July 28, 2022 Russia-Ukraine news

More than 75,000 Russian troops have been killed or wounded during the war in Ukraine, Biden administration officials told US lawmakers during a classified briefing on Wednesday.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov disputed the figure in regard to a New York Times report.

“This is not a statement from the American administration," Peskov said during a call with journalists on Thursday. "This is a newspaper article. Nowadays, even the most reputable newspapers do not shy away from spreading all sorts of fakes. This, unfortunately, is a practice that is becoming more and more common. This is how it should be treated.”

It's difficult to independently gauge casualty figures in the war. Both Russian and Ukrainian officials, seeking to gain the upper hand in propaganda efforts, have at times exaggerated military advancements and downplayed setbacks. The Kremlin does not regularly provide updates on casualties; on March 25, Russia's Ministry of Defense said 1,351 of its soldiers had died in the first month of the invasion, but it has not shared any updates since.

Last week, Richard Moore, the head of MI6, said at the Aspen Security Forum that he believes the Russians will begin to lose steam in the coming weeks because they are running out of manpower. 

And the next few weeks of the war will be crucial, US and Western officials have said, because the Ukrainians are going to try to mount a major counteroffensive in the south before the winter. Ukraine is looking for additional reinforcements, lawmakers were told in Wednesday's briefing.

Ukraine will aim to take back the southern city of Kherson, which has been occupied by Russia since March, US and western officials believe.

“The sort of main conversation in the briefing was, you know, what more we can and should be doing for the Ukrainians, literally in the next three to six weeks, very urgently. Ukrainians want to go to the south and do operations in the south. And we want them to be as successful as possible,” Slotkin said.  

“I think that what we heard very firmly from President Zelensky and reinforced today is that the Ukrainians really want to hit Russia in the teeth a few times before the winter comes, put them in the best position possible, particularly hitting them down south.”

During the briefing, Slotkin said there was bipartisan support for sending Ukraine long-range missiles, known as ATACMS, that can strike as far as 180 miles away.

The Ukrainians have been urging the US to provide these systems for months, because the HIMARS they possess can only strike distances of around 49 miles. 

But national security adviser Jake Sullivan said last week at the Aspen Security Forum that the US would not be providing the ATACMS, because they could be used to strike into Russian territory, which would escalate the war even further. 

Russian forces have made further incremental progress in the eastern Donetsk region, where they have been bombarding areas south of the town of Bakhmut for several weeks, according to the Ukrainian military.

In an operational update Thursday, the General Staff of the Ukrainian military said Russian forces were trying to advance toward Bakhmut from the south and east.

Russian forces had "partial success" in the direction of Vidrodzhennia-Vershyna and were entrenched southeast of the settlement of Vershyna, the update said.

Vershyna is about 10 kilometers (6 miles) southeast of Bakhmut. Earlier this week, the Russians took the nearby village of Novoluhankse and an adjacent power plant.

Russian advances blocked: However, the General Staff said attacks from four different directions toward Bakhmut were repelled.

It said that the Russians continue to use a wide variety of weapons, including tank fire, airstrikes and artillery, across the front lines in Donetsk.

The Russians hit several settlements north of Sloviansk in order to break down Ukrainian defenses and advance, although two such advances attempted Wednesday had been repelled, the General Staff said.

The General Staff also said it is using drones to establish the positions of Ukrainian troops as Russian artillery continues to fire on settlements around the northeastern city of Kharkiv.

Battlefield overview: The General Staff assessed that Russia was focusing its main efforts on "establishing full control over the territories of Luhansk and Donetsk," and maintaining the captured southern Kherson region and parts of Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, and Mykolayiv.

Russia was blocking Ukraine's maritime communications in the Black Sea, it added.

A Ukrainian reconnaissance team squats in a modest home in a village near Mykolaiv. Machine guns and army knapsacks line the walls, sleeping bags lie rolled out on the floor, and a pot of soup warms on the stove.

Outside, the garden shed is stacked with Javelins and other shoulder-launched anti-tank weapons.

The soldiers smoking on the porch hardly notice the boom of incoming artillery shells landing some 10 kilometers away. Today is not their turn to fight on Ukraine's southern front.

The owners of the house, who fled to Poland after the war broke out in late February, are happy in the knowledge that their village is now back in Ukrainian hands.

Pidlisnyi commands a unit of 100 men tasked with identifying Russian positions, often by drone. They then call in the artillery.

On his computer, he shows CNN bodycam videos from his missions earlier in the war. He has had some close calls, but says his morale is high after recent successes. US hardware has helped.

