Russian troops captured village of Zaporizhzhya in Ukraine's Donetsk region, TASS reports

MOSCOW, June 21 (Reuters) - Russian troops have captured the small settlement of Zaporizhzhya in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region, Russian state news agency TASS reported on Saturday, citing Russia's Defence Ministry.
Reuters could not independently confirm the battlefield report.
The small village of Zaporizhzhya, which had a pre-war population of about 200 people, is located near the strategic city of Pokrovsk, where some of the fiercest battles of the war have been fought over the past several months. Pokrovsk is a crucial transport hub in the east of Ukraine.
The village is distinct from the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia, the regional centre and large industrial hub located some 160 kilometers (90 miles) to the southeast.

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Telegraph

an hour ago

• Telegraph

Britain's new breed of drone-racing soldiers will be more than ready to take on Putin

The Chief of the General Staff – the head of the British Army – General Sir Roly Walker has a plan to defeat the Russians. In a speech this week he made it clear that our Army is laser focused on the enemy, the Russian Army, and is not only learning from Ukraine but re-equipping and re-training itself at pace. The European Nato allies are also focusing East. Collectively, European Nato will soon over-match Putin's men, even without the traditional assumption of massive help from the US. Though the whole world seems currently focused on Iran in its struggle with Israel, Vladimir Putin remains the main threat here and we should not forget it. He is committing war crimes every week in his evil campaign against Ukraine's civilian population: the latest is the reported use of cluster munitions against residential areas of Kyiv. Not only are cluster bomblets devastating across wide areas against unprotected civilians, their use leaves unexploded bomblets scattered across the target area: effectively a field of landmines, and one that is difficult and dangerous to clear up. Against this background, the move of US air defence assets from Europe to the Middle East is dispiriting, and seems to indicate that President Trump has given up on European peace. He will probably seek instead to disable the Iranian nuclear programme, with most of the hard work done for him by the Israelis. But this is no help to us in Europe and most especially not to the brave Ukrainians who are keeping Putin's war machine tied up and so protecting us all. Bold Ukrainian secret-service operations have taken the fight to Russia and shown the world that Zelensky and his indomitable compatriots are a force to be reckoned with. Meanwhile here in Britain there is scepticism among journalists and commentators regarding the British Army's ability to stand up to Russia, and the willingness of our young people to fight for their country. But in fact there is no shortage of young Brits wanting to join – over a million have tried over the last ten years, but sadly some 75 per cent of them were defeated by the absurdly clunky recruitment mechanism. This is now being sorted out, and people are making it through: among them my own son, following in my footsteps at Sandhurst and probably doing it better! General Walker reminded us this week of Field Marshal Montgomery's memoirs in which he wrote: 'I shall take away many impressions into the evening of life. But the one I shall treasure above all is the picture of the British soldier – staunch and tenacious in adversity, kind and gentle in victory – the figure to whom the nation has again and again, in the hour of adversity, owed its safety and its honour'. Never a better word said on the British soldier and it is as true today as it was then, in my opinion. When it comes to lethality, General Walker explained how this will double in two years and treble by the end of the decade. The traditional heavy end, tanks, artillery and attack helicopters, will account for 20 per cent with the remaining 80 per cent expected to come from drones. Anybody who has dipped even the smallest toe into the Ukraine war would agree this is a good mix. Mass, still the main currency that ensures victory, can come from drones: thousands of them, AI enabled, with the tanks providing the direct 'thunder' when appropriate. There is also a realisation in Strategic Defence Review that he who controls the Electromagnetic Spectrum nowadays controls the battlefield. Electronic warfare capabilities are now a priority. The third element which guarantees success in battle is training, and British soldiers have been training like dervishes in this contemporary battlespace. Despite the Russians having a few 'islands of excellence' the rank-and-file conscripts of Putin's army are in the main untrained and used as cannon fodder. The meat grinder has now consumed over one million Russian souls. The British Army for its part is now a 'world of excellence', well trained, with excellent kit coming onboard, and still pound for pound the best fighters on the planet. In the past the British Army concentrated on a few very expensive drones, but we have now well and truly grasped the mass drone idea, so critical for success against the Russians. General Walker tells us that 3,000 drone pilots have been trained in the last 12 months, and we will have another 6,000 in the next 12 months. These will fly mainly the basic FPV drones, $500 a pop-ish, that will create the mass we need. The Army's newest sport is drone racing, which teaches FPV pilots the skills they need to manoeuvre on the modern battlefield. At the beginning of the war, we were teaching Ukraine how to fight, but we are now learning from them how to be very much more lethal in the battle space, and most especially against a Russian looking threat. Sir Keir Starmer may be Trump's buddy today, but I'm sure he realises his genuine friends are in Europe and this absolutely includes Ukraine. It is now up to us to enable Ukraine to get into a position to get a just ceasefire out of the Kremlin. I'd argue that the RAF jets stationed at eastern airbases on Nato missions and our troops forward deployed in Estonia are doing more for our national interests than the planes we recently deployed to Cyprus. President Trump does not need our help to defeat Iran's nuclear weapons programme, but President Zelensky does to stop the Russians and force them to seek peace. I believe that General Walker is on the right track and is delivering the Army the nation needs and that Nato needs. When war in Ukraine ends and Putin looks further westwards, he will see a very different picture to that of 2022. The British Army will once again be ready to take the advice of the great General Slim: 'Hit the other fellow as quickly as you can, as hard as you can, where it hurts him most, when he is not looking'.

