Poland’s President Addresses Ukraine’s Parliament, Calls for Removal of All Russian Troops
By Trofimov & Hinshaw, May 22, 2022, WSJ
Duda’s visit to Kyiv was his second since the war began. Duda—who told The Wall St. Journal in an interview this month that he speaks by phone nearly every day to Zelensky—is currently looking to help Ukraine move its grain to international markets,
circumventing Russia’s naval chokehold in the Black Sea. Next month, Duda is traveling to Egypt, the world’s largest wheat importer, to help coordinate those shipments.
Duda met with Zelensky to discuss how to get Ukraine’s grain harvest out of the country via ports and rail lines in Poland and its neighbors.
Warehouses in Ukraine are filled with wheat and other grain that the country, one of the world’s largest exporters, has been unable to ship since February. Ukraine also relies on shipments from and through Poland to alleviate the crippling fuel
shortage that was caused by Russia striking Ukraine’s oil refineries and fuel-storage facilities.
Ukrainian leaders say the country needs a massive increase in weapons supplies to continue resisting Russia, to liberate occupied territories and to try to unblock shipping lanes.
Zelensky said in his late-night address that he is preparing for a week of maximum diplomatic activity as Ukraine looks for ways to increase the volume of its agricultural exports and fuel imports. He will give a virtual speech on Monday to the World
Economic Forum being held in Davos.
Biden on Saturday signed a $40 billion bill that includes an additional $6 billion in direct military aid and $8.8 billion in economic assistance to Ukraine. The Biden administration hasn’t specified what weapons it plans to supply with these new funds,
and hasn’t indicated whether it will accept Ukrainian requests for long-range artillery and missile systems such as the Himars multiple-launch rocket system that Kyiv says it needs most urgently.
Ukrainian resistance forced Putin in late March to abandon plans to seize Kyiv, precipitating a Russian withdrawal from northern Ukraine. In this new phase of the war, Russia’s declared objective was to capture the entirety of the eastern Donetsk and
Luhansk regions, collectively known as Donbas. Putin in February recognized the independence of the Russian-controlled statelets, known as the Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics, and no longer considers Donbas part of Ukraine.
In addition to about three-quarters of Donbas, Russia currently controls parts of the Kharkiv region, where its forces are retreating under Ukrainian counterattacks, and a swath of southern Ukraine’s Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions. Signs of Ukrainian
resistance are growing in these occupied areas, where Russia has replaced local administrations with collaborators and is introducing its ruble as the currency instead of the Ukrainian hryvnia.
In Enerhodar, a city in the Zaporizhzhia region that is home to Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, unknown assailants Sunday placed an explosive device at the residence of the Russian-appointed mayor, Andriy Shevchyk, according to Russian and
Ukrainian reports. Enerhodar’s legitimately elected mayor, Dmytro Orlov, said in a social-media post that Shevchyk and his bodyguards were injured and hospitalized.
Russia’s broader effort to capture the entirety of Donbas has stalled after more than a month of fighting. Moscow’s current offensive focuses on a much narrower salient that includes Severodonetsk, the administrative center of Ukrainian-controlled
Luhansk region, and nearby towns. Russia’s Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Saturday that Russia is close to completing the “liberation” of the Luhansk region.
Russia’s initial effort to cut the only road connecting Severodonetsk to the rest of government-controlled Donbas failed two weeks ago, after Ukrainian forces destroyed Russian pontoon bridging attempts. Russia lost some 90 tanks and other armored
vehicles in that attempt, according to drone footage, and has acknowledged the death of its 12th Engineers Brigade commander, among other casualties.
Russian forces were more successful in recent days as they moved toward the road from the south, developing an offensive from the town of Popasna, which Moscow seized early this month. On Saturday, a Russian Tulpan self-propelled heavy mortar destroyed
the main bridge connecting Severodonetsk to government-controlled areas, making the defense of the embattled city even more difficult.
Russian TV filmed the Tulpan, a relatively rare vehicle, firing 220 mm rounds from the town of Rubizhne near Severodonetsk. Ukrainian forces geolocated the position from the footage and destroyed the vehicle hours later, said Ukraine’s Luhansk
administration chief, Serhiy Haidai. Open-source intelligence analysts located drone footage of the strike on the Tulpan to within 200 meters of the footage broadcast on Russian TV.
Russia said it had taken complete control of the southeastern port city of Mariupol on Saturday after the surrender of the last remaining Ukrainian forces there. Zelensky described the soldiers and marines who had defended Mariupol through a monthslong
siege as national heroes. He said the military had told them to get out and save their lives.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said a final group of 531 Ukrainian fighters had been evacuated from bunkers under the sprawling Azovstal steel plant to Russian-controlled territory, bringing the total number of prisoners taken from the plant to 2,439.
“The underground facilities of the enterprise, where the militants were hiding, came under the full control of the Russian armed forces,” the ministry said.
By holding out for weeks in ever-smaller pockets, Ukrainian defenders tied up large numbers of Russian troops, preventing their deployment elsewhere.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/polish-leader-returns-to-ukraine-backing-eu-bid-and-efforts-to-restart-exports-11653217429
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