Putin marks 70th as Ukraine pressures rise

Nandita Bose and Pavel Polityuk | October 8, 2022

Russian President Vladimir Putin has marked his 70th birthday with little fanfare and a decree targeting a crucial Western energy investment, as signs grow that key parts of his Ukraine invasion are unravelling.

News programs made only glancing references to Friday’s event and celebrations were low-key, in contrast to just a week ago, when Putin held a huge concert on Red Square to proclaim the annexation of nearly a fifth of Ukrainian land.

On the world stage, in a clear repudiation of Putin’s record, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Russia’s most prominent human rights group, Memorial, which Moscow shut down at the end of 2021.

A Ukrainian human rights group and a jailed campaigner against abuses by the pro-Russian government in Belarus also shared the award.

Ukrainian authorities found a mass grave in the eastern town of Lyman, recently retaken from Russian forces, regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said in an online post. News agency Ukrinform cited a police official saying it held 180 bodies.

Reuters could not independently confirm the account.

In his latest salvo at Western businesses, Putin signed a decree creating a new operator for Exxon Mobil Corp’s largest investment in Russia, the Sakhalin-1 oil and gas project.

Partners include Rosneft, India’s ONGC Videsh and Japan’s SODECO.

A fuel tank was on fire on the Kerch bridge in Crimea early on Saturday, Russia’s RIA state news agency said, while Ukraine’s media reported an explosion.

Traffic was suspended on the road-and-rail bridge, opened in 2018 and designed to link Crimea into Russia’s transport network.

“A fuel tank is on fire on one of the sections of the Crimean bridge,” the agency said, citing a regional official, but without stating the cause.

“The shipping arches are not damaged.”

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, launched on February 24, has killed thousands, displaced millions, pulverised cities and damaged the global economy.

But Moscow has faced setbacks since abandoning an early advance on the capital, Kyiv. 

Ukrainian forces have advanced swiftly since breaking through the Russian front in the northeast at the start of September, and in the south this week.

In video remarks, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said his forces’ latest offensive had liberated 2434 sq km and 96 settlements in the country’s east.

Reuters could not independently confirm the figures.

Reports of Russia’s battlefield failures have provoked unusual public recrimination from Kremlin allies and regular reshuffles in the top brass.

Russian news site RBC said Moscow had sacked the commander of its eastern military district, but gave no details of the reasons, while the army and the Kremlin offered no immediate comment.

That followed a comment a day earlier by a Russian-installed leader in occupied Ukrainian territory suggesting that Putin’s defence minister should have shot himself.

Late on Thursday, US President Joe Biden said the prospect of defeat could make Putin desperate enough to use nuclear weapons, the biggest risk since 1962’s Cuban missile crisis during the Cold War.

“We have not faced the prospect of Armageddon since (President John F) Kennedy and the Cuban missile crisis,” Biden said in New York.

The White House said it had no new intelligence on Russia’s nuclear threats, and that Biden’s comments were meant to underline how seriously he took the situation.