May 7, 2023 Russia-Ukraine news

Our live coverage of Russia’s war in Ukraine has moved here.

Russian forces are trying to chip away at Ukraine’s air defense system, a spokesperson for the Ukrainian military said in an interview Sunday.??

Russians are trying “to test and find out where the air defense systems are located,” according to Humeniuk.?

Evacuations in southern Ukraine: The spokesperson also commented on Russian authorities recently evacuating civilians from the Zaporizhzhia region, calling it “an imitation of care for the local residents.”

This is a standard practice that was used by Russians before, she said.

“They are trying to evacuate the people to the places where they set up their own defense lines and where they are setting their units in order to use local civilians as a cover,” Humeniuk claimed.

Analysts suspect the southern region could be a key target of Ukraine’s anticipated counteroffensive.

Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin serves one master, Russia’s?President?Vladimir?Putin. Whatever he says about Bakhmut should be understood in that context.?

On?Friday, he threatened to pull his troops out, blaming?Putin’s?defense chiefs for?leaving?his fighters?short?of ammunition.?Should Putin’s war?blow up in his face, Prigozhin has told Russians who they should blame.?

Kyiv’s assessment is?that?he is insulating his long-time benefactor,?the man who transformed him from a catering boss to a billionaire mercenary,?from the repercussions of military failure in Ukraine.?

The night after Prigozhin claimed to be short of ammunition, Russia massively upped its artillery barrage on Bakhmut,?raining down?25,000 shells, up from the average of 20,000, according to the Ukrainian military.

In towns nearby, then and since, the still night air carries the near constant sound of heavy shells “crumping” in to trench and tree. Ukraine’s SBU intelligence agency released video they said shows Bakhmut illuminated by fires ignited by incendiary rockets.?

Prigozhin may?still?pull out?of Bakhmut. Months ago, Ukraine’s military said if he kept losing fighters at an estimated rate of 100 or so a day, he’d burn through Wagner’s deep reserve of convicts and other mercenary fighters. They say he’s reaching that limit now.

But?for now,?rather than pull out and cede hard-gained ground, much coveted by Putin, Prigozhin is cooking up a plan to have Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov’s troops step where his dead soldiers stood.

This is?confirmation for Ukraine’s military?that?Prigozhin wouldn’t dare give up on what his boss Putin wants: to be able to call Bakhmut his by the time he stands on Red Square for Russia’s annual Victory Day Parade on Tuesday.

Little surprise Putin’s Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu is playing along, too, vowing ammunition for the fight. It’s the way Putin has remained in power so long, playing one minister, commander or oligarch off against the next.

The Russian president will also see what the Ukrainian commanders see: Prigozhin is gathering acolytes in the military high command, this weekend hiring the ex-deputy defense minister,?who was?fired by the Kremlin last week, to be one of his own deputies.

For Ukrainians, though, it’s what happens in Bakhmut that counts the most, not Kremlin backstabbing, although they say any chaos in Moscow is always welcome news.

A Patriot air defense system, pictured in Germany in January.

The US has high confidence in the accuracy of Ukraine’s claim that it used an American-made Patriot air defense system to intercept a Russian hypersonic missile, according to a source familiar with the matter.??

While the Patriot system has been successful in countering ballistic missiles, its ability to stop air-launched?hypersonic missiles was purely theoretical before last week. Ukraine’s intercept has now provided a real-world demonstration of that capability — something that has been viewed within the Pentagon as a major development, the source said.?

Ukraine’s intercept claim created buzz within the Pentagon late last week, the source added, noting it is significant for several reasons.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has publicly touted the capabilities of Russia’s hypersonic weapons and cast them as capable of overcoming all existing air defense systems.?

Production of hypersonic ballistic missiles has always been challenging for Russia and sanctions have only made it more difficult.?

But prior to last week, Russia’s calculus was that if it did use a hypersonic ballistic missile, whatever it was shooting at would assuredly get hit, the source said.?This intercept has called that calculation into question, they continued.

The fact that this intercept was conducted by a Ukrainian crew?that was trained in Oklahoma, but had no US advisers on the battlefield,?is even more of a feather in the cap for the Pentagon, the source added, calling it a major return on investment.?

The intercept also has likely caused a severe amount of uncertainty for Russia, raising the question of whether Ukraine is in possession of a sustainable countermeasure against hypersonic ballistic missiles, the source added.?

