by tyler | May 24, 2023 | CNN, europe
A new “revolution” could rock Russia if its stuttering war effort in Ukraine continues, the chief of private military group Wagner has said, in a scathing assessment of Moscow’s military readiness that could further expose divisions in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s military hierarchy.
Yevgeny Prigozhin said in an interview with Konstantin Dolgov, a pro-Russian blogger, that Moscow’s troops are unprepared to resist forces loyal to Kyiv even when they enter Russian territory.
He also praised the capabilities of the Ukrainian army, and urged Moscow to escalate its war effort if it wants to avoid a long and costly conflict.
“I believe Ukrainians today are one of the strongest armies in the world,” Prigozhin said. He called Kyiv’s forces “highly organized, highly trained and their intelligence is on the highest level, they can operate any military system with equal success, a Soviet or a NATO one.”
In recent days Moscow suffered embarrassment when a group of anti-Putin Russians entered the Belgorod region in an incursion that caused anger and confusion among Russia’s influential military analysts. Asked about the incident, Prigozhin said Russian defense forces are “absolutely not ready to resist them in any shape or form.”
“Here we are with Ukraine, that is our enemy, in the middle of the war, Russian Volunteer Corps groups come in effortlessly and go through (the border) in tanks and APCs without any repercussions and make their own videos if it,” the Wagner chief vented.
Prigozhin has frequently criticized Russia’s traditional military hierarchy as he sought to win a power struggle against military commanders to lead Putin’s ground effort in eastern Ukraine. Earlier this month he blamed Russian defense chiefs for “tens of thousands” of Wagner casualties because they didn’t have enough ammunition.
But his comments to Dolgov were alarmist even for the free-wheeling Putin ally. As he has frequently done, Prigozhin urged Moscow to step up its war in order to defeat Ukraine – urging Putin to “declare a martial law and a new wave of mobilization.”
He warned that if Russian losses continue to mount, “all these divisions can end in what is a revolution, just like in 1917.”
“First the soldiers will stand up, and after that – their loved ones will rise up. It is wrong to think that there are hundreds of them – there are already tens of thousands of them – relatives of those killed,” he said. “And there will probably be hundreds of thousands – we cannot avoid that.”
Russian forces, primarily made up of Wagner troops, have labored for months over the capture of Bakhmut – a city in Ukraine’s east of relatively insignificant strategic value, where Russia has suffered vast losses – and its larger ground campaign has been in stalemate since a string of successful Ukrainian counter-attacks last autumn.
by tyler | May 23, 2023 | CNN, europe
A Russian politician died of – as of yet – unknown causes after falling ill on a plane on Saturday, the latest in a string of mysterious deaths among Russian elites.
Russia’s Deputy Minister of Science and Higher Education, Pyotr Kucherenko, 46, died while returning from a trip to Cuba on Saturday, according to the ministry.
“Kucherenko was feeling ill while on a plane with a Russian delegation that was returning from a business trip to Cuba. The plane landed in the city of Mineralnye Vody, where doctors tried to assist,” the ministry said in a statement posted on its website, adding that the minister could not be saved.
Kucherenko’s family said his death may have been from a heart condition but a forensic examination will be held on Wednesday, according to the state-run broadcaster Zvezda.
Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said he was not aware of Kucherenko’s cause of death.
Journalist Roman Super, who fled Russia shortly after it invaded Ukraine last February, said on his Telegram channel that he had spoken with Kucherenko “just days” before fleeing. He said Kucherenko feared for his safety and encouraged him to leave Russia.
“Save yourself and your family. Leave as soon as possible. You cannot imagine the degree of brutalization of our state. In a year you won’t recognize Russia at all. By leaving you are doing the right thing,” Super quoted Kucherenko as saying.
Super said he asked Kucherenko if he too wanted to leave Russia, to which, he said, the minister replied: “It is no longer possible to do so. They take away our passports. And there is no such world where they will now be happy with the deputy Russian minister after this fascist invasion.”
