Russia/Ukraine War Update - June 8th, 2022

  *** MILITARY SITUATION ***

-The leader of Ukraine’s pro-Russian separatists in Donetsk, Denis Pushilin, has confirmed the death of a Russian general, Maj Gen Roman Kutuzov, during the war in Ukraine. A reporter of state-run Rossiya 1 earlier said Kutuzov was killed while leading forces from the Russian-controlled east into battle.

-Ukraine’s governor of Luhansk, Serhiy Haidai, said Kyiv’s forces are finding it hard to stave off Russian attacks in the centre of Sievierodonestk but Moscow’s forces do not control the frontline eastern city. In an online update, Haidai also said Russian troops were constantly shelling Sievierodonetsk’s twin city Lysychansk.

-Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu is talking of the residential parts of the pivotal south-eastern city of Sievierodonetsk having been “liberated” by the invading forces.

-Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said some Western-supplied military equipment deployed in the country’s east, including two U.S.-provided artillery systems, had been knocked out by Russian artillery, a claim that could not be independently verified.

-In his latest briefing, Sergei Shoigu said that in the last five days 126 Ukrainian soldiers surrendered bringing the total to 6489 captured Ukrainian servicemen. Around 2500 surrendered in the Azovstal capitulation, and around 1000 in an earlier mass surrender of Ukrainian Marines also in Mariupol. So then around 3000 were captured in various other smaller surrenders in Mariupol and outside of it in the 103 days of war. If the last five days when 126 were captured are typical (a big assumption to make) it would imply that in a typical day (one without mass surrenders of surrounded troops) 25 Ukrainians are captured. (750 per month.) So when Zelensky speaks of 60 to 100 dead and 500 wounded on the Ukrainian side in a day, up to 25 POWs could be added to that tally. On the other hand, if Shoigu’s five days cover the Ukrainian rout at Lyman about a week ago that could skew the numbers as such mini disasters are not the norm.

A significant part of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics were liberated along the left bank of the Seversky Donets, including the cities of Krasny Liman, Svyatogorek and 15 other settlements. Of these, the largest are Studenok, Yarovaya, Kirovsk, Yampol and Drobyshevo. The residential areas of the city of Severodonetsk have also been completely liberated. Control of its industrial zone and nearby settlements continues, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said in a thematic conference call.

The head of the military department noted the successes of the offensive in the Pasna direction: “In general, 97% of the territory of the Luhansk People’s Republic has been liberated to date. During the last 10 days of a special military operation, fifty-one units of foreign military equipment were destroyed, including 12 armored fighting vehicles, twenty-one 155mm howitzers, two MLRS and 16 unmanned aerial vehicles. In five days, 126 servicemen of the Armed Forces of Ukraine surrendered, their total number is 6,489 people. The minister noted that in the liberated territories of Donbass, “activities to establish a peaceful life continue.”

The Mariupol mines and the Azovstal plant are cleared, where water and electricity supply to residential areas are gradually restored, the streets are cleaned, “the first social facilities have begun to function.” Mariupol seaport and Berdyansk port began to receive ships. On behalf of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, we are ready to load grain at these ports, – Shoigu noted, saying that the largest Zaporozhye nuclear power plant in Europe is operating normally, which is capable of generating up to half of all nuclear power generation in Ukraine. In addition, work was restored at 33 coal mines, 2 oil fields, and 14 gas fields that came under DPR and LPR control during a special military operation.

The minister also spoke about the joint efforts of the Russian Ministry of Defense and the Joint Stock Company of Russian Railways, which are resuming full traffic between Russia, Donbass, Ukraine and Crimea on six railway sections. Started delivery of goods to Mariupol, Berdyansk and Kherson. The total length of the restored railway sections is 1,200 kilometers. Car communication from the territory of Russia along the mainland to the Crimea was opened, where the unimpeded water supply through the North Crimean Canal was restored, – Shoigu listed evidence of the restoration of peaceful life.

According to the Russian Defense Ministry, the restoration of transport infrastructure and water supply creates favorable conditions for the development of the agro-industrial complex in the liberated territories, the potential of which averages 10 million tons of cereal crops per year and 1.4 million tons of vegetable crops. So those who are friends with Russia will definitely not have to starve. According to the minister, more than 27,000 tons of cargo have already been transferred to civilians in Ukraine. Among them are food, basic necessities and medicines. There is a restoration of social facilities in cities and towns.

