May 10, 2022 Russia-Ukraine news

Our live coverage of the war in Ukraine has moved here.

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi speaks to members of the media outside the West Wing of the White House following a meeting with President Joe Biden in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, May 10, 2022. The meeting comes hours before the House plans to vote on a nearly $40 billion aid bill for Ukraine. 

The Democratic-led House of Representatives voted on Tuesday evening to pass a roughly $40 billion bill to deliver aid to Ukraine as it continues to face Russia’s brutal assault.

The measure will next need to be passed by the Senate before it can go to President Joe Biden to be signed into law.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said earlier in the day that after the House approved the package, the Senate “will move swiftly” to get the measure passed and sent to Biden’s desk.

Aid to Ukraine has been a rare bright spot of bipartisanship on Capitol Hill with Democrats and Republicans largely rallying around a call to help the nation as it faces Russian attack.

Lawmakers unveiled the bill text earlier in the day ahead of the House vote. The legislation the House approved provides funding for a long list of priorities, including military and humanitarian assistance.

The bill includes an increase in presidential drawdown authority funding from the $5 billion the Biden administration originally requested to $11 billion. Presidential drawdown authority funding allows the administration to send military equipment and weapons from US stocks. This has been one of the main ways the administration has provided Ukrainians with military equipment quickly over the past 75 days of the conflict in Ukraine.

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WASHINGTON, DC - OCTOBER 21: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) speaks at her weekly press conference at the U.S. Capitol Building on October 21, 2021 in Washington, DC. Speaker Pelosi discussed a range of topics including the status of the negotiations for the Build Back Better agenda. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

Related article House expected to vote Tuesday on $40 billion Ukraine aid bill | CNN Politics

Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines testifies during a Senate Armed Services hearing in Washington, DC, on May 10.

The US intelligence community believes that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine is likely to become “more unpredictable and escalatory” in the coming months, the nation’s director of national intelligence told Congress on Tuesday. 

Here’s what to know about Avril Haines’ remarks:

Bryan Stern, co-founder of Project Dynamo, left, and Kirillo Alexandrov, a 27-year-old American citizen who was held captive by Russians for alleged espionage

CNN’s Erin Burnett spoke with Kirillo Alexandrov, a 27-year-old American citizen who was held captive by Russians for alleged espionage. 

Bryan Stern, co-founder of Project Dynamo, told CNN that Alexandrov and his Ukrainian wife and mother-in-law were taken by Russian forces more than a month ago in Kherson Oblast. They had been held in a building occupied by the Russians and the Russian security services would not allow them to leave until today, Stern said.    

Sitting next to Stern, Alexandrov told Erin, “I feel relieved, nothing more, nothing less, just relieved.”  

When asked how he was treated by Russian soldiers while in captivity he said he is a victim of war crimes. 

Alexandrov did not know negotiations for his release were happening. 

“I was ignorant to basically everything. I was just held in a room for however many days. It just felt like one long day or a lifetime,” he said. 

His wife was assaulted during their time in captivity but she is a strong person and doing much better, he said. 

“She’s great. She’s held me up … she’s got a strong grip, she’s a strong person and she’s doing a lot better,” he said of his wife. 

The US government was aware and helped when they could, Stern told CNN. 

“We were close to getting them out pretty much every day for the last two and a half weeks,” he said. “A lot of people told us this was a losing case, this is not gonna work, this is too hard, he’s an alleged spy in captivity there’s just no way … A lot of people told us it was impossible but we get told that a lot in Dynamo and it always seems to work out.” 

Alexandrov says he’s indebted to Stern for his teams work securing his released. 

“Incredibly brave, honorable, he’s a very good man and I’m not gonna forget any of this ever, I don’t know how I can ever repay him and his team because I would be dead if it wasn’t for him,” Alexandrov said of Stern and his team.

The UN Security Council is expected to hold a public meeting Thursday morning on the humanitarian situation in Ukraine at the request of France and Mexico. The UN Humanitarian Office and officials from UNICEF are expect to brief the council at that time though no vote is scheduled.

