Russia/Ukraine War Update - July 6th, 2022

  *** MILITARY SITUATION ***

 

AFU shelled Russian border areas in Kursk and Bryansk regions. Russian Armed Forces struck enemy positions in Sumy and Chernihiv regions.

In northern Kharkiv region, AFU are actively preparing for the Russian Armed Forces' offensive by equipping positions and mining the approaches to Petrivka, Zolochiv and Odnorobivka. Overnight, the Russian Armed Forces launched a missile attack on a vocational school building in Kharkiv in the northeast of the city, where Ukrainian formations were deployed.

In Lysychans'k, the mopping up of the remnants of Ukrainian units on the southern outskirts of the town continues. The Russian Armed Forces continue their offensive on the right bank of the Seversky Donets towards Hryhorivka and Serebryanka. Allied forces are fighting fiercely on the outskirts of Spirne to the south-west of Lysychans'k.

AFU continue to launch massive artillery and missile strikes on towns in people's republics.

Artillery duels continue in Zaporizhzhia region near Hulyaipole and Vasylivka.

In Mykolaiv direction, AFU are preparing for a counteroffensive in certain parts of the front.

Positional fighting and artillery duels along the entire line of contact continue in Kryvyi Rih direction. A Ukrainian SU-25 assault aircraft was shot down in an aerial battle near Novobrats'ke in Kherson region.

In the evening, the Russian Armed Forces launched a missile attack on AFU positions in Odessa region near Rozdil'na near the border with Transnistria.

The Russian Armed Forces hit AFU facilities in Yarmolynets'kyi district of Khmelnytskyi region.

-The mayor of Sloviansk has called on its remaining residents to evacuate as the Russian invaders stepped up their shelling of the frontline Ukrainian city.

-Ukrainian forces have taken up new defensive lines in Donetsk, where they still control major cities, and plan to launch counter-offensives in the south of the country. The Luhansk governor, Serhiy Haidai, said the weeks-long battle for Lysychansk had drawn in Russian troops that could have been fighting on other fronts, and had given Ukraine’s forces time to build fortifications in the Donetsk region to make it “harder for the Russians there”.

-Ukrainian forces will be able to fall back to a more readily defendable, straightened front line following Russia’s capture of Lysychansk and control of Ukraine’s eastern Luhansk region, according to British intelligence. Russia’s “relatively rapid capture” of Lysychansk has allowed its forces to extend its control across virtually all of the territory of Luhansk, according to the UK Ministry of Defence.

*** ECONOMIC & POLITICAL ***

-Russia’s parliament has approved the first stage of laws that would allow the country to move to a war economy. The two bills would authorise the government to oblige businesses to supply the military with goods and their employees to work overtime to support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

-Russian President Vladimir Putin’s key ally Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko has started hinting at what may be next in Russia’s war, and it doesn’t sound pretty. Lukashenko claimed this weekend that he thinks it’s time for Europe to face a “moral cleansing.” “The time has come for the forgetful Europe to give itself a moral cleansing,” Lukashenko said, without going into further detail about what that would entail, according to BelTA. Lukashenko mentioned that efforts to fight Nazis from World War II, or what Russia calls the “Great Patriotic War,” are not over yet—echoing erroneous Russian claims that they are waging war in Ukraine in order to “denazify” or fight Nazis in Ukraine. It is “a war to destroy the Slavic ethnos, cultures and entire nations. Today we often say that this war is not over yet,” Lukashenko said. “It is not over yet because not everyone who was involved in the monstrous facts of that war… has been punished. That war is not over yet because once again, as at the frontline, we are defending our historical memory.” His plans for a “cleansing” in Europe coincide with Lukashenko’s claims that Ukraine is escalating tensions with Belarus; Lukashenko claimed Sunday that Ukrainian forces fired missiles at Belarus, which he says the Belarusian military successfully shot down.

