Archive for the ‘Ukraine’ Category

Ukraine’s military intel chief Budanov issues stark warning to war-weary West – Yahoo News

Western countries t succumbing to war fatigue "will have to take care of the Muscovites when they come to occupy their territories," Chief of Ukraines Defense Intelligence (HUR) Kyrylo Budanov said in an interview with Le Monde on Jan. 11.

Russia's war against Ukraine began 10 years ago, and the full-scale invasion has been going on since 2022, so war fatigue is becoming more pronounced at both the individual and social levels, he said.

Read also: Attack on Ukraine is an attack on all of us, says Donald Tusk

"I'm not criticizing, said the spy chief.

It's an understandable phenomenon. The main thing is to find solutions, and we found them in time.

Russia is waging a war not only against Ukraine but also against NATO, as their propaganda has been claiming from the very beginning, Budanov stated.

Read also: Three scenarios the West is trying to avoid in Ukraine

"Every day I read classified Russian reports and other reports circulating through various channels," he continued.

All of them talk about 'strikes on NATO bases,' specifying that there were '50 Poles, '30 French,' and so on. They know that this is not true, but they are spreading this information.

Budanov noted that Russian captives are always surprised when they do not encounter any NATO soldiers in Ukraine, because, as they understand it, they came to fight against them. Ukraine is only the first stage.

The spy chief also emphasized that Western sanctions against Russia remain inadequate. Restrictions should have crippled the main sectors of the Russian economy: energy, metallurgy, and the financial system.

Read also: World is rapidly approaching World War III believes Ukrainian intelligence chief Budanov

Budanov touched on several other issues, including the need to provide Ukraine with more shells and artillery systems, both modern and old, as well as the necessity of supporting the stability of Ukraines economy.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk earlier has previously slammed Western war, stressing the importance of further assistance to Ukraine and calling on partners to "fully mobilize."

"I cant bear to hear politicians who talk about fatigue with the situation in Ukraine," Tusk said.

They tell President Zelenskyy that they are tired of the situation. I will demand help for Ukraine from day one.

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Ukraine's military intel chief Budanov issues stark warning to war-weary West - Yahoo News

U.S. Military Aid to Ukraine Was Poorly Tracked, Pentagon Report Says – The New York Times

More than $1 billion worth of shoulder-fired missiles, kamikaze drones and night-vision goggles that the United States has sent to Ukraine have not been properly tracked by American officials, a new Pentagon report concluded, raising concerns that they could be stolen or smuggled at a time when Congress is debating whether to send more military aid to Kyiv.

The report by the Defense Departments inspector general, released on Thursday, offers no evidence that any of the weapons have been misused after being shipped to a U.S. military logistics hub in Poland or sent onward to Ukraines front lines.

But it found that American defense officials and diplomats in Washington and Europe had failed to quickly or fully account for many of the nearly 40,000 weapons that by law should have been closely monitored because their battlefield impact, sensitive technology and relatively small size makes them attractive bounty for arms smugglers.

These are identified as the items that because of their sensitivity, their vulnerability to diversion or misuse or the consequences of that its particularly important to have this additional tracking and accountability in place, Robert P. Storch, the Pentagons inspector general, who is also the lead watchdog for American aid sent to help Ukraines war effort, said in an interview on Thursday.

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U.S. Military Aid to Ukraine Was Poorly Tracked, Pentagon Report Says - The New York Times

Ukraine’s Spy Chief Promises More Attacks on Crimea – The Moscow Times

Ukraine's military spy chief Kyrylo Budanov said in an interview published Friday that Kyiv's attacks against Russian-annexed Crimea were set to intensify, adding that Moscow's economy was proving surprisingly resilient despite sanctions.

"In 2023, the first Ukrainian incursions took place in temporarily occupied Crimea," Budanov told the French daily Le Monde, adding: "And this is just the beginning."

Ukraine has repeatedly targeted Russia's Black Sea Fleet, based in Sevastopol on the Crimean peninsula.

"The Russians have had to move everything in a hurry to the southeast," Budanov said, adding that Moscow was now trying to set up a naval base on the Black Sea coast of the breakaway Georgian region of Abkhazia.

