Updated June 1, 2022 at 10: 00 p.m. EDT|Published
June 1, 2022 at 2: 05 a.m. EDT
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With the war in Ukraine nearing its 100th day, Russia and the United States traded barbs over Washington’s pledge to bolster Kyiv’s military defense with advanced rocket systems, while a key Ukrainian city appeared to be on the brink of capture.
After President Biden announced the shipment of more firepower to Ukraine, Moscow accused America of “pouring fuel on the fire.” But Secretary of State Antony Blinken denied that U.S. officials were escalating the conflict, and he urged Russia to end the war.
Meanwhile, the battle for the Donbas continued, and local officials said Russian forces were close to claiming full control of Severodonetsk, a city important to Moscow’s strategy in the east. The Kremlin would be able to capture this city if it can win a crucial symbolic and territorial victory.
Here’s what else to know
- The war has left at least 5.2 million children “in need of humanitarian assistance,” the United Nations said Wednesday. According to U.N., each day the war kills two and injures four children. figures.
- Germany said it would send a modern air defense system and an artillery-tracking radar to Ukraine, two crucial pieces of equipment.
- Russia’s Defense Ministry said its strategic missile forces were conducting exercises northeast of Moscow. They reportedly involve mobile launchers of the Yars, an intercontinental ballistic missile, and about 1,000 military service members.
- The European Commission approved the disbursement of Poland’s share of the European Union’s pandemic recovery fund — a decision seen as an expression of goodwill toward a country harboring roughly 3 million Ukrainian refugees.
- The Washington Post has lifted its paywall for readers in Russia and Ukraine. Telegram users can subscribe to our channel.
Photos: Ukraine celebrates Children’s Day in wartime
Wednesday is the International Day for the Protection of Children in Ukraine and many other former Soviet countries.
Photos from Bucha, where Russian forces were accused of committing war crimes during their month-long occupation of the normally quiet suburb of Kyiv, show children making “embroidered hearts and paper birds for soldiers on the front line,” according to the Getty photo service.
Ukrainian officials have said there is little cause to celebrate. The war has left 5.2 million children in need of humanitarian assistance, according to the United Nations, and has disrupted children’s lives and education.
“This year, Children’s Day in Ukraine is celebrated in a different way than usual,” Daria Herasymchuk, an adviser to Ukraine’s president on children’s rights and rehabilitation, said Wednesday, according to the Interfax-Ukraine news agency.
In wartime, children “are forced to hide from the bombing in shelters, in the subway,” Herasymchuk said during a news briefing. “They are forced to leave their homes and seek shelter in safe regions.”
Since Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion, at least 262 children have been killed and 415 injured in Ukraine, according to UNICEF, the U.N. children’s agency, citing confirmed figures that the United Nations acknowledges are incomplete and much lower than the actual tolls.
Zelensky says Russia has deported more than 200,000 children
As cities across Ukraine marked Children’s Day on Wednesday, Volodymyr Zelensky accused Russia of deporting more than 200,000 children and described the tragic fate of those killed.
In his nightly address, Ukraine’s president called deportations “one of Russia’s most heinous war crimes,” where people are sent to remote regions to “forget about Ukraine and not be able to return.”
“These are orphans from orphanages. Children living with their parents. In an English translation, he stated that children were separated from their parents.
Zelensky said that 243 children have been killed in the war, with 446 injured and 139 missing, adding that “these are only those we know about.”
He did not elaborate on the numbers, which could not be independently verified.
Zelensky named children who he said had been killed, from younger than 2 to 15, spanning Odessa to Izyum and Mariupol, including sisters Varvara and Polina from Mariupol, who he said died after Russia shelled an apartment building.
According to UNICEF, 5.2 million children need humanitarian assistance.
Updates from key battlefields: Russia’s focus on Severodonetsk is creating ‘vulnerabilities,’ analysts say
BELARUS
RUSSIA
Chernihiv
Sumy
POLAND
Kharkiv
Kyiv
Lviv
Izyum
Lyman
UKRAINE
Separatist-
controlled
area
Dnipro
Russian-held
areas
and troop
movement
Mariupol
Mykolaiv
ROMANIA
Kherson
Odessa
Crimea
Annexed
by Russia
in 2014
Control areas as of May 29
100 MILES
Sources: Institute for the Study of War, AEI’s Critical Threats Project, Post reporting
BELARUS
RUSSIA
Chernihiv
Sumy
Separatist-
controlled
area
POL.
