As Russian troops appeared to shift tactics, U.S. intelligence reports indicated that President Vladimir Putin feels misled by his military, with an American official describing “persistent tension” between Putin and the Russian Defense Ministry’s leadership.
Here’s what to know
- About 20 percent of the Russian forces around Kyiv are in various stages of moving north, away from the capital, with some troops crossing into Belarus, the Pentagon said.
- The United States will provide the Ukrainian government $500 million in direct budgetary aid, President Biden told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
- More than 4 million people have fled Ukraine, the United Nations said — nearly 10 percent of the prewar population.
- A narrow majority of Americans said it would be a “good idea” to send troops to NATO ally countries in Eastern Europe, a poll from the Economist/YouGov found.
- The Post has lifted its paywall for readers in Russia and Ukraine. Telegram users can subscribe to our channel for updates.
UNDERSTANDING THE RUSSIA-UKRAINE CONFLICT
U.K. spy chief says Russian soldiers are sabotaging their own equipment
Russian soldiers short on morale and weapons have refused orders, sabotaged their own equipment and shot down one of their own aircraft, Britain’s spy chief said.
The efforts are evidence of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s miscalculation when he decided to invade Ukraine, Jeremy Fleming, head of Britain’s electronic intelligence agency, said in a speech Thursday at Australian National University. U.S. and British officials have said Putin, even more isolated than ever, was misinformed by his own aides, further stoking tensions.
“It’s clear he misjudged the resistance of the Ukrainian people,” Fleming said. “He underestimated the strength of the coalition his actions would galvanize. He underplayed the economic consequences of the sanctions regime. He overestimated the abilities of his military to secure a rapid victory.”
Putin’s “strategic miscalculation” has cost innocent Ukrainian lives — and now is being felt by “ordinary Russians, too,” Fleming said.
Putin has attempted to quell news of the setbacks reaching Russians, but Fleming said his efforts have failed to stop the growing global support for Ukrainians. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has operated an “extremely effective” information campaign, reaching multiple audiences through various platforms and media.
“One only has to look at the way Ukraine’s flag — a field of sunflowers under a sky of blue — to see it flying everywhere, including outside GCHQ, to see how well the message has landed,” Fleming said, referring to the acronym for his intelligence agency.
Here’s the status of some key Ukrainian cities under Russian attack
- Kyiv: Less than 20 percent of Russian forces near the Ukrainian capital have started to move away to other areas, including northern Ukraine and Belarus, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said Wednesday. U.S. defense officials believe Russia aims to move those soldiers to other parts of Ukraine, rather than returning them home, a signal that Russians have not de-escalated their efforts.
- Chernihiv: Small groups of Russian troops near the northern city also have begun heading north, Kirby said, following Ukrainian reports of strikes targeting the city, the latest in near-constant attacks that have cut power and decimated resources. Russian forces “spent the whole night striking Chernihiv,” the regional governor, Viacheslav Chaus, claimed Wednesday.
- Irpin: The mayor of Irpin, Oleksandr Makrushin, said hundreds of civilians had died before the town was taken back from Russians this week. While the Ukrainian military has said it now controls most of the city, U.S. officials have not confirmed that. The Institute for the Study of War, a U.S. think tank, said Wednesday that “Ukrainian forces did not secure additional territory.”
- Mykolaiv: A Russian missile hit the regional administration building in the southern port city Tuesday, killing 15 people, injuring dozens of others and leaving a gaping hole in the middle of the nine-story building, according to the Ukrainian State Emergency Service.
- Mariupol: Russian President Vladimir Putin said the shelling on the key southern port city will cease only when Ukrainian forces surrender. The pronouncement comes after Russians have devastated the city, Kirby said, including “civilian infrastructure, residential buildings, hospitals, recreation parks, everything. The place is just being decimated from a structural perspective by the onslaught of Russian airstrikes.” Meanwhile, Russians are likely close to the city center, Kirby said.
- Kharkiv: Russian forces do not appear to have conducted significant operations in or immediately around this city, Ukraine’s second largest, in the past day, according to the Institute for the Study of War.
Rachel Pannett contributed to this report.
Russia has sent 1,000 Wagner Group mercenaries to Donbas, Pentagon says
About 1,000 Russian military mercenaries, part of a group accused of human rights abuses, were sent to a part of Eastern Ukraine, a sign of the Kremlin’s shifting priorities amid heavy fighting and losses, the Pentagon said.
Wagner Group mercenaries were deployed to the Donbas region, an area partially controlled by separatist forces supported by Russia, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said, confirming intelligence shared by Britain’s Defense Ministry this week. The news comes after Russia has asserted that its “main goal” is “the liberation of Donbas.”
Kirby said the move is not necessarily surprising given the role the mercenaries had in the region since Russia backed separatists in 2014.
