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The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has appeared to admit severe losses in Ukraine, conceding the severity of the Kremlins recent military reversals and insisting Russia would stabilise the situation in four Ukrainian regions Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia it illegally claimed as its own territory last week. We are working on the assumption that the situation in the new territories will stabilise, Putin told Russian teachers during a televised video call on Wednesday.

The UN nuclear agency chief is en route to Kyiv to discuss creating a security zone around Ukraines Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, after Putin ordered his government to take it over. On our way to Kyiv for important meetings, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) head Rafael Grossi wrote on Twitter, saying the need for a protection zone around the site was more urgent than ever. Grossi is also expected to visit Moscow in the coming days to discuss the situation at the plant. The IAEA said it had learned of plans to restart one reactor at the plant, where all six reactors have been shut down for weeks.

Ukraines forces are pushing their advance in the east and south, forcing Russian troops to retreat under pressure on both fronts. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Ukraines military had made major, rapid advances against Russian forces in the past week, taking back dozens of towns in regions in the south and east that Russia has declared annexed. Military experts say Russia is at its weakest point, partly because of its decision not to mobilise earlier and partly because of massive losses of troops and equipment.

Ukraine has extended its area of control in the Kherson region by six to 12 miles, according to its militarys southern command. Zelenskiy confirmed the recapture of the villages of Novovoskresenske, Novohryhorivka and Petropavlivka, saying the settlements were liberated from the sham referendum and stabilised, in an address on Wednesday. Kherson regions Moscow-appointed governor, Kirill Stremousov, said the withdrawal was a tactical regrouping to deliver a retaliatory blow. The extent of Russias retreat remains unclear.

Moscows forces have left behind smashed towns once under occupation and, in places, mass burial sites and evidence of torture chambers. In Lyman, which was retaken by Ukrainian forces on Sunday, more than 50 graves have been found, some marked with names, others with numbers, the Kyiv-based outlet Hromadske reported on Wednesday.

The UN has warned Russias claimed annexation of Ukraine territory will only exacerbate human rights violations. Christian Salazar Volkmann, said UN experts had documented a range of violations of the rights to life, liberty and security and warned the situation would only worsen as Russia pushes forward with the annexation of some Ukrainian regions.

Attempts to play down retreats in Ukraine are no longer washing inside Russia with the latest military failures spilling on to local television screens. Why do we advance metre by metre when they advance village by village? Olga Skabeyeva, the countrys top state-TV host, asked a Russia-appointed official in Luhansk in a recent broadcast. Pro-war military bloggers and journalists are also criticising the Kremlin and painting a bleak picture of deteriorating Russian morale. Roman Saponkov, a prominent war correspondent, described his despair over the pullback in Kherson on his Telegram channel: I really dont know what to say to you. The retreat is catastrophic.

Poland says it has asked to have US nuclear weapons based on its territory, amid growing fears that Putin could resort to using nuclear arms in Ukraine. The request from the Polish president, Andrzej Duda, is widely seen as symbolic and appears to be the latest example of nuclear signalling to deter Putin. The White House, however, said it had not received such a request.

The car bombing that killed Darya Dugina, the daughter of prominent Russian political figure Alexander Dugin, was allegedly authorised by elements within the Ukrainian government, according to US intelligence sources who spoke with the New York Times and CNN. The United States took no part in the attack, either by providing intelligence or other assistance, the officials said.

A SpaceX rocket carrying Russian cosmonaut, Anna Kikina, the only female cosmonaut in service, soared into orbit from Florida on Wednesday. The International Space Station crew comprising Kikina, two Americans and a Japanese astronaut flew together in a demonstration of US-Russian teamwork in space despite Ukraine war tensions.

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Russia-Ukraine war latest: what we know on day 225 of the invasion - The Guardian

Ever since Ukraine launched a successful counteroffensive against Russian forces in late August, American officials have tried to claim credit, insisting that U.S. intelligence has been key to Ukraines battlefield victories.

Yet U.S. officials have simultaneously downplayed their intelligence failures in Ukraine especially their glaring mistakes at the outset of the war. When Putin invaded in February, U.S. intelligence officials told the White House that Russia would win in a matter of days by quickly overwhelming the Ukrainian army, according to current and former U.S. intelligence officials, who asked not to be named to discuss sensitive information.

