*** MILITARY SITUATION ***
Russian forces began a new phase of large-scale offensive operations in eastern Ukraine on April 18 likely intended to capture the entirety of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts. Russian forces have been concentrating reinforcements—including both newly-deployed units and damaged units withdrawn from northeastern Ukraine—to the Donbas axis for several weeks. Russian forces conducted large-scale assaults focused on Rubizhne, Popasna, and Marinka with heavy artillery support on April 18 after previously conducting only localized attacks and shelling along the line of contact. Russian forces have not secured any major territorial gains as of publication.
The Russian offensive in the east is unlikely to be dramatically more successful than previous Russian offensives, but Russian forces may be able to wear down Ukrainian defenders or achieve limited gains. Russian forces did not take the operational pause that was likely necessary to reconstitute and properly integrate damaged units withdrawn from northeastern Ukraine into operations in eastern Ukraine. As we have assessed previously, Russian forces withdrawn from around Kyiv and going back to fight in Donbas have, at best, been patched up and filled out with soldiers from other damaged units, and the Russian military has few, if any, cohesive units not previously deployed to Ukraine to funnel into new operations.[1] Frequent reports of disastrously low Russian morale and continuing logistics challenges indicate the effective combat power of Russian units in eastern Ukraine is a fraction of their on-paper strength in numbers of battalion tactical groups (BTGs). Russian forces may certainly be able to wear down Ukrainian positions in eastern Ukraine through the heavy concentration of firepower and sheer weight of numbers, but likely at a high cost. A sudden and dramatic Russian offensive success remains highly unlikely, however, and Ukrainian tactical losses would not spell the end of the campaign in eastern Ukraine, much less the war as a whole.
Russian cruise missiles struck a Ukrainian vehicle repair shop in Lviv, western Ukraine, killing civilians in Lviv for the first time in the war. Social media users depicted several missiles striking a warehouse and railway junction in Lviv and killing several civilians on April 18.[4] The Russian Ministry of Defense claimed that Russian forces destroyed a logistics center in Lviv used to store weapons arriving in Ukraine from the United States and European Union on April 18.[5] Russian forces seek to disrupt western aid shipments to the Ukrainian military but likely lack large numbers of the precision weapons needed to frequently strike these targets in western Ukraine.
Russian forces likely captured the Port of Mariupol on April 16 despite Ukrainian General Staff denials, reducing organized Ukrainian resistance in the city to the Azovstal factory in eastern Mariupol. Russian and DNR forces released footage on April 16 confirming their presence in several key locations in southwestern Mariupol, including the port itself. Isolated groups of Ukrainian troops may remain active in Mariupol outside of the Azovstal factory, but they will likely be cleared out by Russian forces in the coming days. Russian forces likely seek to force the remaining defenders of the Azovstal factory to capitulate through overwhelming firepower to avoid costly clearing operations, but remaining Ukrainian defenders appear intent on staging a final stand. Russian forces will likely complete the capture of Mariupol in the coming week, but final assaults will likely continue to cost them dearly.
The GUR reported Russian military authorities established a commission intended to run from March 2 to April 24 in occupied Horlivka to identify the reasons for personnel shortages among Russian forces. The GUR reported that Russian investigators discovered the commanders of Russia’s 3rd Motor Rifle Brigade was 100% staffed at the beginning of the invasion when it in fact only had 55% of its personnel and arrested two battalion commanders in the brigade. The GUR also reported the FSB arrested DNR Defense Spokesperson Eduard Basurin for his ”careless statement” on April 11 revealing Russian intent to use chemical weapons in Mariupol, though there is still no independent confirmation of the Ukrainian claim of Russian chemical weapons use.
-Russian forces likely captured the Port of Mariupol on April 16 despite Ukrainian General Staff denials.
-Russian forces likely seek to force the remaining defenders of the Azovstal factory to capitulate through overwhelming firepower to avoid costly clearing operations, but remaining Ukrainian defenders appear intent on staging a final stand.
