The Hamilton Spectator

Russia takes losses in failed river crossing

Another sign of Moscow’s struggles to salvage war gone awry, officials say

- OLEKSANDR STASHEVSKY­I AND DAVID KEYTON

Russian forces suffered heavy losses in a Ukrainian attack that destroyed a pontoon bridge they were using to try to cross a river in the east, Ukrainian and British officials said in another sign of Moscow’s struggle to salvage a war gone awry.

Ukrainian authoritie­s, meanwhile, opened the first war crimes trial of the conflict Friday. The defendant, a captured Russian soldier, stands accused of shooting to death a 62-year-old civilian in the early days of the war.

The trial got underway as Russia’s offensive in the Donbas, Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland, seemed to turn increasing­ly into a grinding war of attrition.

Ukraine’s airborne command released photos and video of what it said was a damaged Russian pontoon bridge over the Siversky Donets River and several destroyed or damaged Russian military vehicles nearby. The command said its troops “drowned the Russian occupiers.”

Britain’s Defence Ministry said Russia lost “significan­t armored maneuver elements” of at least one battalion tactical group in the attack earlier this week. A Russian battalion tactical group consists of about 1,000 troops.

“Conducting river crossings in a contested environmen­t is a highly risky maneuver and speaks to the pressure the Russian commanders are under to make progress,” the ministry said in its daily intelligen­ce update. In other developmen­ts, a move by Finland and, potentiall­y, Sweden to join NATO was thrown into question when Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his country is “not of a favourable opinion” toward the idea. He accused Sweden and other Scandinavi­an countries of supporting Kurdish militants and others Turkey considers terrorists.

Erdogan did not say outright that he would block the two nations from joining NATO. But the military alliance makes its decisions by consensus, meaning that each of its 30 member countries has a veto over who can join.

An expansion of NATO would be a blow to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who undertook the war in what he said was a bid to thwart the alliance’s eastward advance.

With Ukraine pleading for more arms to fend off the invasion, the European Union’s foreign affairs chief announced plans to give Kyiv an additional 500 million euros ($672 million) to buy heavy weapons. Ukrainian Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov welcomed the heavy weapons making their way to the front lines, but admitted there is no quick end to the war in sight.

“We are entering a new, long-term phase of the war,” he wrote in a Facebook post. “Extremely difficult weeks await us.”

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