The journalist added that Kucherenko told him he’d been taking antidepressants and tranquilizers, quoting him as saying: “I drink them in handfuls. And it doesn’t help much. I hardly sleep. I feel terrible. We are all taken hostage. Nobody can say anything. Otherwise, we are immediately crushed like bugs.”
It has been reported that senior Russian officials at the Kremlin and in the regions have been forbidden from leaving their posts. IStories, an online investigative news outlet based outside Russia and run by a well-known journalist Roman Anin, reported last week that several governors, officials within the security forces and people from the presidential administration had tried to quit but had not been allowed to. Peskov dismissed the report as a hoax.
Kucherenko’s demise is not the first unexplained Russian death to spark interest.
At least 13 high-profile Russian businessmen have reportedly died by suicide or in unexplained accidents in the last year, with six of them associated with Russia’s two largest energy companies.
Russian sausage magnate-turned-lawmaker Pavel Antov died in India in December after falling from the third floor of his hotel, according to the Indian police.
Antov’s death came after his friend and travel companion Vladimir Budanov died of a heart attack on Antov’s 65th birthday, two days earlier, according to the police. Budanov was 61 years old and had a preexisting heart condition, the police said, adding that they believed Antov’s death was a suicide.
Alexander Buzakov, the head of a major Russian shipyard that specializes in building non-nuclear submarines, died suddenly in December, with no cause of death given by the authorities, Reuters news agency reported.
Anatoly Gerashchenko, the former rector to the Moscow Aviation Institute, died in an unspecified accident in September, according to a statement from the institute.
Lukoil chairman Ravil Maganov died at the beginning of September after falling out of the window of a hospital in Moscow, according to TASS.
In mid-September, Russian businessman Ivan Pechorin, who was the top manager for the Corporation for the Development of the Far East and the Arctic, was found dead in Vladivostok, according to Russian state media. Pechorin drowned on September 10 near Cape Ignatyev in Vladivostok, regional media reported.
Another top Lukoil manager, Alexander Subbotin, was found dead near Moscow in May after reportedly visiting a shaman, TASS reported.
How to get help: In the United States, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255. The International Association for Suicide Prevention and Befrienders Worldwide also can provide contact information for crisis centers around the world.
by tyler | May 22, 2023 | CNN, europe
Ukraine has claimed it still controls parts of Bakhmut after Russian forces said they had finally captured the besieged eastern city.
The conflicting claims follow a months-long slog in the city where Russian soldiers have had to grind for every inch of territory.
Kyiv has turned the battle – for a largely insignificant city in the Donbas – into a monumental struggle that has encapsulated the slow-moving and territorial nature of the ground war.
Ukraine’s deputy defense minister, Hanna Maliar, said Monday that Ukrainian forces were still in control of some buildings in the southwest of Bakhmut, two days after Russia claimed to have captured the city.
Maliar also claimed that Ukraine’s troops were advancing on the city’s flanks.
On Ukrainian television, she said: “Yesterday, the Ukrainian Armed Forces retained control of certain industrial facilities and private houses area in the southwestern area, the area where the aircraft [monument] is.” The monument of a MiG-17 is in Druzhba Square in the southwest of Bakhmut. “Today, we still have control of this small part of the city. The fighting continues,” she added.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had earlier said at the G7 summit in Japan: “We are keeping on, we are fighting.”
That followed Russian claims to the contrary. On Saturday the chief of the mercenary Wagner group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, claimed to have captured Bakhmut after months of brutal fighting, saying he would hand it over to Russia later in May.
Russian President Vladimir Putin offered his congratulations for “the completion of the operation to liberate Artemovsk,” Russian state news agency TASS reported the Kremlin as saying, using the Soviet-Russian name for Bakhmut.
Bakhmut sits toward the northeast of the Donetsk region, about 13 miles from the Luhansk region, and has long been a target for Russian forces. Since last summer the city has been a stone’s throw from the front lines.
