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New details have emerged about Belarusians fighting for Ukraine against Russia's invasion as part of a broader struggle to free their own country from Russian domination and the rule of Moscow-backed autocrat Alexander Lukashenko.

Speaking exclusively to VOA in a Tuesday phone interview, the deputy commander of the largest pro-Ukraine Belarusian fighting force said its numbers have almost reached the size of an average Ukrainian battalion, which he said has about 450-500 troops.

"Several thousand more have applied to join us through our online recruitment tool," said Vadim Kabanchuk of the Kastus Kalinouski battalion, named after a Belarusian revolutionary who led a regional uprising against Russian occupation in the 1860s.

The Kalinouski battalion began forming in Kyiv after Russia had begun its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24. The battalion uses the Telegram channel @belwarriors to share news and images of its activities. On March 9, it announced its adoption of the Kalinouski name in a video posted to the platform.

Kabanchuk said he is one of a number of the Belarusian battalion's fighters who have been active in Ukraine's defense starting in 2014. That year, Russian forces invaded eastern Ukraine's Donbas region to foment a separatist uprising within its Russian-speaking community.

Belarusians have been drawn to fight for Ukraine for years in the hope that freeing it from Russian occupation would boost their own efforts to rid Belarus of Moscow's influence and end the 27-year presidency of Lukashenko, a key Russian ally.

The Kalinouski battalion swore an oath of allegiance to Belarus and Ukraine in a Telegram video posted March 25. Four days later, in another video, battalion members said they had a new status as part of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and held up green booklets that resembled Ukrainian military IDs.

There has been no confirmation of the Kalinouski battalion's announcement on websites run by the Ukrainian government and military. The Ukrainian Embassy in Washington did not respond to a VOA email asking whether it could provide such a confirmation.

Franak Viacorka, a senior adviser to exiled Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, told VOA that he believes the Kalinouski battalion's declared integration into the Ukrainian Armed Forces is credible. He described the battalion as the biggest and "perhaps best organized" of the Belarusian groups fighting for Ukraine and said it has earned a right to display Belarus' national flag and coat of arms in its operations.

"As of now, they will be fighting not only in one place, not only in defense of Kyiv, but all over Ukraine," Viacorka said.

As Russia's full-scale invasion began, Belarusian fighters of what later became the Kalinouski battalion joined the Ukrainian military's volunteer Territorial Defense Force units in Kyiv, according to deputy commander Kabanchuk. The Kyiv Independent news site had reported in January that the Territorial Defense Force units would comprise former active-duty Ukrainian military personnel and other volunteers, including civilians.

Kabanchuk said some of the Kyiv territorial defense units that his fellow Belarusian fighters joined included Ukrainian fighters with ties to the Azov regiment of the Ukrainian National Guard. The Azov regiment is known for the far-right beliefs of some of its members and has been most active in Mariupol, the southern Ukrainian port besieged by Russia for weeks.

"We initially were part of Kyiv territorial defense units whose members called themselves part of the 'Azov movement,'" said Kabanchuk. "But we are not part of the Ukrainian National Guard's Azov regiment and don't want to be confused with it," he added.

Most Belarusians who volunteer to fight for Ukraine are driven not by far-right ideology but by a belief that Kyiv's struggle is part of their own fight to free Belarus from Russian imperialism, said former Belarusian Foreign Ministry official Pavel Slunkin in a phone call with VOA.

"They include bloggers, journalists, I.T. specialists, factory workers. All kinds of professions. And they want to see Belarus as a democratic state," said Slunkin, now an analyst at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

Not all Belarusians who seek to join the Kalinouski battalion will make it through a multistage vetting process aimed at weeding out security threats, Kabanchuk explained. Those threats include the possibility of Lukashenko's agents trying to infiltrate the battalion, he said.

"Many of the thousands who applied will be rejected after in-person interviews at the Belarusian recruitment center in the Polish capital, Warsaw, which acts as a first-stage filtration hub for potential fighters," Kabanchuk said. "Others will be rejected as unsuitable after they arrive to the battalion bases."

