Daily Flyer - May 11, 2023
A voice of Ukraine to the West
Trump says US sends too many weapons to Ukraine, refuses to call Putin war criminal
Former U.S. President Donald Trump said at CNN's town hall that he would not commit to providing Ukraine with defense assistance if he won the 2024 election.
"We're giving away so much equipment, we don't have ammunition for ourselves right now," Trump said, as cited by CNN. He also refused to say who he thinks should win Russia's war against Ukraine, telling the voters instead that he wants "everybody to stop dying."
At the New Hampshire event, the ex-president said he doesn't "think in terms of winning and losing" but rather "in terms of getting it settled so we stop killing all these people." Trump added he would stop Russia's war "in 24 hours" if re-elected.
When asked if he considered Russian dictator Vladimir Putin a war criminal, Trump replied that it "should be discussed later."
"If you say he's a war criminal, it's going to be a lot tougher to make a deal to make this thing stopped," Trump told the audience, according to CNN. "If he's going to be a war criminal, people are going to grab him and execute him; he's going to fight a lot harder than he's fighting under the other circumstances."
In March, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, the Russian official overseeing the forced deportations of thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia.
Russian shelling in Kherson Oblast kills a woman
Russian shelling has killed a woman in Kherson Oblast’s Kakhovskyi District, the Prosecutor General’s Office reported on May 10.
Russian forces reportedly shelled the district at around 5 p.m. The attack also damaged residential buildings and farms in the area.
Ukraine’s Armed Forces liberated the west bank of the Dnipro River in Kherson Oblast, including the regional capital, in November 2022. Since Russian troops fled to the east bank, they have shelled Kherson and the west bank relentlessly.
UK confirms supply of Storm Shadow missiles to Ukraine
U.K. Defense Secretary Ben Wallace has confirmed that his country is donating Storm Shadow long-range missiles to Ukraine, becoming the first nation to provide Kyiv with weaponry able to reach targets deep behind the front lines, Sky News reported on May 11.
Earlier the same day, CNN reported, citing Western officials, that Britain had already delivered to Ukraine these cruise missiles, which can hit targets over 250 kilometers away. Storm Shadow is only slightly inferior to the 185-mile U.S. Army Surface-to-Surface System (ATACMS), which Ukraine has long requested, so far unsuccessfully.
According to an official cited by CNN, such missiles can reach Russia's territory, but Kyiv promised the U.K. government not to use them to strike targets inside Russia.
Instead, Kyiv says it would use donated long-range weapons to attack Russian command centers, supply lines, ammunition, and fuel depots deep in Crimea and the occupied territories of Ukraine's east.
Russia likely recruited 10,000 convicts for Ukraine war in April
Since the beginning of 2023, the Russian Defense Ministry has stepped up its scheme of recruiting Russian prisoners to fight in Ukraine, with up to 10,000 convicts signing up in April, the U.K. Defense Ministry reported on May 11.
“The MoD’s prisoner recruitment campaign is part of a broader, intense effort by the Russian military to bolster its numbers while attempting to avoid implementing new mandatory mobilization, which would be very unpopular with the Russian public,” the ministry wrote in its latest intelligence update.
From last summer, prisoners were the main source of recruits for Russia’s private mercenary Wagner Group, reads the update.
However, the group most likely lost access to the Russian penitentiary system in February 2023 amid its escalating conflict with the Russian Defense Ministry, according to the U.K. Defense Ministry.
Reuters wrote in its January investigation that Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin
had motivated prisoners, including contract killers, murderers, career criminals, and people with alcohol issues, by promising they would be free if they survived half a year on the Ukraine front.
Ukraine and international observers have reported extremely heavy casualties among the Russian forces, including the Wagner members in Donetsk Oblast.
On March 25, Prigozhin claimed that more than 5,000 Russian prisoners who fought in Ukraine were offered amnesty.