by WISEMOVECOURIEUkraine live briefing: Zelensky says counteroffensive hasn’t started. Wagner’s chief disagrees.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Wagner head Yevgeniy Prigozhin shared conflicting reports on the much-anticipated Ukrainian spring counteroffensive, with Zelensky saying his country needed to wait for more equipment to arrive and that starting the campaign now would result in “unacceptable” losses.
Prigozhin, meanwhile, said the Ukrainians were “in full swing,” attacking his forces’ flanks in Bakhmut. “Unfortunately, in some places they are successful,” Prigozhin said. “All the units that have received the necessary training, weapons, equipment, tanks, everything else — they are already fully engaged.”
The U.S. ambassador to South Africa on Thursday accused his host country of shipping weapons to Russia in December, in violation of its self-proclaimed policy of nonalignment.
Here’s the latest on the war and its ripple effects across the globe.
Ukraine’s cultural counteroffensive: The rush to erase Russia’s imprint: In another sign of how Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion has backfired, Ukrainians are erasing the traces of Russian culture, language and monuments from their country, Ruby Mellen, Zoeann Murphy, Kostiantyn Khudov and Kasia Strek report. Russian books have been pulped. Russocentric museums have been shuttered. Landmarks named after Russian figures have been marked for renames.
“No one has done more de-Russify Ukraine than Putin,” said Rory Finnin, an associate professor of Ukrainian studies at Cambridge University. Ukrainians had been able “to manage their, at times, overlapping” and layered cultures, Finnin added, but Putin’s aggression has pushed many to seek the complete removal of Russian culture and history.