-Ukrainians tend to believe that not only Russia, but their own government, the US, and NATO should all share the blame for the conflict in their country, a recent poll has found. The survey, done by phone among 1,005 Ukrainians between June 9 and 13, was carried out by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago and paid for by the Wall Street Journal. The participants were united on Russia’s role in the conflict, with 82% saying that the country bears “a great deal of responsibility” after sending its troops into Ukraine on February 24. Only 9% believed Moscow had nothing to be blamed for. However, the poll made it quite clear that most Ukrainians don’t seem to agree with the narrative of President Volodymyr Zelensky and his Western backers that Moscow’s military operation in their country was an unprovoked aggression. A whopping 70% of those surveyed said that the actions of the Ukrainian government also contributed to the outbreak of the conflict, with 47% assigning “a great deal of responsibility” to Kiev for it. The US, which has been providing Zelensky’s government with billions of dollars in military and economic aid during Russia’s military operation, has been labeled the culprit by 58%. According to 26% of respondents, Americans bear “a great deal of responsibility” for the current state of affairs.

-Latvia will reinstate compulsory military service, its defence minister, Artis Pabriks, announced on Tuesday following growing tension with neighbouring Russia amid Moscow’s war in Ukraine. Pabriks also announced plans to build another military base near the southeastern city of Jekabpils, located closer to the Russian border than the existing Adazi base.

-Inside the White House, aides are exhausted from feeling forever on red alert, batting at a swarm of crises that keeps growing -- enough for White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre to make an offhand joke about the constant "eleventh hour" decision-making in the building when under fire at a recent daily briefing. Several officials say Biden's tendency to berate advisers when he's displeased with how a situation is being handled or when events go off poorly has trickled down the ranks in the West Wing, leaving several mid-level aides feeling blamed for failings despite lacking any real ability to influence the building's decision-making. That's contributed to some of the recent staff departures, according to people familiar. Democrats worry the lack of decisions and authority are deepening their own midterm problems and feeding a sense that the President couldn't truly handle the extra complications of a run for reelection in 2024 -- and along the way, reinforcing narratives that he's an old man not fit for the moment. The President who campaigned on putting America back together again after four years of deep divisions appears to have stopped trying, supporters say.

-A number of US veterans are reportedly training Ukrainian soldiers near the frontlines of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, despite the Pentagon urging them not to do so, claimed the New York Times in an article on Sunday. “Americans are in Ukraine,” states the outlet, noting that the exact number of US citizens fighting on the front lines of the conflict is unknown. The NYT adds that some of these Americans are also volunteering for casualty evacuation teams and to be bomb disposal specialists, logistics experts and instructors. The NYT also claims that there are currently small teams of former special operations members providing training to Ukrainian soldiers and, in some cases, helping Kiev’s forces plan combat missions.

-Tokyo’s proposal to place a cap on Russian oil prices would lead to significantly less crude on the market and could drastically push oil prices higher, former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev warned on Tuesday. Responding to the idea put forward by Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on Sunday, Medvedev wrote on his Telegram channel that Japan “would have neither oil nor gas from Russia, as well as no participation in the Sakhalin-2 LNG project” if Tokyo decided to go through with the proposal.

-Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has demanded an explanation from General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces regarding conscripts’ travel restrictions. “I ask the General Staff not to make similar decisions without me in the future,” he said. Only July 5, the General Staff said that individuals subject to military service, conscripts, and reservists would have to obtain permission from the local military registration and enlistment office in order to leave their place of residence.

-Ukrainian plans to seize as much as $500bn (£418bn) in frozen Russian assets to fund the country’s recovery have met firm resistance from Switzerland, the hosts of an international two-day Ukraine recovery conference. The Swiss president, Ignazio Cassis, pushed back on the plan, saying protection of property rights was fundamental in a liberal democracy. He underlined at a closing press conference the serious qualms of some leaders that proposals to confiscate Russian assets will set a dangerous precedent and needed specific legal justification.

