Latest news with #RussianForces
Yahoo
13 hours ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Top Ukrainian commander sees new assault on key eastern city
(Reuters) -Ukraine's top commander said on Saturday that his forces faced a new onslaught against a key city on the eastern front of its war against Russia, while Moscow said it was making progress in another sector farther southwest. After their initial failed advance on the capital Kyiv in the first weeks after the February 2022 invasion, Russian troops have focused on capturing all of Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine. The city of Kostiantynivka has been a major target. Ukrainian forces have for months defended the city against fierce assaults, with the regional governor urging remaining residents this week to evacuate as infrastructure breaks down. Top Ukrainian commander Oleksander Syrskyi, writing on Telegram on Saturday, said the area around Kostiantynivka was gripped by heavy fighting. "The enemy is surging towards Kostiantynivka, but apart from sustaining numerous losses, has achieved nothing," Syrskyi said. "The aggressor is trying to break through our defences and advance along three operating sectors." A spokesman for Ukrainian forces in the east, Viktor Trehubov, told the Ukrinform news agency that Kostiantynivka and the city of Pokrovsk to the west were "the main arena of battles and the Kremlin's strategic ambitions". Syrskyi also said that Ukrainian forces had withstood in the past week a powerful attack near the village of Yablunivka in northeastern Sumy region, where Russian forces have been trying to establish a buffer zone inside the Ukrainian border. Russia's Defence Ministry, in a report earlier in the day, said Moscow's forces had seized the village of Chervona Zirka -- further southwest, near the administrative border of Dnipropetrovsk region. Russia's slow advance through eastern Ukraine, with Moscow claiming a string of villages day after day, has resulted in destruction of major cities and infrastructure. Moscow has insisted that progress towards a settlement of the 40-month-old war depends on Ukraine recognising Moscow's control over four Ukrainian regions -- Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. Russian forces control about one-fifth of Ukraine's territory, though they do not fully hold any of the four regions. Moscow has said in recent weeks that its troops have made advances in areas adjacent to Dnipropetrovsk region, which lies next to both Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia regions. Ukrainian officials have denied those reports.
CTV News
2 days ago
- Politics
- CTV News
Russia has amassed 110,000 troops near strategic Ukrainian city, Kyiv says
An abandoned car stands against the background of damaged buildings in central Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region, Ukraine, Wednesday, April 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Michael Shtekel) Russia has amassed 110,000 troops in the vicinity of Pokrovsk as part of its efforts to take over the strategic eastern Ukrainian city, the Ukrainian military chief said Friday. Oleksandr Syrskyi said on Friday that the area around Pokrovsk was the 'hottest spot' along the 1,200-kilometre (745 miles) front line which runs across the east. Russian forces have been trying to capture Pokrovsk for almost a year, staging one grinding offensive after another. But despite having a clear advantage in terms of the number of troops and weapons available, Moscow has failed to take over the city. Pokrovsk is a strategic target for Moscow. Russian President Vladimir Putin has made it clear that his goal is to seize all of the eastern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk his forces partially occupy. Kyiv and its allies accuse Russia's President Vladimir Putin of stalling on peace efforts so that his forces can seize more Ukrainian territory. Although not a major city, Pokrovsk sits on a key supply road and railroad that connect it with other military hubs in the area. Together with Kostiantynivka, Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, it forms the backbone of Ukrainian defenses in the part of Donetsk region that are still under Kyiv's control. Some 60,000 lived in Pokrovsk before the war, but the majority have left in the three years since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022. Ukraine's last operating coking coal mine was in Pokrovsk and many of its employees were staying in the area to keep it going. Once it was forced to shut down early this year, they too began to leave. The Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a U.S.-based conflict monitor, said late last year that Ukrainian defensive operations in Pokrovsk have forced Russia to abandon its original plan to take over Pokrovsk in a frontal assault. The ISW said this was because Ukrainian troops began using drones as integral part of their defensive strategy, successfully integrating drone operators with their ground forces. At the same time, Russia was unable to increase the number of troops in the area by much, because it was trying to contain the surprise incursion of Ukrainian troops into its own territory in the southern Kursk region. Syrskyi told reporters last week that at one point, the Kursk operation pulled back nearly 63,000 Russian troops and some 7,000 North Korean troops. 'This allowed us to weaken the enemy's pressure on the main fronts and regroup our troops. And the enemy's capture of Pokrovsk, announced back in September 2024, has not yet taken place, thanks in part to our Kursk operation,' he said. Instead of continuing to attacking the city directly, Russian troops then began encircling the city from south and northeast. The ISW said in its most recent assessment on Friday that Russian forces were continuing assaults with small fireteams of one to two soldiers, sometimes on motorcycles, in all-terrain vehicles and buggies. In a statement issued on Friday, Syrksky said Russia continued to try to break through to the administrative border of the Donetsk region. 'They want to do this not only to achieve some operational results, but primarily for demonstrative purposes. To achieve a psychological effect: to put the infamous 'foot of the Russian soldier' there, plant a flag and trumpet another pseudo-'victory',' he said. Ivana Kottasová and Daria Tarasova-Markina, CNN
