For the first time since mid-April, Zelenskyi has disclosed his own losses. These losses in eastern Ukraine are high. All news about the attack on Ukraine can be found here in the ticker.
12:13 p.m .: According to the Russian military, it bombed a military transport near Kyiv. “High-precision sea-launched missiles were used to destroy weapons and military equipment of the 10th Ukrainian mountain assault brigade from Ivano-Frankivsk near the Malyn railway station in the Zhytomyr region, which was to be transferred to Donbass,” Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said on Aug Monday at the presentation of the management report.
Ukrainian sources had reported the bombing of the small town the night before, reporting one fatality and several injuries.
Konashenkov also informed about numerous Russian rocket and air attacks in eastern Ukraine’s Donbass region. There, targets in the villages of Bakhmut, Soledar, Berestowe, Lyman, Nyrkowe and Sakitne were fired upon. In addition to command posts, ammunition depots and troop concentrations, the major general also named “traffic hubs” as targets of attack. It should be the train stations in the towns.
According to Russian sources, the airstrikes killed more than 230 Ukrainian soldiers and disabled 33 military vehicles. There were also 3 fighter jets shot down by Russian air defenses and 13 drones. This information could not be verified independently.
9:50 a.m .: According to the Ukrainian general staff, there are few changes in the fighting in eastern Ukraine: the Russians are trying to defend their positions in the north of Kharkiv, and further south they are preparing a new offensive against the city of Sloviansk. When trying to take the village of Dowgenke west of the strategically important road between Izyum and Sloviansk, the Russian military was repulsed.
According to Ukrainian information, the night’s attacks in the direction of Sievjerodonetsk and Bakhmut were also unsuccessful. In the area of Avdiivka, Kurakhove, Novopavlivka and in the direction of Zaporizhia, hostilities have abated, said General Staff Spokesman Olexandr Stupun. A total of eleven enemy attacks were repelled. Because of the high losses, Russia now has to reactivate the decommissioned T-62 tanks in order to equip reserve units. The information could not be independently verified.
8:23 a.m .: The former Soviet Republic of Belarus, which has not yet actively participated in the Russian-Ukrainian war, is assembling forces at the border, according to information from Kyiv. “The Belarusian armed forces are conducting increased reconnaissance and have set up additional units in the border area,” the Ukrainian general staff said in its situation report on Monday. Accordingly, the danger of rocket and air attacks on Ukraine from Belarusian territory remains.
The Belarusian ruler Alexander Lukashenko did not take part with his own troops in the war against Ukraine that Russia started at the end of February. However, Russian troops were allowed to use the country as a staging area for the attack. Kyiv therefore does not see Minsk as neutral and fears that Belarusian soldiers could potentially intervene in the conflict on the part of Russia. Lukashenko, who is meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Sochi on Monday, has always denied such intentions.
Most recently, the Ukrainian President disclosed his own losses in mid-April. At that time he spoke of a total of around 3,000 Ukrainian soldiers who had died since the Russian attack on February 24. However, the President’s Office has refused to provide precise figures. Presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovich explained that this was a war secret.
6:24 a.m .: According to a report by the Wall Street Journal, US government officials are considering sending special forces to protect the US embassy in Kyiv. These are intended to protect the security of the embassy staff who have just been sent back.
However, sending soldiers would not be a safe decision – because they would have to go to a war zone and the US has so far refused to have its own soldiers in Ukraine. The presence of strong US forces could lead Putin to launch an attack on the embassy, some Pentagon officials fear. According to the report, US President Biden has yet to decide on the plan.
Monday, May 23, 6:06 a.m.: The mayor of the small town of Enerhodar, who was deployed by the Russian occupying forces, was seriously injured in a bomb attack on Sunday. “The self-proclaimed head of Enerhodar’s ‘People’s Administration’ Andriy Shevchik was injured by an explosion at the entrance to the apartment building where his mother lives,” the Ukrainian military administration of Zaporizhia Oblast said on its Telegram channel late Sunday evening. It was a targeted partisan attack against a collaborator, it said.
According to media reports, Shevchik is in intensive care. His bodyguards were also injured in the attack. According to the Ukrainian military administration, the Russian occupying forces are now looking for two young men in a red Audi. They would also have strengthened the checkpoints. According to its own statements, the Russian investigative committee on Monday initiated criminal proceedings “for the crime of Ukrainian nationalists”.
9:39 p.m .: According to its chief negotiator Vladimir Medinsky, Russia is ready to resume negotiations with Ukraine. “For our part, we are ready to continue the dialogue,” Medinsky said in an interview with Belarusian state television on Sunday. The ball is in the field of Ukraine, at whose instigation the talks were suspended. “Russia has never refused negotiations,” Medinsky said.
