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Oleg Kozhemyako, the governor of Primorsky Krai in the Russian Far East, has published videos on his Telegram channel, ostensibly showing marines from the 155th Brigade and fighters of the Tigr Battalion outside Pavlivka. The servicemen deny heavy losses and say they are “alright” and that the Russian forces are faring well. “There have been reports that the 155th Brigade, our detachment, no longer exists. We want to say we’re holding the line. The brigade is fighting. There have been losses, unfortunately. Fighting is heavy in Pavlivka. It's tough. We’ve lost a few men, wounded and killed. But we keep...

In late October, near the village of Pavlivka in the annexed part of Ukraine’s Donetsk region, heavy fighting broke out between Russian and Ukrainian forces. On November 5, the Russian Defense Ministry reported that it had “defeated" Ukrainian forces on the southern Donetsk front; the following day, however, multiple Russian “war correspondents” posted a message from marines in the 155th Brigade of Russia's Pacific Fleet who took part in the offensive. The marines alleged that their unit had lost approximately 300 people and half of their equipment in just four days. They asked Oleg Kozhemyako, governor of Russia’s Primorsky Krai,...

Translated from Russian with Safari TranslateThere's not much chance to take the city. And even if it succeeds, it's not a fact that it will bring great benefitsBakhmut of the Donetsk region is one of the few destinations where the Russian army is still advaning. The report of the American Institute for the Study of War (ISW) says that on October 21, the Russians advanced from the eastern outskirts of the city towards the center. According to Deputy Minister of Defense of Ukraine Anna Malyar, Russian troops were tasked with taking Bakhmut before the end of October. "The area...

Russian forces have been moving thousands of civilians in the occupied southern Ukrainian region of Kherson over the Dnipro River and deeper into Russian-occupied territory this week. The evacuations, announced by the region’s Kremlin-installed governor Vladimir Saldo, followed warnings from Moscow that Kyiv’s southern counteroffensive meant the regional capital, Kherson, could be recaptured. But Kyiv has condemned the evacuation, describing it as an attempt to forcibly deport Ukrainian citizens and settle them in Russia, tactics that Ukrainian officials say the Kremlin has been employing since the war in Ukraine began. Three days into Moscow’s evacuations, we explain the current situation...

Translated from Russian with Safari TranslateRussian "military commissars" say that the first attacks have been stopped, the Ukrainian side is silent. What happenedOn the morning of October 15, pro-Russian telegram channels wrote that the Armed Forces of Ukraine resumed a counteroffensive in the Kherson region, and about heavy battles in this direction. In recent days, analysts have discussed how the situation near Kherson can develop, and Ukrainian officials have said that Russians are preparing to flee the city. However, on the first day of the onset, the Ukrainian army did not seem to have achieved great success. What is...

Russian military recruiters appear to be employing new and increasingly desperate methods to round up men for the Kremlin’s "partial" mobilization drive. Military and law enforcement officials in Moscow and St. Petersburg on Friday were seen inspecting the identity papers of passers-by around the entrance to metro stations and handing out draft notices to eligible men in the hallways of apartment buildings, according to local media and eyewitness accounts. In St. Petersburg officials holding stacks of draft papers were apprehending people inside an apartment complex in the city’s northern Kalininsky district from 7:30 a.m., according to a video posted by...

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) -The United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday overwhelmingly condemned Russia's "attempted illegal annexation" of four partially occupied regions in Ukraine and called on all countries not to recognize the move, strengthening a diplomatic international isolation of Moscow since it invaded its neighbor. Three-quarters of the 193-member General Assembly - 143 countries - voted in favor of a resolution that also reaffirmed the sovereignty, independence, unity and territorial integrity of Ukraine within its internationally recognized borders. "It's amazing," Ukraine's U.N. Ambassador Sergiy Kyslytsya told reporters after the vote as he stood next to U.S. Ambassador to the United...

Russian lawmakers have proposed a bill that would allow the granting of amnesties to prisoners enlisting to fight in Ukraine, according to Senator Olga Kovitidi on Thursday. "If a convict shows courage and heroism while performing military duty … the court may release him from serving his sentence … or commute the remainder of the sentence to a milder one,” Kovitidi said in a post on Telegram. According to Kovitidi, the measures wouldn’t apply to those convicted of such recently-legislated crimes as "discrediting" or "spreading false information about" Russia’s armed forces, or for calling for sanctions against the country. People...

One of the by-products of the Ukraine war has been the emergence of the online “Z-Universe," an enormous network of websites and social media accounts named after a popular pro-war symbol. It is most active on Telegram, which, unlike Twitter and Facebook, is not banned in Russia. All its participants spread pro-Kremlin and anti-Ukrainian propaganda, publishing information that may or may not be true, but which legitimizes the war and the killing of Ukrainians. The Z-Universe seems chaotic, but it is actually very complex — and hierarchical. At the top are politicians and Kremlin officials, such as former Russian President...

The Russian authorities have resorted to raiding hostels and hotels in search of men who may be eligible for military service as part of the country's "partial" mobilization, according to multiple media reports. Two Moscow locations of the Travel Inn hostel chain were visited by the police last week, according to a report by broadcaster RTVi, which cited a hostel representative. At one of the hostels, all guests eligible for military conscription were rounded up and sent to an enlistment center where men with prior military experience had their passports confiscated and were ordered to report back with their belongings...

Russian authorities are mobilizing men from the country’s most vulnerable groups to send to the front in Ukraine, the independent Mediazona news website reported Tuesday. In Moscow, security officers have taken men to military enlistment centers from charity centers for the homeless and needy as well as hostels where labor migrants live, Mediazona reported. The Food Not Bombs group, which hands out food to Moscow’s homeless community, told Mediazona that it has seen dozens of homeless men taken off the street and brought to military enlistment offices in the weeks since President Vladimir Putin declared a “partial” mobilization. “The police...

More than 90,000 troops make up Russia’s “irrecoverable” military losses in Ukraine, as reported by the Russian media project iStories (or Vazhnye Istorii). One of the two sources of this information works in the FSB; the other is a former state security officer. [Emphasis added.] “Irrecoverable losses” is a category that includes servicemen who were killed, went missing, died from their wounds or were disabled and cannot return to military service. This new estimate is close to the figures stated earlier by the Pentagon and the British Defense Ministry. Last August, the Pentagon estimated that 70–80 thousand Russian troops had...