The Central Intelligence Agency was so pessimistic about Ukraines chances that officials told President Joe Biden and other policymakers that the best they could expect was that the remnants of Ukraines defeated forces would mount an insurgency, a guerrilla war against the Russian occupiers. By the time of the February invasion, the CIA was already planning how to provide covert support for a Ukrainian insurgency following a Russian military victory, the officials said.

U.S. intelligence reports at the time predicted that Kyiv would fall quickly, perhaps in a week or two at the most. The predictions spurred the Biden administration to secretly withdraw some key U.S. intelligence assets from Ukraine, including covert former special operations personnel on contract with the CIA, the current and former officials said.Their account was backed up by a Naval officer and a former Navy SEAL, who were aware of the movements and who also asked not to be named because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

The CIA got it completely wrong, said one former senior U.S. intelligence official, who is knowledgeable about what the CIA was reporting when the Russian invasion began. They thought Russia would win right away.

When it became clear that the agencys predictions of a rapid Russian victory had been wrong, the Biden administration sent the clandestine assets that had been pulled out of Ukraine back into the country, the military and intelligence officials said. One U.S. official insisted that the CIA only conducted a partial withdrawal of its assets when the war began, and that the agency never completely left.

Secret U.S. operations inside Ukraine are being conducted under a presidential covert action finding.

Yet clandestine American operations inside Ukraine are now far more extensive than they were early in the war, when U.S. intelligence officials were fearful that Russia would steamroll over the Ukrainian army. There is a much larger presence of both CIA and U.S. special operations personnel and resources in Ukraine than there were at the time of the Russian invasion in February,several current and former intelligence officials told The Intercept.

Secret U.S. operations inside Ukraine are being conducted under a presidential covert action finding, current and former officials said.The finding indicates that the president hasquietly notified certain congressional leaders about the administrations decision to conduct a broad program ofclandestineoperations inside the country. One former special forces officer said that Biden amended a preexisting finding, originally approved during the Obama administration, that was designed to counter malign foreign influence activities.A former CIA officer told The Intercept that Bidens use of the preexisting finding has frustrated some intelligence officials, who believe that U.S. involvement in the Ukraine conflict differs so much from the spirit of the finding that it should merit a new one.A CIA spokesperson declined to comment about whether there is a presidential covert action finding for operations in Ukraine.

The U.S. intelligence communitys stunning failure at the beginning of the war to recognize the fundamental weaknesses in the Russian system mirrors its blindness to the military and economic weaknesses of the Soviet Union in the 1980s, when Washington failed to predict the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. While not all U.S. intelligence analysts underestimated the Ukrainian will to fight, the communitys missteps in Ukraine came just months after American intelligence gravely underestimated how fast the U.S.-backed government in Afghanistan would collapse in 2021, leading to a rapid takeover by the Taliban.

Some senior U.S. intelligence officials have since admitted they were wrong in projecting a quick Russian victory. In March, Avril Haines, the director of national intelligence, acknowledged during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing that the CIA didnt do well in terms of predicting the military challenges that [Putin] has encountered with his own military.

The director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Army Lt. Gen. Scott Berrier, said at the same March hearing that my view was that, based on a variety of factors, that the Ukrainians were not as ready as I thought they should be, therefore I questioned their will to fight, [and] that was a bad assessment on my part.

I think assessing morale, and a will to fight is a very difficult analytical task, he added. We had different inputs from different organizations. And at least from my perspective as director, I did not do as well as I could have.

Yet these admissions mask a more fundamental failure that officials have not fully acknowledged: U.S. intelligence did not recognize the significance of rampant corruption and incompetence in the Putin regime, particularly in both the Russian army and Moscows defense industries, the current and former intelligence officials said. U.S. intelligence missed the impact of corrupt insider dealing and deceit among Putin loyalists in Moscows defense establishment, which has left the Russian army a brittle and hollow shell.

There was no reporting on the corruption in the Russian system, said the former senior intelligence official. They missed it, and ignored any evidence of it.

There was no reporting on the corruption in the Russian system.

Following a string of Russian defeats, even prominent Russian analysts have begun to openly blame the corruption and deceit that plagues the Russian system. On Russian television last weekend, Andrey Gurulyov, the former deputy commander of Russias southern military district and now a member of the Russian Duma, blamed his countrys losses on a system of lies, top to bottom.

