Ihor Zhdanov, Information Defence

 

Informational Defence of Ukraine provides a daily review of the military-political situation in Ukraine as of April 7th, based on an analysis of open sources.

1. The Armed Forces of Ukraine liberated the Kyiv, Chernihiv and Sumy regions and continue counterattacks.

According to the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the enemy's main efforts are focused on capturing Mariupol, conducting attacks near Izium and trying to break through the defence in the Donetsk direction.

In the Donetsk and Tavriia directions, the enemy continues to carry out fire and assault operations, launch missile and bomb strikes, and conduct artillery fire on the civilian infrastructure of settlements. The  occupiers use the port of Berdiansk to transfer weapons, military equipment and personnel.

The enemies also intensified efforts in the Severodonetsk direction. They are trying to continue the attacks in the areas of Donetske, Novotoshkivske and Popasna. The enemy also tried to launch an attack in the areas of Mar’inka, Borivske and Solodke. Attempts to attack were unsuccessful.

The General Staff assumes that the occupiers will soon try to break through the defences of Ukrainian troops in the Severodonetskyi, Avdiyivskyi and Kurakhovskyi districts.

In the Pivdennyi Buh direction, the enemies conducted artillery fire, in some areas using army aircraft. They are trying to continue the attacks in the direction of Oleksandrivka.

In the Kharkiv region, up to five battalions of tactical groups of the enemy continue to encircle the city and fire at it from multiple rocket launchers, artillery and mortars.

The occupiers held Izium, trying to continue the attacks in the direction of Sloviansk and Barvinkove.

The total combat losses of the enemy from February 24 to April 7 were approximately: combatants - about 18,900 people, tanks - 698 units, armored combat vehicles - 1,891 units, artillery systems - 332 units, MLRS - 108 units, air defense - 55 units, aircraft - 150 units, helicopters - 135 units, cars - 1358 units, ships / boats - 7 units, fuel tanks - 76, UAVs of operational and tactical level - 111, special equipment - 25, TBM / BRBM (tactical ballistic missile / battlefield range ballistic missile) launchers - 4.

A group of SSOs of Ukraine seized several units of enemy air defence equipment during special operations. In particular, BPU complex BUK M1 and SAM BUK M2.

2. Information summaries and assessments of foreign and Ukrainian intelligence.

According to CNN, citing a US official, the United States believes it will be able to identify russian units that committed atrocities in Bucha. Identifying these is "an extremely important priority right now" for US intelligence agencies.

The collection and analysis of intelligence flows using all available tools and assets has been going on since the atrocities became known, and the United States is on the verge of narrowing the circle of suspects. According to officials, there is no certainty that the United States will publicly announce its conclusions, and a decision may be made to leave it to Ukraine.

US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin has officially confirmed that US intelligence is sharing the latest data with Ukrainian defenders, including russia's plans to seize Donetsk and Luhansk.

For the first time, a high-ranking US official like Austin [?] has publicly confirmed the exchange of classified government intelligence information between the United States and Ukraine.

3. Genocide of the Ukrainian people, shocking tragedy in Bucha – “Bucha massacre”.

According to DW, the Mayor of Bucha, Anatolii Fedoruk, said that the number of bodies found in the city was growing every day, and almost all of them had been shot dead: “As of last night (April 6), there were 320 civilians. The experts have been working with the found bodies (criminalists, militaries) [?] but the number is growing every day.

When asked by a journalist whether they died mainly due to shootings or artillery shelling, the mayor replied: “Almost 90% of the dead are the results of the bullets, not fragments.”

International community reacts to mass killings of Ukrainians in Bucha. In Berlin, Warsaw, Vilnius and Tbilisi mass rallies were held on Wednesday April 6th to commemorate Bucha residents brutally killed by russian soldiers.

Protesters lay on the ground with their hands tied behind their backs, symbolically showing their position and drawing the authorities' attention to atrocities committed by the russians in Bucha while the city was under occupation.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine responded to the latest statements of the Prime Minister of Hungary, Viktor Orban, with a call to “move to the right side of history.”

A spokesman of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, Oleh Nikolenko, stressed that “after the elections in Budapest, we have a next stage - to help putin continue his aggression against Ukraine, the civilized world and Christian values”. [Dmytro, I’m not sure what he is trying to say here, but obviously Orban’s election victory makes Hungary’s stance towards the war in Ukraine more uncertain].