Smaller groups of Belarusian fighters have been active in other parts of Ukraine in recent weeks, according to Belarusian opposition figures. In a Thursday tweet, Tsikhanouskaya said a recently formed regiment called Pahonia is training new volunteers on behalf of Ukraine's armed forces.

In a Friday statement to VOA, a spokesperson for the International Legion for the Defense of Ukraine, Norwegian-born Damien Magrou, responded to a question about Pahonia by saying Ukrainian officials are considering an initiative to integrate "suitable" Belarusian volunteers into the legion.

Kabanchuk said the Kalinouski battalion prefers not to join the international legion because his fighters have much more autonomy as a separate unit.

Viacorka, the Tsikhanouskaya adviser, said in a Thursday tweet that he hopes the Pahonia regiment will form the basis of a new professional Belarusian army in a post-Lukashenko era.

Lukashenko derided the pro-Ukraine Belarusian fighters last month, telling a government meeting that the fighters are "crazy" and motivated only by money.

As for his own troops, he has avoided sending them into Ukraine to join in Russia's invasion.

Kabanchuk said that if Lukashenko were to do that, some of the Belarusian military's forces would surrender, and others would turn against the Belarusian autocrat.

"He understands very well that sending troops into Ukraine will speed up the fall of his regime," Kabanchuk said.

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How Belarusian Fighters in Ukraine Evolved Into Prominent Force Against Russian Invasion - Voice of America - VOA News

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy speaks from Kyiv on Thursday night. He said he had stripped two generals of their military rank and that all traitors will ultimately be punished. Ukrainian Presidential Press Office via AP hide caption

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy speaks from Kyiv on Thursday night. He said he had stripped two generals of their military rank and that all traitors will ultimately be punished.

Ukraine's president has stripped two generals of their military rank, calling them "traitors" and "antiheroes."

Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly public address on Thursday the two intelligence officers Naumov Andriy Olehovych, the former chief of the main department of internal security of the Security Service of Ukraine, and Kryvoruchko Serhiy Oleksandrovych, the former head of the Office of the Security Service of Ukraine in the Kherson region are no longer generals.

The Security Service of Ukraine is the government's main intelligence and security agency focused on counter-intelligence and counter-terrorism. Kherson is one of the few big Ukrainian cities that has fallen to Russian forces, who occupied it in the early days of the war.

Zelenskyy did not elaborate on the reasons behind the decision, but suggested that the generals had not been loyal to Ukraine.

"According to Article 48 of the Disciplinary Statute of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, those servicemen among senior officers who have not decided where their homeland is, who violate the military oath of allegiance to the Ukrainian people as regards the protection of our state, its freedom and independence, will inevitably be deprived of senior military ranks," he said, according to an English translation. "Random generals don't belong here!"

He added that he does not have time to deal with all such traitors, "but gradually they will all be punished."

Zelenskyy also mentioned that a government program to compensate citizens who have lost their homes has received more than 25,491 applications in just a few days, even though the estimated number of residents in these houses and apartments is closer to 63,000.

"But we know that more needs to be restored," he said. "Much more."

This story originally appeared in the Morning Edition live blog.

Original post:
Zelenskyy calls 2 Ukrainian generals traitorous and strips them of their rank - NPR

The scenes of German and Soviet soldiers overtaking Ukraine in Sergei Loznitsas Babi Yar: Context inevitably bring to mind the current Russian invasion of the country. For more than two decades, Loznitsa, a Ukrainian filmmaker who was raised in the Soviet Union, has chronicled the past and the present in Ukraine and Russia by revisiting historic events and depicting daily life in the grips of war and empire.

Babi Yar: Context, a documentary that opens on Friday at Film Forum, recreates Ukraine during World War II through vivid archival footage of Kyiv, where Nazis murdered thousands of Jews at a single site, the ravine of the films title. In the fictional satire Donbass, which opens on April 8, Loznitsa re-enacts bizarre and disturbing episodes from Russian incursions into eastern Ukraine in the 2010s.