*** ECONOMIC & POLITICAL ***

-An NBC Meet the Press special on May 14  presented a war game conducted by the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), a Washington-based think tank. On the surface, the game appeared to “educate” its audience. However, looking deeper into the messages delivered, “education” was not its purpose.

These are the “conclusions” as quoted from the NBC news article about the war game:

    -The “U.S. should prepare for drawn-out conflict if China invades Taiwan.”
    -“An attack would plunge the region into a broad, drawn-out war that could include direct attacks on the U.S.”
    -The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) will conduct a decapitation strategy against Taiwan prior to its invasion. The CCP is “not going to let the president of Taiwan survive the first day.”
    -Part of the “swift decapitation of Taiwan’s government” involves the CCP “pre-emptively attacking American bases in Japan and Guam.”

This NBC report notes that “it may sound like a purely academic exercise but, in fact, it’s deadly serious.” Even the monthly Air Force Magazine picked up the story and repeated some of the CNAS’s talking points. Luckily, one senior retired U.S. Air Force officer recognized that the scenario was far-fetched. NBC assumed the CNAS game is consistent with what we know about CCP assumptions about what the United States will or will not do to stymie an invasion.

The CNAS war game’s most important problematic assumption is that the CCP would order the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to conduct a preemptive strike against U.S. bases in Japan and Guam. First, attacking the U.S. military bases and killing American soldiers, airmen, sailors, Marines, and the U.S. and Japanese civilians will bring a hellfire on the CCP—and the CCP is fully aware of such a response. An attack on the U.S. territory of Guam would remind the U.S. public of the last time an Asian country attacked the United States and what transpired; Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and, after four years of hard fighting, was the recipient of two atomic bombs in August 1945. The CNAS assumption about attacking U.S. Pacific bases is analogous to asserting that Vladimir Putin would preemptively attack NATO bases in Europe as a prelude to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The CNAS’s assumption is fantastical and unrealistic.

-The M777 is highly mobile and capable of firing long distances, but training has been a bottleneck in deploying the howitzers, Ukrainian officers say. At courses in Germany that lasted a week, the United States trained soldiers to fire the weapon and others to maintain it. But an oversight nearly delayed all maintenance on the guns at the hard-to-reach front lines, Ukrainian officers said. The entire M777 machine is put together on the imperial system used in the United States, meaning that using a Ukrainian metric wrench on it would be difficult, and would risk damaging the equipment. Only after sending the guns did the United States arrange for a rushed shipment of toolboxes of imperial-gauge wrenches, said Maj. Vadim Baranik, the deputy commander of a maintenance unit. But tools can be misplaced, lost or destroyed, potentially leaving guns inoperable unless someone scrounges up a U.S.-supplied wrench.

-The White House on Tuesday insisted that “global challenges” such as the conflict in Ukraine, and not President Joe Biden’s policies, were to blame for inflation in the US. Biden’s press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said that the economy is doing better than historically and that the government and its experts feel they’re in a “good position” to start taking on the problem.

-The United States and its Asian allies flew dozens of fighter jets over waters surrounding the Korean Peninsula on Tuesday in a show of force as their diplomats discussed a coordinated response to a possibly imminent North Korean nuclear test. The flights came as U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman traveled to Seoul for discussions with South Korea and Japanese officials over the gathering North Korean threat and warned of a “swift and forceful” counterresponse if the North proceeds with a nuclear test explosion, which would be its first in nearly five years. If staged, the test could be another leap forward in North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s goal of building an arsenal that can viably threaten regional U.S. allies and the American homeland. That would escalate a pressure campaign aimed at forcing the United States to accept North Korea as a nuclear power and negotiating economic and security concessions from a position of strength.

-Italian oil company Eni SpA and Spain’s Repsol SA could begin shipping Venezuelan oil to Europe as soon as next month to make up for Russian crude, five people familiar with the matter said, resuming oil-for-debt swaps halted two years ago when Washington stepped up sanctions on Venezuela.

