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| Evgeniy Maloletka/Associated Press |
Advanced Western weapons have boosted Ukraine’s fortunes in battling Russia’s invasion recently, but it remains unclear whether those arms will enable Kyiv to turn the tide and avoid a prolonged, grinding stalemate, say Western officials.
U.S. Himars mobile rocket launchers and other systems from France, the U.K., Germany and Poland have begun scoring direct hits on Russian bases far behind front lines, including spectacular detonations of ammunition depots. The strikes are critical because Russian troops have gained ground in eastern Ukraine over recent weeks by firing large amounts of artillery in fairly concentrated areas.
“Ukraine has now been successfully striking Russian locations in Ukraine, deeper behind the front lines, and disrupting Russia’s ability to conduct that artillery operation,” a senior U.S. defense official said this week.
Whether the destruction of Russian munitions and command centers is sufficient to undermine Moscow’s ability to wage war in Ukraine remains a core question for countries in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization that have recently shifted to providing far more precise, long-range and expensive equipment.
“There is a lot of analysis going on in capitals about the most efficacious weapons systems to provide,” said a senior Western intelligence official, who said systems must be readily used without extensive training and easily sustained and repaired during battle. --->READ MORE HERE
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| Alexander Zemlianichenko/Pool via Reuters |
The U.S. called on Russia to stop forcibly deporting upwards of 1.6 million Ukrainians to “isolated regions” in the Far East on Wednesday, calling the the act a “war crime.”
“Russian authorities have interrogated, detained, and forcibly deported between 900,000 and 1.6 million Ukrainian citizens, including 260,000 children, from their homes to Russia – often to isolated regions in the Far East,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement, one day before the Ukraine Accountability Conference set to be held in The Hague.
“The unlawful transfer and deportation of protected persons is a grave breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention on the protection of civilians and is a war crime,” Blinken added.
Russia has denied any presence of “filtration camps” used to deport Ukrainians, but the U.S. claimed Thursday that they identified at least 18 “filtration locations” on both sides of the Ukrainian-Russian border set up by Russian officials.
The “filtration systems” were set up by Russian president Vladimir Putin and have purposefully separated children from parents, confiscated Ukrainian passports and issued Russian passports “in an apparent effort to change the demographic makeup of parts of Ukraine,” Blinken said. --->READ MORE HEREFollow links below to +++++relevant+++++ and related stories:
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