Putin
Russian mercenaries are Putin's 'coercive tool' in Africa
When abuses were reported in recent weeks in Mali — fake graves designed to discredit French forces; a massacre of some 300 people, mostly civilians — all evidence pointed to the shadowy mercenaries of Russia's Wagner Group.
Even before these feared professional soldiers joined the assault on Ukraine, Russia had deployed them to under-the-radar military operations across at least half a dozen African countries. Their aim: to further President Vladimir Putin's global ambitions, and to undermine democracy.
The Wagner Group passes itself off as a private military contractor and the Kremlin denies any connection to it or even, sometimes, that it exists.
But Wagner's commitment to Russian interests has become apparent in Ukraine, where its fighters, seen wearing the group's chilling white skull emblem, are among the Russian forces currently attacking eastern Ukraine.
In sub-Saharan Africa, Wagner has gained substantial footholds for Russia in Central African Republic, Sudan and Mali. Wagner's role in those countries goes way beyond the cover story of merely providing a security service, experts say.
"They essentially run the Central African Republic," and are a growing force in Mali, Gen. Stephen Townsend, the commander of U.S. armed forces in Africa, told a Senate hearing last month.
The United States identifies Wagner’s financer as Yevgeny Prigozhin, an oligarch who is close to the Russian president and sometimes is called “Putin’s chef" for his flashy restaurants favored by the Russian leader. He was charged by the U.S. government with trying to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election, and the Wagner Group is the subject of U.S. and European Union sanctions.
Russia's game plan for Africa, where it has applied its influence as far north as Libya and as far south as Mozambique, is straightforward in some ways, say analysts. It seeks alliances with regimes or juntas shunned by the West or facing insurgencies and internal challenges to their rule.
The African leaders get recognition from the Kremlin and military muscle from Wagner. They pay for it by giving Russia prime access to their oil, gas, gold, diamonds and valuable minerals.
Russia also gains positions on a strategically important continent.
But there's another objective of Russia's “hybrid war” in Africa, said Joseph Siegle, director of research at the Africa Center for Strategic Studies.
Siegle said Russia is also waging an ideological battle, using Wagner as a “coercive tool" to undermine Western ideas of democracy and turn countries toward Moscow. Putin wants to challenge the international democratic order “because Russia can't compete very well in that order,” Siegle said.
“If democracy is held up as the ultimate aspirational governance model, then that is constraining for Russia," Siegle said.
Rather, Wagner promotes Russian interests with soldiers and guns, but also through propaganda and disinformation, as Prigozhin has done for Putin before.
READ: Ukrainian counterattacks slowing Russian offensive in east
In Central African Republic, Wagner fighters ride around the capital Bangui in unmarked military vehicles and guard the country's gold and diamond mines. They have helped to hold off armed rebel groups and to keep President Faustin-Archange Touadera in power, but their reach goes much further. Russian national Valery Zakharov is Touadera's national security advisor but also a “key figure” in Wagner's command structure, according to European Union documents accusing the mercenary group of serious human rights violations.
A statue erected last year in Bangui depicts Russian soldiers standing side by side to protect a woman and her children. Russia is cast as the country's savior and pro-Russia marches have been held in support of the war in Ukraine and to criticize former security partner France — though several protesters said they are paid.
“A Central African adage says that when someone helps you, you have to reciprocate. This is why we have mobilized as one to support Russia,” said Didacien Kossimatchi, an official in Touadera's political party. “Russia has absolved us of the unacceptable domination of the West."
Kossimatchi said Russia was “acting in self-defense” in Ukraine.
Such support from African countries is a strategic success for Russia. When the United Nations voted on a resolution condemning the invasion of Ukraine, 17 of the 35 countries that abstained from the vote — nearly half — were African. Several other African nations did not register a vote.
“Africa is fast becoming crucial to Putin’s efforts to dilute the influence of the United States and its international alliances,” said a report in March by the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, a non-profit set up by the former British prime minister.
Russia's strategy in Africa comes at a minimal cost economically and politically. Analysts estimate Wagner operates with only a few hundred to 2,000 mercenaries in a country. Many are ex-Russian military intelligence, Siegle said, but because it's a private force the Kremlin can deny responsibility for Wagner's actions.
The real price is paid by ordinary people.
The people of Central African Republic aren't more secure, said Pauline Bax, Africa Program deputy director of the International Crisis Group think tank. “In fact, there’s more violence and intimidation,” she said.
France, the U.S. and human rights groups have accused Wagner mercenaries of extra-judicial killings of civilians in Central African Republic. A U.N. panel of experts said private military groups and "particularly the Wagner Group” have violently harassed people and committed rape and sexual violence. They are just the latest accusations of serious abuses by the group.
Central African Republic in 2021 acknowledged serious human rights violations by Russians, which forced Russian ambassador Vladimir Titorenko to leave his post.
The Wagner group has responded with a charm offensive — creating films designed to please the public, sponsoring beauty pageants and distributing educational materials that promote Russia’s involvement in Africa. Russian is now being taught in universities.
Russia has taken its Central African Republic blueprint to Mali and elsewhere in Africa. In Mali, there has been an “uprooting of democracy,” said Aanu Adeoye, an analyst on Russia-Africa affairs at the London-based Chatham House think tank.
Following coups in 2020 and last year, France is withdrawing troops from its former colony that had been helping fight Islamic extremists since 2013. Wagner moved in, striking a security deal with Mali's new military junta, which then expelled the French ambassador and banned French TV stations. Tensions with the West have escalated. So has the violence.
Last month, Mali's army and foreign soldiers who witnesses suspected were Russian killed an estimated 300 men in the rural town of Moura. Some of those killed were suspected extremists but most were civilians, Human Rights Watch said, calling it a “deliberate slaughter of people in custody."