-Speaking earlier to a Financial Times conference, Zelenskyy insisted on Ukraine’s need to defeat Russia on the battlefield but also said he is still open to peace talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin. But a former senior U.S. intelligence officer said the time isn’t right“You’re not going to get to the negotiating table until neither side feels they have an advantage that they could push,” said Andrea Kendall-Taylor of the Washington-based Center for a New American Security.

-Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki announced on Tuesday that the country will be exporting nearly $630 million worth of weapons to Ukraine. The military contract has been called the biggest Warsaw has signed in the past 30 years.

-Ukraine’s ambassador has slammed Israel for declining to supply his country with anti-tank munitions and a sophisticated missile defense system, insisting the weapons are needed to fend off Russian forces.

-In what may be the latest instance of anti-Russian sabotage inside Ukraine, Russian state media said Tuesday that an explosion at a cafe in the city of Kherson wounded four people. Tass called the apparent bombing in the Russian-occupied city a “terror act.”

-Crude oil prices may soon hit $150 per barrel or more this year, Trafigura’s CEO Jeremy Weir told the FT Global Boardroom conference on Tuesday. The spike in crude oil prices would likely trigger demand destruction for the commodity, Weir added. The forecast is just $10 per barrel over where Brent prices shot up to in March shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine.

-Two military law enforcement agencies are investigating a service member over an April incident at a US outpost in eastern Syria, the Pentagon acknowledged on Monday. It's now believed that the explosions, initially thought to be an artillery attack, were set off by someone inside the Green Village base. Four troops were injured.

-Russia is ramping up oil exports from its major eastern port of Kozmino as it aims to offset the impact of EU sanctions with the surging demand from Asian buyers. Sources told Reuters that Russia has already increased the amount of crude pumped to Kozmino on its main Asian oil route, the East Siberia Pacific Ocean (ESPO) pipeline, by 70,000 barrels per day (bpd). Russia has previously said that its gas deliveries to Europe could be entirely redirected to Asia, where demand is rising, but doing so via long tanker journeys from European sea ports would be expensive – and complicated by western sanctions.

-Russian proxy fighters in east Ukraine have said they are opening a trial against two Britons, Aiden Aslin and Shaun Pinner, who were captured fighting alongside Ukrainian soldiers in Mariupol. The two men, who are serving in the Ukrainian military, and Ibrahim Saadun, a captive from Morocco, were shown sitting in a courtroom cage reserved for defendants in a video released on pro-Russian social media channels on Tuesday.

-The European Union needs to build warehouses and extend railway tracks across the Ukrainian border to help Kyiv in its attempts to move more grain out of the country to those who need it, says the country’s trade representative. Ukraine will not be able to export more than 2m tonnes of grain a month, around a third of pre-war levels, as long as its main trade routes through its Black Sea ports remain blockaded by Russia, said Taras Kachka.

-As American households are crushed under the weight of rapid inflation and sagging economic growth, the Biden administration has yet to cool energy prices. By the end of the week, if not next, the national average for gasoline at the pump could cross another milestone: $5 a gallon. As of Tuesday morning, gas prices at the pump climbed to a record $4.919, up 21% since mid-April of $4.07. The national average price for a gallon of gas last year was around $3. AAA data shows thirteen states, including California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Arizona, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Maine, Alaska, and Hawaii, including the District of Colombia, averaged over $5 a gallon on Tuesday morning.

-Russia's military has declared that its desired strategic "land bridge" connecting Russian national territory with the Donbas and Crimea is complete, according to statements given to CNN senior national security correspondent Alex Marquardt. The Tuesday Russian military statement said that "roads and rail lines between western Russia and Crimea are operational," which marks that "the land bridge is complete." "Conditions have been created for the resumption of full-fledged traffic between Russia, Donbas, Ukraine and Crimea on six railway sections," Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said. "Automobile communication has been opened from the territory of Russia along the mainland to Crimea." Thus it appears the Kremlin is touting its own 'mission accomplished' moment, at least pertaining to the eastern and southern theaters of the war.

-The European Council president, Charles Michel, accused Russia of using food supplies as “a stealth missile against developing countries” and blamed the Kremlin for the looming global food crisis. Michel’s remarks prompted Moscow’s UN ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, to walk out of a security council meeting.