The security council is also expected to hold a public meeting on Wednesday afternoon on North Korea’s recent ballistic missile test. The United States has been pushing a new resolution on the issue, as well, but no vote is scheduled at this time. 

The Democratic-led US House of Representatives is expected to vote Tuesday evening on a nearly $40 billion bill to deliver aid to Ukraine as it continues to face Russia’s brutal assault.

Lawmakers unveiled bill text on Tuesday ahead of a planned vote later in the day on the legislation, which is expected to have bipartisan support. Aid to Ukraine has been a rare bright spot of bipartisanship on Capitol Hill with Democrats and Republicans largely rallying around a call to help the nation as it faces Russian attack. 

The legislation the House will vote on provides funding for a long list of priorities, including military and humanitarian assistance. 

Included among the legislation’s allocations for defense is $6 billion to assist Ukrainian military and national security forces, according to a fact sheet released by House Democrats. The expenditure will go toward training, weapons, equipment, logistics and intelligence support as well as other needs. 

There will also be almost $9 billion to help restock US equipment that has been sent to Ukraine. That comes as many lawmakers have raised concerns about replacing US stocks of weapons the US is giving to Ukraine, especially stingers and javelin missiles.

The bill includes an increase in presidential drawdown authority funding from the $5 billion the Biden administration originally requested to $11 billion. Presidential drawdown authority funding allows the administration to send military equipment and weapons from US stocks. This has been one of the main ways the administration has provided Ukrainians with military equipment quickly over the past 75 days of the conflict in Ukraine.

In the Ukraine aid supplemental that was signed into law in mid-March, $3 billion in this kind of funding was included. The Biden administration has been using that funding to provide military assistance to Ukraine in a series of presidential drawdown authority packages. The latest package of $150 million was authorized on May 6. 

The bill also includes $6 billion in Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative funding, another way the Biden administration has been providing Ukraine with military assistance. USAI funding allows the administration to buy weapons from contractors and then provide those weapons to Ukraine, so this method does not draw directly from US stocks.

To address humanitarian needs, the bill will include $900 million to bolster refugee assistance, including housing, trauma support, and English language instruction for Ukrainians fleeing the country.

The measure provides an additional $54 million that will be used for public health and medical support for Ukrainian refugees.

“This package, which builds on the robust support already secured by Congress, will be pivotal in helping Ukraine defend not only its nation but democracy for the world,” Pelosi said.

Senate Democratic leadership has indicated the chamber will take up the bill quickly once it passes the House.

Read more here.

Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said the removal of not only Vladimir Putin, but the entire regime that supports him is necessary to stop Russia’s “warmongering” and predicted the Kremlin leader will become increasingly erratic as his battlefield losses grow in Ukraine.

Speaking to CNN in Washington on Tuesday, Landsbergis also said his nation is seeking a permanent US troop presence, calling it “the biggest deterrent to an aggressor like Russia,” as well as fortified support from NATO at next month’s leaders’ summit in Madrid.

Lithuania has been a strong supporter of Ukraine since the start of the war more than two months ago and has pushed for a robust response to counter Russia, becoming the first country in the European Union to stop Russian gas imports.

Landsbergis said the United States and European allies have thus far been focused on their “tactical approach” to the war in Ukraine, responding to the developments on the ground.

However, the foreign minister stressed that they also need to think strategically about the longer-term — and until Putin and his enablers are gone, the world needs to be prepared that Russia “might war again, and not excluding NATO countries.”

Landsbergis did not suggest the West should take concrete action to remove Putin from power and acknowledged that “it might take quite some time for it to change, because we don’t have any active means to change it. So it needs to change from within.”

Moreover, Landsbergis explained it would not be enough just for Putin to no longer lead Russia because “it’s a whole system.”

“Putin might be sick, he might be pushed aside by his inner circle — who’s probably quite unhappy about the losses in the battlefield — but that doesn’t mean that the regime will change or its attitude, the war mongering attitude will change,” he said, saying it was reminiscent of Nazi Germany.