This week, when French forces handed over control of the Gossi military base, suspected Wagner agents hurriedly buried several bodies nearby and a Russian social media campaign blamed France for the graves. The French military, however, had used aerial surveillance after their withdrawal to show the creation of the sandy graves.
Both atrocities bear the hallmarks of Wagner mercenaries and Russia's foreign policy brand under Putin, say several analysts.
"They have no concerns about minor things like democracy and human rights,” said Chatham House's Adeoye.
Looking to deepen pain for Putin, West studying oil and gas
The United States unleashed some of its toughest actions against Russian President Vladimir Putin right after he rolled his troops into Ukraine. Polls in the U.S. find that people want Washington to do more. So what’s left, financially, diplomatically and militarily, to step up the pressure?
The U.S. could get strong results from any number of next steps, economists and current and former U.S. officials say. It could simply persist in pouring cash and potent weaponry into Ukraine — a likely course. It could even commit to shutting down some of the inroads the Kremlin has made into U.S. political and financial systems, also conceivable.
But the mightiest trigger the West can pull now on Russia, many experts agree, is the one on a gas pump nozzle. Cutting off Russian profits from oil and natural gas sales has become a main topic among world leaders looking at what else they can do to force Putin to end his invasion.
“It would be very useful to try to devise a way to reduce proceeds from those sales and that really is the proper objective, I think, of a ban,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told a meeting of world finance leaders Thursday.
“But if we can think of a way to do that without harming the entire world from higher energy prices, that would be ideal," Yellen said.
President Joe Biden already has ended the relatively minor U.S. imports of Russian oil and other fossil fuel products. But the U.S. would be central if allies move to cut the global flow of Russian fuel and punish nations and businesses that fail to comply.
Global purchases of Russian oil and gas production account for at least 40% of government revenue for Moscow. Exports are keeping Russia’s economy afloat despite the sanctions enacted so far and financing the war.
Cutting back further on Russian petroleum to the market would make a global supply crunch even worse, increasing prices for everyone, including in the United States.
Republicans already are making gas price increases that stem in part from Russia’s war a top campaign point against Biden.
“Everybody wants a pain-free option, right?” asked Daniel Fried, a former assistant U.S. secretary of state for Europe, and one of many urging the U.S. to take tougher action as Russia builds forces for a new phase of attacks in Ukraine. “Yeah, they seldom exist.”
“If anybody writes they can do this thing without some effect on gas prices, you know, without taking a hit — you’re crazy, because you can’t,” Fried said.
The U.S. is already being asked to assure the world that U.S. producers can help make up for lost Russian supply, if Europe moves to cut the hose on Russian oil purchases quickly. The U.S. would likely be an administrator and enforcer in any secondary sanctions to penalize China or other nations or businesses if they buy from or enable Russia’s oil and gas industry.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said European nations have considered diverting their payments for Russian oil and gas into escrow accounts, similar to deals forced on Iran and Iraq as part of sanctions.
A poll by The Associated Press and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that more than half of respondents want Biden to be tougher on Putin.
People in the U.S. may just be coming around to accepting that doing that could mean financial hardships for them. By 51% to 45%, respondents in the AP-NORC poll said the U.S. should focus on sanctioning Russia as effectively as possible more than on limiting damage to the U.S. economy.
But ask Alan Gold of Potomac, Maryland, if he's willing to pay more for gasoline as part of any global move to starve Russia of money for the Ukraine war, and the answer you get is a growl.
“I'm paying $5 a gallon now,” Gold said this past week at a strip mall gas station, jerking his head at the price tally rolling upward as he pumped gas into his vehicle.
Elina Ribakova, deputy chief economist of the Institute of International Finance, said Russia's war is boosting the price it gets for its oil and gas, driving the surplus in Russia's current accounts to nearly $60 billion, a recent high despite all the West's sanctions.
Economists and policymakers have to decide next steps as part of the larger context of militaries at war, the risks of nuclear war and the cost of Ukrainian lives, Ribakova told an online panel with Princeton’s Bendheim Center for Finance this past week. “This is the cost we’re thinking about when we think about sanctions ... not just about economics.”
Barring major shifts, the financial realm is the one where the next major U.S. actions against Russia will come from.
Militarily, the U.S. is unlikely to send in many new, complex weapons systems, like U.S. tanks or fighter or bomber jets. Doing so would tie up Ukrainian fighters in training on unfamiliar weapons when they're needed for fighting, by the Pentagon's reasoning.
Instead, the U.S. is expected to keep doing what it's doing militarily, only more so, pumping in more cash and basic battlefield weapons and resupplies. On Thursday Biden pledged an additional $1.3 billion for heavy artillery, 144,000 rounds of ammunition and other aid.
Further boosting U.S. intelligence-sharing to help Ukraine in the fight is an option.
On the diplomatic front, the U.S. and likeminded nations are exploring ways Russia could be further isolated. Russia has already been suspended from the U.N. Human Rights Council and is facing a push at the world body’s educational, scientific and cultural organization to strip it of its UNESCO presidency and bar it from hosting a June meeting of its World Heritage Committee.
Russia is unlikely to be suspended from the International Civil Aviation Organization, World Health Organization or Food and Agriculture Organization, however. Any attempt to remove it from the world body’s most powerful grouping – the U.N. Security Council – would fail on a Russian and likely Chinese veto.
READ: Putin claims Mariupol win but won’t storm Ukrainian holdout
Talk of the U.S. officially designating Russia or Russian mercenaries as terrorists or supporters of terrorism hasn't gained traction.
There is another big step the U.S. and its democratic allies should take, that doesn't get as much attention, argues Alex Finley, a former officer of the CIA’s directorate of operations: Clean up their own act.