Loznitsa, 57, recently made news when he quit the European Film Academy over a statement by the group on the Russian invasion that he deemed toothless; then he returned to the headlines after he was ejected from the Ukrainian Film Academy for opposing boycotts of Russian filmmakers. Even Ukraines president, Volodymyr Zelensky, weighed in during a March 27 interview with Russian journalists, saying of Loznitsa, Hes an artist who supports Ukraine.

Loznitsa regards the conflict as a European war, not just a Ukrainian war. Speaking in Russian, with his producing partner Maria Choustova-Baker serving as an interpreter, he spoke about his films and current events during a video chat from Berlin, where he lives. These are excerpts from our conversation.

Where were you when the Russian invasion started?

Vilnius. I am finishing a new film there. I was awoken by an SMS from my friend, Russian filmmaker Victor Kossakovsky. It said, Forgive me. What a nightmare.

Is it true that you helped your parents get out of Ukraine?

In contrast to many others, I actually believed in what the U.S. intelligence was reporting and what President Biden was telling the world [that Russia had planned to invade]. I even guessed the dates correctly. My friend, the Ukrainian co-producer Serge Lavrenyuk, helped me remove my parents [from Kyiv, three days before the invasion started]. This war comes as an enormous shock for millions of people. My father was born in 1939, and he remembers very well his childhood and these horrors. My mother was born in 1940 and also remembers all the movement during the war. Now they are [in their 80s] and it is the same circumstances!

How would you compare the situation now with the history in Babi Yar: Context?

The fundamental difference is that back then, it was a fight between two totalitarian regimes. Now there is one totalitarian regime fighting with a country aspiring to be independent. Back then, the big countries like the U.S. and the U.K. also participated in the war. But today, the majority of the countries who have the potential to stop this war have chosen this immoral position of an onlooker, of noninterference. And the politicians of these countries have put their citizens in this situation of immorality, because the only choice the citizens have is to observe online, in real time, how city after city of Ukraine is destroyed.

You could say that Putin is winning at the moment internationally, because the policies of world leaders are based on fear. Theyre not even capable of taking a rather neutral step of introducing a no-fly zone over Ukraine.

Some worry that such involvement would lead to escalation and nuclear conflict.

I dont think its a valid excuse. First of all, do these politicians have any guarantee that in case God forbid Russia does manage to swallow Ukraine, they wont use nuclear weapons? Putin had no valid reason for invading Ukraine. So why do you think he would need a valid reason to use nuclear weapons? This can only be stopped by force. Sooner or later, NATO will have to get involved, and the longer they wait, the bloodier the resolution of the conflict would be.

Babi Yar: Context doesnt shy from addressing the role of people within Ukraine in the massacre of Jews. Have you experienced any criticism about this?

There were people who criticized me in Ukraine for making this film the way I made it. The contemporary situation is completely different. And its absolutely obvious that all that Putin is talking about, that there are Nazis in Ukraine, was all nonsense. At the same time this question of collaboration in history is very, very painful in Ukraine. Yes, I was heavily criticized.

Do you have relatives that were affected by the Babi Yar killings?

[Nods]

In Donbass you take a different approach: dramatizing events based on actual cellphone videos. Why this form?

First, because I was mesmerized by those amateur videos that I found on the internet. Second, I wanted to create this grotesque form because I needed something to keep the film together and I didnt want to use just one protagonist or a group of protagonists. I wanted you to observe the idiocy in all its shapes and forms. This wonderful film by Luis Buuel, The Phantom of Liberty, also employs this method.

One of the scenes shows Russians moving artillery around from place to place after firing on a civilian bus.

Yes, the most important thing for them was not to be identified. So this is why they had to move from one place to the other. And the killing that occurs afterward [in the film] is because they wanted to get rid of the witnesses.

That sounds like a mafia movie.

Yes, in fact, these criminal gangs that took power in 1917 and that hold power today, theres no difference between them and any other mafia. Before this, the mafia covered itself up with Soviet ideology. Nowadays there is no ideology anymore. Its just mafia.

Donbass also portrays people who are hired to pretend to be witnesses to a staged explosion.

