Briefing sobre a Guerra de agressão da Rússia contra a Ucrânia (NYTIMES)

 

October 14, 2022

By Carole Landry Editor/Writer, Briefings Team

Welcome to the Russia-Ukraine War Briefing, your guide to the latest news and analysis about the conflict.

Russian news media reported the first deaths among military draftees. President Vladimir Putin said 16,000 had been sent into combat, with some receiving as little as 10 days of training. Elon Musk said SpaceX could not “indefinitely” fund its Starlink internet service in Ukraine. CNN reported that Musk asked the Pentagon to pick up the bill. E.U. foreign ministers are poised to approve a new mission to train thousands of Ukrainian soldiers in Germany and Poland. Get the latest updates here. Track the invasion with our maps. These photoschronicle the ordeal of the war.

A photograph released by the Russian Defense Ministry showing a cruise missile launched from a Russian warship on Monday.Russian Defense Ministry Press Service, via Associated Press

Lashing out, falling back

This week, Russia fired its most intense barrage of missiles since the invasion began, killing dozens of civilians and knocking out power in cities across Ukraine. One thing the missiles didn’t do: change the broader course of the war.

Fighting in the south and east continued, with Ukraine on the offensive and Russia mostly falling back.

In the Russian-occupied southern region of Kherson, officials today asked civilians to evacuate to Russia or Crimea, after a plea for help from the region’s Russian-appointed leader.

Ukrainian officials said the evacuations were a sign of panic from Moscow in the face of Ukraine’s advance in the Kherson region. Ukrainian forces broke through Russian lines this month and have retaken about 75 towns and villages, according to Ukrainian officials.

Serhii Khlan, an adviser to the head of the Kherson region’s military administration, said it would be impossible for Russia to stage an evacuation from Kherson, given the military pressure its forces were facing. Western military officials predicted Ukrainian forces could control the Kherson region up to Dnipro as soon as next week, according to a report in The Financial Times.

A missile strike in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, killed eight people on Monday.Nicole Tung for The New York Times

The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based research group, wrote yesterday that the Kremlin “continues to struggle to message itself out of the reality of mobilization and military failures” and “continued its general pattern of temporarily appeasing the nationalist communities by conducting retaliatory missile strikes.”

In the east, pro-Russian forces made some advances in villages south of Bakhmut in the Donetsk region, the British Ministry of Defense said. But, it added, Russia’s slow progress overall is undermined by pressure from Ukrainian forces and severe shortages of munitions and personnel.

Our Kyiv bureau chief, Andrew Kramer, notes that the war is now separated into two largely unconnected arenas: in the skies, where Russia is using missiles and drones to destroy heating, electricity and water infrastructure as winter sets in; and on the ground, where Ukraine continues to advance.

The question now is whether Russia has enough missiles to keep bombarding cities. There have been several signs that Russia is running low on precision-guided weapons.