*** MILITARY SITUATION ***
Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, March 26th
Russian forces continued their unsuccessful efforts to move into positions from which to attack or encircle Kyiv, claims by First Deputy Chief of the Russian General Staff Sergei Rudskoi on March 25 notwithstanding. The Russian military continues to concentrate replacements and reinforcements in Belarus and Russia north of Kyiv, to fight for positions on Kyiv’s outskirts, and to attempt to complete the encirclement and reduction of Chernihiv. Russian activities around Kyiv show no change in the Russian high command’s prioritization of the fight around Ukraine’s capital, which continues to occupy the largest single concentration of Russian ground forces in Ukraine. The Russians have not claimed to redeploy forces from Kyiv or any other part of Ukraine to concentrate on fighting in Donbas, and we have observed numerous indicators that they have not done so. The increasingly static nature of the fighting around Kyiv reflects the incapacity of Russian forces rather than any shift in Russian objectives or efforts at this time.
Russian forces will likely bisect the city of Mariupol in the coming days as they claim and will likely gain control of the city in the relatively near future. Fighting in Mariupol continues to be fierce, however, and Russian forces continue to suffer significant losses. The amount of combat power the Russians will be able to harvest from Mariupol once they gain control of the city will determine whether the city’s fall will allow the Russians to launch renewed large-scale offensive operations in Ukraine’s east. It remains unclear how badly damaged Russian units fighting for Mariupol are—or how much more damage they will incur in completing the capture of the city—but high-profile casualties in elite and conventional Russian combat units such as the 810th Naval Infantry Brigade and the 150th Motorized Rifle Division, both of which have lost commanders in the past few weeks, suggest that losses in such units are high.[1]
Ukrainian forces continue to conduct limited counter-attacks across the theater, most recently near Kharkiv. Ukrainian counter-attacks have been prudent and effective, allowing Ukrainian forces to regain small areas of tactically or operationally significant terrain without over-extending themselves.
-In an early update on Sunday, Ukraine’s General Staff said it had repelled seven enemy attacks in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of the Donbas, destroying eight tanks. Russia’s defence ministry meanwhile reported a battle for control of two villages near the separatist stronghold of Donetsk and also claimed a missile strike had destroyed an arms and ammunition depot in the Zhytomyr region, west of Kyiv, on Friday.
-Russia struck military targets in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv with high-precision cruise missiles, the Russian defence ministry said on Sunday. Russia struck a fuel depot being used by Ukrainian forces near Lviv with long-range missiles and used cruise missiles to strike a plant in the city being used to repair anti-aircraft systems, radar stations and sights for tanks, the ministry said. “The armed forces of the Russian Federation continue offensive actions as part of the special military operation,” the ministry said in a statement to Reuters. Russia used sea-based long-range missiles to destroy an arsenal of S-300 missiles and BUK anti-aircraft missile systems near Kyiv, the ministry said. Russian forces also destroyed a number of drones, it said.
-Russia has started destroying Ukrainian fuel and food storage depots, meaning the government will have to disperse the stocks of both in the near future, Ukrainian Interior Ministry adviser Vadym Denysenko has said according to Reuters. Speaking on local television, Denysenko also said Russia was bringing forces to the Ukrainian border on rotation, and could make new attempts to advance in its invasion of Ukraine.
-Russian forces appear to be concentrating their effort to attempt the encirclement of Ukrainian forces directly facing the separatist regions in the east of the country, the UK’s Ministry of Defence has said in its latest intelligence report on the war in Ukraine. It said Russian forces were advancing from the direction of Kharkiv in the north and Mariupol in the south. However, the battlefield across northern Ukraine “remains largely static with local Ukrainian counterattacks hampering Russian attempts to reorganise their forces.”
*** ECONOMIC & POLITICAL ***
-The veteran US diplomat Richard Haass has criticised the US president Joe Biden over his comment that Russian president Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power”. In Twitter posts made on Sunday, Haass, the president of the US Council on Foreign Relations, said Biden had “made a difficult situation more difficult and a dangerous situation more dangerous”.
-Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Gen. Mark A. Milley, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have tried to set up phone calls with Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Gen. Valery Gerasimov but the Russians “have so far declined to engage,” said Pentagon spokesman John Kirby in a statement Wednesday, March 23. According to a CNN report detailing a rare face-to-face meeting between Russian and US military officials last week, the US believes that the refusal for high-level meetings is due to Kremlin worries that the encounters would show them to be vulnerable if they allowed such meetings, because it risks a tacit admission that an abnormal situation exists, according to the readout of the meeting. Though the assumption of vulnerability appears misconceived considering while the Pentagon has allegedly attempted to maintain high-level contacts with Russian counterparts, Secretary of State Antony Blinken has not attempted any conversations with his counterpart, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, since the start of the conflict last month. “A nightmare scenario would be a Russian missile or attack aircraft that destroys a U.S. command post across the Polish-Ukrainian border,” James Stavridis, a retired admiral who served as the Supreme Allied Commander at NATO from 2009 to 2013, told the Washington Post. “A local commander might respond immediately, thinking the event was a precursor to a wider attack. This could lead to rapid and irreversible escalation, to include potential use of nuclear weapons.”
