Russia has been stepping up attacks for four days. Putin’s army has suffered massive losses over time. The news ticker on the Ukraine war.
- Russian casualties: Wagner boss complains about “stacks of dead bodies”
- According to alleged drone attack: USA accuses Moscow of lying
- Read the latest developments here Ukraine conflict. The processed information on losses of the armies involved in the Ukraine war come partly from the warring parties Russia or Ukraine. They can therefore not be independently checked in part.
Update from May 4th, 8:25 p.m.: Russian forces have continued their attacks in eastern Ukraine. Once again, the city of Bakhmut was the focus of events, the Ukrainian general staff reported in its situation report in the evening. A total of around 50 Russian attacks were repulsed at Bakhmut, Limansk and Marjinka.
“Russian occupying forces continue to suffer heavy casualties on the battlefield and all medical facilities in the temporarily occupied areas are overflowing with wounded occupying soldiers,” it said. The information provided by the military could not be independently verified.
News about the Ukraine war: “Every day stacks of corpses” according to the Wagner boss
Update from May 4th, 6:25 p.m.: Apparently, Russia is currently preparing for the expected counter-offensive by the Ukrainian army. According to reports, the Kremlin has already ordered the digging of mass graves for possible victims – even within its own borders.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner mercenary group, also complained about the poor equipment and fatalities within his own troops: “Every day we have stacks of thousands of corpses that we pack in the coffin and send home,” said Prigozhin in an interview with the Russian military blogger Semyon Pegov. He once again blamed the Russian army leadership.
News on the Ukraine war: Several explosions in Sumy and Chernihiv
Update from May 4th, 4:45 p.m.: In the border areas of the Sumy and Chernihiv oblasts, there were apparently dozens of Russian attacks in the course of Thursday. Within a period of around three hours, there were 35 small to medium-sized explosions, the Operational Command Pivnich North reported on Facebook. So far, however, nothing is known about the possible number of victims. The information has not yet been independently confirmed. However, several photos are circulating on Twitter and Telegram that are supposed to show the surcharges in the regions.
News in the Ukraine war: USA denies involvement in alleged drone attack
Update from May 4th, 3:25 p.m.: A Pentagon spokesman denied US involvement in the alleged drone attack on the Kremlin and accused Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov of lying. “I would simply tell you that Mr. Peskow is lying. I mean, that’s obviously a ridiculous claim. The United States had nothing to do with it. We don’t even know what happened here,” said John Kirby, White House communications director.
News about the Ukraine war: Russia accuses the USA of a drone attack
May 4 update at 1:56 p.m: Russia has accused the US of being behind the alleged drone attack on the Kremlin. “We know that the decision on such acts and acts of terrorism is not made in Kiev, but in Washington. And Kiev carries out what they are told,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, according to the Interfax news agency, without presenting any evidence.
News in the Ukraine war: Russia laments the wave of “sabotage” in Ukraine
Update from May 4th, 12:00 p.m.: Russia is currently facing an unprecedented wave of “sabotage” by Ukraine, according to the Foreign Ministry in Moscow. “Terrorist activities and sabotage by the Ukrainian armed forces are reaching unprecedented levels,” the ministry said on Thursday (May 4).
The day before, Moscow announced the shooting down of two Ukrainian drones that were said to be targeting the Kremlin and President Vladimir Putin.
News in the Ukraine war: military experts suspect Putin’s political intentions
Update from May 4th, 11:10 am: According to international military experts, Russia probably staged two alleged Ukrainian drone strikes on the Kremlin itself. This was intended to bring the war closer to the Russian public and create the conditions for broader social mobilization, the Washington-based Institute for War Studies (ISW) wrote in its report on Wednesday (May 3). Several indications indicated that the attack was carried out from within and staged in a targeted manner.
According to the US think tank, Russian authorities have recently taken steps to bolster air defenses, including within Moscow itself to create air defense circles around the city. It is therefore extremely unlikely that two drones could have penetrated multiple air defense perimeters and been detonated or shot down directly over the heart of the Kremlin – in a way that could be easily captured on camera to provide spectacular images, according to the report .
According to the ISW, the immediate and coordinated Russian response to the incident suggests that the attack was prepared internally in such a way that its intended political impact overshadowed the embarrassment that a hit at the Kremlin would cause. With the action shortly before the “Day of Victory” on May 9, the war should be presented to the local audience as existential.