“This is an area where the Wagner Group is experienced so it’s not a surprise,” Kirby said.
“We think it’s a reflection of the very tough fighting that continues to go on there,” he added.
The company of Russian mercenaries, which has been sent to Syria and war-torn African countries, has a murky relationship with the Kremlin. Mercenaries are banned by Russia, but they have continued to serve a purpose, offering Russia a fighting force that lends plausible deniability to the government. The United Nations has accused the group of human rights violations, including forcibly displacing citizens, torturing prisoners and committing mass summary executions.
Russia may have committed war crimes, U.N. human rights official says
Michelle Bachelet, the top United Nations human rights official, said Wednesday that Russia may have committed war crimes in Ukraine, in her strongest condemnation of the conflict. She described the devastation and impact the conflict has had on civilians.
Bachelet said that Russia’s “indiscriminate attacks” are prohibited under international humanitarian law and “may amount to war crimes,” adding that her investigators have received “credible” allegations that Russian forces have used cluster munitions in population areas at least 24 times.
U.N. investigators are also looking into allegations that Ukraine also used such weapons.
“The hostilities must stop, without delay,” Bachelet said Wednesday, addressing the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva and urging Russia to “immediately act to withdraw its troops from Ukrainian territory,” she added.
Hospitals, schools, water supplies and administrative buildings have been struck by heavy artillery shells, rockets and airstrikes, causing massive destruction, she said.
The U.N. has verified 77 incidents in which medical facilities were damaged.
“For more than one month now, the entire population of Ukraine has been enduring a living nightmare,” Bachelet said, pointing to the lives of millions of people who have been forced to flee their homes or hide in basements and bomb shelters as their cities are pummeled and destroyed.
The war has killed at least 1,189 civilians and injured at least 1,901, according to the U.N. Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine.
But Bachelet added, “The actual figures are likely far higher.”
Pentagon: Russian troops near Kyiv, Chernobyl begin repositioning
About 20 percent of the Russian forces around Kyiv, including those who commandeered the Chernobyl nuclear site, are in various stages of moving north, away from the capital, with some troops crossing into Belarus, the Pentagon said Wednesday.
But the Defense Department does not consider this movement proof positive that the Russian government is serious about its vow to let up the attacks on major cities, in what Moscow characterized earlier this week as a sign of good faith in ongoing negotiations.
The Pentagon’s current assessment is that Russia intends to “refit these troops, resupply them, and probably employ them elsewhere in Ukraine,” spokesman John Kirby told reporters, indicating the Donbas region in Ukraine’s east has emerged as Russia’s chief priority as its forces have met intense resistance around several major cities.
If the Moscow government was serious about its attempts to de-escalate, “they should send them home,” Kirby said. “But that’s not what they’re doing. At least not yet.”
Small groups of Russian troops near the northern city of Chernihiv and northeastern city of Sumy also have begun heading north, away from those cities, Kirby said. Nevertheless, Kirby said, the Russian military continues to conduct airstrikes in Kyiv.
A senior U.S. defense official, speaking on the condition of anonymity under terms established by the Pentagon, affirmed Wednesday that Russian troops had begun to leave Chernobyl, too, one of the first objectives seized in late February. The development was first reported by Agence France-Presse.
Chernobyl was the scene in 1986 of the world’s worst nuclear disaster, dispersing a radioactive cloud over parts of Europe and leaving contaminated soil at the site that remains a hazard.
Stocks waver, oil rebounds amid supply worries
Stocks edged lower Wednesday and oil prices rebounded amid supply worries.
The Dow Jones industrial average dropped 65 points, or almost 0.2 percent by market close. The broader S&P 500 index fell 29 points for a loss of 0.6 percent, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq dropped 177 points for a loss of 1.2 percent.
Oil prices climbed Wednesday after two days of declines that briefly sent crude below $100 per barrel. West Texas Intermediate crude, the U.S. benchmark, climbed about 3 percent to push above $107 per barrel. The international benchmark, Brent crude, fell 0.5 percent to $110.
Oil prices have spiked since Russia invaded its neighbor — swelling past $130 a barrel in early March. That’s had a significant effect on consumers: As of Wednesday, the U.S. average for a gallon of fuel was nearly $4.24, according to data from AAA. That’s 63 cents higher than last month and $1.37 more than a year ago.
Investors are worried about weaker demand in China, which recently initiated lockdowns to contain a coronavirus resurgence, including in the nation’s financial hub of Shanghai.
Poland, meanwhile, announced plans Wednesday to end its dependence on Russian fossil fuels, including by halting oil imports by year’s end and cutting itself off from Russian coal as soon as April. The issue has divided the European Union, whose member states buy a quarter of their oil and more than 40 percent of their gas from Russian suppliers.
