al jazeeraBy David Child and Faras Ghani- The Commander of the Ukrainian Ground Forces says the situation around Bakhmut is “extremely tense”.
- US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is meeting officials from all five former Soviet republics.
- Moscow has accused the United States of preparing a “toxic chemicals” provocation in Ukraine.
- Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, a close ally of Russian leader Vladimir Putin, is due in Beijing to begin a three-day state visit.
Hacking attack prompts Russian regional broadcasters to issue air alert warnings
A hacking attack caused some Russian regional broadcasters to put out a false warning on Tuesday urging people to take shelter from an incoming missile attack, the country’s emergencies ministry has said.
“As a result of the hacking of servers of radio stations and TV channels, in some regions of the country information about the announcement of an air alert was broadcast,” the ministry said in a statement.
“This information is false and does not correspond to reality,” it added.
Among the regions where the fake messages were broadcast was Crimea, the peninsula Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014, the state-run RIA Novosti news agency reported.
Radio stations played a loud siren sound with a message stating: “Attention, attention. An air alert is being issued. Everybody head to shelters now. Attention, attention. Missile threat.”
Several radio stations put out similar warnings last week, and websites run by Russia’s state TV conglomerate went down during President Vladimir Putin’s annual state-of-the-nation address to Russian lawmakers on February 21 in what state media said was a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack.
Russia tries to encircle Bakhmut amid mud of Ukraine’s Donetsk
Russian forces have been pressing their offensive around Bakhmut, trying to encircle the small mining city, as rain and an early spring thaw turn eastern Ukraine’s battlefields to mud, potentially leaving both sides hamstring as they try to secure an edge in the war.
The spring thaw, known as the “rasputitsa”, has a long history of ruining plans by armies to attack across Ukraine and western Russia because it turns roads into rivers and fields into impenetrable bogs.
Russians pushing on Bakhmut from ‘north, south and east’: AJ correspondent
Al Jazeera’s Hoda Abdel-Hamid, reporting from Kyiv, says Ukrainian forces are facing a “very difficult” situation in the eastern city of Bakhmut.
“As we understand, the situation now is that Russian forces, led by the paramilitary Wagner Group, have been pushing from the north, south and east on Bakhmut,” Abdel-Hamid said.
“The Ukrainian forces are still holding their ground, albeit it is precarious ground, in the western part of the city,” she added.
“It would be significant if indeed the Russians do take control of Bakhmut on several levels – because it will give Russia a military victory that it hasn’t had in a very long time … and would also pave the way for Russia to reach nearby Slovyansk and Kramatorsk.”
Mr.BadGuy
Publisher
These soldiers are from a country whose president is a Jew Zelensky. Orthodox churches are also being destroyed in this country. Synagogues are not touched. Surprisingly, it turns out that Jews get along well with the Bandera Nazis.