After weeks of intense fighting, Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region is “completely destroyed,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said this week. He accused Russia of a “deliberate and criminal attempt to kill as many Ukrainians as possible” after a village in Chernihiv was hit with missiles, leaving many dead. Officials in the region say the front line is being shelled “day and night,” with Russian forces attempting to break through Ukrainian lines.
Ukrainian forces have beaten back Russia’s assaults in Ukraine’s second city of Kharkiv, and advanced toward the border in several places north and east of the city.
Mariupol, a port city on the Sea of Azov, finally fell to Russian forces after weeks of relentless bombardment. The city was the scene of some of the most intense fighting since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine. It was there that Russia carried out deadly strikes on a maternity ward and the bombing of a theater where hundreds of civilians had sought refuge from the violence.
More evidence of potential Russian war crimes is emerging in Bucha, the northern Ukrainian city near Kyiv, the capital. An investigation by The New York Times alleged that Russian paratroopers carried out summary executions of at least eight Ukrainian men in Bucha on March 4. Evidence of mass graves and civilian executions in the towns of Bucha and Borodianka has continued to emerge since early April, following the withdrawal of Russian forces from the Kyiv region. Images of bodies lying strewn the streets of Bucha have sparked international condemnation and fueled calls for an investigation into potential Russian war crimes.
This week we also started getting reports that Russian troops have become so demoralized and desperate to quit they’ve begun deliberately injuring themselves. The Ukrainian Defense Ministry’s Main Intelligence Directorate released audio of what it said was an intercepted call revealing the incredible new deveolopment. A man identified as a Russian soldier in an air assault brigade based in Ukraine’s Kherson region can be heard venting his frustrations to his mother and explaining why he wants to abandon the fight. “Why would they [the Ukrainians] surrender? We’re on their land,” the soldier tells his mother. “This won’t end anytime soon. What the hell do I need this for? At 20 years old… I’m not at all interested in Ukraine. I need to come back and resign,” he says. “I had a commander who shot himself in the leg just to get out of here. And that was in the very beginning! What is there to talk about? He served in Chechnya.” He said less than 50 percent of his brigade was left. “Our people are just disappearing on their own. Some of them vanished without a trace, some were taken prisoner, some are hiding, some are already in Russia,” he said.
The tapped phone chat was not the only one to suggest Russian troops are taking desperate measures to escape the war. In a similar recording released by Ukrainian intelligence, a woman identified as the wife of a Russian soldier urges him to “fall off a tank.” “There’s no way out,” she says. “Otherwise you will be there until September… They will not swap you out, because everyone is refusing.” “Well, clearly, what kind of stupid fuck would come here?” the soldier replies. His wife argues a “fall from a tank” is just one option. “You just don’t need to shoot yourself in the leg, because who the fuck knows how that would end. Or let someone whack you on your side,” she says, so that his kidneys would get injured. “I don’t fucking know! Because you’d be able to go home straight from the hospital.”
The separatist city of Donetsk is having serious problems with their drinking water supply. But they can’t do anything about it because they’ve conscripted the people who used to maintain it.
A 21-year-old Russian soldier pleaded guilty to killing an unarmed civilian, in the first war crimes trial in Ukraine since the war started. Vadim Shishimarin admitted shooting a 62-year-old man a few days after the invasion began. Shishimarin was commanding a unit in a tank division when his convoy came under attack. He and four other soldiers stole a car, and as they traveled near Chupakhivka, they encountered the man on a bicycle. Shishimarin was ordered to kill the civilian and used a Kalashnikov assault rifle to do so. He faces life in jail.
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