Russia’s Invasion of Russia on the 500th Day

Russia invaded Ukraine 500 days ago. For much of that time President Vladimir Putin relied on the Wagner Group, well-trained mercenary soldiers from Chechen led by Yevgeny Prigozhin. At least until mid-June when Prigozhin grew resentful after he lost half his 40,000 members, blaming it on Putin’s bad leadership and lack of ammunition. In an armed uprising, Prigozhin captured the Russian military headquarters in Rostow and led his troops on a march to Moscow. The rebellion killed Russian soldiers, shot down seven Russian aircraft, and got within 125 miles of Moscow.

On June 24, Prigozhin abruptly turned around his troops and released the military headquarters. Putin allowed Prigozhin to go into exile in Belarus after an arrangement with its president Alexander Lukashenko. Twelve days later, Prigozhin returned to St. Petersburg to retrieve his arsenal of weapons seized from his home and office, including a Glock given him by Defense Minister Sergeo Shoigu he hoped to capture and over $100 million.

Prigozhin’s release came after he promised new “victories on the frontline” although the Kremlin claims he and his troops are still banished to Belarus. Thus far, he escaped criminal charges, but British intelligence commented the rebellion “worsened existing fault lines within Russia’s national security community.” Both General Sergei Surovikin, the deputy commander of Russian troops in Ukraine, and Deputy Defense Minister Colonel General Yunus-bek Yevkurov were not present at a recent top meeting. Surovikin has disappeared from public as has General Valery Gerasimo, the 67-year-old commander of Russia’s war in Ukraine and the holder of one of Russia’s three “nuclear briefcases.”

Surovikin was a secret VIP member of Wagner, according to documents obtained by the Russian investigative Dossier Center. At least 30 other senior military and intelligence officials also are VIP members. They may have divided loyalty between Prigozhin and Putin, helping Wagner to take the military headquarters in Rostov with little resistance.

If Putin feels he looks weak for the release, Prigozhin could face new criminal cases. The Russian president refuses to say Prigozhin’s name and raised questions of criminal crimes connected to contracts between Prigozhin’s businesses and the government such as the $2 billion paid to his Concord group and Wagner. Putin, however, needs the Wagner group for its effectiveness in the invasion. Asked where Prigozhin is, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said they didn’t “follow his movements.”

Some Russian elites were shocked at Putin’s dropping insurgency charges against Prigozhin after calling him a traitor. Alexandra Prokopenko, a former adviser to a senior official at Russia’s Central Bank, said:

“Everyone expected there to be repressions as a consequence, but it seems like this hasn’t happened. And now it seems you can [gather] thousands of armed men and you can go with them to Moscow, which violates every written and unwritten law of the Russian Federation. And what are you getting after that? You just need to go to Belarus. And they just give you back all your cash, all your guns.”

Russian media tried to discredit Prigozhin by broadcasting video and photos of his luxury home with bundles of cash, weapons, fake passports, and wigs used for disguises. Other views were of gold, an indoor pool, a personal helicopter, and a corner with a Wagner flag and a mannequin in a black suit, draped in more than a dozen military awards, including Russia’s highest honor, the Hero of Russia medal, awarded in June 2022.

In late June, satellite images accompanied speculation that temporary construction at a deserted Belarus miliary base might be  An eight-acre sports field with the gated military facility was recently packed with what appears to be over 250 new tents, each about 16 feet wide and 36 feet long, similar to other military encampments built in Russia and Belarus since the beginning of the invasion. The location is about 80 miles from Minsk and 13 miles northwest of Aspipovichy, which houses multiple military facilities including a training ground and ammunition storage site. An independent Russian news outlet, Verstka, reported Asipovichy as a location to house the Wagner fighters and matches details for Lukashenko in his description of where the Wagner fighters could be housed.

Russia is sending tactical nuclear weapons to Lukashenko who said there would be “no hesitation” to use them. Some of them are three times more powerful than the atomic bombs the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan in 1945 that burned 70 percent of the buildings and killed about 140,000 people.

