Ukraine Update…816 Days of the Russian Conflict….More Ammo reaching the Ukraine

• France has carried out its first test firing of an updated nuclear-capable missile, the ASMPA-R, designed to be launched by a Rafale fighter jet, according to the French defence minister, Sebastien Lecornu. It came a day after Russia said it began nuclear drills in its southern military district, which stretches from Russia into occupied Ukrainian territory. The announcement of Russian drills is partly directed at France after its president, Emmanuel Macron, said he would not rule out sending in troops on Ukraine’s side.

• Lecornu said the missile was fired without a warhead by a plane in an exercise “above national territory … at the end of a flight representing a nuclear air raid”. He congratulated “all the forces, [defence] ministry teams and industrial partners involved” in a “long-planned” operation. France plans to spend about 13% of its military budget over the coming years on its independent nuclear capability, including upgrading to next-generation air-launched missiles by 2035.

• “Lethal aid is now flowing from China to Russia and into Ukraine,” Grant Shapps, the British defence secretary, told a London conference on Wednesday. “Today I can reveal that we have evidence that Russia and China are collaborating on combat equipment for use in Ukraine,” he said, attributing the information to “US and British defence intelligence”.

• In the US, however, Joe Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan said that while there were concerns China might “provide weapons directly – lethal assistance – to Russia … we have not seen that to date”. The US did have a “concern about what China’s doing to fuel Russia’s war machine, not giving weapons directly, but providing inputs to Russia’s defence industrial base”.

• Shapps said Nato needed to “wake up” and bolster defence spending across the alliance. He argued that democratic states should make a “full-throated case” for freedoms that are dependent on the international order, meaning “we need more allies and partners” worldwide.

• Ukraine has equipped some of its naval drones with Grad multiple rocket launching systems and used them to fire at Russian positions in combat, a Ukrainian intelligence source has told Reuters. The “Sea Babies” had been used this week to attack Russian positions on the Kinburn Spit in Ukraine’s southern region of Mykolaiv.

• A Russian airstrike on Kharkiv city on Wednesday destroyed a cafe, damaged a nearby residential building and set a petrol station ablaze. Local officials said 10 people were wounded, including, said regional prosecutors, a trolleybus driver who had both legs amputated. Russia used a UMPB D-30 guided bomb launched from the bordering Belgorod region, prosecutors said.

• Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, made a plea for defences against the guided bombs, which had become the “the main instrument” used in Russian attacks. “In countering Russian bombs much remains to be done … Ukraine needs systems and tactics that will allow us to protect our positions, our cities and our communities.”

• A Russian drone dropped explosives on a police car that was on its way to evacuate civilians in Vovchansk, killing one officer, said the Ukrainian interior minister, Ihor Klymenko. A video posted by the minister online by Klymenko showed what he said was a drone bombing the car. Reuters could not independently verify Klymenko’s statement. There was no immediate comment from Russia.

• Russia said there were Ukrainian attacks on its Belgorod region across the border from Ukraine, and in the occupied eastern Ukrainian city of Lysychansk, killing up to three people.

• The Swedish government has announced additional military support to Ukraine totalling 75 billion crowns (US$7bn) over three years. Ukraine’s defence minister, Rustem Umerov, said Swedish-made weapons had “already proven themselves on the battlefield … Archers and CV-90s help Ukrainian defenders drive the enemy out of our land.”……..

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• Ukrainian soldiers fighting in the Kharkiv region near Vovchansk say the situation is “hotter” than it was around fallen Bakhmut, but now they have the shells to fight back. “It’s 24/7, their infantry keeps coming, we keep fighting their attacks. At least we are trying to. Whenever possible, we take them down,” Pavlo, a gunner of Ukraine’s 92nd Separate Assault brigade operating a howitzer, told Reuters. “We were positioned in the Bakhmut area before, now we have been transferred here. It’s much ‘hotter’ here. We didn’t have shells there. Here, at least we have shells, they started delivering them. We have something to work with, to fight.”

• The Ukrainian military says it has destroyed the last Russian warship armed with cruise missiles stationed at the Crimean peninsula. “According to updated information, the Ukrainian defence forces hit a Russian project 22800 Tsiklon missile ship in Sevastopol, on the night of May 19,” the military said. Reuters was not able to independently verify the statements. There was no immediate comment from the Russian side. Russia’s defence ministry on Sunday said Ukrainian forces had attacked Crimea with Atacms missiles.

