The Washington Post - USA (2022-06-07)

TUESDAY, JUNE 7 , 2022. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ SU A

war in ukraine

BY KAROUN DEMIRJIAN

AND JULIAN DUPLAIN

Russia escalated its assault
against Ukraine on the battle-
field Monday, pummeling a city
that has emerged as a key battle-
ground in the east as Moscow
expanded sanctions against
those who have condemned its
actions during the war.
The fight for Severodonetsk
has “worsened for us,” Serhiy
Haidai, governor of the Luhansk
region, said in a televised inter-
view. Russian forces have been
shelling and expanding their
footprint in the city, though
Ukrainian troops remain in con-
trol of its industrial zone.
The creeping losses come as
the West scrambles to send
Ukraine more firepower as fight-
ing in the country’s eastern Don-
bas region intensifies. On Mon-
day, Britain said it would send
rocket launch systems that can
be used to strike targets up to 50
miles away despite threats from
the Kremlin that it would retali-
ate. The announcement follows a
pledge by the United States to
send Ukraine similar weapons.
It will take at least a few weeks
for Ukrainian forces to be
trained in how to use the longer-
range weapons, U.S. officials
have said, and it remains unclear
whether the West’s combined
efforts to arm Ukraine with more
powerful systems will be enough
to beat back Russia’s recent ad-
vances.
Ukrainian leaders have sought
to buoy troops’ morale. Speaking
to reporters Monday, President
Volodymyr Zelensky — who a day
prior visited units in Lysychansk,
a town neighboring Severodo-
netsk — said Ukraine had “every
chance” to claw back the city.
Kyrylo Budanov, the country’s
chief of military intelligence, sig-
naled “the occupiers” were being
pushed out of Severodonetsk
gradually.
The killing of Russian Maj.
Gen. Roman Kutuzov, confirmed
by Russian state media, ap-
peared to bolster those claims.
Kutuzov was the fourth general
whose death in Ukraine was
confirmed by Russian officials or
pro-Kremlin media. Ukraine
claims to have killed 12 generals,
apart from Kutuzov.
Yet on Monday, Zelensky ac-
knowledged the Ukrainian forces
“holding out” in Severodonetsk
and Lysychansk were outnum-
bered by “stronger” Russian
troops, according to reports. He
also referred to both places as

“dead cities.”

Speaking at the annual D-Day

commemoration in France on

Monday, Gen. Mark A. Milley, the

chairman of the Joint Chiefs,

compared the suffering of Ukrai-

nians to the “horrors” experi-

enced “at the hands of the Nazi

invaders” during World War II.

Milley and his counterparts from

other countries supporting

Ukraine are meeting this week in

the Normandy countryside to

discuss how else they might

assist the government in Kyiv.

“The world has come together

in support of the defense of

Ukraine against a determined

invader,” Milley said, adding that

the fight now is about preserving

the principle that “strong coun-

tries cannot just invade small

countries.”

“That aggression,” he said,

“cannot be left to stand.”

At the United Nations in New

York, Ukrainian officials testified

about worsening sexual violence

in Ukraine. Natalia Kabrowska,

of the Ukrainian Women’s Fund,

told a session of the U.N. Security

Council about how Russian

troops use rape “as terror to

control civilians in temporarily

occupied territories.” The United

Nations has received 124 reports

of sexually based violence during

the war, which is the “tip of the

iceberg,” said Pramila Patten, the

U.N. special representative on

sexual violence in conflict.

The head of the International

Atomic Energy Agency also re-

ported “extremely stressful and

challenging working conditions”

at a nuclear power plant in

Zaporizhzhia, which is under

Russian control, and regulators

have yet to be able to visit.

Meanwhile, the British De-

fense Ministry reported Monday

that Russia is likely to have

installed new air defense sys-

tems in the Black Sea, south of

Odessa on Snake Island. The

antiaircraft missile units be-

lieved to be stationed there

would provide cover for its ships

operating in the area, which

have been vulnerable to attack

by Ukrainian forces. In April,

Russia’s Black Sea ship Moskva

sank after Ukraine said it hit the

vessel with two anti-ship mis-

siles; in February, Ukrainian

fighters on Snake Island were

captured and held as prisoners

after defying a demand from the

Moskva to surrender.

Russia has begun to turn over

to Ukraine the bodies of Ukraini-

an fighters killed during the

siege of the Azovstal steel plant

in Mariupol, the Associated Press

reported Monday. The remains

are undergoing DNA testing to

verify identities.

