SUNDAY, APRIL 3 , 2022. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A21
cause the costs they’ve incurred in
this war, the economic and politi-
cal isolation they’re suffering in
addition to the military losses, are
just not worth it for the Donbas,”
he said. “It’s one thing to say
you’re fighting for Ukraine. It’s
another thing to say, we’ll settle
for Donbas and try to sell it to the
domestic market.”
Indeed, Russia’s withdrawal
from some regions has ignited
strong opposition from hard-lin-
ers in state television and Tele-
gram channels, with many, in-
cluding Chechen leader Ramzan
Kadyrov, arguing that Russia
should fight on and seize control
of Kyiv.
After the stall of Russia’s ad-
vance, Moscow’s negotiators in
talks with Ukraine agreed to de-
escalate the war around Kyiv and
Chernihiv and to focus on the
eastern Donbas region, promi-
nent state television anchor
Vladimir Solovyov, complained.
“Don’t mislead and demoralize
our people and our troops with
crazy messages,” he said, referring
to talk of “de-escalating” in Kyiv
and Chernihiv.
Russia may be hoping that if it
manages to take Donbas, it will be
able at some future point to
launch offensives to take a broad-
er swathe of the country. But that
seems unfeasible given the losses
it has suffered so far, O’Brien said.
“Theoretically they can try
again, but it would take a major
new army. This army does not
have the strength,” he said.
Lee questioned whether Russia
can afford to sustain a protracted
conflict, given the toll that sanc-
tions will take on its economy and
the scale of the military losses it
has incurred. The longer the war
goes on, the greater the damage to
Russia’s overall strategic standing
and ability to defend itself from
other threats elsewhere, he said.
The war is far from over, cau-
tioned said Iuliaa Mendel, a for-
mer spokesperson for Ukrainian
President Volodymyr Zelensky,
speaking from Lviv. Ukrainians
are braced for all eventualities,
she said.
“This phase could go on for a
while,” she said. “Russia has a lot
of missiles and rockets and still
has a lot of soldiers.”
But the withdrawal from Kyiv
and the shift in the direction of the
war has lifted spirits, at least in
Western Ukraine, she said. “We
feel we can win,” she said. “People
are starting to talk about when
they can go home.”Max Bearak in Irpin, Ukraine, C laire
Parker in Washington and David L.
Stern in Mukachevo, Ukraine,
contributed to this report.Russian forces in 2014, the official
said.
Russia is also expected to sus-
tain pressure on the other parts of
eastern and southern Ukraine
that it captured in the first days of
the war, including Kharkiv and
the strip of territory running
along the coast that links Donbas
to the annexed peninsula of
Crimea. Russia will probably
eventually take control of the be-
sieged city of Mariupol, which will
free up thousands of troops to
fight elsewhere.
By concentrating its firepower
on a limited area, Russia should
be able to muster a more effective
force, said Bulloch. It will also
help them address the logistical
and supply problems that have
plagued troops strung out along a
vast front line around the country.
“It positions them better for a
longer war because by concentrat-
ing their forces in a smaller area
they can do more sustained opera-
tions,” he said.
But it’s not certain that Russia
has the capacity even to fully pur-
sue its goals in the east, some
experts believe. Ukrainian forces
have been making advances in
Kharkiv and elsewhere in the
south and east, and will probably
continue to inflict losses on Rus-
sian forces as they seek to regroup.
The 190,000 troops that
launched the initial invasion in-
cluded 75 percent of the country’s
combat-ready troops, according
to the Pentagon, and the replace-
ments won’t be as capable or well
trained as those, the Western offi-
cial said.
The troops being withdrawn
from northern Ukraine are un-
likely to be more effective in a new
location than they were in the
initial invasion, said John Spen-
cer, who chairs the Urban Warfare
Studies program at the Madison
Policy Forum.
“These forces are exhausted,”
he said. “Soldiers can’t keep up
this level of losses and sustain the
pace. They are demoralized, they
have wounds, mental injuries,
they’ve lost their friends, you can’t
just throw them into another
fight.”