Yes, it happens all the time. This is the technique thats routinely employed by Russian television, and monitoring groups managed to identify actors who play the parts of witnesses in different locations. So they have almost a cast of actors that they employ for fabrication of fake news. There was a notorious TV report around 2014: a story of how Ukrainians crucify a Russian boy. This report was analyzed by professionals who proved that every single element was fake, all staged.

When you were growing up in the Soviet Union, was there a point where you became disillusioned?

The fact is that the entire Soviet Union lived in this kind of double reality or multiple realities, and everybody was aware of it, but very few people actually questioned it. But I was a very bad pupil. [Laughs] I was a very good pupil in terms of school results, but I always questioned this double reality and asked myself, Where am I and what is going on?

Today this criminal group [in power in Russia] has regrouped. They fixed the countrys economy a little bit. They upgraded their military force. And now theyre ready to conquer the world again. [Laughs]

These days your movies can look like prophecies because of their familiar images of war.

The problems that I talk about in my films have been around for a long time. This is why I wanted to make Mr. Landsbergis [a new film about Lithuanias successful bid for independence from the Soviet Union in 1989-91]. Because there is this unique and fantastic and colossal experience of fighting against the Soviet Union and winning.

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Russia and Ukraine Have Long Been This Filmmakers Subject - The New York Times

President-elect Vladimir Putin ahead of being sworn-in as President of Russia at St Andrew's Hall of the Moscow Kremlin.

Mikhail Metzel | TASS via Getty Images

Russia's Kremlin has rebuffed claims made by the U.S. that President Vladimir Putin felt he was "misled" by his military commanders over Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.

"To our regret and even concern neither the Department of State nor the Pentagon have authentic information about what is happening in the Kremlin," Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters at a briefing Thursday.

"They just do not understand what is happening in the Kremlin, they do not understand Russian President Vladimir Putin, they do not understand the mechanism of decision-making and they do not understand the style of our work," Peskov added, according to state news agency Tass.

"This is not just regrettable. It causes our concern, because such utter misunderstanding results in wrong decisions, in careless decisions that have very bad consequences."

The comments came after a declassified U.S. intelligence assessment released Wednesdaysuggested Putin had not been given the whole truth about Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Statements by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and White House communications director Kate Bedingfield on Wednesday included comments that Putin "felt misled by the Russian military" and that this had resulted in "persistent tension between Putin and his military leadership."

Putin is thought to have expected Russian forces to be able to occupy Ukraine with some ease, with the aim of unseating the Ukrainian government and installing a pro-Russian regime as Moscow looks to expand its sphere of influence over former Soviet states.

However, Russian forces have faced staunch resistance from both Ukrainian forces and thousands of volunteer civilian fighters across the country.

To date, Russia has only captured one city, Kherson, while a much-feared assault on the capital of Kyiv has yet to begin, the second-largest city Kharkiv continues to resist and the western city of Lviv remains relatively unscathed.

Defense analysts have said that Russian troops were ill-prepared for the invasion, but this may not have been communicated to Putin by military commanders eager to please and reluctant to look incompetent.

Analysts told CNBC on Thursday that Putin's inner circle are either too loyal, or too scared, to question the strongman leader. As a result, despite the unpopular war, no one is likely to challenge his leadership or instigate a coup against Putin.

Read more of CNBC's politics coverage:

More here:
Russia hits back at U.S. intelligence claims that Putin was 'misled' over Ukraine war - CNBC

On March 25, the Russian Ministry of Defence announced that the first phase of the invasion of Ukraine was over. A mere month earlier, President Vladimir Putin had vowed to completely destroy Ukraines military capabilities and to replace the Ukrainian government, which he claimed without any evidence was a neo-Nazi junta planning to commit genocide in Donbas.

To that end, on February 24 the Russian army and airborne forces attempted a lightning assault on Kyiv, and simultaneously launched offensives against Kharkiv, Sumy, Chernihiv, Kherson, Melitopol, Mariupol and on the line of contact in the Donbas region. The subsequent month of unexpectedly vicious high-intensity combat has seen Russian forces fail to take all the cities, with the exception of the smaller southern cities of Kherson and Melitopol, which fell in the first days. In return, the Russian army has taken extremely heavy losses; between 7,000 and 15,000 personnel killed and more than 2,000 vehicles visually confirmed as destroyed or captured.

