Ukraine Breaking News Today Live on 05-29-2024

US hints at flexibility on policy on attacks in Russia; Photos show new Russian hangars; Body count from hypermarket now 19; Finland OKs use of its weapons over the border; Moscow gains near Kharkiv.

In very carefully couched language, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday opened the door to the possibility that the standing US policy that American-supplied weapons cannot be used on Russian territory could be “adjusted” in the future.

Speaking to reporters in Moldova before joining other foreign ministers in Prague for a NATO meeting, Blinken said, “As the conditions have changed, as the battlefield has changed, as what Russia does has changed in terms of how it’s pursuing its aggression [and] escalation, we’ve adapted and adjusted.”

The “Swedish AWACS” have advanced radar systems capable of detecting and tracking fighters, bombers, helicopters, cruise missiles, and naval targets across vast volumes of the battlespace.

The Ukrainian Air Force will receive two Saab 340 AEWCS aircraft in the ASC 890 airborne early warning and control (AEW&C) system configuration from Sweden, providing Kyiv with “absolutely new potential for radar reconnaissance and combat control against targets in the air and at sea,” according to the local publication Sydsvenskan.

The aircraft will be delivered as part of Sweden’s largest military aid package to date, worth more than SEK 13 billion ($1.3 billion). This military aid package is the 16th from Sweden since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Georgia’s pro-European forces have suffered a setback with the parliament overriding the veto of a controversial “Russian law” that may yet galvanize them to shift the tide in the upcoming elections.

For the past seven weeks Georgia has experienced mass daily protests sparked by the ruling party’s reintroduction of a controversial “foreign influence” law in April, after giving up on similar measures last year.

Thousands have been protesting in Tbilisi against the “On Transparency of Foreign Influence” bill, which the pro-European opposition has dubbed the “Russian law” due to its similarity to Russia’s “foreign agents” law.

Ukraine is countering with drone swarms, artillery strikes, and local counterattacks by elite infantry units. Kyiv is claiming it’s even taking prisoners, but the Kremlin assaults keep on coming.

Kremlin strategists across Ukraine’s 1,500 km fighting front are pounding selected sectors with glide bombs and then following up with ground assaults, making limited progress at some locations but according to almost all accounts suffering heavy losses everywhere.

Ukrainian sources say the Russian attacks mostly are executed by small groups of infantry, and less often by columns of a dozen armored vehicles or less. Kyiv counterattacks led by units picked for combat effectiveness are gathering in captured prisoners and in a few places taking back lost ground, but overall, the Kremlin has the initiative, a Kyiv Post survey of the past week’s battle reports and combat video showed.

Why has Central and Eastern European literature written in languages other than Russian had such difficulty gaining traction in Western European and American markets?

Half a century ago, Taras Shevchenko wrote:

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Poland’s deputy defense minister backed up an earlier statement by the country’s foreign minister to allow Ukraine to strike military targets inside Russia with the weapons Warsaw has provided.

Polish Secretary of State at the Ministry of National Defense Cezary Tomczyk told Polish news outlet Radio ZET  on Wednesday, May 29 that Poland supports Ukraine’s right to use weapons provided by Warsaw to strike targets inside Russia. He said Ukraine “can fight however they want”.

“We decided to help Ukraine in the conflict, Ukraine was brutally attacked, so it has the right to defend itself as it sees fit,” said Tomczyk. He also called on other allies to lift the restrictions placed on Kyiv that prevents its troops from engaging military targets in Russian with the weapons they have provided.

No new warehouses and business centers were opened in the first quarter of 2024, while commercial real estate leasing activity stays below pre-war levels in Kyiv.

Office leasing activity stayed 31 per cent lower than in 2023 in the first quarter of 2024, according to research by commercial real estate consulting company CBRE. The level of warehouse leasing didn’t recover either, with take-up showing a fall of 21 per cent year-on-year. 

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The trip coincides with Moscow's recent battlefield victories in Ukraine and its troop presence in Moldova's Transnistria region,prompting calls to allow Kyiv to strike Russian soil with Western arms.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday headed for talks with Moldova President Maia Sandu aimed at showing robust support for the frontline country's Western aspirations as alarm grows over Russian gains elsewhere.

The top US diplomat landed in Moldova, sandwiched between Ukraine and EU member Romania, and headed straight to talks with Sandu, who has charted a firmly pro-European course for one of the continent's poorest countries.

