Weekly megathread for news/updates/discussion of Russian invasion of Ukraine - June 23

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, JUNE 24 (Institute for the Study of War)

Ukrainian officials ordered a controlled withdrawal of troops from Severodonetsk on June 24. Luhansk Oblast Administration Head Serhiy Haidai announced that Ukrainian forces are withdrawing from “broken positions” in Severodonetsk to prevent further personnel losses and maintain a stronger defense elsewhere. Severodonetsk Regional Military Administration Head Roman Vlasenko stated that several Ukrainian units remain in Severodonetsk as of June 24, but Ukrainian forces will complete the full withdrawal in "a few days."

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Ukrainian forces will likely maintain their defenses around Lysychansk and continue to exhaust Russian troops after the fall of Severodonetsk. Ukrainian forces will occupy higher ground in Lysychansk, which may allow them to repel Russian attacks for some time if the Russians are unable to encircle or isolate them.

Turkey lifts block on Finnish and Swedish NATO bids
https://www.politico.eu/article/finland-sweden-nato-membership-turkey-lifts-block/

On Tuesday, following weeks of talks, the three countries reached a deal.

“Our foreign ministers signed a trilateral memorandum which confirms that Türkiye will at the Madrid Summit this week support the invitation of Finland and Sweden to become members of NATO,” Finnish President Sauli Niinistö said in a statement.

“Our joint memorandum underscores the commitment of Finland, Sweden and Türkiye to extend their full support against threats to each other’s security,” the Finnish leader added. “Us becoming NATO allies will further strengthen this commitment.”

How Russia’s Offensive Damaged Critical Donbas Water Infrastructure (Bellingcat)

On May 5, 2022, the Russian nationalist news outlet Russkaya Vesna (‘Russian Spring’) published a brief article stating that the Russian air force had destroyed Ukrainian soldiers’ barracks near Bilohorivka, a town in the Luhansk Region. The article, citing a Russian military source, claimed that the Russian air force used unguided bombs to destroy the facility.

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But Russkaya Vesna neglected to mention one key fact — this was a facility which provides drinking water to approximately one million people in the region.

The structure depicted was the water intake facility and first lift of the Popasna Water Pipeline, which pumps water from the Siverskyi Donets towards several settlements in the north of the Luhansk Region.

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“The water situation is the Donbas region has been complicated by war since 2014. The region has few resources given the intense consumption of the water-hungry metals and coking industries and the densely populated areas. With few exceptions, the water stems from a small river the Siverskyi Donets flowing in the north”, said Dr. Sophie Lambroschini, a researcher on Eastern Europe, now working on economics in wartime in Ukraine at the Centre Marc Bloch in Berlin.

Dr. Lambroschini added that these large-scale pipeline and canal networks are part of a holistic system which requires electricity and chemical treatment; any disruption can cause humanitarian consequences hundreds of miles away: “When a critical node on that journey is cut, all the settlements downstream are affected.”

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“At present the extensive water supply system that was supplying drinking water to four million people and supplying industry has stopped operating”, said Dr. Lambroschini. “The canal and pipeline system is damaged by months of shelling. Also water can’t flow without electricity to operate pumps and filters. Power lines have been cut, power stations bombed. As a result the whole region under the impact of the Russian advance into Ukrainian territory in most of Luhansk and Donetsk Oblast has been cut off from essential utilities (power, water, sewage).”

Biden administration announces $450 million in additional military assistance for Ukraine (CNN)

The Biden administration on Thursday announced an additional $450 million in military aid for Ukraine, with the US giving the war-stricken country four more multiple launch rocket systems and artillery ammunition for other systems.

The package, which will be drawn from existing Defense Department stocks, also includes 18 patrol boats for monitoring coasts and rivers, and small arms.

The most significant part of the package is the four additional High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, wheeled vehicles capable of launching barrages of guided rockets at targets up to approximately 40 miles away.

The US approved the first four rocket systems at the beginning of the month. Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov announced Thursday on Twitter that they had entered the country. Training for 60 Ukrainian soldiers on the systems concluded last week.

