*** MILITARY SITUATION ***
Russian and Ukrainian officials announced that the next phase of the Russian invasion of Ukraine began on April 19. Russian forces conducted intensive artillery and air bombardments of many areas along the front line from around Izyum to Mykolaiv but relatively few ground offensive operations. Russian forces continue to receive personnel and equipment reinforcements as well as command-and-control and logistics capabilities even as they conduct air and artillery preparations and some mechanized advances.The Russians have not fully set conditions for a large-scale offensive operation. The Russians have not had enough time to reconstitute forces withdrawn from the Battle of Kyiv and ready them properly for a new offensive in the east. The Russians appear to be still building logistics and command-and-control capabilities even as they start the next round of major fighting. The tempo of Russian operations continues to suggest that President Vladimir Putin is demanding a hasty offensive to achieve his stated objectives, possibly by “Victory Day” on May 9. The haste and partial preparation of the Russian attack will likely undermine its effectiveness and may compromise its success.
Russian forces appear to be attempting to conduct a wide encirclement of Ukrainian troops along axes from Izyum to the southeast and from Donetsk City to the north even as they push west from Popasna and positions north of Severodonetsk. Russian ground offensives in the last 24 hours occurred around Izyum, Kreminna (north of Severodonetsk), and from Donetsk City toward Avdiivka. Only the advance to and possibly through Kreminna made significant progress. An encirclement on this scale would likely take considerable time to complete against Ukrainian resistance. Even if the Russians did complete such an encirclement and trapped a large concentration of Ukrainian forces inside one or more pockets, the Ukrainian defenders would likely be able to hold out for a considerable period and might well be able to break out.
The Russians may alternatively try to complete several smaller encirclements simultaneously, each trapping fewer Ukrainian forces and therefore taking less time to complete and then reduce. Coordinating such operations is complicated and beyond the planning and execution capacities the Russian army has demonstrated in the conflict thus far.
Ukrainian forces continue to defend parts of the Azovstal complex in Mariupol, but Russian officials and media are gathering in and near the city, likely in preparation to declare victory in the coming days whether or not fighting continues.
-Ramzan Kadyrov, the leader of Russia’s Chechnya region and an ally of Vladimir Putin, said Russian forces would completely take over the Azovstal metallurgical plant in the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol today, Reuters reports.
-Russian forces have seized the city of Kreminna in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region and Ukrainian troops have withdrawn from the city, the regional governor has said. Kreminna, a city of more than 18,000 people about 350 miles (560km) south-east of the capital, Kyiv, appears to be the first city captured in a Russian offensive in eastern Ukraine.
-Russia has deployed up to 20,000 mercenaries from Syria, Libya and elsewhere in Ukraine’s Donbas region, sent into battle with no heavy equipment or armoured vehicles, according to a European official. The official said the estimates of mercenary involvement on the ground in eastern Ukraine range from 10,000 to 20,000 and that it was hard to break down that figure between Syrians, Libyans and other fighters recruited by the Russian mercenary company, the Wagner Group.
*** ECONOMIC & POLITICAL ***
-Following earlier this month both Finland and Sweden signaling their intent to join NATO, close Putin ally and former president Dmitry Medvedev, who serves as deputy chairman of Russia's Security Council, has warned that the Western military alliance is engaged in a military buildup along Russia's borders. "A senior Russian official said on Tuesday that NATO's reinforcement of its borders with Russia was no longer a figure of speech and Moscow should be prepared for possible aggressive action, Russia's TASS news agency reported," according to Reuters. "NATO's expansion near Russia's borders is no longer a figure of speech or a set of threats, we must be prepared for aggressive action," he said according to a translation. The fresh words follow Medvedev's prior threats to position nuclear and hypersonic missiles along Russian's western border in the scenario that Finland and Sweden join NATO. The prospect of Finland, which is said to be studying the issue, joining the alliance is especially alarming for the Kremlin, given Russian and its Scandinavian neighbor share a 810-mile border. Sweden, though a little less important geographically, has already announced its intent to join the alliance.
