WAR IN UKRAINE: June 8, 2022
A Russian soldier patrols a Mariupol street on April 12, 2022, photographed as part of a trip organized by the Russian military. (Alexander Nemenov/AFP via Getty Images)
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS: Day 104
As Russia’s military claims it controls all of Luhansk oblast, President Volodymyr Zelensky says in order to advance he needs “ten times more military equipment and at least ten times more people…we have more desire but we still have less military equipment, therefor we cannot move forward very strongly.” Overall, Russia now controls about 20 percent of Ukraine’s territory. Ukrainian troops are locked in fierce street battles with Russian forces in Severodonetsk. RFE/RL reports that Russian troops are now targeting Slovyansk, in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, and have resumed their offensive near Svyatyhorsk, some 20 kilometers north of Slovyansk, suffering losses.
Two Britons captured by Russian forces in Ukraine have appeared in court in the so-called Donetsk People's Republic - part of the Donbas region held by pro-Russian rebels since 2014. Video footage from the court, which is not internationally recognised, showed Aiden Aslin and Shaun Pinner alongside Moroccan national Saaudun Brahim - BBC
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has begun a two-day visit to Turkey, where he will hold talks on unblocking grain exports from Ukraine, reports RFE/RL. It appears that Ankara is preparing to play a leading role in the unblocking of grain shipments, with reports of a command center being established in Turkey. Some media are reporting that Turkish citizens are involved in the illegal smuggling of Ukrainian grain to other countries.
After being occupied by Russia's military for five weeks, United Nations nuclear watchdogs have assessed the damage done to the Ukrainian city of Chornobyl and the site of its notorious nuclear disaster. The news is not good: soil kicked up by the Russian military has increased radiation levels. They even ransacked the offices at the power plant. Check out this Global News report here
Some residents of the devastated Ukrainian city of Mariupol who managed to escape are saying they were given no choice but to travel to Russia in what the Kyiv government regards as "deportations". For several weeks, Ukrainian authorities have been accusing Moscow of "illegally transferring" more than a million Ukrainians to Russia or to the parts of Ukraine currently controlled by Russian forces. A Russian defence ministry official, Mikhail Mizintsev, confirmed the one million number but said the transfers of civilians was only being done to "evacuate" them away from "dangerous areas". More in this AFP report here
Crimea land corridor: Russia claims it has opened a land corridor to Russian-occupied Crimea, allowing civilians and goods to pass through the eastern Ukrainian territory. Russia's defense minister said the military, working with Russian Railways, had restored 1,200 kilometers of train tracks and opened roads to allow "full-fledged traffic" between Russia, eastern Ukraine's Donbas region and Crimea, the peninsula annexed by Russian forces from Ukraine in 2014 - CNN
Russia’s war crimes in Ukraine, though committed on an unprecedented scale, are of a piece with how the Russian state treats its own citizens. Mikhail Fishman recounts the historical, social, and economic factors that ushered Putin’s transformation of Russia into an ideologically Stalinist dictatorship. Read the Wilson Center analysis here