Ukraine: civilian casualty update 27 June 2022

From 4 a.m. on 24 February 2022, when the Russian Federation’s armed attack against Ukraine started, to 24:00 midnight on 26 June 2022 (local time), the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) recorded 10,631 civilian casualties in the country: 4,731 killed and 5,900 injured. This included:

a total of 4,731 killed (1,812 men, 1,225 women, 134 girls, and 155 boys, as well as 41 children and 1,364 adults whose sex is yet unknown) a total of 5,900 injured (1,196 men, 829 women, 131 girls, and 174 boys, as well as 184 children and 3,386 adults whose sex is yet unknown)

• In Donetsk and Luhansk regions: 6,029 casualties (2,773 killed and 3,256 injured)
• On Government-controlled territory: 5,061 casualties (2,582 killed and 2,479 injured)
• On territory controlled by Russian affiliated armed groups: 968 casualties (191 killed and 777 injured)
• In other regions of Ukraine (the city of Kyiv, and Cherkasy, Chernihiv, Kharkiv, Kherson, Kyiv, Mykolaiv, Odesa, Sumy, Zaporizhzhia, Dnipropetrovsk, Poltava, Rivne, Vinnytsia, Ternopil and Zhytomyr regions), which were under Government control when casualties occurred: 4,602 casualties (1,958 killed and 2,644 injured)
  Most of the civilian casualties recorded were caused by the use of explosive weapons with a wide impact area, including shelling from heavy artillery and multiple launch rocket systems, and missile and air strikes.

OHCHR believes that the actual figures are considerably higher, as the receipt of information from some locations where intense hostilities have been going on has been delayed and many reports are still pending corroboration. This concerns, for example, Mariupol (Donetsk region), Izium (Kharkiv region), Popasna, Lysychansk, and Sievierodonetsk (Luhansk region), where there are allegations of numerous civilian casualties.

Kissinger’s Stance on Concessions over Ukraine Comes as No Surprise
https://www.geopoliticalmonitor.com/kissingers-stance-on-concessions-over-ukraine-comes-as-no-surprise/

Henry Kissinger is one of the most well-known figures in U.S. foreign policy. Recently he delved into geopolitics once again, citing an appeasement strategy to satisfy the Kremlin in order to “save” Ukraine. These comments have drawn outrage in not just Kyiv, but much of the world. This is not the first time in history Kissinger has cited appeasement and a willingness to leave a smaller country out to dry against a neighboring country with imperialistic ambitions. These misguided foreign policy takes extend back to the 1960s.

Zelenskyy wants to replace Ukraine’s top spy after security failures (Politico)

Zelenskyy is looking to replace Bakanov, who now runs Ukraine’s spy agency, with someone more suitable to serve as the wartime chief of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), according to four officials close to the president and a Western diplomat who has advised Kyiv on reforms needed to revamp the SBU.

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The officials and the Western diplomat all said the concern is greater than just Bakanov — it’s also about the decisions of several senior agency personnel in the first hours and days of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine that may have cost the country precious territory, including the strategic city of Kherson.

Gen. Serhiy Kryvoruchko, head of Kherson’s SBU directorate, ordered his officers to evacuate the city before Russian troops stormed it, against Zelenskyy’s orders, authorities allege. Meanwhile, Col. Ihor Sadokhin, his assistant and head of the local office’s Anti-Terrorist Center, is alleged by authorities to have tipped off Russian forces heading north from Crimea about the locations of Ukrainian mines and helped coordinate a flight path for the enemy’s aircraft while he fled in a convoy of SBU agents going west.

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The Ukrainian officials said Russian troops were able to take Kherson so easily because of the failure on the part of SBU officials there to blow up the Antonovskiy Bridge that crosses the Dnipro river, allowing Russian troops to cruise into the city.

Underscoring the lack of loyalty within the top ranks of the SBU, a third former senior official, Andriy Naumov, a brigadier general who headed the agency’s internal security department — a unit whose responsibilities include preventing corruption within the SBU — fled abroad a few hours before Russia’s invasion on Feb. 24.

Ukrainian authorities have charged all three former SBU officials with state treason. In his late-night video address on March 31, Zelenskyy stripped Naumov and Kryvoruchko of their ranks and denounced them as “traitors.”

