LATEST DEVELOPMENTS: Day 457

A Russian rocket hit a medical clinic in eastern Ukraine on Friday. At least one dead and 16 others injured, including two children 3 & 6 yrs old, in the missile strike on the clinic in Dnipro. Four are missing. “We must defeat these inhumans irrevocably and as quickly as possible. Because our time is our people. And our people are the most precious thing in Ukraine,” said President Volodymyr Zelensky
Russia launched 36 Iranian-made Shahed drones against Ukraine overnight Thursday from the northern and the southern directions of the country, Ukraine’s Air Force reports. All the drones were shot down. According to the Ukrainian military, Russian forces likely aimed to strike at critical infrastructure and military facilities in western regions of Ukraine.
"In the best case, the Ukrainians really liberate a lot of territory, perhaps even pushing the Russians back to the line on Feb. 23 of last year before this massive Russian invasion began. That would be a huge blow to Moscow," said Steven Pifer, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine who's now at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation. This scenario would reverse Russia's most significant military gain over the past year, the creation of a land bridge connecting Russian troops in eastern Ukraine — the Donbas region — to Russian forces in the south — in Crimea. But Pifer acknowledges this is pretty optimistic. "Probably a more realistic expectation is that the Ukrainians take a good chunk of territory back, something that would be seen in the West as underscoring that Ukraine has the potential to win," he added. The U.S. and other NATO nations are sending Ukraine tanks, drones and artillery — giving it more firepower than ever — as it plans this offensive - NPR
Finland on May 24 said it would provideUkraine with 109 million euros ($117 million) in additional military equipment to include anti-aircraft weapons and ammunition.
Pro-Kremlin journalist Konstantin Dolgov was fired on May 25, a day after he published the full version of an interview with Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner private mercenary group - RFE/RL
106 Ukrainian POWs reportedly came back home today. 68 of them were considered missing. The oldest is 59 year old, the youngest - 21. Some are heavily injured.

Required reading…

Damage to Russian-occupied dam submerges Ukrainian reservoir island community.

AP - Ukraine controls five of the six dams along the Dnipro River, which runs from its northern border with Belarus down to the Black Sea and is crucial for the entire country’s drinking water and power supply. The last dam — the one furthest downstream in the Kherson region — is controlled by Russian forces.

All of Ukraine’s snowmelt and the runoff from rainy spring days winds up here, in the Kakhovka Reservoir, said David Helms, a retired meteorologist who has been monitoring the reservoir levels during the war. Russian forces detonated the sluice gates of the Nova Kakhovka Dam last November during the Ukrainian counteroffensive, although they ended up keeping control of that sliver of the Kherson.

River dams work as systems. The idea is to manage the flow to provide constant water levels that secure both ships on the water and buildings on land, Helms said. This is done mechanically with a combination of locks, turbines and sluice gates — and constant communication among the operators of the individual dams.

Because the sluice gates are closed, the water is cresting over the top of the dam but nowhere near as fast as the waters are flowing down the Dnipro. So there is little relief in sight for the handful of people left on the islands. The little community was primarily made up of second homes, but became more permanent with the start of the war, when people sought safety in its isolation.

Helms said the water levels are likely to drop slowly during the summer dry season. But that seems a distant future to Medyunov, whose work as a hunting guide ended with the war.

“Now there is nowhere to go,” he said. “We will wait for a better time to rebuild, repair. It’s really painful.”

WAR IN UKRAINE: May 26, 2023

Required reading…