May 23, 2023 - Russia-Ukraine news

It will take “several months at best” to get F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine, US Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said Monday.

The administration has provided few details of the plan to equip the Ukrainian Air Force with the US-made jets or other fourth-generation aircraft after President Joe Biden announced on Friday the US would support a joint training effort, such as who will provide the aircraft or where it will take place. US personnel will participate in the training alongside allies and partners in Europe. 

“It’s been in the works, and there’s obviously been interest from Ukraine in getting that kind of capability,” Kendall told reporters at the Defense Writers Group. He said there are “a lot of open possibilities, including our partners.”

Kendall said it would take at least “several months” before Ukraine would have the capability to operate F-16s, and a number of details have to be worked out before Ukraine’s air force will be able to fly Western jets in large numbers. 

But it’s still a relatively rapid timeline, since it normally takes more than two years to train a new US pilot on the aircraft, according to an Air Force official. Even a refresher course for an F-16 pilot who has stepped away from flying the jet for a period can take up to five months. 

Publicly, the US had argued for months that fighter jets were not at the top of the priority list and would quickly drain the available funding for Ukraine aid instead of more important weapons like Abrams tanks and Patriot missiles. Kendall described what appeared to be a sudden about-face for the Biden administration as a decision that it was the right time to begin preparing Ukraine’s military for the future.

The Freedom for Russia Legion — a group that has claimed responsibility for an apparent incursion inside Russian territory in Belgorod — posted a video on Monday evening that appears to show the so-called flag of free Russia flying over Moscow State University. 

In the video of the incident, which the Legion did not directly claim responsibility for, balloons appear to lift the blue-and-white-striped flag above the university's main building.

Other videos posted by The Freedom for Russia Legion appear to show another Russian opposition flag flying over various areas of Moscow, carried by blue and white balloons.  

CNN could not independently verify the reports. 

The blue and white flag has been used by several anti-Putin Russian opposition groups and has become more widely used since the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The eastern Ukrainian cities of Bakhmut and Marinka continue to be the "epicenter of fighting," according to the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine on Monday. 

Twenty-five "combat engagements" took place around Kupyansk, Lyman, Bakhmut, Avdiivka and Marinka, the update said.

Russian attacks hit apartment buildings, houses, a kindergarten and other civilian infrastructure facilities, injuring some civilians, according to Ukraine's Armed Forces.

"They continue to destroy civilian infrastructure near the contact line" in the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson directions, according to the update. The daily report also highlighted the "massive missile and air attack at Ukraine’s civil and critical infrastructure facilities," which struck the city of Dnipro, the city of Zaporizhzhia, and settlements in the Kharkiv region. 

Earlier on Monday, President Volodymyr Zelensky thanked the Ukrainian forces who are defending the country's skies.

"From last night to this morning, they have shot down 25 Shaheds (drones). Twenty-five out of 25. An excellent result," Zelensky said in his daily address. "Each such downing means saved lives, saved infrastructure."

The Freedom for Russia Legion — a group that has claimed responsibility for an apparent incursion inside Russian territory — has one ambition. As “Caesar” says in a video statement he recorded with his comrades before joining a cross-border raid into his motherland: “Russia will be free.”

The group numbers a few hundred of diehard, battle-hardened Russian volunteers fighting their own people as part of the Ukrainian armed forces. Caesar is a former teacher, a father and has a wife living in Kyiv. He told CNN last year that he had dedicated his life to toppling Russian President Vladimir Putin and marching into Red Square and the Kremlin itself. 

Caesar is a devoted member of the Orthodox Church and is nostalgic for the Tsarist era that predated the Soviet Union. His unit is well-equipped with modern armored vehicles, gunsights and the latest automatic weapons. 

Previously engaged in bitter fighting south of Bakhmut, the Freedom for Russia Legion now claims to have crossed into Russia itself and, as of late afternoon on Monday, was continuing combat operations against Russian forces in areas close to the frontier.

In a Telegram post, the group said it had “liberated” a settlement in Russia's Belgorod region.

Ukrainian officials acknowledged that the unit crossed into Russia, but insist that members of the legion were operating independently as "Russian citizens."

The Legionnaires themselves have admitted that they’re often treated with suspicion by Ukrainian soldiers but hope to win them over with gallantry on the battlefield.

Their apparent incursion along a border that’s frequently used by Russian mortar teams and artillery as a firebase for attacks inside Ukraine will help further cement their reputation.

It also serves as part of ongoing psychological operations intended to undermine support for the war in Russia and the fighting spirit of Russian soldiers themselves — signaling that they could be attacked at any time and even by their own countrymen.

Ukrainian search teams found 50 bodies of missing people in the past month alone in areas formerly occupied by Russian forces, a Ukrainian official said.

Ukraine's Commissioner for Persons Missing in Special Circumstances Oleh Kotenko said the bodies were discovered in the Donetsk, Luhansk and Kharkiv regions. The commission is still searching de-occupied territory for possible graves, he said.

Ukraine's Ministry of Internal Affairs said about 23,000 people have been officially deemed missing since the start of Russia's invasion. 

A group of anti-Putin Russian nationals — who are aligned with the Ukrainian army — has claimed responsibility for an attack in Russian’s southwestern region of Belgorod, as Moscow said it was fighting a group of saboteurs there.

Shelling damaged an administrative building, several residential buildings, and a kindergarten in the area, according to regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov, who said there were no fatalities.

In a Telegram post, groups calling themselves the “Freedom for Russia Legion” and “Russian Volunteer Corps” said they had “liberated” a settlement in the Belgorod region, which borders Ukraine.

A Ukrainian official acknowledged that the units had carried out an operation in the area but insisted they were acting independently.

He said the units were “part of defense and security forces” when they were in Ukraine, but were independent from Kyiv when they were not: “In Russia they are acting as independent entities.”

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said the Kremlin’s forces were working to push out a “sabotage and reconnaissance group,” according to state media TASS.

The situation in Belgorod marks “the first time” that Ukrainian-aligned forces have launched “a cross-border land operation against Russian targets,” according to CNN’s Sam Kiley.

“This is on a significant scale, and clearly intended to cause considerable consternation among the local authorities at the very least, if not at the level of the Kremlin,” Kiley told CNN’s Lynda Kinkade on Connect the World.

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