Commando Network Coordinates Flow of Weapons in Ukraine, Officials Say (New York Times)

Shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine in February, the Army’s 10th Special Forces Group, which before the war had been training Ukrainian commandos at a base in the country’s west, quietly established a coalition planning cell in Germany to coordinate military assistance to Ukrainian commandos and other Ukrainian troops. The cell has now grown to 20 nations.

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The commandos are not on the front lines with Ukrainian troops and instead advise from headquarters in other parts of the country or remotely by encrypted communications, according to American and other Western officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters. But the signs of their stealthy logistics, training and intelligence support are tangible on the battlefield.

Several lower-level Ukrainian commanders recently expressed appreciation to the United States for intelligence gleaned from satellite imagery, which they can call up on tablet computers provided by the allies. The tablets run a battlefield mapping app that the Ukrainians use to target and attack Russian troops.

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Still, former military officials who have been working with the Ukrainian military have expressed frustration with some of the training efforts.

For instance, Ukrainians have struggled to evacuate soldiers wounded at the front lines. The United States could step up front-line first-aid training and advise the Ukrainians on how to set up a network of intermediate mobile hospitals to stabilize the wounded and transport them, former officials said.

“They are losing 100 soldiers a day. That is almost like the height of the Vietnam War for us; it is terrible,” a former Trump administration official said. “And they are losing a lot of experienced people.”

Army Green Berets in Germany recently started medical training for Ukrainian troops, who were brought out of the country for the instruction, a U.S. military official said.

US to announce purchase of medium- to long-range surface-to-air missile defense system for Ukraine (CNN)

The US plans to announce as soon as this week that it has purchased an advanced, medium-to-long range surface-to-air missile defense system for Ukraine, a source familiar with the announcement tells CNN.

President Joe Biden, who is currently meeting with G7 leaders in Germany for a summit primarily focused on Ukraine, announced recently that the US would provide Ukraine with "more advanced rocket systems and munitions" as its war with Russia grinds on. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is slated to virtually address Biden and other G7 leaders on Monday.

In response to requests by Ukrainian forces, other military assistance is also likely to be announced this week, including additional artillery ammunition and counter-battery radars. Ukrainian officials have asked for the missile defense system, known as a NASAMS system, given the weapons can hit targets more than 100 miles away, though the Ukrainian forces will likely need to be trained on the systems, a source said. The NASMAS system the same one that protects Washington, DC, and the area around the nation's capital.

NATO formally invites Finland and Sweden to join alliance (CNN)

NATO formalized its invitation to Sweden and Finland to join its alliance Wednesday, a historic expansion of the defense bloc that directly undercuts Russian President Vladimir Putin's aims as his war in Ukraine grinds ahead.

The group collectively decided to approve countries' applications to join after Turkey dropped its objections Tuesday, paving the way for NATO's most consequential enlargement in decades.

The decision will now go to the 30 member states' parliaments and legislatures for final ratification. NATO's leaders said they expected the process to move quickly, allowing for an unprecedentedly swift accession and a show of unity against Putin.

The leaders entered Wednesday's talks propelled by a diplomatic victory after Turkey dropped its objections to the two nations joining NATO, setting the stage for the two longtime neutral countries to enter the defensive bloc.

NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg called the formal invitation from the alliance to Sweden and Finland to join the defense bloc a "historic decision."

The expansion vote, paired with substantial new commitments bolstering NATO's force posture in Europe, combined to make this week's summit in Madrid one of the most productive in recent memory. The alliance endorsed a new "Strategic Concept" document that outlines the NATO's goals for the next decade. The document, last updated in 2010, lays out the security challenges facing the defensive alliance while outlining a course of actions.

For the first time, the document outlined the China "challenge," saying that the country's "ambitions and coercive policies challenge our interests, security and values." This was the first time the Strategic Concept document mentioned China; the 2010 version made no mention of Beijing. It also states that climate change is "a defining challenge of our time."

The document identifies Russia as the "most significant and direct threat to allies' security and to peace and stability in the Euro-Atlantic area" and addresses NATO's support for an independent Ukraine. In the 2010 version of the document, Russia was referred to as a "Euro-Atlantic partner."

The outcome is exactly what Putin was hoping to fend off when he invaded Ukraine more than four months ago.