He acknowledged that the front lines were largely frozen in Ukraine.

"The very intensive use of attack drones has made both Russian and Ukrainian offensives impossible," he said, noting that "another factor has been the density of minefields, unprecedented since World War II."

Budanov said the resilience of the Russian economy surprised him and that the current Western sanctions were not enough to force the Kremlin to change its behavior.

"A certain Russian paradox surprised me. Everyone thought that Moscow had a strong army and a weak economy. It turns out that the opposite is true," he said.

"The economy may be weak, but the country is not starving, far from it. It could even last quite a long time at this rate," Budanov said, adding that sanctions should target Russia's main economic sectors and the entire financial system.

Signs of fatigue over the war in Ukraine might be increasing but Budanov urged the West to keep supporting Kyiv militarily.

"Those who think they are tired of Ukraine abroad will have to court Russians when they come to occupy their own territories," he said.

Budanov, who has led Ukraine's GUR military intelligence unit since 2020, accurately predicted that Russia would attack Ukraine on February 24, 2022.

He insisted that now was not the right time to negotiate with Russia.

"Negotiations begin when one or both parties have an interest," he said. "This is not the case."

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Ukraine's Spy Chief Promises More Attacks on Crimea - The Moscow Times

Zelensky Visits Baltic Nations to Rally Support for Ukraine – The New York Times

In Estonia, a four-story banner that combines the flags of Ukraine and Estonia hangs over a main square in the capital, Tallinn. In Latvia, Foreign Minister Krisjanis Karins is calling for allies to ramp up military support to Ukraine without delay.

And the leader of Lithuania, where President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine began a tour of Baltic States on Wednesday, recently made a pointed plea to help Kyiv hold the line against invading Russian forces as support for Ukraine in the war elsewhere in Europe threatens to fragment.

For all those saying they are tired of war in Ukraine a reminder by the terrorist Russia that theres no limit to its brutality & thirst for blood, President Gitanas Nauseda of Lithuania wrote on the social media platform X on Dec. 29, hours after a Russian barrage of missiles and drones slammed into cities across Ukraine.

Almost nowhere is the emotional investment for Ukraines war effort stronger than in the Baltics, where the three former Soviet states declared independence at the end of the Cold War to escape Russias grip. Mr. Zelenskys trip there this week, an early diplomatic foray of 2024, comes as he tries to rally support for his war effort from a bastion of political backing while other European nations show increasing fatigue and financial distress from a war that began nearly two years ago.

Mr. Zelensky said on Wednesday that his trip, which will also take him to Tallinn in Estonia and Riga in Latvia, was meant to show Ukraines gratitude for the uncompromising support for Ukraine since 2014 and especially now, during Russias full-scale aggression.

Pavlo Klimkin, a former foreign minister of Ukraine, said the trip was intended to engage our friends who are close to us in their understanding of Russia to push for assistance in D.C., in Brussels, because this assistance is critical for us now.

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Bloodied and exhausted: Ukraine’s effort to mobilize more troops hits trouble – POLITICO Europe

KYIV Ukraine's parliament on Thursday withdrew a mobilization bill that would supply more troops to the front, but which has come under ferocious attack for flaws in how it was drafted.

"Nothing will happen under the law on mobilization. Neither today nor tomorrow. Nor in the near future," Ukrainian lawmaker Yaroslav Zhelezniak of the pro-European opposition Voice party said on Telegram.

Defense Minister Rustem Umerovsaid the bill will be revamped and submitted for government approval in the near future.

"This law is necessary for the defense of our state and every soldier who is currently at the front. It needs to be approved as soon as possible," he said in a Facebook post.

The bill presented to parliament over Christmas generated enormous controversy with its aims of cutting the draft age from 27 to 25, of limiting deferrals for men with slight disabilities, and of increasing penalties for draft-dodgers. But some parliamentarians claimed it wasn't clearly formulated and included human rights violations.

