Russia/Ukraine War Update - April 26th, 2022

*** MILITARY SITUATION ***

 Russian forces conducted precision missile strikes against five Ukrainian railway stations in central and western Ukraine on April 25 in a likely effort to disrupt Ukrainian reinforcements to eastern Ukraine and Western aid shipments. A series of likely coordinated Russian missile strikes conducted within an hour of one another early on April 25 hit critical transportation infrastructure in Vinnytsia, Poltava, Khmelnytskyi, Rivne, and Zhytomyr oblasts. Russian forces seek to disrupt Ukrainian reinforcements and logistics. The Kremlin may have additionally conducted this series of strikes—an abnormal number of precision missile strikes for one day—to demonstrate Russia’s ability to hit targets in Western Ukraine and to disrupt western aid shipments after US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s surprise visit to Kyiv over the weekend. However, Russian precision strike capabilities will remain limited and unlikely to decisively affect the course of the war; open-source research organization Bellingcat reported on April 24 that Russia has likely used 70% of its total stockpile of precision missiles to date.

Russian forces have established control of Mariupol. However, Ukrainian defenders retain pockets of resistance in the Port of Mariupol and in the Azovstal Metallurgical Zone, with the Azovstal Steel Plant the focal point of Ukrainian defense. 

Local Ukrainian counterattacks retook territory north of Kherson and west of Izyum in the past 24 hours. Russian forces continue to make little progress in scattered, small-scale attacks in eastern Ukraine. Ukrainian forces are successfully halting Russian efforts to bypass Ukrainian defensive positions around Izyum, and Russian forces are struggling to complete even tactical encirclements. Local Ukrainian counterattacks in Kherson Oblast are unlikely to develop into a larger counteroffensive in the near term but are disrupting Russian efforts to completely capture Kherson Oblast and are likely acting as a drain on Russian combat power that could otherwise support Russia’s main effort in eastern Ukraine.

-The Russian defence ministry has claimed that its armed forces have struck the Kremenchug oil refinery, to the north-west of Dnipro. The ministry claims the Russian air force struck 56 military infrastructure targets overnight. Russia is also claiming to have downed two Ukrainian drones flying over Russia’s Kursk region.

-Russia fired rockets at two towns in Ukraine’s central Vinnytsia region on Monday, causing an unspecified number of deaths and injuries, regional governor Serhiy Borzov reported. The head of Ukraine’s railways has said five train stations have come under fire in western and central Ukraine, and that casualties have been reported.

-Five railway stations in central and western Ukraine were hit by Russian airstrikes in the space of one hour on Monday. Oleksander Kamyshin, the head of Ukrainian Railways, said five train stations came under fire causing an unspecified number of casualties

*** ECONOMIC & POLITICAL ***

-The US has launched a new web portal which will allow a US-based sponsor to apply for Ukrainian refugees and their immediate family members to stay in the US for up to two years. The programme, called Uniting for Ukraine, was announced by president Joe Biden last week and foresees the arrival of up to 100,000 Ukrainians. Would-be sponsors have to fill out a form and will then be vetted by US authorities to “protect against exploitation and abuse, and ensure that they are able to financially support the individual(s) whom they agree to support,” according to the web portal.

-The 193 members of the UN General Assembly are to vote Tuesday on a resolution that would require the five permanent members of the Security Council to justify their use of the veto in future, AFP reports.

-The Ukrainian grain harvest is likely to be down by 20% this year on last year due to reduced sowing areas following the invasion, the UK’s Ministry of Defence has warned in its latest intelligence update on the conflict.

-The US said today that new aid for Ukraine will likely be apart of a longer-term aid package that requires approval from US lawmakers, reports Reuters. US president Joe Biden said last week that he would seek approval from Congress for a larger aid package after giving more than $800m in military aid to Ukraine, with the White House confirming today that additional aid given would be a part of a longer-term package. The White House also said they could not confirm the maximum amount of aid that the US is willing to give Ukraine.

-The US will begin by only sending ambassadors to Lviv on short trips versus fully reopening its embassy in Kyiv. US officials have also confirmed that they hope to send diplomats to Kyiv, but have said that it depends on the security situation.

-Sergei Lavrov told Russian news agencies that Russia’s peace talks with Ukraine will continue, but that there remains a “real” danger of a third world war. The Russian foreign minister was critical of the Ukrainian president’s approach to peace talks, accusing him of “pretending” to negotiate and calling him a “good actor”. “Good will has its limits. But if it isn’t reciprocal, that doesn’t help the negotiation process,” he said. “But we are continuing to engage in negotiations with the team delegated by Zelenskiy, and these contacts will go on.” He said he was confident that “everything will of course finish with the signing of an accord”, but that “the parameters of this accord will be defined by the state of the fighting that will have taken place at the moment the accord becomes reality.” The danger of a world war is real, he said. “The danger is serious, it is real, you can’t underestimate it,” Lavrov told the Interfax news agency.

-Russia’s foreign ministry said it had expelled 40 German diplomatic staff in a retaliatory move after Berlin expelled the same number of Russian diplomats.

-Ukraine’s defence minister said today that Ukraine has started to receive 155mm calibre artillery from the US and other partners. From CNN’s Bianna Golodryga citing a report from the Financial Times: Ukraine’s Defense Minister says Ukraine is already starting to receive 155mm calibre artillery — the standard Nato size — from the US and from other partners, including France. He predicts that longer-range weaponry will ‘fundamentally’ change fight with Russia.

-Poland said today that it sent tanks to Ukraine, reports Reuters citing Poland prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki. When asked if Poland sent tanks to Ukraine, Morawiecki responded “Yes,” declining to provide additional details on the number of tanks provided.

