Attacks on Russian and Russian-occupied territory this weekend are just the latest setbacks for Russian forces as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine reached its eighth month.
Summary
Attacks on Russian and Russian-occupied territory this weekend are just the latest setbacks for Russian forces as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine reached its eighth month.
- Two men killed 11 Russian soldiers and wounded 15 others at a military firing range near the Russia-Ukraine border in southwestern Russia.
- Both men, volunteers from “an unnamed former Soviet republic” fired on volunteer soldiers and were killed by return fire.
- The two gunmen, apparently from Tajikistan, appeared to target “personnel who had volunteered to fight in Ukraine” in the attack in Russia’s southwestern Belgorod region.
- Rockets struck the Donetsk mayor’s office in the separatist-controlled east. The municipal building in the illegally annexed region was severely damaged.
- Russian officials said their air defense shot down at least 16 Ukrainian missiles aiming at western Russia.
- POLITICO linked the attacks to other recent Russian setbacks like the Kerch Bridge bombing and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s claims that over 65,000 Russian troops had been killed in the war so far.
- The New York Times said the shooting attack in Belgorod was part of growing unrest in Russia and discontent with Putin’s partial mobilization order.
- CNN reported on a Russian attack on an apartment complex in the eastern Ukrainian city of Izium on March 9. Approximately 54 people, half the building’s residents, were killed in the Russian attack, including entire families whose fates were unknown until recently.
- Fox News reported Iranian military personnel ‘may’ be training Russian troops to use ‘kamikaze’ drones to attack Ukrainian forces in the aftermath of last week’s Kerch Bridge bombing.
- Per Breitbart, U.S. B-52 bombers will lead fighter jets from 14 European countries in annual nuclear exercises on Monday amid rising fears of a Russian nuclear strike in Ukraine.
- The Washington Examiner noted the training facility attack comes as 220,000 reservists have been called up to bolster Russian forces in Ukraine, sparking unrest in Russia and causing hundreds of thousands to flee.
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© Dominic Moore, 2022