The reluctance of the Hungarian leadership to recognize russia's irrefutable responsibility for the atrocities in Bucha, Irpin, Hostomel and other settlements means to consciously strengthen russia's sense of impunity and encourage it to commit new atrocities against Ukrainians,” Oleh Nikolenko said.

New evidence of the russian occupiers’ involvement in the mass killings of Ukrainians has been published. Federal Intelligence Service of Germany (BND, Bundesnachrichtendienst) has intercepted talks on radio communications between the russian military, in which the occupiers are discussing the massacre of civilians in Bucha.

In particular, the intelligence service has reports, the content of which coincide with the location of the bodies of killed civilians along the main street of Bucha. In one of them, a serviceman stated that he and his comrades shot a man on a bicycle. In another conversation, the man said that Ukrainian soldiers are first interrogated and then killed.

In addition, it can be concluded from these materials that Wagner's militants played a crucial role in the atrocities in Bucha, they demonstrated a special degree of brutality during their participation in the war in Syria.

Intercepted BND conversations suggest that the massacres in Bucha were neither accidental nor the actions of individual soldiers who lost their control. It is much more likely that the killing of civilians was a part of the russian military's usual manner of action, and possibly part of their strategy to spread fear among the civilian population and suppress resistance.

4. The russian occupiers continue to violate international humanitarian law.

The russian aggressors continue to kill Ukrainian children. More than 464 children were injured in Ukraine due to the armed aggression of the russian federation. As of the morning of April 7th, the official number of child victims fortunately has not changed - 167, the number of injured has increased - more than 297.

Most children were affected in the Kyiv (86), Donetsk (81), Kharkiv (73), Chernihiv (50), Mykolaiiv (39), Luhansk (32), Zaporizhzhia (22), Kherson (29), Sumy (16), Zhytomyr (15) regions and in Kyiv City (16).

On April 6th, the body of a 12-year-old girl who was burned in a car on a highway near the village of Yahidne in the Chernihiv region. During the temporary occupation of the Vyshhorod district of the Kyiv region in March, the russian occupiers fired on the civilian population of the village of Dymer. As a result of the shelling, a child was injured and her father died.

As a result of daily bombings and shelling, 928 educational institutions were damaged, of which 84 were completely destroyed.

The russian invaders continue to attack civilians daily. During the day, the enemy inflicted 48 strikes with MLRS, artillery, and mortars on the civilian infrastructure of Kharkiv, the regional state administration has informed.

During 43 days of the war, the russian occupiers did not leave a single hospital in the Luhansk region.

The russian occupiers are creating fake authorities. russians and their allies in Enerhodar, the Zaporizhzhia region, began to create fake authorities.

According to Energoatom in the Telegram:  "initially 34 members of the public council of self-organization of Enerhodar" allegedly elected the main collaborator Shevchyk as the head of the “city administration”.

Then Shevchyk, by his own order, "single-handedly" fired the legally elected mayor, Dmytro Orlov, and “at the same time all the heads and members of the executive bodies of the city authorities. Well, he signed a note to fire everyone.”

In Melitopol, russian occupiers and collaborators have already abducted more than 100 people.

5. The evacuation of civilians under the attacks of the russian aggressors continues.

On Wednesday April 6th, with the help of the humanitarian corridors from Mariupol and Berdiansk, 3,686 people travelled in their own transport and by evacuation buses to Zaporizhzhia. 1,171 of them are from Mariupol. 2,515 people arrived from the cities of the Zaporizhzhia region: Polohy, Vasylivka, Berdiansk, Melitopol and Huliaipole.

In the Luhansk region, 1,206 people were evacuated from Lysychansk, Severodonetsk, Rubizhne, Kreminna and the village of Hirske on Wednesday.

On April 6th 4,892 people were evacuated.

On April 7th, the Ukrainian authorities confirmed the opening of 10 humanitarian corridors: from Mariupol, Berdiansk, Tokmak, Enerhodar, Melitopol to Zaporizhzhia; from Severodonetsk, Lysychansk, Popasna, Rubizhne, Hirske to Bakhmut.

