The Times - UK (2022-06-13)

the times | Monday June 13 2022 2GM 31

Wave of women surfers

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10 miles

UKRAINE

Severodonetsk

Popasna Luhansk

Pavlohrad

Toshkivka

Rubizhne LULUHANSNSSSKK

Bakhmut

Peace games

Young Ukrainians

enjoyed a sunny

Saturday beside

the Dnipro River in

Kyiv, where the

war in Donetsk,

right, seemed far

away. Yesterday

was Russia Day,

which a Russian

citizen in Kyiv

marked by burning

his passport

outside the

shuttered embassy

Chemical plant

set on fire by

Russian shells

Ukraine

Ian Morris

Smoke rises from the Azot plant,

where people were taking shelter

DOMINIKA ZARZYCKA/SOPA IMAGES VIA SHUTTERSTOCK; REUTERS; SERGEI SUPINSKY/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

Intense fighting continued in the city of

Severodonetsk yesterday as Russian

shelling set off a blaze at a chemical

plant where civilians and defenders

were said to have taken refuge.

Ukraine’s army said Russian forces

had failed in attempts to break through

near Toshkivka, south of the city.

“People are hiding in shelters,” Serhiy

Haidai, head of the Luhansk regional

military administration, said in a video

address. “But the Russians are firing on

residential neighbourhoods for hours

on end, using high-calibre artillery.

Everyone probably wants to evacuate

but it is impossible to organise.”

Haidai told Ukrainian television

there was “non-stop” fighting in the

city. The fire at the chemicals plant

started on Saturday after oil leaked

from damaged radiators at the Azot

plant, which produces nitrogen fertilis-

ers and household goods.

Officials have estimated that up to

800 civilians are hiding in underground

bomb shelters at the plant. Villages in

eastern Ukraine near Severodonetsk,

including Pavlohrad and Synetskyi,

were also being shelled. There were

exchanges of fire in Lysychansk, just

over the Siverskyi Donets River.

A source in the Russia-backed rebel

Luhansk People’s Republic told a

Russian news agency that the Azot

plant would not be stormed because it

was surrounded. “The Ukrainian ser-

vicemen who remain there will be

obliged to surrender,” the insider said.

Haidai denied the plant was

surrounded. He conceded that Rus-

sian soldiers controlled most of

Severodonetsk but insisted the situa-

tion was “under control”. He added

that it was impossible to say if there

had been further casualties in the past

24 hours.

Severodonetsk is a key objective for

Russia. Seizing it would allow its

soldiers to strike deeper into the neigh-

bouring Donetsk region, having taken

control of all of Luhansk. President Zel-

ensky is pleading for more weapons

from the West to halt Russia’s advance.

In a separate assault, the Russian

army said it had fired Kalibr cruise mis-

siles from the Black Sea, destroying a

cache of weapons provided to Ukraine

by the US and European states.

A spokesman in Moscow said anti-

tank missile systems, anti-aircraft

batteries and artillery shells were

among the hardware destroyed in

Chortkiv, in the Ternopil region of

western Ukraine.

Volodymyr Trush, a regional official

in Ternopil, said 22 people had been

injured in the Chortkiv strike, including

seven women and a 12-year-old child,

but there had been no deaths.

He added that most of the casualties

lived in houses near the centre of the

strike, and that part of a military facility

had been destroyed.

of the Apocalypse are on their way, Putin’s puppet warns

Russian leader whose political views

had not been forged in service of the

Soviet system. He oversaw a brief “re-

set” in ties between Moscow and Wash-

ington in 2009 and visited Silicon Val-

ley to seek inspiration for his plans to

establish a high-tech hub in Russia.

Yet as Putin’s war in Ukraine grinds

on, Medvedev, 56, deputy head of

Russia’s national security council, has

changed from a western-looking leader

into one of the country’s biggest hawks.

His metamorphosis is symbolic of the

Kremlin’s shift towards totalitarianism,

which has involved a crackdown on dis-

sent and a rise in state propaganda.

“I am often asked why my Telegram

posts are so harsh. The answer is I hate

them. They are bastards and degener-

ates,” Medvedev wrote last week.

Although he didn’t define who “they”

were, his comments were widely under-

stood to mean Ukraine and its allies.

Medvedev added: “They want death for

Russia. And while I’m alive, I will do

everything to make them disappear.”

Days earlier he had warned that

Moscow would attack western cities, if

missiles provided to Ukraine by the US

were used to hit targets in Russia. “The

horsemen of the Apocalypse are

already on their way,” Medvedev said.

He has accused President Zelensky

and other Ukrainian leaders of being

Nazis and drug users.

The contrast between Medvedev’s

increasingly harsh rhetoric and his pro-

democracy comments during his four-

year presidency have prompted specu-

lation in Russia. Dmitry Gudkov, a

former opposition MP who was briefly

enthusiastic about Medvedev’s presi-

dency, believes he harbours hopes of a

return to the Kremlin. “He is trying to

please the hardliners in the hope that

they will promote him, in the event

of Putin leaving office,” he said.

“The only way to survive politically

right now in Russia is to be a hawk.”

Although Medvedev has known

Putin since the 1990s he is not a

member of the president’s inner

circle, which has shrunk to

a core of anti-western

officials from the mili-

tary and the security

services. Gleb Pavlov-

sky, a former Kremlin

adviser, said, how-

ever, it was absurd to

believe that Medvedev, who had low

approval ratings when he served as

prime minister from 2012 to 2020

and has few influential allies,

could become president again.

“He has no chance,” he said. “He

is not a popular person.”

Any remaining sympathy that

liberal Russians may have had

towards Medvedev evaporated

in 2017 when an investi-

gation by Alexei Naval-

ny, the opposition

leader, revealed that the

former president

owned a considerable

amount of elite prop-

erty, including a

vineyard in Italy.

Medvedev’s be-

haviour, however,

may be inspired less by his political

ambitions than by his concerns for him-

self and his family amid an increasingly

repressive atmosphere in Moscow.

Maria Snegovaya, a political analyst,

said Medvedev’s links with liberal poli-

ticians and businessmen may mark him

out as an “attractive” target for the

security services. A number of Medve-

dev’s former allies have been jailed in

recent years and Arkady Dvorkovich, a

former adviser, was accused of a

national betrayal after he spoke out

against the invasion of Ukraine. Putin

has spoken of the need to “purify”

Russia of “national traitors”.

Snegovaya told the Rferl website:

“Medvedev may want to signal to

everyone that he is part of the system,

that he is essentially by Putin’s side. His

goal right now is to survive.”

Dmitry Medvedev is

increasingly hardline