Landsbergis told CNN that Putin’s Victory Day speech on Monday suggested there may be discontent among that inner circle about Russia’s failures in the war, saying it was “fascinating” that the Russian President “tried to explain” why he started the war in those remarks.

 Read more here.

Ukraine’s fierce resistance to the Russian invasion has resonated around the world.

At the center of that fight are ordinary citizens who left behind comfortable lives to answer a call of duty – people such as a software engineer, a logistics manager and even a poet.

The area south of Izium is a key point of resistance against Russian attempts to completely encircle the Donbas region.

Most civilians have left, and the artillery battles are near-constant. These are some of the people trying to ensure it does not fall into Russian hands.

Anna Arhipova, 22

Anna Arhipova was a logistics manager in her hometown of Poltava, northeast Ukraine, before the war began.

At the time, her overriding fear was not of the violence, but of “not being useful,” she says. So she signed up, and now drives a pickup truck to some of the most dangerous areas of the conflict.

In a world of bearded, stocky young men, her slight frame cuts an uncommon figure. But she says it’s the men, not her, who are troubled by her presence.

“Everybody tells me that I have to give birth, cook, clean, and do the housekeeping, not be here,” she says. “It irritates me very, very much. I answer that if I would like to give birth, I would not be here.”

Alex, 34

Alex, who wanted to use only his first name out of privacy concerns, is a software engineer from Kharkiv. Last year, he built his own countryside log cabin.

Now his house, which was on a strategically located hill, has been reduced to a hole five meters deep, and he spends many of his nights sleeping in a tank named ‘Bunny,’ which was stolen from the Russian military in the opening weeks of the war.

“This is like my personal tank,” he explains. “I am like tank commander and tank owner,” he says with a laugh.

Vlad Sord, 27

Vlad Sord was still a teenager when he signed up to fight for Ukraine in 2014.

“A lot of strange things happen there,” explains Sord, as he chain smokes cigarillos. “Things that I could not explain, I collected them, compiled them, wrote them down.”

He’s now a published author and poet. He fights for his country, and gathers material to document what’s happening.

“I have a very good memory for the dialogues themselves and I use that. I write everything down.”

Bridget Brink, nominated to be U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, prepares to testify at her Senate Foreign Relations Committee confirmation hearing at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, on Tuesday, May 10

Bridget Brink, the nominee for US ambassador to Ukraine, said Tuesday that the United States is “trying to work with international partners and others to help find alternative routes for grain and corn out of Ukraine.”

Brink called it “an enormous challenge” but said the US has the benefit of the Biden’s administration’s “success in galvanizing a coalition of like-minded people who together condemned this war of choice and are ready to work together.”

Damaged cars and debris from a damaged residential building are seen in the Saltivka neighbourhood, of Kharkiv, Ukraine, on Tuesday May 10.

The war in Ukraine is likely to become “more unpredictable and escalatory” in the coming months, the US director of national intelligence told Congress on Tuesday. 

Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines painted a grim and uncertain picture of the next phase of Putin’s two-month-old invasion, which she told the US Senate Armed Services Committee will be difficult to predict in part because “Putin faces a mismatch between his ambitions and Russia’s current conventional military capabilities.” 

“At the very least, we believe the dichotomy will usher in a period of more ad hoc decision-making in Russia, both with respect to the domestic adjustments required to sustain this push, as well as the military conflict with Ukraine and the West,” she told US lawmakers.

Still, Haines told US lawmakers, the intelligence community does not believe Putin would turn to the use of nuclear weapons unless he felt there was an existential threat to Russia.

Here are more of the latest headlines from the Russia-Ukraine war:

Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi meets with US President Joe Biden in the Oval Office of the White House on Tuesday, May 10, in Washington, DC. T

US President Joe Biden and Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi said that the ties between their two countries are “stronger” in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. 

The President thanked Draghi for his response to the “brutality of Putin,” when the two leaders met at the White House on Tuesday.