One video shows Pidlisnyi sitting in a trench, using his drone to pinpoint Russian tank positions. "Call in the American gift," he says over the radio.

Russian troops are now on the defensive in this part of the south — unlike in the east, where Ukrainian troops are the ones being forced to cede ground.

Read the full story here.

More than 25,000 people, including nearly 4,000 children, have been evacuated to Russia from the Russian-backed separatist regions of Donetsk and Luhansk in the past 24 hours, state-run news agency TASS said Thursday, citing Russian authorities.

Col. Gen. Mikhail Mizintsev, head of Russia's National Defense Management Center, said about 3,000 vehicles had crossed the border into Russia in the past day, TASS reported.

Mizintsev added nearly 2.9 million people, including about 460,000 children, in total have been evacuated since the start of what he called Russia's "special military operation" in Ukraine.

Some context: Bloody battles have raged for months in eastern Ukraine, where Russian forces now control the Luhansk region but have so far been unsuccessful in taking all of Donetsk. According to an adviser to Ukraine's president, Russian troops are attempting to consolidate gains in Donetsk rather than taking over the entire region "at this stage."

Russian shelling was reported early Thursday in the northeastern Ukrainian cities of Chernihiv and Kharkiv.

Earlier in the night, officials in Kharkiv said two S-300 long-range surface-to-air missiles had hit the region. 

"Kharkiv was shelled twice overnight, both coming immediately after midnight. One hit closer to the center, while the second targeted an adjacent district," Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov said. "As a result, two small fires broke out and were extinguished by our rescue team. Currently we have no information about casualties," Terekhov said. 

Southern attacks: Meanwhile, "powerful explosions" were also heard early Thursday in the southern Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv, the city's mayor Oleksandr Senkevych said.

Explosions have been reported in the region of the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, early on Thursday morning.

Emergency services are already on site, Kuleba said, adding that information on victims is not yet known. 

The Kyiv city state administration urged residents to seek shelter as the air raid alarm is still in effect. 

Some context: Russia initially attacked and occupied multiple Kyiv suburbs following the start of its invasion in February, before the Kremlin withdrew its forces in April from around the capital to concentrate on the east of the country. Sporadic Russian attacks against Kyiv have occurred since the withdrawal, including a series of deadly missile strikes last month.

Russian forces have taken over Ukraine's second-largest power plant, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an interview posted on YouTube on Wednesday.

The coal-fired Vuhlehirsk power plant is in the eastern Donetsk region, close to the border with Russian-controlled Luhansk.

Arestovych added that Russian forces were attempting to consolidate gains in the area. The Russians are now "moving to strategic defense on all conquered fronts," rather than taking over the Donetsk region "at this stage," he said.

He said it is based on an "assumption, which is sufficiently substantiated, that a strategic decision has been made in the Kremlin."

The Ukrainian military said Wednesday is had repelled Russian offensives in the region, which has seen heavy fighting for the past several months.

After months of internal debate, the Biden administration has offered to exchange Viktor Bout, a convicted Russian arms trafficker serving a 25-year US prison sentence, as part of a potential deal to secure the release of two Americans held by Russia, Brittney Griner and Paul Whelan, according to people briefed on the matter.

These sources told CNN that the plan to trade Bout for Whelan and Griner received the backing of President Joe Biden after being under discussion since earlier this year. Biden's support for the swap overrides opposition from the Department of Justice, which is generally against prisoner trades.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced Wednesday that the US presented a "substantial proposal" to Moscow "weeks ago" for Whelan and Griner, who are classified as wrongfully detained.

The top US diplomat said he intended to discuss the matter on an expected call with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov this week — his first conversation with his counterpart since the war in Ukraine began — telling reporters, "my hope would be that in speaking to Foreign Minister Lavrov, I can advance the efforts to bring them home."

"There is in my mind utility in conveying clear, direct messages to the Russians on key priorities for us. And as I mentioned, these include securing the return home of Brittney Griner and Paul Whelan," he said.

Read the full story here.

The Ukrainian military said it was able to repel Russian offensives toward the Donetsk city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine.

In its evening update on Wednesday, the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said it had inflicted losses on Russian forces looking to advance in that area.

Artillery shelling and airstrikes were reported in most villages and towns around the area, and along most of the front line in the Donetsk region, as Russia “continues its attempts to improve the tactical position in the directions of the cities of Kramatorsk and Bakhmut with assault actions,” the General Staff said. 

The Ukrainian military said an assault along the Bilohorivka-Verkhnokamianske axis was also repelled. 

Front lines: Ukrainian forces said the Russian military has mostly maintained its defensive positions In the area around the northeastern Kharkiv region, and along the southern flank near Kherson.