The U.S. sanctioned gold and diamond concerns in Mali and the Central African Republic related to Prigozhin. These profits, however, are negligible compared to his funding from the Russian government. Formed in 2014, the Wagner group captured part of Ukraine, Crimea, and the Donbas for Russia. In one year, the Wagner group made $1 billion and Prigozhin picked up an additional $900 million. They also make money from other sources, and Russia makes about $4.5 billion on its own from its diamond industry in 2021.

A struggle for Ukraine—and the world—is the pending disaster at Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant which Russia has rigged with explosives, ready to be set off. Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky said:

“[Russia] occupies the plant. It uses it to cover the shelling of neighboring cities. It keeps weapons and troops there.”

The Russian plans for the Zaporizhzhia plant started with their destruction on June 6 of the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant on the Dnipro River which released a devasting flood. The dam’s destruction caused over $1.3 billion of damage and unearthed mines that could wash onto other European countries’ shores.

Russian security forces and plant workers fled the power plant’s area before July 5. Ukraine reported what appeared to be explosive devices on the wings of two reactor buildings, possibly designed for explosions to make them look like a Ukrainian strike. None of the six reactors is currently operational, and Russia is in full control of the plant, beginning its occupation in March 2022.

Residents of Nikopol, three miles from the facility, saw Russian Grad multiple rocket launchers firing on their city beside the reactor buildings. Videos prove their testimonies. Last September, 40 percent of the plant positions were unstaffed; remaining staff worked overtime in conditions greatly increasing the potential for human error, according to the IAEA’s first monitoring visit. With cool shutdowns of the reactors, the danger is much lessened unless Russia restarts them to fully operational, increasing the possibility of contamination caused by a meltdown.

Outside the Prigozhin episodes, chaos continues to reign in Russia under Putin’s faltering rule. Windows remain a problem for high-level Russians after several of them have fallen from heights. Kristina Baikova, the 28-year-old executive at Loko-Bank, is the most recent mysterious casualty after she allegedly fell from her 11^th-story apartment on June 23. Other deaths are from mysterious illnesses and mysterious suicides.

A Ukrainian official reported that Russia used a banned “chemical aerosol munition with suffocating effect” on Ukrainian troops, but the wind blew it back to the Russians. In May, Russia used phosphorus, a war crime in civilian areas, in Bakhmut and dropped chloropicrin grenades.

Russians in the border region of Belgorod east of Ukraine face looting and home invasions by Russian troops assigned to “protect” them just as these troops did to Ukrainians. Locals are afraid of leaving their home because of the thefts and vandalism. In the first three months of the invasion in early 2022, Russian troops sent 58 tons of goods stolen from Ukrainians back to Russia.

With great pride, Russia’s Defense Ministry announced it destroyed eight Leopard tanks in Ukraine’s counteroffensive, but the video shows the destruction was of two combine harvesters and a John Deer tractor.

On the 500^th day of Putin’s invasion to take over Ukraine, people in Russia debate a definition of “victory.” Putin expected to topple the democratic government within a few days and install his own stooge, pretending he wanted to help Ukrainians in “demilitarizing and denazifying” the country. Now state television, supposedly under Putin’s control, broadcasting the clashes and contradictions.

In The Daily Beast, Julie Davis reported that The Meeting Place host Andrey Norkin asked, “Why aren’t we destroying them like rats?” State Duma Member Aleander Kazakov imagined that “either through our military or diplomatic efforts, Ukraine disappears from the political map.” That was after he said, “I am anti-war.” But State Duma Deputy Boris Nadezhdin believes that defeating Ukraine is meaningless if the only outcome is death and destruction:

“What would victory look like? We can see it by looking at Bakhmut, the city where 70,000 people used to live, with children and kindergartens. It was simply wiped off the face of the Earth. Everyone who could escape from there did just that.

“If victory means conquering ruins without the people, I don’t know who needs this kind of victory… In some Russian cities, they are running out of men.

“The sooner this horror comes to an end, the better it will be for Ukrainians and Russians alike.”

Meanwhile, Ukraine is making a little progress, people are dying, and a debate swirls around whether Biden should send cluster bombs, banned by 120 countries through a UN international treaty. Russia, Ukraine, and the U.S. have not signed the treaty.

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.