Latest news with #OleksandrSyrskii
Yahoo
16-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 1,177
Here is where things stand on Friday, May 16 : Fighting continues along the 1,100km (683 mile) front line, where Russia's Ministry of Defence said its forces captured two settlements located near Moscow's long-term targets. Russia claimed to have taken Novooleksandrivka, a rural village near Pokrovsk, a logistics hub in Ukraine's Donetsk region, as well as the town of Torske, which is located near the cities of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk. The Ukrainian military acknowledged that Novooleksandrivka had been under attack, but it did not mention Torske in its latest report. Oleksandr Syrskii, Ukraine's top military commander, said on Telegram that Russia 'has turned its aggression against Ukraine into a war of attrition and is using a combined force of up to 640,000 troops'. Ukraine lost its first F-16 fighter jet on Friday due to an 'unusual situation on board', but the pilot successfully ejected, according to the Ukrainian Air Russian and Ukrainian envoys will hold trilateral talks in Istanbul, although hopes are low for any breakthrough after Russia sent a lower-level delegation to the meeting than hoped. The meeting marks the first direct talks between Russia and Ukraine since a meeting in 2022 also held in Istanbul. Turkiye will take part in two trilateral meetings on Friday as part of the renewed diplomatic efforts to end the war in Ukraine, Turkish Foreign Ministry sources told the Reuters news agency. A meeting will take place between Turkish, US and Ukrainian officials and is scheduled to take place at 10:45am local time [07:45 GMT], followed by talks between Turkish, Russian and Ukrainian delegations at 12:30pm [09:30 GMT], the sources told Reuters. The Ukrainian delegation will now be led by Defence Minister Rustem Umerov instead of Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara on Thursday. 'We can't be running around the world looking for Putin,' Zelenskyy said after a meeting with Erdogan. 'I feel disrespect from Russia. No meeting time, no agenda, no high-level delegation – this is personal disrespect. To Erdogan, to Trump.' US President Donald Trump said an agreement between Russia and Ukraine is not possible without him first meeting Putin. 'I don't believe anything's going to happen, whether you like it or not, until he and I get together,' Trump told reporters on Air Force One.
Yahoo
01-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 1,162
Here is where things stand on Thursday, May 1: Russian drones attacked Ukraine's Black Sea port of Odesa early on Thursday, sparking fires and damaging dwellings and infrastructure, the regional governor said. In Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city in the northeast, the mayor said another Russian drone had struck a petrol station in the city centre, triggering a fire. Ukraine's SBU security agency claimed responsibility for a drone strike on a defence manufacturing facility in Russia. The strike on Murom Instrument-Building Plant, 300km (186 miles) east of Moscow, sparked a fire and damaged two buildings, the region's governor reported. Russian air defence units destroyed 34 Ukrainian drones overnight, Russian news agencies reported, citing the country's Ministry of Defence. Ukraine's top military commander, Oleksandr Syrskii, said Russian forces have significantly increased the intensity of their combat activity in eastern Ukraine, despite Moscow declaring a three-day ceasefire from May 8-10. Russian President Vladimir Putin said some small groups of Ukrainian soldiers were still holed up in basements and hideouts in Russia's western Kursk region. Moscow claims it expelled Ukrainian forces from the border region over the weekend. The Kremlin said at least 288 civilians were killed during Ukraine's months-long incursion into Kursk. South Korean lawmakers, citing their country's intelligence agency, said about 600 North Korean troops have been killed fighting for Russia against Ukraine out of a total deployment of 15,000. United States lawmakers have asked the Department of State to brief them about Russia's use of Chinese fighters in its war in Ukraine, saying that Moscow could only employ Chinese mercenaries with Beijing's 'tacit approval'.The US and Ukraine have signed a long-awaited agreement that gives Washington access to Kyiv's minerals in return for investment in Ukraine's defence and reconstruction. US President Donald Trump said he thinks Putin wants to stop Russia's war in Ukraine, despite recent attacks against the beleaguered nation. 'If it weren't for me, I think he'd want to take over the whole country,' Trump told the ABC News broadcaster. 