-The UK defence secretary, Ben Wallace, has confirmed that the UK will send a small number of Stormer missile launching vehicles to Ukraine, and that the overall amount of military aid could rise to £500m. The UK has sent 5,361 NLAWs, 200 Javelins and will provide 250 Starstreak anti-air missiles, Wallace told MPs.

-State security HQ in Transnistria targeted in a hit-and-run rocket propelled grenade attack, a source in Tiraspol tells me. Transnistria is a pro-Russia, self-declared republic in Moldova with a long border with Ukraine. There are about 1,500 Russian troops stationed there.

-Ukraine will receive 22 new ambulances, as well as more than 44 fire engines with rescue equipment, thermal imaging cameras and thousands of items of protective clothing, from the UK, Reuters reports. The aid is intended to help emergency services in Ukraine deal with the aftermath of Russian attacks.

-Austria has just broken from what was looking like an emerging EU consensus on Ukraine's membership bid, with Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg announcing Vienna's opposition on Sunday at the 14th European media summit. Underscoring Austria's commitment to neutrality as a central element to Ukraine's "self-definition", he asserted that Ukraine's application for candidate status should be rejected by the 27-country economic and political union. "We don’t belong to any military alliance and we don’t want to," he stressed in the speech, instead urging a "different way" for Ukraine to deepen its ties with Europe, strongly suggesting that EU membership for Ukraine would unnecessarily deepen Europe's involvement in the conflict amid the Russian invasion. He called Austria "militarily neutral, but not politically" on the issue of the Russian war in Ukraine. Additionally, Schallenberg went so far as the spell out that Ukraine shouldn't be granted membership even in the future.  As part of current rules and procedures dictating the process, to even start Ukraine's candidate status, all EU governments would have to unanimously agree.

-Sweden and Finland have agreed to submit applications to join Nato at the same time, the Swedish newspaper Expressen reports. Both countries have agreed to announce their applications in the week of 16 to 22 May, during Finland’s president Sauli Niinistö’s visit to Stockholm, according to Swedish government sources.

-Russia has warned the US against sending more arms to Ukraine. Washington ambassador Anatoly Antonov said “We stressed the unacceptability of this situation when the United States of America pours weapons into Ukraine, and we demanded an end to this practice.”

-US 'wants to see Russia weakened', says defence secretary. Here’s more from the US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, following his meeting with the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy in Kyiv. Speaking to reporters from an undisclosed location in Poland near the Ukrainian border, Austin was asked what the US now sees as success in Ukraine. Austin replied: We want to see Ukraine remain a sovereign country, a democratic country able to protect its sovereign territory. We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine. It has already lost a lot of military capability. We want to see them not have the capability to very quickly reproduce that capability.

-Large fires broke out early on Monday at two oil depots in the Russian city of Bryansk, less than 100 miles from the border with Ukraine, in a potential act of sabotage by Kyiv. Russian state media said the first fire occurred at a civilian facility in Bryansk holding 10,000 tons of fuel, followed by a second fire at a military fuel depot holding 5,000 tons. Bryansk, which is less than 100 miles north-east of the Ukrainian border, serves as a logistics base for Moscow’s military campaign in Ukraine. Military analyst Rob Lee said that the footage suggested the fire was “probably” caused by Ukrainian sabotage. “It sounds like something is flying through the air before the explosion. I think it was probably a Ukrainian attack, but we cannot be certain,” Lee said. “The fact that it was two separate sites not far from the border is important,” Lee said, adding that the fires may have been caused by a Tochka-U tactical ballistic missile, which he said had the range to reach both targets if deployed near the Russian-Ukrainian border. Lee added that if Ukrainian involvement was confirmed, the strikes were likely to have been conducted to “disrupt fuel supplies for the Russian military”.

-Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, has criticised world leaders for their “excuses and half-measures” and called for an EU embargo on Russian oil.

-The Russian defence ministry on Monday also repeated its claims that “nationalists” were holding civilian hostages as “human shields” at the Azovstal plant.

-Three Nato warships have arrived in the southwestern Finnish port of Turku to train with Finland’s navy, Reuters reports. The Latvian minelayer LVNS Virsaitis and minehunters Estonian ENS Sakala and Dutch HNLMS Schiedam will train with two minehunters from Finland’s coastal fleet, Finland’s defence forces said in a statement today. The two-day exercise will prepare the Finnish ships to take part in Nato response forces and focus on “mine countermeasures and working in a multinational framework”, the statement said.

-Russian president Vladimir Putin on Monday said the FSB spy agency had foiled what he cast as a Western plan to kill a prominent Russian journalist. “This morning, the Federal Security Service stopped the activities of a terrorist group that planned to attack and kill one famous Russian TV journalist … We have indisputable facts,” Putin said during a meeting with the country’s top prosecutors=“After experiencing an information fiasco in Russia, the West has now turned to attempts to kill Russian journalists,” Putin added, without providing evidence to support his claim. Shortly after Putin’s statements, Russian news agency Tass said that the security services had arrested Russian members of a neo-nazi group called National Socialism/White Power that was allegedly plotting to kill popular pro-Kremlin state television host Vladimir Solovyev on “orders” of Ukraine.

-An active-duty South Korean marine who made an unauthorised overseas trip – reportedly an attempt to reach Ukraine – has been arrested after arriving back home, Seoul’s military has said.

-The OSCE, the world’s largest security body, has said it is “extremely concerned” after several of its Ukrainian members were believed to have been arrested in Russian-controlled territories in the country’s east.