“We need to examine our own role,” said Finley, who tracks seizures of Russian yachts and other Western penalties on Putin. She and others say lax regulation and enforcement in the West have allowed Putin and Russia to influence U.S. elections, park cash from corrupt enterprises in shell companies and offshore tax havens, and buy visas and passports to Western countries.
It's all served to erode transparency and the rule of law in Western democracies, as Putin intended, said Finley.
The West got lax because "we made money with it,” Finley said. “But we did it in a way that we sold ... part of the soul of democracy.”
UN chief to meet with Putin, Zelenskyy to press for peace
U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres is set to meet separately with the presidents of Russia and Ukraine next week to make urgent, face-to-face pleas for peace, the world body said Friday.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed that Guterres is to meet Tuesday with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and that Putin will also host the U.N. chief.
The U.N. later said that Guterres will head Thursday to Ukraine to see President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba.
In both visits, Guterres aims to discuss “steps that can be taken right now” to stop the fighting and help people get to safety, U.N. spokesperson Eri Kaneko said.
Also Read: Satellite photos show possible mass graves near Mariupol
“He hopes to talk about what can be done to bring peace to Ukraine urgently,” she said.
Guterres had asked Tuesday to meet with the presidents in their respective capitals.
Guterres has urged Russia to stop its attack since it began two months ago, in what he called “the saddest moment” in his five years in the U.N.’s top job. He appealed Tuesday for a four-day “humanitarian pause” in fighting leading up to Sunday’s Orthodox Easter holiday.
“Stop the bloodshed and destruction. Open a window for dialogue and peace,” he implored.
Guterres sent the U.N.’s top humanitarian official to Moscow and Kyiv earlier this month to explore the possibilities of a cease-fire.
But the secretary-general had faced questions about whether he himself should travel to press for peace. In a recent letter, former U.N. officials called on him to step up his personal, public involvement.
Whatever overtures may have been made privately, the now-planned trip “is a visible symbol of what the United Nations is supposed to be standing for, which is peace and security,” one of the letter-writers, former U.N. political affairs chief Jeffrey Feltman, said by phone Friday.
“I don’t think any of us should have exaggerated expectations about what the secretary-general will be able to accomplish, but he has significant moral power,” said Feltman, now a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington. “It’s important that the secretary-general have these conversations.”
Also Read: Zelenskyy gets John F. Kennedy award for defending democracy
Former Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon went to Moscow and Kyiv in March 2014 to try to foster talks and diplomacy as Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula.
Putin vows to press invasion until Russia’s goals are met
Vladimir Putin vowed Tuesday that Russia’s bloody offensive in Ukraine would continue until its goals are fulfilled and insisted the campaign was going as planned, despite a major withdrawal in the face of stiff Ukrainian opposition and significant losses.
Russian troops, thwarted in their push toward Ukraine’s capital, are now focusing on the eastern Donbas region, where Ukraine said Tuesday it was investigating a claim that a poisonous substance had been dropped on its troops. It was not clear what the substance might be, but Western officials warned that any use of chemical weapons by Russia would be a serious escalation of the already devastating war.
Russia invaded on Feb. 24, with the goal, according to Western officials, of taking Kyiv, the capital, toppling the government and installing a Moscow-friendly regime. In the six weeks since, the ground advance stalled and Russian forces lost potentially thousands of fighters and were accused of killing civilians and other atrocities.
Putin insisted Tuesday that his invasion aimed to protect people in parts of eastern Ukraine controlled by Moscow-backed rebels and to “ensure Russia’s own security.”
He said Russia “had no other choice” but to launch what he calls a “special military operation,” and vowed it would “continue until its full completion and the fulfillment of the tasks that have been set.”
For now, Putin’s forces are gearing up for a major offensive in the Donbas, which has been torn by fighting between Russian-allied separatists and Ukrainian forces since 2014, and where Russia has recognized the separatists’ claims of independence. Military strategists say Moscow appears to hope that local support, logistics and the terrain in the region favor its larger, better-armed military, potentially allowing Russia to finally turn the tide in its favor.
Read: ‘It’s not the end’: The children who survived Bucha’s horror
In Mariupol, a strategic port city in the Donbas, a Ukrainian regiment defending a steel mill claimed a drone dropped a poisonous substance on the city. It indicated there were no serious injuries. The assertion by the Azov Regiment, a far-right group now part of the Ukrainian military, could not be independently verified.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that while experts try to determine what the substance might be, “The world must react now.” Evidence of “inhuman cruelty” toward women and children in Bucha and other suburbs of Kyiv continued to surface, he added, including of alleged rapes.
“Not all serial rapists reach the cruelty of Russian soldiers,” Zelenskyy said.
The claims came after a Russia-allied separatist official appeared to urge the use of chemical weapons, telling Russian state TV on Monday that separatist forces should seize the plant by first blocking all the exits. “And then we’ll use chemical troops to smoke them out of there,” the official, Eduard Basurin, said. He denied Tuesday that separatist forces had used chemical weapons in Mariupol.
Ukraine’s Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said officials were investigating, and it was possible phosphorus munitions — which cause horrendous burns but are not classed as chemical weapons — had been used in Mariupol.
Much of the city has been leveled in weeks of pummeling by Russian troops. The mayor said Monday that the siege has left more than 10,000 civilians dead, their bodies “carpeted through the streets.” Mayor Vadym Boychenko said the death toll in Mariupol alone could surpass 20,000.
Zelenskyy adviser Mykhailo Podolyak acknowledged the challenges Ukrainian troops face in Mariupol. He said via Twitter that they remain blocked and are having issues with supplies, while Ukraine’s president and generals “do everything possible (and impossible) to find a solution.”
“For more than 1.5 months our defenders protect the city from (Russian) troops, which are 10+ times larger,” Podolyak tweeted. “They’re fighting under the bombs for each meter of the city. They make (Russia) pay an exorbitant price.”