Donbas – the vast, industrial expanse of land in Ukraine’s east, encompassing the Luhansk and Donetsk regions – has been the primary focus of Russia’s war effort since last spring, after its initial lunge toward Kyiv and central Ukraine failed.
The battle has been compared to the kind of fighting seen in World War I, with soldiers fighting in a hellish landscape of mud and trenches, trees and buildings mangled by artillery fire.
While Russian forces have continued their slow street-by-street advance in Bakhmut for many months, over the past two weeks Ukrainian forces have managed to re-capture small pockets of territory held by Russian troops to the northwest and southwest of the city.
Russian forces, bolstered by members of the Wagner mercenary group, have taken heavy losses trying to capture the city.
There are no official casualty figures, but earlier this year a NATO source told CNN they estimated that for every Ukrainian soldier killed defending Bakhmut, Russia lost five.
The battle has also highlighted an extraordinary rift among Russian forces, with Prigozhin at one point accusing a Russian brigade of abandoning its position in the city and railing several times at the Defense Ministry over a lack of ammunition.
Prigozhin, a former catering boss who has grown in prominence throughout the war, compared the battlefield to a “meat grinder.”
Bakhmut’s fall would be an undoubted boost to Prigozhin, who recently announced his men would pull out entirely because dwindling ammunition supplies and mounting losses meant there was “nothing left to grind the meat with.”
Over the early part of 2023, the routes into Bakhmut had gradually come under the control of Russian forces and the battle for the city turned into an inch-by-inch grind, with Ukrainian forces repelling dozens of assaults each day.
Only two roads out to the west have remained outside Russian control, though for Ukrainian forces trying to re-supply the city, the drives in have been treacherous.
Before they began their slow push through the city center, Wagner troops first sought to encircle the city in a wide arc from the north.
In January they claimed the nearby town of Soledar, and later took a string of villages and hamlets north of Bakhmut, making Ukraine’s defense of the city increasingly perilous.
But even as Moscow’s troops closed in and most residents fled through dangerous evacuation corridors, a small group of Ukrainian civilians remained in the ruined city. Before the war, around 70,000 people lived in Bakhmut, a city once famous for its sparkling wine.
As of March, the population stood at less than 4,000 and most of the once thriving city has been reduced to ashes and rubble.
In his comments at the G7, Zelensky said pictures of ruined Hiroshima he has seen on his visit to the Japanese city “really remind” him of Bakhmut.
by tyler | May 22, 2023 | CNN, europe
A group of anti-Putin Russian nationals, who are aligned with the Ukrainian army, has claimed responsibility for an attack in Belgorod, as Moscow said it was fighting a group of saboteurs in the southwestern region.
In a Telegram post, groups calling themselves the “Freedom of Russia Legion” and “Russian Volunteer Corps” said they had “liberated” a settlement in the Belgorod region.
A Ukrainian official acknowledged that the units had carried out an operation in the area but insisted they were acting independently. “We can confirm that this operation was carried out by Russian citizens,” Andriy Yusov, a representative of Ukraine’s defense intelligence agency, told CNN.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said the Kremlin’s forces were working to push out the “sabotage and reconnaissance group” that had entered Belgorod, according to state media TASS.
The situation in Belgorod marks “the first time” that Ukrainian-backed forces have launched “a cross-border land operation against Russian targets,” according to CNN’s Sam Kiley.
“This is on a significant scale, and clearly intended to cause considerable consternation among the local authorities at the very least, if not at the level of the Kremlin,” Kiley told CNN’s Lynda Kinkade on Connect the World.
Regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said that at least three people had been injured in the attacks.
“They are in the hospital in a state of moderate severity. All necessary medical assistance is provided,” Vyacheslav Gladkov said on Telegram.
He added that shells hit an administrative building in Belgorod and damaged three residential buildings, which caught fire. Gladkov also said a shell hit a kindergarten in the village of Zamostye, where another woman was injured with a hand wound.