“It’s not going to be a cakewalk,”
said Dmitri Alperovitch, Chair-
man of Silverado Policy Accelera-
tor, a geopolitical think tank, not-
ing that some of Ukraine’s best
trained and battle-hardened
troops are located in the Donbas,
where they have been holding
Russian-backed forces at bay for
the past eight years.
It’s also not going to be easy for
Russia to justify a more limited
goal to the Russian public, he said.
“This is going to be a huge
political problem for them be-forces and journalists.
Troops have withdrawn from
key locations that they captured
in the first days of the conflict,
including the Chernobyl nuclear
power plant and the airport at
Hostomel, which was intended to
serve as a launching point for the
push into Kyiv. Instead, Ukrainian
forces pinned them down in Irpin,
now under Ukrainian control,
and the Russians never managed
to advance any further.
The Ukrainians are attacking
the Russians as they leave, inflict-
ing more losses and making it
hard to tell whether the Russians
are withdrawing according to a
plan or whether they are being
forced to retreat, said Thomas
Bulloch, an intelligence analyst
with Janes, a defense consultancy.
It had been assumed that the
Russians would leave forces dug
in the vicinity of Kyiv to prevent
the Ukrainians from drawing re-
inforcements for the new battle to
the east, and to sustain pressure
on the capital. It’s now unclear
whether they even intend to do
that, or whether a force large
enough to defend itself will re-
main, he said.
“There’s no question that
they’re withdrawing now and it
looks like it’s going to be bigger
than we first expected,” he said.
Much will now depend on the
extent to which Russia is able to
replenish and reinvigorate the
ranks of its shrunken force —
depleted by as many as 40,000
soldiers due to deaths, injuries,
captures and surrenders, accord-
ing to a senior NATO official, and
more according to the Ukraini-
ans.
The military is in the process of
calling up new conscripts, which
could add 100,000 more soldiers
to its ranks. It is also generating 10
new battalion tactical groups, the
core fighting unit of the Russian
army, to replace some of those lost
in the first weeks of fighting, said a
senior Western official who spoke
on the condition of anonymity to
discuss sensitive subjects.
Of the 120 battalion tactical
groups that went into action in
Ukraine, at least 20 have been
rendered inoperative by losses of
men and equipment, he said — a
figure likely to be higher since the
Ukrainian advances in recent
days.
The new troops are being
drawn from the Kalingrad oblast
adjoining Poland, the Far East and
Georgia, and all the available evi-
dence suggests they will be sent to
the Donbas, with the goal of tak-
ing control of the portion of the
region that wasn’t captured by
STRATEGY FROM A20
BY ANA VANESSA HERREROcaracas, venezuela — I n the
depths of the Amazon jungle, a
dispute over WiFi turned deadly
last month when four Yanomami
were killed in what the govern-
ment is calling a “clash” between
the Indigenous group and Ven-
ezuelan soldiers.
“This is unprecedented,” said
Cristina Burelli, an anthropolo-
gist and the founder of SOS
Orinoco, a group that advocates
for the conservation of the Ven-
ezuelan Amazon. “It is the first
time soldiers have turned their
weapons on this ancient tribe.”
The incident, experts say, re-
veals the Venezuelan state’s lack
of understanding when dealing
with Indigenous cultures in a
military-controlled territory that
is rife with illegal mining. The
latter impedes the way of life of
the Yanomami, one of the largest
Indigenous communities in
South America.
On March 20, a group of Indig-
enous men approached soldiers
at a military base in Parima B — a
remote part of the Venezuelan
Amazon that borders Brazil — to
ask them for the WiFi password,
according to five people with
knowledge of the situation. The
Indigenous community and the
military had agreed to share the
router, but the soldiers changed
the password without the autho-
rization of the Yanomami, ignit-
ing the conflict, said the five
people, who spoke on the condi-
tion of anonymity to discuss a
sensitive matter.
Venezuelan Attorney General
Tarek William Saab launched an
investigation into what he re-
ferred to as a “clash” between the
Venezuelan soldiers and the Ya-
nomami. No information has
been shared since the investiga-
tion started, and Saab did not
answer questions from The
Washington Post about the inqui-
ry.
More than 40,000 Yanomami
live in the southern part of Ven-
ezuela’s Amazonas state and in
northern Brazil, according to
Survival International, a non-
profit that advocates for Indig-
enous groups.
