Russo-Ukraine War - 20 March 2022
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On 24 February 2022, Ukraine was suddenly and deliberately attacked by land, naval and air forces of Russia, igniting the largest European war since the Great Patriotic War. The military buildup in preceeding months makes it obvious that the unprovoked and dastardly Russian attack was deliberately planned long in advance. During the intervening time, the Russian government had deliberately sought to deceive the world by false statements and expressions of hope for continued peace.
"To initiate a war of aggression... is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole." [Judgment of the International Military Tribunal]
Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a "special military operation" in Ukraine in response to the appeal of the leaders of the "Donbass republics" for help. That attack is a blatant violation of the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Ukraine. Putin stressed that Moscow's goal is the demilitarization and denazification of the country.
The Washington -based Institute for the Study of War said that the Ukrainians had failed the "initial mission" that the Russians had bet on achieving through military operations that began on February 24. The study added that the Russians do not have sufficient forces and equipment at the moment, to control the capital, Kiev , or other major cities in the country, such as Odessa and Kharkiv. In the same vein, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said that he sees no indications that Russia is planning to try to control major cities in the country, in the near term.
The US-made Patriot air defence system is on its way to Slovakia, Defence Minister Jaroslav Nad has said, paving the way for Bratislava to deliver similar hardware to Ukraine. “I can confirm that the first units to deploy the anti-aircraft Patriot system are gradually arriving,” Nad said, adding the delivery would continue over the next few days. NATO member Slovakia said this week that it was willing to provide its Russian-made S-300 anti-aircraft system to Ukraine on the condition that it received a substitute to avoid a security gap.
Russia continued losing high ranking military officers in the war in Ukraine, according to reports from the Ukrainian army. Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to the Ukrainian president, claimed that six Russian generals had been killed. "Already 6 generals killed: Maj Gens Tushayev, Gerasimov, Kolesnikov, Sukhovetsky, Mityaev & Lt Gen Mordvichev. Dozens of colonels & other officers." Russia confirmed in daily newspaper Kommersant that Black Sea fleet Deputy Commander Andrey Paliy died while fighting in the Mariupol region. Former United States military commander and CIA chief David Petraeus told CNN it was “very, very, very, very uncommon” for generals to be killed. “The bottom line is that their command and control has broken down,” Petraeus said.
Deputy Commander of the Black Sea Fleet (BSF), Captain 1st Rank Andrei Paly died during a special operation in Ukraine in the battles for Mariupol. The governor of Sevastopol, Mikhail Razvozzhaev, announced this on the Telegram channel. "In the battles for the liberation of Mariupol from the Ukrainian Nazis, the deputy commander of the Black Sea Fleet, captain of the 1st rank Andrey Nikolaevich Paliy died. In 1993 he refused to take the oath of allegiance to Ukraine, remained loyal to Russia by leaving for the Northern Fleet. I was friends with Andrey Nikolaevich, <...> he was a very open and decent person," the statement said.
Russia’s defence ministry says it attacked Ukraine with hypersonic missiles from Crimean airspace. “I think the reason he is resorting to using these types of weapons is because he is trying to re-establish some momentum,” US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told CBS. Austin said that he does not consider Russia's use of hypersonic Kinzhal missiles in Ukraine as a factor that is fundamentally changing the situation. Russian defence ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov said that the Kinzhal (Dagger) hypersonic missile hit a Ukrainian fuel depot in Kostiantynivka near the Black Sea port of Mykolaiv.
Russia’s defence ministry says it attacked Ukraine with cruise missiles from ships in the Black and Caspian Seas. “Kalibr cruise missiles were launched from the waters of the Black Sea against the Nizhyn plant that repairs Ukrainian armoured vehicles damaged in fighting.” The Russian military launched Caliber cruise missiles from the Black Sea at the Nizhyn repair plant, where they repaired Ukrainian armored vehicles. This was announced by the official representative of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation Igor Konashenkov.