U.S. official: Putin being misled by Russian military on Ukraine
ALGIERS — U.S. intelligence thinks that Russian President Vladimir Putin feels misled by the Russian military, a U.S. official said in a statement Wednesday, describing “persistent tension” between Putin and the Russian Defense Ministry’s leadership.
“Putin didn’t even know his military was using and losing conscripts in Ukraine, showing a clear breakdown in the flow of accurate information to the Russian President,” the U.S. official said in the statement, speaking on the condition of anonymity under rules set by the Biden administration.
“We believe that Putin is being misinformed by his advisers about how badly the Russian military is performing and how the Russian economy is being crippled by sanctions, because his senior advisers are too afraid to tell him the truth,” the U.S. official added.
Asked about those comments during a briefing in Algeria, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said, “One of the Achilles’ heels of autocracies is that we don’t have people in those systems who speak truth to power or have the ability to speak truth to power. And I think that is something that we’re seeing in Russia.”
Blinken was speaking at the U.S. Embassy in Algiers on his four-country swing through Eastern Europe, the Middle East and North Africa.
At the Pentagon on Wednesday, spokesman John Kirby called it “discomforting” that Putin “may not fully understand the degree to which his forces are failing” thus far in Ukraine.
“It’s his military,” Kirby said. “It’s his war. He chose it. … And certainly, one outcome of that could be a less-than-faithful effort at negotiating some sort of settlement here. If he’s not fully informed of how poorly he’s doing, then how are his negotiators going to come up with an agreement that is enduring?
“The other thing,” Kirby added, “is, you don’t know how a leader like that is going to react to getting bad news.”
In the lead-up to Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine, U.S. intelligence emphasized that Putin was being misled by his close advisers about the feasibility of a multi-front invasion of Ukraine.
That information is part of what led U.S. officials to be so concerned about the possibility of an invasion, because the Biden administration came to believe that Putin was not receiving a full picture of how difficult such a broad military operation would be.
― Sonne reported from Washington. Alex Horton in Washington contributed to this report.
White House calls Russia’s invasion a ‘strategic blunder’
White House communications director Kate Bedingfield said Russian President Vladimir Putin’s advisers are not accurately sharing with him just how poorly the war is going and its impact on Russia.
“It is increasingly clear that Putin’s war has been a strategic blunder that has left Russia weaker over the long term and increasingly isolated on the world stage,” she said in Wednesday’s briefing.
The comment was a response to recent U.S. intelligence that Putin is being misled by his military based on “persistent tension” between the leader and the Russian Defense Ministry’s leadership.
U.S. intelligence has long believed that Putin was being misinformed by his advisers before invading Ukraine and was under the impression that a multi-front attack would be more successful than it has been. Bedingfield said publicly speaking about misinformation among Putin’s camp helps to “paint a picture” of the depth of mistakes he and Russia are making.
“Making this information public contributes to an understanding that this has been a strategic failure for Russia,” she said. “Obviously, we will continue to pursue our strategy of imposing severe costs on Russia and trying to strengthen Ukraine on the battlefield and at the negotiating table.”
Why Russian troops are using tree branches for camouflage in Ukraine
Russian troops in Ukraine have scrambled to avoid detection and attack by using tree branches and straw, even swaths of carpeting, to conceal tanks and other armored vehicles, in what analysts call a surprising lack of sophistication for such an advanced military and further evidence of how ill-prepared some commanders were for the sustained fight that has unfolded.
Camouflage, whether for personnel or equipment, is a fundamental part of warfighting, even as technological advances such as drones, satellite imagery and infrared scopes have made it harder to hide on modern battlefields.
Yet to some observers who have closely tracked the conflict in Ukraine, Russian forces, despite their military superiority, have exhibited a breathtaking degree of amateurism.
Biden to use Defense Production Act for U.S. critical minerals supply
The White House will invoke the Defense Production Act to secure materials necessary for clean energy with the aim to break dependence on foreign sources of oil and natural gas, including from Russia — the world’s largest oil exporter.
According to a source familiar with the plan who spoke on the condition of anonymity because it hasn’t been formally announced, President Biden as soon as this week may sign a presidential determination to encourage domestic production of critical minerals for both stationary large-capacity batteries and those used in electric vehicles.
The determination aims to bolster the production of critical materials needed for a clean energy economy, while upholding “environmental, labor and Tribal engagement standards” and ensuring that the United States will no longer depend on “unreliable and unsustainable” foreign supply chains.
The act signals a renewed push from the Biden administration on its climate change priorities amid an energy crisis prompted by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The new order also follows Biden’s ban on all imports of Russian oil and gas.
The aftershocks on oil and gas markets have had an outsize impact on European Union member nations, which collectively rely on Russia for roughly 40 percent of their natural gas supplies and more than a quarter of their oil. Overall, Russian oil last year accounted for about 3 percent of total U.S. consumption, which analysts say U.S. refiners can buy elsewhere.