Draghi told Biden he felt those bonds had been strengthened due to the unrest in Europe.

“The ties between our two countries have always been very strong, and if anything, this war in Ukraine made them stronger,” the Italian leader said.

“I agree,” the President responded.

Draghi said that he and Biden would discuss “energy security” and “food security” during their meeting.

“What happened in Ukraine is going to bring a drastic change in (the) European Union,” the Italian prime minister said. “We’ve always been close, now we’re going to be much closer. I know that I can count on your support as a true friend of Europe and of Italy.”

Biden said he believed a strong European Union was “in the interest of the United States. 

“Granted,” he added, “that’s competition economically but it’s good. It’s good.”

“Putin really believed he could split us,” Biden said, “and we’ve all stepped up.”

US President Joe Biden on Tuesday will meet with the congressional delegation that visited Ukraine earlier this month, the White House said.

She noted that Biden had previously spoken to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “about the delegation’s trip by phone.”

“As we said earlier this month, he wanted to hear a more thorough account of their time in Ukraine in person after they returned to the United States, so this is an opportunity to do exactly that,” Psaki said.

“The President is eager to hear from them and to continue working together on their shared bipartisan goal of providing Ukraine with additional urgently needed security and economic assistance as soon as possible,” she continued.

A new Telegram channel set up in Mariupol and called “Novyj Mariupol” (New Mariupol) has announced that temporary labor is being sought immediately at employment centers of the Donetsk People’s Republic. 

In a post on May 7, the channel said vacancies existed in information security, city improvements and “gathering up the dead.” An updated announcement, appearing in flyer form, with a QR linking to the “New Mariupol” Telegram channel, appeared on Tuesday.

The channel appears to be linked to the new Russian-backed administration in the city.

The flyer uses the same language as the original Telegram post, but makes three additional announcements: The DNR Pension Fund is now open to applications; work is being sought at Illich Iron & Steel Works; and open markets will begin operating at four different locations around the city, starting May 14.

In this 2018 photo, a Russian Air Force MiG-31K jet carries a Kh-47M2 Kinzhal missile during a Victory Day military parade in Moscow.

Russia has used about 10 to 12 hypersonic weapons during the war in Ukraine, a senior US defense official said Tuesday.  

Cautioning that the US does not have a “perfect count,” the official said the number of hypersonic weapons Russia has used is “probably between 10 and 12 I think would be about right.”

Though the official did not specify the dates and locations of the launches, US officials observed the first known combat use of the Russian air-launched Kinzhal hypersonic missile against a building in western Ukraine.

The official would not corroborate Ukraine’s claim that Russia had fired Kinzhal missiles at Odesa over the weekend. Sergey Bratchuk, a spokesperson for the Odesa regional military administration, said Russia had fired three Kinzhal missiles at a “tourist infrastructure target.”

The US has seen no indications that Russia used hypersonic weapons in these strikes, the US official said. 

The Kinzhal missile, which became operational in 2017, has a claimed top speed of Mach 12, or about 9,000 miles per hour (more than 14,400 kilometers per hour). It is an air-launched version of the Russian Iskander short-range ballistic missile.

US officials downplayed the significance of the Russian use of their hypersonic Kinzhal missile. US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said he did not view it as “some sort of game changer” after the Russians announced the missile launch. Days later, Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said it was “hard to know what exactly the justification” was for the launch, since it targeted a stationary storage facility.

“That’s a pretty significant sledgehammer to take out a target like that,” Kirby said at the time. 

Russia also claimed it used Iskander missiles in April to strike weapons depots and Ukrainian military equipment.

Ukraine, on the other hand, claims Russia used Iskander missiles launched from Crimea to strike at a settlement in the Odesa district in early April.

More on hypersonic missiles: Essentially, all missiles are hypersonic — which means they travel at least five times the speed of sound. Almost any warhead released from a rocket miles in the atmosphere will reach this speed heading to its target. It is not a new technology.

