FORT IRWIN, California —- US Army trainers use lessons learned from Russia’s war against Ukraine as they prepare soldiers for future battles against a major adversary.
Role-playing players this month at a training center in California’s Mojave Desert speak Russian, and the enemy force is using a steady stream of social media to make false accusations against the U.S. brigade that is preparing to attack.
In the coming weeks, the planned training scenario for the next brigade to come will focus on how to fight an enemy who is willing to destroy a city with rockets and missiles to conquer it.
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RIAT – Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman on Saturday, their second phone call since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The Saudi news agency reported that the two discussed bilateral relations and “ways to strengthen them in all areas.”
The Saudi reading of the call said the successor reaffirmed his support for efforts to find a political solution to the crisis in Ukraine. The kingdom recently announced $ 10 million in humanitarian aid for Ukrainian refugees.
The Kremlin statement added that the two also discussed the ongoing conflict in Yemen, where the coalition under Saudi Arabia has been at war for years, as well as their joint work on an oil production agreement known as OPEC +. The oil pact has carefully kept production from the major producers, supporting oil prices.
Ukraine has urged countries around the world to reduce their dependence on Russian oil imports, which it says are financing Russia’s military war in Ukraine.
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KIEV, Ukraine – Russian forces bombed an oil refinery in the Ukrainian city of Lysychansk on Saturday and a large fire broke out, a regional governor said.
Luhansk regional governor Serhiy Haidai said it was not the first time the refinery had been targeted and accused the Russians of trying to “exhaust” local emergency services. He stressed that there was no fuel at the refinery at the time of the attack and “the remnants of the oil sludge” were burning.
Ukraine’s presidential office said on Saturday that rockets and bombings had been fired in the past 24 hours in eight regions: Donetsk, Luhansk and Kharkiv in the east, Dnipropetrovsk, Poltava and Kirovohrad in central Ukraine and Mikolaiv and Khyrov. The strikes underscored that the entire country remained under threat despite Russia turning to launch a new offensive in the east.
In Kharkov, nine civilians were killed and more than 50 were injured on Friday, with two dead and three wounded in the area, according to the report.
The southern part of Mykolaiv was hit on Friday and Saturday. According to the presidential office, airstrikes on Friday killed five and injured 15. The head of the regional legislature, Hanna Zamazieva, said on Saturday that 39 people had been injured in the past 24 hours.
Zamazieva said the targets included many housing estates “where there are no military installations”.
The besieged Ukrainian port of Mariupol is still standing, but the situation there is critical.
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KYIV, Ukraine – Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said in televised comments Saturday that 700 Ukrainian soldiers and more than 1,000 civilians – more than half women – are currently being held captive by Russians.
Verestsuk said Kyiv intended to exchange prisoners of war, as Ukraine has about the same number of Russian troops, but demanded the release of civilians “unconditionally”.
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BERLIN – Peacekeepers took part in Germany’s traditional Easter march on Saturday, calling for an end to the war in Ukraine but at least in some cases opposed to helping Ukraine defend itself with weapons.
An event in Berlin drew 400 people and one in Hanover 500, the dpa news agency reported, citing police. Marches took place in cities such as Munich, Cologne, Leipzig, Stuttgart and Duisburg. The banners read “End the war in Ukraine” and “He who sends weapons reaps war.”
The country’s vice chancellor, Green politician Robert Hubbek, warned protesters not to send the wrong message, saying “there will be peace only when Putin stops his aggressive war.” He said in an interview with the Funke media group that “it is clear who the attacker is and who is defending in the event of an emergency and who we need to support, also with weapons.”
Ukrainian officials say Germany has sent anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons, as well as night-vision equipment, body armor and machine guns.
Locally organized peace marches date back to the days of the Cold War and focus on issues such as disarmament and the abolition of nuclear weapons.