-A day after Russian president Vladimir Putin declared victory in seizing an eastern Ukraine province essential to his wartime aims, his troops escalated their offensive in the neighboring province Tuesday, prompting the governor to urge more than a quarter-million residents to evacuate. Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko said that getting the 350,000 people remaining in Donetsk province out is necessary to save lives and to enable the Ukrainian army to better defend towns from the Russian advance.

-Teachers from Russia have arrived to the Polohy district of Zaporizhizhia region that is occupied by Russia. According to Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense, children will go to kindergartens and schools to study under a Russian curriculum.

-Nickel prices jumped by 6% following news that the UK government has added Vladimir Potanin, Norisk Nickel’s president, to its list of sanctioned individuals.

-Gas rationing, which could be introduced under the UK government’s emergency plan, would lead to the closure of many factories, some of which would be unable to survive even two days, the Energy Intensive Users Group warned, according to the Financial Times (FT). Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng is scheduled to discuss the details of the emergency plan with industry representatives later this week. According to an FT government source, the ministers do not anticipate gas rationing this winter. This measure, one official said, is provided for the “extreme” and “hugely unlikely” scenario in which Russia cuts off all gas supplies to Europe and Norway then cuts off supplies to Britain as well.

-A Russian-flagged ship carrying thousands of tonnes of grain is being held and investigated by Turkish authorities over claims its cargo was stolen from Ukraine. The head of the Russian-imposed administration of the occupied Zaporizhzhia region of Ukraine, Yevgeny Balitsky, has said the region plans to sell Ukraine’s grain to the Middle East.

-Russian-backed separatists have seized two foreign-flagged ships in the Russian-occupied port city of Mariupol and claimed they are “state property”. The self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) informed two shipping companies that their vessels were the subject of “forcible appropriation of movable property with forced conversion into state property”.

-Ukraine has asked Turkey to investigate three additional Russian ships that it alleges transported stolen grain, Reuters reports.

-Russia’s defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, has claimed some of the weapons the west is sending to Ukraine are ending up on the black market. Shoigu said Ukraine had received more than 28,000 tonnes of military cargo so far, and some of the weapons were appearing in the Middle East. He did not provide any details to back up his claim.

-Russia is planning to launch a railway link between Rostov region and the areas of Donetsk and Luhansk it occupies in eastern, Russian state media reported.

-Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, held further talks with Britain’s prime minister, Boris Johnson, about the latest situation in Ukraine. A Downing Street spokesperson said Johnson told Zelenskiy that he believed Kyiv’s military could retake territory recently captured by Russian force.

-The more times you catch COVID, the sicker you’re likely to get with each reinfection. That’s the worrying conclusion of a new study drawing on data from the U.S. Veterans Administration. Scientists stressed they need more data before they can say for sure whether, and why, COVID might get worse the second, third, or fourth time around. But with more and more people getting reinfected as the pandemic lurches toward its fourth year, the study hints at some of the possible long-term risks. To get a handle on the health impact of reinfection, re-reinfection and even re-re-reinfection, three researchers—Ziyad Al-Aly from the Washington University School of Medicine plus Benjamin Bowe and Yan Xie, both from the V.A. St. Louis Health Care System—scrutinized the health records of 5.7 million American veterans.

Some 260,000 had caught COVID just once, and 40,000 had been reinfected at least one more time. The control group included 5.4 million people who never got COVID at all. Al-Aly, Bowe and Xie tracked health outcomes over a six-month period and came to a startling conclusion. “We show that, compared to people with first infection, reinfection contributes additional risks,” they wrote in their study, which hasn’t been peer-reviewed yet but is under consideration for publication in Nature.

Every time you catch COVID, your chance of getting really sick with something—likely COVID-related—seems to go up, Al-Aly, Bowe and Xie found. The risk of cardiovascular disorders, problems with blood-clotting, diabetes, fatigue, gastrointestinal and kidney disorders, mental health problems, musculoskeletal disorders and neurologic damage all increase with reinfection—this despite the antibodies that should result from repeat infections. All of the conditions are directly associated with COVID or have been shown to get worse with COVID. “The constellation of findings show that reinfection adds non-trivial risks,” the researchers warned.