Russia/Ukraine War Update - May 29th, 2022

*** MILITARY SITUATION ***

Ukraine is in a race against time to save the eastern Donbas region as relentless Russian artillery and air strikes threaten to turn the tide of the war, and support for Kyiv’s continued defiance among some west European allies appears to be slipping.

Russian forces are now in full control of the town of Lyman in eastern Ukraine, the Russian defence ministry has claimed. Yesterday, Ukraine reported Russia had captured most of Lyman but that its forces were blocking an advance to Sloviansk, a city a half-hour drive further southwest.

A quick glance at a map will reveal Lyman as the MAJOR railway hub that services the entire region. This effectively cuts off rail supplies to the Ukrainian troops caught in the Severodonetsk pocket, and also will make it much harder for them to withdraw before they become tactically encircled.

Russia continues to bombard areas of Donbas with shelling and seize more territory in Ukraine’s east. Russia’s defence ministry claims troops have captured the strategically important city of Lyman and several other smaller towns and encircled Sievierodonetsk, which Ukraine denies.

Russian 203mm 2S7 self-propelled howitzers (30 mile range) in action:

Russia TOS-1A multiple rocket launchers firing thermobaric munitions against entrenched Ukrainian positions:

-Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a Saturday night television address that conditions in Donbas are “indescribably difficult”. He thanked Ukrainian defenders holding out in the face of the onslaught.

-Zelenskiy also conceded that, while he is certain his country will take back all the land Russia has seized since its 24 February invasion, other territory, such as Crimea, which Russia took in 2014, cannot be recovered by force. “I do not believe that we can restore all of our territory by military means. If we decide to go that way, we will lose hundreds of thousands of people,” he said.

-Russia’s Tass news agency says president Vladimir Putin on Saturday signed into law a measure scrapping the upper age limit for military recruits in the face of mounting losses in Ukraine. UK intelligence estimated this month Russia had lost about a third of its ground forces.

-Officials in the south eastern port city of Mykolaiv said at least one person was killed, and at least six injured, in Russian shelling. Two rounds landed in courtyards of high-rise buildings, and one shell fell close to a kindergarten, CNN reported.

*** ECONOMIC & POLITICAL ***

-Ukrainian officials say they urgently need advanced US-made mobile multiple launch rocket systems (MLRS) to halt Russian advances in Luhansk and Donetsk. The rockets would be capable of striking Russian firing positions, military bases, air strips and supply lines at a range of up to 300km (185 miles). Moscow, keenly aware of the game-changing potential of the rocket systems, has already voiced strong objections. “If the Americans do this, they will clearly cross a red line,” said Olga Skabeeva, an influential Russian state TV host whose views reflect the Kremlin’s. Russia’s response could be “very harsh”, she warned. US news outlets reported on Saturday that Biden had agreed to provide some rocket systems as part of a major new US arms package for Ukraine to be announced this week. The package may also include another advanced weapon, the high mobility artillery rocket system, known as Himars.

-Robert Spingarn from Melius Research asked Raytheon CEO Greg Hayes at the time: "Will the Army replace the current 1,400 stingers that were sent to Ukraine?" Hayes replied Raytheon is "currently producing stingers for an international customer, but we have a very limited stock of material for stinger production." Like with everything related to the ease with which Congress and the administration shovels taxpayer money overseas, the Pentagon has apparently come up with a solution... in the form of more, more, more taxpayer money. "The U.S. Army has signed a deal to buy $687 million worth of anti-air Stinger missiles to replenish stocks sent to Ukraine, sources said on Friday," Reuters reports. The Stingers are in "hot demand" we are told: "The shoulder-fired anti-aircraft Stinger missiles made by Raytheon Technologies were in hot demand in Ukraine, where they have successfully stopped Russian assaults from the air, and in neighboring European countries who fear they may also need to beat back Russian forces," writes Reuters further. Again, late last month it was one of the DoD's biggest contractors that "alerted" the Pentagon that it needs to do some urgent replentishing. Raytheon's Hayes had described that "DoD hasn't bought a stinger in about 18 years. And some of the components are no longer commercially available, and so we're going to have to go out and redesign some of the electronics in the missile of the seeker head." Hayes said it's "going to take us a little bit of time" to ramp up production and doesn't expect DoD to place large replenishment orders for stingers until 2023 or 2024.

-A consignment of Russian crude oil that has waited off Sri Lanka’s coast for more than a month was finally unloaded in Colombo on Saturday in a move beneficial to both countries. That the cash-strapped Sri Lanka was finally able to come up with $75m (£59m) to pay for it could prove a timely boost to Russia, which faces European sanctions on its oil from Monday when EU leaders meet to discuss new measures to punish the country for its invasion of Ukraine. Moscow, meanwhile, has been negotiating further exports to Sri Lanka, of crude, coal, diesel and petrol as the island nation suffers an economic downturn and severe fuel shortages.

-Russian President Vladimir Putin in a Saturday phone call with his French and German counterparts Emmanuel Macron and Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Moscow stands "ready" to re-engage in peace talks with the Ukrainian government. The phone call came as some Western officials have belatedly admitted that Russian forces are making steady gains in the Donbas, also as the Luhansk is about to come under total Russian control. The focus of the call included Macron and Scholz urging the Russian leader to immediately hold "serious negotiations" with President Zelensky; however the European leaders reportedly requested that captured Azov battalion members from Mariupol must be released, which the Kremlin balked at, also given the group's neo-Nazi identity. A follow-up Kremlin statement said of the call that "Special attention was given to the state of affairs on the negotiating track, which is frozen because of Kiev. Vladimir Putin confirmed Russia is open to resuming the dialogue."

-On Saturday Russia announced it conducted another successful test of the Zircon hypersonic missile, which reportedly flew over a distance of 1,000km (or 621 miles) after it was launched at a target in the White Sea. The missile was fired from the Russian navy's Admiral Grigorovich-class frigate the waters of the Barents Sea. The identified area for the test, given the hypersonic was launched from the Barents, is very close to waters off Finland and Sweden.

-Spain is sending a battery of surface-to-air missiles and around 100 troops to the Nato forward presence mission in Latvia, joining around 500 compatriots already present in the Baltic state, El País reported.

-The New York Times reports that Russia has resorted to crowdsourcing food, clothes and even military supplies for its troops from its own citizens. “No one expected there to be such a war,” Tatyana Plotnikova, a business owner in the city of Novokuybyshevsk, told the Times in a phone interview. “I think no one was ready for this”. The article suggests Russia’s $66bn (£52.2bn) defence budget was woefully inadequate for such a large scale undertaking as the invasion of Ukraine. A grass-roots network of citizens is donating roubles to pay for, among other items, drones, crutches and potatoes to be sent to the front line.

-For the third year, Americans are greeting the unofficial start of summer shadowed by the specter of the coronavirus amid rising covid-19 cases and hospitalizations across the country. The United States is recording more than 100,000 infections a day — at least five times higher than this point last …

COVID CASES USA 7-DAY AVG
110,838 MAY 27 2022
23,011 MAY 27 2021