This Week in Ukraine: 4/2/22

The week started out with reports that Russia was withdrawing some forces from Kyiv and Chernikhiv.  Russia’s military claimed it was “fundamentally cutting back" operations near Kyiv, Chernihiv "to increase trust" in talks. But nobody believed that-- Russian was more likely to be repositioning troops or resupplying them, or simply trying to buy some more time before their next military action.  U.S. intelligence later tied the move directly to Russia’s failure to capture Kyiv and meet other strategic objectives in northern Ukraine. Expectations are that these forces will be redeployed in the Donbas region.  

Russia continued to suffer setbacks as Ukrainian defense forces began to find their footing.  Ukrainian forces began to successfully conduct local counterattacks around Kyiv, towards Sumy, and in Kherson Oblast and will likely take further territory—particularly northwest and east of Kyiv—in the days afterward. Russia withdrew elements of its damaged forces around Kyiv, Chernihiv, and Sumy for redeployment to eastern Ukraine-- but these units are unlikely to provide a decisive shift in Russian combat power.  Ukrainian forces continued to repel Russian assaults throughout Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts, and Russian forces failed to take territory in the later stages of the week.  Russian forces continued to steadily advance in Mariupol, but still failed to gain full control of the city.

Later in the week, it became clear that what Putin wanted was to ultimately cleave off the south eastern portion of Ukraine, creating a coherent, contiguous block that could be absorbed directly into Russia. This would secure Russia’s control over Crimea, give it complete ownership of the Sea of Azov, and set it up for the next round of funding unrest in what remains of Ukraine. That’s the kind of result that would allow Putin to exult over his victory—even though the value of the area gained wouldn’t come close to the losses generated. It also became clear that Russia originally intended to create additional “republics” in Mykolaiv and Odesa, except for the messy fact that it failed to capture them. 

Russia continued to attack towns and villages in the southeaster area, deliberately blocking previously agreed on humanitarian corridors, depopulating the region by shipping thousands to prison camps in Russia, and launching missiles into government buildings in Mykolaiv as Ukrainian forces tried to close on Kherson.

Mid-week, @bellingcat reported that the Russian intelligence service paid money to ensure that a shadowy political class in Ukraine supported this war & created an internal coup d'état immediately after the invasion. But Ukrainian agents who took the money ditched them.

Negotiations began taking place in Istanbul, but most people were not expecting much progress to be made. 

According to a story from CyberNews yesterday, Ukraine’s Main Directorate of Intelligence of the Ministry of Defense ( GUR MOU) posted on their website a list of over 600 names the intelligence agency suspected of being Russian intelligence (FSB) officers.

The New York Times began reporting that Putin was misinformed about Russia's military’s struggles in Ukraine. One American official said there was “now persistent tension” between the Russian president and his Defense Ministry. Strikes were reported around the Ukrainian cities of Kyiv and Chernihiv, and Russian officials offered contradictory assessments of the progress in peace talks.

Russian forces began to pull out of the defunct Chernobyl nuclear power site on the heels of reports that seven buses packed with Russian soldiers suffering from Acute Radiation Syndrome arrived in Belarus from the Chernobyl exclusion zone. Russian soldiers who seized the site of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster drove their armored vehicles without radiation protection through a highly toxic zone called the "Red Forest", kicking up clouds of radioactive dust, workers at the site said. The two sources said soldiers in the convoy did not use any anti-radiation gear.

From Jeremy Fleming, the head of the U.K. Government Communication HQ;  “We’ve seen Russian soldiers, short of weapons and morale, refusing to carry out orders, sabotaging their own equipment, and even accidentally shooting down their own aircraft,” said Fleming. “And even though we believe Putin’s advisers are afraid to tell him the truth, what’s going on, and the extent of these misjudgments, must be crystal-clear to the regime.”

At the end of the week, Ukrainian defense officials claimed that Ukraine was not behind an attack on the oil depot at Belgorod (25 miles inside the Ukrainian border).  However, there are early reports that a pair of Ukrainian Mi-24 Hind attach helicopters crossed low over the border into Russia and struck the oil storage facility.  Hard to know what the facts are at this point-- but the only thing better than having Russia worry about whether Ukrainian pilots slipped across the border to attack a site in the middle of a Russian city, may be having Russia worry that two of their own pilots might have done it.

German Foreign Minister Baerbock said, "Putin is saying every other day that he’s having, as he calls it, peace negotiations but... he’s bombing Mariupol... you can’t say on the one hand that you are having... peace negotiations and on the other hand, you are bombing hospitals.”