Ukraine-Russia war – live: Putin ‘loses entire brigade’ as Moscow suffer painful losses in latest battle

The White House on Thursday said Russia is executing soldiers who have failed to follow orders and threatening entire units with death if they retreat from Ukrainian artillery fire.

It’s a development that U.S. national security officials believe reflects Russia’s morale problems 20 months into its grinding invasion of Ukraine, said White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby.

“It’s reprehensible to think about that you would execute your own soldiers because they didn’t want to follow orders and now threatening to execute entire units, it’s barbaric,” Kirby told reporters. “But I think it’s a symptom of how poorly Russia’s military leaders know they’re doing and how bad they have handled this from a military perspective.”

The White House has downgraded and released intelligence findings about Russian action over the course of the war. In the past, the administration has said it has acted to disclose the intelligence to highlight plans for Russian misinformation and other activity so allies remain clear-eyed about Moscow’s intent and Russia thinks twice before carrying out an operation.

This latest unveiling of intelligence about Russia’s struggles comes as President Joe Biden is pressing the Republican-controlled House to go along with providing more funding for Ukraine as Kyiv tries to repel Russia in a war that has no end in sight.

Scores of protesters gathered on the streets of Ukrainian cities on Friday to demand a cap of 18 months on mandatory military service, amid new suggestions of possible Ukrainian and international weariness with the 20-month war.

Both the warring sides are striving to keep their military momentum, though neither side is able to land a knockout blow, and the fighting is expected to drag on deep into next year.

The 18-month service limit would be the same maximum as before the war. It is currently open-ended for draftees. The protesters, who are part of a loose national network, want the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s parliament, to consider possible alternatives on service time.

As all eyes are on Israel and Gaza, Askold Krushelnycky speaks to military officers in Ukraine about facing Russian forces from multiple sides in the northern and eastern battlegrounds – and their fears that US support for Israel’s war on Hamas could drain the flow of essential munitions for their fight:

Thyroid cancer, Parkinson’s disease, leprosy or declining in the aftermath of a stroke – just a few of the many unproven ailments rumoured to have afflicted the Russian leader in recent years.

Just this week, the Kremlin were forced to deny rumours that Vladimir Putin had suffered a cardiac arrest in his bedroom, months after they were forced to deny that he had soiled himself.

Since gripping the reins of power in 1999, Putin has established himself as one of the most infamous politicians in modern history, with a vicelike grip over Russia.

Soldiers who don’t follow the suicidal Kremlin orders now risk gunfire from both sides of the war, says Askold Krushelnycky in Ukraine:

So brutal is the conflict in the heavily fortified battlefields around the city of Avdiivka, in eastern Ukraine, that Western intelligence suggests some Russian commanders are now executing soldiers who refuse to advance into the tempest of rocket and gunfire.

Russia’s foreign ministry has called on other governments to condemn Kyiv after a Ukrainian drone crashed into a nuclear waste storage facility at the Kursk power plant in western Russia on Thursday, damaging its walls.

Ukraine must have known that its actions could have caused a full-scale nuclear catastrophe, the ministry’s statement said.

“We call on all governments to issue a strong condemnation of Kyiv’s barbaric actions, which are extremely dangerous and could lead to irreparable consequences,” said ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova.

“According to preliminary data, the drones used in the attack on the nuclear power plant used components supplied by Western countries,” she said, adding that such an attack must have had the permission or possibly of Ukraine’s allies or possibly been ordered by them.

A Ukrainian drone crashed into a nuclear waste storage facility at the Kursk nuclear power plant in western Russia on Thursday, damaging its walls, Russia’s foreign ministry said on Saturday.

The ministry said in a statement that Kyiv must have known that its actions could have caused a full-scale nuclear catastrophe.

Moscow said on Friday that it had thwarted the drone attack in the country’s south, where two news outlets said an explosion had damaged the facade of a warehouse storing nuclear waste.

A Ukrainian drone crashed into a nuclear waste storage facility at the Kursk nuclear power plant in western Russia on Thursday, damaging its walls, Russia’s foreign ministry said on Saturday.

The ministry said in a statement that Kyiv must have known that its actions could have caused a full-scale nuclear catastrophe.

Moscow said on Friday that it had thwarted the drone attack in the country’s south, where two news outlets said an explosion had damaged the facade of a warehouse storing nuclear waste.

The head of Ukraine’s state grid operations said Russian strikes on energy systems damaged 70 large facilities last autumn and winter.

Volodymyr Kudrytskyi told Voice of America that about half of Ukraine’s power system was damaged in the campaign.

He said: “Any lower-level facilities were damaged in frontline areas by artillery strikes, small transformer points or regional substations. There are probably hundreds, thousands of them.”

It was a good thing Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Zelenskyy had his videoconference address to the European Union summit pre-slotted for the opening session.

Immediately afterward, EU leaders switched off and went to the order of the day — the Israel-Hamas war. They didn’t come back to the issue of Russia‘s war in Ukraine again before Friday’s closing day of the summit.

After dominating summit after summit since Moscow launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, the timing alone, anecdotal as it was, underscored a deeper reality: Zelenskyy will be facing tougher times to get all the attention and political, economic and military aid that Ukraine wants.