-A secret plan for a “peacekeeping mission” involving 10,000 NATO troops from different countries entering Ukraine and imposing a limited no fly zone is allegedly being prepared by the Polish government. Polish news outlet Onet reports that President of Poland Andrzej Duda is waiting on a green light from the White House to implement the proposal. Created by the Polish Ministry of Defense, the plan would see 10,000 NATO troops formed of an international contingent sent to Ukraine to “protect humanitarian corridors” and enforce a no fly zone over them. “It means setting up military units, at a distance from the frontlines, that would be tasked with defending humanitarian convoys with food and medicine and the ones allowing civilians to escape danger,” the article states. According to the report, the White House was considering the plan before Thursday’s NATO summit in Brussels.
-Joe Biden said Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power”, appealing to the Russian people against the killing of innocent civilians, and telling Ukraine that the US stands with them. He told a cheering crowd: “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power. God bless you all, and may God defend our freedom and may God protect our troops.” And quoting Pope John Paul II, he said: “Never, ever give up hope, never doubt, never tire, never become discouraged. Be not afraid.” President Biden also sent a direct message to the people of Russia to say they are not the “enemy”.
-According to Reuters, a White House official has already responded to say that Joe Biden was not calling for a regime change in Russia with his comment that Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power”.
-Russia has responded to Joe Biden’s remarks that Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power”: Reacting to @POTUS comment that Putin “cannot remain in power.” Kremlin spokesman Peskov tells me: “This not to be decided by Mr.Biden. It should only be a choice of the people of the Russian Federation.”
-British foreign minister Liz Truss says the UK could lift sanctions imposed on Russian individuals and companies if Russia withdraws from Ukraine and commits to “no further aggression”, the Telegraph is reporting.
-In a possible shift on a plan to transfer Soviet-era fighter jets from Poland to Kyiv to boost Ukraine’s firepower in the skies - rejected earlier this month by the Pentagon as too not “tenable” - Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, says the US no longer objects, according to AFP. “As far as we can conclude, the ball is now on the Polish side,” Kuleba said in written comments to the newswire after a meeting with US president Joe Biden in Warsaw. Biden, who was winding up a whirlwind visit to Poland after holding a series of urgent summits in Brussels with Western allies, met both Kuleba and Ukrainian defence minister Oleksii Reznikov in an emphatic show of support for Kyiv.
-In his nightly address to the Ukrainian people and the world, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has called on the US and Europe to supply more planes, tanks, anti-missiles defences and anti-ship weaponry, arguing that Europe’s own security was at stake. “This [the weaponry] is what our partners have. This is what is covered with dust at their storage facilities. After all, this is all for freedom not only in Ukraine - this is for freedom in Europe,” he said. “So who runs the Euro-Atlantic community? Is it still Moscow because of intimidation?” he added.
-As he spoke, Russian missiles rained down on Ukraine’s most pro-western city, just 40 miles from the Polish border. The timing of the attacks, only the third on west Ukrainian targets since the war began, and the closest to Lviv’s city centre and its residential areas, was clearly designed to send a message to the White House.
-The Kremlin has again raised the spectre of the use of nuclear weapons in the war with Ukraine. Dmitry Medvedev, a former Russian president who is deputy chairman of the country’s security council, said Moscow could use them to strike an enemy that only used conventional weapons.
The comments prompted Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy, appearing by video link at Qatar’s Doha Forum, to warn that Moscow was a direct threat to the world. “Russia is deliberating bragging they can destroy with nuclear weapons, not only a certain country but the entire planet,” he said.
-Ukrainian troops are reporting that Russian forces are deploying white phosphorus against them near the eastern city of Avdiivka. While these reports cannot be confirmed, Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskiy told Nato leaders earlier this week that Russia had used phosphorus bombs that had killed adults and children.
-Russian forces seized Slavutych, a northern town close to the Chernobyl nuclear site on Saturday and took its mayor, Yuri Fomichev, prisoner. However, after failing to disperse the numerous protesters in the main square on Saturday – despite deploying stun grenades and firing overhead – the Russian troops released the mayor and agreed to leave.
-The Ukrainian parliament has confirmed a fresh Russian attack on the nuclear research reactor in Kharkiv. In a tweet, it quoted the State Nuclear Regulatory Inspectorate as saying, “It is currently impossible to estimate the extent of damage due to hostilities that do not stop in the area of the nuclear installation.”
-The White House revealed on Saturday evening that it would include a proposal to impose a "minimum tax" on all families (and individuals) with more than $100 million in assets in its 2023 budget proposal, according to a Washington Post report. If enacted, it would mandate that the wealthiest Americans pay an annual rate of at least 20% on all income, including unrealized capital gains on all liquid assets. The quasi-wealth-tax comes as Biden and Manchin look to revive a scaled back version of 'Build Back Better'. The White House is also planning on including a budget placeholder known as a "deficit-neutral reserve fund" - essentially a blank space that the final BBB proposal can be plugged into later, after negotiations have been finalized, according to Bloomberg.
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