After the beginning of the Russian military action in Ukraine on February 24, talks between Ukrainian and Russian negotiators initially took place regularly – in person or via video conference. The foreign ministers of both countries met in Turkey in March for talks that remained fruitless. A meeting of delegations in Istanbul followed, which also brought no progress.
On Tuesday, Ukraine’s chief negotiator and presidential adviser Mykhailo Podoliak said talks with Moscow were “on hold”.
4:34 p.m .: According to Ukrainian information, Russia is intensifying its airstrikes throughout Ukraine. The Russian army continues “its missile and air strikes on the entire territory” and has “increased the intensity,” the General Staff of the Ukrainian Army said on Sunday. Accordingly, Moscow is increasingly using the air force “to destroy important infrastructure”.
Local Ukrainian authorities confirmed a Russian missile attack on the village of Malyn west of Kyiv. The Ministry of Defense in Moscow said on Saturday that it had destroyed a significant western supply of weapons there with “high-precision sea-based long-range weapons”. The Ukrainian authorities, on the other hand, spoke of damage to “civilian infrastructure”. The General Staff did not provide any information on a delivery of weapons that had been fired upon.
In the eastern Donbass region, after taking the port city of Mariupol completely, Russian troops are now apparently trying to capture the last Ukrainian positions as well. In the Luhansk region, only the cities of Severodonetsk and Lysychansk, separated by a river, are now controlled by Ukraine. According to experts, Severodonetsk is at risk of being completely surrounded and besieged by Russian troops.
2:34 p.m .: Russian troops attacked the eastern Ukrainian city of Sievjerodonetsk from several directions at night, according to the office of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Sunday. However, they were pushed back to their former positions.
The attack on Seyerodonetsk is part of the Russian offensive along the line of contact between Russian and Ukrainian forces, according to the Ukrainian military general staff. “Enemy forces are preparing to continue their offensive towards Sloviansk.”
Sieverodonetsk and Sloviansk are considered key to controlling the Luhansk region of Ukraine. Parts of Luhansk and neighboring Donetsk have been controlled by Russian-backed separatists since 2014.
1:50 p.m .: Ukraine has extended martial law, which has been in force since the end of February, by a further 90 days. In view of the Russian war of aggression, the parliament in Kyiv also voted to extend the general mobilization until August 23, as several MPs wrote in the Telegram news service on Sunday.
11:53 a.m .: At least two groups with “right-wing extremist sentiments” have apparently joined Russia’s attack on Ukraine. This emerges from a confidential report by the Federal Intelligence Service (BND), about which the “Spiegel” reports. Accordingly, the groups “Russian Imperial League” and “Rusisch” are fighting on the side of Putin’s army against Ukraine.
The BND analysts came to an exciting conclusion: the fact that Russia is working with the groups mentioned “reduces the alleged reason for the war, the so-called ‘denazification’ of Ukraine, to absurdity,” according to “Spiegel” in the paper.
Sunday, May 22, 08:01: British intelligence believes that Russia has deployed its only operational company of BMP-T-Terminator armored support vehicles on the Sieverodonetsk axis in Donbass. This is also an indication of the use of the central armed forces grouping (CGF), which is the only formation that has these vehicles. The force had previously suffered heavy casualties in a failed attempt to break through to Kyiv.
“With a maximum of ten terminators, they are unlikely to have a significant impact on the operation [at Sievarodonetsk; Note d. Red.] will have,” said the secret service in its update.
Sieverodonetsk in Luhansk remains a key tactical target for Russian forces seeking to occupy the entire Dombass in eastern Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his late-night address that the Russian army was trying to attack the cities of Sloviansk and Sievyerodonetsk in the east of the country. “The armed forces of Ukraine are holding back this offensive.” But: “The situation in Donbass is extremely difficult.”
10:04 p.m.: Among the fighters captured at the Azovstal steel plant in the port city of Mariupol in southeastern Ukraine, 78 are women, according to the pro-Russian separatists. According to the Russian state agency TASS, the head of the Donetsk separatists, Denis Puschilin, said on Saturday evening that foreigners had also been taken into Russian captivity. He didn’t give a number at first.
On Friday evening, the Russian Ministry of Defense announced that the steelworks on the Azov Sea, which had been under siege for weeks, had been completely taken over. According to Moscow, a total of 2,439 Ukrainian soldiers have been taken prisoner by the Russians since May 16.
“They had enough food and water, they also had enough weapons,” Puschilin said. “The problem was the lack of medicines.” to blow up their capture”.
You can read more reports on the Ukraine conflict on the following pages.