British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said the use of chemical weapons “would be a callous escalation in this conflict,” while Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne said it would be a “wholesale breach of international law.”
Ukrainian forces retake areas near Kyiv amid fear of traps
Ukrainian troops moved cautiously to retake territory north of the country’s capital on Saturday, using cables to pull the bodies of civilians off streets of one town out of fear that Russian forces may have left them booby-trapped.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned that departing Russian troops were creating a “catastrophic” situation for civilians by leaving mines around homes, abandoned equipment and “even the bodies of those killed.” His claims could not be independently verified.
Associated Press journalists in Bucha, a suburb northwest of Kyiv, watched as Ukrainian soldiers backed by a column of tanks and other armored vehicles used cables to drag bodies off of a street from a distance. Locals said the dead — the AP counted at least six — were civilians killed without provocation by departing Russian soldiers.
“Those people were just walking and they shot them without any reason. Bang,” said a Bucha resident who declined to give his name citing safety reasons. “In the next neighborhood, Stekolka, it was even worse. They would shoot without asking any question.” Ukraine and its Western allies reported mounting evidence of Russia withdrawing its forces from around Kyiv and building its troop strength in eastern Ukraine.
The visible shift did not mean the country faced a reprieve from more than five weeks of war or that the more than 4 million refugees who have fled Ukraine will return soon. Zelenskyy said he expects departed towns to endure missile and rocket strikes from afar and for the battle in the east to be intense.
Read: Russians leave Chernobyl; Ukraine braces for renewed attacks
In his nightly video address Saturday, the Ukrainian leader said the country’s troops were not allowing the Russians to retreat without a fight: “They are shelling them. They are destroying everyone they can.”
Russia, Zelenskyy said, has ample forces to put more pressure on Ukraine’s east and south.
“What is the goal of the Russian troops? They want to seize the Donbas and the south of Ukraine,” he said. “What is our goal? To defend ourselves, our freedom, our land and our people.”
Moscow’s focus on eastern Ukraine also kept the besieged southeastern city of Mariupol in the crosshairs. The port city on the Sea of Azov is located in the mostly Russian-speaking Donbas region, where Moscow-backed separatists have fought Ukrainian troops for eight years. Military analysts think Russian President Vladimir Putin is determined to capture the region after his forces failed to secure Kyiv and other major cities.
The International Committee of the Red Cross had hoped to evacuate Mariupol residents Saturday but had not yet reached the city. A day earlier, local authorities said the Red Cross was blocked by Russian forces.
An adviser to Zelenskyy, Oleksiy Arestovych, said in an interview with Russian lawyer and activist Mark Feygin that Russia and Ukraine had reached an agreement to allow 45 buses to drive to Mariupol to evacuate residents “in coming days.”
The Mariupol city council said earlier Saturday that 10 empty buses were headed to Berdyansk, a city 84 kilometers (52.2 miles) west of Mariupol, to pick up people who managed to get there on their own. About 2,000 made it out of Mariupol on Friday, some on buses and some in their own vehicles, city officials said.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister, Iryna Vereshchuk, said 765 Mariupol residents on Saturday used private vehicles to reach Zaporizhzhia, a city still under Ukrainian control that has served as the destination for other planned evacuations.
Among those escaping was Tamila Mazurenko, who said she fled Mariupol on Monday, made it to Berdyansk that night and then took a bus to Zaporizhzhia. Mazurenko said she waited for a bus until Friday, spending one night sleeping in a field.
“I have only one question: Why?” she said of her city’s ordeal. “We only lived as normal people. And our normal life was destroyed. And we lost everything. I don’t have any job, I can’t find my son.”
Read: War in Ukraine fuels fears among draft-age Russian youths
Mariupol has been surrounded by Russian forces for more than a month and suffered some of the war’s worst attacks, including on a maternity hospital and a theater that was sheltering civilians. Around 100,000 people are believed to remain in the city, down from a prewar population of 430,000, and they face dire shortages of water, food, fuel and medicine.
Zelenskyy said a significant number of Russian troops were tied up in Mariupol, giving Ukraine “invaluable time ... that is allowing us to foil the enemy’s tactics and weaken its capabilities.”
The city’s capture would give Moscow an unbroken land bridge from Russia to Crimea, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014. But its resistance also has taken on symbolic significance during Russia’s invasion, said Volodymyr Fesenko, head of the Ukrainian think tank Penta.
“Mariupol has become a symbol of Ukrainian resistance, and without its conquest, Putin cannot sit down at the negotiating table,” Fesenko said.
About 500 refugees from eastern Ukraine, including 99 children and 12 people with disabilities, arrived in the Russian city of Kazan by train overnight. Asked if he saw a chance to return home, Mariupol resident Artur Kirillov answered, “That’s unlikely, there is no city anymore.”
In towns and cities surrounding Kyiv, signs of fierce fighting were everywhere in the wake of the Russian redeployment. Destroyed armored vehicles from both armies lay in streets and fields along with scattered military gear.
Ukrainian troops were stationed at the entrance to Antonov Airport in suburb of Hostomel, demonstrating control of the runway that Russia tried to storm in the first days of the war.
Inside the compound, the Mriya, one of the biggest planes ever built, lay wrecked underneath a hangar pockmarked with holes from the February attack.
“The Russians couldn’t make one like it so they destroyed it,“ said Oleksandr Merkushev, mayor of the Kyiv suburb of Irpin.
Irpin has seen some of the fiercest battles, and Merkushev said Russian troops “left behind them many bodies, many destroyed buildings, and they mined many places.”