Kharkiv
Kyiv
Lviv
Lyman
Mykolaiv
Mariupol
ROMANIA
Odessa
Kherson
Crimea
Annexed by
Russia in 2014
200 MILES
Control areas as of May 29
Sources: Institute for the Study of War,
AEI’s Critical Threats Project, Post reporting
THE WASHINGTON POST
BELARUS
RUSSIA
Chernihiv
Sumy
POLAND
Kharkiv
Kyiv
Zhytomyr
Poltava
Lviv
Izyum
Lyman
Cherkasy
UKRAINE
Kramatorsk
Luhansk
Dnipro
Uman
Kropyvnytskyi
Donetsk
Separatist-
controlled
area
Zaporizhzhia
Mariupol
Russian-held
areas and troop movement
Mykolaiv
ROMANIA
Berdyansk
Kherson
Odessa
RUSSIA
Crimea
Annexed by
Russia in 2014
Control areas as of May 29
100 MILES
Sources: Institute for the Study of War, AEI’s Critical Threats Project, Post reporting
Russian forces are attempting to seize Severodonetsk, one of the largest Ukrainian-controlled cities in the east. Russia would take Luhansk and a large part of Donbas. Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, stated that Moscow has “maximum” combat power in its attempt to seize the region.
Severodonetsk: In an intelligence update Wednesday morning, the British Defense Ministry said that “over half of the town is likely now occupied by Russian forces, including Chechen fighters.” Serhiy Hadai, Luhansk’s regional governor, said that “most of Severodonetsk” — perhaps as much as 70 percent — was under Russian rule. He said that the city was cut off from all major sources of electricity and water and has become difficult to evacuate.
Donbas region: Russia must capture the Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk and a key road linking the cities of Dnipro and Donetsk to achieve its probable goal of seizing the entirety of the eastern Ukrainian provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk, the British Defense Ministry said in an intelligence update Tuesday. Severodonetsk is about 45 miles northeast of Kramatorsk.
Kharkiv region: Kremlin forces have been prevented from seizing Ukraine’s second-largest city, with Ukrainian operations pushing the Russians almost out of artillery range of the city and stopping Russian advances from Izyum, to the southeast. According to the Kharkiv regional military administrator, Kremlin troops still occupy only one third of Kharkiv’s larger region.
Kherson region: Moscow’s focus on seizing Severodonetsk and Donbas is creating “vulnerabilities for Russia” in this pivotal region, where Ukrainian counter-offensives continue, the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said. According to ISW analysts, Kherson is a critical area because Russian forces are not able to hold the territory on the Dnipro River’s west bank. In the beginning of war, Kherson was under Russian control. Moscow will hold it once the fighting ceases to launch further invasions. If Kyiv takes back Kherson it will be in a better position.
Lviv: Five people were wounded when a Russian missile hit railway infrastructure in this city not far from the Polish border, an official with the Interior Ministry, Anton Gerashchenko, wrote on Telegram. He said it was “an attempt to interrupt the western supply of weapons and fuel to Ukraine.”
Odessa region: Russia is “trying to intensify air reconnaissance” in the Odessa area, the head of the regional military administration, Sergey Bratchuk, said on Telegram on Wednesday. Odessa is the only major Black Sea port still under Ukraine’s control, and Russia is maintaining a blockade of grain exports from the area, threatening global food supplies.
Bryan Pietsch and Reis Thebault contributed to this report.
Lawmaker: Russian-occupied areas could hold accession referendums soon
Russian-occupied regions of Ukraine could soon hold referendums on joining the Russian Federation, a top lawmaker in Moscow said Wednesday, a step that would lay the groundwork for their annexation.
Officials in Ukraine, the United States and elsewhere have warned for weeks that Russia may try to absorb the swaths of territory its troops have taken since the invasion began, along with separatist-backed regions in the country’s east.
Leonid Slutsky, the chair of the foreign affairs committee in Russia’s parliament, told the state media outlet Tass that such referendums could appear as soon as the summer in the Donbas provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk, along with the southern region of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in the southeast.
“I do not want to predict, but I can guess that initiatives to hold referendums in those regions may appear very soon, and they may take place, quite possibly, in the summer,” Slutsky said.
The Kremlin has falsely framed its war in Ukraine as a “liberation” effort, and Russian officials have employed similar rhetoric in discussing the fate of the occupied regions. However, in several Russian-held cities, Ukrainians have carried out defiant demonstrations protesting the invading forces, stunning displays that came despite the associated danger.