• Russian drones struck energy sites early on Wednesday and knocked out power to some parts of Ukraine’s northern Sumy region, regional officials said. The Sumy regional authority said the drones hit targets in the cities of Shostka and Konotop, north-east of Kyiv and near the Russian border. Emergency services were working to restore electricity. Officials have warned of a possible Russian push into Sumy.

• Ukrainian troops are achieving “tangible” results against Russian forces in the Kharkiv region but the frontline situation near the cities of Pokrovsk, Kramatorsk and Kurakhove remains “extremely difficult”, said Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy. More than 14,000 people have been displaced in recent days from the Kharkiv region, the World Health Organization has said. “Nearly 189,000 more still reside within 25km of the border with the Russian Federation, facing significant risks due to the ongoing fighting,” said Jarno Habicht, the WHO’s representative in Ukraine.

• EU countries have formally adopted a plan to fund Ukraine’s defence using profits from $300bn in Russian central bank assets frozen in the EU. Under the agreement, 90% of the proceeds will go into an EU-run fund for military aid for Ukraine against Russia’s invasion, with the other 10% going to support the Ukrainians in other ways. The EU expects the assets to yield about €15bn-€20bn in profits by 2027. Ukraine is expected to receive the first tranche in July, EU diplomats have said.

• Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, thanked the EU for the decision but reiterated Ukraine’s goal of seizing the assets themselves, not just the interest. The US treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, is meanwhile pushing fellow G7 nations this week to agree a plan to use Russian assets frozen abroad to back a larger loan to help Ukraine. Yellen has said it could be worth up to $50bn to Ukraine.

• Russian forces have started military drills near Ukraine simulating the use of tactical nuclear weapons, Pjotr Sauer reports. Vladimir Putin ordered the drills after the French president, Emmanuel Macron, floated the possibility of sending European troops into Ukraine, and the UK foreign secretary, David Cameron, said Ukraine had the right to use weapons supplied by Britain to target sites in Russia.

• The former commander of Russia’s 58th army, Ivan Popov, was arrestedon suspicion of “large scale fraud”, state-run Tass news agency reported. Popov, military call sign “Spartacus”, commanded Russian units in southern Ukraine. He criticised his superiors about the deaths of Russian soldiers.

• More than 3,000 Ukrainian inmates have applied to join the militaryunder a new law. “We predicted this before the adoption of this law,” said Olena Vysotska, deputy minister of justice, adding that more had expressed interest and 20,000 had been identified as eligible. Only prisoners with less than three years to serve can apply. Prisoners not eligible include those found guilty of sexual violence, killing two or more people, serious corruption and former high-ranking officials.

• Tens of thousands of Russians who fled to Turkey after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine have moved on to other countries, squeezed by residency issues and soaring costs, Reuters has reported. This month, the number of Russians with Turkish resident permits fell to 96,000, down by more than a third from 154,000 at the end of 2022, official data showed. Many who left Turkey headed to Serbia and Montenegro, Reuters said….

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The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) proposed on May 21 that the Russian government reassess Russia’s maritime borders in the Baltic Sea so that these borders “correspond to the modern geographical situation.” The Russian MoD produced a since-deleted document, which appeared on the Russian government’s legal portal on May 21, proposing that the Russian government should reassess the 1985 maritime borders in the Gulf of Finland because these borders were based on outdated “small-scale nautical navigation maps” developed in the mid-20th century.

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How Delays in Western Aid Gave Russia the Initiative: From the Ukrainian Counteroffensive to Kharkiv

May 22, 2024 – ISW Press

Ukraine and the West have defeated a months-long Russian effort to persuade the West to abandon Ukraine and set conditions to collapse Ukrainian defenses. Russian forces have conducted offensive operations since Fall 2023 that aimed to convince the West to abandon its commitment to Ukraine, and prolonged US debates about security assistance likely convinced the Kremlin that its efforts had partially succeeded. The effects of continued delays in US and Western security assistance set conditions for Russian forces to make more significant gains on the battlefield than they had previously been able to make, and the Russian military command likely concluded that Russian forces would be able to collapse the Ukrainian frontline at some point in the near to medium term.