A prominent Ukrainian photojournalist who went missing last month in a combat zone near the capital was found dead Friday in the Huta Mezhyhirska village north of Kyiv, the country’s prosecutor general’s office announced. The prosecutor general’s office attributed Maks Levin’s death to two gunshots allegedly fired by the Russian military and said an investigation was underway.
Elsewhere, at least three Russian ballistic missiles were fired late Friday at the Odesa region on the Black Sea, regional leader Maksim Marchenko said. The Ukrainian military said the Iskander missiles did not hit the critical infrastructure they targeted in Odesa, Ukraine’s largest port and the headquarters of its navy.
Ukraine’s state nuclear agency reported a series of blasts Saturday that injured four people in Enerhodar, a southeastern city that has been under Russian control since early March along with the nearby Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant. Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman said via Telegram that the four were badly burned when Russian troops fired light and noise grenades and mortars at a pro-Ukraine demonstration.
The head of Ukraine’s delegation in talks with Russia said Moscow’s negotiators informally agreed to most of a draft proposal discussed during face-to-face talks in Istanbul this week, but no written confirmation has been provided. However, Davyd Arakhamia said on Ukrainian TV that he hopes that draft is developed enough so that the two countries’ presidents can meet to discuss it.
White House: Intel shows Putin misled by advisers on Ukraine
U.S. intelligence officials have determined that Russian President Vladimir Putin is being misinformed by advisers about his military’s poor performance in Ukraine, according to the White House. The advisers are scared to tell him the truth, the intel says.
The findings, recently declassified, indicate that Putin is aware of the situation on information coming to him and there now is persistent tension between him and senior Russian military officials.
The U.S. believes Putin is being misled not only about his military’s performance but also “how the Russian economy is b eing crippled by sanctions because, again, his senior advisers are too afraid to tell him the truth,” White House communications director Kate Bedingfield said Wednesday.
Earlier, President Joe Biden said in an exchange with reporters that he could not comment on the intelligence.
The administration is hopeful that divulging the finding could help prod Putin to reconsider his options in Ukraine, according to a U.S. official. The official was not authorized to comment and spoke on the condition of anonymity. The war has ground to a bloody stalemate in much of the country, with heavy casualties and Russian troop morale sinking as Ukrainian forces and volunteers put up an unexpectedly stout defense.
But the publicity could also risk further isolating Putin, who U.S. officials have said seems at least in part driven by a desire to win back Russian prestige lost by the fall of the Soviet Union.
“What it does is underscore that this has been a strategic blunder for Russia,” Bedingfield said of the intelligence finding. “But I’m not going to characterize how ... Vladimir Putin might be thinking about this.”
Meanwhile, Biden told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy during a 55 minute call that an additional $500 million in direct aid for Ukraine was on its way. It’s the latest burst in American assistance as the Russian invasion grinds on.
Asked about the latest intelligence, Secretary of State Antony Blinken suggested that a dynamic within the Kremlin exists where advisers are unwilling to speak to Putin with candor.
“One of the Achilles’ heels of autocracies is that you don’t have people in those systems that speak truth to power or have the ability to speak truth to power, and I think that’s what we’re seeing in Russia,” Blinken told reporters during a stop in Algeria on Wednesday.
The unidentified official did not detail underlying evidence for how U.S. intelligence made its determination.
The intelligence community has concluded that Putin was unaware that his military had been using and losing conscripts in Ukraine. They also have determined he is not fully aware of the extent to which the Russian economy is being damaged by economic sanctions imposed by the U.S. and allies.
The findings demonstrate a “clear breakdown in the flow of accurate information” to Putin, and show that Putin’s senior advisers are “afraid to tell him the truth,” the official said.
Biden notified Zelenskyy about the latest tranche of assistance during a call in which the leaders also reviewed security aid already delivered to Ukraine and the effects that weaponry has had on the war, according to the White House.
READ: Biden ending Europe trip with unity message that echoes past
Zelesnkyy has pressed the Biden administration and other Western allies to provide Ukraine with military jets, something that the U.S. and other NATO countries have thus far been unwilling to accommodate out of concern it could lead to Russia broadening the war beyond Ukraine’s borders.
Prior to Wednesday’s announcement of $500 million in aid, the Biden administration had sent Ukraine about $2 billion in humanitarian and security assistance since the start of the war last month.
Congress approved $13.6 billion that Congress approved earlier this month as part of a broader spending bill. Bedingfield said the latest round of financial assistance could be used by the Ukrainian government “to bolster its economy and pay for budgetary expenses” including government salaries and maintaining services.
Ukraine’s presidential website says Zelenskyy told Biden: “We need peace, and it will be achieved only when we have a strong position on the battlefield. Our morale is firm, there is enough determination, but we need your immediate support.”
Zelenskyy in a Twitter posting said that he also spoke to Biden about new sanctions against Russia. Bedingfield said the administration is looking at options to expand and deepen current sanctions.
The new intelligence came after the White House on Tuesday expressed skepticism about Russia’s public announcement that it would dial back operations near Kyiv in an effort to increase trust in ongoing talks between Ukrainian and Russian officials in Turkey.
Russian forces pounded areas around Ukraine’s capital and another city overnight, regional leaders said Wednesday.
The Pentagon said Wednesday that over the past 24 hours it had seen some Russian troops in the areas around Kyiv moving north toward or into Belarus.
Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said in interviews with CNN and Fox Business that the U.S. does not view this as a withdrawal but as an attempt by Russia to resupply, refit and then reposition the troops.
Putin has long been seen outside Russia as insular and surrounded by officials who don’t always tell him the truth. U.S. officials have said publicly they believe that limited flow of information –- possibly exacerbated by Putin’s heightened isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic -– may have given the Russian president unrealistic views of how quickly he could overrun Ukraine.
The Biden administration before the war launched an unprecedented effort to publicize what it believed were Putin’s invasion plans, drawing on intelligence findings. While Russia still invaded, the White House was widely credited with drawing attention to Ukraine and pushing initially reluctant allies to back tough sanctions that have hammered the Russian economy.