In early May, Michael Carpenter, the U.S. ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, said Russia would probably hold sham referendums in the Donbas and Kherson as a pretext to formally seize the areas.
Ukrainian sentiment rings loud and clear at World Cup qualifying playoff
Close your eyes and you may mistake the setting for the World Cup qualification game at Hampden Park in Glasgow, Scotland, on Wednesday. Ahead of the Ukraine-Scotland playoff, attendees at the 51,866-capacity venue received fliers containing a phonetic version of the Ukrainian national anthem and were invited to sing along in solidarity with the away nation, which continues to combat Russia’s invasion.
ESPN estimated that around 2,000 Ukrainian fans were in attendance, but after Ukrainian players walked onto the field with their flag draped over their shoulders and stood for their national anthem, the song seemingly rang louder than the home country’s, which followed. Some attendees waved flags, other raised signs that read “Stronger Together” or “Stop War.”
Neither Ukraine nor Scotland has played in the World Cup since at least 2006, but on Wednesday, they competed for a chance to join England, the United States and Iran in Group B of the World Cup in November.
Kremlin says sanctions on Russia may trigger ‘profound food crisis’
By Mary Ilyushina5: 00 p.m.
Russia once again blamed the emerging food crisis on “illegal” sanctions placed on Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine in an apparent attempt to renew pressure on Western capitals to lift restrictions.
“The grain problem is constantly on the agenda nowadays,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters in a conference call Wednesday. The issue is currently being addressed through different channels. Indeed, we are on the brink of a quite profound food crisis related to the imposition of illegal restrictions on a key supplier: us.”
Ukraine and Russia produce about a third of global wheat and barley exports and over half the world’s sunflower oil.
The war and Russia’s blockade of Ukraine’s Black Sea ports have halted much of these exports. Heavy mining is also a problem in the transport hubs of Ukraine. Moscow linked the resumption of food supplies to clearing the ports of mines, but the Ukrainians fear this could lead to a renewed Russian attempt to seize key locations on the coastline with amphibious assaults.
U.S. Officials stressed that grains and other agricultural exports were exempted from the sanctions placed on Russia in response to its invasion.
Last week, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the United States will not agree to lift any sanctions on Russia in exchange for the release of various exports.
“This is Russia who is actively blocking the export of food from Ukrainian ports and is increasing world hunger,” Jean-Pierre said. “This is on them.”
Moscow’s comments about “illegal sanctions” blocking its exports appear to be part of an effort to link the blockade of Ukrainian exports with Russia’s own difficulties in moving its goods, which involve shipping companies’ growing concerns in dealing with a heavily sanctioned government.
Russian and Turkish officials are expected to discuss a potential corridor via the Bosphorus strait through Istanbul for grain exports from Ukraine. According to the Kremlin, talks between Sergei Lavrov (Russian Foreign Minister) and his Turkish counterpart were confirmed on Wednesday.
On Wednesday, Peskov also addressed the European Union’s decision this week to embargo imports of Russian oil.
“These sanctions will have a negative effect on the entire continent, both the Europeans and us and the entire global energy market,” Peskov said. The Europeans are also likely to feel the effects. They will experience all of that.”
Pentagon: Advanced rocket systems won’t be usable for 3 weeks
The High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or HIMARS, that the Biden administration pledged to send to Ukraine on Wednesday will not be usable for about three weeks, according to the Pentagon, because Ukrainian fighters must still learn how to use it.
“These aren’t turnkey … they need to know not just how to use the systems but how to maintain the systems,” Defense Undersecretary for Policy Colin Kahl said. He said it would take “roughly three weeks to train them how to use the systems and maybe a couple additional weeks for the maintainers.”
It is not clear what the situation on the ground will look like at that point. Kahl stated that the United States had prepositioned four HIMARS (humanitarian intelligence and reconnaissance systems) in Europe, to speed up their transfer to Ukraine.
Though Ukraine had success in pushing Russian forces out of Kyiv and Kharkiv earlier, they have been making “incremental gains” lately, as Pentagon officials have put it, in the eastern and southern parts of the country. Kahl maintained that HIMARS, for which Ukraine had been waiting for several weeks, would not be too late in order to achieve the desired result.
“We’re not seeing the Ukrainian defenses buckle. “They’re holding on but it is hard work,” Kahl stated. “We believe that these additional capabilities will arrive in a time frame that’s relevant.”
“No system is going to turn the war,” he added. “This is a battle of national will.”
