Russia has temporarily moved its invasion to eastern Ukraine, pulling its forces and other efforts from the central and western areas of the country. Satellite images from April 8 show an eight-mile Russian convoy of armored vehicles and trucks carrying artillery and support equipment east of Kharkiv and heading south toward Donbas after Russia failed to take the capital city, Kyiv. The departure of Russian forces in the northern Sumy region left horrific evidence of attacks on Ukrainian civilians—mass graves, human shields, and destruction of civilian infrastructure as well as a second strike on a nitrate acid tank near Rubizhne. Exposure to the toxic fumes can include the possibility of blindness.
Thus far, Russian President Vladimir Putin has failed to obtain his goal of a land corridor connecting Crimea to the eastern Donbas region, but he is moving in mercenaries from the Wagner Group to indiscriminately kill Ukrainians. Some Russian military units have been “almost completely devastated,” according to the Pentagon. The mercenaries also helped take over Crimea in 2014 and, along with mercenaries from other military companies, fought in thirty countries on four continents from Venezuela to Syria, Libya, and Afghanistan.
Mercenaries are likely financed by Russian oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin, close to Putin and called Putin’s chef because his companies cater Kremlin events and pay for political and military exploits. Prigozhin is on the FBI most-wanted list with a $250,000 bounty on his head. The Russian constitution finds the use of private military companies to be illegal, thus Russian government denies their existence.
Of the 1,000 Wagner mercenaries deployed during the first ten days of the Ukraine invasion, about 200 had died by early March. Now Putin is offering over a thousand dollars a month to fight in Ukraine to Syrians who make as little as $15 to $35 for the same period of time. Syrians, however, don’t speak the language or know the Ukrainian terrain. The UK’s Ministry of Defense believes that Russia is trying to build its military by bringing back veterans discharged from military service since 2012 and trying to recruit men from the unrecognized Transnistria region in Moldova.
After almost 20 Russian leaders—generals, colonels, and commanders—have been killed, Putin appointed Gen. Alexander Dvornikov to lead all the Russian forces in Ukraine. Called “the butcher of Syria,” His record of brutality against civilians in Syria and other war areas includes the nine-month siege against the rebel-held eastern Aleppo where Russians caused large casualties of civilians by targeting strikes on densely populated neighborhoods. Before Dvornikov’s assignment, Russian units had sometimes operated at cross purposes with no coordination. He may have been sent to obtain a result that Putin could call a victory before May 9, Victory Day when Russia celebrates the 1945 defeat of Nazi Germany with a military parade in Moscow’s Red Square.
Russia’s ongoing murders in Ukraine have led to a fast-track for the country to become a candidate to join the European Union in “a matter of weeks,” possibly June. One reason that Putin invaded Ukraine was to stop this from happening. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said:
“Russia will descend into economic, financial and technological decay, while Ukraine is marching towards the European future.”
Russia has a history of massacring Ukrainian civilians in large gatherings, including those attempting to leave Ukraine. Last week, Russians bombed a crowd of 4,000 at a train station who were waiting to evacuate the country. At least 57 people were killed, 109 wounded, and the three trains to rescue evacuees were blocked. A missile fragment found there after the disaster had the words “for the children” in Russian. Russian soldiers bragged on Telegram about their massacre although state TV followed by false claims that the civilians fleeing Ukraine were “a crowd of Ukrainian militants.” The people had only what they could carry from their homes. (Left: aftermath of air strikes after civilians fled.)
Despite the incessant Russian killings in Ukraine, over 6,600 people escaped the siege this past week.
Several countries, including the United States, have accused Russia of war crimes and called for an investigation. Russia’s alleged crimes:
- Targeted killings of thousands of civilians.
- Targeted destruction of civilian buildings, including ones used as bomb shelters, hospitals, apartment buildings, shopping malls and schools.
- Russian soldiers raping women.
- Thousands of Ukrainians kidnapped, taken to Russia, some of them local officials such as mayors.