But underscoring the limits of intelligence, the U.S. also underestimated Ukraine’s will to fight before the invasion, said Lt. Gen. Scott Berrier, head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, in recent testimony before Congress.
Putin misled by advisers on Ukraine, US intel determines
U.S. intelligence officials have determined that Russian President Vladimir Putin is being misinformed by his advisers about his nation's forces’ poor performance in Ukraine, according to a U.S. official.
The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity Wednesday to discuss the recently declassified intelligence, added that the finding says Putin is aware of the situation and there is now persistent tension between him and senior Russian military officials.
The Biden administration is hopeful that divulging the finding could help prod Putin to reconsider his options in Ukraine. The war has ground to a bloody stalemate in much of the country, with heavy casualties and Russian troop morale sinking as Ukrainian forces and volunteers put up an unexpectedly stout defense.
But the publicity could also risk further isolating Putin, who U.S. officials have said seems at least in part driven by a desire to win back Russian prestige lost by the fall of the Soviet Union.
READ: Dhaka, Moscow to boost constructive bilateral cooperation: Putin
The official did not detail underlying evidence for how U.S. intelligence made the determination.
The intelligence community has concluded that Putin was unaware that his military had been using and losing conscripts in Ukraine. They also have determined he is not fully aware of the extent to which the Russian economy is being damaged by economic sanctions imposed by the U.S. and allies.
The findings demonstrate a “clear breakdown in the flow of accurate information” to Putin, and show that Putin’s senior advisers are "afraid to tell him the truth,” the official said.
The new intelligence comes after the White House on Tuesday expressed skepticism about Russia's public announcement that it would dial back operations near Kyiv in an effort to increase trust in ongoing talks between Ukrainian and Russian officials in Turkey.
“We’ll see,” Biden said about that announcement. “I don’t read anything into it until I see what their actions are.”
Russian forces pounded areas around Ukraine’s capital and another city overnight, regional leaders said Wednesday.
White House communications director Kate Bedingfield said the administration views any movement of Russian forces as a “redeployment and not a withdrawal” and “no one should be fooled by Russia’s announcement.”
Biden spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday to discuss the latest developments in the war.
Putin has long been seen outside Russia as insular and surrounded by officials who don’t always tell him the truth. U.S. officials have said publicly they believe that limited flow of information –- possibly exacerbated by Putin’s heightened isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic -– may have given the Russian president unrealistic views of how quickly he could overrun Ukraine.
The Biden administration before the war launched an unprecedented effort to publicize what it believed were Putin’s invasion plans, drawing on intelligence findings. While Russia still invaded, the White House was widely credited with drawing attention to Ukraine and pushing initially reluctant allies to back tough sanctions that have hammered the Russian economy.
But underscoring the limits of intelligence, the U.S. also underestimated Ukraine’s will to fight before the invasion, said Lt. Gen. Scott Berrier, head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, in recent testimony before Congress.
Biden lashes at Putin, calls for Western resolve for freedom
President Joe Biden delivered a forceful and highly personal condemnation of Russia’s Vladimir Putin on Saturday, summoning a call for liberal democracy and a durable resolve among Western nations in the face of a brutal autocrat.
As he capped a four-day trip to Europe, a blend of emotive scenes with refugees and standing among other world leaders in grand settings, Biden said of Putin: “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.”
It was a dramatic escalation in rhetoric — Biden had earlier called Putin a “butcher” — that the White House found itself quickly walking back. Before Biden could even board Air Force One to begin the flight back to Washington, aides were clarifying that he wasn’t calling for an immediate change in government in Moscow.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov quickly denounced Biden, saying “it’s not up to the president of the U.S. and not up to the Americans to decide who will remain in power in Russia.”
While Biden’s blunt language grabbed headlines, in other pieces of his roughly 30-minute speech before Warsaw’s iconic Royal Castle he urged Western allies to brace for what will be a turbulent road ahead in a “new battle for freedom.”
READ: Biden ending Europe trip with unity message that echoes past
He also pointedly warned Putin against invading even “an inch” of territory of a NATO nation.
The address was a heavy bookend to a European visit in which Biden met with NATO and other Western leaders, visited the front lines of the growing refugee crisis and even held a young Ukrainian girl in his arms as he sought to spotlight some of the vast tentacles of the conflict that will likely define his presidency.
“We must remain unified today and tomorrow and the day after, and for the years and decades to come. It will not be easy,” Biden said as Russia continued to pound several Ukrainian cities. “There will be costs, but the price we have to pay, because the darkness that drives autocracy is ultimately no match for the flame of liberty that lights the souls of free people everywhere.”
Biden also made the case that multilateral institutions like NATO are more important than ever if the West and its allies are going to successfully push back against autocrats like Putin.
During his campaign for president, Biden talked often about the battle for primacy between democracies and autocracies. In those moments, his words seemed like an abstraction. Now, they have an urgent resonance.
Europe finds itself ensconced in a crisis that has virtually all of Europe revisiting defense spending, energy policy and more, and so does the U.S.
Charles Kupchan, who served as senior director for European affairs on the White House National Security Council during the Obama administration, called the invasion a “game-changer” that left Atlantic democracies with “no choice” but to bolster their posture against Russia.
But the path ahead for Biden — and the West — will only grow more complicated, Kupchan said.
“The challenges Biden’s presidency faces have just grown in magnitude,” said Kupchan, now a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “He now needs to lead the West’s efforts to protect the West from the pressing external threat posed by Russia. And he needs to continue strengthening the West from within by countering the illiberal populism that still poses internal threats to democratic societies on both sides of the Atlantic.”
