This Week in Ukraine - 6/4/22

In an interview this week, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Ukraine is, “losing 60 to 100 soldiers every day and something like 500 wounded in combat.” If these numbers are accurate, that’s a fearsome rate of loss—between 1,800 and 3,000 killed in a month. Ukraine estimates that 30,000 Russians have been killed since the war began, which would put Russia’s rate of loss over 300 a day. But what Ukraine is reportedly suffering is a tremendous loss.

Early in the week, a Ukrainian refugee in the United Kingdom said she recognized items looted from her house sitting on top of a Russian tank in a photo published on the BBC website.  Alina Koreniuk said the box in the photo contained a new boiler she planned to install before the war started.  She and her children left Ukraine on April 8 and are staying with a British couple in Nottinghamshire.  The picture, taken in late May, showed the tank moving past bombed residential buildings in the town of Popasna.  Russian forces have been in control of the town, in the Luhansk region, since May 8.  Koreniuk said the photo was taken on a street just five minutes away from her house.  Apart from the boiler, other items on the tank include a tablecloth from the family's summer house, new Disney bedsheets for her children and a red blanket, she said.

On Wednesday, Ukrainian officials in the area reported that Russia now occupies roughly 80% of the city of Severodonetsk as an intense block by block, house by house fight continues.  Up to 15,000 people may still be trapped there, Luhansk regional governor Serhiy Haidai said.  Both sides are suffering heavy casualties and the Ukrainian command may decide a tactical retreat would better serve their medium-term interests.  There are also reports that Russia has bombed a chemical plant, raising clouds of nitric acid above the streets.  Ukrainian forces are now isolated in a small area of the city and may be forced to soon retreat across the river to the much more defensible and supportable city of Lysychansk.

The list of NATO equipment headed into Ukraine continues to grow.  At the beginning of the week, it was reported that Poland is dispatching 18 AHS Krab self-propelled howitzers, which followed reports on Saturday that—though not an official part of any announced assistance package—the U.S. was sending an unknown number of self-propelled 155mm M109 howitzers.  The last two weeks have seen a flurry of new announcements including armored transports, multi-launch rocket systems, anti-aircraft systems, and anti-ship missiles.

In addition to defensive system, offensive weapons, supplies, and ammunition, there are a growing number of Ukrainian troops being trained to operate and maintain the new systems. Poland has reportedly already trained 100 Ukrainian soldiers to operate those AHS Krab, which are capable of firing a standard round 30km and an extended range round 40km, making them one of the longest ranged artilleries.

There are also reports fro Russian-occupied Mariupol that kangaroo courts are imprisoning Ukrainian citizens. Vadim Boychenko, Mariupol's mayor when it fell to Moscow, said that Russian forces had begun handing out prison sentences as long as 10 years to those who refused to work with occupying forces.   The same is apparently occurring in areas in eastern Donetsk, with special prisons already housing thousands of Ukrainians - some with up to 15 inmates crammed into two-by-three meter cells.