The purpose of the bill is to send more soldiers to battle; the military has said it needs an additional half-million men this year. The extra troops would allow exhausted frontline soldiers who have been fighting for almost two years to rotate home, while also holding the line against the 617,000 Russians fighting in Ukraine. The latter figure was given by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is increasing the ranks of the Russian military by nearly 170,000 to a whopping 1.3 million.

Ukraine's army now has some 850,000 troops, according to the country's State Military Media Center and the Global Firepower Index.

The mobilization plan, however, is politically toxic.

In the early weeks of the war in February 2022, Ukrainians lined up at draft centers to join the army, while across Europe Ukrainian truck drivers, builders and waiters left their jobs to return home and fight.

But after months of bloody stalemate that continued to cost thousands of lives, that early enthusiasm has evaporated. Meanwhile, military corruption scandals and a sense of exhaustion both at home and among Ukraine's allies have made joining up far less appealing.

The mobilization bill has been sent back to be reworked, with Human Rights Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets saying some provisions could violate the constitution, and Anastasia Radina, head of the parliamentary anti-corruption committee, predicting it could increase the risk of corruption.

We can already say that there will be changes to the bill. There will be no mobilization of disabled people, no possibility for local authorities discretion on mobilization issues, and also no significant limitations of human rights, Fedir Venislavsky, an MP and member of the parliament's defense committee, told POLITICO.

The enormous strain the war has placed on Ukraine has been reflected in the conflict over the mobilization bill.

Over a fifth of Ukraine's GDP or about $46 billion out of an economy of $214 billion is going toward the war effort, with about half used to pay troops and a quarter feeding the military industrial complex. Simply put, Ukraine's entire government budget is being spent on the war, with billions in aid from the EU and the U.S. helping fund the rest of the economy.

But that aid is increasingly in question stuck in Washington thanks to resistance from the Republican Party, and blocked in Brussels by Hungary. That has forced Kyiv to balance between finding enough new soldiers to continue to prosecute the war while also ensuring enough taxpayers and workers remain to keep the economy and war industries afloat.

The mobilization of an additional 450,000 to 500,000 people will cost Ukraine 500 billion hryvnia (12 billion) and I would like to know where the money will come from, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in December. Considering that it takes six Ukrainian working civilians paying taxes to pay the salary of one soldier, I would need to get 3 million more working people somewhere to be able to pay for the additional troops."

Speaking in Estonia on Thursday, Zelenskyy said: "If you are in Ukraine and you are not at the front, but you work and pay taxes, you also defend the state. And this is very necessary." He added that Ukrainians who have fled the country and are neither fighting nor paying taxes face an ethical dilemma.

"If we want to save Ukraine, if we want to save Europe, then all of us must understand: Either we help Ukraine or we don't. Either we are citizens who are at the front, or we are citizens who work and pay taxes," he said.

Pavlo Kazarin, a Ukrainian journalist and soldier, broke the calculation down in a Facebook post.

In order to wage war, a country needs money it is what keeps the economy afloat. It needs weapons without weapons it is impossible to talk about resistance. Also, we need soldiers. And if the first two resources can be provided to us by our allies, people capable of defending the country live in Ukraine, he said.

Ukrainian political analyst Volodymyr Fesenko said the mobilization bill is very unpopular, so politicians are afraid to take ownership; even Zelenskyy prefers the legislation be proposed by the government rather than championing it himself. At the same time, it is broadly recognized that the mobilization process must improve and that the military's needs must be met.

"The draft law on mobilization needs significant refinement and the search for an optimal balance of interests between the provision of military needs and the financial and economic capabilities and needs of the state; between the front and the rear; between the needs of the military and public sentiment," Fesenko posted on Facebook.

A key concern is that pulling men from offices and factories and putting them in uniform will tank the economy, but that may be overblown, said Kazarin, the Ukrainian soldier.

"They forget only that in case of successful mobilization, all those hands that have been holding weapons for the past few years will be released from duty in a year, he said. "Many of those who serve in the army today were quite successful businessmen, specialists, and IT professionals before the war. They held the front for two years, leaving the rear to you. And now it's your turn.

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Bloodied and exhausted: Ukraine's effort to mobilize more troops hits trouble - POLITICO Europe