News in the Ukraine war: Ukraine publishes current figures on Moscow’s losses
Update from May 4, 10:00 a.m.: The Armed Forces of Ukraine disabled about 192,590 Russian soldiers in Ukraine from February 24, 2022 to May 4, 2023, including 650 in the past day alone. This was announced by the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine on its Facebook page. The information cannot be independently verified. Here are the numbers, with the changes from the previous day in brackets:
- Soldiers: so far a total of about 192,990 (+650)
- Armored Fighting Vehicles: 7216 (+17)
- Tank: 3707 (+5)
- Artillery Systems: 2962 (+16)
- Unmanned missiles / drones: 2523 (+18)
- Vehicles and fuel tanks: 5886 (+21)
- Source: Ukrainian General Staff as of May 4. The information cannot be independently verified.
News in the Ukraine war: Ukrainian air defense shoots down drones
Update from May 4, 8:20 a.m.: Ukraine’s air defenses say they shot down 18 of 24 kamikaze drones that Russia is said to have used in an attack on Thursday (May 4) before dawn. A statement from the Kyiv city administration said all rockets and drones that struck the Ukrainian capital for the third time in four days had been destroyed.
“The Russians attacked Kiev with Shahed Loitering ammunition and rockets, probably of the ballistic type,” the administration said. Of 15 Shahed Kamikaze drones fired at the Black Sea coastal city of Odesa, air defenses destroyed 12 while three hit a university campus. According to the Ukrainian military command in the south of the country, there were no casualties, the statement said, according to the news agency Reuters.
News in the Ukraine war: Russia reports new drone attack
Update from May 4, 05:42: In Russia, according to the state news agency Tass, a fire broke out in an oil refinery in the south of the country after another drone attack. As Tass reported on Thursday (May 4), citing civil protection services, the fire broke out after an attack by an “unidentified drone” in the settlement of Ilski in the Krasnodar Territory near the Black Sea. In recent days, Russian authorities have reported a series of drone strikes, describing one of them as an attempted assassination of President Vladimir Putin.
Regarding the incident in the Krasnodar region, regional governor Veniamin Kondratiev said the fire had spread over an area of 400 square meters, but was quickly extinguished by emergency services. On Wednesday night, the regional administration reported a fire in an oil storage facility in the town of Volna, near the bridge to the Russian-occupied Crimean peninsula, and also blamed a drone crash.
A few hours later, Moscow reported the shooting down of two drones aimed at the Kremlin in Moscow – and accused Ukraine of planning an “act of terrorism”. Kiev had declared that it had nothing to do with the incident – and accused Russia of staging the incident.
News in the Ukraine war: USA warn of Kremlin reaction
Update from May 3, 10:30 p.m.: In view of the intensified rhetoric from Russia, which accuses Ukraine of a drone attack on the Kremlin, the USA warns of an increased missile attack. Among other things, the Ukrainian capital Kiev and the surrounding region should be the primary target of the Russian armed forces.
“Given the recent spike in attacks in Ukraine and Moscow’s inflammatory rhetoric, the State Department warns U.S. citizens of an ongoing heightened risk of missile attacks, including in Kiev and Kiev Oblast,” the embassy said in a security advisory. In the warning, the embassy urged citizens to “heed the air alert, protect themselves appropriately and follow the instructions of local authorities.”
Ukraine-News: Russia is building massive defense systems – also in its own country
According to British secret services, Russia built strong defenses at the front during the Ukraine war, but also in occupied Ukrainian areas and sometimes deep within its own country. “Images show that Russia has made special efforts to fortify the northern border of occupied (Ukrainian peninsula) Crimea,” the British Ministry of Defense said.
Hundreds of kilometers of trenches have also been dug on internationally recognized Russian territory, including the Belgorod and Kursk oblasts that border Ukraine.
Two possible reasons for the defensive investments were given in London. “The defenses underscore the deep concern of the Russian leadership that Ukraine could make a major breakthrough,” it said. “But some work was probably commissioned by local commanders and politicians to support the official line that Russia is ‘threatened’ by Ukraine and NATO.” (frs/nak with dpa material)
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