'I will tell you, I was not happy when I saw Putin shooting missiles into a few towns and cities.' The Kremlin, meanwhile, said Putin is open to peace in Ukraine and that intense work is going on with the US, but the conflict is so complicated that the rapid progress that Washington wants is difficult to achieve. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov also said Putin had expressed a willingness for direct talks with Ukraine, but that there had been no answer yet from Kyiv. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha responded by saying Ukraine was ready for peace talks in any format if Moscow signed up to an unconditional ceasefire. Putin has previously welcomed the idea in principle, but said that many issues need to be worked out in practice before such a ceasefire can be agreed. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney spoke with Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy and underscored Canada's commitment to supporting Ukraine in achieving lasting peace and security. The European Union is preparing a 'plan B' on how to keep economic sanctions against Russia should the Trump administration abandon Ukraine peace talks and seek rapprochement with Moscow, EU's top diplomat Kaja Kallas told the Financial Times. The EU says 16 member states are seeking exemptions from the bloc's public debt rules so they can ramp up defence spending as the continent looks to rearm following Russia's invasion of Ukraine and Trump's stance on European security.
Al Jazeera
10-04-2025
- Politics
- Al Jazeera
Russian advances in Ukraine slow down despite growing force size
Russia's territorial gains in Ukraine are slowing down dramatically, two analyses have found, continuing a pattern from 2024 at a time when both nations are trying to project strength in the face of United States-mediated negotiations aimed at ending the war. Britain's Ministry of Defence last week estimated that Russian forces seized 143sq km (55sq miles) of Ukrainian land in March, compared with 196sq km (76sq miles) in February and 326sq km (126sq miles) in January. The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington, DC-based think tank, spotted the same trend, estimating Russian gains at 203sq km (78sq miles) in March, 354sq km (137sq miles) in February and 427sq km (165sq miles) in January. These estimates are based on satellite imagery and geolocated open-source photography rather than claims by either side. Should this trend continue, Russian forces could come to a standstill by early summer, roughly coinciding with US President Donald Trump's self-imposed early deadline for achieving a ceasefire. Russia's diminishing returns have come even as it has greatly expanded the size of its forces from an estimated 150,000 soldiers who carried out its initial invasion in February to May 2022. 'Since the beginning of the aggression, the enemy has increased its group fivefold,' Ukrainian Commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrskii told the online publication Livyi Bereg this week. He estimated that Russia has been adding 120,000 to 130,000 soldiers a year to its forces in Ukraine and it today has about 623,000 military personnel in the country. Despite this, almost all of the Ukrainian territory Russia occupies, about a fifth of the country, was the result of the seizure of Crimea in 2014 and its initial, full-scale invasion in 2022. A Ukrainian counteroffensive in 2023 took back about 20,000sq km (7,722sq miles). Russia has so far failed to recapture that. Its grinding advances in Ukraine's eastern region of Donetsk last year succeeded in wresting away just 4,168sq km (1,609sq miles) of fields and abandoned villages – equivalent to 0.69 percent of Ukraine, the Institute for the Study of War determined in January. Those gains also came at a significant cost in men and materiel. Ukraine's Ministry of Defence put Russia's losses of soldiers at 430,790. That's the equivalent of 36 Russian motorised rifle divisions and outnumbers Russia's losses in 2022 and 2023 combined. While Russia has recruited enough soldiers to more than make up for its losses, its performance on the battlefield suggests it is struggling to train and equip its forces. Moscow's announcement of each capture, however small, has helped create an impression of inevitability to its conquest of Ukraine. On Monday, for example, Russia's Ministry of Defence said it had taken the settlement of Katerinovka in Donetsk. But these conquests have been small. The Institute for the Study of War estimated that even at 2024 rates of advance, Russia would have needed two years to capture the remaining parts of Donetsk alone. And that was