The Washington Post

2022-04-22 18:58:01 Human Rights Watch finds evidence of Russian atrocities in Bucha

Russian forces committed multiple apparent war crimes while occupying the Ukrainian town of Bucha in March, New York-based Human Rights Watch said in a report released Thursday.

The report adds to the evidence documenting alleged atrocities by Russian troops in Ukraine.

The rights group’s researchers spent a week interviewing residents in Bucha, a suburb of the capital, Kyiv, earlier this month. They found evidence of summary executions, torture and enforced disappearances by Russian forces, “all of which would constitute war crimes and potential crimes against humanity,” the group said.

The Geneva Conventions governing the laws of war forbid indiscriminate killings, enforced disappearances and torture, as well as the humiliating or inhumane treatment of prisoners of war.

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2022-04-22 17:30:34 U.S. sends Ukraine new Phoenix Ghost drones, howitzers for Donbas battle

President Biden announced an additional $800 million in military assistance for Ukraine on Thursday, with the initial portion arriving over the weekend. The package, which represents a sharp increase in artillery shipments, includes weapons that meet Ukraine’s specific battlefield needs.

The latest package includes 72 155mm howitzers and the tactical vehicles to tow them, along with 144,000 artillery rounds. That is a significant increase over the 18 howitzers in another shipment also announced in April, and it is enough to equip five battalions, the Pentagon said.

Also in the package are over 120 Phoenix Ghost Tactical Unmanned Aerial Systems — drones that the U.S. Air Force developed “in response, specifically, to Ukrainian requirements,” according to the Pentagon. The drones had actually been “developed for a set of requirements that very closely match” the Ukrainians’ needs for operations in Donbas.

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2022-04-22 13:36:47 A packed train to Kyiv, bearing worried and hopeful returnees

LVIV, Ukraine — Train 750L was running nearly an hour behind schedule when it rumbled into the western Ukrainian hub of Lviv one recent afternoon. The delay meant extra time for the dozens of nervous passengers waiting at the depot to ask themselves: Is this a bad idea?

The families huddled on the platform that day are part of a wave of Ukrainians who fled Russian attacks to the safer, western part of the country but are gambling on a return to the capital, Kyiv, now that Russian forces have withdrawn from the area. Ukrainian officials say about 50,000 people a day are going back, despite warnings from Kyiv’s mayor to stay put and continued airstrikes around the city.

Drivers report traffic snarls at entrances to the capital. Trains that until recently were full only in one direction — away from Kyiv — are now busy on the return leg, too. The passengers of 750L said the decision to go back was agonizing.

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2022-04-22 11:35:35 'It’s a miracle we managed to leave that hell': Mariupol survivors describe horrors

Four buses from Mariupol arrived in the southeastern town of Zaporizhzhia after President Putin declared victory in the Ukrainian port city on April 21.

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2022-04-22 09:04:11 Here’s the latest from Ukraine.

- President Biden said Thursday that Russia was setting the stage for a new phase of the war, and announced an additional $800 million in military aid for Ukraine that is tailored for combat in the flat, open terrain of the eastern Donbas region.

- New satellite images showed a mass grave near Mariupol. Kyiv said the images were evidence of possible Russian war crimes, as President Zelensky acknowledged that the Kremlin’s troops had captured most of the city some time ago. Roughly 120,000 civilians remain trapped there, along with a final group of Ukrainian troops that have refused to surrender, he said.

- Zelensky said Russia had rejected an appeal by the United Nations and others for a four-day truce over the Orthodox Easter holidays.

- For the first time in weeks, a convoy of civilians escaped Mariupol, with four buses and a dozen private cars reaching Zaporizhzhia.

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2022-04-22 07:51:12 Here's the latest on key battlegrounds in Ukraine.

Donbas region: Russian forces have made “minor gains” in eastern Ukraine, according to the Institute for the Study of War.

Kharkiv region: Ukrainian forces continued to halt Russian attacks around Izyum. At a Thursday World Bank ministerial meeting, President Zelensky said “it is equally dangerous both in the center of Kharkiv and on the outskirts."

Mariupol: Putin declared victory here – even as his advisers acknowledged that thousands of Ukrainian fighters remain holed up in a steel plant. The ISW predicts Russian forces will attempt to “starve out” the Ukrainian defenders in the plant.

Kherson region: Zelensky warned residents Thursday of the southern cities of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia to be “very careful” about any information they provide to Russian forces. He said Russian attempts to collect personal data are “aimed to falsify the so-called referendum on your land, if an order comes from Moscow to stage such a show.”

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2022-04-21 23:06:37 Here is the latest from Ukraine.

- The Biden administration rolled out plans Thursday to expedite the arrival of Ukrainian refugees.

- Ukrainian forces have more tanks on the ground than their Russian counterparts, according to a senior U.S. defense official.

- For the first time in weeks, a convoy of civilians escaped Mariupol, with four buses and a dozen private cars reaching Zaporizhzhia.

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2022-04-21 22:05:03 Satellite images show mass grave near Mariupol with 200 new plots

New satellite images show a mass burial site in the Russian-occupied village of Manhush, about 12 miles west of Mariupol, containing more than 200 new plots alongside an existing cemetery.

The images, provided to The Washington Post by Maxar Technologies, show several rows of graves in four distinct sections, each measuring nearly 280 feet.

Maxar’s review of the images indicates that the new graves appeared March 23-26, and the company said additional plots have appeared in the weeks since.

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2022-04-21 21:12:03 91-year-old Jewish survivor of Nazi-occupied Mariupol dies during Russian siege

Vanda Obiedkova was 10 years old when German troops occupied Mariupol, a strategic port city in the south of Ukraine, in 1941.

Nazi soldiers began rounding up the city’s Jewish population, but the little girl escaped arrest by hiding in a basement, according to Chabad.org, the official website of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement. Thousands were removed from Mariupol and executed, including Obiedkova’s mother. She survived the war.

More than eight decades later, once again trapped in a basement as Russian forces bombarded the city for weeks, Obiedkova lost her latest battle. She was 91. Before she died on April 4, she had asked her family: “Why is this happening?” according to Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

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2022-04-21 19:03:31 U.S. gives Ukraine Mi-17 helicopters that once belonged to Afghanistan

When the United States wanted to purchase a fleet of helicopters for the Afghan government in the early 2010s, it chose the Mi-17 sold by a Russian state-owned arms exporter.

The decision infuriated lawmakers who felt the Pentagon should choose an American manufacturer. But the Defense Department stayed the course, saying the Russian helicopters were relatively inexpensive, functioned well in Afghanistan’s desert and Afghan pilots knew how to fly them.

A decade later, neither Congress nor the Kremlin could have anticipated that those helicopters would be used against Russian forces by way of arms transfers engineered by the U.S. in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan.

The Mi-17s’ unusual journey went unmentioned last week when President Biden announced his approval of an $800 million security package dramatically expanding the scope of military aid to Kyiv.

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