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

Rachel Pannett contributed to this report.

About 1,000 Russian military mercenaries, part of a group accused of human rights abuses, were sent to a part of Eastern Ukraine, a sign of the Kremlin’s shifting priorities amid heavy fighting and losses, the Pentagon said.

Wagner Group mercenaries were deployed to the Donbas region, an area partially controlled by separatist forces supported by Russia, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said, confirming intelligence shared by Britain’s Defense Ministry this week. The news comes after Russia has asserted that its “main goal” is “the liberation of Donbas.”

Kirby said the move is not necessarily surprising given the role the mercenaries had in the region since Russia backed separatists in 2014.

“This is an area where the Wagner Group is experienced so it’s not a surprise,” Kirby said.

“We think it’s a reflection of the very tough fighting that continues to go on there,” he added.

The company of Russian mercenaries, which has been sent to Syria and war-torn African countries, has a murky relationship with the Kremlin. Mercenaries are banned by Russia, but they have continued to serve a purpose, offering Russia a fighting force that lends plausible deniability to the government. The United Nations has accused the group of human rights violations, including forcibly displacing citizens, torturing prisoners and committing mass summary executions.

Michelle Bachelet, the top United Nations human rights official, said Wednesday that Russia may have committed war crimes in Ukraine, in her strongest condemnation of the conflict. She described the devastation and impact the conflict has had on civilians.

Bachelet said that Russia’s “indiscriminate attacks” are prohibited under international humanitarian law and “may amount to war crimes,” adding that her investigators have received “credible” allegations that Russian forces have used cluster munitions in population areas at least 24 times.

U.N. investigators are also looking into allegations that Ukraine also used such weapons.

“The hostilities must stop, without delay,” Bachelet said Wednesday, addressing the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva and urging Russia to “immediately act to withdraw its troops from Ukrainian territory,” she added.

Hospitals, schools, water supplies and administrative buildings have been struck by heavy artillery shells, rockets and airstrikes, causing massive destruction, she said.

The U.N. has verified 77 incidents in which medical facilities were damaged.

“For more than one month now, the entire population of Ukraine has been enduring a living nightmare,” Bachelet said, pointing to the lives of millions of people who have been forced to flee their homes or hide in basements and bomb shelters as their cities are pummeled and destroyed.

The war has killed at least 1,189 civilians and injured at least 1,901, according to the U.N. Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine.

But Bachelet added, “The actual figures are likely far higher.”

About 20 percent of the Russian forces around Kyiv, including those who commandeered the Chernobyl nuclear site, are in various stages of moving north, away from the capital, with some troops crossing into Belarus, the Pentagon said Wednesday.

But the Defense Department does not consider this movement proof positive that the Russian government is serious about its vow to let up the attacks on major cities, in what Moscow characterized earlier this week as a sign of good faith in ongoing negotiations.

The Pentagon’s current assessment is that Russia intends to “refit these troops, resupply them, and probably employ them elsewhere in Ukraine,” spokesman John Kirby told reporters, indicating the Donbas region in Ukraine’s east has emerged as Russia’s chief priority as its forces have met intense resistance around several major cities.

If the Moscow government was serious about its attempts to de-escalate, “they should send them home,” Kirby said. “But that’s not what they’re doing. At least not yet.”

Small groups of Russian troops near the northern city of Chernihiv and northeastern city of Sumy also have begun heading north, away from those cities, Kirby said. Nevertheless, Kirby said, the Russian military continues to conduct airstrikes in Kyiv.

A senior U.S. defense official, speaking on the condition of anonymity under terms established by the Pentagon, affirmed Wednesday that Russian troops had begun to leave Chernobyl, too, one of the first objectives seized in late February. The development was first reported by Agence France-Presse.

Chernobyl was the scene in 1986 of the world’s worst nuclear disaster, dispersing a radioactive cloud over parts of Europe and leaving contaminated soil at the site that remains a hazard.

Stocks edged lower Wednesday and oil prices rebounded amid supply worries.

The Dow Jones industrial average dropped 65 points, or almost 0.2 percent by market close. The broader S&P 500 index fell 29 points for a loss of 0.6 percent, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq dropped 177 points for a loss of 1.2 percent.

Oil prices climbed Wednesday after two days of declines that briefly sent crude below $100 per barrel. West Texas Intermediate crude, the U.S. benchmark, climbed about 3 percent to push above $107 per barrel. The international benchmark, Brent crude, fell 0.5 percent to $110.

Oil prices have spiked since Russia invaded its neighbor — swelling past $130 a barrel in early March. That’s had a significant effect on consumers: As of Wednesday, the U.S. average for a gallon of fuel was nearly $4.24, according to data from AAA. That’s 63 cents higher than last month and $1.37 more than a year ago.

Investors are worried about weaker demand in China, which recently initiated lockdowns to contain a coronavirus resurgence, including in the nation’s financial hub of Shanghai.

Poland, meanwhile, announced plans Wednesday to end its dependence on Russian fossil fuels, including by halting oil imports by year’s end and cutting itself off from Russian coal as soon as April. The issue has divided the European Union, whose member states buy a quarter of their oil and more than 40 percent of their gas from Russian suppliers.

ALGIERS — U.S. intelligence thinks 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.

At the Pentagon on Wednesday, spokesman John Kirby called it “discomforting” that Putin “may not fully understand the degree to which his forces are failing” thus far in Ukraine.

“It’s his military,” Kirby said. “It’s his war. He chose it. … And certainly, one outcome of that could be a less-than-faithful effort at negotiating some sort of settlement here. If he’s not fully informed of how poorly he’s doing, then how are his negotiators going to come up with an agreement that is enduring?

“The other thing,” Kirby added, “is, you don’t know how a leader like that is going to react to getting bad news.”

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. Alex Horton in Washington contributed to this report.

White House communications director Kate Bedingfield said Russian President Vladimir Putin’s advisers are not accurately sharing with him just how poorly the war is going and its impact on Russia.

“It is increasingly clear that Putin’s war has been a strategic blunder that has left Russia weaker over the long term and increasingly isolated on the world stage,” she said in Wednesday’s briefing.

The comment was a response to recent U.S. intelligence that Putin is being misled by his military based on “persistent tension” between the leader and the Russian Defense Ministry’s leadership.

U.S. intelligence has long believed that Putin was being misinformed by his advisers before invading Ukraine and was under the impression that a multi-front attack would be more successful than it has been. Bedingfield said publicly speaking about misinformation among Putin’s camp helps to “paint a picture” of the depth of mistakes he and Russia are making.

“Making this information public contributes to an understanding that this has been a strategic failure for Russia,” she said. “Obviously, we will continue to pursue our strategy of imposing severe costs on Russia and trying to strengthen Ukraine on the battlefield and at the negotiating table.”

Russian troops in Ukraine have scrambled to avoid detection and attack by using tree branches and straw, even swaths of carpeting, to conceal tanks and other armored vehicles, in what analysts call a surprising lack of sophistication for such an advanced military and further evidence of how ill-prepared some commanders were for the sustained fight that has unfolded.

Camouflage, whether for personnel or equipment, is a fundamental part of warfighting, even as technological advances such as drones, satellite imagery and infrared scopes have made it harder to hide on modern battlefields.

Yet to some observers who have closely tracked the conflict in Ukraine, Russian forces, despite their military superiority, have exhibited a breathtaking degree of amateurism.