before Russia's pace of territorial gains slipped further in 2025. Despite these trends, Russian President Vladimir Putin has escalated his aggression since US-Russian ceasefire talks kicked off on February 18. An analysis by The Telegraph found that the number of Russian drone strikes against Ukraine rose by more than 50 percent from January to February. In the first week of March, Russia launched a concerted effort that mostly pushed Ukrainian soldiers out of Kursk, a Russian border region Ukraine invaded in August. On April 9, Russia said only two settlements – Gornal and Oleshnya – remained in Ukrainian hands in Kursk, and it was locked in fierce battles to recapture them. Russia's March success in Kursk coincided with a US intelligence and military aid cut-off for Ukraine. During the past week, Russia was building up forces to follow up its success in Kursk by opening new fronts in Kharkiv and Sumy, two regions in northeastern Ukraine on the border with Russia, Syrskii said. 'For several days, almost a week, we have been observing an almost doubling of the number of enemy offensive actions in all main directions,' he said. Syrskii also said he believed Russia could use joint military exercises with Belarus planned for the autumn as cover to mobilise more forces, a tactic Moscow used in late 2021. 'The visibility of exercises is the most acceptable way to rebase, transfer troops, concentrate in a certain direction and create a troop group,' Syrskii said. Moscow also went on the diplomatic offensive this week, doubling down on efforts to vilify Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as an unreliable leader. Russian officials said Ukraine was continuing to defy a ceasefire on energy infrastructure Kyiv never agreed to but that Moscow declared unilaterally on March 18 after a phone call between Trump and Putin. On Friday, Russia's Defence Ministry said Ukraine carried out half a dozen attacks on energy facilities in the Bryansk, Tambov and Lipetsk regions, causing gas outages to three cities and two electricity blackouts. 'More than 100 Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles sent to bomb civilian targets on Russian soil in one night alone are a thousand times more telling than Zelensky's wails about his 'aspiration for peace',' Russian special envoy Rodion Miroshnik wrote on his Telegram channel. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Monday said ceasefire negotiations were complicated by the 'lack of control over the Kyiv regime, about the impossibility of the Kyiv regime to control the actions of a number of extremist and nationalist units that simply do not obey Kyiv'. That was a reference to the alleged existence of far-right elements in the Ukraine military. Russia and the US are expected to hold a round of negotiations in Istanbul on Thursday. On Wednesday, Russia's Defence Ministry said two drones were shot down while trying to strike the gas distribution plant of the city of Temryuk, which sits on a neck of land on the Russian side of the Crimean Peninsula. That same night, the ministry said, eight Ukrainian drones were shot down before reaching the Korenovskaya electrical plant, which powers the TurkStream gas pipeline. Ukraine has twice this year tried to shut the pipeline down by targeting its compressors. In total, Russia's Defence Ministry said it had intercepted 107 Ukrainian drones over 10 regions on the night of April 3 to early April 4 in one of the biggest such attacks. But Russia, too, targeted the Kherson thermal power plant with a short-range first-person view (FPV) drone on Friday, Zelenskyy said. FPV drones generally carry up to 5kg (11lb), a much smaller payload than long-range strike drones, which usually ranges from 20kg to 50kg (44lb to 110lb). The Kremlin gave less publicity to the fact that a Ukrainian drone barrage on Saturday struck the fibre optic systems plant in Saransk in Russia's Mordovia. It is Russia's only plant manufacturing optical fibre used in FPV drones and other defence systems. Russia also did not mention that Ukrainian drones struck industrial explosives manufacturer Promsintez in the Samara region, causing 20 explosions and fires. The plant reportedly stopped production after the attack. Syrskii said in his interview that drones had destroyed a $100m long-range Tupolev-22M3 bomber days earlier. Ukraine has targeted these bombers because they are used to launch thousands of glide bombs against Ukraine's front lines every month. Syrskii also said strikes against Russian airfields had pushed back the Russian air force, reducing its effectiveness. Unlike Ukraine, which has consistently targeted defence and energy infrastructure, Russia has kept up long-range air attacks targeting Ukrainian cities. In retaliation for Saturday's attacks, Russia launched 18 cruise missiles, six ballistic missiles and 109 attack drones on Saturday night – its largest strike in a month. Ukraine said it intercepted 93 of the drones, one ballistic and 12 cruise missiles but five ballistic missiles struck residential areas. One of them killed 20 people in Kryvyi Rih, including nine children, prompting the United Nations Security Council to hold an emergency meeting. 