Ukraine forms eight new storm brigades; Black Sea grain meeting to be held on Wednesday
Ukraine has formed eight new “storm” brigades to take part in a future counteroffensive amid growing speculation about its timing and whether it can inflict serious defeats on Russia. The Ukrainian interior ministry said it had “fully formed” initial brigades comprising up to 40,000 troops, but they would need further training before being ready to fight.
An explosion derailed a freight train for the second day in a row in a Russian region bordering Ukraine on Tuesday, sending both the locomotive and some cars off the tracks, authorities said. It occurred in the western Bryansk region, which borders both Ukraine and Belarus. Russian officials say pro-Ukrainian sabotage groups have made multiple attacks there since 2022.
The US plans to announce as soon as Wednesday a new $300m military aid package for Ukraine that will for the first time include a short-range air-launched rocket, two US officials have said. The rockets could help Ukraine weaken Russian ground positions and provide advancing Ukrainian ground forces with air support for a spring offensive.
Russia’s defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, said his country was inflicting heavy blows to Ukraine across the entire frontline but the supply of weapons was crucial to success. In a meeting with Moscow’s top military officials, Shoigu said Russian combat operations were engaged “along the entire line of contact”, fighting Ukraine and its “unprecedented military assistance from the west”.
The Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said German-supplied weapons were already being used in the Donbas region, which Russia has illegally annexed. The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, said on Monday that Germany had insisted, like other Nato member countries, that the weapons it was supplying to Ukraine must not be used against Russian territory. The Donbas is not Russian territory.
Ukraine’s military vowed on Tuesday not to give up the eastern city of Bakhmut as it prepares to launch a counteroffensive against Russian forces. General Oleksandr Syrskyi, the commander of Ukrainian ground forces, underlined the importance Kyiv attaches to holding Bakhmut as preparations continue for a counterattack that it hopes will change the dynamic of the war.
Russia’s military has sustained 100,000 deaths and injuries in the past five months in fighting against Ukraine, mostly in the Bakhmut region, the White House has estimated. The national security spokesperson John Kirby said the figure, based on US intelligence estimates, included more than 20,000 dead.
The Kremlin rejected the US assessment of Russian military casualties in Ukraine as having been “plucked from thin air” and said Washington had no way of obtaining the correct data.
Turkey’s trade data has started to reflect that Ankara has stopped allowing the re-exportation of sanctioned western goods to Russia after repeated warnings from Washington, a senior US treasury official has told reporters.
All parties in the Black Sea grain initiative will meet for talks on Wednesday, according to a senior Ukrainian source. Additionally, the senior UN trade official Rebeca Grynspan is expected to travel to Moscow this week.
At least six Russian regions have scrapped 9 May Victory Day parades to mark the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany amid fear of Ukrainian attacks. The governor of Saratov, 400 miles from the border, announced that its parade was off because of “safety concerns”.
Suspilne, Ukraine’s state broadcaster, reported that three apartment buildings and a school were damaged in Kramatorsk in a strike by Russian S-300 missiles that caused one injury.