The Guardian

an hour ago

• The Guardian

One million and counting: Russian casualties hit milestone in Ukraine war

Over the past few years, Nikolai has seen the ups and downs of the funeral trade in his native Ufa, a Russian city in the plains west of the Ural mountains. The coronavirus pandemic, which hit Russia with devastating force, brought an unexpected boom to his family-run business, forcing him to hire extra staff almost overnight to cope with the rise in funeral demand. 'But after Covid, there was a real dip; people just stopped dying in such numbers,' Nikolai said. That lull didn't last. Over the past two and a half years, business has picked up again. Part of the reason: Russia's casualties in its continuing invasion of Ukraine. Few regions in Russia have sent as many men to fight and die in Ukraine as the republic of Bashkortostan, whose capital, Ufa, draws recruits from poorer surrounding areas in search of money. 'Sometimes, I check the name of the person we're burying and realise it's someone I know – someone I went to school with or met before,' said Nikolai, who asked that his last name be withheld for fear of government reprisal. Since the start of its war in Ukraine, Russia's military casualties have remained a closely guarded state secret. But look a little closer and the signs of devastation are unmistakable – from the booming funeral industry to the rising number of veterans returning home without arms or legs. In total, between January and April 2025, funeral service providers in the country earned nearly 40bn rubles – (£380m), a 12.7% year-on-year increase, according to Rosstat, Russia's federal state statistics service. This month, Russia's wartime toll of dead and wounded reached a historic milestone. According to the British Ministry of Defence, more than one million Russian troops have been killed or injured since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began on 24 February 2022. The estimate aligns with a recent study by the US-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), which puts Russian military deaths at up to 250,000 and total casualties, including the wounded, at over 950,000. Ukraine has suffered very high losses as well, with between 60,000 and 100,000 personnel killed and total casualties reaching approximately 400,000. While precise wartime casualty figures are notoriously difficult to verify, the independent Russian outlet Mediazona has identified the names of more than 111,000 Russian military personnel killed, using official records, social media obituaries, and images of tombstones. The outlet believes the true death toll is significantly higher. These are staggering figures by any measure of comparison in modern Russian history. In just over three years, Russian fatalities are estimated to be five times higher than the combined death toll from all Soviet and Russian wars between the end of the second world war and the start of the full-scale invasion in 2022. The war in Ukraine has proved far deadlier for the Kremlin than other recent conflicts: Russia's losses are roughly 15 times greater than those suffered during the Soviet Union's decade-long war in Afghanistan, and 10 times higher than in Russia's 13-year war in Chechnya. And it's not just the dead returning in caskets – soldiers with amputated limbs and serious injuries are also coming home, driving a sharp rise in the production of prosthetic limbs. 'We doubled the number of our clients one year into the conflict and since then it has been a steady 10% increase annually,' said Igor Vinogradov, the director of a mid-sized prosthetics and orthopaedics firm in northern Russia. 'By far, the majority are war veterans,' Vinogradov said, adding that his company relies on imported prosthetic arms and legs from Germany, as well as some homegrown technology. Data from Russia's labour ministry shows the state subsidised the provision of 152,500 prosthetic limbs to people with disabilities in 2024. That marks a 53% increase on the previous year, when 99,200 artificial arms and legs were distributed – itself a sharp rise from 64,800 in 2022. 