'This is why the war must end,' US Ambassador to Kyiv Bridget Brink wrote on social media. 'Such a strong country, such a strong people – and such a weak reaction,' Zelenskyy responded on Telegram. 'They are even afraid to say the word 'Russian' when talking about the missile that killed children.' Russia accused Zelenskyy of deliberately framing the attack as an indiscriminate massacre of civilians whereas it was really targeting a meeting of foreign mercenaries with Ukrainian commanders at a restaurant. But Russia followed up the ballistic missile strike in Kryvyi Rih with a wave of drones, which hit a playground and residential buildings. Until this strike, Russia and Ukraine had observed an unofficial ceasefire over the Black Sea. This had apparently come to an end because Zelenskyy said several of the Russian missiles were launched from ships and submarines. The attacks continued this week. Russia's Defence Ministry on Monday said it shot down 19 Ukrainian drones overnight. Ukraine's air force said it intercepted 31 drones on Tuesday out of an attack totalling 46. The drones followed a strike by an Iskander ballistic missile in a tactic reminiscent of that on Kryvyi Rih. The following night, Russia launched 55 Shahed drones at Ukraine. Ukraine's air force said it downed 32 and disoriented eight. Russia said it downed 158 Ukrainian drones over 11 regions. Ukraine's 81st Separate Airmobile Sloboda Brigade on Tuesday said it captured two Chinese soldiers on Ukrainian soil. Zelenskyy confirmed it at a news conference, saying, 'Ukrainians engaged in combat with six Chinese service members in the Donetsk region – in Tarasivka and Bilohorivka.' He later wrote on social media: 'We have information suggesting that there are many more Chinese citizens in the occupier's units.' US Department of State spokesperson Tammy Bruce said Chinese soldiers' involvement was 'disturbing'. Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Lin Jian on Wednesday denied Beijing's involvement. But Russian television channels showed further evidence of Chinese troops in Ukraine weeks earlier.
Al Jazeera
13-03-2025
- Politics
- Al Jazeera
Russian forces recapture Kursk, raising questions about US-Ukraine cutoff
Russia pushed Ukrainian forces out of most of the territory they controlled in the Russian region of Kursk during the past week, raising questions about whether a weeklong US intelligence cutoff materially helped the Russian counterattack. The US said it had restored intelligence sharing and military aid to Ukraine on Tuesday night, after Ukraine agreed to a ceasefire plan discussed in Riyadh for nine-and-a-half hours. Russian efforts to recapture Kursk intensified on March 6, a day after the White House cut off military and intelligence assistance to Ukraine. Russian forces attacked 32 times in Kursk, said Ukraine's general staff. According to Russian military reporters, Russia had prioritised that front, moving some of its best drone operators there and deploying electronic warfare to prevent Ukrainian drone counterattacks. The effort became clearer on Friday, March 7, when Russian forces attacked the Ukrainian border areas in Sumy for the first time since the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022, in an attempt to encircle Ukrainian forces in Kursk from the south and cut off their supply lines. On Saturday, Russian forces captured several settlements north of Sudzha, the main Ukrainian stronghold in Kursk, and began to fire upon Sudzha itself. One Russian operation involved infiltrating the industrial zone by making soldiers crawl inside a gas pipeline. The UK's Daily Telegraph newspaper reported Ukraine was considering a withdrawal to avoid encirclement, but Ukrainian commander-in-chief, Oleksandr Syrskii, on Monday said, 'There is no threat of encirclement of Ukrainian units in the Kursk region.' He did, however, send drone and electronic warfare reinforcements. By Tuesday, Russia's defence ministry announced it had recaptured more than 100sq km (40sq miles) in Kursk, including a dozen settlements. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told media on Wednesday that Sudzha had been liberated. 