The front lines between Ukrainian and Russian forces are “practically frozen”, as Russia does not have enough combat strength to advance further, Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych said in a video address. [Over the past day] there were practically no rocket strikes on [Ukrainian] cities,” Arestovych added.
The besieged port city of Mariupol is witnessing worsening conditions, after the city council said an art school sheltering 400 people was bombed by Russia. There was no immediate word of casualties from the attack. Local authorities said the school building was destroyed and people could remain under the rubble.
Ukraine’s president says the siege of Mariupol will go down in history for what he is calling “war crimes” by Russia’s military. “To do this to a peaceful city, what the occupiers did, is a terror that will be remembered for centuries to come,” he said in his night-time video address to the nation. Russia’s military is not even recovering the bodies of its soldiers in some places, Zelenskyy said. “In places where there were especially fierce battles, the bodies of Russian soldiers simply pile up along our line of defence. And no one is collecting these bodies,” he said.
Russia has set a deadline for Mariupol to surrender: “the department appealed to the authorities of Mariupol, noting that now they have the right to a historical choice: either they are with their people or with bandits. Otherwise, they face a military tribunal”. The Ministry of Defense announced the opening of humanitarian corridors from Mariupol in the morning on March 21. The Ministry of Defense wants to receive a written response from Kyiv to these proposals before 5:00. Separately, the department appealed to the authorities of Mariupol, noting that now they have the right to make a historical choice: either they are with their people, or with the bandits. Otherwise, they face a military tribunal, the Russian ministry stressed.
According to Ukraine's Armed Forces, Russia reached an agreement with Libya’s military commander Khalifa Haftar during his visit to Moscow to recruit Libyan mercenaries to fight in Ukraine.
The Russian Defense Ministry said that units of the Russian Armed Forces are completing the defeat of the national battalion "Donbass". The official representative of the department, Igor Konashenkov, said that units of the Russian army advanced 12 km during the day, reached the Nikolskoye line and, in cooperation with the units of the DPR, blocked the settlement of Sladkoe from three sides. A battle was being fought with the remnants of the militants and units of the 54th separate mechanized brigade of Ukrainian troops for the capture of the settlements of Sladkoe, Novoukrainka and Shakhterskoe. The grouping of troops of the Donetsk People's Republic continued to pursue the retreating units of the 53rd mechanized brigade of the Ukrainian armed forces Konashenkov said that Russian operational-tactical and army aviation hit almost 90 Ukrainian military facilities in a day. "During the day, operational-tactical and army aviation hit 89 military facilities of Ukraine. Among them: four command posts, two installations of multiple launch rocket systems, nine artillery pieces, five depots of rocket and artillery weapons and ammunition, as well as 65 places of accumulation of military equipment" , he noted. According to the official representative of the Russian Defense Ministry, Russian air defense systems also shot down seven Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles in the air.
"In total, since the beginning of the special military operation, 214 unmanned aerial vehicles, 1,483 tanks and other armored combat vehicles, 150 multiple rocket launchers, 584 field artillery pieces and mortars, as well as 1,279 units of special military vehicles" have been destroyed, he said.
Ukraine sees a high risk of an attack on western Ukraine’s Volyn region being launched from Belarus, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office said, citing the military. The Russian invasion has mostly focused on northern, southern and eastern areas of Ukraine, though missiles last week also hit the Yavoriv military base, close to the Polish border. It was not immediately clear whether Ukraine saw the threat of an attack on Volyn from Russian forces or the Belarusian military, which has so far not publicly committed troops to supporting Russia.
The UK Ministry of Defence says Ukraine’s air forces are “continuing to effectively defend Ukrainian airspace”. “Russia has failed to gain control of the air and is largely relying on standoff weapons launched from the relative safety of Russian airspace to strike targets within Ukraine,” the ministry said in its latest intelligence update. “Gaining control of the air was one of Russia’s principal objectives for the opening days of the conflict and their continued failure to do so has significantly blunted their operational progress,” it added.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov defined Russia’s demands as “absolutely minimal” and suggested the Ukrainian delegation “was being held by the hand, most likely by the Americans,” who he said were not allowing Kiev to agree to Moscow’s requests.