-Evgeny Prigozhin, financier of the Wagner Group, is likely active on the ground in eastern Ukraine to coordinate Wagner Group recruitment and funding.
-Russian forces continued their build up around Izyum but did not conduct any offensive operations.
-Russia destroys production buildings of armoured vehicle plant in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv. A military repair facility was also destroyed in the city of Mykolaiv, reports the Interfax news agency quoting Russia’s defence ministry. The strikes were carried out by high-precision long-range weapons. Russia also downed one Ukrainian SU-25 aircraft near Kharkiv Oblast, in eastern Ukraine.
-Reuters reports the latest operational claims from the Russian defence ministry. They have said that Russian missile and artillery forces struck 1,260 targets in Ukraine overnight, and that anti-aircraft forces downed a Ukrainian MiG-29 jet in the Donetsk region.
-Russia has 76 battalion tactical groups in the Donbas region of Ukraine and in the country’s southeast with 11 of those added over the last several days, a senior US defence department official said in a statement on Monday night.
-The southern port city of Mariupol has not fallen to Russian forces, US officials added. “Our assessment is Mariupol is still contested,” the Pentagon official said. If Russian forces succeed in taking full control of Mariupol, that could free up nearly a dozen battalion tactical groups for use elsewhere in the Donbas.
-Russian troops have reportedly captured the east Ukraine town of Kreminna while local authorities have urged residents in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions to evacuate.
*** ECONOMIC & POLITICAL ***
-The first shipments of a new US military aid package have arrived at Ukraine’s borders, a senior Pentagon official confirmed. “There have been four flights from the United States arriving into the theatre just yesterday,” the official said on Monday, with a fifth flight due shortly. Last week, the United States unveiled a $800-million tranche of equipment for Ukraine, including helicopters, howitzers and armoured personnel carriers.
-Britain will also reportedly soon send armoured missile launchers to Ukraine after Russia started its full-scale offensive to take control of the country’s east, PA Media is reporting. The ministry of defence demonstrated the Stormer High Velocity Missile (HVM) launcher for Ukrainians on Salisbury Plain two weeks ago, according to The Sun, with the paper adding the 13-tonne vehicles can be flown to the war on C-17 transport planes in days. The Stormer is manufactured by BAE Systems, needs just three people to operate it and and uses Starstreak missiles, which can be used to take down low-flying aircraft.
-New York Times: “To Push Back Russians, Ukrainians Hit a Village With Cluster Munitions” Lubov Dvoretska, 62, lost her husband, Olexandr, during the shelling of Husarivka by Ukrainian forces just days before Russian troops retreated: “Ones are shooting this way, others another way”. The truth and reality of the war is that both Ukrainians AND Russians will set up positions in settlements. And both Russians AND Ukrainians will fire into settlements when the other side is entrenched in them.
-Turkey has begun a major cross-border military offensive, targeting Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militants in the northern part of Iraq, according to the Defense Ministry, in Ankara. The operation involves an extensive airstrike campaign using jets, helicopters, and drones, as well as a ground incursion by commando troops, Defense Minister Hulusi Akar announced in a video address on Monday morning.
-It has cost Serbia a lot to defy the West’s push to impose sanctions on Russia over its military operation in Ukraine, President Aleksandar Vucic said on Sunday. He believes he would be celebrated by the West and hailed as a hero had Belgrade backed the economic restrictions against Moscow. Vucic was re-elected with 58% of the vote earlier this month. He repeatedly said that Belgrade has been under serious pressure and “blackmailing” to join in on the restrictions placed on Russia after it launched a large-scale offensive against Ukraine in late February.
-Senior officials in Serbia have blasted Britain after a report in local media claimed that the country had secretly supplied advanced weapon systems to Kosovo, a breakaway region that Belgrade considers to be under its sovereignty. 'Novosti' claimed on Sunday that 50 NLAW shoulder-fired anti-tank missiles had arrived in the partially recognised statelet, with more weapons to come.