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KIEV, Ukraine – Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said one person was killed and several others were injured in air strikes Saturday morning in the Darnitsky district of the capital as Russian forces repeated repeated attacks in the western part of the capital.
“The air defense forces are doing everything they can to protect us, but the enemy is insidious and ruthless,” Klitschko told the Telegram messaging app.
The attacks, which the Russian Defense Ministry said were aimed at an armored factory in the Ukrainian capital, were an explosive reminder to Ukrainians and their Western backers that the entire country remained under threat despite Russian forces moving east. where there is a fear of a new attack. .
Klitschko urged Ukrainians not to return to Kyiv in a televised statement on Saturday, warning that strikes in the capital were likely to continue and that its suburbs were equipped with explosives. “We do not rule out further strikes in the capital,” Klitschko said. “We can not forbid, we can only suggest. If you have the opportunity to stay a little longer in cities where it is safer, do it.”
The mayor of Kiev added that due to the mines, the residents of Kiev are forbidden to visit parks and forests in the northeastern regions bordering on liberated lands formerly owned by the Russians.
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MOSCOW – Russia has barred the UK prime minister and 12 other top British officials from entering the country in response to British sanctions imposed on Russia over its military operation in Ukraine.
Russia’s foreign ministry announced on Saturday that it was targeting Boris Johnson, some British ministers and former Prime Minister Theresa May on Saturday.
The ministry said in a statement that “unprecedented hostile actions by the British government, particularly in the form of sanctions against senior officials” in Russia.
“The Russophobic course of the British authorities, whose main goal is to incite a negative attitude towards our country, the severance of bilateral relations in almost all areas is detrimental to the well-being and interests of the British people. “Any attack on sanctions will inevitably boomerang on their instigators and they will receive a decisive rebuff,” the statement said.
On Friday night, the ministry announced the expulsion of 18 European Union diplomats from Moscow in retaliation for the fact that the bloc declared 19 diplomats from the Russian mission to the EU and the European Atomic Energy Community persona non-grata.
The European Union said the deportations were unfounded and that the targeted EU diplomats were working under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.
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LVIV, Ukraine – The governor of the Lviv region in western Ukraine reported airstrikes in the region on Saturday morning.
Maksym Kozytskyy told the Telegram messaging service that Russian Su-35 aircraft had taken off from Baranovichi Airport in Belarus and carried out rocket attacks in Lviv.
Ukraine’s air defense system shot down four cruise missiles, Kozytskyy said.
He did not provide details on possible losses or damage.
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KIEV, Ukraine – Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said in an online post that Kyiv was hit early Saturday in the Darnitsky district in the eastern part of the capital, saying there were “explosions”.
He said rescuers and nurses were at the scene and that details of the victims would be released later.
Klitschko urged residents to heed the air raid sirens and warned those who have left the capital not to return for the time being for safety.
Dense smoke rising from the site on the east side of Kiev was visible from points in the city center near the Dnipro River.
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KIEV, Ukraine – Russian forces struck an airport in Olexandria, a city in Ukraine’s Kirovohrad region, late Friday night with a missile strike, the city’s mayor, Sergiy Kuzmenko, said on Facebook on Saturday. He did not say if there were any casualties in the strike.
In the eastern Luhansk region, overnight bombings killed one person and injured three others, according to regional governor Serhiy Haidai. The bombing also damaged gas pipelines in the cities of Severodonetsk and Lysychansk.
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WASHINGTON – Ukraine is sending top officials to Washington for next week’s meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, where the focus will be on the Russian invasion and its impact on the world economy.
The meeting was attended by Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal, Finance Minister Serhiy Marchenko and Central Bank Governor Kyrylo Shevchenko, according to a World Bank official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the visit had not been officially announced.
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KIEV, Ukraine – Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Friday that existing sanctions on Russia were “painful” but not enough to stop the Russian military.
Zelensky called on the “democratic world” to ban Russian oil. While the American deputies and the president of the USA Joe Biden …