Russia and the West also trad-

ed punitive measures against

prominent individuals, as Mos-

cow blacklisted more than 60

Americans, including Treasury

Secretary Janet L. Yellen, and a

federal judge in New York ap-

proved the U.S. Justice Depart-

ment seizing two private jets

owned by Roman Abramovich, a

Russian oligarch close to Russian

President Vladimir Putin.

Abramovich, who until recent-

ly owned the British Chelsea F.C.

soccer team and has served as a

go-between for Putin and Zel-

ensky since hostilities began, is

accused of violating federal law

by re-exporting his planes, which

were made in the United States

and worth more than $400 mil-

lion.

Shayna Jacobs, Lateshia Beachum,

Dan Lamothe, Robyn Dixon, Karen

DeYoung and Bryan Pietsch

contributed to this report.

Ukraine’s position has ‘worsened’ in S everodonetsk

REUTERS

BY DAN LAMOTHE

colleville-sur-mer, france
— The top Pentagon general said
Monday that Ukrainians are “ex-
periencing the same horrors that
the French citizenry experienced
in World War II at the hands of
the Nazi invaders,” drawing a
direct comparison between Rus-
sia’s invasion of its neighbor and
a conflict fought on the nearby
beaches of Normandy 78 years
ago.
Army Gen. Mark A. Milley,
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, said the world is “again
seeing death and destruction on
the European continent.” He
stood among the snow-white
marble headstones of Normandy
American Cemetery and Memo-
rial, the final resting place for
more than 9,000 U.S. troops
killed in action.
Milley commemorated their
sacrifices as he and the defense
chiefs from countries supporting
Ukraine meet this week in the
Normandy countryside to dis-
cuss how else they may assist
Kyiv in fighting off a Russian
invasion that has left tens of
thousands dead.

“The world has come together

in support of the defense of

Ukraine against a determined

invader,” Milley said, speaking a

short distance from where U.S.

troops came ashore on Omaha

and Utah beaches. He said the

fight now is about maintaining

“the order that was established

in 1945 at the conclusion of

World War II.”

That included the establish-

ment of the NATO military alli-

ance, whose members have

rushed weapons and ammuni-

tion to the Ukrainian border to

help Kyiv fend off Russian forces.

Underpinning the world order

established after World War II

was the principle that “strong

countries cannot just invade

small countries,” Milley said,

adding, “That aggression cannot

be left to stand.”

Milley recalled the German

blitz across Europe beginning in

the late 1930s and how millions

of people were killed in the years

to come. He said the world was

slow to respond.

“Let not those who lay here be

the last witnesses to a time when

allies came together to defeat

tyranny. Let’s all band together

as allies, partners and friends.

Let us continue to stand shoulder

to shoulder as an alliance,” he

said.

In a subsequent interview at

the cemetery, Milley told report-

ers traveling with him that the

United States and its allies are

trying to prevent “another great

European war” and that what

Russia has done in Ukraine since

invading Feb. 24 is “qualitatively

different than anything we’ve

seen in a lot of years.”

There has been violence in

Europe since World War II, Mil-

ley noted, citing bloodshed in the

Balkans and Georgia, “but this is

one of a different order of magni-

tude in size, scale and scope.”

The United States, which re-

moved a cadre of military train-

ers from Ukraine before the start

of hostilities there, does not want

war with Russia, Milley said. But

the Kremlin’s provocation must

be answered in some form, he

said.

“Aggression cannot be allowed

to succeed,” he said. “Otherwise,

everything that these guys fought

for and died for on Omaha Beach

means nothing. We can’t allow

that to be. We can’t allow them to

have died in vain.”

Milley acknowledged that

Russia’s military is making some

gains as it hammers Ukrainian

forces in the Donbas region of

eastern Ukraine, where Moscow

has shifted its emphasis after

failing to seize the capital city,

Kyiv, earlier in the invasion.

“Whatever progress the Rus-

sians are making is very, very

limited and in small increments

day to day, and they’re suffering

heavy casualties for that,” he said.

After delivering his speech on

Monday, Milley walked the cem-

etery for a couple hours, meeting

World War II veterans, taking

pictures with French and Ameri-

can civilians, and leaving com-

memorative coins at several

graves.

Among those he visited were

the final resting place of Army

Brig. Gen. Theodore Roosevelt

Jr., who earned a Medal of Honor

for valor on D-Day and died of a

heart attack a month later in

France, and those of James and

Joseph McKeon, brothers from

Milley’s native Massachusetts

who died in action a couple

months apart in 1944.

