The Week in Ukraine - 5/28/21

On the ground, Ukraine’s military has been remarkably effective at halting Russian advances and extracting a price for every inch of ground surrendered. Oryx currently has Russia’s verified losses at over 4,000 pieces of equipment, including 715 tanks. By comparison, Ukraine’s documented losses are at just over 1,000 pieces of equipment and 177 tanks. Russia has been losing equipment at a rate that’s 4 times that of Ukraine. It still is.

Ukraine has also surprised Russia in the air. Not only was Russia’s initial attempt to take out Ukrainian air defenses ineffective, the Ukrainian Air Force is still flying. Despite the loss of multiple pilots and planes over the course of the war, it’s been making more sorties in the last two weeks than it did in the first two weeks (to be fair, so has Russia).

Russian shelling destroyed a music school in the Eastern Ukrainian village of Sviatohirsk.  Pavlo Kyrylenko, Head of the Donetsk Regional Military Administration, reported the attack on Twitter saying, “the Russians [have] turned [the school] into ruins.”   Less than 50 miles east from Sviatohirsk lies the former tourist city Severodonetsk. It is the largest city in the Luhansk region area which is still under Ukrainian control.  However, over the weekend, the city came under intense artillery and missile fire from Russian military. The Governor of Luhansk today accused Russia of using a “scorched-earth approach” in their army’s attempt to take control of Severodonetsk away from Ukraine, and “deliberately destroying” the city.  Like Sviatohirsk, another school came under fire in Severodonetsk. Around 200 people were sheltering in the building at the time, and reportedly, the majority of these were children. At least two were killed.  Severodonetsk’s own music school was reportedly destroyed by Russian forces in March 2022 at the start of the invasion.

Workers digging through the rubble of an apartment building in Mariupol found 200 bodies in the basement, as more horrors came to light in the ruined city that has seen some of the worst suffering of the 3-month-old war.  The bodies were decomposing and the stench hung over the neighborhood, said Petro Andryushchenko, an adviser to the mayor. He did not say when they were discovered, but the sheer number of victims makes it one of the deadliest known attacks of the war.

Mid-week came reports that Russian forces occupied the town of Lyman after an extended period of heavy combat that saw the town attacked from three sides. Those on-the-ground reports appear to be confirmed by high-resolution satellite imagery that showed a pattern similar other sites that have fallen. A day later, ground reports revealed that have Russian infantry were now patrolling the city’s streets, and it seems likely that remaining Ukrainian forces have withdrawn across a bridge to the south. 

Fears are rising that Russia's blockade of Ukrainian ports is causing a global food crisis. Poland's primer minister publicly accused Vladimir Putin of "weaponizing Ukraine's crops" as "a blackmail tool" for the rest of the world.  Mateusz Morawiecki told the BBC it was like what "Stalin did in 1933".  Ukraine's inability to export its grain has led to global food prices soaring.  It has also raised the prospect of famines in the countries which depend on its exports.  Morawiecki said that this was "part of [Putin's] strategy" in order to "create ripple effects in Northern Africa and huge migration waves".   His warning was echoed by the European Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen, who told delegates in Davos that Russia was using "hunger and grain to wield power".  "Global co-operation is the antidote to Russia's blackmail," she said.