A Russian fighter jet?intercepted?a Polish border guard aircraft flying a mission above the Black Sea near the Romanian border Friday, which almost resulted in a collision, according to Romanian authorities.

The Polish Border Guard said on Twitter that the Russian Su-35 flew into the area without radio contact and performed “aggressive and dangerous” maneuvers.

The incident took place on Friday at 6:20 a.m. ET, about 60 kilometers (37 miles) east of Romania’s airspace, the Romanian defense ministry said in a statement Sunday.

The Polish?aircraft?was there as part of a joint mission coordinated by the European Union border patrol system Frontex.

The mission, which is set to last until mid-December, focuses on preventing irregular migration, illegal fishing, marine pollution, and combatting other cross-border crimes in the western Black Sea, according to the defense ministry.

The ministry said that, as a result of the incident, two combat aircraft of the Romanian air force as well as two aircraft of the Spanish Air Force were prepared to intervene by the NATO Combined Air Operations Center in Torrejon, Spain, but that their intervention was not necessary.

Smoke rises from buildings in an aerial view of Bakhmut, on April 26.

The eastern city of Bakhmut has been the site of a months-long assault by Russian forces that has forced thousands from their homes and left the area devastated.

Bakhmut has not yet fallen under total Russian control. On his official Telegram channel on Saturday, Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin — whose mercenaries have played a huge part in Russia’s advance — claimed to have taken 95% of the city.

Ukrainian soldiers have dug in, while Wagner troops have sought to encircle the city in a wide arc from the north, making sluggish progress since the capture of the nearby town of Soledar in January.

The fall of Bakhmut would mark a rare breakthrough by Russia in what has become a slow-moving ground war in the east that has at times resembled the trench warfare of World War I.

But, despite the time, manpower and resources poured into capturing the city, its strategic value has always been dubious.

Bakhmut — a relatively small city in eastern Donestk — is not the sort of city Moscow would have hoped to be fighting for in the second year of its invasion.

Instead, the city has come to be prized more for the symbolic value its capture would lend to Russia. It would give Russian President Vladimir Putin a much-needed victory — and relief from criticism at home of his faltering invasion of Ukraine.

Earlier in May the US said that 20,000 of Russia’s troops have been killed in action in recent months in Ukraine with most of its efforts having “stalled and failed.”

Russian-installed authorities have said they are continuing to evacuate Zaporizhzhia region residents away from front lines in the annexed region.

Vladimir Rogov, a member of the Russian-appointed military-civilian administration in occupied Zaporizhzhia, claimed on Telegram that 1,552 residents “are in safety now.”

The evacuations come amid rumours of a looming Ukrainian counteroffensive, with the Zaporizhzhia region likely to be a target.

Meanwhile, Yurii Malashko, a Ukrainian official and head of the Zaporizhzhia region military administration, said on Telegram that Russians were continuing to shell the region, but with no casualties in the last 24 hours.

Russian servicemen arrive to the Victory Day Parade rehearsal in Moscow, on May 7.

Rehearsals for Russia’s annual Victory Day Parade, to mark the end of the Second World War,?began in Moscow on Sunday.

Soldiers could be seen marching down the Red Square which has been decorated with signs and installations bearing the date of the planned parade.

The?Victory Day Parade is held every year on on May 9 to mark the anniversary of when Nazi Germany unconditionally surrendered in 1945.

The parade?has been used by Russian President Vladimir Putin in recent years as a stage to flout Russia’s military prowess.

This year’s?parade?will be the second since Moscow began its invasion of Ukraine. It will be held just days after Russia alleged that Ukraine launched a drone attack on the Kremlin. Kyiv has denied involvement in the attack.

Head of the Wagner mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, arrives during a funeral ceremony in Moscow, Russia on April 8.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner mercenary group, has apparently backtracked on a threat to pull his forces from the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut after being promised more ammunition.

In an explosive, expletive-laden rant this week, Prigozhin had previously declared that his men would leave the area by May 10 because of heavy casualties and inadequate supplies.

But a new audio message posted Sunday on Telegram suggests he has changed his mind after concessions from the Russian government.

The Russian Ministry of Defence did not immediately comment on Prigozhin’s latest claim.

The Wagner boss had said Wagner positions in and around Bakhmut would be transferred to Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov’s forces from May 10.

