Ukraine-Russia war latest: Putin ‘no longer has upper hand’ in war, says ex-CIA chiefnewsline24

Russia no longer has the “upper hand” in the war against Ukraine, former CIA director David Petraeus said.

“I think what’s remarkable is that Russia no longer has the upper hand,” Petraeus said in an interview with CBS News.

“Russia heavily outnumbers Ukraine. It outguns Ukraine. It has an economy 10 or 12 times the size of Ukraine’s. And yet the Ukrainian forces right now are stopping the Russians cold on the front lines,” he said.

Petraeus also highlighted that on the morning of his interview, more than 400 drones and dozens of missiles were fired, and glide bombs are incoming every night.

A Russian drone strike on ⁠a city bus killed three people and ⁠injured ​12 more ⁠on Tuesday in the ⁠city of ​Nikopol ⁠in the ‌eastern Dnipropetrovsk region, Ukrainian officials ‌said.

“It is a ‌devastating blow at ⁠public transport. It happened during rush hour, just as people were heading to ‌work,” ​interior minister Ihor ‌Klymenko ⁠said on ⁠the Telegram app.

Ukrainian forces deployed British drones to bring down a Russia-controlled bridge in the Kherson part of the country in a massive operation, senior military officials said, the Telegraph has reported.

The attack, carried out early last year using a Malloy T-150 heavy-lift drone, dealt a massive blow to Russia’s ability to carry out a military offensive across the river’s right bank in Kherson, the report added.

This is the first time a drone-led operation resulted in destroying a major bridge, according to the military officials.

“Bridges are relatively easy to destroy from underneath,” Colonel Oleksii Bulakhov, the regiment’s commander said, adding that their “engineering makes them extremely robust from the outside”.

Russian satellites have made dozens of detailed imagery surveys of military facilities and critical sites across the Middle East to help Iran strike US forces and other targets, according to a Ukrainian intelligence assessment.

The conclusions, reviewed by Reuters, also found that Russian and Iranian hackers were collaborating in the cyber domain. They represent the most detailed account yet of how Russia has provided secret support ⁠to Iran since Israel and the US launched their assault on 28 February.

Russian satellites, the undated assessment said, made at least 24 surveys of areas in 11 Middle Eastern countries from 21 March to 31 March, covering 46 “objects”, including US and other military bases and sites including airports and oil fields.

Within days of being surveyed, military bases and headquarters were targeted by Iranian ballistic missiles and drones, the assessment said, in what it described as a clear pattern.

A Western military source and a separate regional security source told Reuters that their intelligence also indicated intense Russian satellite ⁠activity in the region and said that imagery had been shared with Iran.

Nine surveys covered parts ​of ⁠Saudi Arabia, including five over the King Khalid Military City near Hafar Al-Batin, in what appeared to be an effort to locate elements of the US-made THAAD air defence system, the Ukrainian assessment said.

Areas of Turkey, Jordan, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates also came under satellite surveillance twice, while ⁠places in Israel, Qatar, Iraq, Bahrain and Naval Support Facility Diego Garcia did once, it said. In an emerging trend, the assessment added, Russian satellites were actively ​surveying the Strait ⁠of Hormuz, a vital waterway for a fifth of global oil ‌and LNG flows where Iran has imposed a de facto blockade to all but “non-hostile vessels”.

Rescue workers completed ​search operations five days after a large fire at a Russian petrochemical plant and ⁠the final death toll stood at 12, the company owning the plant said in the early hours today.

Sibur, which ​owns the ⁠sprawling Nizhnekamskneftekhim plant in central Russia’s Tatarstan region, ⁠offered condolences and posted the names ​of ⁠the 12 ‌dead, including a firefighter, on Telegram. Dozens of people were injured.

In ‌the aftermath of ‌the accident in the town of Nizhnekamsk, Sibur said a gas ⁠mixture had exploded following a loss of pressure at a facility producing synthetic rubber and plastics. It said it was not clear what had caused the ‌gas to ignite.

Russia’s ​emergencies ministry said an ‌aircraft had been dispatched ⁠from Moscow to Nizhnekamsk, ⁠about 1,000km (620 miles) to the ‌east to ​bring the ‌injured to the ​capital for treatment.

Earlier this year, Ukraine’s defence minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, admitted that Ukraine has 2 million draft-dodgers and hundreds of thousands more who are absent without leave (awol).

All 41 miners who were trapped ⁠underground after Ukraine struck the Bilorechenska coal mine in the Russian-controlled Luhansk ⁠region have ​been evacuated ⁠and are safe, a Russian-installed ⁠official said.

Leonid Pasechnik, ​the ⁠Moscow-appointed head ‌of the region, said power had been restored to ‌the mine and ‌the workers brought to the surface.

He added none ⁠of the miners was injured and that no one required medical assistance.

Earlier, Pasechnik said a Ukrainian strike had damaged ‌a power substation supplying ​the mine, leaving ‌workers trapped underground ⁠while rescue operations ⁠were under way.

Kyiv has ‌not ​commented on ‌the incident.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has said he stood by a proposal made to Russia for a ceasefire contingent on Moscow halting all attacks on energy infrastructure.

Zelensky ⁠said in his nightly video address that the proposal had been conveyed to Moscow through the US. He also said work was continuing with US negotiators ⁠on security guarantees, which he ​called ⁠the key to lasting peace.

“If Russia is ready to stop strikes on our ⁠energy infrastructure, we will be ready to respond ​in ⁠kind,” he said. “This proposal ‌has been conveyed to the Russian side through the Americans.”

Zelensky offered last week to observe a ‌ceasefire under similar conditions for Easter – ‌in the Orthodox faith dominant in both Russia and Ukraine Easter falls on this coming Sunday.

But following new ⁠Russian attacks, he then said Russia had responded to the proposal by deploying Iranian-designed Shahed drones.

Moscow reacted coolly to Zelensky’s proposal last week, saying it favoured an overall peace deal instead.

In his remarks last night, after an overnight attack on ‌the Black Sea port of Odesa killed three ​people, Zelensky said Russia appeared unwilling to ‌agree to an Easter ⁠ceasefire.

“We have repeatedly proposed to Russia ⁠a ceasefire at least for Easter, a special time of ‌the year,” he ​said. “But for them, all times ‌are the same. Nothing ​is sacred.”

Russia said Ukrainian drones attacked the Caspian Pipeline Consortium’s Black Sea terminal, which handles 1.5 per cent of global oil supply, damaging ⁠the single point mooring (SPM), loading infrastructure and four vast storage tanks.

Separately, the Ukrainian military said it had struck oil loading facilities at the nearby Sheskharis oil terminal in Novorossiysk.

The strikes could be among the most significant on Russia’s Black Sea export facilities during the more than four-year-old war with Ukraine, which in ⁠the past month has seen Ukraine step up ​attacks ⁠on Russia’s energy infrastructure.

Russia’s defence ministry said Ukraine had attacked the CPC’s loading ​facilities ⁠with air drones. The CPC’s Yuzhnaya Ozereevka ‌terminal exports oil from Kazakhstan and its shareholders include Chevron and Exxon Mobil.