Russia-Ukraine live updates: Cities say attacks persist despite vow; U.S. official says Putin feels misled by military

A batch of 100 armed “kamikaze” drones that crash into targets is on its way to Ukraine, but the top U.S. commander in Europe predicts the Ukrainian military will need more very soon.

Once the Ukrainian military receives the Switchblade drones, there will probably “be an immediate request for more,” Gen. Tod D. Wolters, NATO’s supreme allied commander Europe, told the House Armed Services Committee in testimony Wednesday.

The demand underscores the dynamic needs of Ukrainian troops, who are outgunned by the larger Russian military but have degraded that advantage with antitank launchers and drones, experts have said.

The Switchblade is a single-use drone that can be launched from a tube and guided to a target. The smaller version can be carried in a backpack and launched against troops in the open. A larger variant carries more explosives and can target armored vehicles. Both versions are much cheaper and smaller than other kinds of drones, such as the Predator.

Switchblade drones were part of a $800 million U.S. aid package authorized earlier this month. A new request for aid was made Tuesday, Celeste Wallander, assistant defense secretary for international security affairs, told lawmakers at the hearing.

Ambushed convoys and broken-down tanks. Generals killed close to the front. Long-expired rations. Frostbite.

Russia’s military was built for quick, overwhelming firepower, experts say, but its weakness is logistics. And on the roads of Ukraine a month after the first invasion, that weakness is showing.

Many analysts say the Russians assumed they would quickly capture the capital city of Kyiv and force President Volodymyr Zelensky out of power. Whatever the strategy, that outcome did not happen, and Russia has been bedeviled by an inability to keep supplies flowing to troops in a longer ground war.

After a surprisingly fierce Ukrainian resistance, “we can suspect that [Russians] did not properly organize the logistics necessary for an effective Plan B, which was to have an actual, serious fight in what is the largest country in Europe outside of Russia,” said Michael Kofman, director of Russia studies at CNA, a Virginia-based think tank.

The head of the Russian delegation of peace negotiators reiterated Wednesday Russia’s willingness to continue to work on an agreement, after attacks around Ukrainian cities that dashed hopes of a near end to the bloody war.

“Yesterday, for the first time, the Ukrainian side provided … its readiness to fulfill a number of important conditions for building normal and, I hope, good neighborly relations with Russia in the future,” Vladimir Medinsky said in a televised statement.

His statement came after attacks were reported around Kyiv and Chernihiv overnight, despite Russia’s promise to “drastically reduce” attacks in both areas, in negotiations held in Istanbul on Tuesday. Kyiv officials accused Russia of continued missile attacks and shelling, pouring cold water on the chances of a breakthrough.

Medinsky outlined some of Ukraine’s commitments, some of which Russia said they had demanded “for years,” including Ukraine’s refusal to never join NATO, renunciation of nuclear weapons, a refusal to host foreign military bases and military contingents, and to conduct military exercises only with the consent of guarantor states, including Russia.

These set of principles, Medinsky said, gave way to a “possible future agreement,” he added.

But Russian officials sent mixed messages Wednesday, with the Kremlin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, stating earlier that the talks held in Turkey had not produced anything “very promising.”

RIGA, Latvia — The pro-Russian soldiers from the separatist-controlled area of Donbas arrived one day in mid-March.

“They just walked into our shelter and said that women and children must leave it,” recounted a young woman who had been hiding with her family in a suburb of the heavily shelled Ukrainian port city of Mariupol. “We asked if it was possible to stay at all, and they said no, that this is the order. We did not know where they were taking us.”

Most of the men were ordered to stay behind, including those with disabilities, she said. Only those few men who had to take care of big families with small children could leave. The soldiers moved a group of about 90 people to a local school, which still had some of its walls intact, and the next morning put them all on buses bound for an unknown destination.

ALGIERS — U.S. intelligence believes that Russian President Vladimir Putin feels misled by the Russian military, a U.S. official said in a statement Wednesday, describing “persistent tension” between Putin and the Russian Defense Ministry’s leadership.