Prigozhin had also floated the possibility that Wagner might be disbanded, but appeared to also ow back from these suggestions in the audio message.

While the fury of conflict echoes across the?eastern Donbas region, a very different war is being waged in?Crimea: one of night-time explosions, sabotage and disinformation.

Reclaiming Crimea – which Russia illegally annexed in 2014 – may seem like an unlikely quest for Ukraine, but it is putting considerable effort into making Russia’s occupation as uncomfortable as possible.

Few details emerge about Ukrainian strikes in Crimea. Only occasionally does social media video provide clues about what has been hit. Circumspect Ukrainian officials rarely refer to any actions taken in the region.

But this weekend’s drone strikes – reported by Russia on Sunday – have just raised the stakes.

Read our full report on Ukraine’s plans for the “de-occupation” of Crimea here.

Russian forces have used a variety of missiles and air-launched weapons against several regions of Ukraine in the past 24 hours, according to the Ukrainian military.

It said the Mykolaiv and Kherson regions in the south and Kharkiv in the north came under fire.

There has been an uptick in the use of air-launched missiles and bombs by Russian forces in recent days.

The Ukrainian military said that Russian “strategic aircraft launched missile attacks on Ukraine’s southern regions overnight. The enemy struck Mykolaiv region with five X-22 missiles, and Kherson region with one missile.”

X-22 missiles: The X-22, also known as the Kh-22, is a powerful missile originally designed to destroy large ships. It is also frequently inaccurate. X-22 strikes have been responsible for heavy civilian casualties in Ukraine.

However, Ukraine’s Operational Command South said there had been no casualties in the latest strikes, which included “an industrial facility.”

Strikes increase: The Ukrainian military’s General Staff reported Sunday that over the past day Russia carried out six missile attacks, including close to the front lines in Bakhmut and in Kherson.

The General Staff also noted 48 airstrikes and 77 strikes using multiple launch rocket systems.

In Kharkiv region, the head of the military administration, Oleh Syniebuhov, said that an S-300 missile had struck a depot of vehicles in Balakliya near Izium. He said five civilians had been injured.

A residential building stands damaged after night missile attacks on Friday, in Zaporizhzhia.

A thousand people have been evacuated and placed in temporary accommodation from the frontline territories in the southern Ukrainian region of Zaporizhzhia region, according to Yevgeniy Balitskiy, the Russia-appointed head of the local administration.

Balitskiy said in a statement that he had visited the temporary accommodation where the “first thousand” people have been accommodated, adding that “buses keep arriving, people are also getting here in their cars,” in an update on Sunday.

The people who have been evacuated include children of primary school age.

Balitskiy claimed that the evacuees “have everything they need: food, a place to sleep, constant contact and consultation with specialists.”

Russia controls much of the Zaporizhzhia region and it could be a target for Ukraine should it launch its heavily anticipated counteroffensive.

Russian-appointed authorities in the annexed region of Crimea reported Sunday that their air defense units and electronic war fare units fended off at least three Ukrainian drone attacks on Sevastopol.

Governor Mikhail Razvozhaev said that “more than ten drones” were sent to Crimea and Sevastopol overnight, he said in a statement on Telegram.

“The air defense forces and electronic warfare units prevented another attack on Sevastopol,” he added.

Razvozhaev said that one of the drones lost control and crashed into a forest. The wreckage was recovered by personnel from the Interior Ministry and Emergency Ministry.

Two others were shot down over the sea, Razvozhaev said, adding there was no damage to any structures in the city.

Some background: Crimea was illegally annexed by Russia in 2014. Ukraine has been harassing Russian forces in the region, with the recapture of Crimea the country’s ultimate goal.

Last weekend a suspected drone strike sparked a huge fire at a fuel storage facility in Sevastopol.

Head of the Chechen Republic Ramzan Kadyrov attends a military parade on Victory Day, which marks the 77th anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany in World War Two, at the Chechen capital Grozny, in Russia on May 9, 2022.

The head of the private?Russian?military company Wagner,?Yevgeny?Prigozhin, claimed he would hand over his group’s positions in frontline Bakhmut to?the?Chechen leader?Ramzan?Kadyrov’s forces on May 10.

It was not immediately clear how serious Prigozhin, who often speaks sarcastically, is about the transfer to Kadyrov.

