NATO estimated on Wednesday that 7,000 to 15,000 Russian soldiers have been killed in four weeks of fighting in Ukraine, where the country’s defenders have put up stiffer-than-expected resistance and denied Moscow the lightning victory it hoped for. A senior NATO military official said the estimate was based on information from Ukrainian officials, what Russia has released — intentionally or not — and intelligence gathered from open sources. The official spoke on condition of anonymity under ground rules set by NATO. According to an infographic published by the Ukrainian Defense Ministry, Russia has suffered more deaths in 26 days since it invaded Ukraine than it suffered over ten years in Afghanistan (1979-1989) When Russia unleashed its invasion Feb. 24 in Europe’s biggest offensive since World War II and brandished the prospect of nuclear escalation if the West intervened, a swift toppling of Ukraine’s democratically elected government seemed likely. But with Wednesday marking four full weeks of fighting, Russia is bogged down in a grinding military campaign, with untold numbers of dead, no immediate end in sight, and its economy crippled by Western sanctions. U.S. President Joe Biden and key allies are meeting in Brussels and Warsaw this week to discuss possible new punitive measures and more military aid to Ukraine. As Biden left the White House on Wednesday for the flight to Europe, he warned there is a “real threat” Russia could use chemical weapons and said he will discuss that danger with the other leaders. The war’s economic and geopolitical shockwaves — with soaring energy prices, fears for global food supplies, and Russia and China aligning in a new world order with Cold War echoes — have reverberated across a planet yet to emerge from the COVID-19 crisis. In an apparent reflection of growing divisions in Russia’s top echelons, top official Anatoly Chubais has resigned, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the Interfax news agency. Chubais, the architect of Russia’s post-Soviet privatization campaign, had served at a variety of top official jobs over three decades. His latest role was as Putin’s envoy to international organizations. Peskov would not say if Chubais had left the country. With his olive-drab T-shirts, unshaven face and impassioned appeals to governments around the world, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been transformed into a wartime leader and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s No. 1 antagonist. Addressing Japan’s parliament on Wednesday, Zelenskyy said four weeks of war have killed thousands, including at least 121 of Ukraine’s children. “Our people cannot even adequately bury their murdered relatives, friends and neighbors. They have to be buried right in the yards of destroyed buildings, next to the roads,” he said. Repeatedly pushed back by hit-and-run Ukrainian units armed with Western-supplied weapons, Russian troops are shelling targets from afar, falling back on tactics they used in reducing cities to ruins in Syria and Chechnya. Major Russian objectives remain unfulfilled. The capital, Kyiv, has been shelled repeatedly hit but is not even encircled. More shelling and gunfire shook the city Wednesday, with plumes of black smoke rising from the western outskirts, where the two sides battled for control of multiple suburbs. Mayor Vitali Klitschko, said at least 264 civilians have been killed in the capital since war broke out. In the south, the port city of Mariupol has seen the worst devastation of […]

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