“Putin didn’t even know his military was using and losing conscripts in Ukraine, showing a clear breakdown in the flow of accurate information to the Russian President,” the U.S. official said in the statement, speaking on the condition of anonymity under rules set by the Biden administration.

“We believe that Putin is being misinformed by his advisers about how badly the Russian military is performing and how the Russian economy is being crippled by sanctions, because his senior advisers are too afraid to tell him the truth,” the U.S. official added.

Asked about those comments during a briefing in Algeria, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said, “One of the Achilles’ heels of autocracies is that we don’t have people in those systems who speak truth to power or have the ability to speak truth to power. And I think that is something that we’re seeing in Russia.”

Blinken was speaking at the U.S. Embassy in Algiers on his four-country swing through Eastern Europe, the Middle East and North Africa.

In the lead-up to Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine, U.S. intelligence emphasized that Putin was being misled by his close advisers about the feasibility of a multi-front invasion of Ukraine.

That information is part of what led U.S. officials to be so concerned about the possibility of an invasion, because the Biden administration came to believe that Putin was not receiving a full picture of how difficult such a broad military operation would be.

― Sonne reported from Washington

The fierce Ukrainian resistance is defying the battlefield odds, turning the tide against a superior Russian force. Observers are whispering the once unthinkable — that Ukraine might win. But what would victory look like? Even in triumph, would Ukraine emerge whole?

The risk of the Kremlin achieving its apparent initial objective — the decapitation of the Ukrainian government and the complete subjugation of its neighbor — seems to be receding. Demoralized and wounded, the Russians are falling back from the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv. The Kremlin’s Plan B, as suggested by its own generals, still appears to be some form of partition — or keeping parts of Ukraine, if not the entire nation, under long-term Russian control.

But how much? Gen. Kyrylo Budanov, Ukraine’s chief of defense intelligence, warned last weekend that Moscow “will try to pull the occupied territories into a single quasi-state structure and pit it against independent Ukraine.” He compared the Russian endgame to the splitting of the Korean Peninsula in the 1950s.

As the dust settles on the first face-to-face peace talks between Russian and Ukrainian officials in Istanbul, both camps offered mixed reviews on Wednesday.

“They definitely moved the negotiations forward,” Ukraine’s Ihor Zhovkva, deputy chief of staff to President Volodymyr Zelensky, said of the peace talks.

“This was the first time that, instead of giving its own ultimatums and red lines, the Russian side listened to Ukrainian positions,” he told BBC Radio on Wednesday. He also said Ukraine is still seeking security guarantees in a legally binding treaty to end the war and “stop Russian aggression happening in future.”

“They took into consideration our proposals,” he said. “Hopefully, when they come back with their proposals, we will be moving forward to the conclusion of this international treaty.”

However, Zhovkva insisted that Ukraine would not trade an “inch” of its eastern territory or ever consider it Russian land. “This is an issue that is not even discussable,” he said. But he conceded that to achieve an immediate cease-fire, people were more important than land.

On the Russian side, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Wednesday that an agreement is not close. “So far, we cannot say anything very promising, any breakthroughs. There’s still a long, long way to go,” he told reporters.

He said it was “positive” that the Ukrainian side has “begun to formulate concretely and put down on paper what it proposes.” However, few details of the talks would be made public by Moscow, Peskov said. “We believe that negotiations should proceed in silence,” he added.

Peskov ruled out any movement on Crimea, which he said is “part of the Russian Federation” and could not be discussed. Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, sparking international condemnation.

Some pro-Kremlin groups called for Russia to fight to the end and take the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv.

“There should be no place for emotions. Negotiations are handled by professionals. We must trust them,” Peskov said. “The position of the Russian side is well known. It is logical and has a solid foundation, and this position has not changed. We keep working, but let’s leave our emotions to our enemies.”

Ukrainian authorities said Wednesday that attacks continued overnight around Chernihiv and Kyiv, despite Russia’s pledge during Tuesday’s peace talks in Turkey to “drastically reduce” attacks in both areas, as Russia’s invasion nears the five-week mark.