Additionally, Putin imposed an invasion plan on the Russian military that was impossible to achieve, one current U.S. official argued. You cant really separate out the issue of Russian military competency from the fact that they were shackled to an impossible plan, which led to poor military preparation, the official said.

Remains of Russian uniforms in the destroyed village of Shandryholove near Lyman, Ukraine, on Oct.3, 2022.

Photo: Wojciech Grzedzinski/Getty Images

The inability of the U.S. intelligence community to recognize the significance of Russian corruption appears to be the result of an over-reliance on technical intelligence. Before the war, high-tech satellites and surveillance systems allowed the U.S. to track the deployment of Russian troops, tanks, and planes, and to eavesdrop on Russian military officials, enabling U.S. intelligence to accurately predict the timing of the invasion. But it would have needed more human spies inside Russia to see that the Russian army and defense industries were deeply corrupt.

Since the war began, a long list of weaknesses in the Russian military and its defense industries have been exposed, symbolized by the so-called jack-in-the-box flaw in Russian tanks. Ukrainian forces quickly learned that one well-placed shot could blow off a Russian tank turret, sending it sky high and killing the entire crew. It became clear that Russian tanks had been designed and built cheaply with ammunition stored openly in a ring inside the turret that can explode when the turret is hit and that crew safety had not been prioritized. In July, Adm. Tony Radakin, Britains military chief, said that Russia had lost almost 1,700 tanks in Ukraine.

Weak leadership, poor training, and low morale have led to huge casualties among Russian rank and file soldiers. In August, the Pentagon estimated that 70,000 to 80,000 Russian troops had been killed or wounded in Ukraine. Ukraine has also suffered huge casualties, but Russian front-line strength has been badly weakened.

Meanwhile, one of the biggest mysteries for U.S. analysts has been Russias failure to gain control of Ukraines skies, despite having a far larger air force. Aircraft design flaws, poor pilot training, and gaps in aircraft maintenance have left Russian aircraft vulnerable to Ukraines air defenses, which have been bolstered with Stinger missiles and other Western air defense systems.

The failure of U.S. intelligence to see the dysfunction in the Russian army and defense industries means that it also didnt foresee Russias ongoing battlefield defeats, which are now having a profound political and social impact on both Putin and Russia. Putin has ordered a partial mobilization to replace heavy battlefield losses,sparking large-scale protests. At least 200,000 people have already fled Russia, including thousands of young men seeking to avoid conscription.

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CIA Thought Putin Would Quickly Conquer Ukraine. Why Did They Get It So Wrong? - The Intercept

Soccer Football - Carabao Cup Final - Chelsea v Liverpool - Wembley Stadium, London, Britain - February 27, 2022 Liverpool fan with the big screen in the background in support of Ukraine before the match Action Images via Reuters/John Sibley TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY

John Sibley Reuters

Ukraine has joined Spain and Portugal in their bidto host the 2030 World Cup.

The partnership between the three countries was confirmed by leaders of the countries' three soccer federations at UEFA headquarters Wednesday.

"This is the dream of millions of Ukrainian fans. The dream of people who survived the horrors of war or are still in the occupied territories, over which the Ukrainian flag will surely fly soon," said Andriy Pavelko, president of Ukraine's soccer federation, at a news conference Wednesday.

He said the move was sanctioned by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Ukraine has been under full-scale invasion by Russia since February.

Details were not given on how many games would be held in Ukraine, or in which cities, but the Olympic Stadium in Kyiv hosted the finals of the 2012 European Championship and the 2018 Champions League.

"Now it's not the Iberian bid, it's the European bid," Spain's soccer federation president, Luis Rubiales, said at the news conference, according to the Associated Press. "Together we represent the power of transformation football has in society."

Spain and Portugal previouslyannounced their joint bid in June 2021. The new bid faces competition from a collaboration between Egypt, Greece and Saudi Arabia, and a South American bid between Uruguay, Argentina, Paraguay and Chile.

FIFA will vote to choose the host in 2024.

