May 11, 2022: Russia-Ukraine news

Russia has assembled about 20 battalion tactical groups in Belgorod — a Russian city close to the Ukrainian border — and is concerned about the possibility of Ukrainian counterattacks, according to a senior Ukrainian official.

Russian forces, however, have enough strength for another attack on the area, he said.

Skirmishes to the south: The most active battles Wednesday are farther south, Denysenko said, "in the Luhansk direction. This is Rubizhne, Severodonetsk."

He denied a claim by the Russian Ministry of Defense on Tuesday that Russian forces had reached the border of Luhansk.

Russian forces are trying to break south from Izium to take other parts of the Donetsk region, but there's been little movement on the ground.

Missiles struck two areas of the city of Sloviansk in eastern Ukraine, according to the city's mayor.

No casualties have been noted so far, Mayor Vadym Liakh said, and authorities are assessing the resulting damage.

Some context: Sloviansk is the main goal of Russian forces trying to push south into the Donetsk region, and has been a key focus since Russia revised its strategy away from northern Ukraine in early April.

According to a report from the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces on Tuesday, Russians were trying to break through Ukrainian defenses north of Sloviansk, around the settlements of Oleksandrivka and Shandryholove.

This area has seen almost constant fighting for around two weeks, but the Russians appear to have made minimal progress on the ground.

Musicians representing Ukraine were selected Tuesday to advance to the finals of this year’s Eurovision Song Contest.

Kalush Orchestra, performing on behalf of Ukraine, is heavily favored to win, according to Johnny Weir, who hosted the US coverage of the competition on the streaming service Peacock.

The group's song is called Stefania.

The run-up to Eurovision featured controversial decisions determining whether musicians from Russia would be able to participate following the invasion in February.

The European Broadcasting Union, which organizes the contest, had initially decided it would allow a performer to represent Russia but changed course less than 24 hours later following public outcry.

Ukraine and others had petitioned the European Broadcasting Union to bar Russia from participating.

Ten countries in all advanced from the competition's first semi-final on Tuesday.

The Grand Final will take place Saturday following the second semifinal, which is set to happen Thursday in Turin, Italy.

Read more about Ukraine and the competition here:

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The US House of Representatives passing a bill to send $40 billion in additional aid to Ukraine sends “a clear, bipartisan message to Ukraine, to Russia, and to the world that the United States stands with the people of Ukraine as they defend their democracy against Russian aggression,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement Tuesday.

The bill was approved in the House with broad bipartisan support by a vote of 368-57. The Senate will next take up the measure, and upon approval is expected to be signed into law by President Joe Biden.

Read more about the aid package here:

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Leonid Makarovych Kravchuk, Ukraine's first president who served from 1991 to 1994, died on Tuesday, President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a statement.

In an on-camera address, Zelensky paid homage to the late president, calling the news tragic.

Kravchuk was a key figure in Ukraine's independence movement in the late 1980s amid the collapse of the Soviet Union. He later became Ukraine's first president when the country declared independence in 1991.

Reflecting on the Cuban missile crisis, US President John Kennedy once warned that nuclear powers "must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war."

The showdown with Russian President Vladimir Putin over Ukraine does not yet mirror the one-minute-to-midnight brinkmanship that brought the Soviet Union and the West to the cusp of Armageddon in October 1962.

But Kennedy's superpower logic is resounding poignantly as Putin gets backed into a corner by the strategic disaster of his war, Ukraine's heroic resistance and an extraordinary multibillion-dollar allied conveyor of arms and ammunition.

Read the full analysis here:

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Putin's current dilemma was JFK's worst fear | CNN Politics

Ukraine’s fierce resistance to the Russian invasion has resonated around the world.

At the center of that fight are ordinary citizens who left behind comfortable lives to answer a call of duty — people such as a software engineer, a logistics manager and even a poet.

The area south of Izium is a key point of resistance against Russian attempts to completely encircle the Donbas region.

Most civilians have left, and the artillery battles are near-constant. These are some of the people trying to ensure it does not fall into Russian hands.

Anna Arhipova, 22

Anna Arhipova was a logistics manager in her hometown of Poltava, northeast Ukraine, before the war began.

At the time, her overriding fear was not of the violence, but of "not being useful," she says. So she signed up, and now drives a pickup truck to some of the most dangerous areas of the conflict.

In a world of bearded, stocky young men, her slight frame cuts an uncommon figure. But she says it’s the men, not her, who are troubled by her presence.

"Everybody tells me that I have to give birth, cook, clean, and do the housekeeping, not be here," she says. "It irritates me very, very much. I answer that if I would like to give birth, I would not be here."

Alex, 34

Alex, who wanted to use only his first name out of privacy concerns, is a software engineer from Kharkiv. Last year, he built his own countryside log cabin.

Now his house, which was on a strategically located hill, has been reduced to a hole five meters deep, and he spends many of his nights sleeping in a tank named ‘Bunny,’ which was stolen from the Russian military in the opening weeks of the war.

"This is like my personal tank," he explains. "I am like tank commander and tank owner," he says with a laugh.

Vlad Sord, 27

Vlad Sord was still a teenager when he signed up to fight for Ukraine in 2014.

"A lot of strange things happen there," explains Sord, as he chain smokes cigarillos. "Things that I could not explain, I collected them, compiled them, wrote them down."

He’s now a published author and poet. He fights for his country, and gathers material to document what's happening.

"I have a very good memory for the dialogues themselves and I use that. I write everything down."

As intense fighting continues in the eastern and southern portions of Ukraine, Russia's ally Belarus announced it will deploy its special forces along the border it shares with Ukraine’s north, claiming opposing military buildups from the US and its allies.

Meanwhile, a United Nations agency has reported that more than 8 million people — roughly one in five of Ukraine’s pre-war population — are internally displaced, with needs "growing by the hour."

Here are some of the latest developments:

CNN’s Erin Burnett spoke with Kirillo Alexandrov, a 27-year-old American citizen who was held captive by Russians for alleged espionage. 

Bryan Stern, co-founder of Project Dynamo, told CNN that Alexandrov and his Ukrainian wife and mother-in-law were taken by Russian forces more than a month ago in Kherson Oblast. They had been held in a building occupied by the Russians and the Russian security services would not allow them to leave until today, Stern said.    

Sitting next to Stern, Alexandrov told Erin, “I feel relieved, nothing more, nothing less, just relieved.”  

When asked how he was treated by Russian soldiers while in captivity he said he is a victim of war crimes. 

Alexandrov did not know negotiations for his release were happening. 

“I was ignorant to basically everything. I was just held in a room for however many days. It just felt like one long day or a lifetime,” he said. 

His wife was assaulted during their time in captivity but she is a strong person and doing much better, he said. 

“She’s great. She’s held me up ... she’s got a strong grip, she’s a strong person and she’s doing a lot better,” he said of his wife. 

The US government was aware and helped when they could, Stern told CNN. 

“We were close to getting them out pretty much every day for the last two and a half weeks,” he said. “A lot of people told us this was a losing case, this is not gonna work, this is too hard, he’s an alleged spy in captivity there’s just no way ... A lot of people told us it was impossible but we get told that a lot in Dynamo and it always seems to work out.” 

Alexandrov says he’s indebted to Stern for his teams work securing his released.