Tensions rose this past week between Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of Wagner, Russia’s paramilitary group, and Russian officials when the Wagner chief threatened to pull his forces out of Bakhmut if the Russian Defense Ministry didn’t provide the organization with the necessary arms to continue the offensive. Wagner and Russian troops control 90 percent of the destroyed city.
The world’s largest asset manager, BlackRock, has been sending teams of executives to Kyiv to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky since September, and in December, CEO Larry Fink and Zelenksy reached a tentative agreement via phone to coordinate large-scale reconstruction investment for the war-torn country.
This week, the White House released the details of its latest $300 million defense aid package for Ukraine, which will be pulled from already existing, although dwindling, Pentagon stockpiles. This package includes the Hydra-70 rocket for the first time. The rockets are unguided missiles that are usually air-to-ground and fired from an aircraft.
After numerous drone strikes over the past 24 hours on Russian soil, including an attack on the Kremlin, several Russian cities have decided to cancel their upcoming May 9 Victory Day parades – a celebration that commemorates the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II.
In the early hours of May 3, two purportedly Ukrainian drones struck the dome of the Kremlin’s Senate building which overlooks the Red Square. According to the Kremlin’s Spassky Tower which can be seen in the foreground of emerging social media videos of the attacks, the first drone struck at 2:27 a.m. with the second hitting at 2:43 a.m. While one drone appears to be destroyed in a cloud of smoke, the second one can be seen bursting into flames above the dome. Russian officials immediately alleged that Ukraine was behind the attacks and claimed that the incident was a failed assassination attempt on Russian President Vladimir Putin.
A string of Russian freight train derailments near the Ukrainian border in recent days appears to be indicative that what have previously been irregular sabotage attempts are increasing as the anticipated Ukrainian spring counteroffensive stalls.
During a Monday press briefing, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby claimed that Russian forces have suffered more than 100,000 total casualties in the strategic city of Bakhmut since December. According to Kirby, that estimate includes 20,000 troops killed in combat and another 80,000 wounded.
On Saturday, Ukrainian forces aggressively shelled a Russian village in the Bryansk region close to the Ukrainian border, with initial reports indicating that 2 people had been killed in the attack. However, the number of casualties has risen as emergency responders have continued to search the rubble for survivors. According to governor Aleksandr Bogomaz, 4 civilians have been killed, with another two wounded in what he said was “as a result of the actions by Ukrainian nationalists.”
Among other rather unsavory revelations from the trove of Pentagon materials leaked by Airman Jack Teixeira, it has been discovered that the Biden administration’s efforts to slow Putin’s war in Ukraine by imposing sweeping sanctions on Russia are failing. According to the classified assessments, U.S. intelligence believes that Putin can afford to fund Russia’s war in Ukraine for at least another year. The assessments confirm what many in the West already knew to be true – economic sanctions are having little effect on Russia’s war.
U.S. Continues Years-Long Proxy War Against Wagner In Africa