WESTERN PERSPECTIVE
Putin, Zelenskyy rally troops with war poised for new phase
Russian President Vladimir Putin visited command posts of his forces fighting in Ukraine for the second time in two months, officials said Tuesday, while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy made his latest trip near the front line.
The visits — on different days and in different provinces — sought to stiffen the resolve of soldiers as the war approaches its 14th month and as Kyiv readies a possible counteroffensive with Western-supplied weapons.
Some of the most significant of those weapons appeared to have recently arrived in Ukraine. Germany’s official federal government website on Tuesday listed a Patriot surface-to-air guided missile system as among the military items delivered within the past week to Ukraine.
Ukraine has been pressing for Patriots and other air defense systems from its allies for months, and Germany’s appeared to be the first to have arrived. Ukrainian air force spokesman Yurii Ihnat declined to confirm Tuesday that a Patriot is in Ukraine, local media outlet RBC-Ukraine reported, while stating that receiving the missiles would be a landmark event, allowing Ukrainians to knock down Russian targets at a greater distance.
Elsewhere, Kremlin video showed Putin arriving by helicopter at the command post of Russian forces in southern Ukraine’s Kherson province, then flying to the headquarters of the Russian National Guard in Luhansk province, in the country’s east. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the visits took place Monday.
Dressed in a dark suit, Putin attended briefings with his military brass on both of his stops. The locations of the military headquarters weren’t disclosed, making it impossible to assess how close they were to the front line. Nor was it possible independently to verify the video’s authenticity.
On Tuesday, Zelenskyy made his latest trip to visit units in Avdiivka, an eastern city in Donetsk province where fierce battles are taking place. He heard first-hand reports about fighting and handed out awards.
Zelenskyy’s visits to areas feeling the brunt of Russia’s full-scale invasion gathered pace last month as he shuttled across the country, often by train. As with Putin, the Ukrainian president’s wartime trips usually aren’t publicized until afterward.
While official coverage of Putin’s trip showed him in mostly formal and ceremonious settings, Zelenskyy’s office issued photos showing the Ukrainian president taking selfies with soldiers, eating cake with them and drinking out of paper cups.
Russia’s war in Ukraine has become largely deadlocked, with heavy fighting in the east, particularly around the Donestk province city of Bakhmut, which for 8½ months has seen the longest and bloodiest battle so far.
Russia illegally annexed Kherson, Luhansk, Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia provinces in September, following local referendums that Ukraine and the West denounced as shams. Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak was scathing in his criticism of Putin’s trip, accusing him of “degradation” and being the author of “mass murders” in the war.
Large parts of Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, as well as some areas of Luhansk province, have remained under Ukrainian control. In November, Russian forces ceded territory in Kherson province, including the region’s namesake capital.
In a related development, the Moscow-appointed governor of the occupied part of Donetsk province, Denis Pushilin, went to the Belarus capital of Minsk and won pledges of support from President Alexander Lukashenko, a Putin ally.
“The Kremlin forces Minsk to get involved in the war more actively in order to pressure Ukraine,” Belarusian political analyst Valery Karbalevich said in a telephone interview. “It is clear that Pushilin’s visit to Minsk has been synchronized with Putin’s trip to the occupied Ukrainian regions and aims to show that the Belarusian threat hasn’t gone away.”
During his visits, Putin congratulated the military divisions on Orthodox Easter, which was celebrated Sunday, and presented them with icons. Speaking to senior officers at the Kherson headquarters, Putin handed them a copy of an Orthodox icon he said belonged to a 19th century Russian general.
The senior officers present at the meetings reflected which ones were currently in favor with Putin. Col. Gen. Mikhail Teplinsky, the chief of Russia’s airborne troops, was among the top generals at the Kherson base.
Teplinsky, a career officer who rose from lieutenant to become chief of the elite military branch, is known for being popular with his troops. Last fall, however, he was temporarily relieved of his position amid a spat with the military brass. He was restored to the job this year, and his meeting with Putin indicated he was back in favor.
A senior officer who greeted Putin in the Luhansk region, Col. Gen. Alexander Lapin, also was relieved of his duties as commanding officer in northeastern Ukraine after he was blamed for a hasty Russian pullback from parts of Kharkiv province in the face of a Ukrainian counteroffensive in September. Lapin was later named as chief of staff of the ground forces, and his meeting with Putin signaled he had the president’s trust.
Putin’s and Pushilin’s trips came as Ukraine is preparing a new counteroffensive to reclaim occupied territories, possibly using the newly arrived Patriot.
In addition to Germany, the United States and Netherlands have pledged to provide Patriots, and a group of 65 Ukrainian soldiers trained in Oklahoma last month on how to use them.