Ukraine cannot agree to the loss of sovereignty and territorial integrity, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an interview with CNN, answering a question about possible concessions in negotiations with Russia. "We need to find a model in which Ukraine will not lose its sovereignty and territorial integrity. We cannot agree to this. But we need to find a model of understanding in order to prevent new wars between the territories that we control and the temporarily occupied territories," - he said. At the same time, the President of Ukraine stressed that his country also needed security guarantees. "A number of world leaders could become sources of guarantees for Ukraine," he said.
Asked by CNN’s Fareed Zakaria to comment on Moscow’s demands, which include the recognition of Crimea as a part of Russia and the Donbass republics as independent states, Zelensky said these were compromises for which Ukraine “cannot be ready as an independent state.” “Any compromises related to our territorial integrity and our sovereignty” could not be made, he said, adding that “you cannot just make a president of another country recognize anything by the use of force.”
The "fashion choice" of the three cosmonauts who just arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) became the latest tool that the US-led West has employed in their "information war against Russia" amid the ongoing Ukraine tensions. The bright yellow flight suits with blue highlights were misinterpreted by many Western media including the New York Times, which drew similarities with the Ukrainian flag, and speculated that the astronauts were making a political statement. The US National Public Radio said on Saturday local time that it was "an apparent statement of support for Ukraine," and "wearing the colors of the Ukrainian flag has widely been seen as a way to oppose" Russia's military operation in Ukraine.
Dmitry Rogozin, head of Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, made the remarks on his social media accounts. Russia’s space agency dismissed Western media reports suggesting Russian cosmonauts joining the International Space Station (ISS) had chosen to wear yellow suits with blue trim in support of Ukraine. “Sometimes yellow is just yellow,” Roscosmos’s press service said on its Telegram channel. “The flight suits of the new crew are made in the colours of the emblem of the Bauman Moscow State Technical University, which all three cosmonauts graduated from … To see the Ukrainian flag everywhere and in everything is crazy.”
Nearly one-fourth of Ukraine’s population has been displaced by the invasion, according to UN figures released on March 20. “The war in Ukraine is so devastating that 10 million have fled – either displaced inside the country, or as refugees abroad,” Filippo Grandi, the UN high commissioner for refugees, wrote. According to UN data, almost 3.4 million refugees have left Ukraine since the war began on February 24, with more than 2 million taken in by neighboring Poland, close to 530,000 by Romania and over 362,000 by Moldova. Some 6.5 million are estimated to be internally displaced in the country.
Pro-Kremlin tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravde reported 20 March 2022 "According to preliminary estimates of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, from the beginning of the special military operation in Ukraine to March 20, the RF Armed Forces have lost 96 aircraft, 118 helicopters and 14.7 thousand military personnel. The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation refutes the information of the Ukrainian General Staff about the alleged large-scale losses of the RF Armed Forces in Ukraine. According to the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, during the special operation in Ukraine, the Russian Armed Forces lost 9861 people killed, 16153 people were injured.
Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper claimed hackers attacked its system and briefly published the figure indicating a Russian death toll of nearly 10,000 soldiers from the fighting in Ukraine before editors deleted the information. Aleksandr Gamov, a journalist at the newspaper, said on March 22 that the story was fake and quickly removed from the site, though not before several media outlets picked it up. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov refused to comment on the report when asked about it at a news conference on March 22.
U.S. and Ukrainian officials had estimated the deaths to be more than 7,000, with some estimates going near 10,000, although casualty figures in the war are impossible to independently confirm. Yaroslav Trofimov of The Wall Street Journal wrote on Twitter that "either [the newspaper's website] KP.ru has been hacked or someone there got the leaked numbers and posted them."
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