-Private aerospace firm SpaceX has successfully launched another US spy satellite into orbit, this time deploying a used Falcon 9 rocket to carry its payload into space. Sunday’s mission from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California marked the first time that a US National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) satellite has been carried into orbit on a used rocket. The same Falcon 9 was used to launch an NRO satellite in February.
-The Russian offensive to seize eastern Ukraine and the “battle for Donbas” has begun, Ukraine’s president Volodymr Zelenskiy said. “Now we can already state that the Russian troops have begun the battle for the Donbas, for which they have been preparing for a long time,” he said in a video address, adding that a “significant part of the entire Russian army is now concentrated on this offensive”. Presidential chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, said: “The second phase of the war has begun.”
-Accusations of embezzlement have been leveled at France’s National Rally party leader, Marine Le Pen, and several of her close associates, just a week before the 53-year-old politician crosses swords with incumbent President Emmanuel Macron in the second round of the French presidential election on April 24.
-Taiwan should ramp up its military cooperation with the US and start hosting American troops on its soil as it did before the 1979 switch of diplomatic recognition to Beijing, former US National Security Advisor John Bolton proposed at a policy event on Saturday. Both the Washington and Taipei should boost military spending on the island’s defense, Bolton insisted, adding that the formal stationing of American troops could be part of a solution to the threat from China.
-Joe Biden's decision to release 180 million barrels of oil from the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve - one million barrels per day for 180 days, was meant to help lower US gasoline prices "because Putin price hike." Instead, it is heading for Europe. According to Bloomberg, citing a person familiar with the matter, the Suezmax ship Advantage Spring - sailing for Rotterdam, according to ship-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg - received emergency SPR sweet crude from Energy Transfer’s Nederland oil facility around April 1 for export. The Suezmax also received SPR crude from Aframax Eagle Hatteras, which loaded at same terminal in first week of April. The Advantage Spring was chartered by Atlantic Trading, an affiliate of Total, ship fixtures data show. According to Matt Smith, oil analyst at commodity data firm Kpler, this is the first export of SPR crude since last November. Which means the oil was apportioned from Biden's shock SPR release.
-French finance minister Bruno Le Maire said that an embargo on Russian oil at a European Union level was in the works, adding that France’s president Emmanuel Macron wants such a move
-Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi has apparently all but given up on a negotiated solution to the Ukraine crisis, saying he suspects that it’s a “waste of time” to negotiate with Russian President Vladimir Putin about ending the conflict.
-The Biden administration is implementing a self-imposed ban on all anti-satellite weapons testing, in order to take the lead in highlighting what it says are the dangerous and irresponsible Russian tests in space, which have lately created a potentially disastrous field of space debris. China has also been accused of similarly reckless anti-satellite missile testing. NBC reported the initiative Monday based on admin sources, and a briefing provided to Congress indicates that the move is to address "the most pressing threats to the security and sustainability of space, as demonstrated by Russia’s November 2021 destructive direct-ascent ASAT missile test."
-Ukraine is hoping to receive candidate country status to join the European Union within weeks
-Monday's market highlights:
WTI topped $109, erasing Biden admin SPR planed benefit
US NatGas surged above $8 for the first time since 2008
Corn topped $8 for the first time since 2012
Other markets were wild rollercoasters with stocks dumping overnight, soaring at the cash open, dumping as Europe closed (it was already closed but the algos weren't told), then pumping back to the highs of the day, before puking it all back again. Small Caps were the worst performers but the swings in Nasdaq were the most aggressive. Bonds followed a similar path with an overnight bid was rejected and yields pushed higher during the US day session. The longer-end underperformed while the belly ended the least changed on the day. The yield curve continued to steepen with 2s10s back up to +40bps and 7s10s now uninverting. Gold futures surged back up above $2000 overnight and then puked it all back to close lower on the day. Bitcoin was even more chaotic with a big dump to almost $38500 before someone went panic-bid and lifted the cryptocurrency back up to $41,000. Finally, President Biden has a problem as the resurgence in crude prices (and implicitly wholesale gasoline prices) mean that gas prices at the pump are turning back up and are on course to erase all of the albeit tiny price drop prompted by the Biden SPR Release plan.
-Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) signaled that he wants the US to send troops into Ukraine to fight Russia in an interview on Sunday. When pressed about the issue, Coons said Russian President Vladimir Putin “will only stop when we stop him.” Coons was asked on CBS News’s Face the Nation about comments he made last week in an address to the University of Michigan. In the speech, Coons said the Biden administration and Congress should “come to a common position about when we are willing to go the next step and to send not just arms but troops to the aid in defense of Ukraine … If the answer is never, then we are inviting another level of escalation in brutality by Putin.” When asked in the CBS interview if President Biden was wrong to say he’ll never send troops into Ukraine, Coons said, “The American people cannot turn away from this tragedy in Ukraine. I think the history of the 21st century turns on how fiercely we defend freedom in Ukraine, and that Putin will only stop when we stop him.”
-Russia has reportedly hit hundreds of targets across Ukraine Monday in a significant expansion of its long-range strikes and show of air power. Significantly this includes multiple missile strikes on the major Western city of Lviv, which has for much of the war been considered relatively 'safe' compared to the eastern half of the country. Ukrainian officials say at least seven people were killed and 12 wounded due to the strikes on Lviv, with NBC underscoring, "The attack marked a deadly extension of Russia's war into a city that has become a refuge for thousands fleeing from further east as well as a major supply and logistics hub."
The projectiles are being described as 'powerful' cruise missiles. "Five powerful missile strikes at once on the civilian infrastructure of the old European city of Lviv," Ukrainian presidential aide Mykhaylo Podolyak said Monday, adding: "The Russians continue barbarically attacking Ukrainian cities from the air, cynically declaring to the whole world their ‘right’ to kill Ukrainians."
-The governments of Athens, Nicosia and Valetta have blocked sanctions aiming to ban Russian ships or those with Russian interests from EU ports, EURACTIV Greece has learned. Particularly, the European Commission had proposed banning all ships with a Russian flag or with another flag, i.e. Panama, but of Russian ownership. Ships with a Russian flag have been banned from EU ports, while proposed sanctions also to ban ships with another flag but with Russian interests have been vetoed by the three countries. The veto was exercised on the day when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was addressing the Greek parliament, EURACTIV Greece reported.
-The situation in Mariupol, in the southeast, looks bleak for a couple thousand or more Ukrainian fighters said to be surrounding by the Russian military. "Ukrainian officials said the remaining defenders of Mariupol are encircled by Russian forces but have not surrendered the strategically important port city, as a deadly strike was reported in Lviv near the Polish border," Bloomberg reports.
-Germany will increase a military support fund for foreign countries to €2 billion, of which a large share will go to Ukraine to help it purchase weapons, Finance Minister Christian Lindner announced late Friday. Lindner wrote on Twitter that Germany will increase its Ertüchtigungshilfe — a financial support tool to strengthen military and security forces in partner countries — to €2 billion, adding that “the funds will largely benefit Ukraine.” The fund was €225 million last year. The increase in foreign military aid will be part of Germany’s supplementary budget for this year, Lindner said, adding that Chancellor Olaf Scholz “had requested this.”
-4 Ukrainian officials have run more than 8,600 facial recognition searches on dead or captured Russian soldiers in the 50 days since Moscow’s invasion began, using the scans to identify bodies and contact hundreds of their families in what may be one of the most gruesome applications of the technology to date. The country’s IT Army, a volunteer force of hackers and activists that takes its direction from the Ukrainian government, says it has used those identifications to inform the families of the deaths of 582 Russians, including by sending them photos of the abandoned corpses.