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Ukraine joins Spain and Portugal's joint bid to host 2030 World Cup - CNBC

Tourists by the boulevard at a Black Sea resort in Odesa, Ukraine, on Sept. 3. Tourists are not allowed to enter the public beach due to the presence of land mines and other explosives. Dominika Zarzycka/NurPhoto via Getty Images hide caption

Tourists by the boulevard at a Black Sea resort in Odesa, Ukraine, on Sept. 3. Tourists are not allowed to enter the public beach due to the presence of land mines and other explosives.

SLAVSKE, Ukraine Ukraine's war-battered economy is expected to shrink by at least a third this year, hitting virtually every sector. This includes the tourism industry, which officials say had started to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic before Russia invaded Ukraine in February.

But the Ukrainian government still hopes its people will continue to travel within the country and spend money in locales on the Black Sea and in the Carpathian Mountains in the west.

"A lot of people in Ukraine still don't feel it's OK to go on vacation or travel," Mariana Oleskiv, chair of Ukraine's State Agency for Tourism Development, tells NPR.

More than seven months into the war, "we understand that many people in our country live in very bad conditions, that some people don't have electricity and our soldiers sleep in trenches," she says.

According to agency data provided to NPR, domestic tourism, which the agency defines as leaving your home city for leisure, increased 24% between 2019 and 2021. Nearly 4.2 million foreign tourists visited Ukraine in 2021 a 30% jump over the previous year.

Oleskiv says she forecasted that the trend would continue into 2022, but then the war started.

Trips into Ukraine by international tourists are down between 85% and 90%, says Oleskiv. Tour operators in safer areas of Ukraine reported to the government that occupancy rates are down 50% this summer compared to last. She says tourism in places such as Odesa and other parts of southern Ukraine closer to the front line of the conflict has "stopped completely."

Tourists take the Soviet-era Zakhar Berkut resort chairlift in Slavske, Ukraine, in August. The tourist town is located in the Carpathian Mountains, a wildly popular vacation destination for Ukrainians. Ashley Westerman/NPR hide caption

Tourists take the Soviet-era Zakhar Berkut resort chairlift in Slavske, Ukraine, in August. The tourist town is located in the Carpathian Mountains, a wildly popular vacation destination for Ukrainians.

The slowdown is being felt across the country, including in the Carpathian Mountains, a popular vacation destination in the relatively safe western part of the country.

Katerina Minich manages the Dvir Kniazhoiy Korony hotel in Slavske, a popular ski resort town about 85 miles south of Lviv. Minich tells NPR that the number of guests at her 15-room hotel is down about 60% from last year.

"Overall, from February to [August], the hotel's earnings are 70 to 80% lower" compared to last year, Minich said by text message. She says other hotels in Slavske, whose population has shrunk since the war broke out, have experienced a similar drop in guests and revenues.

Tourists ski near the Chornohora mountain range, part of the Carpathian Mountains, in western Ukraine on Feb. 21, 2021, one year before the Russian invasion. Markiian Lyseiko/Ukrinform/Future Publishing via Getty Images hide caption

Tourists ski near the Chornohora mountain range, part of the Carpathian Mountains, in western Ukraine on Feb. 21, 2021, one year before the Russian invasion.

The true damage Russia's full-scale ground invasion has wrought on Ukraine's domestic tourism sector won't be fully known for months, Oleskiv says. But her agency plans to start trying to turn things around with a new tourism campaign called "Get Inspired by Ukraine" which she says aims to tell Ukrainians they have a right to take a rest.

"At some point, we need to stop and take a breath and don't be so involved in the news," Oleskiv says.

Some Ukrainians are already following the advice.

"I think that in order to be more effective, you have to relax sometimes," Natalii Baliuk, 35, from Kyiv said on a visit to Slavske in August. "Otherwise, you just will not be able to do anything and you cannot serve this country."

Baliuk and her friends traveled to the Carpathians for Ukrainian Independence Day not only because they believed it to be safe, but also because one of her friends could not travel abroad because martial law prevents men between the ages of 18 and 60 from leaving Ukraine.

The conflict in Ukraine could affect tourism throughout all of Europe, according to a report by the Economist Intelligence Unit. Russian and Ukrainian tourists spend a combined $45 billion a year, but that number is expected to decrease. In addition to the loss of tourists, the report says the conflict will also raise food and fuel prices, affect traveler confidence and disposable incomes, and restrict airlines and airspace.