In 1993, at least 16 Yanomami,
including women and children,
were killed by a group of wildcat
miners, known in Brazil as garim-
peiros.
“After that massacre, the Ven-
ezuelan state committed to pro-
tect the Yanomami lands, and
instead, they are being attacked
again,” said Burelli of SOS Orino-
co.
How the conflict in Parima B
escalated is unclear. The Post
reviewed an internal police re-
port that listed the four dead, aswell as six wounded — three
Yanomami and three soldiers.
Security forces arrived days after
the incident, according to the
report.
Two of the soldiers were held
hostage and released only after
several days of mediation. They
were later taken to a hospital in
Puerto Ayacucho, the capital of
Amazonas state.
According to the report, the
clash involved guns as well as
bows and arrows. Police seized a
9mm gun and at least 70 rifle
shells.
“I wouldn’t call it a massacre,”
said Guillermo Marciales, a law-
yer, Indigenous rights activist
and member of local group Wa-
taniba. “There was a clash be-cause protocols were not clear.
There was a rupture in the dia-
logue, and the Venezuelan state
has more responsibility for that.”
In a video shared by SOS Ori-
noco three days after the inci-
dent, an unidentified Yanomami
woman is heard talking to a
military official. “We weren’t do-
ing anything,” she is heard say-
ing. “They had no right to use
their guns.” The group of around
15 Yanomami, some apparently
wounded, gathered around a
man in military uniform who
promised to bring higher-rank-
ing officials to the negotiation.
“We are in the process of writ-
ing a letter to Venezuelan author-
ities asking for an investigation,”
said Fiona Watson, research di-rector for Survival International.
“I know tensions are high in the
Yanomami territory, on both
sides of the border, because of the
mining invasion and because au-
thorities have done nothing to
remove the problem.”
She said the military’s control
over information made it difficult
to ascertain what happened.
“It is necessary to review the
relationship of the Venezuelan
state with the Indigenous peo-
ples,” said Venezuelan anthropol-
ogist Aimé Tillett. “They are sup-
posed to be there to protect the
territory, but that’s the last thing
they do.”
A person working directly with
the Yanomami who spoke on the
condition of anonymity out of
fear of reprisals told The Post that
garimpeiros have been exploiting
the Alto Orinoco-Casiquiare Bio-
sphere Reserve for years and
contaminating the rivers, with
the Venezuelan military aware of
the situation. The Yanomami, he
said, have been recruited by the
miners in exchange for weapons
and gold, creating a dependency
on the gold business and the
government.
“They didn’t die just for an
Internet service, but for the blood
gold that exists in the Amazon,”
said Romel Guzamana, an Indig-
enous opposition congressman.
“All the soldiers sent to the Ama-
zon go with the intention of
working for gold with no under-
standing of their worldview and
culture.”
In 2019, a report from the
Office of the U.N. High Commis-
sioner for Human Rights found
that Indigenous people in Ven-
ezuela had lost control of their
lands due to the presence of the
military, mining activity and a
rise in organized crime.
“Mining, particularly in Ama-
zonas and Bolivar ... has resulted
in violations of various collective
rights, including rights to main-
tain customs, traditional ways of
life, and a spiritual relationship
with their land,” the report said.
Since then, activists say, no real
advances have been achieved.
“The Amazon is loved by every-
one but forgotten by the entire
planet,” Guzamana said. “There is
nothing there. They have been
abandoned.”Indigenous people die in ‘clash’ with Venezuelan troops
ANDRESSA ANHOLETE/GETTY IMAGES
The Brazilian Amazon region near the border with Venezuela. More than 40,000 Yanomami live in the southern Amazonas state of
Venezuela and in northern Brazil. In 1993, at least 16 Yanomami, including women and children, were killed by a group of wildcat miners.The deadly dispute,
critics say, shows state’s
lack of understanding“This is unprecedented.
It is the first time
soldiers have turned
their weapons on this
ancient tribe.”
Cristina Burelli, an anthropologist
and the founder of SOS Orinoco, a
group that advocates for the
conservation of the Venezuelan
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