The enemy made an air strike on the overpass near the Barvinkove station on the Donetsk railway. This is the only Ukrainian-controlled railway exit from cities such as Sloviansk, Kramatorsk and Lyman. Three evacuation trains remained temporarily blocked in Sloviansk and Kramatorsk.

6. International support and assistance to Ukraine.

Political support for Ukraine and security guarantees. According to Politico, the US Senate has unanimously passed an important bill to restore the program of World War II, which will allow President Joe Biden to send more effective weapons and other supplies to Ukraine against russia's invasion.

The document, known as the Law on Land Lease for the Defense of Ukraine's Democracy of 2022, will speed up the transfer of important military equipment and other critical supplies to Ukraine by reducing bureaucratic red tape. It allows de facto donations of equipment with provisions that provide that the recipient countries will pay their value to the United States later.

Military assistance to Ukraine. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in an interview with NBC that all scenarios of war with Russia would have a victory for Ukraine in the end.

He stressed information about the additional supply of weapons to Ukraine: “The President allowed us to use another $100 million to provide more Javelin to our Ukrainian partners… For each russian tank in Ukraine we have provided or will soon provide 10 anti-tank systems.”

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby has said that the Ukrainian military has been trained in the United States and can share experience in the Armed Forces in the use of kamikaze drones called Switchblades.

John Kirby has noted that Ukrainians will soon return home where they could transfer their knowledge and skills to their colleagues.

The UK Ministry of Defence is considering options for sending armoured vehicles such as Mastiff, as well as vehicles like the Chakal, which can be used as reconnaissance or long-range patrol.

Financial assistance to Ukraine. According to Minister of Finance, Serhii Marchenko, the country has already received about three billion euros in financial assistance from the partners. “Today we are negotiating for approximately 7 billion euros, of which we have already received about 3 billion euros,” Marchenko said.

The Ministry of Finance of Ukraine and the German State Bank Credit Institution for Reconstruction (KfW) signed a loan agreement worth 150 million euros.

Loans are provided under the project “IHR-Financing Covid-19” and will be directed to the state budget to refinance the costs incurred under the state programs: “Affordable Loans 5-7-9%” and “Affordable Financial Leasing 5-7-9%”.

Humanitarian aid to Ukraine. The United States Government Agency for International Development (USAID) helps to finance and deliver 5,000 sets of equipment for satellite Internet Starlink of Elon Musk’s company StarXink's to Ukraine.

According to Lviv Mayor Andrii Sadovyi a container town is being set up in Lviv where 350 temporary migrants evacuated from hotspots will be able to live.

The mayor of Lviv explained that these houses were donated from the Polish government. First of all, the students of universities evacuated from hotspots will settle there.

The first seven resuscitation vehicles donated to the Ukrainians from Munich arrived in Kyiv. This was announced by Kyiv Mayor Vitalii Klitschko on his Facebook page.

7. Provocations and fakes of the russian aggressors.

Sergei Naryshkin, director of the russian Foreign Intelligence Service, wrote an article claiming that American political technologists set NATO the task of prolonging the war in Ukraine as much as possible in order to turn it into a model of Afghanistan for russia.

According to him, the most insidious methods are used for this, up to the exile of armed militants to Ukrainian territory, who are tasked with organizing and supporting the so-called partisan, and, in fact, terrorists in the country.

Naryshkin notes that the United States and the vast majority of NATO countries are not ready to enter into direct armed confrontation with russia, preferring to limit themselves to providing moral and material support to Kyiv.

Naryshkin asserts that russia is allegedly trying to prevent “Ukraine's transformation into a puppet Russophobic state, which is trying to form its own identity on the basis of denial and demonization of everything that naturally connects it with russia.”

According to him, the persistence of the "conflict" in Ukraine shows that not only the fate of the "Kyiv regime" is at stake, but also the "architecture of the whole world order.”

"Predicting its specific contours, based on the current situation, is quite difficult, there will be no return to the old world," wrote the head of the Foreign Intelligence Service.

8. Political and socio-economic situation in russia, the impact of international sanctions on it.

General Assembly supported the resolution on the suspension of the russian federation's membership in the UN Human Rights Council. The reason for the resolution was gross human rights violations in Bucha in the Kyiv region.

Permanent Representative of Ukraine to the United Nations, Serhii Kyslytsia, published the results of the vote - 93 "for", 24 "against", and 58 "abstained".