What military powers — including Russia, China, the United States and North Korea — are working on now is a hypersonic glide vehicle (HGV). An HGV is a highly maneuverable payload that can theoretically fly at hypersonic speed while adjusting course and altitude to fly under radar detection and around missile defenses.

An HGV is the weapon that’s almost impossible to stop. And Russia is thought to have an HGV in its arsenal, the Avangard system, which Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2018 called “practically invulnerable” to Western air defenses.

CNN’s Brad Lendon contributed reporting to this post.

The Armed Forces of Belarus will deploy special forces to the border of Ukraine because “the United States and its allies continue to increase their military presence at the state borders,” according to the Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces Viktor Gulevich.

“In order to ensure the security of the Republic of Belarus in the southern direction, the forces of the units of the special operations forces are deployed in three tactical directions,” according to a statement Tuesday.

It said the Ukrainians had created a force of 20,000 close to the Belarus border, which “requires a response from us.”

“As part of the second stage of checking the immediate reaction forces, battalion-tactical groups were sent to the Western and North-Western operational directions. To strengthen them, air defense, missile forces and artillery units are being moved forward to ensure their combat functioning,” the statement continued.

Earlier today, Belarusian Defense Minister Viktor Khrenin said the country has started the second stage of inspection of its army’s reaction forces, according to video commentary posted on the Telegram account of Belarusian state media Belta.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba speaks during a joint news conference with German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, in Kyiv, Ukraine, on May 10.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock had an “open, friendly conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, together with Dutch Foreign Minister Hoekstra, “a source in the German delegation said. 

“The conversation focused on assistance to Ukraine in the military sphere and reconstruction, as well as on how to solve the blockade of much-needed global food exports from Ukraine,” media was told.

Germany will start reopening its embassy in Ukraine, German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock announced during a visit to Kyiv Tuesday.

The embassy will begin operating on limited capacity, Baerbock said, and the German ambassador to Kyiv, Anka Feldhusen, will again be the German representative in Kyiv.

In her remarks, the foreign minister also said that Russian President Vladimir Putin has fallen victim to self-deception. 

“He believed that our European values of freedom and humanity, make us decadent and weak. Ukrainians have proved that in reality it is the other way around. Your will for freedom makes you strong,” Baerbock said.

“And the knowledge that you are fighting for your humanity against an army that knows only cynicism and terror. That is why your struggle marks a turning point in the world dispute between liberal democracy and autocratic regimes,” she continued.

Baerbock also visited Babyn Yar, a historical site in Ukraine where massacres were carried out by Nazi forces during World War II. In March, Russian missiles struck near the memorial, located on the northern edge of Kyiv, which commemorates the site where more than 33,000 Jews were shot to death in 1941. 

Zelensky, who is Jewish, tweeted at the time that the Russian attack was “history repeating.”

CNN’s Zahid Mahmood contributed reporting to this post.

A senior US defense official told reporters Tuesday that 89 of the 90 howitzers the US agreed to give to Ukraine have been transferred to Ukrainian possession.  

“Almost 370 Ukrainian soldiers” have completed training on those M777 howitzer artillery systems in locations outside of Ukraine conducted by the US and other NATO allied countries, and 29 Ukrainian soldiers “are completing, wrapping up their maintenance course,” on the howitzer systems, the official added.

“It’s a two-week course, so about 29 have finished it; there’s another 17 going through it right now,” the official said.

The official said 120,000 rounds of ammunition out of the United States’ commitment of 184,000 rounds of ammunition have been transferred to Ukraine from the US. One of the 11 Mi-17 helicopters the US plans to give to Ukraine “is going in” to Ukraine today, the official said.

In other ongoing trainings, 60 Ukrainian soldiers “have completed training on the M1-13, the armored personnel carrier,” the official said. Training on the US Phoenix Ghost, an unmanned aerial system, is also ongoing.

“There is training for a small number ongoing outside of Ukraine on the Phoenix Ghost, there have been others ahead of them that have already returned to Ukraine. So that’s ongoing,” the official added.