He said earlier that Russian troops, the border service, the National Guard and the FSB “are taking the necessary measures to eliminate the enemy.”
Air defenses struck down an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) in the region, Gladkov said, adding that there were no victims and Russian authorities are looking into any potential damage on the ground.
Yusov, the Ukrainian intelligence official, said of the encroachment: “These actions are the consequences of intensified Russian cross-border attacks, which have led to victims and destruction.”
He added the units that had crossed the border were “part of defense and security forces” when they were in Ukraine, but were independent from Kyiv when they were not. “In Russia they are acting as independent entities.”
Aleksey Baranovsky, a representative of the Kyiv-based Russian Armed Opposition Political Centre – the political wing of the Freedom of Russia Legion – told CNN that the operation had started Sunday night and fighting was “ongoing.” He would not specify the number of fighters who had crossed the border into Russia.
Baranovsky said the group wanted to “liberate our motherland from the tyranny of Putin.”
In a Telegram post, the groups said they had “fully liberated the settlement of Kozinka of Belgorod region. [The] first groups have entered Grayvoron.”
“Russian forces are working to push out the Ukrainian sabotage and reconnaissance group from the territory of the Russian Federation and destroy it. There are enough forces and means,” he told reporters.
Peskov made reference to Bakhmut, which has garnered an outsized importance in the conflict as Russian forces battle to capture the eastern Ukrainian city – while failing to make gains elsewhere.
by tyler | May 22, 2023 | CNN, europe
Turkey’s third-placed presidential election candidate, Sinan Ogan, on Monday backed frontrunner Recep Tayyip Erdogan in a boost ahead of the scheduled runoff vote.
Ogan, who received 5.17% of votes in the first round of the presidential election that took place on May 14, told a news conference in Ankara that he will back the incumbent Erdogan, rather than his challenger Kemal Kilicdaroglu, in the presidential runoff planned for May 28.
Erdogan received 49.52% of votes in the first round, giving him a five-point lead over Kilicdaroglu.
“I announce that we will support the candidate of the People’s Alliance President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and invite the voters who voted for us in the first round to vote for Mr. Erdogan,” Ogan said.
The decision was made “after deliberation and because we believe that it is the right thing for our country and our people,” he added.
Ogan had conditioned his endorsement of either candidate on hardened policies towards refugees and some Kurdish groups he perceives as terrorists.
“The National Alliance has failed to convince us,” he said, speaking of the main opposition group in Turkey, led by Kilicdaroglu.
Ogan claimed that Turkey was at a “critical juncture,” and laid out four priorities he said needed to be addressed urgently.
First is the issue of refugees and migrants in Turkey, he said. Second, the “urgent national security threat” following the recent earthquakes. Third, the economic problems “caused by domestic and foreign dynamics that have caused deep issues in the public.” And fourth, the fight against terrorism in Turkey, which he said needed to be “addressed on all fronts, including financially.”
“Everyone has the right to be in politics and that must be guaranteed but the political extensions of terror groups must be cleansed from Turkish politics,” Ogan added.
The Ancestral Alliance – the right-wing electoral alliance that nominated Ogan as its presidential candidate – has announced that each party within the alliance will make a decision independently.
The main party within the alliance, the Victory Party, is expected to make an announcement on Tuesday.
Responding to reports that Ogan had endorsed Erdoğan, Kilicdaroglu said in a tweet Monday that “it is clear who sides with those who sell out this beautiful country.”
“We are coming to save this country from terrorism and migrants. This is a referendum. Let’s not allow anyone to fool anyone anymore. I invite all of the youth and the 8 million citizens who didn’t vote to come to the ballot boxes,” Kilicdaroglu wrote.
Before the first round of the election, Ogan was a fringe, ultranationalist politician virtually unknown outside Turkey. But the votes he won may now make him a kingmaker.