'The market has exploded,' said a prosthetics manufacturer in Moscow, who asked not to be named. Russia's losses in Ukraine are likely to further accelerate the country's deepening demographic crisis. The invasion has already caused tens of thousands of young Russians to emigrate to the west and has claimed the lives of many others who might have formed the backbone of the workforce for decades to come. The toll compounds the damage from the Covid-19 pandemic, which caused more than a million excess deaths and left lasting scars on Russia's population. Alexander Raksha, an independent demographer and former analyst at Rostat, estimates average male life expectancy has fallen from 68 to 66 since the start of the full-scale invasion. He said the government has made it harder to track the long-term demographic consequences of the ongoing fighting. 'Russia stopped publishing all mortality and life expectancy data for its male population from 2024 onwards,' Raksha said. Russian anti-war activists, inside and outside the country, initially believed the rising number of returning bodies would spark public protests. But Russia's expansive propaganda campaign has portrayed the fallen as heroes, with Vladimir Putin repeatedly touting the idea that dying on the frontlines is more meaningful than enduring a bleak existence in the country's impoverished towns. Responding to a grieving mother during a televised meeting in late 2022, he said: 'Some people die in road accidents, others from alcohol – when they die, it's unclear how. But your son lived, do you understand? He fulfilled his purpose.' Instead of widespread public discontent, the opposite now appears to be true: many Russians who have lost relatives are urging the Kremlin to press on, convinced that the losses must be justified. Among them is Dmitry Shkrebets, whose son, Yegor, was one of more than three dozen sailors killed when Ukraine struck Russia's Black Sea flagship, the Moskva, in 2022. Shkrebets now runs a blog in which he routinely urges Russia to step up its attacks on Ukraine. 'Any compromise with Ukraine would be a betrayal of the country. A betrayal of the blood our sons have shed,' Shkrebets said. 'We need to see this through to the end,' he said, adding that he hoped Russia would soon launch an offensive on the Ukrainian cities of Odesa and Mykolaiv. To maintain support among grieving families, the Kremlin has also resorted to offering generous payouts to the relatives of the dead and wounded. According to a study by the Re:Russia thinkthank, the government allocated at least 1.2tn rubles (about $15.3bn) in 2024 alone for compensation to the families of the dead and injured. The sheer scale of the losses – and the money involved – has given rise to dedicated message boards and online discussion groups, where relatives of the deceased exchange advice on how to access death benefits, or vent their frustrations about long-absent family members suddenly reappearing to claim a share of the compensation. 'My husband signed the contract a few days before we got married. He died shortly after. Now his children from a previous marriage are suing me to take away the death payouts … Please help!' read one recent post on VKontakte, Russia's equivalent of Facebook. For now, Moscow appears able to replenish its manpower for the war, allowing it to slowly advance and capture more territory in Ukraine despite the human cost. Military recruitment continues to surge across many regions, with signing bonuses for contracts to join the war reaching record highs – up to 2m rubles (about $25,000). Janis Kluge, a researcher on the Russian economy at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, estimates Russia recruited 89,601 men between January and March 2025, based on federal spending on sign-up bonuses. 'This represents a 22% increase over the same period last year,' Kluge said. Nikolai, the funeral home director, said he's closely watching the ongoing peace talks between Russia and Ukraine to determine his next business move. 'Of course, I hope this ends soon and the deaths stop,' he said, noting with disappointment the talks appear to have stalled. 'It just feels wrong to be making money off young guys dying.'