The intelligence arm of the Ukrainian defense ministry said that grain stolen by Russian troops in occupied areas is already being sent abroad.

The intelligence directorate claimed that a “significant part of the grain stolen from Ukraine is on dry cargo ships under the Russian flag in the Mediterranean.”

The directorate also said the Russians “continue to export food stolen in Ukraine to the territory of the Russian Federation and the occupied Crimea.”

It said that in one of the main grain-producing areas — around Polohy in the Zaporizhzhia region — grain and sunflower seeds in storage are being prepared for transportation to Russia. 

A column of Russian trucks has left the town of Enerhodar, which is also in the Zaporizhzhia region, under the guard of the Russian military, the directorate claimed. The final destination of the column was Crimea, it said. 

Grain was also being stolen in the Kharkiv region, and 1,500 tons of grain had been taken from the village of Mala Lepetykha in the Kherson region to Crimea.

Last week, the defense ministry said nearly half a million metric tons of Ukrainian grain had already been stolen. 

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Multiple sources have told CNN how Russian forces have been stealing grain and farm equipment from Ukrainian farmers. The photo shows one machine being stolen near Melitopol.

Related article Russians steal vast amounts of Ukrainian grain and equipment, threatening this year's harvest

The Armed Forces of Ukraine said that the Russians have sent about 500 troops from occupied areas of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions north into the Kharkiv region.

They gave no explanation for the move, but CNN reported earlier Tuesday comments by local officials in the Kharkiv region that suggested some Russian troops were being sent northward to reinforce supply lines from the border.

Local authorities said there is “a mass withdrawal of Russian troops from the territory of Borova and Bohuslavka in the direction of Kupyansk.” 

Kupyansk is an important Russian logistics hub inside Ukraine and may become vulnerable if a Ukrainian counterattack in the region is sustained.

That attack made further progress Tuesday, according to the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, with four more settlements to the north and east of Kharkiv falling under Ukrainian control.

CNN has geolocated video from one of those settlements, showing the Ukrainians in control. The new gains put Ukrainian units within a few kilometers of the Russian border in several areas.

Elsewhere in Ukraine, the Ukrainians said Russian forces continue to try to take the town of Rubizhne in Luhansk region, but without success. Officials said Ukrainian units had withstood several attacks in the Luhansk region.

In the Donetsk region, the General Staff said the Russians were trying to break through Ukrainian defenses north of Sloviansk, around the settlements of Oleksandrivka and Shandryholove. 

This area has seen almost constant fighting for around two weeks, but the Russians appear to have made minimal progress on the ground.

Overall, the General Staff’s report suggests that Ukrainian units are under pressure but resisting on most fronts while taking territory in Kharkiv as the Russians fall back toward the Oskil river.

A US nonprofit involved in rescue and evacuation operations in Ukraine during the Russian war said that it has freed an American citizen and his family from Russian forces on Tuesday.

Florida-based nonprofit Project Dynamo said in a statement that on Tuesday, in the vicinity of southern Ukraine’s Mykolaiv region, one of its exfiltration teams “successfully rescued” Kirillo Alexandrov, a 27-year-old American citizen, and his family.

Their release comes after more than a month of negotiations, the group said.

Bryan Stern, co-founder of Project Dynamo, told CNN that Alexandrov and his Ukrainian wife and mother-in-law were taken by Russian forces more than a month ago in the Kherson region. They had been held in a building occupied by the Russians and the Russian security services would not allow them to leave, Stern said.  

The Russians had charged Alexandrov with spying, Stern told CNN. 

Russia’s defense and foreign ministries have not yet responded to CNN’s request for a comment.  

Stern said he has been in regular contact with the US State Department about his efforts. 

“We are aware of these reports. Due to privacy considerations, we have no further comment,” a State Department spokesperson said Tuesday.   

Stern, in a press release, described the extensive operation to secure Alexandrov’s release:     

Stern said that Alexandrov and his family members are healthy and were fed by the Russians while they were detained.