In an interview with CNN last week, Ogan claimed: “Our electorate is very bonded with us, of course where we need, they will come with us.”
by tyler | May 18, 2023 | CNN, europe
At least nine people have been killed by heavy flooding and mudslides in the northern Italian region of Emilia Romagna, and as many as 20,000 residents are being forced to evacuate, according to local authorities.
Among those killed are a married couple, who died in the village of Ronta di Cesena, authorities say.
More than 20 rivers have burst their banks across the region, causing 280 landslides, the Civil Protection department said Thursday.
Meanwhile up to 27,000 people have been left without power, according to Enel, the Italian multinational manufacturer and distributor of electricity and gas.
The vice president of Emilia Romagna, Irene Priolo, told reporters that the rains were easing but that river levels were still rising, according to Reuters.
The region, which has been suffering a prolonged drought, is under a red alert – the highest level warning or state of emergency for life-threatening weather events.
The Emilia Romagna Grand Prix, scheduled for this weekend, has been canceled and the site evacuated.
Fourteen rivers burst their banks in the region, forcing people in cities such as Cesena to climb onto the roof of their buildings to escape incoming water, Reuters reported. Firefighters rescued them with helicopters or rubber dinghies.
A total of 600 firefighters have been deployed from across Italy to assist with evacuations in the region after Italy’s longest river, the Po, broke its banks, the Italian Department for Civil Protection said in a tweet.
Residents in numerous areas across the region, including in the city of Bologna, were asked not to leave their homes.
Pope Francis has expressed “heartfelt sympathy” to the families of victims of the floods, calling it a “staggering disaster.” The Pontiff sent a message of condolence to Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, the Archbishop of Bologna, on Thursday.
Francis thanked rescue workers and “all those who in these hours of particular difficulty are working to bring relief and alleviate all suffering.”
The city of Ravenna has also been heavily affected. “It’s probably been the worst night in the history of Romagna,” Ravenna Mayor Michele de Pascale told RAI public radio according to Reuters, saying that 5,000 people had been evacuated from his city alone overnight.
“Ravenna is unrecognizable for the damage it has suffered,” he added.
Tweeting on Tuesday evening, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni extended her “total sympathy” to those affected by the flooding, adding that the government stands “ready to intervene with the necessary aid.”
This pledge was echoed by Deputy Prime Minister Antonio Tajani in a tweet Wednesday morning, saying that the “government will do everything necessary to help” everyone from “evacuees to those who have lost crops” due to the flooding.
In the neighboring eastern region of Le Marche, also severely hit by flooding, 200 firefighters have been mobilized for rescue efforts in the past 24 hours, according to the Vigili del Fuoco fire service.
The torrential rains come after months of drought that dried out the land – which meteorologists say has reduced its capacity to absorb water, worsening the floods, according to Reuters.
Water levels on northern Italy’s Lake Garda fell to record lows in February, with Venice experiencing unusually low tides.
From lengthy droughts to severe flooding, the intensity of water-related disasters around the world has increased over the last two decades as global temperatures climbed to record levels, according to recent research.
The study from NASA scientists published in March in the journal Nature Water found that increasingly frequent, widespread and intense droughts and floods were linked more strongly to higher global temperatures than to naturally changing weather patterns, like El Niño and La Niña. This suggests these intense events will increase as the climate crisis accelerates, the study says.
Formula 1 has announced the cancellation of this weekend’s Emilia Romagna Grand Prix because of heavy flooding in the region, citing safety concerns.
In a statement shared on Twitter, it said, “It would not be right to put further pressure on the local authorities and emergency services at this difficult time.”
On Tuesday, Formula 1 staff were asked to leave the site of the race as a precautionary measure, an F1 source told CNN.
The Emilia Romagna Grand Prix is the first event of the Formula 1 season in Europe and was scheduled to take place this weekend.
A moment of silence was held ahead of Thursday’s games at the Italian Open tennis tournament, which is taking place in Rome.