The Patriot is a surface-to-air guided missile system first deployed in the 1980s that can target aircraft, cruise missiles and shorter-range ballistic missiles. A Patriot missile battery typically includes six mobile launchers, a mobile radar, a power generator and an engagement control center. Zelenskyy has said Ukraine needs at least 20 Patriot batteries.
Ukrainian officials have said they’re depleting Russian forces in eastern Ukraine while preparing for a counteroffensive.
Meanwhile, at least three civilians were killed and 11 wounded in Ukraine between Monday and Tuesday, according to Zelenskyy’s office. Most of the casualties occurred in the Donbas, the eastern region made up of Luhansk and Donetsk provinces, the office said. Six people were wounded in artillery fire in the city of Kherson.
In another in a series of possible cross-border attacks into Russia, a drone a Russian official said was sent from Ukraine hit a military office in the Bryansk town of Novozybkov. Gov. Alexander Bogomaz said on Telegram that the building was damaged and no one was hurt. Ukrainian officials, in keeping with past practice, didn’t comment on the incident.
RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE
Ukraine hits Russia with US-made kamikaze drone
Ukrainian forces have allegedly used a US-made unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) in an attack on Russian territory for the first time, several media outlets, including Mash and SHOT, reported on Tuesday.
A Switchblade drone, produced by an American AeroVironment company, flew into Russian airspace from Ukraine before falling in Russian Belgorod Region, bordering Ukrainian territory, the reports suggested. The UAV fell just around 500 meters away from the border between the two nations, without inflicting any damage or casualties, local news outlets said.
Neither Mash, nor SHOT provided any photos or video from the alleged drone crash site. The Russian military has not commented on the incident.
The Switchblade is a miniature kamikaze drone capable of dive-bombing targets. It can weigh up to 15 kilograms and has a length of between 49 and 130 centimeters depending on the modification. The US has supplied Kiev with some 700 Switchblade drones, as well as 1,800 Phoenix Ghost kamikaze drones.
Russia has repeatedly witnessed Ukrainian drone attacks, particularly in its regions bordering Ukraine, amid the ongoing conflict between Moscow and Kiev. Some Ukrainian attacks also targeted regions deeper inside Russia. In March, one of three people as an explosives-laden UAV hit a town in Tula Region located south of Moscow, some 250km away from the nearest border with Ukraine.
In December 2022, Ukrainian UAVs attacked Dyagilevo and Engels military airfields located 500km (310.6 miles) and 700km (435 miles) from Ukrainian-held territory, respectively. Three servicemen were killed and two aircraft received minor damage, the Russian Ministry of Defense said at the time.
Ukrainian forces usually used locally-produced or Soviet-made drones like revamped Tu-141 Strizh (‘Swift’) reconnaissance UAVs in such attacks, according to media reports. In February, Mash reported that a Ukrainian drone that crashed in an apartment block in the Russian city of Belgorod was carrying a “British-made plastic explosive device containing metallic shrapnel.”
Moscow has repeatedly accused the collective West of enabling Ukraine to strike deeper into Russian territory. In his annual address to the Federal Assembly in February, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Kiev’s handlers had been directly involved in drone attacks on the country’s facilities housing strategic, nuclear-capable aviation.
The US and its allies have been supplying Kiev with all sorts of weapons ranging from portable anti-tank missiles to infantry fighting vehicles, tanks and artillery pieces. Yet, Washington has repeatedly refused to provide the Ukrainian troops with longer-range weapons like the ATACMS surface-to-surface missiles, citing a risk of an all-out war between Russia and NATO if such weapons were used to target Russian territory.
** Russian forces control almost all of Artyomovsk, says DPR head’s advisor
Russian forces have taken control of almost 90% of the city of Artyomovsk (called Bakhmut in Ukraine), Yan Gagin, an advisor to the Donetsk People’s Republic’s (DPR) leader, told TASS on Tuesday.
"The Wagner private military company controls about 90% of Artyomovsk and its advance is inevitable," he said.
Wagner PMC founder Yevgeny Prigozhin said on April 11 that Russian forces controlled more than 80% of Artyomovsk, including all administrative buildings.
Gagin specified that Ukrainian troops were booby-trapping and blowing up major infrastructure facilities before leaving the western outskirts of Artyomovsk. "The Ukrainian armed forces are okay with using scorched earth tactics. This is what they did in Volnovakha and Mariupol, and now, they are blowing up and booby-trapping major infrastructure facilities in Artyomovsk before retreating from the western outskirts of the city. A local community center was one of the buildings that they blew up recently," Gagin noted.
Earlier, he told TASS that Ukraine was redeploying troops to Artyomovsk but the majority of new soldiers were getting killed on their approach to the city.
Artyomovsk, located in the Kiev-controlled part of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), is an important transport hub in terms of Ukrainian military supplies. Heavy fighting is raging in the area.
AP/RT/TASS
