March 6, 2023 - Russia-Ukraine news

Should Russian forces take the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, it wouldn't constitute "an operational or strategic setback" for the Ukrainian military, according to US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.

"So the fall of Bakhmut won’t necessarily mean that the Russians have changed the tide of this fight. I think it will continue to be contested," he added.

"What I do see is the Russians continuing to pour in a lot of ill-trained and ill-equipped troops," said Austin. "And those troops are very quickly meeting their demise."

Some context: Intense fighting is raging around Bakhmut and analysts say that Russian forces are making gradual gains as they seek to encircle Ukrainian units.

On Sunday, the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said that geolocated video footage suggests that "Wagner Group forces continued to make advances in northeastern Bakhmut and advanced near the Stupky railway station," which is north of the city.

"Ukrainian forces are unlikely to withdraw from Bakhmut all at once and may pursue a gradual fighting withdrawal to exhaust Russian forces through continued urban warfare," added the ISW.

Intense fighting is raging around the city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, where analysts assess that Russian forces are making gradual gains as they seek to encircle Ukrainian units.

In its Monday operational note, the Ukrainian military said Russia "continues its attempts to assault the city of Bakhmut" and surrounding settlements. It lists about six nearby settlements that came under fire.

On Sunday, the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War said that geolocated video footage suggests that "Wagner Group forces continued to make advances in northeastern Bakhmut and advanced near the Stupky railway station," which is north of the city.

However, as yet, Russian forces do not appear to have crossed the Bakhmutka River — which runs along the eastern outskirts of the city — into central Bakhmut.

On Monday, two Bakhmut officials outside the city, including the deputy mayor, told CNN that military engineers have erected a temporary metal bridge to replace one that was destroyed late last week on the northern supply route into Bakhmut from Chasiv Yar. 

The deputy mayor said the main southern route into Bakhmut from Ivanivske is harder to use because another bridge has been destroyed.

An embedded Russian war correspondent, Evgeny Poddubny, claimed that some Ukrainian forces have begun retreating from Bakhmut. 

Officials in the Donetsk region say Russian artillery and missile fire continues to inflict damage on many settlements. 

Pavlo Kyrylenko, head of the Donetsk region military administration, said one person was killed and three wounded in Bakhmut.

A Russian missile strike on the nearby city of Kramatorsk destroyed a school, but preliminary information suggests there were no casualties, he added.

In the hotly contested area around Vuhledar, one person was wounded when the town came under Russian fire. The settlements of Avdiivka and Kurakhove also sustained damage.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu inspected infrastructure projects on a visit to the occupied southeastern Ukrainian port city of Mariupol, Moscow's Defense Ministry said on its official Telegram channel Monday.

Shoigu also toured a medical center, a new residential district constructed by the military, and was briefed on the construction of a pipeline that will "supply water to many settlements in the region,” the post said.

The ministry did not confirm when Shoigu's visit took place, or if he was still in the city. 

On Saturday, the ministry released a video of Shoigu meeting with Russian troops serving in occupied Ukraine. It was unclear where the video was shot, and CNN was not able to geolocate it. 

The ministry said Shoigu “inspected the forward command post of one of the formations of the Vostok [Eastern] forces in the South Donetsk direction.”

Fall of the city: Mariupol, located on the Sea of Azov in Ukraine's Donetsk region, was captured by Russian forces last year after months of intense bombardment and thousands of reported deaths.

It was the scene of some of the most intense fighting since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine; it was there that Russia carried out deadly strikes on a maternity ward and the bombing of a theater where hundreds of civilians had sought refuge.

Mariupol also became a symbol of Ukrainian resistance in the weeks leading up to its fall, with the city's last defenders holding out inside a steel plant alongside as many as 1,000 civilians taking shelter as stocks of food and water dwindled.

For the first time in eight months, the Russians are on the cusp of taking a Ukrainian city, albeit a small one already abandoned by more than 90% of its prewar population.

Ukrainian defenses in and around the eastern city of Bakhmut are being squeezed by a combination of intense artillery, mortar fire, and airstrikes and a substantial commitment of ground forces, both Russian regulars and fighters of the Wagner private military company.

If and when Bakhmut falls, it may be tempting to ask whether Russian forces are improving, learning from the catalog of mistakes they have made so far in this conflict and finally exploiting their superiority in numbers and firepower.

The answer: probably not.

But a Ukrainian withdrawal does not equal disaster if carried out in an orderly way. “It should be treated as a routine tactic rather than a harbinger of disaster,” Ryan says.

The Ukrainians have used Bakhmut to inflict massive losses on the attacking force: by some estimates at a ratio of 7:1. There comes a moment when it is smarter to withdraw than suffer growing losses and the damaging blow to morale of seeing the surrender of hundreds and maybe thousands of surrounded Ukrainian soldiers.

For the Ukrainians judging that moment is critical.

But for the Russians, taking Bakhmut would not alter the fundamental shortcomings in their campaign.

Read the full analysis here.

At least one person was wounded early Monday as Russian air defenses shot down three missiles over the southern region of Belgorod, near the Ukraine border, the region's governor said on Telegram. 