-Protests against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continued over the weekend. In Paris, France, demonstrators rallied at the Place de la Republique carrying placards, Ukrainian flags and sunflowers.
-The United Nations refugee agency said 4,869,019 Ukrainians had left the country since Russia invaded in February – up 32,574 from Saturday’s total, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees chief, Filippo Grandi’s, said on Sunday.
-A second British soldier fighting with the Ukrainian army was paraded on Russian television after being captured in Mariupol. Shaun Pinner, 48, said he had been fighting alongside Ukrainian marines when Vladimir Putin’s forces invaded nearly eight weeks ago.
-A fresh series of Russian airstrikes came as a reminder this weekend that the war in the Ukrainian capital is far from over, despite signs of more normal life returning to the streets in recent days.
-Ukraine has vowed that its forces will “fight to the end” in the besieged port city of Mariupol, after a Russian ultimatum for the remaining Ukrainian troops there to surrender expired.
-SAS troops have trained local forces in Kyiv for the first time since the war with Russia began, Ukrainian commanders have told The Times. Officers from two battalions stationed in and around the capital said they had undergone military training from serving British special forces, one last week and the other the week before. Captain Yuriy Myronenko, whose battalion is stationed in Obolon on the northern outskirts of Kyiv, said that military trainers had come to instruct new and returning military recruits to use NLAWs, British-supplied anti-tank missiles that were delivered in February as the invasion was beginning.
-The West should absorb higher costs of living to help wean Germany off of Russian oil, a former British Army commander has said. General Sir Nick Parker called on the public to “re-prioritise”, saying they “would have to take more pain” in order to inflict adequate economic punishment on Russia for invading Ukraine in an interview with the Telegraph. His comments are unlikely to be well-received by British citizens living amidst a cost of living crisis that sees many pushed below the poverty line and forced to choose between heating their homes and feeding their children.
-In what appears Moscow's "answer" to the US and NATO countries continuing to supply major weapons systems to Ukrainian forces, state agency TASS is claiming that Russian forces have brought down a Ukrainian military transport plane that was transporting Western arms. It would mark a massive battlefield development if confirmed, potentially escalating conflict more directly with the West, now that Russia is actively targeting Western arms shipments. The alleged shoot down occurred outside Odessa via anti-air systems, says TASS, while citing Russian Defense Ministry Spokesman Major-General Igor Konashenkov. Though remaining unconfirmed, China state media has also picked up the report, citing the defense ministry statement, which reads:
“Near Odesa Russian anti-aircraft defense forces have shot down a Ukrainian military transport plane, which was delivering a large shipment of arms supplied to Ukraine by Western counties,” Russian Defense Ministry Spokesman Major-General Igor Konashenkov said Saturday.
However, there's nothing in the way of independent or outside sources confirming it, and Ukraine's military has not issued any statements, nor are they likely to admit that their military aircraft were transporting Western weapons shipments, even if accurate.
-The most recent macroeconomic figures show that the Chinese slowdown is much more severe than expected and not only attributable to the covid-19 lockdowns. The lockdowns have an enormous impact. 26 of 31 China mainland provinces have rising covid cases and the fear of a Shanghai-style lockdown is enormous. The information coming from Shanghai proves that these drastic lockdowns create an enormous damage to the population. Millions of citizens without food or medicine and rising suicides have shown that the infamous “zero covid” policy often disguises mass population control and repression. It is easy to use the covid-19 lockdowns as the reason for the weakening of the Chinese economy but that would be a gross simplification. The problem is deeper. China is going through a severe slowdown caused by the burst of the enormous real estate bubble and the crackdown on the private sector, which has led to a cut in investment growth.
-Zelenskiy maintained Ukraine is not willing to give up territory in the east in order to end the war with Russia and acknowledged that the battle could influence the entire course of the war.
No comments:
Post a Comment