In one of the most poignant moments of his trip, Biden on Saturday bent down and picked up a young girl, a Ukrainian refugee in a pink winter coat, and spoke of how she reminded him of his own granddaughters.
“I don’t speak Ukrainian, but tell her I want to take her home,” Biden asked a translator to tell the smiling child.
Hours later, Biden was in front of a crowd of a 1,000 — including recent Ukrainian refugees — at the Royal Castle, a Warsaw landmark that dates back more than 400 years and was badly damaged in World War II. He made clear that the West would need to steel itself for what will be a long and difficult battle.
“We must commit now, to be this fight for the long haul,” Biden said.
The Biden administration, which has been selective about putting too great of importance on any single policy speech, sought to elevate what White House officials billed as a major address. Biden spoke with grand palace behind him to an invited audience — one bigger than just about any he’s spoken to during his presidency.
He singled out Lech Walesa, the Polish labor leader who led the push for freedom in his country and was eventually elected its president, and connected the moment to the former Soviet Union’s history of brutal oppression, including the post-World War II military operations to stamp out pro-democracy movements in Hungary, Poland and what was then Czechoslovakia. And he urged Europe to heed the words of Pope John Paul II, the first pontiff from Poland: “Be not afraid.”
Biden’s trip has reaffirmed the importance of European alliances, which atrophied under former President Donald Trump. He’s worked with his counterparts to marshal an array of punishing sanctions on Russia, and placed the continent on a course that could eliminate its dependence on Russian energy over the next several years.
The collective response to the invasion of Ukraine has little parallel in recent history, which has been more characterized by widening divisions than close coordination. But the Russian invasion of Ukraine has changed that dynamic, with European nations stepping up defense spending and imposing crushing sanctions against Moscow, and some taking initial steps to reorient their energy needs away from Russia.
“I’m confident that Vladimir Putin was counting on dividing NATO,” Biden said during a meeting with Polish President Andrzej Duda on Friday. “But he hasn’t been able to do it. We’ve all stayed together.”
Maintaining such unity will likely prove difficult as the war grinds on, and the refugee situation could become one source of strain. Much like NATO is committed to the collective defense of each member, Biden said, other nations should share the burden of caring for Ukrainian refugees. To that end, the U.S. administration announced it would admit up to 100,000 Ukrainian refugees into the United States this year.
“It should be all of NATO’s responsibility,” he told Duda, whose country has accepted roughly 2.2 million of the 3.7 million who have fled Ukraine. It’s not clear how many of those displaced Ukrainians who have come through Poland have now moved on to other nations.
There’s also no clear path to ending the conflict. Although Russian officials have suggested they will focus their invasion on the Donbas, a region in East Ukraine, Biden wasn’t so sure if there was a real shift underway.
Asked on Saturday if the Russians have changed their strategy, he told reporters that “I am not sure they have.”
Despite the hazards ahead, Biden insisted there is more reason to be hopeful that the West and Ukraine can eventually succeed.
“A dictator bent on rebuilding an empire will never erase a people’s love for liberty,” Biden said. “Brutality will never grind down their will to be free. Ukraine will never be a victory for Russia, for free people refuse to live in a world of hopelessness and darkness.”
Dhaka, Moscow to boost constructive bilateral cooperation: Putin
Russian President Vladimir Putin has said Bangladesh and Russia will ensure further development of constructive bilateral cooperation in political, trade, economic, humanitarian and other spheres through joint efforts.
He said the constructive bilateral cooperation undoubtedly meets the interests of their people and goes in line with the promotion of regional stability and security.
President Putin emphasized that the relations between the two countries are based on the good traditions of friendship and mutual respect.
Also read: US committed to expanding ties with Bangladesh to thrive together: Blinken
He said this in a message sent to President Abdul Hamid and Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina marking the Independence Day of Bangladesh on Saturday.
President Putin wished the President and the Prime Minister of Bangladesh sound health and success, as well as happiness and prosperity to all citizens of Bangladesh.
Also read: UAE leaders greet president, PM on Independence Day
Putin appears at big rally as troops press attack in Ukraine
Russian President Vladimir Putin appeared at a huge flag-waving rally at a packed Moscow stadium Friday and lavished praise on his troops fighting in Ukraine, three weeks into the invasion that has led to heavier-than-expected Russian losses on the battlefield and increasingly authoritarian rule at home.
Meanwhile, the leader of Russia’s delegation in diplomatic talks with Ukraine said the sides have narrowed their differences. The Ukrainian side said its position remained unchanged.
The invasion has touched off a burst of antiwar protests inside Russia, and the Moscow rally was surrounded by suspicions it was a Kremlin-manufactured display of patriotism. Several Telegram channels critical of the Kremlin reported that students and employees of state institutions in a number of regions were ordered by their superiors to attend rallies and concerts marking the eighth anniversary of Moscow’s annexation of Crimea, which was seized from Ukraine. Those reports could not be independently verified.
Elsewhere, Russian troops continued to rain lethal fire on Ukrainian cities, including the capital, Kyiv, and pounded an aircraft repair installation on the outskirts of Lviv, close to the Polish border. Ukrainian officials said late Friday that the besieged southern port city of Mariupol lost its access to the Azov Sea, and Russian forces were still trying to storm the city. It was unclear whether they had seized it.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russian forces are blockading the largest cities to create a “humanitarian catastrophe” with the goal of persuading Ukrainians to cooperate. He said the Russians are preventing supplies from reaching surrounded cities in central and southeastern Ukraine.
“This is a totally deliberate tactic,” Zelenskyy said in his nighttime video address to the nation, which was recorded outside in Kyiv, with the presidential office behind him.
In a rare public appearance by Putin since the start of the war, he praised Russian troops: “Shoulder to shoulder, they help and support each other,” he said. “We have not had unity like this for a long time,” he added to cheers from the crowd.