- Blocking humanitarian aid to Ukrainians. Russian forces shoot at humanitarian workers trying to administer aid and reuse to let civilians leave their homes for supplies
- Targeting and killing journalists. Over one dozen members of the media have been thus far killed in Ukraine by Russian soldiers shooting at them or shelling them, and others have been kidnapped and tortured.
In the beginning of the invasion, Russia supposedly took mobiles crematoriums with them into Ukraine to hide the number of soldiers they lost. Now they are hiding the number of civilians they murder in Mariupol by burning them. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov denied any targeting of civilians, refused by audio of a commander in his intercepted call with a Russian soldier in which he ordered the soldier to shoot “everyone” regardless of whether they are civilians. He said, “Yes, cut them all fucking down.” Footage shows a strike at a pediatric hospital in Mykolaiv when a Russian missile hit an ambulance donated to the facility to the UK when one child and one man died with another 60 injured.
Although Russia has lowballed the numbers of their dead soldiers to 1,351 on April 8, Peskov admitted, “We have suffered significant losses, this is a huge tragedy for us.” Ukraine estimated Russian deaths at almost 19,000 and reports it has about 7,000 unclaimed Russian corpses in morgues and refrigerated rail cars. Russians refused to take them. Western leaders approximate Russian deaths between 7,000 and 15,000. On April 10, Ukraine posted this list of losses on Twitter. In 2015, Putin signed a decree declaring all military deaths a state secret, and last year Russia criminalized statements discrediting the military.
Most Russians, however, know only the standard lies communicated through government media: Russia achieves its goals, losses are small, Ukrainian military is weak, and the invasion saves civilians from Ukrainian nationalists who slaughter them or use them as human shields. In a recent speech, the leader of the Russian orthodox church denies the existence of Ukraine or the Ukrainian people.
U.S. agencies are fighting back at Russian attempts to disrupt the country. The DOJ filed criminal charges against Konstantin Malofeyev, sanctioned since 2014, for providing financial support to Russian separatists in Crimea. New charges are for his trying to start media outlets in European countries which would spread pro-Russian misinformation. He had tried to transfer $10 million from a Texas bank to Greece. The FBI blocked a computer malware attack by Russian military intelligence to use a global botnet of denial-of-service on thousands of small computers throughout the world. The FBI copied and removed the Russian malware from botnet machines’ firewall devices for their command and control. The same Russian team attacked Ukraine’s electric power grid and the Winter Olympic Games.
The U.S. has also put “full blocking” sanctions of Sberbank, Russia’s biggest financial institution, and Alfa Bank, Russia’s biggest private bank. These sanctions, blocking over two-thirds of the Russian banking sector, prohibits their transactions with any U.S. financial institution and freeze their assets in U.S. banks. Sanctions on Putin’s two known adult daughters may also freeze Putin’s assets he hides with them. Targeted sanctions on Russia’s former president and prime minister of Russia Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin add to those on over 140 oligarchs and their family members plus over 400 Russian government officials. Russia can no longer pay debts from dollars in U.S. banks.
In its fifth package of sanctions, the European Union banned coal imports and closed its ports to Russian ships. It also sanctions financial transactions, excludes Russia from public contracts, and blocks cars registered in Russia and Belarus from entering the EU, keeping those countries from moving goods through the 27 countries. Exceptions are transporting pharmaceuticals, food, agricultural products, energy, fertilizers, and nonferrous metals. Britain estimates that 60 percent of Russian foreign assets are now frozen.
Indicating Russia will soon default on foreign loans, credit ratings Standard & Poor’s downgraded its assessment of Russia’s foreign debt to “selective default.” On April 4, the country had attempt to make a $649 million bond payments in rubles instead of the mandated U.S. dollars. Even in Russia’s disaster of the 1990s, it continued to pay foreign debts with the help of international aid although defaulting on domestic debt.
The UN voted to suspend Russia from its Human Rights Council: 93 in favor, 24 against, and 58 abstentions. The suspension is the first time any of the five permanent members on the UN Security Council lost its membership rights in any United Nations organization.
Russian students are turning in their teachers who oppose the invasion in Ukraine. (Sort of like parents in U.S. turning in teachers who address the issue of racism.)
Nel's New Day 
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