About Kadyrov: Notorious Chechen leader Ramzan?Kadyrov is an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin and leads sizable paramilitary forces that — while formally a part of Russian security structures — have personal loyalty to him.

Kadyrov has been accused by international and independent observers of gross?human rights violations.

The Chechen leader said online Friday that he will be happy to take over “older brother” Prigozhin’s positions if Wagner decides to leave Bakhmut, and he reiterated that claim in another post Saturday.

“The fighters are on alert; we are only waiting for the order,” Kadyrov said in a video message. “We have already begun to develop our strategy of action in this area together with the Russian Ministry of Defense, taking into account the enemy’s tactics and the resources at our disposal. And believe me, the tactics will yield positive results.”

What Prigozhin has said about the withdrawal: Prigozhin?said Friday that?Wagner?will leave?the besieged eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, citing a lack of ammunition supplies that Prigozhin?blames?on Russia’s military command.?

He also claimed that “a little?more than two square kilometers” (less than 1 square mile) in Bakhmut remain to be taken by Russian fighters.

Ukraine said earlier Saturday that Russian troops have not made any breakthrough in Bakhmut, waving off Prigozhin’s ammunition shortage claims as a “bluff.”

A car explosion wounded a Russian military blogger and left his driver dead Saturday, according to state media. It marked the second recent blast involving one of the country’s nationalist writers, drawing further attention to the role they play in Moscow’s propaganda machine.

The blogger wounded Saturday is Zakhar Prilepin, a former member of the State Duma whose Telegram channel has more than 300,000 subscribers. Last month, another military blogger,?Vladlen Tatarsky, was killed in an explosion at a cafe in St. Petersburg.

Writers like Prilepin and Tatarsky are just two examples of prominent voices in the murky world of Russia’s “milbloggers.”

Offering a rare critique: Unlike Russian state media, many of the most influential military bloggers have not shied away from criticizing Moscow for its battlefield defeats. That includes its retreat from Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine, which Prilepin called a “catastrophe” in a commentary last September. More recently, bloggers have criticized the stalling, drawn-out fight for Bakhmut.

Such commentary is especially rare since Russia forced the closing of any remaining independent media shortly after invading Ukraine in February 2022.

Pro-Kremlin commentators, who are sometimes called “voenkory” for “war correspondents,” have filled some of this information vacuum.

Uniquely well-sourced: Many of the bloggers have deep sources within the military, the Wagner mercenary group or among pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, which gives them unparalleled access to information.

Tatarsky himself was born in Ukraine, reportedly fought with Russian separatists in the Donbas and had close ties to Wagner.

“Obviously, they have a very biased view of the war. But they are critical to understanding what’s happening at least on one side of the flux,” Rondeaux said.

Read more about the Russian “milbloggers” here.

A damaged car overturned after Russian nationalist writer Zakhar Prilepin was allegedly wounded in a bomb attack in the Nizhny Novgorod region, Russia, on Saturday.

A Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson blamed Ukraine, the United States and the United Kingdom for the bombing of military blogger Zakhar Prilepin’s car in the city of Nizhny Novgorod on Saturday.

The ministry provided no proof for its allegations.

Russian pro-Kremlin newspaper Izvestia reported that Prilepin had surgery on Saturday and is at the hospital in stable condition. His driver was killed in the blast.

The Security Service of Ukraine, responding to online outlet Ukrainian Pravda, said of the incident: “Officially, we can neither confirm nor deny the involvement of the Security Service in this or that explosion that happens to the occupiers and their accomplices.”

Russia blamed Ukraine for the death of another Russian military blogger in an attack last month at a St. Petersburg cafe. Kyiv denied any involvement.

The Russian Investigative Committee called the latest incident?“a terrorist act” and said it plans to investigate the blast as such.??

The committee also reported a suspect in the car bombing has been detained, claiming that during interrogation, he testified “that he acted on the instructions of the Ukrainian special services.”?

The suspect “planted an explosive device on the road along the route of Zakhar Prilepin’s car, which he set off remotely,” the committee alleged. “After that, he fled the scene, but was detained by law enforcement officers when he left the forest in another settlement.”??

The committee published what it claimed was a video confession of the suspect, but it was not clear under what circumstances he was interviewed and whether he was under duress in the video.?

The UK’s foreign office declined to comment when contacted by CNN. The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.