'The data from our military shows that our troops have been successfully progressing in the Kursk region as they liberate those areas that have been controlled by [Ukrainian] militants,' he said. Later on Wednesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Kursk for the first time in months and a day later, the Kremlin claimed Moscow's operation in Kursk was in its final stage. Ukraine caught Russia off-guard in its August counter-invasion last year, and succeeded in leveraging a single division of 11,000 soldiers to pin down an estimated 78,000 Russian soldiers, slowing Russia's advances in east Ukraine, embarrassing Putin and forcing him to reportedly seek the help of 12,000 North Korean mercenaries last November. The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, assessed that Russian forces had managed to recapture 655sq km (250sq miles) by last month, more than half the Kursk territory Ukraine had held at the height of its operation. Ukraine launched surprise offensives in early January and February to consolidate its positions, demonstrating the importance it placed on Kursk as an active defence. Ukrainian military analyst Petro Chernyk expressed the view that 'Putin gave a firm order to kick our group out of there by May 9, and if this does not happen, then for him it will really be a very serious ideological defeat,' in an interview, referring to the anniversary of the capture of Berlin by Soviet forces in 1945. Ukraine's incursion on Russian soil was the first since the second world war. A Ukrainian government source told Time magazine the role of the US intelligence cutoff had been key in the Russian advance, as Ukraine was unable to detect Russian bomber and fighter jet takeoffs or use US intelligence to set targeting coordinates for its most precise weapons. After then-US President Joe Biden allowed Ukraine to use US-made ATACMS rockets to strike deep inside Russia last November, Maria Zakharova, Russia's foreign ministry spokesperson, had said the move amounted to 'direct involvement of the US and its satellites'. Europe to the rescue? Europeans scrambled to find alternatives to US government intelligence and the Starlink satellite system Ukrainian forces use to communicate and coordinate counter-battery fire. Four satellite operators in France, Spain, the UK and Luxembourg told the Financial Times on Friday they were offering services to replace Starlink. Maxar Technologies, the commercial satellite imaging company, said European governments were able to pass on its images to Ukraine even though the US had stopped doing so. Europe also tried to step up its deliveries of weapons to prevent Ukraine from suffering setbacks similar to those of early 2024, when US military aid was suspended for six months. Ukrainian Defence Minister Rustem Umerov on Saturday met with eight Nordic and Baltic countries – Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania – to coordinate weapons deliveries. 'We are waiting for important decisions that will help Ukraine strengthen its defence capabilities,' he said. Ukraine was in talks with Poland and Lithuania to step up joint production of weapons and ammunition. Umerov signed two key private sector agreements – one with Germany's Diehl Defence, which manufactures the IRIS-T air defence system, which he said would 'increase threefold the supply of missiles and air defence systems', and one with Britain's Anduril for advanced roving munitions drones paid for by the International Fund for Ukraine. Germany, which has supplied 37 billion euros ($40bn) in military and financial aid under Chancellor Olaf Scholz, announced on March 6 that it would up its defence spending by up to 1 trillion euros ($1.09 trillion) under an expected coalition between the Christian Democrats and Scholz's Social Democrats. Polls suggested three-quarters of Germans supported this. Ukraine has also been expanding its domestic defence industrial base impressively, and now supplies 40 percent of its own weapons. Ukraine's defence ministry said it would triple its purchase of domestically made first-person view drones this year. 