As every day, Midi Libre takes stock of the news about the war in Ukraine. On the agenda for this Sunday, April 16, is the meeting between Putin and the Chinese defense minister, the worrying state of the Russian elite troops and a prisoner exchange for Orthodox Easter.
Chinese Defense Minister in Moscow
Russian President Vladimir Putin held a working meeting with Chinese Defense Minister Li Shangfu in Moscow on Sunday, the TASS news agency reported, citing Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.
Beijing last week announced Li Shangfu’s visit to Moscow and said he would meet with defense officials, but made no mention of meeting Vladimir Putin. Dmitry Peskov told Tass agency that the details of the meeting would be shared later.
Chinese President Xi Jinping met Vladimir Putin in Moscow in March. Russia and China have declared a “borderless” partnership and decided to strengthen their economic, political and military ties since Moscow deployed tens of thousands of troops to Ukraine in February 2022.
Ukrainian forces are finding increasing numbers of Chinese components in Russian weapons deployed in Ukraine, a senior Kiev official said on Friday. China has always denied supplying military equipment to Russia.
Prisoner exchange for Orthodox Easter
The Ukrainian Presidency announced on Sunday that 130 Ukrainian prisoners have been released in a new exchange with Russia to mark Orthodox Easter.
Kiev did not specify how many Russian POWs were included in the exchange.
For his part, the leader of Russia’s paramilitary Wagner militia, Yevgeny Prigoyine, said that a hundred Ukrainian prisoners had been brought back by his group, which has been working to retake the small town of Bakhmout in eastern Ukraine since last summer, when it staged the filmed beheading of a Ukrainian soldier.
Russian elite troops decimated?
While the Russian army can no longer go on the offensive on the Ukrainian front and even seems to fear a counter-offensive from Kiev, recently leaked top-secret American documents show that even the elite troops in Moscow have suffered heavy casualties in recent months.
As the Washington Post in a big way, this Friday, 14 Mariupol, were “decimated” for some.
For example, when no official figures are circulating, the documents examined by the American daily show that one of the brigades (the 346th) “lost almost all of its men” and that only 125 active men would remain out of the 900 that had been dispatched . “Breathtaking” losses, according to a specialist interviewed by the Washington Post.
“Four of the five Spetsnaz brigades that returned from Ukraine in late summer last year suffered significant casualties. Three Spetsnaz brigades lost an estimated 90 to 95 percent of their men,” leaked confidential documents said.