Russian gains branded `minimal at best'
Putin's troops `very tepid,' U.S. officials say
A Ukrainian counteroffensive pushed Russian forces 40 kilometres east of Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city, U.S. officials said Monday.
They also said Russian gains in Donbas had been “minimal at best” and “quite frankly anaemic,” and Vladimir Putin's troops appeared to be displaying a risk aversion to casualties.
“They were hoping to get Kharkiv and hold it,” said a senior U.S. defence official.
The official also said that in areas of Donbas they were “moving in and then declaring victory, and then withdrawing their troops only to let the Ukrainians take it back.
“There's a casualty aversion that we continue to see by the Russians now.”
The official said Russian advances in the Donbas were “very cautious, very tepid.” He said about 70 of the 90 155mm howitzers promised to Ukraine had now been delivered, along with tens of thousands of rounds, and training for Ukrainian soldiers.
British intelligence officials said Russia has lost a quarter of its invading army in its botched occupation of Ukraine.
Some of Moscow's most elite units, including its Airborne Forces, have suffered the highest levels of attrition in the first 68 days of the conflict while one quarter of Russia's forces used in the invasion was now “combat ineffective.” The Kremlin has committed over 120 battalion tactical groups, each numbering between 600 to 1,000 soldiers, to Ukraine, which amounts to about 65 per cent of Russia's entire ground combat strength, according to the report.
The U.K. Ministry of Defence said it would “probably take years for Russia to reconstitute these forces.”
Germany said on Monday it was prepared to back an immediate European Union embargo on Russian oil, a major shift from Moscow's biggest energy customer that could let Europe impose such a ban within days.
Russia's energy exports — by far its biggest source of income — have so far largely been exempt from international sanctions over the war. Kyiv says that loophole means European countries are funding the Kremlin war effort, sending Moscow hundreds of millions of euros every day.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz has been under growing pressure to take a firmer line, including from within the Social Democrat's own governing coalition.
“Germany is not against an oil ban on Russia. Of course it is a heavy load to bear but we would be ready to do that,” Economy Minister Robert Habeck, of the Greens, told reporters before talks with his EU colleagues in Brussels.
“With coal and oil, it is possible to forgo Russian imports now,” Finance Minister Christian Lindner of the pro-business FDP told Die Welt newspaper. “It can't be ruled out that fuel prices could rise.”
Germany had already reduced the share of Russian oil in its imports to 12 per cent from 35 per cent before Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, but had previously said it needed months to phase out Russian crude.
Weaning Europe off Russian oil is likely to be easier than reducing dependence on Russian natural gas. Moscow has demanded European customers pay for gas in rubles, which the EU rejects. Last week, Moscow cut off supplies to Poland and Bulgaria.
In the southern port of Odesa, a 14-year-old boy was killed and a 17-year-old girl was wounded in a missile strike, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Monday.
Zelenskiy said the missile hit a dormitory.
“How did these children and the dormitory threaten the Russian state?” Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address.
Earlier, the secretary of Ukraine's Security Council, Oleksiy Danylov, was quoted by media as saying the strike also hit a church, blowing the roof off.
Reuters was not able to independently verify the reports.
Meanwhile, a Ukrainian drone destroyed two Russian patrol boats in the Black Sea off Snake Island, a rocky outcrop that became a symbol of Ukrainian resistance in the early days of the Russian invasion.
Footage released by the Ukrainian military shows the Turkish-made Bayraktar drone hitting the two Russian Raptor-class patrol vessels that can be used for landing troops.
The 40-acre island became famous when a tiny military unit posted on it refused to surrender to a Russian warship and famously told the vessel to “go f–-yourself” on the first day of Moscow's invasion, sparking a wave of Ukrainian patriotism.
Across the border in Belgorod, used as the Kremlin's staging post for its invasion, more explosions were reported Monday after a series of unexplained attacks on infrastructure.
Ukrainian authorities Monday tried to evacuate a second group of civilians from Mariupol's besieged Azovstal steel works after 100 people were able to leave the plant after taking shelter in its sprawling network of bunkers for several weeks.
Vadym Boichenko, the mayor of Mariupol, said on Ukrainian television that 100 people were able to leave the city's basements Monday and were awaiting an evacuation to a safe place.
“This is supposed to happen, and we're waiting for the enemy troops to let it happen today.”
Authorities in the self-proclaimed separatist statelet of Donetsk said 214 people, including 33 children, left Mariupol that day for a separatist-controlled area.
Ukrainian officials did not confirm the reports. The evacuation may have been complicated by reports of renewed shelling in the city.
Denys Shlega, a Ukrainian National Guard brigade commander in Mariupol, told Ukrainian TV that Russian forces on Sunday night started shelling the plant after a two-day break.
“There are still hundreds of civilians including about 20 children in Azovstal's bunkers, according to our calculations,” he said.
THERE'S A CASUALTY AVERSION THAT WE CONTINUE TO SEE.