In addition to russia, Belarus, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Syria, North Korea, Cuba, Nicaragua, Algeria, Bolivia, Burundi, Gabon, the Central Africa Republic, Congo, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Mali, Zimbabwe and Vietnam have voted against suspending its membership in the Human Rights Council.

Among the 58 states that have abstained are India, Brazil, Egypt, Jordan, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and South Africa.

NATO countries do not have a single strategy for russia. According to The New York  Times, having been faced with the prospect of a long and gruelling war in Ukraine, NATO countries disagree on how best to proceed.

Central European countries, such as Poland and the Baltic countries, want a complete break with Moscow and attempts to bring russia to its knees. They worry that russia can present anything as its victory and will continue to cause serious damage to European security.

Other countries believe that russia cannot be easily conquered and that the outcome of the war is likely to be chaotic - more likely to end in an eventual ceasefire after a long and gruelling conflict than a resounding victory. According to officials, countries such as France, Germany and Turkey want to maintain contact with russian president putin, despite allegations of war crimes committed by his troops.

NATO foreign ministers who have met this week to discuss how to help Ukraine agree on one important issue: the war is far from over and war crimes will continue despite the withdrawal of russian troops from northern Ukraine.

As noted, even if the war ends with a new line of contact between russian and Ukrainian forces, NATO seeks to work with Kyiv to make Ukraine indigestible to russia.

EU ambassadors at a meeting on Wednesday failed to decide on a fifth package of sanctions against russia. According to Ceske Noviny, citing diplomatic sources, some countries have called for clarification on the proposed embargo on russian coal imports and a ban on mooring russian ships in EU ports.

According to diplomats, the Commission should indicate, in particular, whether the ban should apply to existing coal contracts or only new ones. He said that some countries, led by Germany, wanted to define more clearly the conditions under which the EU should cut itself off from russian coal supplies forever.

Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi has backed an embargo on russian oil and gas imports. He stated this at a press conference after the government meeting.

Mario Draghi described the EU's debate on a possible ban on russian gas imports: “What do we choose: housing or air conditioning? We have to ask ourselves this question.”

The Estonian government has agreed to stop importing russian gas into the country by the end of 2022, and to compensate for these supplies through a leased LNG terminal.

In order to reduce dependence on russian oil, the Allies are releasing their strategic oil reserves. As The Wall Street Journal and Reuters write, citing other sources, 29 countries that are members of the International Energy Agency are ready to release 120 million barrels of oil from their strategic reserves.

This is the largest oil intervention in the history of the IEA. According to sources, 60 million barrels will be allocated by the United States, another 60 million by the rest of the IEA (the organization includes 31 countries, including most European countries, Australia and Japan).

In addition, the United States last week said they were ready to withdraw 1 million barrels of oil per day from its strategic reserve for six months, or about 180 million barrels.

New sanctions and restrictions are being imposed on russia, which is having a negative impact on the russian economy. Australia is imposing financial sanctions and a travel ban on another 67 russians in connection with the russian invasion of Ukraine, bringing the total number of individuals and organizations affected by the sanctions to almost 600.

The United States has imposed sanctions on putin's daughters, Katerina Tikhonova and Maria Vorontsova, about whom the russian president has never spoken publicly.

Switzerland has so far blocked 7.5 billion Swiss francs ($ 8 billion) in russian assets after first imposing sanctions on people close to the kremlin.

According to the results of 2022, unemployment in russia may more than double and exceed 9% for the first time in 10 years. According to experts, about 2 million jobs are at risk. This was reported by Bloomberg with reference to a March poll of analysts.

Inflation in russia accelerated to 16.7% year on year by April 1st. Prices for products by April 1 increased by 9.9%.

Belgium has blocked transactions worth more than 196 billion euros under EU sanctions against russia.

Streaming service Spotify after April 11th will completely stop working in russia - this means that you can no longer use the services on the site and in the application.

According to Bloomberg, some Chinese importers have switched to importing russian coal and oil in Chinese Yuan. Several Chinese companies used local currency to buy russian coal in March to get it in April. The russian oil sellers also offered Chinese buyers the opportunity to pay in Chinese Yuan.

The UK company GlaxoSmithKline has said that its consumer division has stopped importing food supplements and vitamins to russia.