-Russian lawmakers voted to take Moscow out of the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights. The Russian state Duma approved two bills, one removing the country from the court’s jurisdiction and a second setting 16 March as the cut-off point, with rulings against Russia made after that date not to be implemented.

-The former Russian president and a close ally of Vladimir Putin, Dmitry Medvedev, lashed out at those who “hate” Russia, calling them “degenerates” and vowing to “make them disappear”. Medvedev, who is now deputy head of the security council, did not say who “they” were but his remarks are an example of the increasingly aggressive language used by Russian officials.

-Americans forced into paying the cost of Biden's economic war on Russia are about to be conscripted into service on a second front, as Washington confronts China over its treatment of its Uyghur ethnic minority. Effective June 21, the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act will impose a guilty-til-proven-innocent regime that bars all imports from China's Xinjiang province unless businesses prove their products are not made with forced labor.  A customs official said a "very high" level of evidence will be required. Though the law was passed almost six months ago, the Biden administration is providing U.S. businesses with little or no guidance on how it will be enforced. One thing is certain: Americans are in for even higher prices and more product shortages imposed on them by a White House that's all too comfortable compelling "shared sacrifice" in pursuit of Biden's foreign policy agenda. Xinjiang supplies about 20% of the world's cotton, and a wide range of other products are either made there or made with materials produced there. The new law—passed in December—threatens to disrupt markets for everything from solar panels to athletic shoes, auto parts and TV remote controls.

-Britain is joining the US is supplying longer range rockets to Ukraine, despite fresh threats from Russia's president Vladimir Putin who says he is ready to expand strikes to 'decision-making centers' if these escalations from the West continue. The Guardian is reporting Monday that "The UK will send a handful of tracked M270 multiple launch rocket systems, which can hit targets up to 50 miles away, in the hope they can disrupt the concentrated Russian artillery that has been pounding cities in eastern Ukraine." The announcement comes as there's widespread acknowledgement that the tide of war is changing particularly in the east, where Russian forces are now making steady gains over the Donbas, with the Ukrainians saying they are suffering chronic supply shortages, including ammo and weapons. In what appears a reference to the situation in the Donbas and the south, UK defence secretary Ben Wallace said the move to ship longer range rocket launchers is justified "as Russia’s tactics change, so must our support to Ukraine." However, he didn't speculate over Russia's potential response.  "As Russia’s tactics change, so must our support to Ukraine. These highly capable multiple-launch rocket systems will enable our Ukrainian friends to better protect themselves against the brutal use of long-range artillery, which Putin’s forces have used indiscriminately to flatten cities," Wallace said. Putin made weekend statements vowing further retaliation if the US proceeds with its HIMAR and MLRS rocket systems delivery. On Sunday five Russian cruise missiles slammed into the Ukrainian capital of Kiev - which was the first time the capital came under Russian fire in over a month. Russia said it targeted a depot that contained Western-supplied tanks - something which Ukraine denied.

-Radiation levels in the area surrounding Ukraine’s Chornobyl nuclear power plant are normal after detectors came back online today, reported Reuters. The radiation detectors in the Exclusion Zone around the defunct nuclear power plant began transmitting data for the first time since Russia seized the area on 24 February. The UN nuclear watchdog reported today that readings show radiation levels in the area are normal. “Most of the 39 detectors sending data from the Exclusion Zone ... are now visible on the IRMIS (International Radiation Monitoring Information System) map,” said the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in a statement. “The measurements received so far indicated radiation levels in line with those measured before the conflict.”

-The US already has up to 300 monkeypox cases — nine times official tally of 31 — but lack of testing is leading to hundreds of infections being missed, expert warns. Dr Boghuma Titanji, an infectious diseases expert at Emory University, claimed U.S. likely already has as many monkeypox cases as the 300 detected in the UK. She said a lack of testing for the virus — with about 120 PCRs done so far — was to blame for so many being missed. But Titanji also pointed a finger at the complex testing process, with swabs sent to one of 74 labs and then on to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Other experts say cases may be being misdiagnosed as other diseases. America's cases are mostly among gay and bisexual men and linked to international travel. But there is at least one case with no links to travel or a known case so far.