Situation as of 8:00 a.m. on April 10, 2023
● Although there is ongoing intense street fighting in Bakhmut and attacks on other parts of the front, the Russian troops have been unable to breach the defense of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
● Ukraine’s Ministry of Energy has announced plans to resume electricity exports, indicating that the Russian missile attacks targeted at destroying Ukraine’s energy system during the winter of 2022-2023 were unsuccessful.
● On April 4, Finland officially became the 31st member of NATO. In May 2022, against the backdrop of the Russian armed attack on Ukraine, the Finnish government was forced to reconsider its neutrality policy and apply to join the North Atlantic Alliance.
● On April 6-8, allegedly classified Pentagon and CIA documents appeared on social media, in particular about Ukraine’s preparations for a counterattack backed by the United States and other Western allies. Ukrainian intelligence called the data published a special operation prepared by Russian special services.
OPERATIONAL SITUATION
In Bakhmut, as Russian troops try to advance from the central part of the city to the west, street fighting continues. Russian troops are also carrying out attacks in the Avdiivka area and on the Svatove-Kreminna line. At the same time, there is a gradual decrease in the intensity of the Russian offensive, which has never led to a breakthrough in the defense of the Armed Forces. Currently, the attacks are focused on specific areas of the front where the main concentration of Russian artillery and ammunition is located.
In the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine, attacks on the military infrastructure of the Russian Federation continue, as well as targeted actions against representatives of the occupation administration. They acquire the largest scale in the Melitopol area, which is a key link in providing logistics for Russian troops on the southern part of the front.
On the night of April 4, Russian troops carried out a large-scale attack using kamikaze drones against the southern regions of Ukraine. Ukrainian air defense destroyed 14 of the 17 UAVs involved. As a result of the attack, a fire was recorded at an enterprise in the Odesa region.
Russian troops continue shelling the territory of Ukraine. During the last week, the losses of the civilian population of Ukraine amounted to at least: in the Donetsk region – 17 people were killed and 31 people were wounded; in the Kherson region – 2 people were killed and 18 people were injured. Shelling, missile and airstrikes continue on the territory of Zaporizhzhia (where 2 people died and 1 person got injured during April 8-9), Mykolaiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Sumy (where at least 3 civilians were injured), and Chernihiv regions. In the Kharkiv region, 1 person died as a result of shelling, and 2 more civilians were injured. In addition, 3 people were injured as a result of a mine detonation.
HUMANITARIAN SITUATION, POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENTS
According to the information of the charity organization Save Ukraine, within the framework of the fifth rescue mission, 31 children from Kherson and Kharkiv regions, who were previously deported by Russia, were returned to Ukraine. The procedure for returning deported Ukrainian children became significantly more complicated after the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for the President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, and the Russian Commissioner for Children’s Rights, Maria Lvova-Belova.
The State Bureau of Investigation and the Security Service of Ukraine announced the completion of the investigation into the case of Oleh Kulinych, the ex-head of the main department of the SBU in Crimea. Kulinich is accused of being an agent of the Russian special services and a confidant of the traitor Volodymyr Sivkovich, former deputy secretary of the National Security Council, who is hiding in Moscow. In particular, on the instructions of Sivkovych, Kulinich appointed proxies to some management positions in the SBU and sabotaged the work of counter-intelligence.
The Ministry of Energy reported that Ukraine is resuming electricity exports. Thus, the Russian missile attacks aimed at destroying the energy system of Ukraine in the winter of 2022-2023 failed. During this period, Ukraine’s energy system survived 15 missile and 18 drone attacks by Russia on its facilities (more than 200 missiles and drones), which, according to UNDP and the World Bank estimates, caused more than $10 billion in damage.
Ukraine has suspended grain exports to Poland. Earlier, Polish Minister of Agriculture Henryk Kowalczyk announced that he was resigning due to mass protests by farmers against the import of grain from Ukraine.
FOREIGN POLICY AND INTERNATIONAL SUPPORT
On April 5-6, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyi paid an official visit to the Republic of Poland. As part of the visit, the head of state held a meeting with the President of Poland Andrzej Duda, discussing defense assistance and reconstruction of Ukraine. Volodymyr Zelenskyi also met with the Prime Minister of Poland Mateusz Morawiecki, the leaders signed a letter of intent to cooperate on the supply of defense equipment. In addition, Zelenskyi took part in the Ukrainian-Polish Economic Forum in Warsaw.
On April 4, 2023, Finland, which has more than 1000 km. border with the Russian Federation, officially became the 31st member of the North Atlantic Alliance. In addition, on April 4, a ministerial meeting of the Ukraine-NATO Commission was held in Brussels, where ways of increasing military aid to Ukraine and a long-term support program were discussed. In turn, an important signal was the adoption of the resolution of the Lithuanian Parliament before the NATO summit in Vilnius in July this year, which contains an invitation to Ukraine to join the North Atlantic Alliance. At the same time, the issue of supporting Ukraine’s NATO membership does not currently lacks the necessary consensus for a political decision.
International partners continue to provide military and economic assistance to Ukraine to counter the challenges caused by Russian aggression. The US government announced the allocation of a new large-scale package of assistance to Ukraine in the field of security and defense with a total cost of $2.6 billion, which includes the transfer of additional ammunition for the Patriot air defense system, as well as for high mobility missile and artillery systems, artillery and mortar shells, grenade launchers, tactical vehicles for the restoration of equipment, spare parts and other field equipment. Lithuania will provide a new package of military support to Ukraine in the amount of about 41 million euros. Australia will provide Ukraine with about a hundred remote weapon systems (RWS) worth up to $80 million. In addition, the Dutch government announced the allocation of a support package to Ukraine in the amount of 274 million euros, intended to provide humanitarian aid, support for agriculture, reconstruction needs and non-lethal support for the Ukrainian army.
During the week, the President of Ukraine held talks with the delegation of the House of Representatives of the US Congress from the Republican Party led by the chairman of the Permanent Committee on Intelligence Mike Turner, as well as with the delegation of US politicians, businessmen and representatives of charitable organizations, led by the former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Volodymyr Zelenskyi also held talks with the Director General of UNESCO Audrey Azoulay, with the Secretary General of the Council of Europe Marija Pejčinović Burić and with the Vice-Chancellor, Minister of Economy and Climate Protection of the Federal Republic of Germany Robert Habek, who visited Kyiv this week. The President of Ukraine held a telephone conversation with the Prime Minister of Canada Justin Trudeau and the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen.
The information in the newsletter is collected from official sources—reports of state authorities of Ukraine, Ukrainian and international news agencies. The accuracy of the data is carefully checked by the project team and corrected in case of fake news.