-Concern is growing that the spread of COVID cases and city lockdowns in China will have massive downstream effects for global supply chains that could dwarf previous disruptions since the start of the pandemic. Last May, the huge Yantian container terminal at the Port of Shenzhen throttled down to 30% of normal productivity for a month to stamp out a handful of positive cases there. Hundreds of thousands of shipments that couldn’t enter the port accumulated in factories and warehouses, and many vessels skipped the port to avoid waiting seven days or more at anchor. It took weeks after the port reopened to clear the cargo backlog. The effects cascaded to the U.S. and Europe, resulting in port traffic jams, transit times triple the norm and missed retail deliveries for the holidays. The difference this time is that an entire metropolis — and highly interconnected global trade center — is essentially shut down. Not since the initial 2020 COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan have lockdowns been this extensive in China. “It’s probably worse than Wuhan,” said Jon Monroe, an ocean shipping and supply chain expert who runs a consulting firm. “You’re going to have a lot of pent-up orders. It’s going to be an overwhelming movement of goods” that will drown shipping lines and ports once the lockdowns are lifted.
-Russian President Vladimir Putin and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman discussed this weekend their countries’ cooperation in the OPEC+ oil production pact in their second telephone call since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
-The US will suffer the least damage from the war and has had its growth forecast for 2022 shaved by 0.3 points to 3.7%. Germany and Italy, both more exposed to Russia, have had their growth estimates reduced by 1.7 points and 1.5 points respectively to 2.1% and 2.3%.
-Russia’s defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, accused the US and its Western allies of “doing everything to drag out” Moscow’s military operation in Ukraine by supplying Kyiv with arms, AFP reports.
-Spain’s prime minister Pedro Sanchez will travel to Kyiv “in the coming days”. AFP reports a government spokesperson said Sanchez “will travel to Kyiv in the coming days, you will understand that I can’t give you more information about the visit for security reasons.”
-Echoing The World Bank's pessimistic perspective from yesterday, The IMF has cut its growth forecasts, saying that global economic prospects have been severely set back, largely because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The war adds to the series of supply shocks that have struck the global economy in recent years. Like seismic waves, its effects will propagate far and wide - through commodity markets, trade, and financial linkages.
-Days ago CIA Director William Burns raised the specter of Russia using nuclear weapons in its war on Ukraine. He said in Thursday remarks at Georgia Tech that the US cannot "take lightly" a scenario of tactical nuclear deployment, particularly if the Kremlin should feel increasing desperation as its goals are being thwarted by Ukraine's military resistance and heavier than expected losses. "Given the potential desperation of [Russian] President [Vladimir] Putin and the Russian leadership, given the setbacks that they’ve faced so far militarily, none of us can take lightly the threat posed by a potential resort to tactical nuclear weapons or low-yield nuclear weapons," Burns said at the time. He added that it would "change the world in a flash."
Naturally the intelligence chief's assessment set off a flurry of doomsday speculation and breathless media commentary suggesting Putin sees this as a real option, despite Burns in the same speech ultimately downplaying the idea. "While we’ve seen some rhetorical posturing on the part of the Kremlin about moving to higher nuclear alert levels, so far we haven’t seen a lot of practical evidence of the kind of deployments or military dispositions that would reinforce that concern," Burns said. And of course, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky seized on this, telling CNN's Jake Tapper in a Sunday interview that "We shouldn’t wait for the moment when Russia decides to use nuclear weapons. … We must prepare for that." He went on to say in dramatic fashion that "anti-radiation medicine and air raid shelters would be needed" while underscoring that Russia "can use any weapon, I’m convinced of it."
All of this has put pressure on the Kremlin to respond directly to the allegations, at a moment it ratchets up operations in the east to take the Donbas. On Tuesday Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was asked in an interview with India Today about the possibility of using nukes, to which he responded that Russia will only use conventional weapons in Ukraine. According to Bloomberg, despite Lavrov obviously not being responsible for military decision-making, the comments remain "among the most categorical from a senior Russian official on the issue" which clearly deny the charge.
US mainstream publications, however, are still issuing headlines like the following: "Even if Russia Uses a Nuke, We Probably Won’t—but Putin Would Still Pay Dearly" - arguing for greater and greater sanctions and isolation imposed on Russia by the West. Such a strategy itself appears to be ratcheting tensions to the point there's increasingly no diplomatic off-ramp between Russia and Ukraine's NATO backers, who are still busy shipping weapons in the conflict. Yet The Daily Beast admits that "Current and former U.S. officials say the U.S. and NATO have plenty of resources at their disposal without having to resort to the nuclear option," assessing further that it remains very unlikely nukes would be used in Ukraine.
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