Pro-Russian separatist forces are seen in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine on May 28, 2022.
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Russia is moving its reserve forces across the country to Ukraine to prepare for future offensives, according to the UK Ministry of Defence. Meanwhile, Moscow says it has no plans to withdraw its troops from the occupied areas of southern Ukraine and that its troops will crush Ukrainian forces throughout the Donbass region.
“Russia is moving reserve forces from across the country and assembling them near Ukraine for future offensive operations,” the UK Ministry of Defense tweeted on Saturday.
“Much of the new infantry units are likely to have MT-LB armored vehicles taken from long-term storage as their primary transport.”
Russia has long considered its tanks “unsuitable for most front-line infantry transport roles”, the ministry said, suggesting the Russians were facing equipment problems.
“Despite President Putin’s claim on July 7, 2022 that the Russian military has ‘not even begun’ its efforts in Ukraine, many of its reinforcements are ad hoc groups deployed with outdated or inadequate equipment,” it said.
Read more: US to send another $400 million in military aid to Ukraine; Russia hits the West in the G20
Still, Russian forces continue to attack Ukraine’s eastern Donbass, and on Friday Russian ambassador to the UK Andrey Kelin said its troops had no plans to leave the southern coastal areas they have occupied for the past few months. These include the regions of Kherson, Mykolaiv and Zaporizhia, the latter of which is home to the largest nuclear power plant in Europe.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian forces are able to slow some of Russia’s advances using advanced precision weapons from the West, but they still need more and troops need more time to learn how to use them, said Oleksiy Danilov of the Council for national security and defense to Reuters in an interview.
Read more: Ukraine says Western weapons make a difference, but needs more
The Biden administration is poised to announce a $400 million security aid package for Ukraine, according to a senior defense official who spoke on condition of anonymity to share new details about the aid package. The official said the latest security assistance will be a mix of systems already deployed for the fight and new capabilities.
Moscow official jailed for anti-war remark
In an example of Russia’s tight grip on dissent, a Moscow city councilor was sentenced to seven years in prison on Friday for what authorities described as spreading “false information” about the war in Ukraine.
A lawyer said it was the first case of anyone being sent to prison under the Russian law, passed shortly after the start of the invasion of Ukraine, which criminalizes “deliberately spreading false information about the Russian military”. “Fake information” by the Kremlin’s standards is anything that contradicts government reports.
Moscow city MP Alexei Gorinov, accused of spreading “deliberately false information” about the Russian army fighting in Ukraine, stands with a placard reading “Do you still need this war?” in a glass cell during a sentencing hearing in his trial at a Moscow court on July 8, 2022.
Kiril Kudryavtsev | AFP | Getty Images
Councilor Alexei Gorinov was discussing a children’s drawing competition at a local meeting that was filmed and later posted on Youtube, according to Reuters. He remarked: “What kind of children’s drawing competition can we talk about on Children’s Day… when we have children dying every day?”
“They took my spring, they took my summer, and now they took seven more years of my life,” Gorinov’s supporters quoted him as saying during his sentencing, Reuters reported.
Read more: Moscow city councilor gets seven years in prison for anti-war comment
G-20 voltage
At the G20 meeting in Indonesia, several foreign ministers called for an end to Russia’s blockade of Ukrainian ports, which is choking off vital food exports to much of the world.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, in turn, accused Western officials at the meeting of “rabid Russophobia” and of focusing on criticism of Moscow rather than ways to tackle global economic problems.
“There is only rabid Russophobia that they are turning to instead of finding the much-needed common position on key issues of the world economy and finance, for which the G20 was created,” Lavrov said on Friday.
“This is a direct provocation (by Ukraine) aimed at drawing the West into military action,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told a news conference while in Saudi Arabia.
The Russian Foreign Ministry | Reuters
Meanwhile, on Saturday, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said he spoke with his Chinese counterpart, Foreign Minister Wang Yi, about Russian aggression during several hours of talks in their first face-to-face discussion since October.
Read more: More Russian men are seeking to avoid military service, some lawyers and rights groups say
Blinken said he expressed concern about Beijing’s “alignment” with Moscow.
“I shared again with the State Counselor that we are concerned about the PRC’s tying to Russia,” Blinken said, adding that China had “stepped up Russian propaganda.”
While China says it opposes bloodshed and wants to see an end to the conflict in Ukraine, its media largely blames NATO and the US for the war and refuses to agree to Western sanctions against Russia. Beijing announced a “boundless” partnership with Moscow just weeks before its invasion of Ukraine.
— CNBC’s Amanda Macias and Reuters contributed to this report.
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