- Putin attends a military command meeting in southern Ukraine
- Russian forces step up attack on Bakhmut – Ukraine
- G7 ministers say nuclear weapons in Belarus are ‘unacceptable’
April 18 (Portal) – Russian President Vladimir Putin has met his commanders in two regions of Ukraine that Moscow is said to have annexed, while Russian forces stepped up heavy artillery bombardments and airstrikes on the devastated eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut.
The Kremlin said Putin attended a military command meeting in Ukraine’s southern Kherson region on Monday and visited a national guard headquarters in eastern Luhansk.
Putin heard reports from commanders of the Airborne Forces and the Dnieper Army Group, as well as other senior officers, who briefed him on the situation in the Kherson and Zaporizhia regions to the south.
Neither Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu nor Chief of Staff Valery Gerasimov accompanied Putin on his trip for security reasons, the Kremlin said.
A senior adviser to Ukraine’s president, Mykhailo Podolyak, took to Twitter to deride Putin’s trip as the mass murder author’s “special tour” in the occupied and devastated territories to enjoy the crimes of his henchmen for the last time.
Kiev and the West have accused Russian forces of committing war crimes on occupied Ukrainian territory, which Moscow denies.
Kherson, Zaporizhia, Luhansk and Donetsk are the four regions that Putin declared annexed to Ukraine last September following alleged sham referendums. Russian forces only partially control the four regions.
Russian troops withdrew from Kherson, the region’s capital, last November and have reinforced positions on the opposite bank of the Dnipro River in anticipation of a Ukrainian counteroffensive.
While numerous Western leaders have traveled to Kiev for talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy since Russian forces invaded 14 months ago, Putin has rarely visited parts of Ukraine under Russian control.
Last month he visited Crimea, annexed by Russia in 2014, and the south-eastern city of Mariupol in the Donetsk region.
A Russian winter offensive made little headway, and its troops have bogged down in a series of battles in the east and south, where progress has been gradual and at enormous cost to both sides.
HEAVY ARTILLERY
Fighting has raged in and around Bakhmut in the Donetsk region for months, with Ukrainian forces holding out despite regular claims by Russia that they have captured the mining town.
“At present, the enemy is increasing heavy artillery activity and the number of airstrikes, turning the city into ruins,” commander of Ukraine’s Ground Forces General Oleksandr Syrskyi said in a statement on Tuesday.
Bakhmut’s conquest could be a stepping stone for Russia’s advance into two larger cities in the Donetsk region it has long coveted – Kramatorsk and Sloviansk.
The head of the Wagner mercenary group that has spearheaded Russia’s attempt to take Bakhmut said this month that his fighters controlled more than 80% of the city. The Ukrainian military has denied this.
Russia says its “military special operation” in Ukraine, launched on February 24 last year, was necessary to protect its security from what it sees as a hostile and aggressive West.
Ukraine and its Western allies say Russia is waging an unprovoked war aimed at gaining territory.
‘IRRESPONSIBLE’
A Group of Seven foreign ministers meeting in Japan on Tuesday condemned a Russian plan to station so-called shorter-range tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, an ally of Moscow that borders Ukraine.
It was the first time since the end of the Cold War three decades ago that Russia said it would deploy nuclear weapons on another country’s territory.
In a communiqué at the end of a three-day meeting in Japan, the G7 foreign ministers said: “Russia’s irresponsible nuclear rhetoric and its threat to deploy nuclear weapons in Belarus are unacceptable.”
“Any use of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons by Russia would have serious consequences,” they said.
The G7 includes the United States, Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Italy and Canada, all of which have imposed economic sanctions on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.
The war in Ukraine has killed tens of thousands, leveled cities, displaced millions from their homes and shattered the global security order, in part by prompting Russia to strengthen ties with non-Western actors like China.
Russia’s Defense Minister Shoigu told his Chinese counterpart Li Shangu during talks in Moscow on Tuesday that their countries’ military cooperation is a “stabilizing” force in the world and helps reduce the likelihood of conflict.
Li said his trip aims to show the world that China firmly intends to strengthen its strategic cooperation with Russia, TASS News Agency reported.
Beijing has refrained from criticizing Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
The Kremlin also praised Brazil’s mediation efforts in the Ukraine conflict on Tuesday. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has drawn US criticism for suggesting that the West has “encouraged” the war by arming Ukraine.
Meanwhile, Japan’s Defense Ministry said it had unleashed a jet fighter in response to intelligence gathering by Russian planes over seas near Japan. Earlier, Russia said two of its strategic bombers – capable of carrying nuclear warheads – had been conducting patrol flights over the Sea of Okhotsk and the Bering Sea in Russia’s Far East.
Reporting by Portal bureaus; writing by Robert Birsel; Adaptation of Lincoln Feast.
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Guy Faulconbridge