Has war in Ukraine hit a turning point? Here’s what we know.
Putin announced a partial military mobilization aimed at slowing Ukraine’s counteroffensive. Here’s what we know about the state of the conflict.
Just the FAQs, USA TODAY
Former U.S. security contractor Edward Snowden, a fugitive of American authorities who has been living in Russia since 2013, was granted Russian citizenship by President Vladimir Putin on Monday at a time of high tension between the countries because of the war in Ukraine.
Putin signed a decree Monday conferring citizenship to 75 foreign nationals, including Snowden, who is wanted in the U.S. after leaking classified documents detailing government surveillance programs. He received permanent Russian residency in 2020.
Snowden, 39, said at the time that he would retain his American citizenship and hoped one day to return to the U.S., where he was charged in 2013 with violating the Espionage Act. He has denied sharing information with Russian intelligence agents.
Despite his new citizenship, Snowden won’t be eligible to get mobilized into the Russian army because he hasn’t served before, his lawyer, Anatoly Kucherena, told the Interfax news agency.
Recent battlefield losses prompted Putin to call up 300,000 civilians last week while making barely veiled threats of using his nuclear arsenal. The U.S. government responded by saying such a move would have “catastrophic consequences” for Russia.
Other developments:
►Voting wraps up Tuesday in four Russian-occupied regions of Ukraine where the Kremlin has authored referendums to allow annexation of the land. “The Russians are seeing the citizens’ fear and reluctance to vote, so they are forced to take people in,” said Ivan Fedorov, the Ukrainian mayor of the Russia-held city of Melitopol. Ukraine, the U.S. and many other nations have dismissed the referendums as “shams.”
►More than $12 billion in Ukraine-related aid will be included in the stopgap spending bill that would fund the federal government through mid-December, the Associated Press reported.
►Japan’s government on Monday banned the export of materials that may be used for chemical weapons to 21 Russian organizations, including science laboratories, and it expressed concern about Putin’s recent nuclear threats.
►A ship carrying thousands of tons of corn and vegetable oil has arrived in northern Lebanon from Ukraine, the first of its kind since Russia’s invasion started seven months ago.
SIX MONTHS INTO THE WAR: The entire world is losing. A look at where we go from here.
Russia-Ukraine war hits 6 months. Here’s what could happen next.
The Russia-Ukraine war has hit the six-month mark. Is there an end in sight?
Just the FAQs, USA TODAY
Russia’s “partial” military mobilization will generate additional forces but inefficiently and with high domestic social and political costs, a U.S. think tank said Monday in an assessment of the war.
President Vladimir Putin announced the effort last week amid a Ukraine counteroffensive that has pushed his forces off thousands of miles of land it had seized earlier in the 7-month-old war. His defense ministry says the mobilization will add about 300,000 soldiers to the Russian military.
‘CATASTROPHIC CONSEQUENCES FOR RUSSIA’: If Putin uses nukes, the results will be dire, top US official says
The assessment from the Institute for the Study of War says forces generated by the partial mobilization are unlikely to “add substantially to the Russian military’s net combat power in 2022.” Putin must fix “basic flaws” in the Russian military personnel and equipment systems if mobilization is to have any significant impact even in the longer term, the assessment adds.
Putin’s “actions thus far suggest that he is far more concerned with rushing bodies to the battlefield than with addressing these fundamental flaws,” the assessment says.
A man entered a military enlistment office in the Siberian city of Ust-Ilimsk on Monday and shot the military commandant at close range, according to Russian media reports. The man, identified in the media as 25-year-old local resident Ruslan Zinin, said “no one will go to fight” and “we will all go home now.”
“In hot pursuit, the suspect in the crime was detained by the National Guard,” investigators for the Irkutsk region said in a statement.
Local authorities said the military commandant was in intensive care. Zinin reportedly was upset that a call-up notice was served to his best friend who didn’t have any combat experience. Military experience was supposed to be the primary criteria for the draft.
Contributing: The Associated Press
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