Moscow police said more than 200,000 people were in and around the Luzhniki stadium. The event included patriotic songs, including a performance of “Made in the U.S.S.R.,” with the opening lines “Ukraine and Crimea, Belarus and Moldova, it’s all my country.”
Seeking to portray the war as just, Putin paraphrased the Bible to say of Russia’s troops: “There is no greater love than giving up one’s soul for one’s friends.”
Taking to the stage where a sign read “For a world without Nazism,” he railed against his foes in Ukraine with a baseless claim that they are “neo-Nazis.” Putin continued to insist his actions were necessary to prevent “genocide” — an idea flatly rejected by leaders around the globe.
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Video feeds of the event cut out at times but showed a loudly cheering crowd that broke into chants of “Russia!”
Putin’s appearance marked a change from his relative isolation of recent weeks, when he has been shown meeting with world leaders and his staff either at extraordinarily long tables or via videoconference.
In the wake of the invasion, the Kremlin has clamped down harder on dissent and the flow of information, arresting thousands of antiwar protesters, banning sites such as Facebook and Twitter, and instituting tough prison sentences for what is deemed to be false reporting on the war, which Moscow refers to as a “special military operation.”
The OVD-Info rights group that monitors political arrests reported that at least seven independent journalists had been detained ahead of or while covering the anniversary events in Moscow and St. Petersburg.
High above the conflict, three Russian cosmonauts arrived Friday at the International Space Station wearing bright yellow flight suits with blue accents matching the colors of the Ukrainian flag. Video of one of the cosmonauts taken as the capsule prepared to dock with the space station showed him wearing a blue flight suit. It was unclear what, if any, message the yellow uniforms were intended to send.
When cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev was asked about the yellow suits, he said every crew chooses its own suits, and they had a lot of yellow material they needed to use “so that’s why we had to wear yellow.”
Since the war started, many people have used the Ukrainian flag and its colors to show solidarity with the country.
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Back in Moscow, Putin stood on stage in a white turtleneck and a blue down jacket and spoke for about five minutes. Some people, including presenters at the event, wore T-shirts or jackets with a “Z” — a symbol seen on Russian tanks and other military vehicles in Ukraine and embraced by supporters of the war.
Putin’s quoting of the Bible and an 18th-century Russian admiral reflected his increasing focus in recent years on history and religion as binding forces in Russia’s post-Soviet society. His branding of his enemies as Nazis evoked what many Russians consider their country’s finest hour, the defense of the motherland from Germany during World War II.
The rally came as Vladimir Medinsky, who led Russian negotiators in several rounds of talks with Ukraine, said that the sides have moved closer to agreement on the issue of Ukraine dropping its bid to join NATO and adopting a neutral status.
“That is the issue where the parties have made their positions maximally close,” Medinsky said in remarks carried by Russian media. He added that the sides are now “halfway” on issues regarding the demilitarization of Ukraine.
Mikhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Zelenskyy, characterized the Russian assessment as intended “to provoke tension in the media.” He tweeted: “Our positions are unchanged. Ceasefire, withdrawal of troops & strong security guarantees with concrete formulas.”
Zelenskyy again appealed to Putin to hold talks with him directly. “It’s time to meet, time to speak,” he said. “I want to be heard by everyone, especially in Moscow.”
In other developments, U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping spoke for nearly two hours in a bid by the U.S. to deter Beijing from providing military or economic assistance for Russia’s invasion.
Earlier Friday, one person was reported killed in the missile attack near Lviv. Satellite photos showed the strike destroyed a repair hangar and appeared to damage two other buildings. Ukraine said it had shot down two of six missiles in the volley, which came from the Black Sea.
The early morning attack was the closest strike yet to the center of Lviv, which has become a crossroads for people fleeing from other parts of Ukraine and for others entering to deliver aid or join the fight. The war has swelled the city’s population by some 200,000.
Zelenskyy boasted that Ukraine’s defenses have proved much stronger than expected, and Russia “didn’t know what we had for defense or how we prepared to meet the blow.”
But British Chief of Defense Intelligence Lt. Gen. Jim Hockenhull warned that after failing to take major Ukrainian cities, Russian forces are shifting to a “strategy of attrition” that will entail “reckless and indiscriminate use of firepower,” resulting in higher civilian casualties and a worsening humanitarian crisis.
In city after city around Ukraine, hospitals, schools and buildings where people sought safety have been attacked. Rescue workers continued to search for survivors in the ruins of a theater that was being used a shelter when it was blasted by a Russian airstrike Wednesday in Mariupol.
Ludmyla Denisova, the Ukrainian Parliament’s human rights commissioner, said at least 130 people had survived the theater bombing.
“But according to our data, there are still more than 1,300 people in these basements, in this bomb shelter,” Denisova told Ukrainian television. “We pray that they will all be alive, but so far there is no information about them.”
Satellite images on Friday from Maxar Technologies showed a long line of cars leaving Mariupol as people tried to evacuate, as well as devastation to homes, apartment buildings and stores.
Early morning barrages also hit a residential building in the Podil neighborhood of Kyiv, killing at least one person, according to emergency services, who said 98 people were evacuated from the building. Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said 19 were wounded in the shelling.
Ukrainian officials said a fireman was killed when Russian forces shelled an area where firefighters were trying to put out a blaze in the village of Nataevka, in the Zaporizhzhia region.
Two others were killed when strikes hit residential and administrative buildings in the eastern city of Kramatorsk, according to the regional governor, Pavlo Kyrylenko.
Maj. Gen. Oleksandr Pavlyuk, who is leading the defense of the region around Ukraine’s capital, said his forces are well-positioned to defend the city and vowed: “We will never give up. We will fight until the end. To the last breath and to the last bullet.”