The clause, included in the agreement signed by Ukraine and Belgium on Tuesday, prohibits Kyiv from using Belgian military aid to strike targets outside of Ukrainian territory.

Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo said the defense agreement, signed by Kyiv and Brussels on Tuesday, stipulates that military aid from his nation can only be “used by the Armed Forces on Ukrainian territory,” including the long-awaited F-16 multirole fighter.

“Everything that is stipulated in the agreement, military equipment, military materials, must be used by the Armed Forces on Ukrainian territory, we have signed such an agreement,” said De Croo at a joint press conference alongside President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Some in the West have asked President Zelensky not to pressure individual allies to support a definitive, prescribed timetable for Ukrainian accession.

The United States and Germany are urging President Volodymyr Zelensky not to demand the “impossible” – a clear timeframe for Ukraine’s acceptance into NATO at the Alliance’s summit, the British newspaper The Telegraph reported on May 28, citing its own sources.

At the NATO summit in Washington, which will be held from July 9 to 11, Ukraine will not be offered anything that would allow the country to move forward on the path to membership because of fears that the alliance could be drawn into a war with Russia.

Western media, citing classified Ukrainian reports, said US-made Excalibur artillery rounds and other GPS-aided munitions are now ineffective due to Russian jamming. But there’s more to the story.

Despite early battlefield successes, US-made weapons augmented by Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites for position updates in Ukraine are now susceptible to Russian electronic warfare (EW) jamming, reported the New York Times (NYT) and the Washington Post, but it is unclear whether other factors are involved.

The weapons affected may include the 155mm Excalibur artillery projectiles, Ground Launched Small Diameter Bomb (GLSDB), Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) and weapons rounds used with the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS), among others, depending on how they are employed by the weapons operators.

In a shock to donors, the former US president is reported to have suggested he would have bombed the two capitals if they invaded Ukraine and Taiwan during his presidency.

Former US President and presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump reportedly suggested he would have bombed Beijing and Moscow if they invaded Taiwan and Ukraine under his presidency.

According to the Washington Post, Trump made the comment during an unspecified leg of his nationwide fundraising tour, a statement which reportedly shocked some of his donors.

First signed by NATO and the Warsaw Pact in 1990, the treaty limits the number of tanks, combat aircraft and other military equipment that can be deployed between the Atlantic and the Ural Mountains.

President Alexander Lukashenko has signed a decree suspending Belarus' participation in a treaty that limits the deployment of conventional forces in Europe, matching a move already taken by ally Russia.

The decree, signed on May 24, was published on Wednesday on an official government website of the ex-Soviet state that borders both Russia and Ukraine.

The minister added that the current number of Russian forces stationed in Ukraine and along its borders stands at 500 thousand troops.

Russia is expected to significantly increase the size of its military presence in Ukraine, with an additional 200-300 thousand troops set to join their ranks, according to Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov in an interview with Reuters.

The minister added that the current number of Russian forces stationed in Ukraine and along its borders stands at 500 thousand troops.

The world in focus, as seen by a Canadian leading global affairs analyst, writer and speaker, in his review of international media.

Ukraine will receive its first supplies of F-16 fighter jets "very soon", but around half of its desperately needed foreign military aid is arriving late, Kyiv's defence minister has said. Rustem Umerov, 42, told Reuters in an interview in Kyiv late on Monday that Russia was deploying more manpower and equipment to the front, more than 27 months after its full-scale invasion. Kyiv's forces have managed to stabilise the new front in the northeastern Kharkiv region where Russia attacked earlier this month. But Umerov said Moscow was preparing for a new push. "Their objective is to open a new front in the north to start using all their manpower, firing power, against us, they are continuing with their objective to destroy the nation," he said. "We are withstanding, but of course we need more weapons, we need more firing power, we need long-range missiles, not to allow them to enter our state." He said Ukraine was grateful for the military aid and weapons supplied by its partners, but that only half of the promised deliveries arrived on time. Every delay benefited Ukraine's much larger and better-equipped foe, with a front line stretching 1,200 km (750 miles). - Reuters

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky reiterated Tuesday that U.S. President Joe Biden should attend a peace summit next month in Switzerland to send a message to Russian President Vladimir Putin and other world leaders. Speaking at a joint news conference with Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo in Brussels, Zelenskyy said the peace summit, scheduled for June 15 and 16 at the Buergenstock Resort near Lake Lucerne, will be “organized by the whole world,” and other leaders will be looking to the U.S.’s response. Zelenskyy said 90 countries have now committed to the summit, and that Putin fears it because he never believed so many nations would support it. - VOA

His comments come amid heated debates on whether to permit Ukraine to strike inside Russia with Western-supplied long-range weapons.