Vendors sell food, beverages and souvenirs at a lookout spot in Slavske, Ukraine, in August. The week of Ukrainian Independence Day, the tourist town saw a small spike in visitors, but overall tourism this summer was down significantly across the Carpathian Mountains because of the war. Ashley Westerman/NPR hide caption

Vendors sell food, beverages and souvenirs at a lookout spot in Slavske, Ukraine, in August. The week of Ukrainian Independence Day, the tourist town saw a small spike in visitors, but overall tourism this summer was down significantly across the Carpathian Mountains because of the war.

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With Ukraine at war, officials hope to bring tourism back to areas away from fighting - NPR

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Russias brutal and unprovoked February 24 further invasion of Ukraine has flooded communities in its eastern, central, and southern regions with deadly explosive hazards, including landmines, unexploded bombs and munitions, and improvised explosive devices. These explosive remnants of war continue to kill and maim innocent Ukrainian civilians, while the threat they pose also blocks access to fertile farmland, delays reconstruction efforts, and prevents displaced families from returning to their homes. According to Government of Ukraine estimates, as much as 160,000 square kilometers of its land may be contaminated an area roughly the size of Virginia, Maryland, and Connecticut combined.

A new initiative supported by the U.S. State Department is working to save lives and prevent injuries by using soccer to raise local awareness about these hidden hazards. This $1.5 million program, managed by the Office of Weapons Removal and Abatement in the Departments Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, is led by Spirit of Soccer, one of our partners working worldwide to save lives and help communities recovering from conflict.

Coach Scotty Lee founded Spirit of Soccer in 1996 after witnessing first-hand the impact landmines and unexploded munitions have on communities during his time as a volunteer aid worker in the Balkans. Since then, Spirit of Soccer has been dedicated to using soccer skills clinics and tournaments to teach Explosive Ordnance Risk Education to more than 1 million children in 14 countries, including Bosnia-Herzegovina, Cambodia, Iraq, and Kosovo.

Working in partnership with the Ukrainian Football Association and the Amateur Association of Football of Ukraine (AAFU), Spirit of Soccer is currently training 30 coaches from Ukraines Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Chernivtsi regions to teach children Explosive Ordnance Risk Education; in other words, how to recognize, avoid, and report dangerous items to local authorities, increasing their safety and that of their friends, neighbors, and community, while also having fun playing soccer.

In Bucha and Irpin, two cities that remain significantly covered in unexploded Russian bombs and explosive hazards, Spirit of Soccer and its local partners recently staged the first in a series of more than 1,400 soccer clinics and 30 tournaments expected to reach an estimated 40,000 children, to spread the word about the risk of explosive hazards and help keep kids safe as communities work toward survey and clearance efforts to eliminate unexploded munitions for good.

The United States is proud to support Ukraines efforts to address the impacts of explosive hazards in Ukraine. Since 2004, we have invested more than $77 million to help Ukraine address both its legacy conventional weapons challenges as well as survey and clearance efforts to mitigate the deadly explosive hazards left behind by Russias initial invasion in 2014 and its renewed assault in 2021. As Ukraine continues to assess the impacts of Russias ongoing invasion, we intend to provide more than $90 million in assistance in the coming year to address explosive hazards, including through Spirit of Soccers important effort, as well as working to train and equip approximately 100 Ukrainian demining teams. We will also support a large-scale train and equip project to strengthen the Government of Ukraines demining and explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) capacity, which will be key to future recovery and rebuilding.

The United States is the worlds single largest financial supporter of conventional weapons destruction. Since 1993, the United States has invested more than $4.7 billion for the safe clearance of landmines and explosive remnants of war as well as the securing and safe disposal of excess small arms, light weapons, and munitions in more than 100 countries and territories.

For more information on how the State Department is strengthening human security, facilitating economic development, and fostering stability through demining, risk education, and other conventional weapons destruction activities, check out our annual report,To Walk the Earth in Safety, and follow us on Twitter @StateDeptPM.

About the Author: Andy Strike is a Public Affairs Specialist in the Office of Congressional and Public Affairs at the U.S. Department of States Bureau of Political-Military Affairs.

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Soccer Saves Lives: New U.S. Effort in Ukraine to Reduce Risk of Explosive Hazards - United States Department of State - Department of State