Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine after 428 Days

With problems surrounding his invasion of Ukraine, Russian president Vladimir Putin has fired his deputy defense minister for war logistics, Colonel-General Mikhail Mizintsev, after only seven months. Nicknamed “The Butcher of Mariupol,” Mizintsev ordered the bombing of a theater sheltering hundreds of families and a maternity hospital a year ago. Over three hundred Ukrainians were killed. He continued with his brutality and indiscriminate bombing of Mariupol, likely giving orders to bomb a maternity hospital a year ago.  

Ukraine is still trying to keep the city of Bakhmut, and 100 kamikaze drones were sent to their military. Subscribers of the Blyskavka online media raised almost $282,000 for the purchase of a total of 500 drones. They can destroy vehicles, people, and other military objects as the operator controls the aircraft from a safe distance.

New and existing Ukrainian troops have been training on new systems and tactics for the spring counteroffensive. A variety of new tanks are rolling into the country along with armored transports, anti-craft guns, artillery, and support vehicles. Troops are being trained in a variety of countries: in Germany, the U.S. is currently training 2,500, and another 8,000 have already completed their training. Sixty-five are starting their training on the Patriot missile defense systems.

Russia attacked Kyiv for the first time since March 9, firing over a dozen cruise missiles at the capital and other parts of Ukraine. Eleven missiles and two drones over Kyiv were intercepted; fragments of them damaged power lines and a road.

Exhausted Russian troops and disorganized and fragmented deployments are keeping the invaders from defending critical parts of their front line. The troops are now operating in seven areas: Kupiansk, Luhansk region, Bakhmut, Avdiivka-Donetsk, the western part of Donetsk Oblast/eastern part of Zaporizhzhia Oblast, the western part of the Zaporizhzhia region, and Kherson Oblast, conducting active offensive operations in the first five sectors. They are all below full strength.

Russia is suffering about 30 percent fewer daily casualties, probably because it ended its winter offensive which largely failed. Troops may also be preparing for Ukraine’s counteroffensive.

Russia is on the defensive in Crimea after Ukrainian maritime drones attacked the Sevastopol harbor. Although none of the surface vessels armed with explosives penetrated the harbor, but Russia plans to increase its already defense of six layers of nets and booms across the harbor in addition to the patrol boats, helicopter patrols, anti-diver dolphins, and gun emplacements. Sevastopol is the Russian Navy’s main base in Crimea where major warships are posted.

Last October, Ukrainian drones hit several ships although they didn’t do lasting damage. Because Ukrainian drones penetrated the inner harbor a month ago, Russia added two more layers of floating nets on the outer side of the harbor entrance. In addition, a row of six large pontoon barges were anchored just inside the entrance to extend the harbor wall and narrow the entrance. Ukrainian troops have also advanced across the Dnipro River north of Crimea.

A Russian military plane on a training flight caught fire and crashed into a lake in northwestern Russia bordering Finland. Ejected from the plane, the pilots survived. The fire started during takeoff, according to an eyewitness. On the Kola peninsula, the large military presence of Russian military bases houses the world’s largest concentration of nuclear weapons.

A week earlier a Russian plane crashed at Belgorod near the Ukrainian border. The pilot jumped out of the cockpit but later died. In Belgorod, over 3,000 people were evacuated after the discovery of an undetonated explosive two days after Russia accidentally a bomb on the city, damaging houses and injuring several people. The undetonated explosive may have come from that accident which left a crater about 60 feet wide close to the city center. Last October, a Russian fighter jet killed 13 people when it crashed in the Russian city of Yeysk, just north of Ukraine’s second largest city, Kharkiv.  

Russia is sending “invisible” T-14 tanks into Ukraine after the UK said using the “poor condition” fleet was a “high risk” for the nation. With a remotely-controlled turret to protect the tank’s crew, it is further off the ground to protect the crew from mines, supposedly fitted with extra protection on their flanks, and designed to explode outwards. On the highway, the vehicles have a maximum speed of 50 mph. A logistic problem is the tank is larger and heavier than other Russian tanks. The production of 2,300 tanks, first unveiled in 2015, won’t be completed until 2025.

As president of the UN Security Council, the Kremlin sent Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov to preside over a session on the virtues of peace and diplomacy. Western diplomats accused Russia of hypocrisy during the full-day session, and Russia denounced its adversaries, accusing the West of causing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The U.S. and European members of the Council did not send their own foreign ministers to the meeting. António Guterres, the U.N. secretary general, warned that the multilateral global system was “under greater strain than at any time since the creation of the United Nations” and cautioned that the tensions between major powers increased the risk of conflict. Lavrov also said the world was at a “possibly even more dangerous threshold” than it was during the Cold War. Olof Skoop, the European Union’s ambassador to the UN, said:

“By organizing this debate, Russia is trying to portray itself as a defender of the U.N. Charter and multilateralism. Everywhere you look, Russia is in contempt.”

In an unusual unity, Security Council members officially condemned the fighting in Sudan and called for an immediate cease-fire with a return to political dialog. Russia has already used its time to explain its kidnapping of Ukrainian children as protection for them and accuse Western countries of irresponsibility on arms control by sending weapons to Ukraine. Maria Lvoya-Belova, a top person in overseeing the transfers of the kidnapped children briefed the meeting remotely; the International Criminal Court has arrest warrants for both her and Putin. Britain and the U.S. refused to permit a broadcast of the event on its official website in a rare case of blocking an airing.

Russia’s leadership of the Security Council ends in a few days. Switzerland will lead the Council in May.

The far-right in the U.S. is promoting the lie that the Russian invasion of Ukraine was staged. No matter that tens of thousands of Ukrainians have been murdered, tens of millions are displaced, and homes and other buildings in the country have suffered billions in damage. A video promoting disinformation shows what conspiracy theorists claim are “fake bodies” in body bags. Images came from a climate change in Austria a month before Russia invaded Ukraine. A tweet sharing the video was viewed over 3.9 million times by last February and “liked” over 45,000 times.

From Catturd, one of Elon Musk’s favorite tweeters, came a message questioning the war’s reality because he hadn’t seen any footage from the war front. Michael Flynn endorsed the false claims, writing, “I double dare anyone to say he’s wrong.” The tweet was viewed over 10.4 million times although Twitter’s fact-checking community attached a note to the past about the availability of “footage and analysis of the Russian war on Ukraine from multiple media sources.” These are just two of falsehoods on social media about a deadly war from Russian assets in the U.S.

A Russian parliament member said that states in the U.S. were welcome to be considered for part of the Russian Federation. According to Russian propaganda, some states have polled for secession from the 50 states, for example 80 percent of New Hampshire residents. Supposedly “most of Oregon wants to leave Oregon,” but the “most” is land mass, not population. The voting was also on social networks, thus not official. According to Cynthia Nicoletti, professor of law at the University Virginia School of Law, state secession is unconstitutional as “established by our Civil War and by the Supreme Court in the 1869 case Texas v. White. Article I, section 10 of the Constitution also prohibits states from entering into alliances, treaties, or confederations. “

The far-right movement in the U.S. to eliminate any support for Ukraine can end up promoting China’s military aggression in Asia, and possibly in the world. The West’s and Ukraine’s resistance to Russia shows China that a use of force against Taiwan would be a problem. The U.S. needs to convince China that it is back to being a world leader after the previous administration took the side of Russia in altercations.