ihnat said his comments to a media briefing on Friday had been misinterpreted.
"Ukraine is only at the stage of negotiations regarding aircraft. Aircraft models and their number are currently being determined," he said.
Ihnat told the Friday briefing that F-16s might be the best option for a multi-role fighter to replace the country's current fleet of ageing Soviet-era warplanes.
He also told Ukrainian national television that allied nations did not like public speculation about jets, Interfax Ukraine news agency said.
Deputy White House national security adviser Jon Finer on Thursday said United States would be discussing the idea of supplying jets "very carefully" with Kyiv and its allies.
Germany's defence minister this week ruled out the idea of sending jets to Ukraine.
RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE
If WWIII breaks out, it won’t start on tanks or fighter jets, warns Medvedev
Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev has lambasted Western attempts to justify arms deliveries to Kiev as an alleged effort to prevent a world war.
"Firstly, defending Ukraine, which nobody needs in Europe, will not save the senile Old World from retribution if anything occurs. Secondly, once the Third World War breaks out, unfortunately it will not be on tanks or even on fighter jets. Then everything will definitely be turned to dust," Medvedev wrote on his Telegram channel on Saturday.
In this post, Medvedev commented, in particular, on Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto’s remarks that the Third World War would erupt if Russian tanks reached Kiev and "the borders of Europe", and that the weapons sent to Ukraine were meant to stop the escalation. Medvedev equated his remarks to the calls from the United Kingdom to provide Kiev with all the weapons NATO has.
** 14 dead, 24 injured in Ukrainian strike on civilian hospital – Russian MOD
At least 14 people have been killed and 24 injured after Ukrainian missiles struck a hospital in the city of Novoaydar in the early hours of Saturday, the Russian Defense Ministry has said in a statement.
The medical facility in the city, which is located dozens of kilometers away from the frontlines in the central part of the Lugansk People’s Republic, treated both local residents and soldiers, the ministry noted. It added that both patients and medics were among the victims.
“A deliberate missile strike on a known civilian healthcare facility is an absolutely grave war crime of the Kiev regime,” the MOD stated in a Telegram post, vowing to bring all those involved in planning and executing the attack to justice.
According to the statement, a US-made HIMARS multiple rocket launcher was used in the strike. In the wake of the attack, Moscow’s First Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN Dmitry Polyansky accused Washington of being directly involved in the incident.
Polyansky branded the strike “yet another heinous crime,” highlighting that 14 civilians were killed in the hospital with missiles provided by the US. He also pointed to the fact that Washington provided the Ukrainian military with intelligence data. “This makes the US directly complicit” in the attack on the hospital, he said, adding that “the US taxpayers should know how their money is spent.”
Moscow has repeatedly accused Ukrainian forces of targeting civilian infrastructure, including with weapons supplied by the West. In early January, six people were killed and 37 injured in a strike on the city of Vasilyevka in Russia’s Zaporozhye Region. Prior to that, a hospital was destroyed in the city of Tokmak in the same region. In both cases, US-made HIMARS systems were used, local authorities said at the time.
** Mozart Group training Ukrainians to ‘kill Russians’ – Founder
Despite its professed humanitarian mission in Ukraine, the Mozart Group is a private military company training Ukrainian soldiers to kill Russians, its founder and CEO told RT’s Afshin Rattansi on Saturday’s episode of ‘Going Underground.’
Founded by US citizens Andrew Milburn and Andrew Bain last March, the Mozart Group has been described as the Western answer to the Wagner Group – the Russian private military company currently fighting Kiev's forces for control of the key Donbass city of Artyomovsk (known as Bakhmut in Ukraine).
Speaking to Rattansi, Milburn was keen to dispel any comparison between Mozart and Wagner. He told the RT host that his group’s mission is “purely humanitarian,” and that Mozart’s members primarily work to supply and evacuate civilians living near the front lines.
However, the group’s other mission is the training of Ukrainian soldiers, which often takes place “very close to the front line,” Milburn, a former US Marine Corps commander, said.
“Sadly in this war – in any war actually – the more of the adversary you take off the playing field, or kill, the less the danger is to your own guys,” he said. “Why do we train guys? It isn’t simply to defend themselves, it’s to kill the enemy.”
“Everything we’re doing is exactly within the parameters of NATO policy,” he continued. “The West is providing Ukraine with lethal weapons that kill Russians. Why are they doing that? It’s to kill Russians.”
“When we train soldiers that is their goal. It’s why we teach them how to operate their weapons.”
While Mozart survives on private donations, Milburn has previously called for “funding from Western governments,” asking Newsweek last month, “What the hell is stopping the US, or UK, or European Union governments from reaching out and saying 'Let us help you?'"
Milburn is currently embroiled in a legal dispute with Bain, who accused the retired commander of violating US arms trafficking regulations and seeking to expand Mozart’s training operations into Armenia. The suit also accused Milburn of embezzling money donated to the organization, orchestrating the burglary of humanitarian supplies in Ukraine, sexually harassing a female co-worker, and bribing Ukrainian military leaders.
Milburn in turn accused Bain of seeking money from the Mozart Group, and claimed that Bain is “heavily invested in Russia,” which he denies.
** Russian forces take control of Blagodatnoye settlement near Soledar — Wagner group
The Blagodatnoye settlement near Soledar in the DPR has come under control of Russia’s forces, Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of the Wagner private military company, said on Sunday.
"The units of the Wagner PMC took Blagodatnoye. Blagodatnoye is under our control," his press service quoted him as saying on its Telegram channel. The commentary is accompanied by an audio recording of remarks by a commander of an assault unit that reached the southern outskirts of Blagodatnoye.
On January 12, Soledar was cleared of Ukrainian formations, the Russian Defense Ministry reported earlier. According to Russian Defense Ministry Spokesman Lieutenant General Igor Konashenkov, full control over this city makes it possible to cut off the supply routes for Ukrainian troops in Artyomovsk and subsequently block and encircle the units holed up there.
** Russian forces hit 86 Ukrainian army units at firing positions — Defense Ministry
Russian forces hit 86 Ukrainian army units at firing positions in the past day, Russian Defense Ministry Spokesman Lieutenant General Igor Konashenkov said on Saturday.
"Russian tactical aircraft, missile troops and artillery forces defeated 86 units at firing positions, hitting troops and military equipment in 124 areas," he noted.
Yahoo News/The Wall Street Journal/Reuters/RT/TASS