Russia bombed an art school sheltering some 400 people in the embattled port city of Mariupol, where Ukraine’s president said an unrelenting Russian siege would be remembered for centuries to come. It was the second time in less than a week that a public building where residents had taken shelter came under attack. Ten days ago, a bomb hit a Mariupol theater with more than 1,300 inside.
Federal Security Service (FSB) Col. Gen. Sergei Beseda, the Russian commander in charge of the FSB’s Ukraine operation, was placed under house arrest amid upheaval and infighting among officials as Putin fumed over the botched Ukraine invasion. Bickering broke out between the FSB and the Russian Ministry of Defense, the two key government agencies planning the invasion.
Russian security and military forces of kidnapped a Ukrainian journalist covering the Russian offensive in the east and the south of Ukraine. The FSB, and the Russian military abducted a journalist from the Ukrainian news outlet Hromadske in Berdyansk, an occupied port city in the southeastern Zaporizhzhia region.
Ukraine also says that Russian forces are taking Ukrainian civilians to Russia against their will. Russians are accused of taking Ukrainians’ passports and sending them to distant, economically depressed areas in Russia. Ukraine believes some may be used as “hostages” to pressure Kyiv to give up. Lyudmyla Denisova, Ukraine’s ombudsman, said 402,000 people, including 84,000 children, have been taken against their will to Russia, and some have reported shortages of food and water there.
As Russia's attack on Ukraine devolved into stalemate, capturing and repurposing abandoned Russian vehicles is one of the few ways Ukrainian defense forces have been replenishing their own supply of armor. NATO countries have been steadily shipping food, ammunition, and all-important drones and anti-armor missiles, but for Ukrainian forces wanting new Soviet-designed armor themselves, the best place is getting it from Russia's own supply lines. CNN published an intriguing look inside a Ukrainian depot responsible for repainting, repairing and refitting captured Russian armor. And it's not just armor that was borrowed; a Ukrainian deputy commander boasted of the 24 captured Russian missiles his team delivered to the Ukrainian defense.
Ukrainian intelligence also claims that a Russian tank regiment commander killed himself after finding out 90% of tanks held in reserve were unusable because parts had been stolen. Kyiv's Ministry of Defence said the commander of the '13th tank regiment' within the '4th tank division of the Russian Federation' shot himself due to the dire situation after learning the condition of the unit's reserve tanks.
The Ukrainian military says it has killed Lt Gen Yakov Rezantsev in a strike near the southern city of Kherson. Rezantsev was the commander of Russia's 49th combined army. A western official said he was the seventh general to die in Ukraine, It is thought that low morale among Russian troops has forced senior officers closer to the front line.
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