The Independent

2 hours ago

• The Independent

Takeaways from AP report on accusation that Wagner commits war crimes by promoting atrocities

Editor's Note: This story contains graphic images and descriptions of atrocities. The International Criminal Court has been asked to review a confidential legal brief asserting that the Russia-linked Wagner Group has committed war crimes by spreading images of apparent atrocities in West Africa on social media, including ones alluding to cannibalism. The brief was seen exclusively by The Associated Press. Violence in the Sahel, an arid belt of land south of the Sahara Desert, has reached record levels as military governments battle extremist groups linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group. Last year, it became the deadliest place on earth for extremism, with half of the world's nearly 8,000 victims killed across the territory, according to yearly data compiled by the Institute for Economics and Peace. While the United States and other Western powers withdraw from the region, Russia has taken advantage, expanding military cooperation with several African nations via Wagner, the private security company closely linked to Russia's intelligence and military. Observers say the new approach has led to the kind of atrocities and dehumanization not seen in the region for decades. Social media offers a window into the alleged horrors that often occur in remote areas with little or no oversight from governments or outside observers. Experts say the images, while difficult to verify, could serve as evidence of war crimes. The confidential brief to the ICC goes further, arguing that the act of circulating the images on social media could constitute a war crime, too. It is the first such argument made to the international court. Here are some takeaways from AP's report on the issue. Videos which humiliate and dehumanize The brief, along with AP reporting, shows that a network of social media channels, likely administrated by current or former Wagner members, has reposted content that the channels say are from Wagner fighters. They promote videos and photos appearing to show abuses by armed, uniformed men, often accompanied by mocking or dehumanizing language. In the videos, men in military uniform are shown butchering corpses of what appear to be civilians with machetes, hacking out organs and posing with severed limbs. One fighter says he is about to eat someone's liver. Another says he is trying to remove their heart. While administrators of the channels are anonymous, open source analysts believe they are current or former Wagner fighters based on the content as well as graphics used, including in some cases Wagner's logo. AP analysis of the videos confirms the body parts shown are genuine, as well as the military uniforms. The videos and photos, in a mix of French and local languages, aim to humiliate and threaten those considered the enemies of Wagner and its local military allies, along with civilian populations whose youth face pressure to join extremist groups. But experts say it often has the opposite effect, prompting reprisal attacks and recruitment into the ranks of jihadis. The governments of Mali and Burkina Faso earlier condemned the graphic videos and said they would look into them, but it is not clear whether anyone in them has been identified. Russia's presence continues The U.S. State Department has described Wagner, a network of mercenaries and businesses, as 'a transnational criminal organization.' Wagner did not respond to AP questions about the videos. Since Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin was killed in a plane crash in 2023, Moscow has been developing a new organization, the Africa Corps, as a rival force under direct command of Russian authorities. Earlier this month, Wagner announced its withdrawal from Mali, declaring 'mission accomplished' in a Telegram post. In a separate Telegram post, Africa Corps said it is staying. In Mali, about 2,000 Russian mercenaries are fighting alongside the country's armed forces, according to U.S. officials. It is unclear how many have been with Wagner or are with the Africa Corps. Outrages on personal dignity Under the Rome Statute that created the ICC, the violation of personal dignity, mainly through humiliating and degrading treatment, constitutes a war crime. Legal experts from UC Berkeley, who submitted the brief to the ICC last year, argue that such treatment could include Wagner's alleged weaponization of social media. The brief asks the ICC to investigate individuals with Wagner and the governments of Mali and Russia for alleged abuses in northern and central Mali between December 2021 and July 2024, including extrajudicial killings, torture, mutilation and cannibalism. It also asks the court to investigate crimes 'committed through the internet, which are inextricably linked to the physical crimes and add a new dimension of harm to an extended group of victims.' The ICC told the AP it could not comment on the brief but said it was aware of 'various reports of alleged massive human rights violations in other parts of Mali,' adding that it 'follows closely the situation.' Its Office of the Prosecutor said investigations have focused on alleged war crimes committed since January 2012, when insurgents seized communities in Mali's northern regions of Gao, Kidal and Timbuktu. Lack of accountability Human Rights Watch has documented atrocities committed in Mali by Wagner and other armed groups. It says accountability for alleged abuses has been minimal, with the military government reluctant to investigate its armed forces and Russian mercenaries. It has become difficult to obtain detailed information on alleged abuses because of the Malian government's 'relentless assault against the political opposition, civil society groups, the media and peaceful dissent,' said Ilaria Allegrozzi, the group's Sahel researcher. That has worsened after a U.N. peacekeeping mission withdrew from Mali in December 2023 at the government's request. That void, she said, 'has eased the way for further atrocities.'