Al Jazeera
2 days ago
- Politics
- Al Jazeera
Russia kills 5 in Ukraine's Samar, as Putin seems ready for new peace talks
Russian forces have continued to hammer Ukraine's Dnipropetrovsk region, launching a deadly attack on the industrial city of Samar for the second time in three days. Friday's missile attack killed five people and injured 23 others in southeastern Samar – located outside the region's main city, Dnipro – said regional governor Sergiy Lysak in a post on Telegram. At least four of the wounded were in severe condition and were taken to hospital, he added. The attack followed missile strikes earlier this week on both Dnipro and Samar, which killed at least 23, as Russian forces attempted to gain a foothold in Dnipropetrovsk for the first time in over three years of war. Officials gave no immediate details about the damage inflicted on Samar, where an attack on an unidentified infrastructure facility on Tuesday killed two people. Moscow earlier this week claimed to have captured two more villages near the border of the Dnipropetrovsk region. Separately, authorities in Ukraine's northern region of Kharkiv said Russian attacks killed one person and wounded three others. Hundreds of kilometres to the south, in the Kherson region, authorities urged residents on Friday to prepare for extended periods without power after a Russian attack hit a key energy facility. Governor Oleksandr Prokudin said on Telegram that 'Russians decided to plunge the region into darkness'. The Ukrainian air force said Russia had launched 363 long-range drones and eight missiles overnight into Friday, claiming that air defences stopped all but four of the drones and downed six cruise missiles. Russia's Defence Ministry, meanwhile, said 39 Ukrainian drones were downed in several regions overnight, including 19 over the Rostov region and 13 over the Volgograd region. 'Find a path' in peace talks The continued attacks on Dnipropetrovsk came as President Vladimir Putin said that he intended to scale back military expenditure and also indicated he was ready for a new round of peace negotiations with Ukraine. The Russian president said his country was ready to reduce the military budget in the long term, owing to budgetary pressures and the increased defence spending having fuelled inflation. Speaking to reporters in Minsk, Belarus, on Friday, he alluded to a new round of peace negotiations with Ukraine, potentially in Istanbul, although the time and venue had yet to be agreed. He acknowledged that the peace proposals from Russia and Ukraine 'are two absolutely contradictory memorandums', but added, 'That's why negotiations are being organised and conducted, in order to find a path to bringing them closer together.' Putin added that the two sides' negotiators were in constant contact and that Russia was ready to return the bodies of 3,000 more Ukrainian soldiers. He also said relations between Russia and the United States were beginning to stabilise, attributing the improvement to efforts by US President Donald Trump. 'In general, thanks to President Trump, relations between Russia and the United States are beginning to level out in some ways,' said Putin. Trump on Friday suggested progress may be on the horizon regarding Russia's war in Ukraine. 'We're working on that one,' Trump told reporters at the White House. 'President Putin called up and he said, I'd love to help you with Iran. I said, do me a favour: I'll handle Iran. Help me with Russia. We got to get that one settled. And I think something's going to happen there.'
Russia Today
2 days ago
- Politics
- Russia Today
Ukrainian military airfield hit with Kinzhal hypersonic missiles
Russian forces launched an overnight attack on a Ukrainian military airfield using high-precision weapons, the Defense Ministry in Moscow reported on Friday. In a statement, the ministry announced that the group strike was carried out using long-range precision air-based weapons, including the Kinzhal ballistic hypersonic missile system, as well as unmanned aerial vehicles. The statement did not identify the specific location of the airfield or offer any assessment of the damage caused. Ukrainian and Russian media reports have suggested that the airfield in question is the Starokonstantinov air base in Khmelnytsky Region in western Ukraine. The Defense Ministry has also reported that over the past week, Russian forces carried out a total of six group strikes using high-precision weapons and drones. According to the statement, the targets included 'defense industry enterprises of Ukraine, fuel and energy facilities, port infrastructure supporting the Ukrainian Armed Forces, air defense radar stations, ammunition and fuel depots, mine and torpedo weapon arsenals, production workshops, storage and launch sites for UAVs, military airfields, and temporary deployment points of Ukrainian armed formations, nationalists, and foreign mercenaries.' Russian and Ukrainian media outlets have reported that explosions were heard overnight in Kiev and the surrounding region, while air defense sirens were activated in Dnepropetrovsk, Odessa, and eight regions in western Ukraine, including Lviv, Rivne, and Ivano-Frankovsk. Russia carried out several other high-precision attacks this week. On Monday, the Defense Ministry reported strikes on two Ukrainian military training sites using Iskander missiles. The same day, Moscow also reported launching a large strike on several Ukrainian military-industrial enterprises in Kiev Region, as well as a military airfield and an arsenal of mine-torpedo weapons used by the Ukrainian Navy. Kiev claimed that the strikes hit a residential building, leading to several deaths. However, it has not been established whether the damage was caused by a direct hit or by debris from shot-down missiles and drones. Officials in Moscow maintain that all strikes are aimed strictly at military objectives and deny targeting civilian infrastructure.