French President Emmanuel Macron said that Ukraine should be allowed to use French weapons to "neutralise" Russian military bases used to launch missile attacks on its territory.

"We think that we should allow them to neutralise military sites where missiles are fired, from where Ukraine is attacked," Macron said, speaking during a state visit to Germany on Tuesday, May 28.

The warning came as French President Macron said Kyiv should be allowed to "neutralise" Russian military bases from where Kremlin troops are firing missiles into Ukraine.

President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday that there would be "serious consequences" if Western countries allowed Ukraine to use their weapons to strike targets in Russia, as sought by Kyiv.

The warning came as French President Emmanuel Macron said Kyiv should be allowed to "neutralise" Russian military bases from where Kremlin troops are firing missiles into Ukraine, and as President Volodymyr Zelensky urged the world not to tire of the war.

Fifteen EU and NATO countries have contributed over €1.6 billion ($1.7 billion) to the Prague initiative to supply Kyiv with ammunition and weapons from outside Europe.

Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala announced on Tuesday, May 28, that the Prague-led initiative to procure ammunition for Ukraine will deliver its first shipment of artillery shells within days.

“The first tens of thousands of 155mm ammunition will be delivered in June. Ukraine can expect the first shipment within the next days,” Fiala stated.

Ukraine’s largest construction mall network will provide financial aid for those wounded in a recent strike in Kharkiv, apart from covering the funeral costs for families of people who died.

Updates: the death toll as a result of the attack rose to 18 after publishing the article which led to new calculations. The mistake in calculations was also fixed.

Epicenter, Ukraine’s biggest network of 72 construction malls across the country, will pay one million to families whose relatives died in the mall during a Russian strike in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv. The company will also cover the expenses for funerals of the dead, Epicenter PR director Yuliia Chudnovets wrote in her post on Facebook.

Latest from the Institute for the Study of War.

Key Takeaways from the ISW:

• Russian President Vladimir Putin grossly misrepresented the Ukrainian Constitution and Ukrainian domestic law on May 28 in order to further promote the Kremlin information operation claiming that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is no longer the legitimate president of Ukraine.
• Ukrainian Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada Ruslan Stefanchuk directly responded to Putin's deliberate misinterpretation of Ukrainian law and explicitly stated that the Ukrainian Constitution and laws stipulate that Zelensky remain in office until the end of martial law in Ukraine.
• Russian allegations about Zelensky's lack of legitimacy are a known Kremlin information operation that Kremlin officials have been promoting extensively in recent weeks, in part targeted at foreign audiences.
• The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE)'s Committee on Culture supported a resolution that recognizes Russia's deliberate erasure of Ukrainian culture as an element of Russia's genocidal campaign in occupied Ukraine, consistent with ISW's longstanding assessment that Russia is pursuing a broad occupation strategy premised on eradicating Ukraine's national identity and independence.
• Russian authorities are preparing to intensify the deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia throughout Summer 2024, further consolidating another component of Russia's genocidal campaign in Ukraine.
• Iran's continued support for Russia's defense industrial base (DIB) and provision of lethal aid to Russia is bolstering Russia's technological output and military capabilities on the battlefield in Ukraine.
• The Georgian Parliament overrode Georgian President Salome Zurabishvili's veto of Georgia's Russian-style "foreign agents" law in an 84-to-4 vote on May 28.
• A limited segment of the Russian ultranationalist information space has resumed its standard public criticisms of the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) and warned that new Defense Minister Andrei Belousov may not solve certain systemic issues within the Russian MoD and military.
• Portugal and Belgium both signed long-term bilateral security agreements with Ukraine on May 28.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed support on May 28 for delisting the Taliban as a prohibited organization in Russia, indicating that Russia will likely do so soon.
• Ukrainian forces recently made confirmed advances near Lyptsi, and Russian forces recently made confirmed advances near Avdiivka and the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area.
• The Russian military is reportedly intensifying efforts to recruit citizens from Central African countries to fight in Ukraine.