Among the veterans whom

Milley met was Denny Thomp-

son. He told the chairman that he

piloted B-17 and B-24 bombers

for the United States and that he

was wounded twice during com-

bat missions.

Thompson, sitting in a wheel-

chair with a cigar, said in an

interview after meeting with Mil-

ley that he still wears his original

uniform and that he turns 100

years old in July.

He has been attending anni-

versary ceremonies at the Nor-

mandy cemetery since 1995, he

said. Asked why it’s important

for him to keep visiting, Thomp-

son was blunt. “It’s pretty god-

damn important to anybody,” he

said.

Milley equates ‘horrors’ of Russia’s invasion with suffering of World War II

JEREMIAS GONZALEZ/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, appears

at a memorial in France to commemorate the anniversary of D-Day.

GLEB GARANICH/REUTERS

TOP: Ukrainian service members fire a shell from an M777 howitzer near a front line in the Donetsk

region. ABOVE: A woman’s home is d estroyed by a Russian military strike in the region.

ties began monitoring potential

cholera outbreaks across the

country on June 1. He said Mari-

upol’s situation is especially dire.

Elsewhere in Ukraine, Kuzin

said, task forces have rushed into

de-occupied areas to begin testing

water and soil in an effort to pre-

vent disease spread. The province

of Kyiv and its western neighbor

Zhytomyr have been completely

inspected, he said, along with

much of Chernihiv and Sumy

oblasts to the north.

Kuzin estimated that his coun-

try’s health-care system has

enough medicine and vaccines to

treat cholera until at least August.

Russia also appears to be gird-

ing itself for the possibility of a

cholera outbreak, according to

Ukraine’s military intelligence

service. In early May, the agency

said Moscow was instituting extra

preventive measures in regions

bordering Ukraine and directing

local officials to prepare labs for

cholera research and to ensure

medical facilities are ready to car-

ry out “anti-epidemic measures.”

Last month, the World Health

Organization said it was sending

cholera vaccines to Dnipro, a city

in central Ukraine, to prepare for

possible outbreaks. At the time,

WHO officials highlighted the

dangerous conditions in Mari-

upol.

“There are swamps, actually, in

the streets and the sewage water

and drinking water are getting

mixed,” said Dorit Nitzan, a re-

gional emergency director at

WHO. “This is a huge hazard. It’s a

hazard for many infections, in-

cluding cholera.”

BY REIS THEBAULT

In Mariupol — the ruined and
Russian-occupied port city in
Ukraine’s southeast — fears of
constant bombardment have giv-
en way to silent threats: bacteria-
laced water and deadly cholera
outbreaks.
The city’s exiled local leaders
have voiced concern about the wa-
ter supply for weeks, and on Mon-
day, mayoral aide Petro Andryush-
chenko said that decomposing
bodies and piles of garbage are
contaminating drinking sources,
leaving residents vulnerable to
cholera, dysentery and other ail-
ments.

The Russian officials now run-

ning the city recently imposed a

quarantine, Andryushchenko said

in an appearance on Ukrainian

television. He did not elaborate on

the measures, and his statement

could not be independently veri-

fied, but he said the humanitarian

situation there was getting worse.

“Spontaneous burials are still i n

almost every yard in Mariupol,”

the city council wrote in an update

on Telegram. “Bodies are rotting

under the rubble of hundreds of

high-rise buildings. And it literally

poisons the air.”

Public health experts have

warned that warming weather

and prolonged warfare could ex-

pose Ukraine — its soldiers and

civilians — to infectious diseases,

potentially ushering in a new

phase of the conflict that forces

authorities to contend with out-

breaks of illness while fending off

Russia’s invasion. The most at-risk

areas, officials have said, are the

country’s occupied regions, where

long bouts of fighting have left

sanitation systems in ruins.

Cholera, which spreads

through contaminated food and

water, is an acute diarrhoeal infec-

tion that can be fatal if untreated.

The Mariupol council predicted

thousands more civilian deaths if

an outbreak were to rage uncon-

trolled, which would bring more

tragedy to a city that has already

endured some of the most brutal

bombing of the Russian cam-

paign. The near-constant shelling,

which allowed Moscow to claim

full control of Mariupol last

month, reduced much of the city

to rubble and destroyed water and

sewer infrastructure, along with

medical facilities, the council said.

To get access to clean water,

Mariupol residents must queue

for hours, and it has only been

available every two days at most,

Andryushchenko said on Tele-

gram.

In a news briefing Monday,

Ukraine’s chief sanitary doctor,

Ihor Kuzin, said national authori-

Officials: Mariupol is facing dire cholera outbreak