The person with knowledge of the plan claimed the new determination contemplates funds for feasibility studies. It also adds minerals like lithium, nickel and graphite, cobalt and manganese to the list, which could help mining companies access funds under the DPA Title III fund.
The Defense Production Act gives the president authority to “create, expand or preserve” manufacturing capabilities for industrial resources, technologies and materials needed to meet national security requirements, according to the Department of Defense.
Russia reiterates focus on separatist areas, despite new reported strikes
By Mary Ilyushina and David L. Stern1: 30 p.m.
Russia’s military on Wednesday reiterated its plan to focus forces on securing the separatist republics in the Donbas region — despite reports from Ukrainian officials that bombing continued near Kyiv and Chernihiv.
Igor Konashenkov, a spokesperson for Russia’s Defense Ministry, said in a televised briefing Wednesday that troops were in Kyiv and Chernihiv during the “first stage” of the “special operation” to “pressure the enemy” to concentrate resources there instead of in the pro-Russian separatist region that is Russia’s main focus.
According to Konashenkov, now that the Russian military’s initial tasks have been “completed,” the goal behind the “regrouping” of troops “is to intensify actions in priority areas and, above all, complete liberation of Donbas.”
Leaders of the two pro-Russia separatist republics in Donbas have signaled that they are aiming to expand their territory and take control of the entire Donetsk and Luhansk regions, which include areas such as the strategic port city of Mariupol.
Despite the pledge, Chernihiv and Kyiv authorities said that attacks continued overnight. The governor of the Chernihiv region in northern Ukraine said Wednesday that Russian forces “spent the whole night striking” the city, damaging several buildings.
In a statement, the general staff of Ukrainian Armed Forces said a “partial withdrawal” of Russian forces from the Kyiv and Chernihiv regions is being carried out.
Western countries have been issuing warnings that Russia might use the “regrouping” to recuperate after sustaining significant losses. Several military experts cast Russia’s shift in goals as an attempt to brand its failed campaign around Kyiv as a successful one for the public at home.
2 million children have fled Ukraine, UNICEF says
In the nearly five weeks since Russia began its invasion of Ukraine, a growing number of children have fled from the country or been displaced — a situation UNICEF described as “spiraling.” In an update Wednesday, the U.N. agency said up to 2 million have fled.
Some are escaping to Poland, Romania, Moldova, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, UNICEF said, noting that children make up half of all the refugees from the ongoing war.
The United Nations said Wednesday that more than 4 million people have fled Ukraine, which means nearly a tenth of the prewar population has poured out of the country since the Feb. 24 invasion.
Within Ukraine, UNICEF estimates that 2.5 million have been displaced.
Separately, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said Wednesday there have been 77 incidents in which medical facilities have been damaged to “various degrees,” including 50 hospitals.
“Civilians are enduring immeasurable suffering,” Bachelet told the U.N. Human Rights Council. “And the humanitarian crisis is critical.”
U.S. to provide Ukraine with $500 million in direct aid
The United States will provide the Ukrainian government $500 million in direct budgetary aid, President Biden told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Wednesday, according to a White House readout of a phone call the two had in the morning.
“The leaders discussed how the United States is working around-the-clock to fulfill the main security assistance requests by Ukraine, the critical effects those weapons have had on the conflict and continued efforts by the United States with allies and partners to identify additional capabilities to help the Ukrainian military defend its country,” the White House said.
The two also reviewed the additional sanctions against Russia and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine that Biden announced last week. Zelensky, meanwhile, updated Biden on the status of negotiations with Russia, though the White House did not provide additional details.
Top U.S. general in Europe predicts immediate demand for ‘kamikaze’ drones
A batch of 100 armed “kamikaze” drones that crash into targets is on its way to Ukraine, but the top U.S. commander in Europe predicts the Ukrainian military will need more very soon.
Once the Ukrainian military receives the Switchblade drones, there will probably “be an immediate request for more,” Gen. Tod D. Wolters, NATO’s supreme allied commander Europe, told the House Armed Services Committee in testimony Wednesday.
The demand underscores the dynamic needs of Ukrainian troops, who are outgunned by the larger Russian military but have degraded that advantage with antitank launchers and drones, experts have said.
The Switchblade is a single-use drone that can be launched from a tube and guided to a target. The smaller version can be carried in a backpack and launched against troops in the open. A larger variant carries more explosives and can target armored vehicles. Both versions are much cheaper and smaller than other kinds of drones, such as the Predator.
Switchblade drones were part of a $800 million U.S. aid package authorized earlier this month. A new request for aid was made Tuesday, Celeste Wallander, assistant defense secretary for international security affairs, told lawmakers at the hearing.
