Every week we wrap up essential coverage of the war in Ukraine, from news and features to analysis, opinion and more.
Military shake-up
Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Thursday fired his top army commander, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, in Ukraine’s biggest military shake-up since Russia’s full-scale invasion, Shaun Walker reported.
The two men met on Thursday, after which Ukraine’s president posted a photograph of the pair and thanked Zaluzhnyi for his service, but outlined the need for “renewal” in the armed forces. Zaluzhnyi’s dismissal has been a much-discussed topic in Ukraine and internationally for more than a week, after it emerged the president had asked his top general to resign.
The dismissal is seen as risky for Zelenskiy given Zaluzhnyi’s high approval ratings among Ukrainians. It is also unclear how it can improve Ukraine’s weakening position on the battlefield, Dan Sabbagh wrote in an analysis. Zelenskiy’s choice of Col Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi to replace him, moving up from commander of land forces, is not seen as a radical departure. Syrskyi led the successful defence of Kyiv early in the war, and was credited with planning and executing a successful counteroffensive in the Kharkiv region later in 2022.
However, Syrskyi has a mixed reputation among frontline troops, with claims that he has been indifferent to the lives of soldiers. “Syrskyi is close to the president,” said Oleksiy Goncharenko, an opposition Ukrainian MP close to Zaluzhnyi. “And the most important thing for Zelenskiy is that he thinks that Syrskyi is absolutely not a political person. That is his most valuable characteristic.”
‘The other kids would beat me up’
Veronika Vlasenko was one of nearly 20,000 children documented by Ukrainian authorities as having been taken from Ukraine to Russia over the past two years. The authorities believe the real number is probably 10 times that, while Russian officials have even boasted of moving 700,000 Ukrainian children to Russia, Shaun Walker reported.
“Every day they said to me that I would be staying here for ever and would never leave Russia,” Veronika said. “They told me that Ukraine doesn’t exist, that it never existed, that we’re all Russians … At times the other kids would beat me for being pro-Ukrainian.”
Nearly two years into the war, there are growing fears that if no way is found to bring the children home soon, Russia’s systemic programme to “re-educate” Ukrainian children could prove devastatingly effective.
Ukrainian officials are calling on international organisations and neutral countries who may still hold some sway in Moscow to put pressure on Russia. Of the 19,500 cases for which Ukrainian authorities have names and data, only about 400, including Veronika, have managed to return to Ukraine so far.
Tucker Carlson interviews Vladimir Putin
Tucker Carlson, a Trump-supporting rightwing US commentator, spoke to Vladimir Putin in the Russian president’s first interview with a western media outlet since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
Carlson’s trip to Moscow had been widely criticised ahead of the interview. But the opening of the two-hour conversation between the former Fox News host and Putin was a let down, Adam Gabbatt and Andrew Roth reported.
Putin spent more than 30 minutes giving a history of Russia, Lithuania, Poland and Ukraine, in a monologue that took viewers from the ninth-century rule of Oleg the Wise, to the struggles of the 1300s, through to a critique of Lenin’s foreign policy.
When a baffled-looking Carlson finally coaxed Putin into the 21st century, the Russian president accused the US and other western countries of prolonging the war in Ukraine.
US Senate advances aid package
The US Senate advanced a wartime aid package for Ukraine and Israel, reviving an effort that had stalled amid Republican opposition to a border security bill they demanded and later abandoned, Joan E Greve and Lauren Gambino reported.
A day after blocking a measure that would have paired harsh new border restrictions with security assistance for Ukraine, Israel and other US allies, the Senate voted 67 to 32 to begin consideration of the $95bn emergency aid bill.
Several Republicans who voted to block the broader border package agreed to open debate on the foreign policy-only version of the measure after securing the opportunity to propose changes, including the immigration enforcement measures that were stripped out.
With Kyiv begging Washington for help battling Russian forces on the frontline, the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, hailed the preliminary vote as a “good first step”. But its prospects remained unclear as Republicans threatened to force a lengthy amendment process.
Russian drones and missiles terrorise Ukraine
A barrage of Russian drone and missile strikes on Ukrainian cities killed five people on Wednesday and injured 50 more, including a pregnant woman, Shaun Walker reported. “It’s another massive attack against our state,” said the president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
The assault came as Josep Borrell, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, was spending the night in Kyiv as part of a two-day visit to the capital to discuss EU support for Ukraine. “Starting my morning in the shelter as air alarms are sounding across Kyiv,” he wrote on X.
Ukraine’s air force said on Telegram that Russia had launched 20 drones, and 44 missiles of various types in its attacks across the country. It said it had intercepted 15 of the drones and 29 of the missiles. Analysis suggested some of the missiles were manufactured in North Korea, the national police said.
Row over right court for Russian crimes of aggression
The international criminal court is locked in a turf war that is blocking Ukraine’s efforts to set up a special international tribunal with the authority to try Russia’s leadership for the crime of aggression, Philippe Sands KC has claimed, according to Patrick Wintour.
Debate has been deadlocked for a year on whether the UN could set up a special ad hoc international tribunal – separate from the ICC – to try the senior Russian leadership, or instead leave the task to a less authoritative court in Ukraine.
It is widely accepted that although the ICC can charge individuals for war crimes, it does not have jurisdiction over Russian crimes of aggression, since Russia is not a party to the Rome statute, the ICCs’s founding treaty. The ICC is instead seeking to charge Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, over the abduction of children from Ukraine.
Sands, a leading advocate of an international tribunal, told a recent conference in London, attended by many Ukrainian ministers, that it was “so sad the institution that seems most opposed to this idea is the ICC in the form of its prosecutor and some of its judges … This is not an issue of principle for them, but an issue of turf.”