The advanced rocket systems more than double Ukraine’s capability to conduct long-range strikes. They cannot be used against Russian targets, even though they are on Russian soil. Along with the HIMARS and guided munitions, the $700 million U.S. security package for Ukraine includes five counter-artillery radars, two air surveillance radars, 1,000 Javelin missiles, 15,000 155 mm artillery rounds to use with howitzers, 6,000 anti-armor weapons and four Mi-17 attack helicopters.
Kahl added that the United States will be able to “rapidly surge additional munitions in the battlefield as appropriate.”
E.U. officials sign off on pandemic recovery funds for Poland amid Ukrainian influx
The executive arm of the European Union approved the release of Poland’s share of the E.U. The release of Poland’s share of the E.U. pandemic recovery fund was approved Wednesday by the executive arm. This is a gesture that could be seen as goodwill towards a country with 3 million Ukrainian refugees.
The European Commission’s approval is contentious. Talks between the commission and Poland’s government on the use of this $38 billion share of the $800 billion E.U. recovery plan had been stuck for months over the erosion of the rule of law and judicial independence in the country. The Law and Justice party, Poland’s ruling party since 2015, had put in place measures that the bloc criticized as threatening judicial independence.
The European Court of Justice ruled last fall that Poland’s new disciplinary chamber for judges, which has suspended dozens in recent years, undercuts E.U. law. The commission has been joined by the overwhelming majority of E.U. members since then. The commission and the overwhelming majority of E.U. countries have said that they cannot approve Polish recovery funds until the Commission dismantles the disciplinary chamber, reinstates the suspended judges, and then it will.
Negotiations between Brussels and Warsaw accelerated in recent weeks as Poland wrestled with a massive influx of Ukrainians fleeing Russia’s invasion. The Polish Parliament has begun to finalize new laws in exchange for some of the controversial measures. The Polish Parliament is currently drafting new laws to address some of the disputed measures in exchange for the recovery money.
“The approval of this plan is linked to clear commitments by Poland on the independence of the judiciary, which will need to be fulfilled before any actual payment can be made,” Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, said in a statement. On Thursday, she is scheduled to fly to Poland. Other E.U. members must approve the Polish recovery plan. members.
The commission’s backing itself was not easily won. According to European officials, several key political heavyweights, including Frans Timmermans, climate commissioner and Margrethe Vestager (both in charge of the law of procedure), had opposed approval. E.U. officials said that other commissioners responsible for the rule of law weren’t present at the time of the decision and raised concern. officials.
Blinken says U.S. isn’t to blame for escalation, ‘it’s Russia that is attacking’
Russia is solely to blame for the escalation of violence in Ukraine, not the United States, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday in response to questions about the U.S. transfer of advanced rocket systems to Kyiv.
The top U.S. diplomat said the United States received assurances that Ukraine would not use the satellite-guided rockets to strike Russian territory.
Concerns about the conflict spiraling out of control can be resolved by Russia ending the war, Blinken said.
“It’s Russia that is attacking Ukraine — not the other way around,” he said during a news conference in Washington with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. It is possible to prevent escalation by Russia stopping the aggression and war it has started. It’s fully within its power to do so.”
Blinken’s remarks follow President Biden’s decision to send the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, capable of precisely striking targets as far as 50 miles away.
Moscow said Wednesday that the decision risked the United States and Russia coming into direct conflict over the war in Ukraine.
Blinken underscored that before the conflict erupted, Biden had warned that the United States would provide more sophisticated weapons to Ukraine if Russia invaded.
“We have done exactly what we said we would do,” the secretary of state said.
Blinken and Stoltenberg characterized Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade as a strategic failure. President Putin desired less NATO. Stoltenberg stated that Putin wants more NATO and more NATO member countries.
The two officials are pushing for Sweden and Finland to join NATO — a process that has been hampered by objections from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Macron vows to continue ‘fight against impunity’ after journalist’s death
French President Emmanuel Macron said France will continue to “fight against impunity” after a French photojournalist was fatally wounded in eastern Ukraine.
Speaking in Brussels, Macron said that “journalists [and] humanitarian workers must be protected in war zones,” according to the Associated Press. Russia, he added, is “breaching all international laws.”
The journalist, Frederic Leclerc-Imhoff, 32, died after shrapnel pierced an armored evacuation truck he was in and struck him in the neck. It was about to transport refugees from the troubled Ukrainian city Severodonetsk.
Leclerc-Imhoff is the eighth journalist killed while covering the Russian invasion of Ukraine. At the time, he was wearing press credentials.