Authorities in Belgorod, which borders Ukraine's Kharkiv region, have reported multiple attacks since Russia began the full-scale invasion of its neighbor last year.

Last week, the wreckage of three unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) were found in Belgorod, one of which crashed into the window of an apartment complex, according to the city's mayor. No injuries were reported, he said.

CNN is unable to independently confirm the claims for each alleged attack, and Ukraine did not immediately comment on the incident. Ukraine has previously declined to comment on attacks inside Russia.

A week after Russia invaded, the family of 15-year-old Arina Yatsiuk decided to flee their home near the Ukrainian capital by car. Less than 10 miles down the road, they encountered a group of Russian troops.

The soldiers started shooting, then dragged Arina and her 9-year-old sister Valeria out of the back seat. Arina was wounded and put into one car; Valeria was ushered into another.

Valeria was taken to a nearby village, where locals found her standing by the road. Denys and Anna, the girls' parents, were discovered shot dead in their car.

But March 3, 2022, was the last time anyone saw Arina. She's one of 345 Ukrainian children who have disappeared since Russia launched its full-scale war on Ukraine last February, according to official Ukrainian statistics.

The Ukrainian government says many of the missing children have been forcibly taken to Russia. The Russian government doesn't deny taking Ukrainian children — in fact, it says it's "saving" them.

Arina's aunt, Oksana Yatsiuk, told CNN the family has been searching for the girl with deep brown eyes and braces ever since she disappeared. Arina is good at drawing and loves make-up and traveling, her aunt said.

The family said they believe the girl, who is now 16, is still alive and "held captive" in Russia.

"I sent official letters to all of the medical facilities, to the Ministry of Health in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine and the official answer I received is that she has not been registered anywhere," Yatsiuk told CNN in a phone interview.

Read more here.

A year after Russia invaded Ukraine, Xi Jinping’s backing of Vladimir Putin has opened the door for the United States and partners in the Pacific to shore up sometimes frayed relationships to the detriment of Beijing.

In the past few months alone, Japan has pledged to double defense spending and acquire long-range weapons from the US; South Korea has acknowledged that stability in the Taiwan Strait is essential to its security; the Philippines has announced new US base access rights and is talking about joint patrols of the South China Sea with Australia, Japan and the United States.

Those might be the biggest initiatives, but they are far from the only events that have left China increasingly isolated in its own backyard as it refuses to condemn the invasion of a sovereign country by its partner in Moscow while keeping military pressure on the self-ruled island of Taiwan.

Analysts say all these things would have likely happened without the war in Ukraine, but the war, and China’s backing of Russia, has helped grease the skids to get these projects done.

Take the situation of Japan, a country limited in its post-World War II constitution to “self-defense” forces. Now it’s going to buy long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles from the US, weapons that could strike well inside China.

In December, Kishida followed that up with a plan to double Tokyo’s defense spending while acquiring weapons with ranges well outside Japanese territory.

“The Japanese people have certainly taken notice of the situation in Ukraine, and it has made them feel more vulnerable as a nation,” said John Bradford, senior fellow at the S. Rajaratman School of International Studies in Singapore.

The nation that Japan feels particularly vulnerable to is China.

The People’s Liberation Army has been growing and modernizing its forces for years. On Sunday, Beijing announced its military budget for 2023, which will increase 7.2%. It marked the first time in the past decade that the military’s budget growth rate has increased for three consecutive years.

Read the full analysis here.

The city council in the southern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia has declared Monday a day of mourning after 13 people were killed when a rocket hit a high-rise residential building earlier this week, the council's secretary Anatoliy Kurtiev said.

“This is a great grief for the whole Zaporizhzhia. That is why tomorrow is declared a day of mourning in our city. Together, let us honor the cherished memory of everyone whose life was cut short forever on that tragic night in March,” Kurtiev said on Telegram Sunday.

Rescuers from the State Emergency Service searched for survivors for four days after the strike hit Thursday. Crews found men, women and a small child dead.

Nine people, including one pregnant woman, were rescued from the rubble early Thursday, the State Emergency Service reported. Five others remain missing, Kurtiev said.

Kurtiev added that a city council meeting will be held Monday with the surviving residents of the affected building.

Ukraine is planning to use more than $460 million worth of assets seized from Russian banks to rebuild the country and compensate Ukrainians, Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said at a conference in Lviv Saturday.

In a Facebook post about the conference, Shmyhal said Ukraine is developing procedures for using the confiscated assets to help Ukrainian citizens and their communities recover in the wake of Russia's invasion.

The government is working with allies to develop a system based on an international treaty, which will help decide how to issue reparations to Ukrainians.

The system will include an international register of losses from the war, a commission to consider applications for compensation and a fund from which compensation will be paid.

Aid from abroad: The prime minister also said Saturday that Ukraine is using billions of dollars worth of assistance from the United States and European Union to rapidly restore the country's battered energy infrastructure and other ailing sectors.

Kyiv expects additional aid to come from Norway and Japan.