'The capabilities of the domestic defence industry in 2025 amount to approximately 4.5 million FPV drones, and the Ministry of Defence plans to purchase them all,' said Gleb Kanevsky, head of procurement. These figures did not include long-range drones used to strike deep inside Russia. Deep strikes inside Russia and Ukraine Those deep strikes continued last week, despite the US intelligence cutoff. Ukraine said a massive Ukrainian drone operation had succeeded in striking Moscow and the Diaghilev air force base in Ryazan on Tuesday. State wire service RIA Novosti reported a total of 337 drones were used, 91 of them over Moscow. Russian authorities reported three people were killed and 18 wounded. Ukraine's general staff said they struck the Ryazan refinery on Sunday, which they said produced jet fuel. The following night, the staff said they struck the Novokuybyshev refinery in the Samara region, which they said produced fuel for Russia's northern grouping of forces. Andriy Kovalenko, head of the Center for Countering Disinformation, said the plant was one of the 10 largest in Russia. Kovalenko also said Ukrainian forces had struck the NLMK metallurgical plant at Novolipetsk, in Kursk. Its rolled steel was used in ships and submarines, combat vehicle hulls, missiles and aircraft, Kovalenko said. Russia also struck Ukraine with one of its largest drone swarms of the war. At least 11 people were killed when Russia conducted a combined strike using an Iskander ballistic missile, Tornado multiple launch rockets and Geran drones in the town of Dobropillya on March 7. The toll was high because the Russian drones attacked in two waves to kill first responders. The Dobropillya attack was part of a nationwide shower of 67 missiles and 194 drones. French-donated Mirage jets went into combat for the first time in the war, knocking out Russian Kh-101 missiles.
Al Jazeera
11-03-2025
- Politics
- Al Jazeera
Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 1,111
Here is the situation on Tuesday, March 11: Fighting One civilian was killed and three more were reportedly injured in one of the biggest Ukrainian drone attacks on Moscow in months. Moscow's Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said Russian air defence units destroyed at least 69 drones flying towards Moscow in a 'massive' attack that later reports said involved more than 90 drones. Four airports in the Moscow region and the Domodedovo train network were forced to suspend services due to the attack. Several apartments were also damaged while Russia's TASS news agency reported a large fire in a car park near the Russian capital. Pro-Russian war bloggers said Kremlin forces have advanced further into the country's Kursk region as part of a major encirclement operation to push out thousands of Ukrainian soldiers holding territory inside Russia. Kyiv's top general Oleksandr Syrskii denied his troops were being encircled by Russian forces, adding that the situation was under control. However, Ukraine's troops required reinforcing, 'including electronic warfare and unmanned components', Syrskii said. Ukraine's military said it shot down 130 of 176 Russian drones launched by Russia overnight, while another 42 failing to reach their targets. Ukraine's border guard spokesperson Andriy Demchenko said Russian troops were trying to create an active fighting zone in Ukraine's northeastern region of Sumy, across the border from Russia's Kursk region. Russia's emergency ministry said a large fire broke out in Russia's southern region of Samara due to a Ukrainian drone attack. No injuries were reported. The General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said it hit two Russian oil refineries in the Ryazan region and the Samara region, which supplied fuel to Moscow's army. Three people were killed and nine wounded by a Ukrainian attack on Belaya village in the Belovski district of Russia's Kursk region, the region's governor, Alexander Khinshtein, said. Politics and diplomacy Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio travelled to Saudi Arabia in advance of talks between Kyiv and Washington to end Russia's war on Ukraine. The AFP news agency, citing a Ukrainian official, said that Kyiv plans to propose a partial, aerial and naval ceasefire with Russia during talks in Saudi Arabia. A senior source from Ukraine's government also told AFP that Russia gained a significant advantage against Kyiv during the US's pause in sharing military intelligence with Ukrainian forces. The US's Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff said Washington expects substantial progress in talks with Ukraine this week, including the signing of the rare earths deal. Witkoff also said intelligence sharing with Ukraine would also be discussed during this week's meetings, but claimed the US never shut out Ukrainian officers from receiving intelligence for defence needs. Zelenskyy promised a fully 'constructive' position by Ukraine in talks with the US, adding that his country hopes for practical outcomes from the negotiations in Saudi Arabia on ending Russia's war on his country. Russia's FSB security service said two diplomats from the United Kingdom were expelled from Russia on suspicion of espionage. The Kremlin said those expelled were the UK embassy's second secretary and the husband of the first secretary.