The Guardian
2 days ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
‘Basically impossible to get them back': Russia's mass abduction of Ukrainian children is a war crime, say experts
As many as 35,000 Ukrainian children are still missing and thought to be held in Russia or Russian-occupied territories, according to an American team of experts, with families saying they are being forced to take desperate and risky measures to try to rescue them. As Russian forces began their invasion in February 2022, children were abducted from care homes, from the battlefield after the death of their parents, or under coercion directly from their families. Russia has rejected demands for the children to be returned, with an official accusing Ukraine of 'staging a show on the topic of lost children' during ceasefire talks in Turkey this month. Speaking to the Guardian, one mother has described her own dramatic rescue of her two teenage sons who were held in a camp in Russia for almost six months. After Russian forces occupied Natalia's home city of Kherson on the eastern border of Ukraine, in September 2022, a neighbour advised her to send her sons to a children's camp in Anapa, a seaside resort town in Russia. 'The 21-day trip was free and they were meant to return to Kherson at the end. The boys wanted to go too, but it was a big mistake on my part to allow it,' she says. In late 2022, Ukrainian forces liberated Natalia's city, but her children were in a camp on the other side of the frontline and Russia would not let them return home. 'The camp authorities refused to let the children leave without my physical presence,' she says. 'I didn't know what to do.' Eventually, with the help of a Ukrainian organisation, Natalia obtained a passport and Ukrainian identification documents for her children. She then travelled alone across the border to the Russian town of Anapa on the northern coast of the Black Sea, passing through numerous border checkpoints where she had to explain to Russian soldiers why she was in the country. She was travelling for six days, amid shelling, before finally being reunited with her children in February 2023. 'You cannot even imagine my emotions, because my children are all I have,' she says. So far just 1,366 children have been returned or escaped back to Ukraine, according to the Ukrainian organisation Bring Kids Back. A team of experts at Yale University has estimated that as many as 35,000 children may be held in Russia and its occupied territories. It is feared that many have been taken by Russian forces and sent to military camps or foster care, or have even been adopted by Russian families. Through extensive examination of Russian databases, official documents, family connections and even satellite images of Russian sites, official buildings and other sources, the Yale team has been able to establish the identities of thousands of children. Nathaniel Raymond, executive director of Yale's Humanitarian Research Lab, which has been investigating the abductions, says: 'This is likely the largest child abduction in war since world war two – comparable to the Germanification of Polish children by the Nazis.' Testimonies of recently rescued children reveal that they received military training at the camps and were punished for speaking Ukrainian. 'We had to sing the Russian anthem and draw the tricolour,' says one rescued nine-year-old. Children are also made to believe that their parents would face consequences if they did not comply, says Daria Kasyanova, chair of the Ukrainian Child Rights Network, which campaigns for the abducted children's repatriation. The forceful deportation and abduction of Ukrainian children is not new, activists and researchers say. Kasyanova says she witnessed similar abductions and deportations during Russia's invasion of the Crimean peninsula in 2014. Back then, she worked to evacuate more than 40,000 people from Donetsk and Luhansk, including 12,000 children. 'My daughter was 11 then, and some of her friends who stayed behind were sent to military camps in Russia,' she says. Activists fear that many of the children will disappear into Russia's adoption system, where laws were recently changed to allow Ukrainian children to be adopted and fostered by Russian nationals. 'Sometimes there are cases when one parent is on Ukrainian territory and the other one is in the occupation with the child. And if that parent dies or is arrested, then the child is left alone and at the risk of getting put into an orphanage. And if that happens, it's basically impossible to get the child back. They will be lost,' says Kasyanova. Raymond says this is why research into abductions is so important: 'To document that these children have been forcibly deported. 'Taking a child from one ethnic or national group and making them part of another ethnic or national group – that's a war crime,' he says. The international criminal court agrees and in March 2023, issued arrest warrants against the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and his commissioner for children's rights, Maria Lvova-Belova, for the 'war crime' of unlawful deportation of Ukrainian children. The return of the children remains a key demand for Ukraine in any peace negotiations. Ksenia, an evacuation specialist at the Ukrainian charity Helping to Leave, says: 'We are discussing territories – and our people, our children, are our territories. How can we give them up? 'These are our children, they are Ukrainian and they have to be brought [home]. Russia doesn't have any right to them,' she says. Raymond says the children are being used as a bargaining chip in negotiations. 'When Russians started out, they thought they were going to be victorious quickly, so this programme was rolled out, not to take these kids and hold them, but to be able to Russify Ukraine. 'But because things started to go south quickly, they had to move their propaganda from the liability concealment phase to using these children as hostages to be leveraged in the negotiations,' he says. The Trump administration in the US terminated Congressionally authorised funding for Yale's Conflict Observatory in February. It has instructed all research and data to be tranferred to Ukrainian organisations and Europol, the EU's agency for law enforcement. The Yale research group is expected to close as a result on July 1.