Germany pledges air defense system for Ukraine amid criticism
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Wednesday that Berlin would deliver a modern air defense system for Ukraine, as the government comes under fire for dragging its feet on the delivery of heavy weaponry.
The IRIS-T system is the most modern air defense system that Germany has and would enable Ukraine to protect an “entire city” from attacks, Scholz told the German parliament during a budget debate. He said that Kyiv would be provided with an electronic tracking radar for detecting artillery.
Scholz has faced criticism for not fulfilling promises to Ukraine. More than a month after he bowed to pressure and said Germany would greenlight sending heavy arms to the country, there have been no deliveries. In Wednesday’s session, opposition leader Friedrich Merz accused the government of doing nothing but “talk a little more than usual.”
The Defense Ministry has said that the first 15 Gepard self-propelled antiaircraft guns will be sent in July. Manufacturer Krauss-Maffei Wegmann had offered to prepare the 50 decommissioned Gepards for shipment in February.
Ukraine unveils ‘simplified’ adoption process as war disrupts orphanages
Ukraine’s government has launched a “simplified procedure” for people wishing to adopt Ukrainian children amid a war that has forced many orphanages to send their wards to other parts of Ukraine or abroad.
Kostiantyn Koshelenko, Ukraine’s deputy minister of social policy in charge of digital initiatives, said Wednesday during a news briefing that more than 17,000 children in Ukraine are awaiting adoption, according to a Telegram post from the state news agency Ukrinform. According to a Telegram post from Ukrinform, “But, there are many times more potential adoptive families.”
“Today, a simplified procedure for the people willing to adopt a child using the Diia portal has become operational,” Koshelenko said. He said that anyone interested in adopting in Ukraine may now make an online request to schedule a consultation.
According to Ukrinform, a technical expert said during the briefing that applicants will be screened and contacted by government authorities “within 15 days” to invite them for an in-person or online consultation.
About 40 percent of Ukraine’s 706 orphanages have evacuated children abroad or to safer parts of the country because of the war, Ukrinform said, citing the Ukrainian Ministry of Social Policy. It said that 6,506 children have been evacuated, nearly two-thirds of them to other countries, and many Ukrainian foster families have been displaced.
5.2 million Ukrainian children need humanitarian aid, U.N. says
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has left at least 5.2 million children “in need of humanitarian assistance,” the United Nations’ agency for children, UNICEF, said Wednesday.
“Three million children inside Ukraine and over 2.2 million children in refugee-hosting countries are now in need of humanitarian assistance,” UNICEF said in a news release as the war nears its 100-day mark on Friday.
Most of the children have been displaced by fighting between Ukrainian and Russian forces, the agency said. According to UNICEF, at most, conflict in Ukraine causes at least two deaths per day and injuries at least four others each day.
“June 1st is International Day for the Protection of Children in Ukraine and across the region,” UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell said in the release. “Instead of celebrating the occasion, we are solemnly approaching June 3 — the 100th day of a war that has shattered the lives of millions of children.”
Russell called for “an urgent cease-fire and negotiated peace” to end the war, without which she warned that “children will continue to suffer — and fallout from the war will impact vulnerable children around the world.”
Kremlin: U.S. supplies of weapons to Ukraine ‘pour fuel on fire’
By Mary Ilyushina8: 56 a.m.
The Kremlin on Wednesday slammed a U.S. plan to supply advanced rocket systems to Ukraine and described it as an escalatory move by the two countries, which have assured Moscow that the weapons will not be used to strike Russian territory.
“We believe that the United States is deliberately and diligently ‘pouring fuel on the fire’ and is following the line to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in a news briefing Wednesday.
“Such deliveries do not contribute to … the Ukrainian leadership’s willingness to resume peace talks,” he added.
The United States is sending the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or HIMARS, that has a range of about 43 miles and will extend Ukraine’s reach in the ongoing artillery war with Russia, a senior administration official said Tuesday. According to the official, the United States would not supply the Ukraine with the most long-range ammunition.
Moscow has warned that it would harshly retaliate against countries that provide advanced weapons to Ukraine. In an essay in the New York Times, President Biden offered assurances to his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, that the United States does not intend to provoke a wider conflict through these supplies but rather put Ukraine in “the strongest possible position at the negotiating table.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky also said that HIMARS would not be used to launch attacks into Russian territory.
The Kremlin said Wednesday it does not trust these assurances.
“No, in order to trust, you need to have experience of cases where promises were kept. When Peskov was asked about Zelensky’s comments, he said that there wasn’t any such experience.
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