5. In March, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights also recorded a total of 12 medical facilities and 32 educational facilities destroyed or damaged. 7/
6. On Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant was attacked for the first time since November 2022. Russia accuses Ukraine, Ukraine accuses Russia of the attacks 8/ bbc.co.uk/news/world-eur…
Gen. Christopher G. Cavoli, the top U.S. military commander in Europe, warned that Ukraine could lose the war with Russia if the U.S. does not send more ammunition to Ukrainian forces quickly. 9/
7. Frontline Ukrainian forces are rationing artillery shells due to lack of a reliable Western supplier, allowing Russian troops to outfire them 5-to-1, a ratio that could soon increase to 10-to-1 without additional U.S. aid. 10/
8. Russia has reconstituted its army faster than initial U.S. estimates, increasing frontline troop strength by 15% to 470,000 and expanding the conscription age limit. Russia plans to expand its military to 1.5 million troops. 11/
9. Russian missile attacks on Ukraine's energy system, bombardment of Kharkiv, and advances along the front are stoking fears that Ukraine's military is nearing a breaking point. 12/
Western officials say Ukraine is at its most fragile moment in over two years of war.
Ukrainian officials don’t comment on the “breaking point” but increasingly voice alarming pleas for weapons and air defense 13/
There is a risk of Ukrainian defense collapse which could enable Russia to make a major advance for the first time since the early stages of the war. The next few months will be Ukraine's toughest test. 14/
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy urged his country's allies to make good on their promises of military aid on Thursday, particularly in the form of desperately needed air defence systems as Russia scales up its air strikes 15/
So, in short, Ukraine is running out of air defense and weapons, and Russia is taking advantage of it.
Russia can break through unless the West overcomes its political infighting and dysfunctionality to provide support to Ukraine
16/
Democracies are messy, I often hear, but it is the best system. True, but this mess currently makes democracies unable to effectively address Russian threat. It looks more and more like a lack of leadership rather than the usual weakness of democracies. 17X
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Former Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba: Ukraine’s victory is not just a line on a map.
Victory is preserving an independent, sovereign, European Ukraine: not absorbed by Russia, not controlled by Russia, and not part of the Russian world. 1/
Kuleba: Putin’s death could seriously break the course of this war.
Apart from Putin and maybe Patrushev, there is no one in Russia’s elite for whom destroying Ukrainian statehood is the meaning of life at this level of obsession. 2/
Kuleba: Putin cannot become the first Russian ruler since 1654 who failed to keep Ukraine. For him, everything in life is now at stake.
That is why this war is personal, historical and much bigger than ordinary imperial pressure. 3X
Petraeus: The U.S. has not remotely learned the lessons it should from Ukraine.
This is the future of war: Ukraine alone uses 10,000 drones a day, and 90% of Russian casualties are caused by drones. That should force institutional change. 1/
You cannot even drive vehicles in the 35-km death zone on either side of the front, because drones can fly into trenches and kill people. This is a vast change. 2/
Petraeus: The U.S. has to overhaul its concepts of war: create unmanned-systems forces like Ukraine has, change how leaders train, and build weapons that can get software updates weekly and hardware changes every few weeks. 3/
A $14B arms package was held up, and Trump seemed to see Taiwan as a “very good negotiating chip” with Beijing — trading an ally’s security for economic advantage while repeating false claims about Taiwan stealing U.S. chip technology. 1/
Fukuyama: The optics showed how far Trump had fallen in Chinese eyes.
Xi did not meet him at the airport, Trump was seated to look smaller, and the worst part was Trump’s constant flattery — calling Xi a great leader, a friend, someone from central casting. 2/
Fukuyama: American decline is a direct product of Trump’s rise since 2016.
It is as if Trump decided to weaken the U.S. against China: polarizing America, attacking universities, cutting science funding, and depleting advanced munitions in the Middle East. 3/
Former Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Zaluzhnyi: It is now easier and cheaper to reach a person or object deep in the rear than to move the front line by 20 meters.
New weapons shift war from destroying military potential to destroying the state itself. 1/
Zaluzhnyi: Cheap, mass weapons with no reliable physical protection have changed war.
They allow any state — or even organization — to use new force against any opponent. The line between front and rear has almost disappeared. 2/
Zaluzhnyi: In an existential war, survival itself means victory. For Russia, stopping without victory threatens the existence of its state system.
That is why this has become a war of attrition where endurance decides everything. 3/