The new announcement by the Russian government is a direct response to these failures. It is an admission that, at least for now, Russia cannot return Ukraine to its control by force. Instead of regime change (denazification according to Russia), the new claim is that Russias goal is a more limited focus on taking territory and destroying Ukrainian forces in the Donbas.

This is a serious crisis for President Putins regime. To justify the special military operation against Ukraine, he has used extreme rhetoric and baseless claims of neo-Nazism and genocide in Ukraine for months. Since the invasion began, ordinary Russians have been presented with a barrage of Z-themed pro-war propaganda, patriotic speeches and rallies designed to stir patriotic fervour.

During the first few days, when Russian leaders still assumed they would quickly defeat Ukraine, Russian state media carried pronouncements that President Putins invasion had reshaped the world order and put an end to both the Ukraine question and a unipolar United States-led, NATO dominated world. Perhaps even more importantly, Russias military power and history both conventional and nuclear are a cornerstone of national identity and national pride, and Russians have long looked down culturally and politically on Ukraine and Ukrainians. All of this makes the current situation extremely difficult for the Russian government to explain to its people.

In the information climate carefully created by the Russian government for its people, how could the mighty Russian military have failed to destroy the much weaker Ukrainian army? How can a supposedly high-tech special military operation that would be conducted in a short time by elite forces have led to tens of thousands of dead, wounded and captured Russian troops and more than 2,000 destroyed Russian vehicles? How is it that the Ukrainian people supposedly being oppressed by an unpopular neo-Nazi junta imposed by shadowy hostile Western forces are now fighting with fierce anger and almost total national unity against their Russian liberators? Most of all, how can the Russian government supposedly a nuclear superpower, and the self-proclaimed heir of the victory over Nazi Germany in 1945 make a ceasefire deal that leaves the supposedly genocidal, neo-Nazi Ukrainian government in power? By creating a narrative justification for the invasion that was completely divorced from reality, the Russian government has created a situation where almost any possible outcome to the war now will be extremely hard to justify to its own people.

Russia needs a ceasefire soon, however, because the current rate of equipment and personnel losses is not sustainable, and in any case, they are making little meaningful progress except in the east. In fact, in the past week, Ukraine has retaken significant territory around Mykolaiv and Kherson in the southwest, around Irpin and Makariv to the west of Kyiv and Trostyanets to the east of Kyiv. With each passing day, the Ukrainian hand in the ongoing ceasefire negotiations becomes stronger rather than weaker.

In this context, the Russian announcement of a new phase of the war that will focus on the Donbas has two purposes. Firstly, it represents a pragmatic military strategy. The Donbas is the part of Ukraine where Russian forces stand the best chance of achieving major military successes they are attempting to concentrate sufficient forces to break the Ukrainian defence line along the Donets River and have gained important ground around Izyum in the past week. It makes sense to prioritise overstretched forces where they have the best chance of achieving tangible results, which will improve their bargaining position in ceasefire talks. Secondly, this is the start of an effort to moderate the expectations created by the completely unrealistic view of the war that the Russian government has fed its people.

Despite this, some in the Russian government seem to find it hard to accept these reduced ambitions and the reality that they imply. On March 27, the propagandist known as Putins mouthpiece, Dmitry Kiselyov, stated on Russian television that Russia will never cede Ukraine to anyone it has to be part of Russia, even against Ukraines own will. Furthermore, Russia continues to conduct missile strikes throughout Ukraine including in Lviv in the west, and is finding it difficult to disengage its forces around Kyiv, Kharkiv, Sumy and Kherson due to strong Ukrainian counterattacks. Therefore, while a new phase of the invasion has been announced, it remains to be seen if Russia can successfully focus on the Donbas as stated.

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial stance.

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Russia has effectively admitted defeat In Ukraine - Al Jazeera English