Ukraine’s counteroffensive hobbled by a lack of firepower, says military chief; Belarus president says Russian nuclear weapons in his country will not be used
The top US military officer, Army General Mark Milley, said he was unsurprised that progress in Ukraine’s counteroffensive was slower than some people and computers might have predicted. “This is going to take six, eight, 10 weeks, it’s going to be very difficult. It’s going to be very long, and it’s going to be very, very bloody. And no one should have any illusions about any of that,” he said.
Ukraine’s counteroffensive plans are hobbled by the lack of adequate firepower, from modern fighter jets to artillery ammunition, the country’s military commander-in-chief, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, said in an interview published on Friday.
CIA director William Burns called Russian spy chief Sergei Naryshkin after last week’s aborted mutiny in Russia to assure the Kremlin that the United States had no role in it, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday. The call was the highest-level contact between the two governments since the attempted mutiny, the Wall Street Journal said.
Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko said on Friday he was certain Russian tactical nuclear weapons deployed in his country would never be used. Lukashenko and Russian president Vladimir Putin have acknowledged that some tactical weapons have arrived in Belarus and the remainder would be put in place by the end of the year. “As we move along, we become more and more convinced that they [the weapons] must be stationed here, in Belarus, in a reliable place,” Lukashenko said.
A teacher and another employee of a school in the Donetsk region have been killed after the building was shelled, according to a report from Suspilne, Ukraine’s state broadcaster.
Pope Francis said there was no apparent end in sight to the war in Ukraine as his peace envoy wrapped up three days of talks in Moscow.
Russia is reducing its presence at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Ukraine’s military intelligence directorate (GUR) has claimed. GUR said that among the first to leave the nuclear power station were three employees of Russian state nuclear firm Rosatom who had been “in charge of the Russians’ activities”.
Ukrainian prosecutors charged a Russian politician and two suspected Ukrainian collaborators with war crimes over the alleged deportation of dozens of orphans from the formerly occupied southern city of Kherson, some of them as young as one, Reuters reported.
The US is strongly considering sending cluster munitions to Ukraine to boost its counteroffensive against Russian forces, according to several news reports that cite Biden administration officials.
Ukraine has conducted nuclear disaster response drills in the vicinity of the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station, regional officials say.
